Canyon, TX - Amarillo, TX

“Can I help you?”

“Nope, just out taking some pictures.”

(motions to camera)

“Ok, it’s just weird to see someone out walking, is all.”

*silence

(man drives off)

(goes back to taking pictures of fence posts, standing in a ditch)

Thank god I was wearing a cowboy hat.

That could have been it.

I was bailed on for a trip to The Blue Hole, so I am trapped spending the weekend in Amarillo.

Last night, I went to see Travis Meadows play at a bar called Hoots and then got picked up by some Nice People™ and brought to a dance hall where I showed off what Houston weddings have taught me about club-stye line-dancing.

Needless to say, my recovery day has me drinking coffee, eating pizza, and walking around (slowly) near a field... asking too many questions to no one about nothing.

I don't blame the man for questioning whether I was in need of assistance.

I keep coming back to check on this field. 

It has been through a lot. 

But it’s starting to look like just another field. Which is nice.
Every field has been through it's own tragedy.

I almost feel bad for taking pictures of it right after the fire. 

Maybe one day it will want to look back and see how far it came, too.

The field's recovery is at a point where it is doing good enough to tell someone, "I’m doing well!"... but not everyone. 

It has been eating the elephant, one bite at a time. But there are still leftovers.
It still forgets that it isn't on fire any more.

If I showed it old pictures, I don't think it would be ready.

Adults don’t like the way they look when they are genuinely happy. It concerns them. 

They prefer to smile without lines on their faces. 

To blend in. 

To not be seen. 

Show a grown adult a picture of themselves mid-laugh and see how they react.

“Oh my god! Delete that! I look crazy!”

We tell children, “Smile! No, not like that! A good smile!” 

Until they stop smiling and fake one...

If happiness creates sadness, then avoiding "true happiness" is avoiding "true sadness". 

Seeing yourself as maniacal is seeing yourself exposed to pain. It's scary.

Fake-sad beats real-sad more than real-happy beats fake-happy.

The only option some people internalize for themselves besides their known history is perfection.
So they feel trapped, frantic, doomed to choose between settling and insanity.

Or, like a child of abuse becoming a parent, accept that they are somewhere in-between.
This becomes harder to do, the better your hand in life.
Because perfection doesn't seem far off.
It seems doable.

I've seen people:
1. Destroy themselves seeking the impossible because they refuse to settle for something that, in the end, is damn-near perfect.

2. Be conservative and settle for what they know, hating a part of themselves that they've hated since forever... and will spend a long time figuring out why.

3. Stand up, cash out, and leave the table altogether.

Number 3 is a strange one.
People don't like it when you choose it for yourself. It forces them to re-write some of their code.
And if you screw it up, you don't have any of the safety nets that 1 and 2 leave in place.

Maybe dystopian stories of technology taking over are our way of slowly revealing to ourselves what we know but can’t admit.
It's what we want.
History never favors the conservatives. To fight change is to tread water in the middle of the ocean. The best swimmers still drown.

Think of how we revere those who choose celibacy.

Their ego shrinks, and with it... part of their humanity. They become closer to God.

In refusing to reproduce, you are considered closer to God. More God-like?
Serving the greater good means, in part, doing your part to end the dichotomy of God and Man.

If you are ever feeling like you want to be condescending, or shut down a conversation a little, use that word, dichotomy.
You'll soon find yourself fogging the windows of the car, all alone.
Another great option: tell people not to reproduce and talk about religion in the same breath.

To Be A Machine seems like a drawn-out realization that at some point in the near future we will have machines that have the capability of passing the Turing Test as YOU.

Your closest friends won't be able to tell the difference.

Becoming a machine (or a machine becoming you) could be the swan song of the Digital Revolution.

"They took our jobs" is ultimately "We eliminated our humanity".
Fred Rogers is rolling in his grave.
"There's no [fence post] in the whole world like you"
 becomes...
"Welcome, my son, you are a machine"

These fence posts have more personality than most humans, anyway.

Strugglista posted once that our engineered (digital) versions of ourselves are arguably the most real versions of ourselves.
And that creating a digitized ideal, unbound by the hands dealt by nature and circumstance, ultimately leads to our happiness.
Yes, Daniela, I read your blog.
And I wish that I could wear that yellow without feeling like a clown.
#fashion

My question becomes, if we digitize ourselves, and all of our versions of our friends... and leave them to interact as designed... is that our own, personal Utopia?
Have we then created Heaven on Earth?
Heaven in a Computer?
If so, why does it get so boring? 

A major component of humanity is our struggle with our mortality.

What happens when we have nothing left to fight, when death is only a physical option?
When your "digital you" lives better than the "physical you", what is "physical you" sticking around for?
Medical Escape Velocity?
History regards those who believe they will live forever as lunatics. (Yes, even the religious)
What if it didn't require belief?

This is too many questions. Too much fog for one person.
I've spent too long with the fences.

Sitting outside a coffee shop in the un-exotic-foreign-town that I live in, I'm distracted.
I'm trying to decide if the shared experience of a proposed trip to Cuba is as pleasurable as the actual experience of traveling in Cuba. 

Certainly less of a story to tell.
No one wants to hear about your dreams unless they are in them.

The experience leaves me with fewer memories to look back on, but it's also purely fantasy... no one can rob me, or leave me stranded, or give me food poisoning in a fantasy.

And it is still a shared, positive experience. Maybe even the most pure form of a safe space, separated physically (by thousands of miles), but connected intimately (by an idea).

Is this how people convince themselves that they’re better off living with just the thought of something?
Is this Phenomenology?
Ok, but is it now?

Again... with the questions. This coffee...

Now laying on the grass, I am still bothered.
This time, though, it's the smell of clove cigarettes.
I consider moving, but realize there is nowhere to go but inside. 

The indoors is dominated by the allergies of whatever dust they use to fumigate Garden Ridge Pottery.

So I decide to wait him out. 

If he can’t resist the cloves, he won’t outlast me.

We do things outdoors, in the atmosphere, that we don't allow indoors, in an enclosed area, for fear of death.

The same brain that fails to grasp the vastness of the oceans fails to comprehend the finite nature of things that are as large. 

40% of me is held hostage by 60% of me that has the truck in reverse, backing down an on-ramp towards the floodwaters, eager to get a better picture of the carnage. 

It’s the 40% that takes the pictures, though.

And a mixed 20% that does the math.

Even if you have to be your own wing-man, do it.

I spent my youth reading, learning everything I could, and coming up with ridiculous ideas. 

People that know me might tell you that I still do those things, or that I'm still a youth.
I did call adults "they" earlier...

But I don't believe in ideas the way I used to... and that certainly points to something.

I am choosing to believe that I'm taking a break from that part of myself. 

I worry, though, that it's more of a hard-break than I'm willing to admit.
Once you learn the magic trick, it loses something.

The real problem I'm faced with is that I don't know what's left after the magic is gone.
When ideas don't seem to warrant real time, I'm left wondering what it is that I want to do rather than what I need to learn to make an idea come to light.
I am left with a lot of free time... mentally at least.

And, I don't want anything at the moment.

Not in a depressing way.

I'm just not feeling "without".

If anything, I could go for less.

Maybe that's part of being an adult male.
Yielding to the loss of testosterone.
Coming down from the high.

Maybe the only ridiculous idea I have is to fight that process, in the face of the paradox.

In many ways, I'm aware of the fact that I'm being sold something. But I might buy it anyway.
I'm undecided, but not a sucker.
Some people take drugs to fight the natural process of aging.
I think I'll practice my Spanish and try to learn French.

Sometimes I want a puppy.
Something to be sweet to, and to share time with, that I won't expect too much of.
Puppies can learn a little bit of any language, even sign language.
We could do it together.
That's starting to sound like work. Work Rodney will have to commit to, as well.

Maybe I just want to plant a tree. A non-digital tree.
And then walk away.

*In pursuit of clarity, these photos and musings are almost always the result and effect of drug-use. Without continued caffeine intake, I would not continue to exist as such.
Other drugs have only lead me to activities with no goal, no destination, like singing and dancing.
And, to be fair, that’s where I end up sober... so we can’t really blame that on the drugs.

If you made it this far into the nonsense (and pictures of fence posts)... it's probably fair to say that you can't blame it on the drugs either.

And wherever this is, it's somewhere the machines can't get us, just yet.