Updates

I am somewhat consistently updating my canon.  

This includes changing contents, graphics, or even the nature of the canon itself.

I earnestly try to make these accurate.

as the end approaches

i am here.  that, if i know anything, is true.  
but soon i will not be here.  i will leave the comfortable fetterance of collegiate life--to where?--i do not know.  To get a foothold, perhaps.  To lay down the first brick, moving toward a definite thing.  

there are some here who i struggle to leave behind.  but i will.  i must pursue growth, the greater; those here could be agents, but they are not neccessarily...

In less than two days, I will have completed something, what--I am not sure.  It is supposed to culminative, but for me, nothing ever is.  There is always a little--or as it seems according to me--a lot more to give, to create, to be.

It may be poor, but it will be mine.  I will force it to descend from my essentiality.  I will read.  I will watch.  I will write.  I will love.  I will fear.  I will die.

Why I Read

Amidst a desperate search for an affirming successor to Ozu's Early Summer, which was an incorrupt beauty, I stumbled upon a reddit thread asking "why do you read?"  

I have an answer.

I read for enjoyment; allow me to elaborate.

Plot and Adaptation

Items of cultural consumption are measured by both artistic and entertainment value.  Plot drives an item's entertainment value, while style drives an item's artistic value.

previously titled "a poem"

my artificial taste
my partial absorption of many many things

it no longer holds virtue
it simply holds

spring awakens spirit
those who identify, those who feel and see it
are those who have; the others, they are have-not

i am a man by birth, a man by aesthetic choice, 
a man

others are there, or are not, being out

Who among us has known of identity?  Who has felt the steely coals of sinking loins?
Which of our young boys may chance to?

untitled

a man passed through

speaking to some, offering a hand to all

it was translucent, but nevertheless darkly-toned

his palm closed and then opened again

leaving glimpses of the middle mark

it was a rich purple, slightly yellow along its edge

the color seemed to differ each time he came

the last time green 

and before that--white

the first day it had been white

no one knew why he came that day

it was near dusk

a street engulfed by the setting sun

men, women, and children moved toward unknown destinations, faces blinded or necks roasted

maybe he knew where they were going, I don't know

he stood, stationary amongst the swirling crowds

he lifted his hands, touching the sky

he raised his voice, bellowing words into the sky

> the time is nigh, the time is nigh

he said that several more times, then lowered his hands 

then he spoke again, words I did not understand

the swirl slowed

the men, women, and children looked at him

a shadow cast by a nearby well crept toward him 

he lifted his left hand, extending it toward the well

it continued, faster now

he lowered his hand as the darkness covered him

the swirl began, but with a convergent tinge

they reached for him, twisting and writhing and slipping

they hit him with their hands

they did this many times, more than I could count

I could no longer see his face, he was covered by the men, women, and children between us

I saw only his open hands, touching the sky, with marks that gleamed a milk white

There are some things that are better left without explanation.  Sometimes a person's just got to accept things.  Once a story's told, there's nothing left to build.

An Earnest Attempt at "Existential" Living

Life is a series of choices.  In each moment we are presented with infinite potential actions; yet, commonly, we act as if these choices are predetermined.  Our inescapable fallibility combined with our human wants--which often are believed to be necessity--leave us to a path that is continuously self-confirmed.  The accumulation of experience becomes a necessary consequence to a rigidly lackluster essence.  

This type of mindset is malicious because it pulls the actor out of the present, into non-present temporal contexts, where one defaults to the path of least resistance.  Memory has the capacity to inhibit the actor, if the past feels fluid, burgeoning alternative outcome trees.  The past must be accepted as rigid, even if it is not completely understood.  The presence of ambiguity in one's past should become immaterial, because it is unchangeable, and unrewarding in fantasy.

The goal is to becomes an autonomous actor, acting spontaneously, grounded in self-identified virtue.  One defines the axioms by which they will live, and attempts to rigidly follow.  One becomes able to shift the rigidity to the present, and the fluidity in the present.  Rewards in memory are simply potential future rewards.  A photograph captures the past, but yields a potential reward only in future sensory consumption.  Reminders of the so-called "best days of our lives"--the college years--will be valuable only in evidence suggesting that "heights" are possible.  More prominently, they will be reminders of the relative diminishment of the present.

So, for a worthy life, one must rely heavily on self-identified virtue, constructed axiomatically.  This is goal-building.  One must make a moral determination on how the environment should be acted on to maintain autonomy.  One can engage in a certain type of behavior in physical, social, and intellectual endeavors that is consistent with the axioms.  One must only self-justify, although collective-justification will inevitably factor into self-justification.

I abruptly end this--