Derek B. Demented

The Princess and the Frog

50 young girls have caught salmonella from kissing frogs.

Why are women so convinced that if they kiss a frog, he'll magically turn into a prince?

Why not kiss the prince that's standing right in front of you?

You think you're going to change him. You think that if you wait long enough, he'll grow up to be the man you think he can be.

You can not change a frog, as exciting as that prospect may seem.

It's hard to be a prince standing in a river of frogs

A Reflection

I saw your reflection in a lake clear as glass

You were a beautiful cloud floating above me

As I gazed into the rippling pool, your breadth claimed the sky

Your rolling white contours embraced the sun

While glowing strands danced like fire across your face beholden to no one

in one fell swoop, the power of your domain became like an ocean

Claiming the air and the birds that fly freely through you

My face pierced your reflection and in that moment there was nothing else

Just our reflections dancing together on the waves of uneasy water

This was the last time I saw us together

For when I looked up to gaze upon you with my own eyes

You had blown away with the breeze

And I was left alone, staring at the heavens

Wondering if you would ever return

And desperately clinging to that brief moment

When our reflections became one in the same

When a passing glace down to the abyss

Was enough to rock me to my core

On truth

Truth is just the lack of false- as each idea is proven false, we call this evolution "progress"- a narrowing of all possibility. But how can infinite possibility be narrowed down?

To hell the truth.

And to hell with searching for it.

To not know truth is to not understand. Yet, we innately fear that which we do not understand which makes us violent and defensive. So maybe... maybe the goal of life isn't to understand and learn truth, but to learn to love the unknown, and thus to inherently appreciate the act of learning.

Embrace the unknown and you embrace the world.

Thus, you love.

Sometimes...

...just sometimes, the world can be so rotten it makes me want to throw up.

No matter how much of a good person I think I am know I am inside, sometimes the world just likes spit it back at me and tell me I'm dead wrong:

                        APPARENTLY...

                                    I'm a vagrant in the eyes of the law

                                                        I'm also some odd mixture of a self centered asshole with a heavy dose of nice guy who's too much of a hopeless romantic to win anyone over

                    I also always think I'm right (though I'll argue that this is dead wrong)

I'm a sexually frustrated, utterly poor, wondering freak of society with plenty of Degrees and ideas about with world but not a damn thing to show for them.

(okay that last one was me, not something I've been told)

All of these things I like to think are untrue- I'm convinced that they aren't.

When I was a kid, I used to fit into the category clinically referred to as "obese." It took a long time to get over the anxiety of that- being a fat kid. I still see a fat kid in the mirror, and have every day since I was a child; probably will until the day I die. It's not true, but my eyes see it nonetheless. Nearly a decade of stubborn perseverance got me to a point where I can take my shirt off in public and not break out in a cold sweat. I'm sure there's a pill for that...

So I've learned to beat the negativity down.

But sometimes, when I really think about it- if all those things were true, would I really want to change them? Am I really that unhappy with who I am and where I am and where I'm going to want to alter who I am simply because someone else thinks I have a problem?

The answer is a resounding N-(to hell with you)-O

                                   

The Reasons Why I Can't

I'm not a good film maker- I have nothing to show for myself. I have one shitty college film and in the 5 years since I left college, I've created virtually nothing that wasn't a job

I am perhaps the most indecisive person I've ever met

I'm too terrified to follow my gut when it tells me to walk off a cliff, even if the fall will teach me to fly

I'll never amount to anything if I don't just buckle down and "down what you have to do-" that is, work, save up for when I'm able

I have an apartment that owns me

I have too many things that own me:

• a couch
• 2 tables
• kitchen stuff
• one padio chair
• a keyboard
• 3 guitars
• some random art
• clothes
• a tv, dvd, vcr
• dvds and books
• 4 shelves
• random files and assorted trinkets
• art
• 2 lamps
• a computer and a camera

I have way too much debt:

• about $4500 in credit debt
• $20,000 in college loans (about $1000 of which is past due)
• (both of these have probably been sent to collection agencies by now)
• I owe about $1700 to a former boss
• I also owe about $4000 in taxes
• I owe a couple hundred to friends (which is the debt of which I'm most concerned)
• And I probably own uncountable thousands of dollars to my dad
• All of this equates to a substantial amount of debt simply to get where I am, which is by proxy of where I came from, simply larger into debt

I have a job that requires my attention nearly every day, people are counting on me- they've entrusted me with responsibility, and for this I'm grateful. This is not the right time to leave, it wouldn't be fair.

Truthfully, maybe I'm not good enough. I'm not organized, I don't really know what I want or how I'll get it. All I know is that I need to try, and damnit that's just irresponsible. 

I'm just emotional

I'm not being "smart"

I'm not thinking, I'm just acting

I'm utterly irresponsible, and according to a recent email, I should be "ashamed" of myself

I suppose I need surgery soon, not sure how I'll be able to cope

If I leave, I have no job, no money, no nothing- I'm back to square one...

Wouldn't it just be like giving up?

Retreat?

Failure?

If you're afraid to fail, haven't you failed already?

Lost

Here's a disillusioned realization- the reason I'm paying rent for my apartment is really just to prove to my parents- should they finally choose to visit me after 3 years of not- that their son is successful and living well.

Don't get me wrong, I love my apartment. Its a simple studio, quaintly decorated with various works of art- some mine, some acquired, some purchased- a few plants and candles and books. It's located in an apartment complex that pulls off the illusory facade of luxury with it's peaceful landscape of flowers and palm trees, a pool, jacuzzi, gym and billiards room. These do a pretty good job of hiding the mice that frequent my cabinets and the appliances that are falling apart because they're older then I am and the coke heads.  

But really, I couldn't care much less about it. I could live in a tent for all I care and in fact, I have. It was liberating to have that kind of mobility. I suppose one might call that a fear of commitment, but I see it as a defense of autonomy. There's quite a bit in this world I want to see and I can't very well see it and pay rent on an apartment at the same time.

So I guess the reason I wake up every morning and drive to a job I'm not in love with is to assure I can make rent payments on the first of every month- rent for an apartment that I only maintain under the guise of success.

That puts a bad taste in my mouth.

It feels good to write all this down- it feels even better to read it back to myself. I'm not sure what it all means, but last night I couldn't get to sleep because I kept taking inventories of exactly how much in my apartment I'd actually want to keep if I left.

My heart started racing with the notion of just packing up and driving across the country. I've been wanting to write a screenplay about this for 2 years and I fear I never will if I don't just do it.

The Void

You are afraid.

You are afraid of what you do not understand. I am too.

I see the abyss of ignorance. It looks back at me. My imagination tries desperately to turn void into a hopeful future riddled with consequences. 

I dive in.

I am not a fool- a fool knows not where he goes.

I know where I'm going- nowhere. And that's okay, because nowhere is some place I haven't been yet.

Before I fuck off...

One time I made the mistake of telling someone I loved them.

What happened to love? When did it become such a burden? Why does it carry so much weight, and travel with so much baggage?

Why can't love just be a term of endearment? Why can't it be cherished? Why must the response be "how do you know?" as if there really were an answer to that?

Why did you have to leave me when I said it? What were you afraid of? I didn't want anything from you. What love have you know that made you so unwilling to accept it?

I meant it.

I told you I didn't.

But I did. 

Somewhere, it is written that you can smother the people you care for; that for some reason, you need to make them think you don't care as much as you actually do. And that's fucked. This is not a law of nature- it is a disease of the psyche. 

I love you. And if you don't love me, then to hell with you. I refuse to live a life in denial of the most beautiful thing a person can feel- love is art. If you're not willing to let yourself love, no matter what the consequences, no matter what the cost, then I truly think you're missing it.

I'll fuck off though. I don't want you to feel bad. I cared about your feelings, and fortunately I cared enough about mine so you didn't have to.

Pangaea

I think about flying and my heart begins to race- the way it did when we would lie naked together. Our bodies fit so perfectly together then, like two continents converging to produce mountains of ecstasy- a  Pangaea of sex and love and tears and... and god damnit real feelings- not the fake shit they peddle on you now a days. Your legs fit perfectly around mine; your head fit into my shoulder, my arms were cut from smalls of your back and your muscles would shudder ever time I came inside you.

I feel suffocated but I seem to have forgotten what it's like to lose my breath.

Things don't fit together the way they used to. What was once a table for two is not a solo stool at the end of a bar with a long line of empties leading the way home like stale breadcrumbs reminding of where I came from- and ultimately, where I'm going.

But I have no interest in home. The heart that might have been there is nothing more but a faded valentine now. And I will keep it on my table with pride, to remind others of the time I was loved.

There were no questions, wasn't it simpler when we didn't question everything. We just did it?

Maybe that's the problem, I'm just not D.O.I.N.G. it.

But pangaea isn't a puzzle that can ever be put back together again, it is forever lost in our imagination, it is only a hopeful memory. We get to pretend that once upon a time, things were simpler- we were all connected, we were all one, I was in you, and you were in me- there were no fractures, no faults, no promises to be broken. But maybe you still are in me, a poison in my soul corrupting it with this strange thing people call "responsibility." You see, growing up just means giving up on your dreams and learning to accept reality for what it is.

But someone who can never settle can never be free because they will never let go of their imagination, and as long as we live, the world we image will always be a better fit then the one we actually live.

F%#$

Sometimes, ya just wanna say the word 'fuck.'

It's kinda like the simplest end-all-throw-my-hands-in-the-air-to-hell-with-it statement. You can't get any more refined then 'fuck.'

I remember the first time I said it- i was maybe 8 or 10 and I said it to me dad, actually echoing a line I'd heard in one of my favorite movies at the time (First Blood, if you were curious). You see, when I was younger, I used to be pretty straight edge and I there were certain words in the English language that you weren't supposed to say. I wasn't a rebel or nothin, but I knew I'd eventually break that rule and when I did, I wanted it to be special.

And really, every time since has been special. I've said it in absolute ecstasy and absolute frustration. 

And so today I read an article about Credit Card debt in America, and really all I had to say after that was "fuck."

I'll let you figure out the intended meaning.

Who needs white men?

i never wait for a traffic signal to cross the street. When traffic is heavy, sure I'll wait, but otherwise, the concept bothers me. When no cars are on the street, it saddens me to see people standing on the corner, waiting for that little white man to tell them it's okay to cross.

Why do they need a signal to tell them what to do?

A Call to Renaissance

Everything is a conclusion. Everything that occurs is a culmination of events- cause and effect. On the contrary to Hume, who claimed that cause and effect were merely assumptions based on the past, cause and effect makes no claims to universality, but rather totality. For this reason, we can trust cause and effect for after all, are not mathematics simple formulaic cause and effect? A causes B, 2 plus 2 equals 4. This is not to say, as Logic points out, that 4 always is the sum of 2 and 2- that is to say an effect implies a cause. This we know to be a fallacy, we can only speculate as to the cause of things that have already occurred. 4 could just have easily been the sum of 1 and 3, or 4 and 0.

    And yet, numbers are really a figment of our imagination. They do no exist in nature, they are purely a tool of human invention- perhaps the greatest. There was no discovery of universal mathematical truths. These universal laws we live by are merely explanations, or accounts for what we see. The fallacy here is that human beings are attempting to deduce a definitive cause after the effect has already occurred. What we all must realize is all of these suppositions are merely speculation. Kant was most on target when he claimed that all human beings must live their lives to a degree of mitigated speculation.
    We know this to be the case currently in science due to the conflict between quantum mechanics and physics, the synthesis of which might completely disrupt our entire perceptions of reality. Ironically, philosophers have been staking the very same claims for several hundred years, yet only now that science and mathematics have caught up to human thought can we allow ourselves to proceed. It was only after we came up with a model of predictability that humans allowed themselves to progress. In this way, we seek out predictability to combat this mitigated skepticism.
    We fear that which we do not know, nor comprehend, and as a result, our knowledge is limited to what we wish to know. Those boundaries can not expand until a society chooses to do so. Currently, we are at the crossroads. We may choose to expand on those boundaries and abandon the models we live by, OR we may choose to live within the constructs of predictability, for as a whole, these constructs have treated us well.
    It has always been human nature to expand the boundaries of knowledge, it is merely a matter of at what point we choose to do so. There will be those that choose so out of curiosity, those out of necessity, and those our of survival. In the end, entropy increases and that prospect may threaten the sanity of humanity.

We need a renaissance!

The God thing...

   It may be safe to say that we will never be able to prove the existence of "God," philosophy and theology notwithstanding. Yet, buried within us, is there not this nagging sensation that there is "something out there?"
     Even an atheist, if he were true to his word, must have strongly debated such a fact before coming to any real conclusion. An atheist can never prove that God does NOT exists. He can merely rationalize why one particular definition of God should not exist.
     Define it as you will, the notion of a higher power is the one commonality that joins every society, every race, every culture, every essence of our species- it is just as much a part of as us we are a part of nature. The sense of god is innate.
    
HEAVEN? HELL?
       Before I was born, my mother was in an awful accident. She was struck by a school bus and was put into a coma. Clinically, she died. She has recounted to me having conversations relatives who had died long before she was born, and seeing bright light all around- many near death experiences are similar. Yet, she never embraced any religious explanation for her experience- my mother is not a "church person."
       Consider this: we know electricity continues to flow within the human brain sometimes five, ten, or even fifteen minutes postmortem. Considering we know very little about human dreams, but can only account for the electric activity that corresponds to dreams, is it possible that all these near death experiences are related to dreams- perhaps inspired by a Freudian consciousness- repressed thoughts? Perhaps a guilt free soul- if there is such a thing- has a fantasy dream of a comforting white light and peaceful family, while a guilt ridden consciousness has nightmares. Could we consider these reactions in the brain to be Heaven and Hell?

GOD THE CREATOR
     Philosophers have been debating the metaphysical composition of our world for over a millennium, trying to understand the meaning of existence. There were those who claimed the answers lye within our rational, while others claimed one could only know what he can sensed to exist. Imanuel Kant suggested that perhaps we can never safely say we know the true nature of reality.
     Now of course, he wasn't trying to say that reality was non-existent, only that there is no way to prove that the reality we sense is absolute truth- our reality is merely our own impression. Take for example a person who is colorblind. Would they consider themselves colorblind were it not for everyone telling them they were not seeing colors correctly? If no one told them, how would they even know what they weren't seeing? For that matter, how do we know that we are not the ones who are colorblind?
       Kant went further to explain that in fact, reality is all in what we make of it and that science and rationality were not universal truths but simply a means of accounting for mass amounts of phenomenon we see every day. We see the world we want to see through lenses of imagination. Yet, Kant also rations that because we know no other reality but the one we can sense and explain, there is no reason to discredit our use of the term reality because for us, there is no other. For the colorblind person, their world is reality. So in a sense, do we not then become the creators of reality?
        Since Einstein's Theory of Relativity, physics has come a long way and is now on the cusp of merging with quantum theory into what is called quantum physics. For the first time, quantum physics can actually mathematically prove that Kant's metaphysical theory of reality might be correct. One theory of quantum physics suggests that the world is a series of free floating molecules and that it is only once we gaze upon them that they take shape- that it is our own action of sensation that creates the reality we see.
        One of the universal understandings of God is that of the creator. So if we can prove that reality is subject to human ingenuity, and humans hence become the creators of reality, then humanity as a collective whole becomes what we have come to call God.
         After all, where do morals really come from? Do they not lye within ourselves? Where does any knowledge or sense of god lye except within ourselves? All we know is what we can deduce from our own senses and logic, thus all we can know about God is based upon what we as humanity can sense and reason about God. Yet, perhaps that's all we really need do. Perhaps we as humanity can realize our potential- have we not begun to see the effect human actions have had on the environment- the reality in which we live? We have shaped this world, we make the rules, we break the rules, and the end game of our world lies solely within our hands.
       Collective consciousness.
       God.
      

Flowers

Flowers that grow in sidewalks amaze me.

Not because they grow through concrete, but because
they survive getting stepped on.

For love... or chocolate

Chocolate is one of the only substances in the world that melts
at the exact temperature that is inside your mouth;
others include truth, hope, confidence, and ideals