Musings and Confusings #9, Part 1

So, I've brought this up with a good number of you over the past blog-entry-free half year or so. Yes, I'm a lazy ass, I'll admit it, let's move on to the topic at hand.

I have a muse.

And my muse has, for a significant amount of time now, been on the verge of making the jump from metaphorical construct to full blown imaginary friend. I was reading Stephen King's book on writing (aptly entitled "On Writing") a little while ago and he talks about how he personifies his literary voice, his muse, as being male. If I remember correctly, he described his muse as being kind of like Hunter Thompson; shady, locked in the basement, snarling at people who wander by, blasting angry rock music and taking advantage of his supernatural constitution by doing as many lines and smoking as many cigars as possible. (Don't quote me on this. This sounds like how I remember Stephen King's muse, but it might be a romanticized reconstruction too.)

Anyways, reason one I found this interesting was because I realized how strange it was that I couldn't think of my own muse as being anything but female. If the things I put on the page, the scenes that come to my mind, were being put there by a supernatural source, I can't imagine her being anything but a girl. And I'm not sure what it says about me that the personification of my innermost thoughts and feelings is female. I don't feel like a closeted transsexual, so I can put that possibility out of my head, but its hard to shake the suspicion that there's something Freudian going on.

So that's reason one I find it interesting. Reason two, though, is just a little pinch even more interesting.

Its interesting because I have a muse. Yes, I'm still a vehement atheist. If I talk about my muse, I do so figuratively. Still, if she existed, I have a disconcertingly clear picture of what she looks like, what she sounds like, what she acts like, and most importantly, I have a sense of her soul the way you only have with childhood friends or close siblings or long-time lovers. Inspiration to me always feels like its coming from an external source. It's just so spontaneous, so organic and so subconscious of a process that its hard not to think of it as being something sent to me from outside me. So personifying that source comes incredibly naturally in the way myths tend to.

I've already told a lot of you about what she would look like if she existed physically, although I suppose that's just speculation- a lot of people don't look like their souls, and if she were beamed down from the Olympian heavens, there's no guarantee she would either. But still, describing your own soul tends to be a difficult task without the use of visual metaphor, so take my description of her that way. This is what the part of my soul that gives me art looks like.

I've had a couple of moments few and far between where I could think of her as being Indian, but I generally think of her as being white, with unambitiously brown hair- not sure why. It might just be that I think of her as being the sort of person who could easily disappear into a crowd, as someone who looks really unremarkable until you take a closer look. In any case, she's generally white.

She looks young, with a folksy and undecorated sort of loveliness that couldn't really benefit from makeup or a wardrobe, and wears barely-tight jeans and favors thick, modest sweatshirts and hoodies that hint at a respectable figure but reveal almost none of it. Her hands are perpetually in her pockets, as though they were invariably cold regardless of the temperature. She has features that make her seem almost sickly to the casual observer- she's noticeably even if not deathly pale, she shivers easily at the slightest breeze, and she has a willowy physique and sad, wrinkled eyes that nearly give her a perpetual aura of morbidity. To counterbalance it, though, she has an equally present aura of vibrancy and passion, even longing. She looks at everything with an intense curiosity and laughs easily and compassionately at humanity's foibles, taking advantage of her inconspicuousness to be a perpetual voyeur. But somehow her vibrancy and her morbidity don't seem incompatible with each other, and even seem to make perfect sense together. It's as though her curiosity, her longing for life, her lust for the world was so great and insatiable that it starves her no matter how fully she lives.

That's the brief version. I've gone on for a while about her with some friends, describing her in painstaking detail that I often impressed myself with.

The point is that she's always been so present, so palpably real that its really easy to picture her. I can barely remember a time when I didn't have this voice telling me to make things, to create things, to make up worlds and to sculpt beautiful thoughts that I could give to other people wrapped up in tiny tinfoily packages. I've been writing since I was 9, and I've had what you might consider a respectable output since then- I've written at least 400 pages over the course of my life, not counting papers for school- but most of the pages I've written, which I imagine number in the thousands, were written in my head. A big part of the reason most of that didn't meet the page was sheer timidity. Another part was perfectionism, and yet another part was the sheer effort required by the task. But it's always been happening. I can't remember a time when I didn't have these stories, these scenes floating through my head.

So, Um, Back to Blogging

Okay.

So you might be wondering, "why Raj, what exactly is it that makes you return to your blog after three odd months of complete literary silence, that you no doubt have several, even if not good, excuses for?"

The answer is because I have to yell at someone as publicly as I can. McCain campaign, you will almost certainly never see any part of this post and will not care a whole lot if you do. But the repeated insinuations you've been making that anybody within a two-state radius of the Atlantic or Pacific shores is NOT a real American is something that I simply have to respond to in some way, shape or form. My response is going to be a little bit detailed, so for the sake of brevity, lemme summarize my point as follows:

Fuck. You.

I started out relatively willing to vote for McCain and was actually torn between him and Obama despite the hellish clusterfuck of irresponsibility that the past administration has been. As far as Republicans go, McCain was the last person I would have expected to kowtow to his constituency as thoroughly as he has, which was why I even considered voting for him. I've been decided on voting Obama for quite a while now, but the sort of lowest-common-denominator trash-compacted garbage the right has been hurling down the throats of the American public is what is about to clinch it.

And I'll be honest, that's not a good reason to vote Obama. If McCain ends up being a good administrator, not dying and not kissing various body parts including but not limited to the feet of the Right, then I could care less that he ran a Machiavellian campaign to get into office. But the fact that I'm as thoroughly decided as I am makes me feel okay about being as stung by the right's appeals to "small town America" and their more bold and insulting and blatantly false assertions that anything that isn't "small town America" is not part of the REAL America. This is a nice position for the McCain campaign to put themselves in, because it ingratiates them with the parts of the country where they actually have a shot, the parts where you won't find much resembling an urban metropolis on the scale of the East or West coasts. In other words, the red states.

Now, there are a lot of practical reasons to be worried about McCain and especially Palin appealing to the red states as much as he has, and spitting in the face of the blue states as much as he also has. Politicians in office shape their policies according to the wishes of the people who put them there. What that means is that if the power of the small-town schpiel is enough to override McCain's month-long sabbatical and Obama's overwhelming charisma, the urban areas of the northeast are going to be filled with a lot more impoverished and understandably angry black and brown people whose neighborhoods aren't getting the attention from the federal government that said federal government owes them, and that they need in order to lift themselves up from the current state of the economy. If McCain finds out he doesn't need the blue states to get himself a second term, the blue states are going to suffer for it.

But on a broader level, the right getting away with selling their small-town rhetoric is going to send the message to politicians across the board that vague, pseudo-moralistic, non-commital stances like "being in favor of small town values" are enough to get elected. If we let people get elected into offices based on rhetoric alone without making them commit to stances on specific social and political issues, we're going to be setting a precedent that's going to affect the next election, and the one after, and the one after. And given the direction No Child Left Behind is taking our collective critical thinking skills, I don't know if our country can ever recover.

But now on to the personal reasons the Republican campaign's pro small-town rhetoric pisses me off. From a completely stereotype-focused point of view, I am the opposite of everything the right claims is the moral foundation of our country.

I'm from the northeast and have spent the vast majority of my life in the northeast. I spent most of my life in cities, and a good chunk of it in honest-to-bob metropoli on the scale of Boston and Philly and New York. I feel most at home in the most urban areas you can find- I love being in crowded areas, being able to look in any direction and see an interesting face. I love being able to find food made with recipes from halfway across the globe made by people from just as far away. I love knowing that I can be strange, as I need to be by nature, and can get away with it without having too many people staring in my general direction. I love having gross wealth and gross poverty both shoved right in my face instead of swept comfortably but uninterestingly under the rug. Hell, I love being able to walk by people without smiling at them. You shouldn't have to smile at people you don't know, it's unnatural. I mean, love your fellow being, look out for them, treat their welfare as no more or less important than your own, but you shouldn't have to smile at them when you don't mean it.

And let me tell you something. People in small towns are not better people. The only reason they're nice to each other (and there's a difference between being nice and being good) is because the population is sparse enough that people can hold each other accountable just by knowing each other. You wanna know how to find a good person? Find them in a city, where they're good and kind even though they can get away with being otherwise.

Next, I am not an all-American in the stereotypical sense when it comes to culture, by any stretch of the imagination. I don't play baseball or watch sports. I've tasted apple pie twice in my life. For all intents and purposes other than the legal, I'm an immigrant. I was born in the U.S. but spent most of my childhood until age 10 in India, so I find myself turning every corner wondering whether or not my behavior seems alien to others, whether or not I truly think like the people I meet even though I know how to sound and look like them. I can't enjoy food without an intense flavor or at least two spices or herbs in it, even if I know it's good. (Mashed potatoes? eh.) I haven't touched McDonalds more than two or three times if that in the past six years, for ethical reasons. I'm vegetarian (barring shellfish) also for ethical reasons. I'm an atheist. I listen to indie music. I eat hippie food. I'm shooting for a PhD. Even if I weren't atheist, I'd still be non-Christian, and more shockingly, I'd be non-Judeo-Christian. And last but certainly not least, I'm brown.

But do NOT tell me that I am not an American. Don't. If you think I'm not an American, than you can go fuck yourself with the largest pipe and/or pipe cleaner you can find. I am an American. I know that because I can say to myself the words "I am an American" and know them to be true with the sort of intuitive certainty you have when you say "I love you" to your lover, child, sibling, friend, when you really and honestly do. You feel it in your soul. You feel the truth of your words, feel it in your throat as the words find their way out. You can't tell yourself it's a lie because it's not.

So fuck you and your small towns. Here's a little secret: the only thing that matters is whether or not you're a good person. That's it. Nothing else. Small town, big city, male, female, red state, blue state, gay, straight, bisexual, transsexual, working class, middle class, upper class, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, tall, short, pretty, ugly, quiet, loud, whatever. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all.

Just be good. That's it. Be good.

That's it.

Random Thought #2

I just thought of the perfect name for my general approach to the pursuit of knowledge, which is something like the following: Whenever I'm presented with any kind of question, I assume the most cynical hypothesis possible, try to refute it as best as I can, and usually fail. It's seemed to have worked pretty well, so far.

I call it Murphy's Razor.

Why I Want To Be An Elf And/Or Cyborg

Yes, I really am that much of a nerd, and I'm afraid you're going to have to deal with it. Anyway, the reason I want to be a (tolkienesque, not keebler) elf and/or cyborg is not just because of the cool powers and acrobatic ability they entail. The reason? Age. I feel old. I realize having a quarter-life crisis is an incredibly pretentious thing to do, but really, there isn't that much I do that isn't unintentionally pretentious anyway. I'm a blog-writing pescatarian philosophy major who loves indie music and eats organic whole wheat french toast at least once a week, so I'm way past the point of no return anyway. I might as well enjoy this existential mire while I can.

I'm fucking 20. That's ooold.

And really, I don't mind getting old so much. I've always felt as old as time itself while growing up, being a naturally mellow, rational and contemplative person (the one way I actually do resemble an elf). I get the sense that age is going to suit me well. What bothers me is that I've never had a chance to be young. I mean, I guess it's not that bad, I still have ten years or so of still mattering to marketers, and if those ten years last as long as the last ten have, then I still have a lot of time left for living. And one of the perks of having grown up in the third world is the perspective it gives you (though one of the most surreal and stupid emotions a person can experience, besides love, is feeling guilty about not being as happy as you should be).

Thankfully, I tend to respond to regret by looking to the future instead of pining over the past, unless I think unearthing something about my past will help me fix something about myself. The problem with that is that the more regret I feel, the more workaholic it makes me. And the problem with that is that diligence, discipline and passion are great for accomplishing most things, but they're sorely inadequate when you're trying to figure out how to have fun and talk to people- two skills that still elude me, though on the bright side, not as much as they have before. That said, I'm gonna get back to working out, desperately reading classics to compensate for one of the many ways in which I've wasted my youth, and doing my fall reading so I actually have time to hang out with people once they're actually around.

Hair and Natural Selection

I'm guessing this has occurred to most people at some point or another, although maybe it hasn't given my very tenuous and inaccurate grasp of what an ordinary human mind is like.

Doesn't it seem like evolution is ridiculously precise? Like, ridiculously? I've been wondering for a while about what the evolutionary purpose of human hair was, especially given how it's so localized to the head and the crotch. The crotch makes a lot of sense for logistical reasons we won't get into here, but the head is just confusing. But then I realized this morning that it was there for a practical purpose- protecting the head from sunburn. The reason for the color of hair is melanin, which is the pigment in the skin that protects from sunburn. That's a beneficial trait for evolution to give us, yes?

But the corollary of that would be that an entire segment of the human population would have to have been wiped out because they weren't well adapted to something that would kill a bald person. I can't think of anything that would only kill bald people except for a serial killer who only killed bald people.

This leads me to speculate that there was an evil, bald child-abusing caveman in the Great Rift Valley, and that two things happened as a consequence. First, his own child was turned sociopathic by a traumatic upbringing and went on to kill all the prematurely bald people before they reproduced. Next, his other victims forced early cavemen to select for genes that made us associate baldness with creepy child molesters and cartoonish supervillains.

Also, I just realized that having hair on our head protects us from UV rays which give us skin cancer, which is probably a much better explanation than the one I just suggested. But I don't think we should rule out my hypothesis just yet.

I Haz A Body!

Biological functions are the coolest things ev4r, if you think about it. We tend to spend so much of our lives thinking of ourselves as beings that exist abstractly, immaterially, as souls or minds that are somehow more important than rocks because they don't exist as matter. Then we do things like eating, sleeping, sweating and so many other things that'll probably seem hilarious to the aliens when they make their way over here. It makes me laugh to think that this species that's so obsessed with the meaning of its existence can still think it's been designed for some profound purpose when its breath smells the way it does every morning. This body that's capable of love is cripplingly dependent on shoving plant matter into and out of itself on a daily basis, and that's pretty hilarious. You need to be reminded every now and then that you're made of meat like so much else in this meat-ridden world. It makes you humble, keeps you grounded. Get it? Meat? Grounded? Fine, be like that.

"The Subject Is Too Great..."

"But we mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius became the canned goods of intellectuals... the cheap mental stimulants of alienation, the cant and rant of pipsqueaks about inauthenticity and forlornness. I can't accept this foolish dreariness. We are talking about the whole life of mankind. The subject is too great, too deep for such weakness, cowardice- too deep, too great, Shapiro. It torments me to insanity that you should be so misled. A merely aesthetic critique of modern history! After the wars and mass killings! You are too intelligent for this. You inherited rich blood. Your father peddled apples."
-Saul Bellow's "Herzog"

I love this quote and put it on my profile. I spend the vast majority of my life trying in vain to get myself out of the shallow existential mire I'm usually in despite knowing about, despite having been exposed to real suffering. Feeling pain is, for fairly self-evident reasons, no fun at all. But give yourself an appropriate level of detachment, enough so you feel the pain through empathy rather than nerve endings, and immense and intense suffering becomes as therapeutic and comforting in its horror as pleasure can be if not more so. When you feel your conscience pang you acutely and feel its purifying sting, it positively stuns you that you- that anyone at all- could find so much to worry about in the fact that modern life is dreary and/or disenchanting and/or disillusioning. Because really, when 25,000 people are dying of starvation on a daily basis, who gives a shit about existential ennui. I feel bad for people who've never wanted to cut their throat for good reasons as opposed to postmodern ones. You need to have felt or even at least witnessed that kind of pain in order to know how to properly use a brain or a heart.

Whipped Cream Goes On Everything!

I bought a can of whipped cream for the first time in about three years last week. I bought it to try strawberries and cream for the first time, and I'm already through and just bought a new one today. I'm in love. It works with anything that has more than five grams of sugar in it. I've tried it with strawberries, bananas, chocolate milk, plain milk, ice cream, nutella on toast, PB&J, granola, waffles, iced tea, hot tea, ginger ale, peanut butter cups, apple juice, cookies...

I've also squeezed it directly into my throat. Just once. Okay, more like three times. But not in the same day, in my defense! And if any of you tell me you've never done this, you're either a filthy liar or missing out on one of life's great milestones on par with your first experiences with true love, religious experience, Firefly on DVD or all of the above.

Random Thought #1 (I expect to have a lot of these)

Here's an interesting puzzle for you sci-fi nerds out there; is there a way to break the speed of light as far as communications technology is concerned? I'm not talking about transporting things faster than the speed of light. I'm talking about communicating over distances of light years. The reason that makes a difference is because someone who's trying to come up with communication technology has a clear advantage over someone who's trying to come up with transportation technology. Specifically, if you replicate an object, it's a different object, but if you replicate a message, it's the same message, so all the problems you have with nanotech teleporters could be escaped completely when it comes to communication- if you walk through a teleporter that disassembles your body and reassembles it at another location, you don't know whether or not the other person constitutes your identity and may have your consciousness phased out in the process. You don't have that issue with communicated messages.

So if you managed to develop a computer that was sophisticated enough to store the location and momentum of every particle in, oh, let's say a solar system, and powerful enough to calculate the trajectory and motion of all those particles at the same rate that those particles themselves changed, then placed that computer about a light year or so away from the solar system whose events its gradually plotting out, then you could actually have that computer predict what messages the denizens of its designated solar system are sending and print them out as they were being, oh, let's say dropped in a certain mailbox in said solar system.

Let's set aside for a second the fact that creating a computer of this complexity would be ridiculously and impossibly difficult. And let's assume that the messages printed out on the other side would be reasonably accurate if you made the appropriate modifications to the computer's predictions to account for quantum probability. Here are my questions-

Would you be able to make this computer without actually replicating the solar system that it was designed to keep track of? Is it possible for a computer to keep track of the relative position and momentum of a system of particles if it's less complex than that system? And if not, do you think it would be possible to omit enough irrelevant details about that solar system to make it possible to keep track of it without being as complex as it? For example, I'm guessing the computer would need less detailed data about uninhabited planets than about inhabited ones, less about inanimate objects than about animate ones, and could probably omit a lot of data about vestigial biological and psychological functions. But even omitting minute details about all those things (and for that matter, limiting the computer's calculations to just one solar system out of all the kajillions out there) might make a huge difference to the computer's calculations.