odds n' ends
どこでもいいよ
i thought we were lovers by in love with a ghost
The evening glow cast by the remnants of holiday illuminations is probably a different hue in your eyes. Just like how you can get the impression of how a person ticks by the manner in which they sip their morning coffee or how they fall asleep at night. A friend raves about the genius math boy with the flat face whom she liked since eleventh grade while another wishes that long hair and the man ponytail were still in fashion. I secretly mourn the practical nonexistence of mori fashion because honestly, everyone can be so much more aesthetic. But I save my preachings for another day.
Today, someone in the world said “I wish we can just have world peace” and someone else next to them laughed. Last Saturday, my friends and I made signs and marched in Boston but everyone else laughed again. On rainy days, I do not like answering the phone and blame it on the inclement weather. But on sunny days, I’ll probably be too busy chasing contrails with my eyes. Sometimes, I listen to songs that remind me of you. At other times, I hum to melodies that do not. After bagged lunch sits in room temperature for two days, the entire vicinity begins to stench. But there is a softness in decay that is strangely consoling. A voice whispers, “Stop being indecisive.” Let’s go before we recall the differences again. An encounter without acknowledgement is as good as goodbye. Someone once said that when a person sees a bird in the sky, they acquire the urge to set out on a journey. Unfortunately, pigeons and crows are closer to commodity than sources of envy here and a college student on financial aid with overpriced dining options does not have disposable funds. There are easier ways to travel, whether that is vicariously through novels or sporadically through dreams. But something is very different about watching everyday scenery slowly vanish into a blur on a rat-infested train and washing the remains of a grasshopper off the back of your boots after finally finding concrete.
There is temptation in a place (or at least the concept of a place) faraway where no one knows you. A courteous kindness that permeates every smile and conversation as long as that thin line of acquaintance is never crossed. When spring arrives, the soil will shed its ashen coat for a hue more organic, but you will not stay to witness the metamorphosis. Instead, you leave after only three days for another place that does not know the meaning of “cold.” The snowflakes you kept as memoir form a puddle of dirty water in your pocket. An escape mechanism that repeats itself but that is another placebo. It’s not some deep metaphysical search for the meaning of existence—you passed that phase in eighth grade when your English teacher called you out for being too “cheesy.” It’s just an excuse intermixed with ego and perhaps a twinge of curiosity. There’s this idea called common sense that dictates why it is reasonable to take the shortest route when encountering a fork in the road or to automatically return home during the holidays. But if the sky that you believed was blue emanated a greenish glow in some distant land but you never got to see it, you would probably hate yourself. It’s a synonym for irresponsibility and a reason to be childish. So you humor yourself and walk a little slower.
according to what god says by etsuko yakushimaru
a sweggy song that has nothing to do with this post lmao
I checked my phone exactly thirteen times since I woke up at 9:13 AM this morning. It is only 10:43 AM. My entry mate next door blasted trance music on speakers at some ungodly hour last night. Tomorrow, at least half the population will be on the computer like I am today. Our generation was married to technology before we learned the vocabulary to speak our vows.
And yet, many dismiss the prospects of artificial intelligence, space colonization, and the like as “scary” or “ridiculous” and by implication trivial in comparison to other more pressing matters such as poverty or warfare. These are the same people using Siri because they are too lazy to type and the GPS because physical maps are too difficult to follow, appropriately after heaving a dainty little sigh of condolence upon seeing a photo Syria circulated through popular media. The utopia (or dystopia, depending on perspective) envisioned by science fiction that is inhabited by some combination of human, cyborg, and android may not be our current state of reality, but that is not to say such a world may never be upon us. I am not insinuating that I endorse test-tube babies and cryogenics nor am I calling technological advancement “progress” because such terminology connotes that there is some positive end goal humans are ultimately working towards. The tale of Icarus is often raised as a caution against transhumanism, yet the truth is the modern-day human is already capable of flight. And still, we are not satisfied. Unlike fish that are content with completing their entire existences within the confines of a 48 x 12 x 20 inch tank, a human being placed within a box will inevitably develop the inclination to leave from said box. However, once he/she does eventually escape from the box, the cycle will only repeat itself if the human decides that he/she is bound by additional boxes—limitations of physical prowess, of mental capacities, of mortality. We are so enamored with the self-destructive idea of freedom that the technological advancement that provides us with a means to achieve it may halt but never terminate. The question is not whether it is morally permissible to merge with inorganic matter or reduce human existence to binary numbers in a program, but whether we even have a choice. Even if we may understand the repercussions of technology, we grow accustomed to it by convenience. Spending an entire 24 hours in front of a screen is unthinkable to society of the 1900s, but the norm for the hikikomori culture of Japan. Transhumanism is rightfully scrutinized now, but the same treatment may not apply 100 years into the future. Perhaps 20,000 years from now, transhumans will look back at history records and scoff at the narrow-mindedness of us, the archaic humans, just as we ridicule those who subscribed to the geocentric model of the universe. If that was the case, then human adaptability is the true tragedy. disclaimer: im not a transhumanist gg |
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July 2019
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