the pursuit of perfection, love or fear?

My friend's father listens only to classical music as after years of
listening he has developed an inability to hear anything else. Nothing
compares, his tastes have become refined to the point of repelling that
which doesn't meet the standard of complexity and brilliance which is
classical. I thought immediately of rock and roll and how a life lived
without it would be a life less lived. I also pondered the effects of
pursuing perfection and how it enslaves one. It is something I have
experienced with the television as I haven't watched it in years and
this past Sunday when my roomate insisted I watch Colombo (in italian)
I was struck by the advertising. It was a calm low grade violence that
I realized people get used to and no longer mind.

".....centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look
back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious
achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered
into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when
we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning
of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events." --
Werner Herzog

Most people are not concerned about this. They no longer are sensitive
to whats happening to them and how they respond. When they look to
solve their problems they don't take everything into account. The fact
is everything matters, everything. All your actions are an expression
of who you are. They are no coincidences and everything has to be gone
over consciously to understand why. Why do I prefer to spend my friday
nights alone?

Even the pursuit of perfection if not done with the right intention
will haunt you. Will enslave you into obsession and stress. Its not
enough to try, the intentions and what you base your actions on is
where the answer lies.

All of our actions are based on two things: fear or love. That's it.
Simple as that. Ask yourself why you do things and whether it is out
of fear or love. Choose love, please. Choose love and I will choose
it too. Love.

Reading Tolstoy on the #7

Picture this: A man on a train reads Tolstoy while the man beside him
plays a video game on a cellphone. Are they both merely entertaining
themselves? Is wisdom to be found everywhere? There is the
egalitarian in me which does not want to confine wisdom to certain
canons and experiences but is the man on the cell phone gaining as much
enlightenment as our man reading Tolstoy? I am of course assuming that
there is something to be gained from reading Tolstoy on a train. What
is it? There is an importance isn't there? if there is then why
aren't we all playing the violin and reading proust in our free time?
Too many questions. Wouldn't we want to fill every minute of our lives
with fulfilling experiences? We don't got much time it seems and as
there is no time to waste its a wonder why most people waste most of
their time away. Perhaps its emotions that get in the way. Something
hurts us so deeply that we can only recover by relaxing and doing
nothing. Gayatri Spivak likens intelligence to a singer who has lost
her voice and can only feel the frustration of the loss of something
one is born with. Intelligence is developed naturally in us in the
form of curiosity as children only to be systematically deadened
through school, television, the church and often times the family that
has been socialized to adore and respect those institutions. There is
nothing new about this but its easy to forget what the struggle is and
needs to be directed towards. Iraq, terrorism, global warming are just
manifestations of a lack of intelligence. They don't get to the heart
of the matter. My voting democrat won't change anything for too long.
My killing my television, well thats when things start to move. Not
that I don't engage in "macro" problems but the revolution is micro and
doing the unsexy, the little things is what will allow you to take on
the bigger challenges.

There have to be some absolutes, universals, and differences as
uncomfortable as it may be to accept. For if there weren't there would
be no such thing as good and bad food, or a difference between the
spice girls and the beatles. Somethings are better, healthier lets
say. Not all actions and experiences are equal. But the problem is
how do we decide, who we do we believe as we progress through
minefields of mediocrity. Its a battle of ideas. Its a battle for
your mind. And who cares anymore? Is there enough energy left for
consciousness and critical thinking? It takes a lot of work to care
and it becomes easy to lose sight of why we bother in the first place.
Just don't think, feel good, be comfortable, enjoy life and stop
thinking. We are so tired and busy. Busy paying the bills or cleaning
the kitchen, doing laundry and becoming organized. Who has the time
anymore?

People give up and don't even realize that to give up is to stop
living. Though thats the problem with spiritual castration isn't it?
It takes away desire and you don't even have that to make you
uncomfortable, to make you suffer. Don't be afraid to suffer and long
for something. One day we will desire desire itself. But people kill
that in themselves to go on calmly and then you become like that singer
who has lost her voice and when she hears music she wants to sing and
tries to and can't but the song will forever be in her mind. In your
mind.

Lets give up then you and I as we walk beneath the empty sky. Remind
me again why we live. How to go on without being critical. For if I
am not critical and not consciousness of what I do then I might as well
not be here. And if I am not here who is writing this? Who am I ?

Thats always the question: Who am I? Who are you? Am I who I am in
times of comfort or in extreme situations? Too many questions. I just
want to be somebody. I want to be a contender.

All I know is that I have to keep writing. I only understand how I am
feeling when I write. And when I don't all goes awry. Writing focuses
me, brings me into being. When it doesn't flow I know something has
happened to my thinking. And when I am not thinking I go astray and
suffer. And I have suffered much. I have wasted much. I see not the
beauty in front of me. I lose sensibility. I, I , I.....let go and
follow the touch and the hand and the kisses......

come on woman make me great. Hold me close. Never let me go.