Clockwise Right? Left.

Source: Herald Sun



Do you see the dancer spinning in a clockwise or anticlockwise manner?

I see it as clockwise at first glance... anti-clockwise seems impossible. But I blinked, look away... and out of the corner of my eye suddenly it appeared to be anti-clockwise.

After awhile, clockwise again. Then anti-, then...
This is tearing me apart! (intrigue)

If only it were in a convenient file format, I will have it, with little hesitation, as my laptop/phone screensaver. Since it's different each time, I wouldn't get bored of it. Maybe, Maybe. Perhaps.

Seriously, how do you see it (at first impression, and also thereafter?)?

untitled

Today was a peculiar day. Today was - worth writing. Today is different. If you had read my earlier post about Sisyphus, then this will seem, at first glance, rather contradictory. For, then, I had emphasised the repetitiveness of life, yet now, you see me saying today is 'peculiar'.

But it is precisely because of the monotone of everyday, that today stands out to be different. Like how a patch of blood on the shirt of white collar workers is deemed 'peculiar' - an eyeball magnet. In contrast, you wouldn't even really notice blood on a front-line infantry's uniform. Why? That office worker's life pretty much the same everyday, as dull as the colour of his shirt.

But you have never been a soldier, and perhaps that comparison fails. But I bet you had someone accidentally step on your toe before, or had, on an unfortunate account, a heavy object dropping on your toe. Well then, today is the day, where at a particular moment, a temporal lost of grip allowed the rock just enough time to roll backwards and flatten the toes of Sisyphus, before he recovered control of the rock.

So today was peculiar, and I am not overstepping my earlier point about my Sisyphean existence. But peculiar is a term devoid of judgment, peculiar means neither good nor bad, it only means different, unconventional. Today was neither good nor bad. It was eventful - not physically but emotionally. I did not step on a pin today, but my "self" grazed a pin. Um, put it like that: Today is when the Sisyphys-Me, for some nebulous reason, turned and looked behind. Yes I'd prefer to use this parallel - looking behind, we saw the absurdity of our actions. Nothing was felt by our toes, but something was felt in our minds (or if you be more poetic, then our souls). Sisyphus was probably shook aghast when he saw the absurd emptiness (lack of meaning/purpose/objective), the large vacuum of nothingness behind him sucked all the breath in his lungs.

You see, looking behind is just a very simple action, isn't it? But it created turmoil in Sisyphus' mind, sprouting dangerous questions like "why am I doing this?", "what is my purpose here?". Dangerous, because they threatened his happiness and sanity. To not think about those questions, and to merely be totally engaged in rolling the rock up the mountain, ensured his happiness.

For me, to put it simply, today was only a very short day. Short, as in, very few happenings. I couldn't really understand why, 7am to 5pm today passed quickly. That's uhh.. 10 hours? But it passed quickly, perhaps because for most of it I was away? Lost in thought. During lessons, during lectures, you are able to keep track of time, and therefore in feels a drag. But when lost in thought, we forget to keep track of time.

At this point, I feel the need to tell you that I am not comfortable with sharing my thoughts directly. They are mine, selfishly mine, only for my review. But I share my reflections about my thoughts. I pen down, not my thoughts, but my reflections of my thoughts here. So, I say "no!" and blows a raspberry at you, if you are reading this with the intention to discover what specifically happened to me today (or rather, what happened today, that is relevant to me).

It was nothing much actually, small and insignificant, but it is immense, and heart-rattling. You know about breaking glass right? A sound, when adjusted to a precise frequency that is equal to the natural frequency of the glass, will result in what is known as acoustic resonance, and consequently an amplification of the vibrations, finally shattering the glass. The sound, more often than not, can be very soft/small (low volume), or sometimes, it is out of our human hearing range. It is like waves on the ocean - or no, even better, it is like pushing a kid on a swing. If you are the sound (as in, "You" are the representation of "Sound"), and you apply force and push the swing forward (as in, your pushing action, represents the sound waves) at the very right moment, where it coincides with the swing's natural rhythm, the swing will move further and faster. Keep repeating this, synchronising your pushes with the moment of the swing, and the swing will go further and higher each time. So, when the pieces making up the glass don't stay still and move around too much, then the glass shatters! Therefore, it (the sound) is nothing much actually, but it is glass-shattering.

No, I still won't tell you what is it. It is not fair. Perhaps too sordid for your prying eyes.

By coincidence and nothing else (I'm atheistic), these lines stood out, as if they were mine, as I read Nausea ?

Nausea:

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Title: La Nausée (Nausea)
Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
"A new translation of Sartre's celebrated first novel. Written in 1938, Nausea remains one of the peaks of Sartre's achievement. It is a novel of the alienation of personality and the mystery of being, and presents us with the first full length essay in the philosophy for which Sartre has since become famous. Nausea is a novel of brilliant observation, wit, and psychological penetration by one of the world's front-rank intellectuals."
[Fiction/Literature]
more info

just now,

- Monday -
How could I have written this absurd, pompous sentence yesterday:
'I was alone, but I walked like a band of soldiers descending on a town.'
I have no need to speak in flowery language. I am merely writing to understand certain circumstances. I must beware of literature. I must let my pen run on, without searching for words.

Yes what pain. Being caught up is all that ... Who am I writing for? - Well, obviously it depends on the kind of writing... But then all of then are subject to cruel judgement. Sure, I can think whatever I want because it is my mind. But can I write/type whatever I think? Who must I appeal to? That "absurd, pompous" assessment of his own statement was most likely not his own! It must be other's opinion of his writing. Not his! He felt that "it was like a band of soldiers" and so he had written that description in an earlier diary entry. The imagery probably appealed to him very well. Pompous? He felt that way at that moment, while walking down the street. What is wrong with that? Can he not express his own feelings?

The answer I realised, is no. He is a slave to the judgment of others.

He can't. Well, in practice he can, as it had just happened. But he can't do that without being shunned aside as a [I can't find a word], where people just see him as a weird, ignorant, pompous guy. But that is obviously undesirable. You can, in practice, run straight into the enemy's crosshairs. Just undesirable, you agree? But would you want to? And likewise, would he?

And he had just made another critical mistake "I must let my pen run on, without searching for words". No! He must lose himself. Displace his very own personality with the potential reader's mind. Then, he must see, and only see, as the hand that is not his anymore grips the pen and writes. Only like this, then he'll write well. Because he is doomed to only be a slave of other's judgement. His unique style and unconventional touch amounts to naught if the readers thinks it is utter "crap".

Alright alright, you wouldn't like reading this.

So anyway, today was eventful, 'thought'fully. It is peculiar, out of the ordinary. But it is not considered 'bad'. Because something neutralised it. Scorching me with acid, and cleaning up with base. I am okay now, at the moment of writing this. But it is the aftermath... the damaged skin tissue, the residual salt.

The base was something which I didn't appreciate for quite some time. A scientific certainty. Doing an experiment and doing it right. I am, after all, the judge of my own experiment. No pesky readers. Overall, it is like a reassuring scientific certainty. 1+1=1.

Catharsis.

No more bitter acrimony, but neither alkaline uplifted-ness. I'm just calmly spiteful. Neutral, but not untouched.

At least for now.





I usually scroll up, re-read, and tidy up my posts, correcting errors and tuning the flow... but, not for this. Time and mood forbid. Anyway so what if all that's above is just incoherent gibberish? I have learnt. it matters to me, as cathartic writing. Just not this time. Yes, comment please, hate, like, if you'd choose to, it is okay, but I beg you, judge not too harshly.

My thoughts & review of Nim's Island

Nim's Island was rather nice.

----- Spoiler Alert : Unsafe region -----

Nice, with a little bit of cheekiness, I sense...

"Alex Rover" was supposed to be a man. Nim had believed so throughout her email correspondence with "Alex Rover". But Nim realised, only upon meeting Alexandra in person, that "Alex Rover" was just a pen name that the writer Alexandra adopted. And it turned out, to Nim's surprise, that Alexandra was female. Conveniently so, I would say. Alexandra just filled up the vacancy - father-mother-daughter. The story started with a duo (father and daughter) on the island. The story ended with a trio (a complete family) on the island. It made me believe that it was by the authors/scriptwriters cheeky touch, that "Alex Rover" turned out not to be a male only at the very last minute. The revelation was so last minute that it leaves trailing thoughts, for we would conventionally assume that another man on the island was not needed, because father-father-daughter relationship wouldn't work out as well as father-mother-daughter, unless ---

A cheeky touch indeed! Don't you think so?

----- End of unsafe region -----

After watching the movie, and thinking about it in a hasty manner that can be likened to scrubbing through the video in my mind with the resultant cacophony of voices trying to grab my conscious attention, I brushed past another significant thought. My cognition, admittedly disorganised, goes roughly as follows, "... like... adventure stories... island... bravery, overcoming...". I mentioned that that was significant (or at least, one that I would personally consider worthy), because my thoughts were truncated after that.

The smooth reflective flow was disrupted as I considered how I had categorised the movie/story. Adventure. The devices are almost always the same, there must be an island, there must be a calm sea turned restless, there must carry some moral/theme such as bravery or grit, and so on.

Adventure?

Had I at the moment, denounced the brilliance and novelty of the written script?

Adventure!?

So it is just another such story, all built upon the 'adventure' template!?

Adventure...

Or the lack thereof... We all want to keep things simple, don't we. In it, the shameless need to categorise. System over style. It is not my fault, at least not to a very great extent though, because I am human. Human, or Man's egoistic nature calls for the need to be in control - to manage via 'divide & conquer' means.

Adventure.

The callous denigration of the writer's work; the indifference to his/her efforts.


I think I finally understand why I hate conventional stuff. That is, stories that conform to the 'standard rulebook' (the conflict-resolution format and its variants). It puts me in this painful and troubling dilemma: while I'd like to consider the story beautiful and unique, the other side of me dismisses it as just another typical copy.

A Sisyphean Existence

-------------- A Sisyphean Existence --------------



My life is like Sisyphus' P?

How to pronounce

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you can pronounce it as see-see-fees

. Is yours?

Have you heard of Sisyphus (in Greek mythology)?

You are probably about to google "Sisyphus" already - Halt! You probably have not heard of Sisyphus. But it is okay. Don't bother. Just look at the picture above. That is the essence of it!

It is simple. The character in there is Sisyphus, a cunning king, and a sinful one. As a result, he had been condemned by the Olympian Gods to spend all eternity ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. He would repeat this task again and again and again. The Gods had thought that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour.

Basically, Sisyphus pushes the rock up, and down, and up, down, up, down... infinitely. A Sisyphean task therefore refers to a repetitive, mundane task.

That is all that is important and crucial to know about Sisyphus.

On a side note, you may additionally want to know that Sisyphus was banished to a mountain in Tartarus. Tartarus, in Greek mythology, is a place for punishment of sinners. It is dark, gloomy, and it is like what most of us understand as 'Hell'.

Don't you think the myth of Sisyphus is actually not so much of a surreal tale, but rather an allegory that strangely and coincidentally resembles our lives? Words like "burden", "mundane", "bore", "dull", "repetition", "futility", and so on seem to fit both the nature of our lives and that of Sisyphus. What if I am simply born into this condemned state? It is as if we are in Tartarus, a living hell. Our clockwork repetition of tasks daily mirrors Sisyphus' punishment. We wake, to work/play/study hard during the day, then sleep when night falls - only to have the small reset button pressed every 24 hours.

And the medium reset button pressed every 7 days.

And the large reset button pressed every 12 months.

And the colossal reset button ---

Nevermind! It's getting repetitive! Let us move on.



--------- ALBERT CAMUS: The Myth of Sisyphus and L’Étranger ---------



Albert Camus P?

How to pronounce

(hide)

and for this, you can drop the 's' because it is a voiceless/silent consonant, so it is typically just pronounced as cah-moo

, a novelist cum philosopher, based his philosophical essays on this story of Sisyphus. They are published in his book, "The Myth of Sisyphus".

Yes. It is a collection of philosophical discourses, despite the trivial appearance of the title. It is not a storybook!

Camus used it as an allegory for the human condition. He suggests, as most of us would usually assume, that death (ala suicide) in this absurd sensibility, is a kind of blessing, an escape from perennial boredom that amounts to nothing. Hence, absurdity.

But from an alternative interpretation offered by Camus, Sisyphus can be considered to be "happy". In the sense that he undertakes his task with immense resentment, and this emotion therefore gives his life meaning and purpose. Thus, if he sees himself as a rebel, then rolling the rock up again and again would not be absurd anymore.

On the contrary, while the above stems from extreme reflection (i.e. judge and decides to hate the Gods), the lack of reflection may also render Sisyphus as a happy man. Here, I am referring to his complete devotion to the task. The lack of reasoning, and consequently, not questioning "why am I doing this? what will I achieve?" prevents Sisyphus from seeing the absurdity of the situation.

I did attempt to read "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Camus ... it was tough. Seriously! The text is extremely heavy and dense, although not too many pages. I guess precise language matters a lot - not your typical page-turner kind of book. Moreover, Camus was French, and I've read that the French language, in certain aspects, is more precise/specific than English (e.g. there are 5 different words in French to specify the various meanings "reflection" in different contexts, but in English, "reflection" is just one generic word). What this means is that, perhaps in the English translation, much meaning may be lost... or that convoluted explanations are necessary to translate with precision. Sigh... I'll try to read it again next year, or a few years down the road, hopefully... hopefully I'll be able to understand it more fully then.

Alas - I'm not that bad, however. Albert Camus also wrote a novel, entitled "L’Étranger", translated as "The Stranger". This is so much easier to understand than "The Myth of Sisyphus". When we read fiction, we are essentially get into someone else's shoes and see what the persona perceives. I have read The Stranger, and I must say it is an extremely compelling novel. You must go and read it! In that novel, I stepped into Meursault's (the persona) shoes. And Meursault is, without doubt, unconventional. He is truly queer, or absurd as I usually like to say. His thoughts and emotions are --- different. I had thought it to be rather cool. I am afraid of spoiling it if I say more, thus, I'll leave the rest to you.

Go. Read The Myth of Sisyphus, and L’Étranger.

I guarantee they would be pleasantly thought-provoking.

The tyranny of J.C.F

Starbucks walked into us, at Vivo, at dark. A double-shot something- (on second thought, it was quite good) was placed in your hands, and Java Chip Frappuccino (which undoubtly was better than quite good) into mine. It simply happened - not a deliberate spending. I thought it's just - tyranny.

It is my favourite drink from Starbucks, costing $7.30. What do you see in a cup of Java Chip (Grande, no whipped cream, please)? Do you see relish in the chocolate chips? Or perhaps relief in the compelling caffeine?

Java Chip. Tyrannical?

It is a simple, and even bare, object. A slave of Man and a soulless entity. A submission to our tyranny.

Or is it?

The sweet first impressions, no doubt images that are ingrained in our subconscious. Put there because our brain, like a super-absorbent sponge, is soaked in polluted society. Our minds are so saturated with myths, lies, impressions and whatnots. But beyond that, we see a fearful picture – its true identity.

A button is pressed. The blender hums. I perceive, helplessly and in despair, the menacing hailstorm brewing underneath its innocent and harmless disguise as a drink.

To salvage the bits of chocolate chip from hailstorm: the sins of indulgence, the synthetic indifference of polycarbonate cups and straws. And to ride the drift of the viscous blend of mocha Frappuccino: the disgusting concoction that poisons humanity, that poisons us.

Such a drink is the real life equivalent of Aldous Huxley’s soma. In his utopian postulation presented in his book, Brave New World, there is “always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon...". Nothing is more valuable and desired than soma. Likewise, nothing betters the draw of coffee. The lucrative attraction of coffee business is one that is unlikely to tire anytime in the near future. (The survival of Starbucks, The Coffee Bean, The Pacific Coffee Company, Spinelli, and the nearly inexhaustible list of other modernist coffee-centric outlets that we see today affirms and attests to that) Coffee = Money. The comfortable existence of such coffee houses can be linked inextricably to the popularity and demand for this class of coffee in today’s society – even despite the expensive tag. My $7.30, it is worth it. Somehow, something convinces me that the $7.30 is just a small price to pay. $7.30 to pay for? What am I buying? My line of reasoning abruptly ends here. What different am I, a coffee-maniac, from a drug addict? This is the tyranny – Java Chip indulgence is like drug addiction. Each cup of coffee consumed for drowsy relief allows us to work for longer hours, thereby nudging the average number of working hours of society a little higher. Caught in the cycle, more coffee in consumed invariably to cope with the expectations of longer working hours. The terrifying prospect lies in the self-amplifying nature of the relationship between coffee consumption and work demand. Like soma, and like Ecstasy pills, coffee serves humanity in a way no different from the un-chivalry of superficial band-aids, hiding, stifling, but never bravely tackling the root cause of problem. Who now would grieve over at our foolish self-enslavement? Dammit. Our brilliant innovation - indeed!

The entirety of this ice cold beverage is the ultimate embodiment of our ignorance and indifference. Our character is as cold as the drink. Bridging that, is my cold, dead, frozen hand. Only now can I empathise with the insanity that a pro-environment advocate feels. Brainwashed and manipulated by The Drink, which he helplessly craves for on a regular basis, it is hard for him to be convincing when making his speech. The sins of caressing the polycarbonate cup and kissing the plastic straw can neither be forgiven nor forgotten, and surely will return to haunt him in the course of his speech. Open your eyes! This is how the world had become; the very ignorance of mankind is manifested in our everyday objects. Our Frankenstein creations! We fail to see them, however, because we are deceived by the apparent reality suggested by the hallucinations of soma – the superficial impressions ingrained in our psyche. So who cares even if the sea level will rise over our heads by next week? Just buy me my panacea from Starbucks right now (Grande, no whipped cream, please) – and all shall be well. Trust me.

Simply depressing. I look at that disgusting concoction, not knowing how to express it precisely. The slow poison that creeps within our body, the secondary tumours that spreads and spreads and spreads, evading removal. We can’t kill it unless we kill all of ourselves, so that it has no more left of us for it to spread to. By “it”, I am referring to none other than the superficial masking of genuine appreciation. The immense success of chemical sciences today has armed cooks, chefs and coffee-brewers (baristas) of today with a wide arsenal of ingredients. This diverse repertoire of weapons comprises everything from aspartame to sugar zeal, contributing to the grossly over-sweetened foods and beverages characteristic of today’s world. Perhaps troubled by their sins of indulgence and the synthetic indifference of polycarbonate cups and straws, or perhaps overweening at their triumph at chemistry, people of today appear to disregard sincere appreciation of food. This is unquestionably one of the triggers to the fervent debate and controversy over Frankenstein food, which largely refers to the infringement of genetics upon gastronomy. Oh, to lament such tyranny! It was never ever about the coffee that we love anyway. As we all know, our desire had always been linked to the brand that we must flaunt while satisfying our addiction. Starbucks coffee culture is an addiction – an addiction that is cultivated from our obsession, although its patrons are not quite in the same classification as despicable marijuana addicts. The patronisation of Starbucks, and other coffee houses of similar class and concept, has become a legal sort of drug addiction, one that is dignified, respected, considered upper-class and not in any way undesirable.

A drink seems harmless. An apple, too, seems harmless. But Snow White wasn’t too lucky, you see, for she truly thought the apple was harmless. On this note, I must caution, once again, that we should not think to sweetly of this sugary drink. A huge chunk of chocolate got stuck in the straw - luckily - I'm safe from that bite-sized shrapnel.

Life goes on, still, I could nearly forget everything. Almost as if I didn't realise anything. Almost. Despite perceiving the menacing hailstorm brewing underneath its innocent and harmless disguise as a drink, ambivalence quells in me, as I am absolutely powerless. I am merely the enslaved, and could only bewail the tyranny of Java Chip Frappuccino (Grande, no whipped cream, please). You could now only really understand why I desire the drink I despise, and loathe the drink I love.


(btw this is partly a re-work of some earlier stuff, still on my computer)

Zeitgeist

***WARNING***
Part One is potentially offensive (w.r.t. religion), skip it if you must.
... other than that, the rest (about 911 - demystifying the cover-ups and so on) should be fine to most of you...

I think Peter Joseph may be too vehemently sceptical for his own good...
If Michael Moore convinces, then Peter Joseph slaps.
It is simply impossible to think of it all as an Inside Job, regardless of how well he substantiates that idea...
Definitely an ambitious project, furthermore, a non-profit one at that - Respect.

Go watch it @ Google-Video
(cinematography seems rather unpolished... but hey, it is a non-profit project)

Official Site: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
Don't be a sponge: (1), (2), and you branch out to more criticisms from there...