Darker Poetry

Course, not all of it's fun and games. I have a tendency, when writing poetry, to stray more towards the darker aspects. I hate reading it, but it's soothing to write.

Empty

What less of me could face this world today?

Insufferably tedious to bear,

My interest in the struggles often stray

Away from those I love. I sit. I stare.

I rage within this prison ennui built

And hope to snatch a glimpse beyond the wall

But no, I cannot seem to shift the guilt

Rather sleep; just shut out it all.

But still there seems this little spark of light

Betraying an inferno raging hidden

At any moment; sudden fight or flight

And strangest yet a coldness, still unbidden

What causes one to spurn a recent friend,

With nothing but silence? A sad way to end.

On Denial of Love

Fear not any sharpness of my tongue

Nor such apparent calumny of thought

For love in life a yearning to be sung

Despite the chains that keep it being wrought

I’ve no desire to keep you from my breast

Nor any wish to shy away a kiss

But only a belief in what is best

Will hold me from elucidating this;

My eternal inner conflict rages

Knowledge of a future full of pain

All thought confirms this discord lasting ages

While hopes of love sweep fleeting like the rain

So worry not this dawn may never rise

For only towards myself do I despise.

Double Dactyl

I've recently been introduced to a form of humorous form of poetry known as the Double Dactyl.

There are a lot of very, very funny ones out there on the net, and I suggest you look them up.

These are a few of my own, most made up on the spot.

Wibbly Wobbly
Doctor and Amy, they
Travel around in their
Little box blue.

Constantly finding they’re
Incomprehensibly
In situations where
Dangers ensue

Hankety Pankety

Havelock Vetinari

Stares down at his city

From high up above

Down in the avenues

Unilaterally

Ankh-Morpork urchins shout

"Give him a shove!"

Sappity Soppity

Me and my MacBook have

Spent the last hour or two

Making up rhyme

Seemingly nonsense and

Metasyntactically

Devoid of a consequence

Losing that time

Well, it was an appreciative effort, and I might come back to them. But for now, enjoy, and find some of the much better ones out there.

Wow, I'm such a nerd.

This is a section and a reply to a blog I wrote back in 2007 (On MySpace, of all things). It's... Weird, but I think most of it still makes sense.

Love and Time
Category: Life

There are two factors of the universe that peoples views on them tell you a lot about the character. One is Love, the other is Time.

Some people view love as a soulful connection of the mind and body that is insurpassable by exterior stimuli. These are the people who will get hurt a lot in casual relationships, but at every corner they look for that One person who makes their lives complete. They tend to be very reserved, possibly shy or even paranoid, but if they keep looking they will acheive a state of personal happiness.

Some people view love as a very physical feeling; based on lusts and compatibilities. They don't look for much more in their partner than a presence and sexual contentment. These people are not to be slandered, though invariably they do. It is, for them, all they require from a partner, and don't look for anything more. If two people of this nature settle together, they will never need anything else.

There are others who are a little like the Physicals, but who are attracted to attributes as well as the physical features. Most teenagers go through a faze of this, where they are attracted to what someone can DO, and not who they ARE. This is, to my knowledge, not love, though quite often it will resolve itself into a steady relationship of either type. Someone who finds themself admiring someone in a sense that they beleive is love needs to focus on what they actually want from a relationship, and whether the other reciprocates.

In case you were wondering, I myself, since my recent break-up, have temporarily forsworn the whole issue altogether.

Time is seen as a harder question to answer by many people, but in effect it is a very easy concept to analyse.

There are two major theories, and my personal theory. The first theory is that there is not such thing as past and future; only a memory of A past, and the anticipation of A future. Therefore all that exists is the present, and all that matters is living in the present. People who believe this theory tend to be the kind to live in the moment, from merely fun-loving to completely reckless. Fidelity and commitment are difficult notions for a follower of this theory, and they have trouble planning ahead, yet their ability to think on their feet is unsurpassed by the followers of the second notion.

The second is, of course, the theory that as the present is immeasurable, it therefore does not exist, but merely as a way of seperating the past from the future. These people are stoic and occasionally ruthless observers of the lessons of the past and their application in the future. If a Present is more likely to start a bar brawl, a Past/Future is more likely to start a war. They always prepare for the future, and the planning stages are as important in a project as the execution.

The third is my own view that the world only exists to be perceived, therefore perception is the world in it's entirety. We PERCEIVE the passage of time, but what does this mean to the only true factor of the universe, the Mind? Everything else is reality, as we percieve it, but it is as impossible to perceive the Mind as it is to look at the back of your own eyballs. Therefore niether past, present of future exist as a truth, and how we see time is dependent on how we see anything. People who agree with my vew of the world tend to go slightly insane, because it offers the untimate freedom, and they either become psychotically depressed, of they become like me; way too difficult to understand by the followers of the other two theories.

Who are you?
Ben's Reply
Hey Tunky. I think I'll reply to this with a quote from the infamous astrophysicist John Wheeler:
Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once.

Sure time is part of perception; I remember having a discussion with you about the influence of our metabolism on our perception of the passage of time, but it plays a much greater part in the make-up of our physical world than just on our minds. After all, when you start to break down how the mind works itself, and even how it perceives events around itself, a time factor is necessary.
Think about it: if time were just a purely perceived notion to allow us to live in this world, then your mind has to exist outside time. If this were so, firstly: your thought processes would have to travel faster than the speed of light, which according to Einstein's General Thoery of Relativity, is impossible (look it up, not going to go into detail here.)
Secondly, this also means that ALL events. past and future, have 'already happened', that is to say, you've already experienced the future, but you haven't gotten there in your mind yet.
Thirdly, different people would not necessarily expereince time at the same rate, which although we discussed is could be possible for differing metabolisms, also means the someone coud experience disjointed time sequences; like watching the movie 'Memento' as your life.
Finally, if you intelligence and personality is built up from past experiences, for time to be a construct as you assume it to be in your third view, then no intelligent being could possibly exist, as how would this perception of time passing occur?

If you were to ask me this question I would place myself closest to the first camp. I personally believe that time is indeed continuous and immeasurable, and in fact the speed of which could even change region to region. But the important thing is that the Past has occured, whether you believe it to have or not, and the Future will occur, again whether you present or not. We live in a world with 3 physical dimensions, and time allows information to travel through them.

Finally, if time were purely a construct of the mind that could be ignored, causality fails. Remember, I couldn't have written this reply until after you wrote your question. So if my perception of time did not correlate with yours then I could have written this reply BEFORE you wrote the question. What's more interesting, is that if we had a conversation about it in another context, I could have a discussion about my reply before you wrote the statement.

So the perception of time 'roughly' correlates with all communable people: this makes sense as information cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

One final note: I agree with you on that perception of the world around us is paramount, and that the truth is immeasurable (considering I'm pretty sure I said it first :) ). I've also said that on the face of truth the past, present and future are irrelevent, because they will all happen no matter what. But, until someone contradicts my with a valid argument, I think there is something we can say about truth. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams:

'Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again...'

These tautological statements point out that although Truth is immeasurable, 'events' in the universe still require execution. In other words, time is still inextricably linked.

(ps. Granted Adams finishes that quote with 'It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.' This is only relevent with the particular book's focus on time travel :) )

My first crack at politics. Not an auspicious start.

So this is perhaps too early in the blog to strike onto a topic as big as this, but I just filled out my AEC enrollment, so I'm gonna have a crack at it anyway.

What the hell is wrong with Australian politics?

I mean seriously, unless you are going to vote for the Sex Party or the Pirate Party, you haven't got a lot of choice; there's the Liberals, led by the devil incarnate, the man so right wing, Christian extremist and evangelical mental that he has even publicly announced an opposition to contraception, Tony Abbott (Now before any of you politicos out there start chewing on my head, I KNOW he hasn't put any official position forward, but merely said it about himself personally in an interview). On the other hand we have Miss Julia Gillard, our first female Prime Minister because she took advantage of poor Ruddy's faffing about to act out a political coup. She, too, for an ALP PM is strangely right-wing.

And then the Greens. They're like the Lib Dems of Australia; no-one really expects them to win. Too bad they don't have their own Nick Clegg.

Okay, so I admit, I know a lot more about British and American politics than Australia; but surely that's because they're so much more interesting? In England there is this fantastic sense of class warfare, the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems all fighting for the Upper, Lower and Middle classes respectively, while the BNP and UKIP are sitting in the corner like various grandparents at family gatherings, randomly blurting racial attacks like Pauline Hanson with Tourettes.

And America is just insane; the Republicans are 60% filled with absolute crazies, and 40% filled with evil little shits who'll cut any throats they need to to fuck up the Democrats. And the Democrats are so focussed on their core objectives they struggle to keep a hold on the country, let alone the world as they so increasingly seem to feel the need to do. Apparently there's an Aristocrat party in America, but they didn't appear in the West Wing, so I know nothing about them...

In short, there is far too much politics in Politics; people are so focussed on one-upmanship, power struggles, vicious undercutting and straight out bullshit that there is so little government actually happening. In an ideal world we could pay them more, make it attractive to the possible statesmen who all hide in the Private sector, but then there is a lot we could do with more money, like pay teachers and emergency service workers.

Personally, I think there should be some kind of socialist industrial reform; any business with an annual income of more than $200 million becomes Government property. The funds are sorted, redistributed across the workforce on a sliding scale of no more than 3%, not the mental salary difference CEOs make compared to everyone else. Ergh, makes me a little bit sick...

Anyway, the profits support the workforce, then are cut into two piles; domestic investment (That is, investing back into the company to improve income and service), and sector investment (Investing in a variety of governmental programs to increase the business sector as a whole). That way, industry becomes so self-sufficient that it could even handle the collapse of a bank or two, unlike Britain during the recession.

Small business gets the weight of corporate competition lifted off them, and residential politics would remain unchanged, hence why this form or socialism might actually work...

I think I've waffled on enough for now.

Writers Block

So, here I am, sitting on my bed with the aching desire to write something.

Okay, fair enough, I consider myself a bit of a writer, and I do have a novel and a script to go on with...

Nope, nothing...

Oh, God no.

Writers Block.

This is the most feared condition faced by any who craft a living or even just a hobby from the use of language. Novelists, journalists, biographers and textbook editors, there is simply too much swirling in our heads that we can't pull any idea from our minds at any time, right?

I wish.

If only we had some way of understanding where ideas come from? What is happening in our brains when we suddenly think "Oh, I know, I'll give an autistic kid omnipotent abilities!" (I didn't think of this one, thank god, it was someone else's. I haven't yet brought myself to actually read it.)

Is it like Terry Pratchett says; elemental particles, existing in the same ethereal dimension of the universe as our consciousness, sleeting through the world in their thousands, sometimes landing on the right mind at the right time producing magnificent works; largely, falling un-received to the ground. Some people, like Da Vinci or Shakespeare, get massive torrents of the stuff; other people go through life with a trickle, or none at all.

I'd like to say I have a bit of a bucket when it comes to inspiration, but, like everyone, it has run unfortunately dry. Despite all of my plans and intentions for my work, I can't seem to get them anywhere; backed myself into a corner with near invisible walls.

So, how does one drench this dismal dry spell? I've been told about "One liner" exercises, "Write until it's funny", "One Character/One Crisis/ Fix it" etc, etc. Nothing seems to help at the moment. To make matters worse, I'd just pared my life back to trying to get more work, and writing, hoping to achieve some small stability. Nope, no chance of that at the moment, it's a dead fucking end.

Sorry, I'll calm down...

So, what now? Last time I had really bad writers block, I decided to make up an exercise; I would write about my friends, but I would give them super powers. Guess what? I scrapped the original text, and wrote a 325 page novel. Now I'm writing the second in what I hope to be a trilogy, and a script for an episode of Doctor Who. I can't really afford to start a new project.

Maybe I'll revive something from my folders of crap I wrote in High School. That should at least give me some self-deprecating schadenfreude.

Starting Out; Staying In

Okay, so this is going to be a bit of a ride.

Hi.

Right, well, now we've got that out of the way.

I've thought many times these past few years that I should catalogue a lot of the ideas I have. Not for any educational purpose, mind you, just as an attempt to understand my own spiraling consciousness.

So, there will be theories, in the manner of my good friend The Enigma.

There will be opinion articles (Some quite offensive; you've been warned), random thoughts for the day, diatribes, short stories and even the occasional poem.

So, for anyone who comes across this journal of my meaningless meanderings, I welcome you with open arms and a slightly crazed grin.