I didn’t want to write about my fainting. It’s such a silly thing, and it’s so harmless. But those present deserve an explanation, and it’s an event, and events are good for philosophizing about.

First, thank you all so much for caring, and I’m sorry to worry anyone. Thank you truered for the part of the party I was there for!

So, doctors have a name for my fainting which I always forget, but it’s the same thing as a breath holding spell in babies. Under weird circumstances (it used to be when I got badly hurt), I’ll forget to breathe. My vision goes tunnelly, then I faint and have a short seizure (which scares people, but I’m just aware of lots of cool visuals), and I wake up feeling relaxed and a little weak.

It only happens when I know I’m safe: I was alone both times I’ve broken bones, and I knew I had to get myself back to my friends/family, and I didn’t come close to blacking out. The last time it happened, two years ago, I did it voluntarily on some good drugs. I’ve done it less than ten times in my life.

I’ve never had an ambulance called on me, but I had fun schmoozing with the EMTs afterwards and getting them to tell me about their other calls (a big evacuation, three crazies, two drunks, one of whom they hinted was someone famous).

I explained it to them as a condition because that’s what I’ve been told. But for me, it’s much simpler: this is a consequence of what I am, down to my core. Some people’s unconsciousness when it comes out to play makes them wear lampshades or hit people or cry or rant. Mine has something funny in it. My unconscious desperately wants to make itself heard, and my conscious mind knows it has what I want, and yet what it has to say cuts so close to what I cannot conceive of that I won’t let it speak or act. No matter how much I try to pry my mental fingers open, they hold tighter. I’m might hold on for the rest of my life, but I’m going to dedicate some indispensable part of my whole life to letting go.

The first thing I said when I suddenly woke up to Ted asking me if I was okay was, “Yeah, that was wonderful.” I know I shouldn’t, but I not-so-secretly love the fainting. It’s when the struggle between conscious and unconscious consumes me, and my consciousness loses, I’m in my own world for that little while while I writhe on the floor. It’s a natural consequence of the struggle I live to excuse myself from.

That’s all. I’m chilling right after, drinking some tea, half considering party hopping, still plenty high, the night is young, and I have so many things to work on.

We’ve been having problems finding places to hold after-parties since a bunch of really nice houses have become less available (Jon’s, Stina’s, Cassie and Kelly’s, MMM’s, Morgan’s). I still can’t host more than once ever couple months, but here’s what I can offer: any week we don’t have a party, you can come over to my place and watch movies with me.

I’ll make sure I always have a couple of interesting options (something sexy, something cultish), and all the popcorn you can drink. This is an open-invitation, but not to be publicized, per se. I’m not going to announce what movies I’ll have (but I’ll know by each Friday evening, if you want to ask), because I’d much rather party, if possible.

And if want to watch something tonight, give me a call.

[Addendum: Have any movie suggestions or movies you’d like to see? Tell me!]

Come to The Full Body Cast’s Halloween Rocky Horror Show!!!

SEE our massive lineup of sexy and disturbing preshows–
SEE the FBC’s fantastic cast of up-and-coming stars and some old pros–
SEE a theatre packed with the best crackpots in Boston on the biggest night of the year–
SEE me play a minor role–

Tonight, 10 pm, at the Church Street AMC Theatre, in Harvard Square!

Come early and be in the costume contest and win actually good prizes.

Gakked from : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qiGyxPplAw

Exquisite!

I’ve decided to leave Cambridge at the end of next semester, in 8 months. This area has been such a wonderful home to me; Randomites, ESGers, Scadians, Olinites, Rockies: you’ve each been a family to me beyond my wildest imagination (not to mention my actual family, who I’ll miss horribly). I love every one of you, and it hurts just imagining leaving, but I’m due.

This January, I’m heading to South America– to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile– to check out the scene there. Maybe Costa Rica too, if I can fit it in. Come with me! Talk to me before December and we’ll make plans.

Come June, I’ll either leave for there or Europe, or possibly points further out. I might get an apartment, a job, a girlfriend whose language I don’t understand, or I might stick to the road, doing computer work remotely and building up my travel blog business. Probably both.

I have no clue how long I’ll be there. There are a million reasons I might come back to the states. But if I do, I’ll probably head to the left coast, to San Francisco or Seattle. I might come back to Boston (for a million reasons), but not for a couple years at least.

Eight months seems like such a short time, with so much to do, and so few chances for the things I like most. A few more rocky after-parties to host, fewer salons than I have digits, a class to teach, learning to drive. I’m making a list of what I need to do before I leave– poke me if you want to be on it!

Disclaimer: I hold a regular Salon discussion group, with wide-ranging conversations on politics, philosophy, society, and life. The ideas in this post came from a recent Salon, but are not meant to be an accurate reflection of the dialogue.

Books mentioned at the salon:

Classics:
* Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
* Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions
* Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Kristen’s Post-Apocalyptics:
* Cormac McCarthy, The Road: how long will social structures last after resources become scarce?
* Alan Weisman, The World Without Us: thought experiment about environmental consequences of humanity vanishing

Other:
* Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own: “the most important philosophy book you’ve never heard of”
* The Blowfellow Institute for Practical Engineering: www.blowfellow.org, where inventions meet social engineering

Notes/Discussion Rant:

Our discussion wandered from the nature of experience to free will to individuality to organizational structures to post apocalyptic scenarios to the plasticity of minds to the classification of people to the Bush administration’s worldview, plus a long tail of other topics I’ve forgotten. It’s unsummarizable, as usual, so feel free to add in comments.

One of the flirted-about cruxes of our discussion was the question, “How do we experience the world?” The world is a physical phenomenon, and yet our experience of it is vastly different from its physics. The world is objective beyond our reach, while experience is subjective beyond the reach of science. Light is only photons, but our experience of light has no relation to our experience of photons. If we experience red a certain way, that has everything to do with us, and not a property of the photons themselves, beyond their fundamental physical property of wavelength.

Everything we know about the world comes from experience. The world of physics– made of infinitesimal particles, following laws of nature– is a abstraction. It’s a fiction we tell ourselves because of what it lets us do. The capacity of mathematics to describe nature, as far as we can tell, is a lucky draw. Moreover, we believe that the physical world is more real than our subjective world. “Free will” (a solely Western concept, but no matter) is integral to our subjective experience, but incompatible with our physical world view. At the salon, we mostly decided that it didn’t exist, except as an experience.

Our experience of the universe is such a constructed phenomenon, built of ideology. Political worldviews, physical understandings, visual and auditory comprehension, even sensation, is for us the echoes of past or expected impressions and ideas. Every context and experience draws upon past experiences. The first bite of bowl of ice cream confirms or conflicts with what we expected; the seventh bite is a warped, half-forgotten memory of that first bite.

Our conscious experience of the world is only a small, filtered part of the chaotic information that constantly bombards our senses. Our minds construct models of the world, and mostly only allow through information that conforms to them. We react to be people by classifying them: conservative, funny, stuck-up, presidential, awake, like me, like mom. It’s natural and necessary, but it’s also flawed and warps our accurate perception of people.

The same is true of our selves. Lacan said that we all have a entity that we mean when we say “I” (he called them phallic signifiers), like “the liberal” or “the lost one”, and that this organizes our whole conception of the world. We have models of ourselves that define our limitations. When making decisions, we only conceive of choices that fit our model.

Max Stirner would say that all ideologies that involve themselves in who you think you are (like Christian or a boss) are limiting. Stirner also says that we should pursue our own good as the highest good. I agree with both claims, with a caveat. Our paradigms construct hand-in-hand who we are and what the world is. It’s impossible to conceive of the world without implicitly creating a role for oneself in it. It is impossible to conceive of a good for oneself without implicitly imagining consequences on the world, which in turn will change who one is in the world. The perfect murder– beneficial and untraceable– still makes you a murderer.

Stirner would applaud the neo-conservatives for shaking off their ethical limitations and making war to their own unhindered benefit. By harnessing the power of money and media and manipulation, they stand on the top of the broken backs of the world. They make themselves Sartrian masters to us slaves by shaking off the ties that limited their freedom. And yet, by placing themselves so centrally in the world, they’ve long since lost their humanity, and their free will is no longer their own.

Come, drink, play, and then come some more! Cast, crew, and check with me about guests. I have plenty of crash space, for those who aren’t just going to stay up until Sunday rehearsal.

I’m a philosopher: I was born this morning, and tonight I die. If someone rolls out of my bed tomorrow, I care not a whit for him. This day (this moment) is all there is.

Forget your chores and come play with me, on this last sunset of the universe! We’ll get drunk over a discussion of the nature of love, and slowly get naked by candlelight and fuck like toads, and roll out of bed and wander the drowsy streets until dawn. The past is as much a dream as the future– I’ve never been to either, and I don’t want to wait around to find out if I ever will.

I’m going to make dinner for a couple friends tonight, and I think I’ll have too much food. Want to come join us? The menu is Atypical Pumpkin soup and Baked Ziti and Bean casserole.

Praise the gods for Friday nights at home! Yesterday (Thursday, the night sanctioned for debauchery in well-known company) I was reading a friend’s copy of How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household, which observed that the effect of Jewish tradition is to sanctifies the routine goings-on of life, by giving them a special routine of their own. By making Shabbat special, by letting it bask in its own glory, every other day of the week enjoys a reflection of that radiance. Like Zahedi says in Waking Life, every moment is holy, but we walk around like they aren’t. Film, poetry, art, math, architecture, love, chocolate, acid, and Fridays at home help us remember.

Thanks siderea for putting together a meme of Mosher Sexual Styles*! Mine’s “Partner Engagement”, which, under other circumstances, I might be embarrassed by, but her descriptions are far too even-handed and likable and insightful for it. “[Sex] is a loving communion with your partner by which you tear down the walls of existential isolation and truly touch, if only for a moment, another human spirit…. The meaning you make of sex is a celebration of life. You see in sex a rejoicing in being alive and a rejoicing in your partner.” Sex, like Shabbat, allows us to sanctify a holy moment for each other.

I’m resisting the urge to cross reference this (or expand the meme) with Stein’s 9 male sexual types and taxonomies of fetishes. More material for my Philosophy of Sex class!

[* Edit: updated as per http://siderea.livejournal.com/526476.html]