Dear John To Consciousness

This must be unique to humans.

I have occasioned to experience moments recently where I’m chugging along on a pattern of thoughts; of rational, inconsequential thoughts. And all of the sudden, a deluge of uncertainty, discombobulation and lightness. “Who am I? Is really the same body I inhabited as a child? Where are my thoughts coming from? How can any of this be?”

I suppose it’s a bit more natural for these moments to come at times of profound change. I hesitate to call what I am going through profound: its profundity is limited to a change of address and to the books I read, really. I still plop down in a chair for a few hours a week to be spoken to about something, plop into another chair to make sure I know from what context the something is emerging, and plop down into another chair in between these particular events to either eat, rest, or take in a few episodes of Star Trek which I’ve seen 40 times and yet never seem to age. So, I still sit quite a bit.

But the nature of my sitting, and what it represents I suppose, has undergone a rumbling, numbing sea change. Certain aspects of the knowledge I take in disturb me...not so much the knowledge itself, but how we get that knowledge. It’s all so much rearranging humans as figurines in some sort of dollhouse. You owed this man this duty, but you no longer do; you’re in the backyard. You engaged in this behavior which, though not at all morally or practically harmful, offends our sensibilities for some reason. Time out for you. 20 years from now, we may change our minds: but you are subject to our whims for now.

A perverse part of me wants to be the child doing all the rearranging; vetting and setting the rules would be such fun. I always liked the control of playing with action figures. Spiderman didn’t necessarily have to be Spiderman; I could rename him Erasmus and characterize him as a heavily tattooed postal worker. He could team up with Bucky O’Hare, Napoleon and Commander Dogstar and perhaps stage an invasion of some random Lego fortress, which was a competing private postal service. Or something. I think the law is sort of like this. At the end of the day, you’re either making shit up, or you’re scarfing up the shit people made up 3 days to 300 years ago.

This power, what it all means, it doesn’t usually hit me until I’ve had a moment or two to reflect on it. It’s impossible not to get lost in the verbosity and pretentiousness of it all, but ultimately, it’s quite a monopolistic system. So while my plopping may be the same (though the chairs here are generally provide a bit more lumbar support), it really is infinitely different. So maybe this does explain my disconnectedness from myself; I'm not familiar with this version of myself, the one that knows these things and lives this way, and my cranium's attempt to search the database for older matches has failed.

Ostriches don’t do this, I guarantee it.

"Sic Transit Gloria" Means Get Gloria Home Before She Throws Up In Your Car

I always seize the opportunity to use something my grandmother says as a blog title. By always, I of course mean just the one time. But I'm one for one you see, so always is an apt term.

Anyway, my intent is really not to write about the random stuff my grandma (who will soon be an octogenarian, and party's at our house, by the way) says, though I suppose that could be a supplemental blog. Then, I don't even update this one...



What my house will look like the weekend after next.



My intents are as follows:

1. Update you on Three Dimensional Rhombus.

2. Ramble on about totally rational fears.

3. Stop writing at some point.

Ok, let's tackle these one at a time.


3DR: The project initially conceived as a space opera about my cat's love of salmon-flavored glop has (d)evolved into a series of rambling, thematically incoherent sound pieces. This is probably what my brother and I are actually capable of producing.

Here is the best(!) of our glorified auditory chicken scratch, "Cackle of the Disenfranchised Donkey":




Not really sure what we were going for there, but we do play all the instruments.

Credits:

Kevin: bongos, transcendent call of the weasel, production

Jimmy: synth, perpetual wailing of the mist, eternal screeching of the bountiful eggplant, production


So there's that.


Fear:

Ever since I signed on for this law school thing, something has been gnawing on my brain, like some sort of teething child of the damned.

As much as I believe I will excel in law school, given the various skill sets I possess, I also believe that the experience, the demands and the curricula will sap me of any sort of creative or playful desires. I'm not kidding myself: it's going to be a hellish three-year sprint. But I constantly wonder whether or not it will come at the cost of what I perhaps value most about myself: my individuality, my sarcasm, my (benign) cynicism and sarcasm even. The law is, for the most part, rigid, though interpretation does lead to some interesting debates. I am, for the most part, Gumby. A match made in heaven, or in Cleveland?

It's a long shot, but law school very well might transform me into some sort of android...thingie.

Anyway, I'll try to update more often. Here's a monkey to be sorry for me.