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| september 2006 |
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| By Leo Tolstoy | 12:52am thursday, 28th september |
[From A Confession]
The foregoing was written by me some three years ago, and will be printed.
Now a few days ago, when revising it and returning to the line of thought and to the feelings I had when I was living through it all, I had a dream. This dream expressed in condensed form all that I had experienced and described, and I think therefore that, for those who have understood me, a description of this dream will refresh and elucidate and unify what has been set forth at such length in the foregoing pages. The dream was this:
I saw that I was lying on a bed. I was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable: I was lying on my back. But I began to consider how, and on what, I was lying – a question which had not till then occurred to me. And observing my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited string supports attached to its sides: my feet were resting on one such support, by calves on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. I seemed to know that those supports were movable, and with a movement of my foot I pushed away the furthest of them at my feet – it seemed to me that it would be more comfortable so. But I pushed it away too far and wished to reach it again with my foot, and that movement caused the next support under my calves to slip away also, so that my legs hung in the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust myself, fully convinced that I could do so at once; but the movement caused the other supports under me to slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters were going quite wrong: the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did not reach the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself about something that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am I and what am I lying on? and I began to look around and first of all to look down in the direction which my body was hanging and whither I felt I must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height comparable to the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at a height such as I could never have imagined.
I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below, in that bottomless abyss over which I was hanging and whither I was being drawn. My heart contracted, and I experienced horror. To look thither was terrible. If I looked thither I felt that I should at once slip from the last support and perish. And I did not look. But not to look was still worse, for I thought of what would happen to me directly I fell from the last support. And I felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back was slowly slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that this cannot be real. It is a dream. Wake up! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask myself, and look upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes. As happens in dreams, a voice says: “Notice this, this is it!” And I look more and more into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all that has happened, and remember how it all happened; how I moved my legs, how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear by looking upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the same? And I do not so much look round as experience with my whole body the point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake that mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. And it seemed as if someone said to me: “See that you remember.”
And I awoke.
1882.
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| I'm in Korea | 4:19pm monday, 25th september |
Hey, with all the stuff I'm going to be busy doing while I'm here, don't know if I'll be able to update H13 for a little. Just to let you know I'm alive and doing well, and hope you are too.
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| Not Done | 12:04am friday, 22nd september |
I have become a dream undreamt, a heart that never loved. My lamentation is not so tragic, it is all the more sadder how mundane it truly is. Who will cry for me, if I cannot even cry myself for myself? I wish perhaps some great suffering, if only to know that it be finite, and at the end to know that these “dues” everyone harps on have been paid in full; I have no hope for great joys. Or perhaps all of this is a passing fancy, and I am in truth happier than I let me in on — mayhap I am ready to spring some sort of surprise on myself? Truly, I am of two minds, half great, half pathetic, which blur together in some sort of muddled stew of consideration. So full of sound and fury? Signifying? No, let it not be so: let me raise a glass to ever glass that could not be raised, for the arm to cheer subsided into that good night. I have breath in me still: I can still dream that dream, my heart can love in some hopeless cause. Time has not done me in, quite yet.
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| Think/Believe | 12:55am monday, 18th september |
We think these things without knowing why, believe what we believe without question. And I speak not only of those who call themselves faithful; the cynical, too, have their own sacraments, their own tenets of indoctrination. Who of us here knows just why they act as they do, why they smile when they smile, what exact tragedies will tug at their heartstrings? Myself, I know that I have deceived mine own eyes at times with that there were devout justifications for my dealings with mindsets and heartsinks. We believe what we believe without understanding anything at all, misinterpreting all the signs; we think these things that concern the import of our existences without stepping back to see that we clutch at straws, in a desperation of being without even the illusion of something. And not believing anything at all, or so one may think of himself: this is illusion, too, for we all stand upon something, whether he choose to acknowledge that there is gravity at all.
There is wisdom in Socrates, who said that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. Most of us do not even know this much; I certainly think I know some things, and that is the trap. That is the illusion. We think these things and think ourselves in a special position, think ourselves outstanding, when we are mere elements in a crowd who all believe so; we believe what we believe and think our faith is strong, especially those who believe that there is nothing to believe at all, for we have never been truly tested. Understand, perhaps, that knowing nothing does not mean you forget your own name, nor does not mean some radical enlightenment within some mystic veil of mystery. It is merely the humility that comes from gazing into the infinite, and seeing how small you truly are. We believe what we believe without ever thinking that we could be wrong, and how wrong we are, really; we think these things and it never occurs to us that thought is not enough.
So, what do you know? What do you think? What do you believe? Don’t say nothing. You and I both don’t really know what that is.
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| stormwinds | 12:19am thursday, 14th september |
the lightning came down in a brilliant cascade of havoc
like the strike of a thousand rogue angels, the storm raged onward
who is to compel the wind? who is here that the rain obeys?
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| Yes | 12:58am sunday, 10th september |
I thought I’d better post today than the next day, for all that date implies. I wasn’t there, only watched it from afar, and I really rather say that I have very little to say about it. Anyway, what’s been going on with me? I had thought that my contract at the place I am working would run its end by the end of August, and then after that, I was going to go back to Korea and work on this software I’ve wanted to do for a little bit now. And I was going to start my own open source artificial intelligence company. But it was not to be; the place where I am wanted me to stay until next March. March! I had thought, November, maybe, but wow. I guess it’s good to be wanted, but it derails any plan I might have had about things like where I was going to live. Alas, take it as it comes. What else? The dating pace has slowed, me not being in Korea, so the less Korean chicks at the elders’ disposal. I have faith though, and maybe I never lost it, that she’s somewhere out there, for me. All in all, I would say that life is quite good. I am satisfied.
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| breathing | 12:12am thursday, 7th september |
the full brunt of dreaming plunges us into the unconscious
fire and whispers guide us into the world soul
deep driven into the core of wondering we hold on
the fortresses of will forget us, and we mix the inky destiny
who lifts their wisdom away, opening to starlight?
who desires so simply that the world is his?
undefined like the primordial chaos, i am this poem
nowhere that i have decided i am not, breathing nightfall
finding what was lost by forgetting i am, i am
coming to the beginning like everything is ending
the dreaming dips us in, satisfied to forever seek
we come upon ourselves in the sleep, thinking only of dawn
like into the depths of light, like doom to all darkness
do we understand only things we fear to lose?
do we dream only so that light can take form?
i climb forever up the rains of heaven, written somewhere
a fleeting thought, a song, a misremembered parable
i flow into the form of this quickening prophecy
remembering who we are, the world becoming nigh
careful not to break the metaphor of forever
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| Live | 5:59am sunday, 3rd september |
My heart sometimes still breaks for no reason at all. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like not to hope for anything at all, just that on the day of final judgment, that I fail every test and am eradicated in the lake of fire by the hand of God. True, there are also times when I feel that life is just so good, and how undeserving of such true joy that I have, the feeling of love for all things and all people... but perhaps neither feeling is really me. I have always thought that the aberrant thoughts of madmen like me were also thought by the random passerby on the street, just that for him, it is a fleeting fancy, while I will dwell on it to sick dimensions. I must understand that perhaps I will never be completely well; this is what I have done to myself. I am to blame, unlike many others, who did nothing to perturb their mental state; I went and entirely brought the heavens crashing down on me by my own hand.
But I must admit, I am much, much better than what I have been in the past. For I was far down the pit, and the whole world was my enemy at times. There was a day that I seemed to awake, and I looked around me, surrounded suddenly only by friends, all my enemies merely illusions that slipped so easily from my sight and mind. It really can be like that: that all the bad things were merely shadows, and all the good things, the really good things: these were always real, after all. No, you do not become master of the universe, but you realize that you never truly wanted that, to begin with. Like most of everyone, we do not know in our heart of hearts what our genuine desires are. All we can do, any of us, mad or sane, is hope for the best. Even when my heart breaks for no reason at all, I can find reason in it. I write a poem, I wonder at the world. We have not much time in the world, not really. We must live, whatever that means.
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