typing, unicode, photography

i want to write differently. i guess to start writing anything i've got to have something to write about. which i considered a challenge before i clicked the little Post button on the top of my cached HTML file, dedicated to the Latest page of the Dreamwidth webbed-site, after reading a biography claiming to have subscriptions entirely based off of the subscribee's post in the Latest page. my post, i mean. but then i remembered while typing that i have a serious ability to begin typing at any point, with no need for pre-context or preparation. im damn good at typing, i tell you what.

yesterday i played more of the NEOTOKYO° pugs, and they indirectly caused me to remember the hex code for the degree symbol, which is xb0, because i was typing "NEOTOKYO°" into my discord status, and i got real tired of being dependent on google and weird Unicode websites for my degree symbol. so i stopped copying it from there and just looked up how to do the Linux equivalent of the Windows ALT-Code thing, where you hold alt and type a code on your numpad, which is converted into a symbol. and now when i type "NEOTOKYO", i also push CTRL+SHIFT+U, and then type "xb0" and as a result an underlined lowercase u appears, and then once "xb0" is typed and the enter key is pushed, my result goes from NEOTOKYOub0 to NEOTOKYO°. hopefully i can remember whichever miscellaneous unicode symbols i use, like the í, which is "xed" but shows as ued because it denotes the strange entering of the "type a damn hex code" category with an underline. linux is weird! also, i suck at NT°!

well, anyway, while on the Latest page, i found the blog of someone who, it seems, only begins posting about christmas, when it's near christmas. like a strange yearly-advent calendar. but i digress, they had linked a beautiful little Flickr gallery, and it makes me want to make one, like how opo did. it's exactly what i meant by little flickrs from or to the style of 2000-2010. also, i guess flickr shows what camera you use. that's cool! and their photos are cool too. i don't post any images or links directly, at least not with my usual style of posting which isn't a chat log. so maybe i'll happen to send it in that Garry's Mod server and then decide something poetic was written and the reader shall be graced with coincidental photography whenever i decide to copy/paste a given log to my blog here. and i don't want to post it now anyway, not to gatekeep, but i remember a few more or at least one more in particular and i want to compile them before i post about them.
after a few moments of scouring, i found the other in particular, and if i ever do compile them i'll add opo's page for good measure. but hopefully i'll first assemble a good few photos of mine in their style as well. i want to be a part too. :-)

infinite jest's relation to the past-tense written blog's omnipotent viewpoint

while sat in the booth closest to the cashiers' desk at my local slim chickens, and before that, in the shotgun of a santa fe, i booted up my beloved nintendo 3ds, opened universal-edit, and typed out the following:

i realized, while sat in the shotgun of a santa fe, cruising
at ~40mph, that Infinite Jest is mildly similar to any blog
i really enjoy, when each post is read in isolation to each
other, like how Infinite Jest presents events in a fairly
random order, other than their context being provided and
them all, at least, having recurring or similar topics.
except blogs can have any topic as long as the author is
involved.

i wrote this because i assumed i'd forget it by the time i returned home, which i didn't, which was a total waste of time avoiding bumps that would screw up my typing on my resistive-touch keyboard.

to clarify:

Infinite Jest is complex. it has multiple plots, some only tangentially related, and while consecutive events are shown as they unfold, the book presents itself to you in a sort of Lord English order. it has already unfolded, in a sense. events are given to you in random order, and you are left to piece together their true fabula, since the book's syuzhet isnt very helpful; the first chapter takes place last, chronologically. nothing tells you this, so for a while you go about assuming Hal just did some serious mammalian regressions and vomited and got restrained and then just went on with life like that, without so much as any context as to why his deliberate and well-considered internal reasoning, hand motions and speech were interpreted as mental retardation, especially with the view through Hal's mind (which describes what he does as very whatever-the-hell-isn't drooling) instead of the coaches (whom, because of your limited view through Hal's mind and not theirs, seem to hear his beautiful and well-articulated speech and then strangle him above a toilet and curse out his accompaniment for raising such a creature).

a well-written blog that focuses on the author's past rather than, say, game reviews or what happened today on the street rather than what occurred on that street on, like, their 7th birthday, mirrors that in a sense. you can shuffle the order of posts (or just read them backwards like Dreamwidth gives you them, since authors tend to pick random eventful-events, rather than the chronos of every day in order since birth) in a way similar to the page-by-page shuffling David Foster Wallace did when composing his masterpiece. to read a blog is to be omnipotent but tethered to the author, but to still be omnipotent time-wise to all past works of recount, and to be able to come to know of all of the past published by the given blog owner. what i really mean to say is, if you write a blog that details things that've happened to you, i'll damn well read it. and i hope you know once i've read it all i will spend some time imagining the rest of it, all that did and didn't happen, and unless you've had a camera strapped to you since you left your mother, i will never know what's what in terms of fiction. and maybe i like my recollection with a sprinkle of doubt, no?

immersive, indescribable want

i realized there is a lot i've overlooked. i claim to see poetry in the mundane but there are things other than the mundane to overlook. this isn't just "you forgot your nose is in your vision", i mean "there is something on the other side of boredom". i never visualized boredom as something to cut through. but you can be immersive, or so i hear! i always thought there were two choices when faced with boredom; to avoid it with distraction, or to simply sit in it, and be bored. i never thought there was anything past boredom. but there is? i havent tried it yet but in my time on this planet i believe i've been immersed once or twice. i just opened discord. and then closed it. i've got a long way to go. but i really appreciate it being made explicit to me. there was this picture of the RTF file editor in the old OS X, and it was something like "READ THIS UNTIL YOU BECOME BORED WITH IT, AND THEN KEEP REREADING IT. BE BORED. TAKE BACK YOUR BOREDOM". and i sort of got its point, and its advantage, but it still never clicked to me. in my youth i found many things to not click (because i was young and dumb). why does Santa use my parents' handwriting? where does the trash in the bin go? what happens if you drink mouthwash? this was because i hadn't gotten accustomed to the basic cause-and-affect of the universe. of which i forgot there really is one, for all the time i've spent doing things in it. but its nice to come back to it. fresh eyes. its still hard to describe. im not really sure what i mean myself. somehow i understand concepts without really being able to describe them mentally, or write about them. im afraid someone will read an essay i write about them, to teach the reader, and the essay will be about how it affects everything else, not about what it really is, and not understand what i mean. i read something that really described its heart directly, and im shocked at how beautifully it was able to describe such a heart. my hope someday is to find many more overlookings, the immersiveness past boredom, the reason to live, what's behind what people do, etc., because i dont have many of those yet. i hope to master it. to be able to make new ones. what i read today was more of a cover of the broad parts of what someone else wrote, and it was really helpful as someone who hadn't read the original, but i'd rather watch the Navidson Record than read House of Leaves, you know? House of Leaves describes things to you directly. you can have a cube on screen and not really think anything of it, but literature forces you to notice things by way of noticing them for you. the cube is red. you are looking at an isometric red cube with some NTSC-VHS shading on it. you know? video passes by you. photos are only 100 words if you decompress them into the 100 words they are, by way of writing. otherwise, to just look at a photo does nothing for your recognition of it. words are where it's really at. authors are the best in the category of telling you things. it's still hard to describe. i want what i've written to be read and then the reader realizes something. realizes what i'm trying to describe. it's a thought. you can't describe raw thought. but it's been done to me. i want to do it to you. someday i want to write and the text means what i want it to mean, directly. and even if what i've written is either confusing or doesn't describe it well and leaves the reader with something else or nothing at all, it's better than never trying. a different interpretation is still insightful and meaningful. a different interpretation still leads to new knowledge and philosophy, even if it isn't the same knowledge or philosophy the author is trying to teach. i still appreciate works that do that. even if i have no real idea what it all is. i feel confused. i read something that spoke to me, and i learned from it, but i dont really know what type of thing it was. it's applicable to my life, but i don't know what kind of thing is appliable like that. it doesn't need to be a type or category, but in my mind i like to categorize so i can easily find more of the style or type of thing. i like unique duplicates. i like music that is drums 'n bass, even if it doesn't have the same drum sample or melody. they're similar enough to be good anyway. in this case, i don't know how wide of a similarity i want, or really what it is i want anyway. i hunger for philosophy, but im not sure what i want is philosophical or some other type of psychological essay. i feel like a baby, crying for want but never having learned the words for the plea. i want to talk to someone. i want to try to describe it, to see if i've got it right. i want to apply the rubber ducky debug method to my inability to comprehend the nature of what type of information i've just ingested, but i also want to become the one to give such information out, because of how much i like it myself. information is free, and should be shared. i have to first comprehend it to try to make others do so too.

in attempting to comprehend knowledge, i also attempt to comprehend the nature of my in-progress or perhaps failed comprehension. this sort of looping thought has happened to me before. when i was maybe 8, i had this sort of thought that came to me occasionally, maybe weekly, that was the thought itself. i thought of it as a non-serious sort of bother, and so sometimes i would remember my bother, and be bothered by both my bother and my botherment of my bothered bother. it was strange, but very simple to me at the time. what i really mean is, there are thoughts that are simply unable to be transcribed to common forms of transfer. song, literature, film. how is one meant to convey such a thing? does it make sense to you, what i described? maybe so, but you can never get the full, carbon-copied thought i once had. there's just no way for me to do that. i like to be caught up in mental discussion of thoughts such as these, to consider heavily the comprehension of thought, what a thought is, why i have them, what they do, etc., but it rarely leads to new insights, and even rarer does it lead to helpful ones in my day-to-day life. but what i read was a very very helpful one, one that shocked me out of looping thoughts and caused one more looping thought, that is: "how can i apply this beautiful idea to myself? how can i make up new ones? how was this idea made? how does one convey such an idea? what is this sort of thing called?". and i really only feel frustrated at the fact that this idea is so good to me, yet i have no idea what it is called or what type of thing it is. pandas are animals. bamboo is a plant. blood is a liquid. food is edible. this thought is... philisophical? it sort of stretches the term, but i realize i have never really delved into the classic philosophy. was it because i fancied myself a blind playthrough of such a game? do i want to do it now? is it too basic compared to what i'm doing now? or are they different things entirely?

not in a long time have i ever felt exhausted by thought. i really feel more exhausted by my frustration at my inability to figure out what kind of thing i read was, not the thought itself. but i find myself thinking in loops and it frustrates me. what am i doing right now? why is it so complex? why is there nothing like this? i feel a burningly indescribable something. it makes me feel mad. what is this?? what is this??? it's like i've fallen prey to some cognitohazard that is much much more intricate than "think of me and i kill you". it isnt a cognitohazard. the thought isnt itself. i'm confusing myself right now. and developing a headache. i've gotten too immersed, i think? i have no idea. i need to stop trying to figure out what this is. the frustration lies in the figuring. i have had enough of writing this.

art, mental limit, comprehendable but unconveyable concepts

for a long while, i've wanted to have art skills. i didnt want them specifically to be able to project a mental image onto something viewable by others, for the projection. i wanted it for the viewability. i wanted to be able to draw because i wanted to be appreciated, not because i wanted the art itself. i realize now i have naturally come to be skilled at what im doing now. writing. i really only write about my thoughts, when i write. i spend a lot of my writing here, in this little textbox. i think i have, over the course of today and yesterday, come to hit some sort of limit or cap. i find myself unusually frustrated when trying to express something unexpressable. it isn't the unexpression itself, but it is a property of something else. a sort of knowledge. i read Infinite Jest, and while it never outright says "Entertainment is everywhere", i came to realize this pretty soon after trying to do any sort of critical thinking about the novel. it is one of the most basic noticabilities about it. the world in there has come to be dominated by entertainment. and what i came to realize is that that isn't something bad. but even if it were it would be quite the battle. but the book itself is an entertainment too, no? but, as my old art teacher would put it, im biting into another tangerine here. what i mean to say is, i have a concept in my mind, one single concept, stemmed from the internal-burning of many a beautiful idea. for example, the idea i had read today, about immersion, which is the one which inspired me to revisit the concept, and i also feel as if my very first mental wall-rub into the blind, dark room that was this concept, caused it to become a much bigger room, as a result of a more experienced mind. i havent thought of it in a while, and so it has changed. but the room is still dark. i can feel its contents, kick its floor, palm its walls. but i cannot ascertain the colors, thus i cannot paint it. i have in me a concept, and based off of the outline of its walls i can tell you it is a concept based off of thought, and a concept based off of concepts. but i find myself unable to conjure a psychological flashlight to bring into my next venture. i have hit a cap. and the cap is startling to me, as someone who, in the past, has found thought and writing to be seemingly limitless and joyous and a bounding landscape of sunshine and rainbows. but i have just recovered from what seems to be a loss of oxygen, after bounding directly through the atmosphere. and, of course, there's obviously space out there, and the atmosphere doesn't span infinitely, but i guess it just never occured to me that the mind has such a thing. i found myself overexerting my psyche, something i had never done before. i began to consider fact v. fiction, and the infinitely complex nature of everything that has never happened and never will, like the sudden explosion of every other Taco Bell establishment, and when i began to imagine the aftermath of the half-loss of the yumbrands inc. properties, i found myself trying to hit David Foster Wallace levels of parallel-lives, and i discovered my semi-conscious doing the mental equivalent of writhing on the floor. there are things i do not know. i have now, what i didnt before, i am easily able to conjure an idea and then realize i know nothing about it. and then it flees from me, or if it is persistent enough for me to attempt to comprehend it it injures me and i flee from it. i can, for brief stints, imagine an idea. its not just "an idea", but it is just too brief and too unexplainable. it frustrates me. i flee from it before i get another headache. i flee from the idea to my bed. i am just as confused as i was when i started typing. and i realize maybe it is good that there are ideas that confuse me. i want all of the ideas. i want ideas i can comprehend, ideas that make sense but that i do not understand, ideas that do not make sense but that i do understand (such as the idea i just conveyed), and ideas that do not make sense and that i do not understand (such as the one i am attempting to convey). this is all a structure, and i have no idea its contents. there is a whole world of ideas, and i have yet to discover it. i am being shown visions of this hypothetical world, and i realize now that i stopped caring for it a long time ago. what i am waiting for, before i begin really comprehending/conveying such ideas, is confirmation that this is something that someone else has experienced before. unlike some philosophers, i find comfort in uniformity here, not in innovation. it's harder to convey an idea that has nothing similar than it is to start with a pre-existing idea and warp it to what you'd like to achieve.