A momentary lapse of judgement

Over the years I've taken a lot of shots at religion and the dull-mindedness caused by religious wish thinking. My mind hasn't changed on this, not in the least. I have though, come to a realization.

Whenever I meet someone who confesses to have been changed for the better by their faith, for the briefest, tiniest of moments it is not the jagged edge of sarcasm or the fiery bloom of my own atheistic values and ideas that I feel rising in my chest, but envy.

Pure, immaculate envy.

The feeling floats momentarily in the pit of my heart like a lost puff of smoke, then gets overrun by the brash voice of my rational mind.

My heart yearns to believe. But the mind has had too long and too much evidence to allow such foolishness. It remembers the wars and the pain. The abject slavery of the infinite will of man. The purposeful tarring of our souls. Religion tells us we are imperfect incomplete beings. And I cannot stand for that.

I doubt that wisp of faith will ever be more than that. But it remains, that last sliver of the God within me.

Growing up in the 90’s: Your first recollection of desire was for a Disney Channel host. She smiles at you her jagged smile filled with CRT scan-lines, flips her Technicolor hair and then raises one delicate, dainty hand to introduce the anthropomorphized rodent god that you must worship if you want to love her. Ah, young romance.

A rant before I start

I've been collecting ideas throughout my entire life. Mostly trivial nonsense, empty concepts like 'God is an energy wave originating at the Big Bang'. Rhetoric like 'take the faith, leave the faithful'.

But the one that stuck finally is this, I believe the universe is more immense, more amazing and more beautiful that we can ever imagine. It will go on no matter what we decide about its origins.

But wouldn't it be a shame if we ended before we saw whats really out there?

And we won't get to see whats out there if we don't buck up as a species.

War? Hunger? Famine? Seriously?

I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the cosmos. You guys can fight this out amongst yourselves.

3.04 am *fart*

Hi, I'm Praveen and I am actually a rather content individual.

For those of you who know me only through this blog, all one of you, it may seem like an unbelievable statement.

It's a habit I've dropped recently that is the cause of this. Writing only when you're depressed or feeling melancholic leads to people thinking you walk around with white makeup and all 28 frowning muscles flexed.

I whistle as I walk. True story.

I whistle so much it annoys my family. My dad once told me that if I whistled at night, ghosts would appear. I love that Asians have all this fantastic folklore to draw on.

I also tend to smile more than should be appropriate. I smile at funerals, at arguments, and when the waiter brings me the wrong order. I smile when someone cuts me off in traffic. I am THAT zen sometimes.

Its moments like those that remind me that all you can do at the end is smile. Though laughing is recommended for true fuck my life moments (pregnancy scares, car accidents, divorces, deaths).

Back to me.

I guess at some point I associated my creative drive with the deep pang of melancholia, and that connection has remained and flourished. Like Pavlov's dog I salivate at the thought of the endorphin high brought on by the joint acts of creation and apathy.

And in the end isn't that the bald man behind the curtain struggling to work the knobs. That we are all constructs of the pain-pleasure centers of the brain. Chemically assisted brainwashed drones. And we provide the chemicals. But if everyone is brainwashed the same way, is anybody?

And on that rhetorical bombshell I end tonights rant.

nowegian wood tee design pat 2

Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood releases in a few days. This book is very special to me, more than any other book, even others by Murakami.

As much as I tried not to, I will have insanely high expectations for this movie.

And in celebration, and because I couldnt sleep. Here are two tee shirt/poster designs with quotes from Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore.

If the stars align just right this movie might just change everything.

Heres hoping

Lorum Ipsum Dolom

There is a first line in a story somewhere that I am sure will explain the beginning of my life.

It is simple and content with being itself. It is small and tells of beginnings.

This story that I hope to read I am also writing. It has many pages and tells of many things.

The hero grows and has many flaws. I believe this makes him relatable.

The earlier pages are written in a shaky voice, that which hasn't yet learned itself.

The paragraphs here expound the beauty of every day, of every rare starry night, every kiss.

That stops eventually.

He falls in love. Too many times in my opinion, but that's the way it's written.

Eventually he will get married, settle down. But it seems to the author's mind unnatural that the story end this way. It fits at the end like a bad toupee, awkward and at an angle.

But he is at a block.

Maybe he could make it a choose your own ending book. Let the reader decide.

But thats as much a cop-out as the picket fence ending.

The hero of our story yearns for an end drenched in flames and beautiful song. But the author is of a different mind.

He years for the peace of an end rocking gently away in the force of the moon pulling the ocean and the earth pulling on the moon and black hole at the center pulling everything.

There will always be this conflict between this creator and his creation. This life that began with a small, sure line is now twisted and tangled in its own paraphrases and ellipses.

Because of this, the story will always come short of its true potential, and the words will always