Discrepant Awareness Alex Fleck

I was reading about medieval heresies tonight and came across Bogomilism and its more famous cousin Catharism.
There’s some pretty interesting stuff there. 

I’m no expert on mysticism and theology, but from what I can tell these heresies seem to be related to Gnosticism, a much older belief system. Gnosticism was dependent on ideas about the purity of spiritual beings and an evil consciousness that entombed those spirits in prisons of flesh.
So all of life is a struggle against the fleshier aspects of our nature like eating meat and having sex and all those lovely embellishments of earthly existence.

It’s troublesome to make too simplistic a narrative out of complicated historical events, but it’s interesting that these medieval heresies seem to have flourished in periods when the church was exacting greater and greater control over the lives of European Christians. It’s almost as though these systems of thought were a kind of theological allegory expressing anxiety about the constraint of an increasingly influential church and then locating that struggle in the spiritual realm. The tragedy, then, is that free spirits trapped in bodies become fleshly people moving about in another layer of constraint, an oppressive society.
So if these beliefs were true, we’d be at the mercy both of social constraint and its allegory, the spirit’s prison, the flesh.
That’s kind of a sad thought.

In any case, all of that is just the process that led to this little poem called “All or Nothing.”
I hope you like it!

Spirits into bodies,
     bodies, spirits structured,
          bound, disjoined from nothing,
               All and nothing.

So aside from its obvious awesomeness in comparison with other forms of social media, my favourite thing about Twitter is the way it makes us play with language, manipulate it, and craft it.

When I write a poem, I start with an idea or an image, express it as fully as possible in my mind, assign words to my thoughts, then pare it down to a convenient packet of meaning. Twitter is an exercise in that same process.
I generally write a tweet that tends to be too long. Then I choose words more carefully to fit the simple restrictions of the medium. It’s just like the times I feel a certain metrical pattern might suggest an idea more fully, and I need to select words that run with that metre.

Aside from the process of whittling and reduction, Twitter also forces us to examine patterns of language. For example, if I’m riding the bus, I can tweet “I’m riding the bus,” or “riding the bus,” or even more simply, “on the bus…”
Does the first tweet seem more straightforward, maybe a little more chipper? Does the last suggest some kind of fatigue or annoyance, perhaps a little frustrated ennui? I get to choose one, and that free play with connotation can be a productive challenge.
It also tells us something about language. The latter two tweets aren’t even complete sentences, but they’re clear enough. That says something about how we communicate, what words we need or can leave aside.
That’s some interesting cognitive maneuvering.

Lately I’ve been telling my students they should start tweeting if they don’t already. The ultimate value is it makes people think about language and clarity.
(Not to mention the fact that it cuts down those giant, paragraph-long sentences I hate to read)

It’s poesis and cognition, expression and play.
Twitter isn’t undermining language; it’s an exciting part of its progression.

Here’s a poem that occurred to me the other night. I’ve been paring it down since then.
It’s more an image than a complete thought, but I quite like the premise: indifference to suffering endlessly prolonged. That’s the most captivating thing about notions of eternal punishment as expressed through legends like Tantalus’. What do they do with boredom and acclimatization? Is getting used to eternal punishment a form of torture in itself?
In any case, I hope you like it!

“Tantalus”

A listless hand
bobs up toward the fruit
and down toward the pool.

A flick of the fingers,
careless,
resigns him
to waiting another forever
until he tries again.

A friend of mine shared a Thought Catalog post that traces our appropriations of people’s personae through brief glances at their Twitter feeds.
It was pretty good.

One line stuck out. With respect to Twitter…
“It’s better than Facebook. Because at least you don’t have to see photo albums of fat people from your high school getting married.”

That struck me as particularly insightful. In fact, I feel like there’s now a common cultural experience related to obsolete Facebook friends who erupt into your current life based on your news-feed, perfectly characterized by the Thought Catalogue statement.
When I receive one of the offending updates, my own thoughts almost universally run as follows:
1. Why the hell do I have you on Facebook.
2. Wow, you’ve really put on weight.
3. Holy shit… I can’t believe you’re getting married.
4. Holy Shit! I can’t believe you’re marrying that person.
5. No, I don’t want to go to your “Stag and Doe” (whatever that is), and inviting someone who hasn’t seen you in ten years just makes you look pathetic.

Am I alone in this thought, or has Facebook and the new development of oversaturation in obsolete and meaningless friendships created a fresh phenomenon, specific to one situation? How many of these can we identify?

So I’m walking down the hall, enjoying my coffee, and reflecting on what I’d reply were someone to ask what my preferences in a cup of joe were.

“Hot and bold” was my response to this hypothetical query, to which I was immediately compelled to add “…just like I like my ladies”.
This crassness isn’t my fault. I am, after all, a product of the “that’s what she said” era. I’m conditioned to it.

Realizing right away that I couldn’t actually say that or I’d look like a reprehensible, post-frat man-boy, I automatically insulated myself from this accusation by encasing my joke in a level of irony.
The resultant quip would therefore be “I like my coffee hot and bold… insert ‘just like I like my ladies’ joke here”.

Two thoughts:
1. It’s interesting to observe how our brains work in light of cultural norms and different levels of conditioning.
2. I’m alarmed at the number of hypothetical dialogues in my head.

Today I made a mental list of every relationship or serious romantic prospect I’ve ever had and why it failed.

Upon close inspection, nine tenths of the reason most of them foundered was my own immaturity and its outgrowths.

My question: to have a real, functioning, permanent relationship, do I have to become more mature or does the strength of connection overcome that consideration?

Today I had an idea for a screenplay I want to write.
I really like this one too, but I don’t have time to put it to paper. There’s a lot on my plate right now.

This has happened before. Had I world enough and time, there are probably three or four screenplays, novels, and clusters of short stories I’d be working on.
But writing stuff is so time consuming.
If you really have respect for the art, you have to take it seriously. That means agonizing over structure and crafting every phrase into the perfect vehicle for your thoughts.

I wish I could duplicate myself for the sake of exploring every project I want to undertake.
There’d be the Alex working on his doctorate in Medieval studies. Next to him is the tea-drinking, weak-eyed novelist, Alexander. Then there’s Zander, the screenwriter, whose pages are dominated by labyrinthine notes, rough-hewn storyboards, and coffee stains.
(We all think he’s a bit of an asshole, especially since he started asking everyone to call him “Zander”, but he has some solid ideas)

Even this fantasy has its problems though. Almost immediately after wishing for my artistic duplicates, I realize that I’d probably start to mistrust them.
I’d be reading an article on Old English versification of Latin prose and glance over at Alexander. I’d ask how his latest chapter’s coming and just wouldn’t be able to resist making a suggestion or two, maybe questioning his overtly terse sentence structure.
Knowing he’s me, he’d in turn be worried that I wasn’t working hard enough or on the right track. “Have you finished sketching out your Major Field proposal?” he’d say with a smug little glance over his thick glasses . I’d resentfully turn back to my article. He just doesn’t understand the process…
Naturally, Zander would be working on his screenplay at some barely known coffee shop. Pretentious fuck. Do you really have to be seen writing something to write it?

That actually sounds like kind of a fun story that I won’t have time to write.
This post is not quite as therapeutic as I’d hoped.

In any case, I suppose I’ll just have to keep slogging through my impulses and ambitions, and the ones that lodge themselves in my brain long enough just might find realization some day.