04 April 2005

confessions of a short attension span

When I focus my mind for whatever reason; in this case to write notes for this bloody essay, I find that my attension cannot stay focused on it solely for long. Once the head reaches fullsteam and starts blasting along avenue of thought I find it differcult not to stop it from going down other avenues after I've made a connection between them. It's as if there is so much going on that to think about only the one thing is impossible; the system becomes overwhelmed by input, or possible input, possible processes, relationships between information to the point where the mind is a chaotic/unstable nebula of ideas, as if these ideas are in control and I am merely a vessel who bounces from one to the other like fingers flicking through television channels.

God, I hope all this academia doesn't sap my creativity. I don't wanna be an academic, I really don't. I don't want to write in that dry, verbose manner all the time. I don't wanna lose the poetic. I love the poetic.

Why do I forsee an intellectual/creative detox when I finish uni? Running off someplace with only a notebook, camera, and plastic shopping bag full of psychoactives for survival? Maybe the drugs are a bad idea. Maybe what I really need to do is to learn how to mediate. Or maybe if I used the two in conjunction...

Discipline. Discipline is the thing!

Fuck, I came to this conclusion years ago, in highschool, that I need to disipline myself and that if I did alot of my internal trouble would just go away. Have I done anything about it? No, in fact I've gone more in the other direction.

Well, at least I'm getting closer to my natural groove than I have been recently. The productive one, not the destructive one. Been on that one for a while already; a dog infested with ticks tearing off its own fur. The destructive groove don't lead noplacegood. Is it still a similie if you don't put 'like' at the beginning? Of course it is. Right?

I'm stuck in a rut, that's it, a rut. I need to make a serious change in my life to gain new momentum and focus. I gotta get out of this hole I've dug myself. Stop this record from skipping back.

and back.

and back.

Paralysed by fear. Held back by neuroses. Fighting himself. Fighting against those external forces that seek to control him, which is in turn himself, his nature. This is the tragic hero of the 21st century. You can see him in any book by Chuck Palahnuik. This is the modern embodiment of the noble spirit of man. Diseased by his very enviroment. A vessel for a thousand messages that all seek control over the subject. You are a victim. Here is the why and whyfore. Read it in the magazines, watch it on the tv screen, feel it when your on the streets. You have to escape the cycle if you are ever to be able to say to yourself with any true seriousness;

"I am who I want to be."

because other forces want to dictate that for you. Did you think that or hear it on the radio? Do you really feel that or are you being manipulated by signs? Can you even tell the difference? We are all stuck in a memetic warzone that spans both the interior and the exterior, but which came first?

Jennie once said that she could think of extremely valid reasons not to do anything. I never agreed with her even though I felt it myself. Think of something to do, something to wear, something to say, a stance to take; think of why not to do it. A prisoner to your own cynical logic. Another cycle to escape.

cycles within cycles connected to other cycles, ad. infinitum.

A system of cycles.

A prison of cycles.

Your always gonna be victim to one cycle or another. A victim because it controls you or because you cannot even see it.

Just don't think of yourself as a victim, k?

death/rebirth...

Okay, now I'm getting onto the spiritual, which is a little off the beaten path, although I was just talking about meditation earlier. Maybe there is no escaping the spiritual; just ignoring it, or misdirecting it.

=[A]=