Wonderful Colors
People love talking about growth: cities, facial hair, finger nails, waist lines, love, and all sorts of shit. For some reason, we have innate appreciation for humans who consistently evolve through life. Folks talk less about the more depressing topic of devolution or stagnation of human curiosity. It’s always about: “try something new” or “get a new hobby” or “try that thing you’ve always wanted to try”.
Luckily for you folks, it is 2020 and I can’t write a post shitting on the human condition because no one needs that (including me). However, I am going to talk about gardening (I was doing it before 2020, and by doing it, I mean failing at it). Previously, I talked about the fact that every 2020 crap cloud has a slightly bronze lining and we need to grab onto those slightly good things and embrace them. For me, one of those was gardening (I’ve been baking my own bread since 2012).
In my return post, Been a Minute, I talked heavily about my gardening and how working from home had given me the ability to monitor the garden more than if I had been in the office: catching two groundhogs (relocated humanely to a local forest) and plugging their hole permanently.
I rather not dive into the battle of “Beefcake Bernie and the Tomato Plants of 2019” but dig into the garden and why I wanted one: I like to eat, I want to eat unique things that cannot be found in a store, heirlooms taste better but are expensive at the farmers market, I have land to support my own garden, and I prefer eating food than looking at flowers (also I save money). That’s the basics and my initial reasoning for jumping into a garden.
Yet, that’s not all that happened, it strengthened a friendship. It made me appreciate and enrich the love I have for two humans and their little one. It blows my mind thinking back on it, but we all love the same thing: food… why did it take this long to fortify this friendship.
To take a quick aside, since this post won’t be about friendships but about me, I have relied on these two so much that it is important to give them a call out. I wouldn’t have the garden I have without their innate knowledge, their experience, and, most importantly, their willingness to share that experience and wisdom with me. Without them, I never would have vined my tomato plants when they outgrew their cages, I wouldn’t have pruned my suckers, and I wouldn’t have achieved the harvest I am still eating today. So, from the bottom of my heart: I love you Randy and Kristine, thank you so much.
Now back to me, but remember as you read this, that I didn’t achieve this by myself. It took a village (of two and their little one). [click “Read More” to be philosophized]
Read MoreThe Storm of Death
I’ve lost a lot of people in the last year around me, and awhile ago, I lost my brother. Whenever I mention my brother, I don’t pull my punches and say he “died” instead of “passed on”. Mostly because I think we need to be faced with the harsh reality of death and that we are mortal pieces of flesh. Now, I wrote my first manuscript (Primo Capite and the Others) and used terms like flesh, corpse, or meat in order to drive home the fact that we are mortal – for certain reasons that book will never be released (mostly it isn’t written well and it has some mistakes due to the use of tropes). However, the terminology was to drive home the reality that we aren’t immortal… but our memories are. [click “Read More” to get my personal philosophy on how to handle death]
Read MoreChronological Order
While writing Manuscript 8, I realized that the story I wanted to tell was much larger than my initial scope (maybe not in words, but in content). Perhaps it was a weird place I ended up, but I felt that the novel needed to go deeper and deeper into the two main characters and their struggle. I began to spiral and twist in the wind. Knowing what I wanted to do, I had to decide what to do with Manuscript 8: 1) to keep going with sheer willpower or 2) take a break and research the necessary non-fiction to make that novel rich and multifaceted.
I chose the latter, and I ended up moving forward with Manuscript 9. Which has thrown me into a confounding predicament: which one came first? I’ve had this feeling before when I thought about how my manuscripts would be listed on a website or in the front of a book. But this is even more problematic because, in that situation, you could use the publication date to add their chronological order.
But here, in my internal filing system, I have two manuscripts and I jumped over an incomplete version to focus on the next one in the list. I fully plan to go back to Manuscript 8 and have been researching it, but can I still call it Manuscript 8? [Click “Read More” to… well… watch me spiral]
Read MoreX2? Fuck you! – An Analysis of Regret
After brutal day work today, I wanted to let my brain relax so I did what any adult who is young would do – turn on some Mahler and stare at an absurdly large clock on the wall (JOKES… I am actually an eighty year old German farmer living in New Zealand (I am not)). Because I am weird, I do this boredom break for fun. Traditionally, instead of enjoying the clock on the wall, I would actually be staring at the weird brown stain that goes across the ceiling in my living room, but I am visiting family today (by the way, that stain in my living room is a constant confusion and has led to wonderful discussions). In general, boredom time is a structured event where the only thing I can do, other than think, is listen to music. As such, my brain gets to jump through some interest thoughts… like: infinite regret of day dreaming about real events.
So, without further introduction, let’s dive into pure sadness! To be fair, some of these concepts are close to Bergson’s view on hope and how one shouldn’t have it– fun stuff, right! Either way, the concept is simple but it is easier with an example. So, just like at work, let’s define a scenario. [Click “Read More” to find out if I am actually a German farmer]
Read MoreMy White Whale… Document Document Document!
Madrid is the greatest major city in Europe. I’ve only had fine memories of that city and perhaps it is because my young mind was bathed in swirls of rampant sexuality, a rock opera, pizza with orange sauce (I think it was a vodka sauce), carefully managing my money to make it to the end of the vacation, but most importantly, it was where my white whale lives. As an Italian-American, who has family in Italy, I often go back to the motherland to see my cousins and they come here to visit; however my experiences in my family’s mountain village never prepared me for a modern European city. Luckily, and being blessed/privileged enough to have the opportunity, I was able to go on a High school Trip to Europe (Paris, Madrid, and a few other towns).
To be honest, I am not even sure what memories are associated with each city/town/village. It was a rigamarole where a teacher learned he could go to Europe for free with his family if they chaperoned an educational voyage. So, in between eating good food, viewing architecture (Notre Dame has some fucked up sculptures above the doors – but you can get a crepe at the corner of every block), and spending time in museums (don’t see the Mona Lisa, it is depressingly anti-climatic), I was unable to really wander. We had an itinerary that we needed to stick to for our education. I was more aloof back then and was just enjoying my life.
So when I was in a discotheque and teenagers my age were dancing in steel cages (what the fuck Madrid), I was confused… add in the dudes who were 50 watching them and you get a strange twang of gross. Where were their parents? Why were so many kids making out along the walls? Who seriously let in these old fucks? Is this a fever dream? Why is this soda* so expensive? (Oh young Theodore, if only you knew that the price of beer would make that soda look cheap).
But I digress. And this post isn’t about Madrid and the weirdness I experienced there (like that Queen Rock opera I watched when I didn’t speak Spanish… We Will Rock You is amazing – see it if you can, especially with Spaniards singing the English parts). No… this blog post is about The White Whale… not fucking Moby Dick (I have officially met two people who have read that entire book – Hi Angelica and Jason) but specifically my White Whale which is a painting I saw in a museum in Madrid.
Now, I am a person who believes that art should speak to you on a fundamental level. No matter what it is, when you look at it, you should be reduced and unable to comprehend why the painting is making you feel things. You should just have an emotional response. It should lodge itself in your mind and never relinquish its place to another memory. No, a true painting is not something that can’t be deduced by art history or technique. A true painting is something you see and can never forget.
Which is why a painting in Madrid is my White Whale. I’ve forgotten everything around that painting. All I know is that the painting is a double perspective with the Last Supper on one end and an arch on another (which arch? only god knows or an art historian or an architect). Wait, let’s rewind, a double perspective (if I am saying that right) means on Side A of the painting the focus is Object A but on Side B the focus is Object B; therefore, as you walk from Side A to Side B, Object A should shrink and become secondary to Object B. Which means, you can twist what matters to the viewer by simply having them walk to the other side of the painting. According to our tour guide, the painting was placed against a wall by the painter so the patron wouldn’t notice that the arch was the true focus of the piece.
Thus, the painting was subversive. Instead of just painting the Last Supper, the artist went painstakingly out of their way to paint a double perspective that shifted to highlight an arch instead of the supper. I will avoid the philosophical implications of an artist correlating Jesus to a piece of architecture because that is its own nugget to unpack.
So I am rambling, and I guess the outcome of my post is simple: take notes. If something impacts you, don’t assume you will remember it, you won’t. I don’t even know if this painting was in Madrid or Paris. All I know is it was on that trip in Sophomore year. It isn’t some famous painter that you can search for on the internet (I’ve tried) or a painting that everyone knows… no this painting was a magical thing from my teenage years. Everything that happened on that trip is inconsequential when I think of that painting. So go out there and look at art, you never know when it will grab you and make you its servant.
One final note: the most recent piece to slap me upside the head was an intense piece of graffiti, and luckily, I had my notebook and took notes that later turned into the inspiration for a painting in Bohr’s Bathos. You never know when inspiration or art will grab you… so be prepared.
~Theodore
*I’ll never use a brand name on this website. Go drink some tea… soda is poison.
Read MoreHard Determinism and Ethics
Apparently, I decided to write a single philosophical piece about a meme (The Stars and Planets Will Affect Your Life in Some Way) and it snowballed into a bunch of smaller pieces to explain certain pieces that I discussed in the aforementioned piece. For example, I discuss how planets will affect your life in many ways based on quantum mechanics. Before I get into the ethical issues for hard determinism, I figured we should go through a primer on quantum mechanics and how you have zero free will but perceive that you have free will. This is the same type of argument one would discuss if someone believed God was all knowing, all powerful, and all moral; God knows everything so nothing you do is a surprise to God, so you don’t have freewill, it is all pre-determined, but you don’t know that so you don’t realize you lack free will and instead perceive that you are free. (I got wordy, so I added a [Read More] link so you can choose to continue reading or not)
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