Whoooa, just realised both my last posts didn't take.

Write.as has a thing against me.

Do ya, guys?

—

Taking a short little “coffee” (matcha and writeas) break from my totally kick ass worknight. Thought I'd drop in and be up a hello.

Speaking of being up a hello

SQUAREPUSHER – BE UP A HELLO !!!

Fucking love that album. Great work music. For me, anywayzle.

Tonight's playlist:

Hours and hours of lyricless electro background noise arranged in musical pentameter

Also layered in the kerfuffle is a 13.8 Hz binaural tone.

And a smattering of vitamins. B complex, magnesium taurate, oestrogen blockers, lithium orotate, butterbur extract, 350 mg centrophenoxine, and 200 mg lamictal. All in all that's a real fine alchemie swirling for me there, and I super recommend it!

Tell me what YOU are listening to?

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

—

Pro tip: I mean, this should be completely obvious, but don't use fonts called aRAPEy. Arapey? A rape-y font? A rapey, unreadable font?

The 💡idea💡 is to make love 💋 to the reader's eyes. 👀 Not, um, #metoo them. 🍆🚷

Lessons learned.

And. Thanks, Kim. For your brutal capslock warlock schlock getting insecure women to follow your cock. Well played, big K.

/me smashing that publishplane.

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

Dear universe, this is how girls actually talk.

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

Do you feel that way?

I deeply appreciate the ability to write persuasively, colloquially.

It's one of life's greatest skills.

And it is a skill, mind you. This isn't innate talent. Anyone can write. Especially when they practice. When one digs in and starts throwing down words — editing and re-editing — OR NOT — until something wonderful comes out.

There's something very tactile, very craftsman-like about massaging messages into place. To an artiste, there's always more to say and better ways to say it. Pieces aren't ever “done”, they just stand for now.

I weave in and out. I zoom into text, I sit back in my chair to take it all in. Back, forth, back, forth. Wondering what the audience sees. Sometimes I zoom REEEEally far out — this is called stepping away from the desk and going to get some ice cream — and that helps a bit. Distance. Making the heart grow fonder. Or. Making the mind go wander.

But inevitably we sit back down and keep writing or editing some more.

I'm writing a couple pieces right now, and gotta tell ya, I'm not disappointed in them. I reckon they'll sell a lot of widgets this Memorial Day weekend.

It makes you wonder what people are actually memorializing during this holiday.

Buying things?

Yes, definitely buying things.

Doorbuster adverts be darned.

—

Every child should be granted one amazing writing teacher per lifetime. Several if they're lucky. It'll change many lifetimes ever after. Someone, maybe an editor, maybe a straight up freshman professor, but someone who can coax your best words out of you. To sit and type and think, then solicit a RESPONSE from the thing you sat and typed and thought about. Bliss.

Another teacher who inspires life is experience.

The 1950s saw the start of a new style of schooling in the deprived inner city, where the teacher would actually bring their students out on field trips. Everything before that was in one room, the entire day.

Gardens. Airports. Behind the scenes at the market. This gave those kids, who would otherwise be secluded from society, the gift of EXPERIENCE. Their parents couldn't bring them out – their parents were working 2-3 jobs and didn't have a car. This experience — life experience — had effects that lasted into the next 3 generations!

We are all so lucky to have benefited from that paradigm shift.

This shift was informed by widening awareness of psychology and the looming achievement focus of the Space Race. The US would do anything to beat the Rooskie's at the nuclear armageddon — err, suborbital frontiersmanship — of mankind. And even though in the history books (depending on which ones you read) they BOTH won the Cold War, the real thing they won was a revolution in the education system.

I mean, education systems aren't at all THAT great, okay, the industrialization of children's daily rhythms isn't perfect, but the idea of field experience is (was) a fantastic start.

Yeah, the industrialized state schooling really does beat the curiosity and drive out of a kid, I know.

All isn't lost, though. As long as we're all here to keep it together.

—

Damn, I wonder how much alcohol is consumed merely because people can't communicate.

Loss for words. Social lubricant. Can't connect with the song of their soul. Need a crutch.

Just.

We all got along fine for 21 years when we could say whatever was on our minds, in the company of a nurturing spark... Fine, without spirits distorting the view of our inspired reality.

Anyway — I'm going to let you ponderwander that one for a bit while I get back to my work today. It's been nice chatting with you write.as, using your blankbox soapbox for some rather nice typing practice... So... thanks for listening!

Another day in, Paradise

PS – This was just conveniently and relevantly tweeted my way as I was about to smash the publish airplane:

“Talent is extremely common. What's rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.” — Our man, Kurt Vonnegut.

PPS – Yes. Absolutely. This is a beautiful happy place.

Okay okay okay, Rescuetime is about to pull the plug on my meanderings. Better fuck off! See ya, nerds!

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

I'm starting to get really excited for the Blues and want to see them win the Stanley. Did you know they've never won a Stanley? And only one of the kids on that team has even gotten to a Playoff before? And that their goaltender is a ROOKIE, and that during the season they were DEAD LAST?

Their crowd, being from St. Louis music city, COOS. They sing along to the vintage organ in enterprise center.

There is nothing not completely cool about this whole organization this year.

They're my pick for Stanley. Last time they were this far, FORTY NINE YEARS ago, they also played the Bruins. And while I love the graceful plays from Marchand and Bergeron and the whole Boston crew, I'm really rooting for the Blues. (STL has totally drowned SJS, probably another factor that wins my loyalty. I think all VGK fans are secretly rooting STL this year.)

It's going to be a nail biter, I think. Boston is really, really good.

And I think STL only beat the shit out of the Sharks because SJS was down 3 really good players, which totally shattered SJS' chemistry. Sharks were a very pheromonal team. I'll explain that in a different message. This was just an aside I added in later as I was walking away from the computer.

Rubbed in my face in the local news lately is about Jeopardy James Holzhauer, who is a professional sports bettor from my town, who holds record for the second most Jeopardy win streak and second most earnings streak, second to a guy who achieved this in 3x more time than him. JJ is obvs going to go on to be reigning champ on all this. He says his secret is commanding the buzzer. And yes, I signed up for the thing that generates the paywall. This was a good read. (And a good app!)

So seeing James Holzhauer's ability to turn betting into a legit personal franchise has me kind of wanting to put a few points in for the playoffs. I'd limit it to trainer's “chump change”, but I think it'd be fun. Money is just points on a scoreboard, anyway. Maybe next year hockey will be one of those hobbies I have accidentally monetized... which seals it as a legit hobby, since all my legit hobbies are monetized, and all my jobs are legit hobbies.

I got to thinking about this whole world of white guys playing sports, and how dominant a career and influence on the American economy it is.

How Greco-Roman it is.

To be whiling away on games and spectacles while there's crop failures and pressing problems in our reality.

That these ubermen spend every waking moment preparing for their spotlight hours. Grinding grinding grinding on machines purpose built for the long slog.

The billions of dollars exchanged daily in the form of merchandise, bets, tickets, transportation to/from, billable hours diverted talking about events...

And like in Greece, the athletes go on to be part of the peri-elite. A certain rung of the pyramid.

Anyway. I'm just staring out the rain pattered window thinking about this.

I would like to sharpen my mathmind. New hobby time. Probably something I can partake in with my eldest, since we stumbled upon the greatest new math teacher... God I wish I knew this guy before I ever learned arithmetic! Everything that took me years to practice he's turned into an amazingly shortcutted body trick. Embodied/visual math is stunning!

All right.

Gotta run. Meds, writing, stretching... all lay out in front of me today.

Haha, wait.

So there's this problem I have in one of my jobs, where ultimately the answer is calling a supplier in France and getting a new part, but this is something I've been slacking off on. Instead, I've added up to 3-5 minutes per piece on crafting these widgets because I have thousands of American/Chinese parts I “think” I have to exhaust. But the fucking real story is... I can just get my FUNCTIONING part from France, spend 10 seconds on the assembly, and SELL the American/Chinese parts on Amazon, netting me more time AND money.

I think once the playoffs are done, my motivation to do this will skyrocket, because one of the things that gets me into the office every day to crank out more widgets is the warm television screen next to my desk and the 3 hour hockey game. I bang away at widget after widget, popping my head up when the CROWD tells me something COOL is about to happen.

They're psychically wired to the beat of the puck, so their collective anthill sounds are the thing that announce the actual fucking intensity of what's happening.

It's a whole different feeling being a fan to a player. When I played in front of big crowds I didn't even notice the fucking crowds were there until the end! As a fan, I'm just one invisible component of a chortling positive mass that spikes and flows along with pheromone/adrenaline spikes and flows, amplifying the spikes and flows. Elevating. It's cool. Idk.

Anyway, once I'm done being part of the active trance, I'll rally hard to get this new French assembly flown in so I can increase my efficiency, freeing up time to work on my slapshot or something, so I can play hockey with the boys during the offseason, in a beer league that NO ONE will watch, and will be so much fun that someone will have to pry bodies off ice.

So yeah, now I'm done. Stomach is grumbling, back needs a stretch, and rain is starting to creep through my windowsills.

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

Saw a tweet yesterday that I'll try to recreate from memory, because I don't remember who twote it (not my feed).

Said something about...

When men experience paranoia they do so in systemic scale (alien abduction, govt conspiracy theories)

When women experience paranoia they do so at a personal scale (crystal woo, ... and some other stuff I can't remember)

So

In that way,

Is it sexist to want to see more systemic visionariness? I think women are perfectly capable of systemic thinking. Self nominated case in point. Maybe I'm delusional or an exception, but I don't think so. I have an PHD in overthinking says my girlfriend. But see, so does she.

If we fairer sex were all so liberated to think.

Anyway. #visionary tag. For those expansive thinkers out there, male or female.

Just some thoughts from paradise.

.:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

Here are my favorite excerpts so far. I'm thinking if I comment on them I get to re-teach and re-learn. Totally a win-win. For me.

I had this awfully dark dream where I strangled and shinered some kid I had a crush on just to get him to notice me. I admitted this to him then he had me committed. Who needs TV when mental dramas are so cool?

Right, excerpts. I didn't forget, I just alighted for a pee break and came back to an open writing window.

It's almost impossible to find capsule quotes of Lewis Thomas because his longreads are just so brilliant, every paragraph being a shiny brick upon which another shiny brick is placed. Trying to find the capstone that holds the whole marvelous idea together is tough!

Oh, to ramble like Lewis Thomas or Oliver Sacks.

“Already there are no closed, two way conversations. Any word you speak this afternoon will radiate out in all directions, around town before tomorrow, out and around the world before Tuesday, accelerating to the speed of light, modulating s it goes, shaping new and unexpected messages, emerging at the end as an enormously funny Hungarian joke, a fluctuation in the money market, a poem, or simply a long pause in someone's conversation in Brazil.” — Lewis Thomas, “Computers”, The Lives of a Cell

Or in a monospace text box on Medium in 2017 or Write.as in 2019. (I remember investing in Medium in 2009, but that's a different story)

Reminds me that information is the building block of the universe, and that the brain is in constant creation of information.

This means that consciousness (brainpower, otherwise) needs to be observed, which then leads to information being distributed, meaning existence exists simply because it's observed. It's a circle. It's a torus!

So no thought/no utterance is ever done without witness. If it exists in your mind, someone hears it. (Even if that someone is you.)

“There are lots of possibilities here, but if you think about the construction of the hill by a colony of a million ants, each one working ceaselessly and compulsively to add perfection to his region of the structure without having the fastest notion of what is being constructed elsewhere, living out his fried life in a social enterprise that extends back into what is for him the deepest antiquity (ants die at the rate of 3-4% per day; in a month or so an entire generation vanishes, while the Hill can go on for 60 years or, given good years, forever) performing his work with infallible, undistracted skill in the midst of a confusion of others, all tumbling over each other to get the twigs and bits of warmth and ventilation of the eggs and larvae, but totally incapacitated by isolation, there is only now human activity like this and it is language.

“We have been working at it for what seems eternity, generation after articulate generation, and we still have no notion how it is done, nor what it will be like when finished, if it is ever to be finished. It is the most compulsively collective, genetically programmed, species specific, and autonomic of all the things we do, and we are infallible at it. It comes naturally. We have DNA for grammar, neurons for syntax. We can never let up; we scramble our way through one civilization after another, metamorphosing, sporting tools and cities everywhere, and all the time new words keep tumbling out.

“The words themselves are marvels, each one perfectly designed for its use. The older, more powerful ones are membranous, packed with layers of different meaning, like one word poems. “Articulated”, for instance, first indicated a division of small joints, then, effortlessly, signified the speaking of sentences. Some words are gradually altered while we have them in everyday use, without our being aware until the change has been completed: the ly in today's adverbs, such as ably and benignly, began to appear in place of “like” a few centuries ago, and “like” has since worn away to a mere suffix. By similar process, “love-did” changed itself into “loved”.”

— Lewis Thomas, “Living Language”, The Lives of a Cell (1974)

One of his earlier essays explores how our DNA is encoded for language. He refs it again here.

I could have just cut the whole three paragraphs and left you with what is bolded, but don't you like to know about ants?

“As Dee and Kelley were receiving and working with the items and concepts of heptarchic magicking, their minds and psychic bodies were, day by day, undergoing subtle yet profound evolutionary changes.

“Could the reason the practical Enochian material came so very late in the game that Dee and Kelley had to first complete their transformation into magicians who could appreciate and handle the advanced work? After all, isn't that way magicking is really about — changes in the magician? Could these changes have been brought about by the mere act of meticulously following the angels' complex directions, which filtered and distilled these magical concepts into material manifestation? If so, this would be a vital predatory step that modern Enochian magicians are omitting entirely.

“I grew intrigued with this idea. Given that GD/Crowly methods of Enochian magicking already work so well right out of the box, how much better would these same techniches work if the magician were first prepared and attuned in a matter similar to the way Dee and Kelley had been prepared and attuned. A magician so equipped would be picking up, as it were, where the two Elizabethans left off in 1584.”

— Lon DuQuette, Enochian Vision Magick (2008)

Don't you find it fascinating that John Dee (scribe), and Edward Kelley (receiver) were Queen Elizabeth's royal magicians, and that this was actually a thing in the 1500s?

And a thing now, mind.

And so, while some people get tripped up with the word “angels” because it triggers religious connotations, think of them otherwise as non-bodied, trans-dimensional entities you can have a conversation with, ask to be melted into you to take on their properties (as much as you can in this 3D world), ask for reality-bending tasks to be completed, and so on.

And so, preparing yourself psychically for this is simply preparing yourself to be aware and perceptive of energies that may seem out of reach or downright impossible to the normal, burger-eatin' layman.

Haha, and here I let Lewis Thomas step in again: “IF you hear the word, 'Impossible!' spoken as an expletive, followed by laughter, you will know that someone's orderly research plan is coming along nicely.”

So one of my favorite movies — top 5 — is Interstellar. Favorite genre – space opera – top fav director, Nolan bros. I could care less about who acted in it. Anyway.

Like when Cooper is stuck in the tesseract playing “angel” (or in their terms: ghost) to his daughter Murph throughout her life, and how 5D entities (can't be said they're human, who knows!) are playing angel to him by building him a tesseract in a black hole.

It's honestly not that far fetched.

We don't know what's in a black hole because we can't observe it.

But it's entirely within the realm of possibility that a transdimensional being would totally be familiar with the fabric of the black hole, and even the building blocks, and so able to build a 4D object, a tesseract, into a dimensionless(?) void(?) to fit a 3D creature into a constructed place to manipulate his timeline, which is connected to earth's timeline by a bridge of Love.

Love and Consciousness.

Both can't be measured (can they? I'm sure the MRI isn't measuring consciousness. Nor is the EEG. At best the EEG is measuring your EYEBALLS moving, and you have to filter out the noise or else you'll be reading false positives and speaking them as gospel

Haha sounds so human.

Anyway,

both love and consciousness can't be measured, but they exist.

I don't remember where I'm going with that. I'm just type rambling in my layman, junior high way.

I've been writing like a junior high schooler my whole life, methinks.

Perhaps, like Dee/Kelley, to prepare myself for a time when my magician ways can be summoned (conversed?) by a trans-dimensional entity for some sort of MISSION. (it feels like I'm on it, so that's cool.)

Seeing that I didn't even get past 10th grade I figure its appropriate to seemingly always speak like a junior high schooler. This also makes my ramblings accessible to a junior high schooler, and those are the most malleable, intelligent creatures on earth next to a pre-kindergartener (obviously trumps all of us), however it is difficult to keep a pre-k engaged in a task for more than a few minutes at a time.

so if we had 4 year olds managing 12 year olds in a symphony of world-saving missions, I think the human race may be okay.

Maybe this is why the world needs moms. To keep these kids safe. Life depends on it. The millennials don't know this, nor do the boomers who wrecked the millennials' chances of owning a home and giving birth during their naturally fertile window (if at all), two requisites for, you know, being a pre-k or junior high schooler.

And dads. To keep the moms safe.

so maybe there needs to be a baby boom ii, but this time without the toxic narcissism that plagued the baby boom i as it reached adulthood.

I dunno, man, what do you think?

This discussion with myself if actually making it a bit easier to stomach my next (new) book, an excerpt of which I'm finding and will type now, and you'll see how curtlingly cringey it is at face value, but after we read this together I'll expand on some virtues as well. (But note, initially, I felt as grossed out as you might feel upon reading it.Or maybe it's me)

” 'Our Washington correspondent has found a very articulate [Ed note: whoa its that word again!] young protestor with something to say.”

” 'Miss, what are you protesting?' the correspondent asked.

”'American Apartheid,” Danielle replied.

”'Apartheid, really? What makes you say that?'

”' Well we have two classes of citizens. That's apartheid, just like South Africa had.' “' I'm not sure I can agree.' The interviewer leaned toward Danielle. 'We only have one class of citizens. And the immigrants want to become citizens. How is that two classes of citizens?'

”'Those are just words,' Danielle said. 'What's really going on is that we would never send all of the so called illegal immigrants back to where they came from. Our country would fall apart. They are part of our economy. So they get some things — like the doctor would see them in an ER and some kids get to go to school. But any one of them can be picked on and thrown out. They're called illegal but that's not really honest because we need them. They get some rights but not others. That's apartheid.'

”'Interesting, I had not looked at it that way before. So what do you think we should do about this?'

” 'Make them official citizens. The first class of citizen.'

” 'Well the demonstrators here apparently agree with you. People on the other side of this issue say that if we gave millions of undocumented immigrants the official rights of citizens we would have to pay them more and prices would go up.'

“Danielle looked surprised and confused. I had seen this face before when her ideas at Stern School would go awry. She was clearly thinking about what the correspondent had said.

” Finally, Danielle replied with a concerned look, 'Yeah, I think that's right. I hadn't thought of that.' There was another long pause, and just as the correspondent was about to break away, Danielle added, 'I guess that's just the price of being fair.'

”'Well said, miss. And how old are you?'

”'Five.'”

— Ray Kurzweil, Danielle, Chronicles of a Superheroine (2019)

You caught it, right?

Five years old?

Not gonna lie, this whole book has me cringing with envy, which is an emotion/reaction/symptom I totally hate feeling. I get where its stemming from, ugh, but it's not a fun one to embody.

Anyway. So I'm not done with the book, but I'm about 64 pages in, and this precocious AF Pasadena child has already organized a trip to Zambia to bring filtered water to 1000s of people, even fixed the generator, then came back home and got onstage at a country music festival, imitating male vices in perfect Harmonia.

I mean

Gimme a break, right?

Okay, but aside from being a dick, it's actually a good book to give young people, because it is imparting an “anything is possible from any age” attitude. Once you can break past the envy or the impossibility (HEY!) of it all.

Reading it the second time while typing it to you, I don't feel entirely too bad about it. The message must have gotten through. Just.. my first readthrough exposed this icky envy over their affluent waldorfian socal parenting style that gives rise and nurtures this annoyingly precocious kid, and how the book has no challenges, doesn't deal with sibling rivalry so far, just has me reactively scanning my environment for similar cues of success, turning up with less, and leaving a giant hole in my soul. A hole of longing. Ugh, we are all so simple and human.

Are the Silicon Valley kids this nurtured? AUGH, isolation. (as Joy Division songs start to fire up in my head.)

Anyway. I'm going to press pause here and rejoin society.

Wait, oh shit, did you catch this today?

We have to remember that what we think of as an interface is built on a metaphor. Take the general definition I found in a dictionary:

“a surface forming a common boundary of two bodies, spaces, or phases.”

This is usually associated with oil and water. It just so happens that we chose to extend the association to man's relation to machines. Now, interface design is the tinkering of that surface forming a common boundary between man and computer.

— CJ Eller, Metaphor Debt (2019)

That makes me want to talk about porous cell membranes but I'll refrain. I'm already at 2500 words, guaranteeing that no one has reached this far (except CJ and inquiry, you marathon readers, you).

Other days I guess I'll talk about conglomerated birthday candle creations and cell membranes, but for now, it's just

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

The thread is me. Naturally.

Lately I've been

• reading biology textbooks
• teaching myself electroencephalography
• messing around with my perfumer's organ
• detoxing, generally
• fiddling around with photoshop and illustrator
• listening to quantum physics lectures
• oh and sports psychology too
• cheering on the blues (5-0W against the Sharts, woot!) and the bruins
• casually investing in biotech

Lots of things I've either never done before, or haven't even tried doing in a long long time. Definitely not socializing on the greater internet. Just meandering through my own mind, feeling the magnetic pull of various interests teasing my mental fabric in one way or another. I'm being sized.

I haven't much been writing (processing) the past few days, just experiencing. Feeding my machine as much knowledge as it can handle — which surprisingly has been a LOT — v voracious these days — having this moderate expectation that by the time it is my turn to write something, all this newfound knowledge and experience I've been percolating through my mental filters is going to wash all over the page

educating you, educating me

I'm too early in some of my studies to grasp it

but my notebooks are starting to get fat.

I'm only telling YOU, write.as, because you're another one of my sketchbooks — notebooks — where I can outline a general idea, a general pathway, and get some semblance or coherence

hmm

So yesterday I lit a birthday candle for my boy. Sang Happy Birthday and spoke Kaddish. It was nice. A little thing I did with him quietly. The dead are with us — they come kiss you in a quiet room then disappear before you're even consciously aware what happened. All you “see” is the swirling vapor from which they traveled here. Unless of course you can both hold enough coherence to see eye to eye. Sometimes that happens.

Was thinking, now that I have a sewing machine again, I will sew him a little bowtie, and her a little dress out of the same fabric, and lay it on an altar as gifts. The thought warmed me. So now that means I have to find some good fabric and a dress pattern in size 4.

The idea originally sprang from a month or so after my daughter's death, where I picked up the board book I Can Fly. I had this overwhelming want to sew her replica dresses from the book. Something felt quiet and sweet about that. Now, 4 years later, I might be in a position to do just that.

And the scrumptious Mary Blair art. Do I ever love the art and flair of Ms Mary Blair.

She's the artist responsible for much of the iconic geometric Disney patterns and characters of the 1950s space age. It's a Small World and Sleeping Beauty being some of her most recognized contributions.

Childlike. Innocent. Perfect, really.

I've been thinking about higher dimension entities lately.

5 or 6D. Maybe that's why I've been interested in listening to physics lectures these days. Just to make imaginatively rational sense of the subsurface emotions I'm feeling. I don't think I'm entirely able to speak about these things with my family — not that they wouldn't totally get it — but a lot of the time, hmm, I'm not ready to put forward unfinished thoughts. #unfinishedthought.

Anyway. Higher

this message was cut short because my keyboard ran out of battery. I don't feel like writing more, and I don't think I feel like discarding this either, so its just

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

Should I even write like this? To you and me?

I'm having second — nay, third — thoughts.

I'm going to let you in on a secret.

I'm super antsy about writing commercially. For blogs and emails. I don't have nearly the “rolls off the tongue” nerdy wordy voice I have here and in other casual text avenues.

And its bullshit, because I know if I talked one on one with a lot of my clients, I pretty much act and talk the way I write here.

Nerdy.

Wordy.

So I'm ridiculously annoyed I have trouble doing this at scale.

There's a lot of chuff about “Impostor Syndrome”.

What is that, even?

I'm not going to pretend to know. I pretend to know things a lot. Maybe this is that syndrome they're talking about! People pretend to know things. Unless you're a two-comma-club investigative reporter with a years time budget to really scoop the truth on a subject, we're all baffling 'em with bullshit. Everyone is an impostor.

College essay writers.

Local newsies.

Husbands to wives and vice versa.

Parents to kids.

Pharmaceutical companies.

Cult leaders.

Marketing agencies.

Publicists.

People. Just people.

I mean: These are Grade A++ bullshitters. Some of 'em are triple-comma-club level bullshitters. Some of 'em are guilty of heinous crimes against humanity level bullshitters.

And we loooove it. We smear it on our faces in prophylactic doses to block out the sun's rays and give our looks a youthful, non-tired energetic glow.

But does it say anything?

No, it moves us along in another day on the timeline, a timeline where the terminal point is death. Not just death, but for the grand bulk of us, “being forgotten”.

The only people who aren't nitro-level bullshitters are people with something to lose if the rest of the world succumbs to the barrage of bullshit.

Old intelligentsia come to mind. Thinkers who have risen above their own self-deluding bullshit to give you the best of their experience-worn brains. I seriously think it takes like 7 decades for someone to get to that point. Maybe that's why we collectively have to live longer...

Back to the subject at hand.

So.

I figured it out.

So

Here's some of my hangup.

I can personally blog or personally email until my fingers spasm stiff, that's no problemo, Joe.

But add a time pressure, boss, and dollar amount to it, all of a sudden it's not fun anymore

AND

I navelgaze wondering, “why would anyone want to listen to me say anything?” “I'm too young. I'm too X. I'm too Y. I'm not Z enough.”

So that makes me a true non-professional. A promising — but ultimately disappointing — amateur.

I growl a bit at editors, because they hurt my feelings. I know consciously they shouldn't, and ultimately we're a team, and the PIECE is the prize, the goal, the focus, but I still can't shake feeling a bit angry, hurt, and bothered that I just didn't get it right the first-first or ten first times, solo. I wish I could have more end-to-end ownership without meddling or intervention. I get too self-conscious.

And just thinking about that editor makes me rewrite paragraphs six dozen different times until all the air is out of the soufflé and all we have is a puck of hard cold eggs and veg. I lose the strength and passion in my voice. I'm tepid, not intrepid.

Then I'm in this “empty ramekin” no-man's land where I think my ideas are shit, my writing is shit, and no one wants to show up, buy my pitches, or even be my friend.

It's a rollercoaster of totally faggy emotions that are solved by

never writing commercially.

But there's another way. Because we can't just not write and not get paid.

I could just take some drugs and remember the PIECE is the PRINCE, and that we all serve the common god known as the PIECE. That's our master and savior, and all parties involved — writers, re-writers, editors, publishers — are teammates working together to rally the Holy Piece's objective into the common GOAL. “Get X to do Y.”

Get prospect to buy product.

Get customer to buy more product.

Get human to feel scared.

Get kid to go to school.

Get adult to go to rehab.

Get woman to have sex with man.

Get group to hate other group.

Get woman to go anorexic, orthorexic, or exercise addicted. (or hop into the nearest plastic surgeon's office)

Idk.

All that. You get the idea. Get X to do Y.

And whatever. We're a team.

The audience is our cheerleader.

Whatever.

Whoopee.

Believe it and it's real.

Idk.

We'll just leave it at this. There's no conclusion. The thought is ongoing. The loop is open. The wounds are real [because I believe in them].

Dear Universe,

Please make me a legendary commercial writer, that net me at least 15k of take home pay per day. When I get to that point, raise it to 82K/day.

Thank you.

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.

But that ain't the energy we wanna bring to the world, innit?

I love the ability to touch these keys and conjure up (with you lot) the world underneath our fingertips.

Plus, I have very good bathroom reading.

Wanna hear what I was reading while making my intestinal rounds today?

Computers cannot deal with such levels of improbability, and it is just as well. Otherwise we might be tempted to take over the control of ourselves in order to make long range plans, and that would surely be the end of us. It would mean that some group or other, marvelously intelligent and superbly informed, undoubtedly guided by a computer, would begin deciding what human csociety ought to be like, say, over the next five hundred years or so, and the rest of us would be persuaded, one way or another, to go along . The process od social evolution would then brind to a standing still, and we'd be stuck in today's rut for a millennium.” (<– I typed this without looking at the keyboard, and I am keeping all the typos because typos in a personal blawg are adorable.)

Lewis Thomas, “Computers”, The Secret Lives of a Cell 1974

This is from a guy who croaked in the 90s.

Still visionary today.

These Lewis Thomas books are super nourishing. You don't know it til you read it.

When you're able to pick the minds of people who have spent their lifetimes reading through other brilliant lifetimes in a lineage of brilliant lifetimes,

Filtered into a coherent syntax that we're all freely able to read, even 35 years into the future.

Or 350.

Take your pick, though I'm sure 350 year future Anglais is going to be crazy different than it is now.

Just consult Ben Franklin and Samuel Clemens.

35 months from now English will be more obscured than it is now.

I mean

Where the fuck did “fleek” come from? Came from a wild blue marketer who had the ability to edit urban dictionary, didn't it? And a cluster of ground zero hot girls in thonglike yoga pants to hash and instagram it.

I mean

Lots of wow packed into one simple idea.

Lewis Thomas woulda written amazing essays about this current future.

Dead science poets.

Anyway. Um. was I saying something coherent here? Idk. I would have never even found this book unless I stumbled into a dusty used book store in North Park San Diego and it literally dropped off the shelf as I was going somewhere else. Serendipity. I read a few middle pages and decided to get everything the shop had. If only I received this book when I was 9. I think I would have really enjoyed it.

(At 9 I read Jurassic Park and Stranger in a Strange Land (just before the sex cult part lol – I didn't read THAT part til I was 20) and I loved how Michael Crichton had that way of instawledging you concepts that would otherwise seem SEEM difficult.

I love science writers who also are poets and also can covert high concepts to baby words. Are there any dudes like that nowadays?

Maybe I'll find it at Terraform.

Ummm. What else.

Hi dude.

Have you figured out what you're supposed to be doing on American Mom's day tomorrow? I feel smug 'cause I wrote a newsletter about it — pretty much as fluidly and easily as I'm writing you this letter today. That's a score for me, because a lot of the time, I can't deal with commercial speech. Heh, but I started it with a bunch of batting practice throwaway grafs to get the fingers moving, and once they did, the texture texted itself to life.

But y'all know that about me.

I'm thinking I should convert all these Lewis Thomas books to PDF and upload them into Mavis Beacon, so my kid can sharpen her typing skills by reading/writing/typing THIS.

Mavis Beacon. You do remember Mavis Beacon, right?

Greatest game ever made.

Mavis is how I learned how to type. Glory be!!!!!!! Apple 2GS!!!!!! Mavis turned a doe eyed 6 year old to a 160 WPM doe eyed 36 year old (or however old I am now, who knows) within the confines of a school semester. While all the other beasts of my grade were getting dysentary in Oregon Trail, I was honing my autistic skills on hitting. every. letter. with. perfection. in Mavis Beacon. PRAISE.

Okay, and some friendly neighborhood shoutouts to the Write.as universe.

Deacon, keep writing, this journey is amazing. I love bike campers, and I am so heartwarmed to know that Write.as is nurturing a person living out a fantasy of mine. Thank you for your slice!

Mia, bipolar is hard, boyfriends with separate families is hard, and you deserve a trophy for just writing the fuck through it. I hope you get your fantasy fulfillment in your Siargao tent with your surfboard I hope you name Paradise.

And we all know CJ is saying something cool, while inquiry is saying something sober, so let's keep those animals in their mental wildnerness and wait with bated breathlessness at what the next installment will be.

I lol'ed at hereisdistant's airport parking obsession, as I too can get obsessed with minute details like this as well. I can relate so hard!

And someone starting a narrative about a magic backpack? Ooh, I'm intrigued.

(Aside: wouldn't it be really friggin cool if we all just pitched in a chapter. It can be like the... the... fuck I can't remember my friend's production, I think it's called The Exquisite Corpse Project. All the authors only read the last few lines of the chapter before, and the whole story twisted into some wild mess. We as a write.as community should do one of those sometime. Just for funsies.)

Gotta get back to work now. Good seeing you!

Another day in, Paradise

— .:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:..:~:. published not proofread. #NeverLookBackspace! Words, Ideas, Magic copyrighted by Zem in Paradise. this is confidential communication. Protected by US and International law.