Smells.

Actinic word sequence.

Metaphysical Fridays.

Consider a system's degree of complexity and its feedback mechanisms. Does it have experiences which correspond with the intensity with which you experience things; or in other words, although a system may be a more simple form than you are, does its world-experience seem as real to it as your world-experience does to you?

People who bother me.

People for whom it takes the anti-epiphany of a random personal tragedy before they question their blind faith in a supernatural, omnipotent and omnipresent force, having ignored the infinite random tragedies of others that preceded theirs, bother me.

Lights.

I feel unplugged from something in this life, he thought. Unable to decipher what I'm supposed to do. Like an insect with broken antennae. During the week my days smell of anxiety. I need validation. He stood as tall as his stature would permit and stared down the camera. I don't know who I am as a person let alone who I'm meant to be as a game show host, he sadly reflected. Someone called action. He smiled.

Colour plate.

Actinic word sequence.

Assistant.

I flinched as his warm hand clasped my shoulder a little too firmly. He leaned closer and I could feel his breath spread across my neck carrying with it the damp inquisitive whisper: "Are your dreams as profound as your waking life is banal?"  He handed me a shirt, one size larger as requested, and limped away from the changing room, returning items of discarded, creased clothing to their perfect display racks.

Not art.

Memento Mori.

Carpe diem is so last year.

Idiosyncrasy.

Her hairs block the plug hole, her toenails are lost among the loop pile. Wads of tissue lie against the skirting like damp tumbleweeds. He forgives her for these indiscretions. Half of her brain was taken out when she was 26 and now the spinal fluid that fills the vacant left-hemisphere sloshes around so she feels the ocean lapping inside her skull. This drives her to distraction, particularly while she grooms herself. He felt he was magnanimous in his overlooking of such foibles; "most would not stand for this!" he often reminds her, as she floats about half submerged in the real imaginary world in her head.

Metaphysical Fridays.

As you seek to determine the answers to questions of existence, you think you may have stumbled upon the writings of Anonymous. At this juncture in time, I say to you that science and linguistics have proved beyond doubt that our considerations and undertakings are simply the artifice of a predetermined existence; and that 'free will' is a ruse.

If you agree with the above text, and endorse the concept of determinism, click the following link:


http://theghostwriterinthemachine.blogspot.com/2010/08/metaphysical-fridays_13.html


If you do not agree the universe is fully governed by causal laws, click the following link:

http://theghostwriterinthemachine.blogspot.com/2010/08/metaphysical-fridays_13.html

Dedication.

Last week he'd contacted her anonymously through a dating website, requesting a recent photo "full length, wearing a really short dress, or panties and a t-shirt please" and inquiring whether or not she'd like to meet him for a drink on Saturday afternoon. "To emphasise my sincerity," he wrote, "I've included a poem that you may like to print off and bring with you. That way, if your photo doesn't arrive in time, I'll recognise you. I've named it 'Together' and dedicate it to you, and the relationship I hope we will forge." 


silence screams an awkward glance

over its shoulder 

to someone else who might be listening or

the voyeur behind the musty drapes.

we smell of those drapes 

we smell sadly of the stories with which they regale each prurient bedfellow

we benignly devour, with no ounce of passion, the answers to non-sequiters.

look under rugs of matted hair and insects for a trap door out of here.

She called out urgently to her flatmate. 
"Shelly, I need you to take a photo for me. And I won't be here Saturday night."

People who bother me.

People clothed in synthetic material who stand in front of empty fireplaces and rock back and forth from toe to heel, musing aloud about the length and severity of the approaching winter and speculating what the change in season may bring in terms of discomfort, misfortune or unfulfilled promise, hinting that the fire should be lit by someone else, bother me.

Continuum.

The beginning, the middle and the end of a line that forms a circle are simultaneously at infinite points along that line. Similarly, the beginning, the middle and the end of your search for answers have no distinct locations.

Consider the following: When did you decide to read this? Why? What caused your decision? What do you expect to get from reading this? What do you think will happen once you've stopped reading? And if something else happens instead, is that the beginning of the next experience or the end of your reading experience – a continuation of the current activity or the beginning of a new one which was (or was not) influenced by the fact you were reading anyway? Did knowing the only way you got to read this was because I decided to publish it change your response to any of the above questions? Do you care? Do I care? Do you care if I care? The beginning, the middle, the end.

Watercolours.

Is, be.

Something that I do not know with absolute certainty, in as much as anything is or can be certain, and in as much as anything actually IS (because really what is IS but an arbitrarily proscribed state of be-ing), is whether unicorn farts smell like the taste of marzipan.

Fog.

Deduce.

You think your thoughts and I try to think what your thoughts might be, write them down, and try to make you think about the thoughts I thought you had.

True and false.

The truth about lying.

Propped up on one elbow, her neck extended at an unusual angle, she met my gaze.

"We all lie a lot," she stated. "We experiment with the science of deception; forge fact from fiction; extract truth from fable. Most of us do so as an instinctive, face-saving social tactic – a protective reflex to advance our cause in the world." She blinked. Her pupils dilated as they refocussed. I lay supine next to her on the floor. "But you do it," she accused, "simply to hurt others. You fabricate to wound and destroy."

"I do not," I lied. And it was only mildly ironic that my features were unable to express pensive torment.

Pursuit.

I have no idea where you are headed; but I will pursue you like the new line of narrative I am in the process of writing as you read this.

Old age.

Senility slowly arrived. His confidence ebbed, replaced with an almost imperceptible accrual of confusion. His liveliness drained away; his ability to decide or deduce decayed; his impulse to improvise faded. And we watched, fabricating scenarios to ensure this did not happen to us.

Metaphysical Fridays.

Q: Is this a question?
A: If this is an answer.

People who bother me.

People who appear in my dreams, night after night, like dogs returning to a buried kill, bother me.

Colour plate.

Plagarism.

Us.

I achieved profound inner change, matched only by a slow outer decay.

I have a distant and forced interest in other people's lives.

I possess an abundance of apathy – yet I threaten others with my achievements.

I am seduced into being what others see in me.

I don't feel vulnerable or exposed in writing things down; it's you I'm writing about.

Cold.

You know that feeling you get when you're cutting vegetables and the knife slips and you're sure you've just sliced right through your knuckle? I feel like that all the time.

Metaphysical Fridays.

I was relaxing in a pub with a close mentor of mine, René Descartes, enjoying a lager. The bar manager asked us if we'd like another round before closing time. 'I think not,' Descartes said, and vanished in a puff of logic. 

I was with another of my colleagues, Jean-Paul Sartre, in the local café, helping him revise his draft of Being and Nothingness. He asked the waitress for a cup of coffee with no cream. The waitress replied, 'I'm sorry, Jean-Paul, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?'

People who bother me.

People with lean academic fingers, who only lie on forms and truly believe in the faux innocence of the 1950s; who cling to youth but in reality seem older, more tired, as though they've attempted something remarkably important but have failed, bother me.

Colour plate.

Metaphor.

Unacceptable.

I called talkback radio to bemoan the lack of work ethic in contemporary society. On air I emphatically opined that from where I was sitting: on the sofa in front of television, just before noon and fresh out of bed, large whiskey in hand, slippers on and pants off – such prevalent lethargy was unacceptable.