Langdon Foss' Nightmare of Nougat

Four years

2010-01-30T00:05:00.000-08:00

It is four years today, three years and 364 days since I got the call. When she told me, I knew it was true, though I felt no shudder in the floor beforehand, nor any dizziness in my heart. It was the call I had expected for years. That isn't to say that I thought his life was predisposed to danger. I think he behaved fairly unrecklessly. How he lived, however, is another matter.

Where he lived dangerously wasn't on the roofs of buildings, or in seedy underworld beyond the notice of proper society, though those are places he frequented. His dangerous acts were the violations of decency and common sense in the arenas of art and social behavior. He never let the dead constriction of courtesy prohibit his playful invasion of someone's arbitrary space, nor would any unspoken code of decorum keep him from bounding up and addressing another person on a level so direct and so personal, as to be an visceral, joyous shock. Boundaries to him were meant not to be broken so much as to be transcended. He knew that limitations are self-imposed, and he chose to live a life without them, and to show the rest of the world how that looked.

He danced through life protected by an armor of faith that there was nothing that could hurt him. Walking naked around Nagoya was certainly an exercise in confronting his fears, but even a baton-wielding policeman was an accepted challenge, one that was in no way a betrayal of the trust he had in his body, his environment, his Universe, and his God. He lived with the knowledge that while there was uncertainty, everything was allowed, and absolutely nothing opposed him.

When we are in moments of crisis, time slows, our thoughts accelerate. As he fell, I think he must have had time to consider his situation, time to wonder if he had somehow been cheated, snookered, hoodwinked by the Universe that had pretended to nurture him so lovingly, yet firmly, for 33 years. Did he have any regrets? Was he afraid? Did someone, somewhere, break the deal?

If he had regrets or a pang of fear, (he was human, after all,) no doubt it was to be his final, glorious challenge. His faith was so strong, his life lived so honestly, that there at the threshold he must have remembered, without reservation, that he was exactly where he should be. He felt the hand of God on his shoulder, His breath on his face, and joy in his heart. He knew his own death would not be a tragedy, it could not be a mistake. He knew that everything is, and will always be, absolutely perfect.

I thought I said goodbye

2010-01-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamed Seth was alive. He simply showed up one day, and my dreamself felt angry and betrayed that he'd run away and forget about me for three years (four, in actuality.) He didn't show any remorse, simply that he had his things he wanted to do, and now he was back for a while. My dreamself realized that I had had every reason to believe that he had died, but that somehow death and absence were the same thing.

All day today I felt that Seth could call me up, or show up at my door, and it would be a surprise, but not nearly the violation of reality and sanity that one might expect. Is this the residuum of a very real dream coloring my mind, or does it illustrate the possibility that, after the initial physical shock has passed of experiencing a loved one's death, we continue to assume that that person still lives, albeit at distance enough to be missed? Part of my mind clearly accepts that Seth could still very well be in Japan, or at his Mom's house, or drawing in April's garage wearing a gorilla suit for warmth. What, then, did seeing his body in its coffin prove to me, if I still expect to run in to him again?

His funeral was supposed to be a farewell, but clearly I didn't say goodbye. And I think I'm okay with that.

Choice and Action and a Dismantling of Free Will

2009-10-12T13:18:00.001-07:00

Wow, what a run. I figured out some pretty big stuff. While I was running I started wondering why it is that I continue to run when it's time consuming, uncomfortable, and leaves me with sore muscles and chafed thighs. I considered that it was because of how good I would feel afterwards, but I don't buy that. The body should want to stop and walk, to take a drink at the closest drinking fountain, and call for a ride home. And I don't consider my will power to be nearly legendary enough to manhandle my body into that kind of submission. The question was, why do I make the choice to run?

And the answer is so facepalmingly obvious. There's no choice at all.

We think we have choice because of one relationship: Action juxtaposed with memory. We think our actions are a consequence of decisions we made, but we only think we made a decision because we remember making a decision. What we recall as a decision is really a moment in which we played with our memory in an exciting way called speculation. We have the memory of doing different kinds of things in the past, so we assume we can choose among those actions in the present. In reality, all there is is the spontaneous action of the body.

Memory and speculation are both simulations. Imaginings. No choice is ever made; actions are ocurrances, unique, spontaneous, and immediate, in relationship to memory and witnessed by someone who pretends that they're responsible for them.

So now what?

2009-08-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

So I've accepted the idea that my life is almost certainly likely taking place in a simulation, whether that be in a computer, or the imagination of a universal consciousness. So what should I expect from this acceptance? First of all I should observe that I said I've accepted the idea. There is of course a massive gulf between an idea and experience, yet it seems direct experience is crucial to understanding. As adeptly as we can rotate shapes, model space, and conjure imaginary worlds mentally, our ability to abstract seems insufficient to really allow this likelihood to be accepted.

So barring spontaneous or chemically-induced mystical experience or years of meditation, we seem stuck with that idea standing in for direct apprehension of our true situation. Buddhists say that understanding the nature of the illusion of independent existence is liberation, a profound shift in one's approach to living, and that seems to be precisely what I'm talking about. But if the trap is to confuse the finger for the moon, we must realize that the idea of living as a simulation is a mental artifact that must be let go of.

We're most likely the imagining of an alien computer, or own dreaming brains, or the entire Universe. Go far enough out into space and, such is the scale of our Universe, it is mathematically proven that we will run into ourselves. Examine our physical structure finely and closely enough and we find that we are nothing but vibrations of a seething medium of energy. These are really, really big ideas. Then why do they seem to be so insufficient to really perturb the patterns of our lives?

Proof that to think there isn't more is foolish

2009-08-29T20:11:00.001-07:00

I am now of the opinion that the suggestion that our apprehension of the fundamental nature the human condition is as it appears, is utterly preposterous.

We all wonder if there is somehow more to life than we've uncovered over our decades of living it. We are also generally quick to accept that we may never know what lies beyond the confines of our senses or our cognition, and go back to working, loving, and suffering. If indeed there is somehow more to 'life' than what we've experienced, some vaster, invisible realm of dimension, complexity and meaning that simply lies beyond our ability to experience it, we should still be able to convince our minds that 'it' exists. We've seen The Matrix, we've thought the thought experiments, yet it remains so abstract, so academic. Listening to Alan Watts and drawing a moustachioed dinosaur head got me to accept certain principles.

If, as Buddhism says, life is a dream from which we will eventually awaken, then just as the night-dreamer knows nothing of his waking life, the life-dreamer must not be able to fathom 'life' after 'death.' The possibilities of what that reality would contain for our experience is unspeakably infinite.

We've also heard speculation that we're existing as elements in a higher-dimensional computer simulation of some sort. Considering how easily we can accept the simulation of worlds on our own computers, and considering how vast, ancient and infinitely Multiversal the Universe appears to be, there can only be one conclusion- That it is more than likely that we are dreaming this life. That is, either as an element in an advanced alien computer simulation, or an element in an alien computer simulation running on a computer so advanced that it's the same thing as dreaming, or even in the mystical model of the Universe at play as fragments of itself, there is no reason whatsoever to think that we as individuals in a three dimensional world are not all... imagined.

Layer those fried eggs of your magical experiences with the wholesome bread of hard reason, and you got yourself something to bite into.

Secrets and Lies. And Delights.

2009-08-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

This post is to delight and confound, but mostly to delight. And confound.

2009-08-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

The sense of self is truly my greatest impediment to productivity and tranquility. The days I am the emptiest, the least present to record my deeds and trials, the most I get done, the happiest the doing. Yet a nugget of self awareness must remain, otherwise, of course, I would not be aware to take satisfaction in the process.

Like shouting in a large room and hearing the echo, so must there be a modicum of reflection, of recursion, of an event. Is that what 'events' truly are, the reflection of some motion, some flux, by an environment? Is consciousness simply the reflection of neurochemical events by other neurochemical events? Do humans seem to have more consciousness than other animals because the network of our brains are denser and more able to reflect back and propogate those events? Or maybe their complexity means that there are more reflections of those events... Consciousness becomes then a matter of iteration, not quality.

An 'event' must therefore include both the action and the response. This is sounding dangerously like the tree falling in the woods, but it's so obviously so very nearly so. We can't exist as conscious individuals without the constant echo of our thoughts. So what would we be without that reflection? Samadhi then is the stilling of the reflection of thought, the closing of doors upon the echoing labyrinth of consciousness.

And yet, the result is not unconsciousness. If we truly exist as the reflection of events within our neurology, quieting that neurology will let us, as part of our environment, reflect everything BUT us- In a word, the Universe.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Langdon's blog is In. The. House.

2009-08-03T21:25:00.001-07:00

After fending off thoughts of my early run tomorrow morning, as well as thoughts of all the sleep I haven't gotten the last several nights, the Langdon Foss Blog is off the ground like the graceful albatross, ankles still shaking from the grueling and comedic sprint towards a sufficient airspeed. Oh, he sees the other majestic sea birds circling overhead, just as he sees many below him, tripping over small rocks or simply sitting on the ground having a chat.

2009-08-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

Last night a iridescent, flaming hawk swooped down on me and whispered into my ear. It sounded like a bird screeching, so I awoke determined to make more sense than it did.