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Beyond Eternity 09
BEYOND ETERNITY ISSN 1203-5416
Episode 09 <--> September 1996
Sanjay Singh eternity@cyberspace.org
_______________________________________________________________
"I wish I had not woke up today
Everyone mistakes the things you say
Take the simple truth and
Twist it all around
Make it sound important
Make it seem profound"
[Garbage]
Deep breath in... hold it... alright... exhale. Feel
better? Neither do I, but I've heard that deep breathing can
help at times... maybe you just need to be outside. That might
be it. Breathing in a place where you can actually get some
fresh air. Too bad that fresh air is just one of those
commodities that you don't get when you're two hours into a
twelve hour train ride. Oh well... at least I got a window
seat.
I've been doing a bit of thinking about the last issue and
this one. So far there has been four outside articles [this
was written before I got another two articles for this issue]
in these two issues. I just realized that they were all kind
of bleak.
A month (and a bit) ago, we looked at work, so I was
expecting to hear about doubt, debt, uncertainty and
frustration. Which I got (especially including what I gave),
but this month's topic was pretty open, and what I got again
was a bit less than optimistic.
The one thing (there have been many been, but this is the
biggie) that I've learned over the past year and a half of
Eternity (has it really been that long?) is that I am not
alone. I am not as unique as I thought I was.
People have related to what I have to say. At times that
was great, at others, it was scary. How many people are all
too familiar with pain, guilt, frustration, and even apathy?
The world would probably be a better place if I was alone in
these thoughts, but I'm not and that means that we all (or at
least most of us) have to figure out how to deal with that.
Well, I guess that's it for the intro. Try the deep
breathing thing again. I'll be back with you in a minute or
so.
Contents
========
- Introduction (you just read it)
- First Things First
- Old Age [by Greg Webster]
- The Good Old Days [by Bob Chase]
- New Technologies, Old Conventions [by Laura Bagby]
- Obsessions Revisited [by Greg Webster]
- Administrivia
- Rules Of The Game
First Things First
==================
"If this is what you get for living on borrowed time,
what good is living?" [Jeph Lobe]
I'm not sure if this should go in the introduction or if
it should sit at the bottom of the issue, mingled in with
Administrivia. So I'll just compromise and put it in the
middle.
You'll probably notice that I didn't do a whole lot in
this issue. For that I'm sorry. It was more for lack of time
than lack of effort. I had the grand plans. I was going to
get my head straightened out when I went to New York, which I
did. Then I was going to be in a such a good mood this week,
it would be a writing frenzy, which it wasn't. I just forgot
how nice uninterrupted free time can be. I gorged myself on
it. And here we go. It's Friday already. End of the month.
Release time. I think I may have dropped the ball somewhere
along the way.
Heroically enough though, Greg, Bob and Laura walked in.
So the pressure on me got a bit lighter and this issue actually
becomes (somehow) a lot more stable than a lot of the others.
Go figure.
Anyways, from here on in (or at least until further
notice), we're back to being monthly. I'll let you decide how
you feel about that.
I have no idea what I'm going to talk about in the next
issue, but I've got some ideas that I've been kicking around
for a bit, and now that I have the time to commit them to
paper, I will. Next month, everything will be a little more
consistent. I promise.
Oh, and I'm just going to mention here that if you want to
say something... I'm listening... and I can get some other
people to hear it too. Write something and send it to me.
You'll never hear me complain about getting too many articles.
(Just in case you missed that message at the bottom.)
I'll leave you alone now so you can read the rest of the
issue.
Old Age
=======
"The new man is born too old to tolerate the new
world. The present conditions of life have not yet
erased the traces of the past." [Eugenio Montale]
by: Greg Webster [kick@vcn.bc.ca]
There's a cliche (and a song, for that matter) that says,
"The world is a funny place".
Well, I think they might, in most cases, have meant that
it is funny-strange, rather than funny-haha. As twisted and
cynical as it seems, the world is really about as unfunny as it
possibly can be most of the time, with ironic twists every once
in a while to break up the monotony.
I've been meaning to write this for a bit, but was not
then, and possibly am not now, sure how to do it. An
occurrence or two has stuck in my head, and remained there, and
when that happens, I'm pretty sure that unless it finds a
release it will dig it's way deeper. Thoughts and experiences
have a way of unhealthily latching onto the subconscious unless
dealt with.
More than two weeks ago, what I assume were a few kids
cruising around, tossed a Molotov cocktail in the street in
front of my apartment building. Some friends and I were
sitting around talking when it happened, heard the smash and
the tinkle of glass, and a screeching as the people in the car
who threw it left immediately.
Of course, we went to the balcony to see what the heck
happened, saw the blazing road and the glass, and called 911.
Normally I wouldn't do that, except for the fact that there
were a few not-so-smart people driving through it while it was
still burning. Others in my building showed up, strutting like
Viking heroes, with brooms and towels as weapons to put out the
fire and sweep up the glass. A few comments among my friends
occurred, all wondering if it was only in Canada that the
average citizen would come out to clean up the mess from a
Molotov cocktail, in a matter-of-fact way. Like wiping the
table after a particularly messy meal.
The whole situation (after the fire truck arrived and left
-- by the time they got here, the fire was cleaned up and the
glass swept to the side of the road) made me think, sadly and
in a way that made me feel very old, about 'the kids of today'.
Now, when I was a teenager in the 80's, I was a bad-ass
stupid jerk. I admit I look on it with a certain fondness, I
enjoyed the looks I got when I was almost the only punk in my
tiny ranching town, and how smashing my head into walls at a
full run made everyone think I was more than a little insane,
but really, that was a major defence mechanism. I was pretty
screwed up, and the less I felt like part of the 'big picture',
the better. Saying all that however, I did quite a few stupid
things. Many of which either cost people money or annoyed
them.
However, I can think of nothing I did that caused people
fear. I didn't terrorize the neighbourhood, mainly I just
shook up a few people who were in desperate need of it, and
maybe allowed a few people to experience things that living in
that town they'd never have to experience.
What I see today though, in a much larger place, is
different. I live near a mall, and last year a group of
suburban kids decided they were a gang and took over the bus
loop at night at the mall. For a period of three months,
numerous beatings of kids and young adults occurred, simply
because the gang colour was purple and these people had the
gall to wear it at night at the bus loop.
Geez, I don't understand the kids of today.
A few months ago I was on the bus with a friend of mine.
We sat one seat forward of the back of the bus, just in front
of two girls. The girls were perhaps age thirteen or fourteen,
and were engaged in a very matter of fact discussion about who
they had given blow-jobs to and when. Turns out they had done
some of the same people.
Well, the fact that they were doing this at that age
doesn't really shock me or surprise me. The fact that they
were speaking of it in such an open way in a crowded bus does.
I don't know if that makes me a puritan or what, but I wonder
how we got here.
Between the random acts of violence, and the bomb-making,
and the not realizing when certain things should be talked
about, I've totally fallen out of touch with that side of me.
I'm no longer a child, I know how the papers have talked about
the increase in teen-violence, teen-angst, teen-pregnancies,
and many other teen-'s, but the part of me that lets it slip
past without mental comment has disappeared. I'm part of a
generational gap like I never was before. I'm an old guy, a
teacher rather than a student, I've lost the thread of popular
music long ago, and attempting to catch up in any sort of way
to these people now half my age would make me look extremely
foolish. Besides the fact that I never would be able to catch
up, I don't really want to.
And the fact that I don't want to is linked to the fact
that I no longer understand that rebelliousness. To me, as
bigoted as it sounds, and as un-savage as I now am, it looks
surprisingly like stupidity and immaturity. Soon I'll long for
the 'good, old days', and I'll begin to speak more about how it
was 'when I was a kid', and the youth I am trying to talk to
will ignore me, as I did when I was that age, and they won't
understand that I was in some ways like them, and they won't
see me when I was that age working through the same stuff they
are.
I'm old now, you see.
The Good Old Days
=================
"What we call human nature in actuality is human
habit." [Jewel Kilcher]
[I swear that this article is not meant to be a response to
Greg. I've been trying to fit this one in for a while now, and
I just got Greg's article a couple of nights ago. Anyways, as
coincidences go... I don't think you can get much better than
this. -SS]
by: Bob Chase [bobtard@aol.com]
There is no such thing as the good old days, and the only
reason we think that things were "better" back then is because
we were either young and naive and didn't know any better, or
because nobody talked about it. Teenage girls have gotten
pregnant from the beginning of time -- they used to blame it on
earthly visits from the gods, if I recall my Greek and Roman
history correctly. Fathers have always molested and
impregnated their daughters. Drunks beat their wives
senseless, even killed them. Parents beat their kids, and some
locked their retarded children in attics. Presidents lied to
the American people. Women were raped while walking alone on
the streets at night.
Business owners misled investors about the financial
health of their companies and embezzled funds. And some
business owners knowingly exposed their workers to hazardous
working conditions just to buy a bigger house. Kids ran the
streets without supervision, and some poured gasoline on cats
and set them afire. And some frustrated white men strung up
black men in their front yards to try to prove a ghastly point.
Bad things have always happened. Bad things are happening
now. Bad things will continue to happen. Nothing about the
fundamental nature of human beings has changed in thousands of
years, and it won't for thousands of years to come. As far as
I'm concerned, the only thing that has changed is that we have
better communications technology which allows us to find out
about these things more quickly, in full colour and in our own
living rooms at six and eleven o'clock every night. Evil deeds
aren't more pervasive -- they're just better publicized.
I saw a study some time ago -- I wish I could find it so I
could carry it around with me to prove my point whenever I have
this discussion -- which said that we live in the LEAST violent
time in the history of humanity. This conclusion was based on
the excavation of burial sites and a subsequent determination
of the cause of death for humans over the course of several
hundreds of years. People were more likely to die violently at
ANY time in our past than they are now.
Life for human beings is certainly more comfortable now,
and technology is responsible for it. We don't all toil on a
small piece of land to grow Just enough food to last us through
the winter. We can spend hours on a weekend chatting with
strangers a thousand miles away instead of worrying about
whether the cows need to be fed. But human nature is far too
powerful to allow technology to change us in any fundamental
way, to make it better or worse. The world of humans is a
cruel place. Always has been. Always will.
New Technologies, Old Conventions:
Writing Errors on the Internet
==================================
"If I had my way books would not be written in
English, but in an exceedingly difficult secret
language that only skilled professional readers and
story-tellers could interpret. Then people like you
would have to go to public halls and pay good prices
to hear the professionals decode and read the books
aloud for you. This plan would have the advantage of
scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians,
country doctors and I-Married-a-Midget writers who
would not have the patience to learn the secret
language." [Robertson Davies]
[This is an iffy topic for me. Where should the line be drawn
between learning a craft and being expected to do it well? I'm
personally pretty picky (alliteration not intended) with what I
read, so I should agree with Laura, but I still like the idea
of a learning curve. -SS]
by: Laura Bagby [laurab@fileserver7.kcom.edu]
Reading the vast amount of information on the Internet is
like watching home movies that were made when movie cameras
first appeared on the market for general consumption. Suddenly
a family member, usually "Dad," who had never made a film
before, became the family's producer, director and cameraman.
Home pages and articles written by amateur writers closely
resemble those early 8mm movies in which the family stands and
waves self-consciously at the camera. Reading through link
after illiterate link on the Internet is like watching those
primitive family films where the camera jerks, stops, starts
and rolls sickeningly; occasionally one catches some ephemeral
and beautiful moment but more often one is bored, confused and
frustrated.
As an avid reader, I expect to have a modicum of
conventional spelling, punctuation and grammar so that I can
concentrate on the content of the information rather than
having to de-code these hieroglyphics into my native English
language. Most of the errors are typical of amateur writers
who are familiar with spoken English but totally oblivious to
written English. I begin to doubt the proper usage of "to" and
"too," "your" and "you're," "their" and "there." The other day
I was skimming through an inarticulate article when I stopped
short at the word "sweet." Knowing the meaning of the word
"sweet," I was completely puzzled by its use in this passage;
by the time I translated it to "suite" as it should have been
written, I had completely lost the context of the entire
passage.
As a writing teacher, I am quite familiar with the basic
errors inexperienced writers make. I have come to realize that
punctuation and spelling are as mysterious to most people as
the terrain of distant planets. For years I was perplexed at
the pervasive writing of "a lot" as one word only to discover
that at least one teacher in our local grammar school was
teaching students to write that expression as one word instead
of two. I am still amazed at the widespread tendency to these
kinds of errors since it takes no more effort to write many of
them correctly rather than incorrectly.
Other errors are obviously a problem of not having learned
the rules in grammar school. As a grammar student, I did not
learn my multiplication tables and struggled for years through
the simplest math problems. I did, however, learn to multiply
when I was an adult and therefore believe adults are capable of
learning to punctuate and distinguish between words such as
"were" and "where" which are not interchangeable or similar in
meaning yet are constantly confused. Not knowing the
difference between how to use a semi-colon and a colon makes
one's writing as confusing as multiplying 6 times 7 and getting
24.
I have given up hope that writers will ever again insert
possessive apostrophes in the proper places and leave them out
of simple plurals. But I wonder what happened to using
apostrophes in contractions; this practice seems to have gone
as completely out of vogue as double knit clothes. I recently
came across an article on the net that had at least one
contraction in every sentence and not one apostrophe in sight;
it was like reading a road map with the roads drawn clearly but
the highway numbers omitted. And the general tendency to use
"of" instead of "have" (as in "could've") makes reading a
painful chore. Perhaps I missed "of" becoming a verb while I
was catching up on those multiplication tables.
We have been a society with a strong oral tradition since
the advent of film, tape and the telephone. Maybe it is
inevitable that a culture which has relied so heavily on verbal
communication is incapable of the nuances of written language.
Or perhaps students will begin to pay attention in grammar
classes and learn the conventions of written English. It is
even possible that we will have to evolve an entirely new
language with which to communicate through the newest advances
in complex technology. But until the current written
conventions become obsolete, I, as a reader, would appreciate
reading my native language without having to have an
interpreter so that I might be able to comprehend the larger
and more important messages in the volumes of writing I read on
the Internet. In other words, I would like to have access to
more straight-forward information and less camera/word
juggling.
Obsessions Revisited
====================
"Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or
baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same
species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful."
[Aldous Huxley]
by: Greg Webster [kick@vcn.bc.ca]
Sanjay and I were talking a while back about obsession,
especially with the truth. Then, I thought I didn't really
have much to say about obsession, I don't really consider
myself obsessed with a whole lot of things, and I (in a moment
of blank mind) couldn't think of anyone else in my life right
now that holds obsessions or is driven by them.
Well, it's been a couple months, and I've had time to
rethink my situation, and my friends. I spent some time
considering the differences between addictions and obsessions,
and just plain enjoyment. They all tie in together, often in
obvious ways, sometimes in not-so-obvious ones.
I've got a friend addicted to cigarettes, as I used to be.
I've got a friend nearly obsessed with honour, as I sometimes
am. I've got another friend who loves to work out, as I am
learning to do. And I've got a friend who can sit at a video
game for 10 hours in a row or more.
The friend who smokes occasionally goes without, since he
has no control of his finances. He has the nicotine fits, but
he survives -- sort of. He borrows money from all of his
friends to support his smoking, but he always pays back
eventually.
The friend who is obsessed with honour has tried, at
various times, to join the French Foreign Legion and considered
moving to China to study the martial arts. If his eyes would
have pass quality control, the FFL would have accepted him, and
he is still seriously thinking about going to China. "No guts,
no glory," I guess... but he'd never admit to thinking that.
I recently spoke to the friend of mine who works out every
day about it (when I went with him on a workout), and was told
how he finds it nearly impossible to do when he is having
depressed thoughts, or is worried about his life. I guess one
obsession takes over another, but he handles the loss of
working out pretty well. I only barely know his interior mind,
but it seems to be nowhere near as stable as his outward
personality.
In somewhat of the same vein is the friend who is in love
with video games. Of all my friends, he may be the most truly
stable, though as the friend obsessed with honour points out,
he is a perfect social chameleon. He fits in everywhere, and
in any crowd, at least partly because he is so adept at holding
in emotions.
The problem I see in obsession is that there are very few
solid threads that bind them all. When I smoked, it was
because I enjoyed it, with the secondary problem that I was
addicted. I know my smoker friend doesn't enjoy smoking
anymore, but he once did -- the addiction has taken over that
part. The workout nut I believe craves the feeling of
accomplishment and power that he has with his solid and potent
body. My honourable friend can't live with himself if he
breaks that honourable commitment, though I've recently seen a
lot of him that is extremely adept at rationalizing his
mistakes to the point where he believes no wrong was done. His
ego sometimes prevents him admitting he made a mistake. The
friend I have who plays video games has a lot more tolerance
for the boredom that overcomes me when I sit doing anything for
too many hours.
The final truth I have found is that obsession eventually
leads to harm if unchecked. I've lost friends, and loves to
obsessions that eventually bordered on addictions. Most of
these people I miss a lot. Some of those have poisoned their
relationship with me to make it impossible to connect with them
ever again. But unfortunately, in an antagonistic society such
as ours, it's pretty rare for anyone to be able to stop or slow
down an obsession, or prevent it from reaching that addiction
stage.
So the only thing I am able to do, fitting int quite
nicely from the long attempt I am making for myself to keep my
own problems with things from affecting others in such a
negative way, is to not become so obsessed with something that
it hurts anyone.
That is, if I am able to see it coming. Perhaps that is
the common thread among obsessions that I was seeking: they
sneak up on you.
Administrivia...
================
Beyond Eternity (ISSN 1203-5416) is a monthly serial that
is written (for the most part) and compiled by Sanjay Singh,
and then edited by Paul Sheen and Sanjay Singh. You can find
older (or even current) issues from any of these places...
mail: eternity@cyberspace.org
web:http://www.interlog.com/~vash
ftp: ftp.etext.org: /pub/Zines/Eternity/
gopher: gopher.etext.org (follow the prompts)
usenet: alt.zines
subscriptions: Just send me mail, I'll add you to the
list. All I ask is that you let me know
what you think about "Beyond Eternity...",
and you can even mention how you found out
about it. It's a small price to pay, but
that's all I ask for.
As always, if you have a question, comment, statement,
rant, or anything, feel free to let me know. (Who knows, you
might even feel better that you did it.) There's always room
for me to improve, and there's always room for outside
contributions. When I say that one person can make a
difference, that includes you.
Rules Of The Game
=================
I take full responsibility of the overall content here.
There might be other writers but what goes into this is my
choice. Copyright is held by whoever wrote the article, and if
it doesn't say who they were, then it was me. I'd strongly
suggest asking them for permission before you reprint anything
that was written in here (this includes my stuff). Chances are
that I won't object, but I'd still like to know.
In past issues of The Eternity Articles, I was asked if
what I had written was true. I'll state this for the record
now, "everything I write is true to me". As for the other
writers, well, you'd have to ask them. As a general rule I'm
not going to print pure fiction anymore, unless I think that it
has a message that's worth relaying.
I think that's all that needs to be said. Talk to you
next month.
Sanjay Singh (8/31/96)
