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)