Wow! I'm sorry it's been so long? Does anyone still read this? Am I arrogant to assume anyone ever did? There are nine of you 'followers' so I'm assuming (statistically) one of you has to have been reading; at least the follower that is secretly me to make me look like I've actually have followers.

I've been giving all of my writing energy to my zine and my project with my pal Bryan - I'm sorry. I'm just trying to release this forty page zine every three months. Anyhow, this issue seems to be about my life as a rhizome. It sounds a lot more cryptic than it is (but it sounds as pretentious as it really is. I'm trying to impress you.)

I was reading some stuff this guy Gilles Deleuze wrote about Kafka. I've read a lot about Kafka (more has been written about him than I think he'd be able to take without puking). This stuff was all over the place, though, jumping from one concept to the other. Did you ever feel like something was utterly mad and ultimately enlighting all at once? This is the feel I got from it.

Upon more research, this seems to be the point of the way Deleuze writes about things. Most literary criticism reminds me of regular rock music - verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus. Pretty straightforward. Deleuze analyzed Kafka's life more like dixieland jazz - three intruments playing a solo simeltaneously. Whereas most critics (and authors, and directors, and so on) seem to list events or concepts in a logical order, one leading to the next, Deleuze showed how many are interconnected to each other, and how many things really make no sense. This way of describing and looking at things seemed to make no sense to me, and also make too much sense to me.

Replacing the good ol' timeline - point A to point B - was a web. There is no beginning and no end. The artist picks where to start, where to go, and where to end, all arbitrarily. Is this just a pointless way of looking at the way I look at things? Maybe.

It's like the brain. There are a limited number of cells. But the connections between the cells can be infinite. All the importance lies there. There are a limited number of things and people in my life. But the connections between them stretch on forever.

The Reality of a Working Class Whale

Poor proletariat whale! He's on his way to clock in and look pretty on the cover of my very first zine. Anyhow, I'm sure you can understand my absence from the blog considering I was writing for the zine. What is a zine, you ask? Simply, it is a blog you can clutch and press to your heart (or some may say its a blog for chumps).

Anyhow, as usual, my ideas form (or step out of the mist of my grey matter) while I'm working on a piece to express those very ideas. Is this a case of acting before I think (aka hoof in mouth disease) or do my ideas only exist after they're articulated? Sounds like a linguists wet dream (linguists have notoriously subtle fantasies).

The entire zine unintentionally focused on reality as its mediated for us by different things. Wow, vague, I know. I'm not looking for anything metaphysical - I'm not your suburban wiccan (no offense small town witches) . Its really rather boring, but I think thats the point of it all.

The boredom of the summer is erasing all of me. Arguably, (but let's not argue - you say potato, I say tomato) memory is a creative act. There is no film or harddrive in our head. Everytime we remember something we re-create the narrative as accurately (or really however we see fit) as possible (considering we group many unconnected incedents into a narrative in the first place makes memory dubious). Think about a lot of your memories - do you see yourself instead of see from yourself?

Anyhow, as everything we see, hear, feel, etc. is mediated by our mind, our life is in the perpetual past. Given, the spark travels pretty quick from eye/ear/fingers to our thinking machine, but it still takes time. Okay: our memories are creative and our "present" is really in the perpetual past. Oh man, I think I'm hyperventilating, I'll be right back...

I'm sure you drew all sorts of weird conclusions while I got my paper bag, but to get to the boring point of it all that I spoke of. If the present is really memory the first time its remembered and memory itself is a creative act what happens when its boring? I'll level with you here: my life is crazy boring. Honestly 90% of my day is habit: work, eat, sleep, type blog, blah, blah, and blah. If our mind were a TV, reality were a show, and memories were re-runs, would I care to watch any of it? Honestly: no.

I'm not getting all nihilistic on you here (trust me: number one descriptor of yours truly: spunky). I just think I'm starting to understand Marcel Proust's point when he says that habit is what kills us.

The Sartre of the Sea

Perhaps if a jellyfish were to clearly be up to shaping some kind of legacy, we'd more readily recognize it as existential. Moreover, jellyfish can't lift up a stringy tentacle and announce "I am doomed to be free!".

However, who is to say that jellyfish don't think of the world existing for an eternity after they have passed on from their watery world? Much is to be said about how condusive to existential thought idle ocean-floating can be.

Give the Sartre of jellyfish a talk bubble and what would he do with it? I'm no jelly fish, but I reckon she'd be too deep in thought to use it. Had I been born a jelly fish I wouldn't waste my time chatting it up, not with all the jelly fish thoughts to think.

Anyhow, regardless of all these theoriticals on the life of jelly fish, I'm sure we can agree that jelly fish are typically the pensive type. Not the cuttlefish, though. The jock of the invertebrates of the sea.