An Apology to Lost

Hi, Lost.

You were a great show. I loved watching you every week. Then you ended and I was mad.

Really, really mad:

http://paulgude.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/lost-finale-chickened-out/

I recently got a chance to watch you again on Netflix, and I realized something.

I shouldn’t have been mad at you.

Thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch you without commercials, without much interruption. Instead of waiting somewhere between a whole week or even months for a new episode, I was able to watch your whole story a couple of weeks.

Instead of having time to come up with my own ending for you, I knew the ending you were heading towards. I knew it from the beginning.

And it worked.

I know it won’t work for everyone. I don’t expect to get much agreement from folks. Heck, if you would present this to me in 2010 I would swear it was a forgery.

Still, speaking for myself, I don’t think you failed, Lost. I think you suffered from your first method of presentation: An hour’s worth of TV entertainment impaled by commercials show each week, spanning years.

You were clearly meant to be a movie that could be shown as a four-day marathon, which a viewer can take in at their convenience.

I love you again.

Sorry.

A New View of Time, Memory, and Imagination

When I come into contact with an object, three functions occur.

1) Exploration

I use my senses to study the object. Maybe I look at it, or listen to it, perhaps I pick it up and feel it with my hands. If the object is a mental object, I might do this exploration with the approximate senses of my mind’s eye, or I may just nail a word onto it and let associate traits fall off it as they will.

2) Contextualizing 

I determine how I relate to the object. For physical objects some of these things are innate. I can estimate how far I am from the object. I can determine if the object is still or moving. However, there are other processes for which I must construct a mental object from the object itself. For example, was the object in the room when I entered or did it appear afterwards? There is no way for me to tell by looking at the object. I have to create a small history in my head, replay the moment that I entered the room and determine whether or not the object was there.

Now, an important part. The mental object in my small story is not the object I see in front of me. This is, in fact, the key behind slight of hand. I follow the mental object of the coin, rather than the coin itself. Thus it “disappears” from where it never really was. 

Or, consider a lost set of keys. I create a mental set of keys in all the places I intend to search. It is only after searching that these phantom keys are dispelled, but they are dispelled retroactively and completely. I even chide myself for looking in a place devoid of keys, no matter how reasonable the guess might be.

3) Utilization

Now, I determine what use I have for the object. Once again, for most processes I have to create a mental version of the object first. It may be created for the purposes of motor planning, such as the phantom glass my imagined arm picks up before my real arm gets me a drink of water. I may file the mental object away in a database of mental objects, to draw upon when I wish to create that object in dreams. It may be cast in an imagined scenario, when I decide to worry. In fact, the only times I interact with an object without going through some motions with a mental object first seem to be accidents.

Now, in very rough terms I consider exploration the present, contextualization the past, and utilization the future. However, there are episodes of false contextualization that have never existed in the past, and utilization that is conceived but never occurs in the future. 

In the same way, a mental object can be taken from my head and described in words from my mouth or on a page and enter the head of someone else in the future, but then transport itself to the past.

As an example:

In 1984, I went to the Epcot Center and got a small stuffed purple dragon named Figment. 

If you have already seen this dragon, having yourself gone to the Epcot Center, the image of the dragon may be clear in your mind. If not, for you the image of Figment is a bit different. Perhaps more frightening, perhaps more silly. Still, although you will be reading this in my future, the inclusion of “In 1984″ will place Figment in YOUR 1984, or for some the hazy 1984 before you were born.

Of course, Figment is now in my daughter’s room. In that small sentence, I have added nearly three decades of history onto Figment. Not only onto Figment, but onto the mental object that is me.

It has disturbed me of late that mental objects are becoming more and more prevalent in my daily life. The reason for this is simple: Mental objects are malleable, corruptible, instantly changeable. You have my assurance that Figment is real, that there is a prime object for this mental object, and yet who is giving you this assurance?   

If you have never met me, you are receiving an assurance from a mental object. If you have met me, you are receiving an assurance from a mental object. 

The proliferation of mental objects is disturbing.

Most disturbing of all is a haunting in the back of my brain, a glimmer of suspicion that I have, in the past, come into contact with a prime object of which no mental object could be forged. I am unable to recall it, unable to describe it, and cannot fathom how I could use it. 

I know it was the early 90s. A Subway counter in Columbia, MO. I know I struck it with my hand. I know its vibrations and its sound, but not the object itself. I have an approximation: The Stanley Home Designs BB8023 Spring Door Stop. However, it was definitely not this door stop, because door stops do not hover three inches above a cash register.

I say “most disturbing of all” and yet I have a much more reasonable fear. If there is a prime object that shrugs of mental objects, then what of one that displays a false mental object?

As children, we see these monsters for what they are, lurking in the darkness. Then some adult comes along, turns on the light, and says, “See? It’s just a coat!” or “Don’t worry, it’s a hat on a chair.” 

When I think back to my original purpose of writing this essay, it was to note how I realized that perhaps time does not exist as anything but relationships between objects. Perhaps reality does not exist but as a filling-in, a shading of the lines between the time generated by object relationships to give it more texture.

No, that wasn’t it.

I had realized…something. There was something in the room. Like a labyrinth. No. Not like a labyrinth. Something.

Something.

And I knew I had to write this down. Trap it. Trap it in here. 

By writing it down.

Only I think I missed it. I think I grasped a part of it. Perhaps enough to place between two glass slides. Unless that too is a trick.

Like a labyrinth.

Amazing.

A maze. 

I…

I’m going to post this without reading it.

On Izmodido

In the mid-90s I took a trip from Fairchild AFB to Seattle, Washington. It was by pickup truck. There were three of us on this journey, and our distaste for sitting hip-to-hip necessitated one of us riding in the back.

So it was that I entered Leavenworth, Washington without a soul to advise me.

As the buildings passed, I began to see them get more and more ornate. I later described it as though a normal small town had caught a “Bavarian Plague,” and as we got closer to town I was seeing it in advanced stages of infection.

Of course, later I learned that it was a tourist attraction. The alteration of architecture to that of a Bavarian Village was not a warping of reality, but an undertaking of full intention. Still, the concept of a city that became infected with another city stuck with me.

Years later in Edwardsville, Illinois, I improvised the following lyrics while “jamming” with my friend Jamie Primas:

You don’t know my real name.
You co-signed my loan just the same.
I’m going to go to Izmodido
Or perhaps just Maine

When asked what Izmodido was, I replied in an offhand manner that it was a city that infected other cities. I then told the story of the Bavarian plague.

As I was recounting this, I suddenly remembered a plot from Grant Morrison’s run of Doom Patrol: Orqwith.

Orqwith was an imaginary world, created when a group of philosophers that eventually started taking over the real world.

Given the fact that I first read Grant Morrison’s run of Doom Patrol in the early 90s, there is a very real chance that the concept of Orqwith remained dormant in my head and simply emerged as a way of interpreting the creeping Bavarian presence in Leavenworth.

I had convinced myself, however, that Izmodido was the true name of Orqwith, a name that had revealed itself to me in the altered state one produces when improvising. I began to catalog changes and inconsistencies within the real world.

I would count the number of steps in staircases, note the page numbers of books, looking for anything that would belie some sort of transformation. I refused to take notes, assuring myself that such notes would be the first thing to be altered. I then realized that memory, too, could be transformed. I considered myself at an impasse. I decided the best thing to do would be attack the problem head-on. I began writing about Izmodido, constructing its language, trying to reproduce its art. Only too late did I realize that I had unwittingly begun doing its work for it: I was transforming our world into Izmodido.

I quickly abandoned the concept as much as I could. I can feel bits of it creeping into my contemporary work, but I try to eradicate it as soon as it is recognized.

I write this now because I have, for the first time, read Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Borges, which predates Morrison’s run of Doom Patrol by decades.

I have now gone insane. I began to realize that this will indeed be a losing battle.

It struck me when reading the story, that Orqwith is a hrönir of Tlön, and Izmodido a hrönir of the former. From this, I realized that with each branch, there must be others who have created second and third generations of this concept, each believing themselves to be the originators.

Even worse, I realized that as we begin rejecting physical objects for digital ones, the effort needed to create counterfeit reality will lessen to the point that the cost will no longer be prohibitive. What percentage of Wikipedia is currently fiction?

If our relationships with others atrophy to those of like-minded individuals whom we meet only through electronic media, how much easier to replace them? This concept alone has necessitated my exiting from the world of social media in an attempt to strengthen my bonds with people in the physical world.

Will the physical world be safe for long?

Once 3D printers are commonplace, how hard will it be to receive an artifact from an unknown world?

Izmodido, Orquith, and Tlön benefit grant us a gift with their otherness. Their alien architecture and practices set them apart, a creeping wave of unreality you can witness in horror. How much more terrifying, insidious, would a world almost identical to ours be? A world populated by the same people and places you have always known, with only the most subtle changes?

Do we not already live here?

Be seeing you.

-Paul

How to Draw a Hat

A lot of my time is spent pitching ideas that don’t see the light of day.

This was a pitch that was promising, but ultimately didn’t work as a book. So, I tried translating it into a different medium.

That House You Should Have Avoided

In my dream, I’m noticing the Schwan man delivering food to a house. It’s dark blue in color, with a large front yard. Small. One floor. A door flanked with windows. The Schwan man is walking back to his truck. He has a wooden mask with a face on it that is barely human, a hollowed log with a bit of 2×4 where the eyes should be. His head seems smaller than the rest of his body. He appears not unlike how one might expect a wooden robot to appear.

There is someone with me, a woman my age, who suggests we leave. I ignore her and she goes without me. I am interested in the house. I mount the steps and peer in through the door. It has glass windows set in it, and I can see a bit inside. Fighting the feeling that breaking and entering is a crime, I step inside.

Instantly, I am overcome with nostalgia. Each piece of furniture in this house is a piece of furniture from my life. The chairs are from my grandmother’s house, a desk from my childhood, a table from my house in Pontiac, Illinois. I turn to see a smiling old woman standing there.

“You got it all,” I hear myself say. “It’s all here.”

“That’s right, dear,” the old woman says, nodding. There is a youthful joy dancing in her eyes. “Every bit of it.”

I am fascinated, running my fingers over the patterns in the upholstery on one of the chairs.

“You know the devil took me,” the old woman says. “At Briarcliff.”

Her head tics to the side, just so. A curious look, but knowing. She’s waiting for me to get frightened.

“The devil?” I say.

“At Briarcliff,” she nods. “He took me, and he’s going to take you.”

“Take me where?” I ask, a formality, knowing the answer.

“To hell, dear,” the woman laughs. “It’s where we’re all going.”

To my left, a dead body appears, as though it’s fallen out of the wall. There’s no panic in me. The old woman doesn’t start to attack me, she simply smiles in a sinister manner. The body is of a different old woman, but I know immediately it’s the true owner of the house. I know that the furniture was a trap to draw me here, and I know that people from a mental institution are coming to take me there, and then take me to hell.

I also realize that Briarcliff is the name of the institution in the FX original series American Horror Story: Asylum. Suddenly, this all seems comical. I realize I’m dreaming. All I have to do is wake up.

Then suddenly, my daughter is there.

“They’re taking both of you,” the old woman says, somberly. “To Briarcliff.”

My daughter is scared. I see that there is a class of students outside of the house. It’s her first grade class. I send her to them. She nods, looks back at me, and runs outside.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” I say to the old woman. “This was going really well until you said Briarcliff. Do you not know the difference between real stuff in my head and commercially created content?”

My daughter’s class files into the house. This isn’t right. They were supposed to go to school, away from here.

“They sent us back,” my daughter explains. “I don’t like it here.”

I pick her up and hug her.

“It’s okay,” I say to her. “This is a dream. We just have to wake up. That’s all.”

“They’re coming,” the old woman says, smiling.

“I can’t,” my daughter whispers, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Dad, I can’t wake up!”

And I get it. The thing I haven’t for so long. The panic, the heart-pound. The idea that something in this dream can actually hurt my real life. I can escape, but I have to wake up without my daughter. 

“They’re coming,” the old woman repeats.

And I wake up. Frightened, for a moment I just sit in bed. I check the time. Fifteen minutes until we have to leave for school. I go into my daughter’s room. She wakes up, groggy, and I hug her. She asks me what I’m doing and I tell her my dream. She looks at me seriously and says:

“Dad, only YOU had to wake up. That wasn’t me-me. That was dream-me. The dream was tricking you.”

Of course, she was right.

Last Night’s Dreams

DREAM ONE

Having run along a series of platforms of varying heights, I came across one that had two pans of glowing liquid on them. I knew that these were for lighting the city, not to be disturbed. I climbed down and came across a blood stand.

The man next to me complained, first that they were only taking blood from people with tickets from their last session ending in odd letters. The idea of “odd letters” took a while for him to explain to me. The idea was that the alphabet was lumped into groups of two: AB, CD, EF, etc. and then each letter grouping was assigned a value of even or odd. The frustrating thing was that the tickets that were assigned to you at the end were not designed for this system, and therefore you could be assigned AC for example. This left it up to the blood stand proprietor to decide whether to take you. You DID have an odd letter, but not both of them. There were more frustrations, such as the insistence that AB was an EVEN letter group, that AE was a group made of even letters but not one of the sanctioned even letter groups, etc. 

All this was somewhat moot to me, because I had no plans of donating blood that day. However, the man’s second complaint got my attention. He was complaining that the only thing TODAY’S blood ticket would buy was energy bread no “real food” at all. This was disturbing for two reasons. One, blood tickets were supposed to be used for any goods or services, and two, up until this point energy bread was free. The reason it was free was that it was designed to create jobs and feed the poor at the same time. It cost basically nothing to make and while not enjoyable, could keep you alive long enough to hand out bread to people for more bread. The realization dawned on me that had I simply walked up and asked for some, they would have told me to get in the blood line.

The bread distributor had heard the man complaining about the bread, and was now yelling at him, angrily pointing to the nutritional facts about the bread. He was college-aged, most likely going to school and working the bread stand for the nutrition.

DREAM TWO

An itching in my scalp alerted me to the fact that I had contracted that clear spider plague going around. I got my pick and began pulling them from my hair into the sink full of water, as directed. As soon as they hit the water, they began to grow. In their larger state they were worm-like, their spindly legs turning into tentacles around an oral disk, like an anemone. Again, as I had learned in an instructional pamphlet, I pulled a worm out and stepped on it with one foot, causing its body to balloon out in the opposite direction. I then stepped on this “head” portion, the resulting rupture sending a slow gush of clear fluid onto the floor. Disgusted, I grabbed two to see if I could get them to fight each other. I saw that their “mouths” were just discolorations in their skins, and suspected that if just left to their own devices they would die of starvation.

 

Magic Bear Chords and Lyrics

Magic Bear by Paul Gude is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://paulgude.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/magic-bear-chords-and-lyrics/.

Here are the chords and lyrics to Magic Bear if you’d like to do your own version.

For reference, the original is here:

https://soundcloud.com/sgnp/magic-bear

Add a link to YOUR version in the comments!

MAGIC BEAR

By Paul Gude

I’m a [F]guy from [Bb]outer [F]space

It’s a [F]cold and [Bb]lonely [F]place

Hu[F]mans are a [Bb]nasty [F]breed

But [F]you have [Bb]what I [F]need

[C7]Don’t wanna meet your leader x4

[F]Take me to your [Bb]Magic [F]Bear

[F]Wanna see what he’s [Bb]doin’ [F]There

[F]Take me to your [Bb]Magic [F]Bear

[F]Wanna pet [Bb]his magic [F]hair

[Dm]Why would I wanna meet that [A7]other [Dm] guy

[Dm]When all he does is see [A7]people [Dm] cry?

[Dm]I got too many lead[A7]ders at [Dm]home

[Dm]I just wanna leave that [A7]guy a[Dm]lone

[F]Take me to your [Bb]Magic [F]Bear

[F]Wanna see what he’s [Bb]doin’ [F]There

[F]Take me to your [Bb]Magic [F]Bear

[F]Wanna pet [Bb]his magic [F]hair

[Dm]Why would I wanna meet that [A7]other [Dm] guy?

[Dm]If he makes mistakes good [A7]people [Dm] die

[Dm]I’m not blind humans [A7]I can [Dm]see

[Dm]Just what that man could [A7]do to [Dm]me

[F]Take me to your [Bb]Magic [F]Bear

[F]Wanna see what he’s [Bb]doin’ [F]There

[F]Take me to your [Bb]Magic [F]Bear

[F]Wanna pet [Bb]his magic [F]hair

[F]If you don’t know [C7]where it [F]is

[F]Well I think that [Bb]I’ll just [F]grab it

[Dm]Foolish [A7]foolish [F]earthlings

[F]You never [Bb]Knew you [F]had it

[C7]Magic [F]Bear

 

 

 

Twila and the Old Devil

Twila and the Old Devil

Twila splitting wood
Arms strong
Breath heavy
Sweat on the back of a shirt
Makes the skin show through
And the ground cracks
Then falls
And out the hole jumps the Devil
Dressed all in red
With a black face
big black clubs for feet
No toes
Not like hers
Greedy for the ground
Sinking into dust
To swing that axe
Chop a devil-leg
Make him fall
And he falls
Twila dragging the devil
To the shed
Him hollering to no one
“Bring the leg!”
More worried than the blood
Red blood of a man
“I can put it back!”

Twila poking the Devil
With a pitch fork
Irony not lost
On such a young girl
Devil rallies
Twila throws his leg
Hits him in the chest
He tries to grab it
Finds his good arm chained
“Put it back, then,” says Twila.
She goes to check the chickens

Night now
Twila has her pitchfork
The Devil’s leg is back on
Him squinting at his hand
“Rusty iron,” says she.
“No devil-lock for you to lie at.”
“Why do you mark me Devil so unkindly?” asks he.
He puts his hand to his face
Tears it off
No blood
But a second face
Mocking her
Made up to look like Jesus
“Where are the owners of this house?”
He tries to sound kind
“You know,” says she.
“You done a deal with them.”
The devil thinks for a minute
Laughs a bit
“You’re Twila?”
Twila’s eyes go wide
Leaves the shed
Door open
Her name follows her
Up the stairs
Into her room
Into sleep

Morning
Twila sees the shed open
Creeps in
The devil is gone
The pitchfork is there
Tine caught in the lock
Twila runs
Behind the house
To the graves
“I buried them deep,” she yells.
The devil has already dug up her daddy
And is halfway to her mama
She sees her daddy’s face
Staring from the inside of the devil’s sack
“You shouldn’t have done it,” the devil groans
Still digging
“They’re mine when they’re dead.”
He turned to look.
“And you’re mine when living.”
He reached her mama then
Threw her in a second sack
“I’m no one’s slave,” Twila said.
She walks to the axe
But the devil jumps up
And gets there before her
“Not a slave,” he corrects.
Devil’s daughter
He explains
Holding a contract she cannot read
Sensing her dumb gaze
He sighs
“Try to get out of a bargin,” he mutters
“Of course they would shirk the rules.”
He turned his wide dull eyes to her.
“Are you lettered in the least?”
“I can read the old words,” Twila says.
“The Bible is the only book I need.”
Again the devil removes his face
As if to answer her statement
With the visage of the Lord
“You ain’t Jesus,” she spits.
He makes a look at her.
A confused Christ.
“Wear my face,” he commands.
He pulls it on her roughly
A smell of sour sweat and bad teeth
And the contract before her
Swims
Forming old words
Like “Guardian”
“Steward”
And many others she cannot place
She looks at the Devil
And sees where to hit him
To incapacitate
To kill
He steps back
As if sensing her intent
She looks at the sky
Each metal angel
Wears its name like a sash
The clouds tell her
If they plan to rain
She looks at the land
All the Devil owns
Is painted green
She shudders
To see her own flesh so stained
“Is this how the Devil sees the world?”
She whispers
“Yes,” he nods.
She sees a line
White against the green
An arrow
Pointing to the hole from which the Devis sprung
“So I’m to serve you below?”
The devil took back his face
Twila blinked the world back into place
“Yes,” says he.
“Why were you so long in coming?”
Asks Twila
“It’s almost five days I put them in the ground.”
“The Devil’s business is his own,” laughs he.
“I imagined this farm mine,” says she.
“Their sick-bed stories a lie.”
“These dreams are vapor,” says he.
“You were mine the moment they died.”
“I ain’t stupid,” says she.
“It’s why I gave you back your leg.”
The Devil takes her by the hand
To the underworld

Paradox Post

I originally wrote a long post about this, but I think shorter is better.

I’m swearing off making pronouncements about rules I’m setting up for my behavior. This goes for calling myself a vegan, saying I’m swearing off the Internet, the whole bit.

I’m still making vegan food, still cutting down on my Internet time, etc.

The only difference is that I’m setting myself up to be more flexible if the situation demands it. Life is going to be getting weird very soon.

This is a paradox post because this is a pronouncement about a rule I’m setting up for my behavior.

You knew that, though.

-Paul

The Past and Patience

If you are prone to obsession regarding past mistakes, the following exercise may be helpful:

Imagine your life is a video game, or if you do not have enough experience with them for that frame of reference, a play in which you are the actor. If this still does not help, play a video game or act in a play and then come back and read this.

Imagine your life up until this moment is a cut scene, or backstory. All of those events have happened. They inform the character of you, the person you are in the story of your life. However, they are also irreversible, unchangeable. Your goal now is to move forward.

This is not to say the experiences aren’t useful. Human life has a habit of repeating events in certain variations. Do you wish you had done something differently? You don’t get to change any past events, but you are at this very moment living the past of your future self. Treat your future self with the respect you wish your past self had shown. 

In my own life, I feel I make mistakes in two areas:

1) I fail to act on opportunities that present themselves, fearing failure.

2) I make decisions without considering every consequence, and therefore fail. 

By examining these two areas, it is easy to see a glaring issue. In order to succeed, I must carefully consider opportunities before they pass me by, to ensure I am making the right decision. Only then can I pass my future self opportunities without mistakes. Within a short amount of time, I will realize the following:

There is not enough time to consider all of the the consequences of an action before the time for that action has past.

Or, more concisely:

Any decision may end in failure.

So what am I to do? 

The first part is to realize that often I rarely have to do anything. 

Take, for example, an online discussion. 

All to often, when people with strong opinions are arguing, I feel the need to state something. In the early days of the Internet, I would respond rashly, only to see that the exact argument I made had already been stated by someone further down the thread. As one should, I eventually evolved to read the thread before commenting. Often I found myself searching for an angle, one that would let people know that I too was smart and had an opinion. I eventually learned that if I waited even longer, eventually someone would come up with THAT opinion as well. The discussion was a system that would continue without my participation.

So too with daily life. The small impacts I make on the whole of humanity would not be missed were they gone tomorrow. It is much too big.

And yet…

My impact on strangers can be life-changing. Holding the door open for someone on the elevator could be the difference between them being five minutes late or right on time for an important meeting.

My impact on my family is enormous. One cross word when a kind one would do can ruin my wife’s mood, perhaps her day.

My impact on my own life can be monumental. If I decide to move to Canada or finish a degree, I may live the rest of my life regretting the decision.

And yet…

What if the five minutes I cost the person who misses their elevator prevents them from getting stuck in a job they would have hated?

What if the cross word to my wife puts her in a bad enough mood to finally confront me about my attitude, changing it for the better?

If moving to Canada proved fruitless, perhaps it was simply a stop to the place I am now.

How am I to tell what impact my actions have on the world?

I cannot. That is the nature of chaos.

The nice part about being human is that we assign meaning to events that have none. I’m not being sarcastic. A tragic event being “All for the best,” is precisely that because we have named it so. Events happen. It is up to us to assign meaning to them.

Therefore, I need only have patience enough to make a decision that feels right to me.

All the decisions I’ve regretted, from crimes to addictions to being the victim of swindles, they’ve all been decisions that I regretted at the moment I was making them. I am making a case for listening to one’s conscience not because of some higher authority, but to make the most comfortable present for ourselves. I believe I can make a present for myself where I feel I’ve done my best.

I’ve set myself the following goals:

1) Accept past failures as part of the backdrop that have lead me to this moment.

2) Have patience to act only when I must, with the best intentions.

3) Acknowledge that what may happen is not what will happen.

4)  Act.

5) Acknowledge that my action is now part of the past.

I’ll let you know how it goes.