Curious About Existence
Oh Mama Rahm Shikah
Oh Mama Rahm Shikah,
I have built you a temple.
I built it in the sewers;
The design is simple:
I modeled your chambers
On my organs and tissue
Cause my body is your residence
As I am your issue.
I made the walls out of gypsum
And the floors out of hide,
I made the ceiling out of daddy
Right after he died.
I festooned your walls
with blossoms and bees,
I made up your bed
With bloody knuckles and knees.
Now I'll grow up there
As big and nasty as you,
A caustic agent,
Lye, the flu.
We will play in the night
in the skies like bats,
In the day we will bathe in the sewer
like rats
And I will know joy,
And I will feel free,
Because you've taught me disorder
And entropy.
Thermodynamics
Today we are here to talk about the First Law of Thermodynamics. Simply put, the first law states that Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed.
For instance, Electricity is turned into heat, which boils water and makes steam, which pushes a piston or rotates a turbine, and so on.
What's significant here is that the First Law of Thermodynamics recognizes no distinction between order and disorder. Historically, we have understoof that moral value is ascribed to a given system in accordance with that systems capacity to work in tandem with another system. This capacity is what is meant by the word “order”. Disorder disrupts this model of efficiency, and thus is determined to have a negative moral value.
If every system were in order, and none were in disorder, they would all join together seamlessly. The world, in that instance, would be determined to be totally good. Total order equals total goodness. This is the method whereby the absolute value of a system has historically been assigned, and this is why the first law is so radical.
Now take the example of the nut-brown mouse. A nut-brown mouse dies in a cardboard box. The energy and order that were housed in that mouse do not disappear. Rather, they undergo a lossless transformation into new systems and organisms, such as fungus, bacteria, houseflies, grief, and other scavenging vermin.
Take the example of the dead human relationship. When a human relationship dies, what happens to the energy and order it contained? Do they disappear? No! Just as in the case of the nut-brown mouse, those intensities are taken up by other systems and organisms. Sexual passion may transform into jealousy, rage may turn into remorse, the energy of nurturing may turn into that of rejection.
The first law contains no method for quantifying goodness or order. It suggests, in fact, in its quietly pragmatic way, that such evaluations are irrelevant.
Which is not to say that the First Law of Thermodynamics denies sadness. That is what is wonderful about this law. Nothing must be denied. Everything works, everything is in order. Envy even, and bitterness. Stinginess and shame. Every dark impulse is acknowledged to be only that: an impulse. Energy. Nothing needs to be forgiven, and everything will be transformed.
Platonic Dialogue II
'Hey, what are you doing?'
'I'm thinking.'
'What are you thinking about?'
'I'm thinking about how bad I feel, and about how bad everyone seems to feel, at least a lot of the time.'
'Uh-huh. What are you feeling bad about?'
'Oh, you know, the ordinary things: wanting stuff I don't have, um, being afraid that bad things are going to happen, and then, you know, I'm angry that bad things have happened. And then, you know, my anger and my fear and everything make me do stupid things, and then I end up, you know, regretting doing those stupid things.'
'You know, this is totally reminding me of this passage that I just read in a letter to Neitzsche from Cosima Von Bulow. Do you know who she is?'
“Um, not really—I've heard her name, she was like, Wagner's wife, or lover or something?”
“Yeah, no that's right, she was Wagner's wife, that's right, and Neitzshe was in love with her so, just, do you want to hear it?”
“Yes, that sounds interesting.”
“Okay, here, just let me look it up…okay…so I guess he was writing to her about, like, being fucked up or whatever, um, so she writes back:
"My counsel is this: do not turn to analgesics of any kind. My counsel is patience with the feelings and a gentle way with pain. Treat your impulses as a comedy which runs to entertain you, not a doctrine to be followed. Read them and put them down at will, like a book.
Rinse your mouth with impulses, but spit them. Don't swallow; and remember--that which you take into your mouth you may develop a taste for. I do not advise that you cease having impulses, Friedrich; that would be absurd. I merely suggest that you not succour them. Things held in the mouth too long will rot. You will sicken and it is a fond wish of mine that you may grow hardy and old."
‘That's beautiful!'
'Yeah there's more. So he writes to her:
'I feel that I am just a little ship, and these things (feelings, impulses, pain) buffet me like a great, wheeling storm!',
and she writes back:
'That is a misapprehension. You yourself are the sea, the gusts of air, all the agents of buffeting. You are the little ship as well. You buffet and are buffeted. You fling and are flung. You wheel, and cry that you've been wheeled upon. I encourage you to consider this storm and ship as one and the same entity. Through quiet consideration of this matter, you may find the sea will grow less angry--that it may even calm, with time, Friedrich, to the cool, bright stillness that you seek."'
You Belong Here
You belong here (two, three, four,
One, two)
You belong here
On this earth
With its green and green and red.
You belong here,
You belong here,
On your bike
And in your bed.
You belong here,
You belong here
Even when you're awful
and filled with fear
Don't think that you don't belong here
Cause you belong here,
You belong here
On this earth
With its green and green and red.
You belong here,
You belong here
Even when you wish that you were dead.
Don't think that you don't belong here,
Cause you belong here
Even when you're
Greedy for tears,
Don't think that you don't belong here,
Cause you belong here,
You belong here.