Three AM

Help! There are no rules other than those that escape our notice.

Time here has no meaning, I’ve been here two thousand years
And for every wasted life that’s lost, I’ve shed a million tears
But the saddest thing of all my friend, you always think you’re right
And don’t the wise men know it, for they’ll always let you fight.

(J K Rowling The Prisoner of Azkerban)

Funny story. I was assaulted recently.
Chap struck me. Just once.
Captured on CCTV.
The police telephoned to ask me if I had suffered any reaction.
“Well,” I replied. “I’m not losing any sleep over the matter.”
He also assaulted my daughter. I am able to see her house from my kitchen window.

The unexamined life! :laughing:

The officer tells me my assailant is due in court on May 7th for a preliminary hearing. He informs me that the guy intends to plead Not Guilty of assault.
I ask. “Does he realise the entire incident was captured on CCTV?”
The Officer assured me he would draft a statement based upon our telephone conversation.

I received an email, but have yet to read it. Perhaps once I have read it, I shall share it. It is important that justice is seen to be done!

To be contined, HW! :slight_smile:

K: assaulted!!! my goodness, what a terrible to have happen…
In all of my years of existence, I have never been assaulted and he
attacked your daughter!!!.. If someone attacked me, meh, if someone
attacked my daughter or wife… there will be violence :angry-fire:

demand justice if not for yourself, at least for your daughter…
My non violence stance ends with my family…
I am glad everyone is OK and no harm was done…

Kropotkin

Contemplating values as instructed

Say what?
You’re thirsty?
Mate, you shoulda said summint, I wouldn’t ave watered this pitch. Thing is, the lads like to slide along on their knees if they should happen to score a goal. They’d get grass burns if I didn’t give the pitch a bloody good soaking before the game. These fellas are worth a few bob. Next time.

Come again?
You’re dying?
Mate, I had no idea you was that bleedin thirsty. Ida give you some of this. Thing is, if I don’t water the track, some of the horses’ll get sore shins. These horses cost a bob or two. Shoulda said summink sooner. Next time.

Insert Paul Mc Cartney: Pipes of Peace.

Opening scene from the Movie, Ismatism. We see a guy who openly admits he does not like isms, striding across the casino floor… he is carrying a copy of Buddism Without the Suffering, :slight_smile:

Apparently, I joined at a little after 3 am. It’s inadmissable as an indicator of my emotional well-being.

The plants on the office window sill are beginning to sprout.

youtu.be/lua-N4OrPKA

“What if one day there is no such thing as snow?”

No other reason. A hoax Hush. Buy one of these.

Iam wrote.
Hoist tendencies?
The “here and now” is crucial to me because given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information/knowledge/ideas, “there and then” might find us arguing from a very different perspective.
As for Vietnam, you bet it was a crucial turning point in my life.
Which I try to convey here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

If there is one thing I am clearly preoccupied with at ILP, it is relationship between moral and political value judgments and the existential trajectory of the lives that we live.

And, in almost every thread in which I post about this relationship, I eventually get around to this:

1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.

2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.

This because in it are embedded two experiences that were of fundamental importance in shaping and then reconfiguring my own moral and political narratives.

Over the years, I have gone from an objectivist frame of mind [right vs. wrong, good vs. evil] to a way of thinking about morality in human interactions that basically revolves around moral nihilism. then, in turn, this resulted in my tumbling down into a philosophical “hole” such that for all practical purposes, “I” became increasing more fragmented.

This hole:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

In other words, I am no longer able to think of myself as being in sync with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.

So, I decided to create this thread in order for others to at least make the attempt to describe their own value judgments existentially. Values as they became interwined over the course of their lives in “experiences, relationships and information, knowledge and ideas.”

The part where theory is tested in practice out in particular contexts out in particular worlds.

This thread is not for those ever intent on providing us with “general descriptions” of human interactions. Interactions that are then described almost entirely using technical or academic language.

Instead, this thread is for trying to explain [to the best of your ability] why you think you came to value some behaviors over others. Linking both the experiences you had and the ideas that you came upon that shaped and molded your thinking in reacting to them.

Wow!

Hoist tendencies?
It has been suggested, the nature of one’s consciousness rises and falls in strict accordance with one’s needs! If it happened that you experienced action in Vietnam, then I’m guessing you would have become pretty needy! :astonished: :laughing: [-o< Events appeared to happen in slow motion? As in a car accident? In such a condition, I would argue that it is possible to observe a higher order at play. Albeit, briefly! A present centred state of consciousness. Kind of thing one experienced as a child! (For a good few years) As Kropotkin observed, depending upon where we are born we label the Higher Order, Allah, or Geoffrey, or God, or Yahweh or Krishna or Fill in the blank!
A hoist is someone who takes the view that there is a higher order at play. Hohoho! :laughing:
They could be wrong! It’s a theory.

and here we are… its 3:13AM and it is hotter then hell and we
(the wife and I) haven’t paid our bills and I can’t sleep…
so I just spent the last 20 minutes paying bills online and
now… I just don’t sleep well in heat… tomorrow is suppose
to be hotter and today was 92… yikes… one of the advantages
of living on the SF penisula is that the fog will roll in after a
day or two of heat and cool things off… tues is suppose to drop
down to 90 and weds is suppose to drop to 82… yep, the SF weather
report brought to you by Kropotkin at 3:17 in the morning…

listening to music, Sigur Ros, part of my sleep music on ITUNES…

and now its Mozart… as I have gotten older, I have grown fonder
of Mozart…

I was randomly thinking earlier and thought something about
20 years from now, and realized that 20 years from now, I’ll
be 80 and that isn’t what I would call a “happy” thought…

Old age sucks and from what I hear, it gets worse……
I see old people in wheelchairs and being pushed around
by caregivers and I’m like, ah, no… I would rather off myself
then be forced to have strangers take care of me…
then, I wonder, why haven’t these old people off themselves
already… I don’t see the point of living with a terrible
quality of life… it isn’t how old you are, but your quality
of life that matters…don’t fall into that trap of thinking
that we must live as long as possible… danger… Will Robinson…
danger…

went out to dinner with in laws and their friends and it was
painful… I dislike shallow conversations and being the beginning
of summer, the recounting of trips to places… it was a pointless
evening and the dinner wasn’t even that good… I just don’t
do small talk… it is boring…and I couldn’t even hear these people
because it was too loud… so I tried to hide into my mind and they
had the nerve to interrupt me and ask me questions… I’m like,
no, no, just leave me alone and then like a good sheep, I
engage with them… small talk makes my wife happy…jeez,
just shoot me……

and all I can engage with, is some attempt to find answers to those
questions I have posed over the years and no answers come to me…

I have a level of frustration with life right now… a combination of
boredom and let’s get this shit over with……….the other night,
I had very sad dreams about people dying, but they died very quietly,
very sad, and then later, I realized that it was the anniversary
of Anthony Bourdain suicide and my subconscious knew it, even
if I didn’t……… the mind, a very strange thing, this thing we know
as the mind… and the subconscious is even stranger…
I have learned to trust my subconscious and I simply input
information like Buddhism or philosophy and my mind will kick
out answers or solutions after the subconscious works it out……

if I have a strength, it is the ability to make connections between
random things… it may be my only strength… I certainly haven’t
succeeded at anything outside of inane ramblings here ILP
and I’m pretty sure inane ramblings don’t count as being a success
in anyone’s else book…

if I have a disappointment in life, it certainly hasn’t been work related
or not making enough money… I guess it would be, I still haven’t answered
the key questions that should keep people up at night, “What am I to do?”
or “what should my values be?” that is my single biggest regret so far… I am
sure bigger regret are on the horizon……… I have been vexed by the fact I
am still killing myself working when people my age are beginning to retire…
this not making any money thing as bit me on the ass in this regards…
but frankly, making money is as pointless and empty as the small talk
people insist on making…so much of life is pointless and I’m trying to find
something about life and/or people that isn’t pointless or meaningless………

people think this daily grind of work is the meaning of life and it isn’t,
really it isn’t…but trying to find meaning in a meaningless world has
been the point of philosophy since Nietzsche and he wasn’t all that successful…
anyway, finding meaning in a meaningless world should be the task of
everyone…but no one seems to notice how meaningless the world is…
every once in a while, I feel like a ghost because I see people
trying to achieve goals that are meaningless and they don’t even see it
and I can’t change anything and it, I feel like a ghost because of it…

why a ghost, I have no idea, but hay, its 3:54 in the morning and things
rarely make sense at 3:54 in the morning…I have noticed that idea’s
that seem great in the middle of the night, quite often don’t look
so great in the harsh sunlight of the day…I am tired…
mentally, physically, emotionally… life has drained the soul/energy out of me…
and I am running on fumes… I go to work at 10:45 in the morning and work
till 7:15… and it gives me absolutely no pleasure, no satisfaction, I go to
work knowing it will just kill another part of my soul… as if I have any soul
left to kill…

well this writing has been just as meaningless and pointless as my day has been
and as meaningless and pointless as tomorrow will be… outside of the fact,
tomorrow will be 97…

and its 4:01 in the morning and still I sit here writing……

well, I am going to try to sleep… maybe get a could of hours of sleep
before I have to get up and begin another pointless day…

Kropotkin

Why would you say that, Menu?
:-k
:-k

Moving on.

Welcome. It is as well to remember, thisis the creative writing forum,
You have been warned
Henceforth
No pussyfooting
Strictly here and now
Not unlike reality
Did someone show you how
You forgot your nature
How you fell asleep
Took on board
Such nonsense
It’s important that we keep

Hello? Anyone in there?
The Cleaner - gone midnight.
Just leaving
Smile.
Another day.
joined to the last one

Beyond it
Be yond
Except the pull out that may pull you in
And that pull is suddenly reversed
Swith a roo
Swith and bait
Whatever position is a place beyond
Judgement that they or any one can offer, no help
To be in, pushed the reversed by opinion
Honey inside chicken shit out side
Meant this
Meant that
If you only knew me I would want this
From you or your friend
And on top of her voice so obvious she said throwing me a lifesaver
Stick it out boy
Stick it out stick it in
Then forget that life flies in then out lava like

Any position faint and very sweetly gurgling for a while.
The hardness envelopes the sweet child just a position any, juxtaposition
try shield
From the dazzling
From the yearning to be, different strokes recapture the same., as never always,

Over and over can’t stop living can’t stop until losing
Her
Then the next eternal search and sweet child make him safe and sound from the deep drops into this ravine,

The satiated with all firms everywhere any time with anyone because its always,
You don’t understand ever, and then deep sleep, exhale and you communion with her, through the
Solemnity of my reckoning heart.

Be warned, and eclipsed by the dark sun.

Joy, sad, hand, touch,
Go on now, don’t look back for tears
to fears.

Its near .
Trembling hand off, five hours pssst.
since.

So now . waited 3:19 am.
A border line crossed again. And as rejections pile up, and have reached a significant barrier, ( last straw her husband my great slkmeball of a son in law, unlocks the safe lock on the smart phone)
Gotten some juicy private stuff well proofed ) probably thinks he’s gotten some kind of heavy ammo into an Achilles heel), bi compromising replicas.

Why he do that? because he is desperate, finding her indiscreet with someone at work?!?
Well phi-phy, cause taking care of his kid, while spending his time in locked garage grumbling, she has straight jib, while he chews uppers and gets xrazy, think in of payback, his partner kicked him out took his money for grass business, now he’s up the creek without paddle.
Thinking acceptance is what I seek, and a petty auto da fe to maybe self destruct with ; will bother the hell out of me.

Well, no.
At the point of the end of despair, will just use his new found ammo, as intrigue to outguess who will blink.

After all the most conservative reproach from life mate will consist of things she ling suspected, and Murphy’s law will not work to self annihilate, only carry me to succeed to write of the eclipse of humiliation.

For the biggest charm in this life so far has been the grand achievement of private jest , it’s political residue
and the real and/or imagined glee upon discovery, hey I got goods on the fucker.

No, not here, not me.
Try me I will shadow him, as he imagines being some kind of scarion of a vulture circling around a withering soul, and that is ulterior to his preposterous unsuspecting enemy: the one closest and nearest to yours truly.

The black sun has shown his cruel rays on Harry Crosby, before, Caress and the desert crowd of Tangiers in a very private descriptive relation.
It’s 3 am and the deal’s delicious feel of discovery pitting my innards against his excrement finding a purified exit to manage with some degree of finesse and dignity…
How much out who knows, maybe will leave it for him to find.

As to the politics here its all healthy and in sync with eyes vampire batted, as voltures praying making for better course agreeing with assessments of this rotting to the core, human nature defiled, but a bound and pedigreed workaholic, whose only mission amounted to living his little list grandson, to whom he promised a level of secure fidelity the scumbag can’t?

When they shacked, he commendingly started with how I’m everything his Backyard of a father wasn’t, and it started with a promise. Me tinkering in the kitchen and cooking up delicacies for his wanting palate, whereas now needs and tidbit paranoias into veiled blackmails, even shaking small caliber into face a surmising grin, on threat of slights to disbondage.

He knows she has this boyfriend at work, holding down a job, straight and clean, not using and hiding in garages to a compromising and compensating high, and getting the goods on an ego threat.
And yet she lives him, sleeping through the day, waiting for her to come home from work,
take it easy, not get family get to you, sure , if it was up to me, but love can do strange things that have little whithall to, and it is so mixed with all that went on before, enough to pre form a reasonable lobotomy forth with.

Got to run, knowing out there, in the vast steppes of internet spaces, stretched out far and wide, the worn mind of cliches serve faithfully no one. As one of Becket’s cubicle tenants in how it is, will make very little difference in the big scheme of things.

(Actually it was 3 am here per rule) & (scratched unwarranted ad-hominem so lest appearances lead the way.)

Thank you for contributing, Meno. You are too evasive for me. I admire those with the capacity to read between the lines. I am unable. You are too profound for me! But please, feel free to contribute. Any time! :slight_smile:

Where were we? :slight_smile:

Why here there everywhere but most of all here and now

When? Now but as soon as I think now, its past, so don’t think And then there it is?

No how!
Nowhere" nan, between lines
Of fancy,
There there screaming pointing and look nuttin’ there except
Some trivial inner skullary return ing
That look
There there there
Where , we’ll before,
Before that and that
Tat tat tat tat
Despertat
Desperarhis
Meaning in lost there lost there could never recover that time

Total vioeout thinmin’ that , that time

But that was then, when seeing not two feet before the other things occurred
Concurred
Recurred
Time gave cover
Think things over
Escape
Here and there from

And now where are we?

Well of course, where we were.

Batallion,
RightFace!
Bear Arms!

About face!
As we were!

That’s where we were, are…(and u2 don’t tell me to get the he’ll put just settin’things straight between us, need friend will travel.)

Violation of rule #1, its late morning .
So sorry the chinaman lips, lisps.

Twitching face marked resolve ok@post, 2post. Whew, that IS a relief.

Burps slightly
Barps more then be gone elsewhere another day., with a deep and irreverent bow, … …

If I am understanding correctly, you are suggesting that raspberries can be found growing on gooseberry trees! :slight_smile:

You also seem to be having difficulties with your daughter’s partner’s unreasonable behaviour. If this is the case, you have my sincere sympathy.

As far as consciousness is concerned, it has been suggested that one is unable to contemplate “now” as it is merely an alternative word for eternity. A lot of ‘nows’ joined together. :-k :slight_smile:

It is or may be suggestive, yes, but how silmuntanious the different " NOW"s are depend on some kind of calibration, and the question of authorship arises as to that.

Or, is calibration even contingent on basis of the backward look on the construction of many.'now’s ?

Deconstruction appears to suggest the functional deficiency, and simulated artificial necessity to sustain the appearance of retaining it.

Calibration.

verb (used with object), cal·i·brat·ed, cal·i·brat·ing.
to determine, check, or rectify the graduation of (any instrument giving quantitative measurements).
to divide or mark with gradations, graduations, or other indexes of degree, quantity, etc., as on a thermometer, measuring cup, or the like.
to determine the correct range for (an artillery gun, mortar, etc.) by observing where the fired projectile hits.
to plan or devise (something) carefully so as to have a precise use, application, appeal, etc.:
a sales strategy calibrated to rich investors.

“You’re early.”

Mister Howe?
No, I’m James Peatt,
Peatt?
Forgive me, I meant Pratt.
So you are the Pratt in Pratt coming here and now.
That would be me.
I wonder if you could help me.
I will do my best.

The Past.
What about it?
We were rather hoping that you might
We?
Well.
There is not a soul on this planet who can change the taps.
Fair enough, I’ll ask my mate, he’s a Plumber.