twist/chi (or, “how to literally turn our universe into hell”)

You know how I’ve talked here about our bodies being made of building blocks — molecules, atoms — that have been around for millennia, passed from one plant, animal, mineral, gas, or whatever, onto the next thing, until we absorbed and assembled them into the thing you see in the mirror every god damn morning, and that when we die they’ll be passed on to the next thing? I still think about that all the time. I love it. And today, I want to expand on that idea.

I’ve been thinking about instincts and other weird phenomena — like birds of paradise doing crazy mating dances and rituals, and the roots of plants growing towards water sources that they shouldn’t know are there — and how it seems like these things are passed on through generations of species through some unknown (at least to me) means.

Well, here’s something I like to contemplate. I like imagining that somehow, memories and experiences are buried deep within our cells, maybe even down in those aforementioned building blocks, and I like imagining that who each of us is right now is the sum of the vast experiences of our building blocks, and that our experience in this lifetime will contribute to that overall picture before our many pieces are scattered throughout the world. It’s like we’re actually just small parts of a single giant thing, slowly accruing knowledge by experiencing life in myriad forms.

When I think about it like that, it seems more important to me than ever to strive to be a kind and positive force within the world, because we’re not just influencing the people around us, we’re influencing life on a cellular or atomic level, and that influence will ripple throughout time in a butterfly effect. If we want to contribute to the positive growth of all things, we have to live positive lives.

And here’s the twist: when I feel utterly foul and am obsessed with ‘soul self-sabotage’ as I’ve started calling it to myself, I think about how we could have the opposite effect by consistently, conscientiously being a negative force in the world. If we spread misery and suffering, our building blocks and those of the people and things that we affect will carry that negative experience with them. Eventually, with enough concerted effort, the end result would be a world resembling a giant malignant tumor where everything would be rotten, twisted, and seething with darkness, down to its very core. Then when the sun swallows the earth, all that negativity would turn to dust and pass throughout the solar system, spreading the affliction.

The idea of physically, truly infecting the universe with cancerous hate — I don’t think I can imagine anything more grim. At my worst moments, I love to fantasize about it.

But most of the time, I want the opposite. I think I just enjoy flirting with abject nihilism. I need it to balance out the hippy-dippie “love everything” angle, you know?

If I was always like this, I’d probably be dreaming about killing the universe all the time.

no purpose to my premonitions, i think.

i recently wrote about some premonitions i have experienced. i’ve had one more since then, and dana also experienced the same thing too — a very specific thought popping into his mind out of nowhere, fixating on it for no good apparent reason, and then coming across that specific thing shortly after. so i’ve been thinking more about why it’s happening.

at first, i found myself wondering what the purpose of the premonitions were. i wondered if each one had a particular significance, despite some of them seeming ridiculously trivial. but at this point, i don’t think they are happening for any grand reason. i don’t think that there is some force that is trying to communicate with me or anything like that. i think that yes, i am experiencing some weird premonition shit, but i don’t think it’s occurring for any greater purpose. i think that there is probably just some really weird cerebral stuff going on that i don’t understand. like the crazy instincts some animals have that we aren’t able to explain: how salmon are able to find their way back to their place of birth so that they can give birth to another generation, or how sea turtles are born on the beach and know that they have to hustle down to the ocean, pronto, or die. animals aren’t taught a lot of this stuff by their parents. they just know it innately, and as far as i know we still don’t have any definite explanations for how that works. we call it ‘instinct’ and stop marveling at it but when you really think about it, it’s incredible. it seems to indicate some kind of genetic memory that is passed down through a species — crazy shit.

i’m quickly getting off topic. my point is that there is much about the world we still don’t understand, and i think that premonitions like the ones i’ve been experiencing could be one of those things. cripes, maybe it’s some kind of ‘infinite dimensions and timelines existing simultaneously’/string theory things. i don’t know, i’m completely ignorant about that stuff. but i do know that i have been experiencing some weird stuff that is really neat but hasn’t pointed to any grand scheme or anything yet.

which is fine. the fact that something cool and weird is consistently happening to me lately is exciting just in itself. i like feeling wonder and excitement.

learn to spot a phony asshole

a friend sent me some links the other day of a new (to me) spoken word/hip hop artist from the UK, scroobius pip. i checked out this vid first, ‘the struggle.’

within the first 30 seconds, i had a terrible feeling that i hated it. why? because of the phony smirk on pip’s face. i thought, this guy looks like an incredibly phony motherfucker. why is he doing that quasi-elvis sneer? but i know i can judge harshly and quickly, so i gave old scroobius the benefit of the doubt. i checked out another video by him entitled ‘stutter.’ here it is.

this time, within 8 seconds i knew my initial reaction to ‘the struggle’ had been right on the money: pip is not being genuine. he is in character. at the start of the second video, he says hello and then looks away nervously as if he didn’t realize he was going to take a selfie vid. he pauses while looking away and suddenly continues awkwardly, “right…”

as if making this video has taken him by surprise, as if he’s not sure what to say, as if he couldn’t stop and start over after his false start.

get real. it’s complete bullshit.

that is not the behaviour of someone who is legitimately confused, nervous, or awkward. it’s the behaviour of a psychopath who is putting on fronts for the sake of a cultivated image. blaaarrrrrgggghhhhh.

i might come off as reading into shit too much or judging a book by its cover but i’ve learned to trust my instincts and recognize small details as being good indicators of larger ones so i stand by my 38-second analysis of scroobius pip: he is a straight-up phony asshole. that’s all i have to say about him.