1403

When I emptied my pockets tonight, I had $14.03. This is more change that I really expected and more change than I really need, but I figure I'll need to get some coffee or some such thing before the week is done and I go back to Montreal to start the new semester so I'll find a way to lose it somewhere before I'm gone. I looked up the year 1403 to see if there was something interesting that happened or something that I could talk about but really almost nothing happened in that year, or nothing that really grabbed my attention. I am not the most attentive guy when it comes to history. You'd figure I'd care a bit more and usually I do, but not when it comes to something like this.

So, instead, I'm going to talk about Jazz. I like it, mostly because of Charles Mingus. Jazz talk over.

Next topic. Surely there must be something else in this wide wild empty head of mine. Surely there's something to catch any manner of errant words. Surely there's something beautiful and true up here. I can almost hear the wind in my head, but I can't. There's no wind, and nothing for it to make sound against. I suppose there could be a zen to this emptiness of mind and draining of body, but instead of me feeling at peace and meditative on this state, there's this struggle to get through it, to get to the other side of this dessert of exhaustion or at least make it as far as I can through it, maybe build a fortress to protect me from the sun or the wind or whatever. I don't know, but I feel like this struggle is good, like I need to struggle sometimes.

But now I fear I shall collapse.

Word to Mother

Heidegger thinks that man is driven by technology, not the other way around. That we keep on making bigger and better and smaller and sleeker machines and computers and weapons and ideas not because we want these things, but because they want to be made. I don't understand it entirely, but somehow something beyond man is making man make things. 

But what if I don't take part. Sorry Heidegger but I don't want to play today. I prefer books to screens, records to mp3, typewriters and pencil to the cold, cold rainfall on skylights of keyboard clatter. I want to pound in my words, I want to press that pencil to the paper and rip it. I don't like plastic, I don't like electricity, I don't like gears and wires and pipes and things I don't understand. I guess it's ignorance, I guess it's stupid but I don't like these things. They don't seem honest, they don't seem true, they seem like magic corrupted. They seem like a man-made miracle. I don't want to take part of this inevitable march of technology. 

But you see the inherent hypocrisy of this self-expression, since, after all, I'm writing this on a fancy macbook, I'm sitting in a heated apartment, my food is in a fridge, my shoes were shipped across the planet, I watch DVDs, I torrent, I steal, I'm dishonest I'm dishonest I'm dishonest. 

That's not what I want, this isn't what I want. I just want to be true. 

Heidegger says the pure truth is beautiful. 

I ain't beautiful, Heidegger. I ain't truth.