"The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome, friend. This document is an abbreviated (or not so abbreviated) list of my personal beliefs, visions, solutions, what have you. It is posted both for my personal satisfaction and as a way to let people know what I think is wrong with the world.

There will probably never be a coherent order to the information presented herein. My mind tends to wander, and the things I will write will be more ranting than prose. Be forwarned.

In the Beginning...
It's always tricky picking the first thing to write about in a manifesto. Do you introduce yourself to your audience first? Try to describe "where it is you are coming from?" Or do you just dive in and hope you float (the old sink-or-swim method)? I like the last option myself, but then I've always been a bit impulsive.

Religion
I am agnostic. Before the seventh grade, I would have claimed to be an athiest, but that was only because I did not know of the existence of agnostics. Then I read a book (I Heard the Owl Call My Name) that had a group of agnostics which played a minor role in the story. Needless to say, I was ecstatic: here was a religious "belief" that excused itself from the entire debate over religion.

Does God exist? Who cares? It's an impossible question -- the existence of God is beyond proof. (An interesting theory I've picked up over the years states that if you somehow manage to prove God's existence, you are rewarded with an early trip to Heaven. Kind of sick if you think about it, but also vaguely comforting.) There are obviously things that science either cannot explain or explains only with great difficulty. God's work? Could be. That's just as valid an answer as the next.

My theory: gravity is the proof of God's existence. Think about it. Of the five "natural" forces (electricity, magnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and gravity), only gravity has eluded scientists searching for so-called "carrier particles." The first four forces have all been linked together: electromagnetism for quite some time, and the nuclear forces only recently. But gravity has eluded all attempts to codify its fundamental properties.

There are other interesting aspects of gravity, but my favorite is its range: of the five fundamental forces, gravity is by far the weakest. Yet, it is the only force that acts over any appreciable distance (say, beyond the scale of a planet or a solar system). Gravity from a dim star on the other side of the universe, though extraordinarily weak, is still tugging on the earth with infinitely more force than the same star's electromagnetic field.

Sound like God? Sounds good to me.

So do I have a problem with religions? On paper, no. I believe in faith. It's what keeps people going from day to day. Without faith, cynicism would infect the world and everyone would just curl up and die.

No, the concept of religion is not what I have a problem with. It is how religions (certain ones, anyway) conduct themselves. Specifically religious followers that seem to feel it is their duty in the universe to convert me to their particular religion. Hello? Who is to say which religion is the "right" religion? If you take every religion in the world into account, we're all going to Hell. Or at least, will be reincarnated as something lower on the evolutionary chain.

Frankly, I'm happy with my belief. I don't actively worship God, but I don't wander the streets denouncing him either. Do the same for me (i.e., keep your religion to yourself), and we'll get along beautifully.

The Wierd Stuff Starts Here
I just mentioned evolution, so I think I should expand on that thought. I have been accused of being an "evolutionist" (whatever that means; I'm not entirely sure). Sure I believe in evolution. But from monkeys? Of course not. That's stupid and overlooking the obvious facts that humans and monkeys are related in the same way as dogs and bears. It is not a linear evolution. Close, but no cigar.

Humans must have evolved from something. (Look at the wierd things in human anatomy, especially the appendix: why possess something that exists only to get infected and potentially kill?) Evidence seems to point to an ancestor common to ancestors of apes and other primates. But the evolutionary jump between knuckledraggers and "modern" man, even over the span of a few million years, still seems to be a bit steep.

So here comes my wierd theory, and it (of course?) involves aliens. Not the little green men of Orson Welles, nor the conspiracy theories feeding the cultural x-files. In fact, no aliens in recent history.

The aliens in my theory make a few visits to Earth. The first is several million years ago, when they begin a grand experiment on one of the more advanced creatures on the planet. (Or maybe a creature which reminded the aliens of their own image -- Genesis?) Thus we have a jumpstarted evolution. Eventually, "modern" man arises. An originally agrarian society is eventually condensed into cities (a/k/a civilization).

The rise of the pyramid-builders, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Meso-America are all directly attributable to extraterrestrial advice, skills, and labor. The best evidence are not the immense structures themselves, but the Nazca lines in South America. Pictures of a variety of animals -- including some which defy categorization -- as well as numerous geometric designs eerily reminiscent of landing strips or other navigational aids cover hundreds of square miles in the middle of the desert. These are only visible from the sky and travel perfectly straight for miles. Their existence was not even known until the mid-twentieth century when airplanes began flying over the area!

Of course, this theory is partially tongue-in-cheek. While ancient evidence of alien life (or at least it's influence) may be available and seem convincing (UFOs are mentioned in the Bible!), concrete, modern, and above all verifiable evidence is hard to come by. However, IMHO, my theory has just as much validity as the next.

Love (Part I)
"'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

What is Love? This question has ranked among the most frustrating since the beginning of time. Is Love devotion? Tenderness? Caring? Or just a construct for reproducing?

I believe Love is both all of these, and more; just as good architecture is more than the sum of its parts, so is Love more than the sum of the emotions and actions which demonstrate it.

I have a rather complex theory about Love. It has been changed over time, but the core concept has remained true. Essentially, Love is a total spiritual, emotional, and physical dedication to another person.

The nature of this dedication is a matter of some debate, and I must admid that I am no longer as certain of its nature as I once was. I used to believe, for example, that true Love had to be reciprocated; I am no longer convinced of that, though I would like to believe it is right.

A funny side affect of love -- real love, not this cheap, meaningless crap they show on teeny-bopper sitcoms -- is that once you have loved someone, you can never hate them. I base this theory on another: the Grand Relationship Scale. The GRS looks something like this:

The GRS is deciphered as follows:

• Hate: A total loathing for an individual; you cannot bear to be near this person because it is almost impossible to control your violent impulses.
• Dislike: An actively negative opinion of a person; you will work near/with this person, but prefer not to and will not enjoy your experience.
• Tolerate: You have a neutral opinion of this person; strangers tend to default to this category; you coexist without incident, but do not really care about the other person.
• Like: An actively positive opinion of a person; you enjoy working with this person, and will seek out such opportunities.
• Love: You have the highest esteem for this person; almost nothing is better than spending time, doing anything, with this person; outside of core personal needs and desires, this person is the highest priority in your life.

As you can see, each category is both clearly defined and open for debate. There are fine gradations between each, but the GRS works for simplicity's sake.

As I mentioned before, once you truly love someone, it is impossible to really hate them. (The opposite also holds true.) That is because you can only slide two positions on the GRS. Your place on someone's GRS dictates the lowest (or highest) that you can possible travel.

Of course, the issue of starting position is a bit tricky. As noted above, most strangers fall into the Neutral category. But strangers are necessarily temporal. Once a person is no longer a temporal acquaintance, his or her place on your GRS is set. If you actively hate the person, for example, you can never love that person.

Moving across the GRS is not a casual action. It usually takes a monumental action, oftentimes emotional, to shift positions on a person's GRS. These actions can be infinitely joyous (like finding your soulmate) or infinitely painful (like losing her).

There will be more on this later.

Poetry, Book I
In high school, specifically my senior year and in relation to my AP Literature (a/k/k "AP Lite") class, I dabbled in the black art of poetry. Most of the poems I wrote during this period were dark and generally depressing, which was odd because for the first time in my life I was in love. Go figure.

Anyway, these poems say a lot about my personality (both then and now). Enjoy.

The End
(12 December 1994)

My soul is forever condemned to dwell
In the bowels of the earth, in stinking air;
The inferno of my personal hell.

Fires burn brightly, and behind me a bell;
Can this be the dark morbid place where
My soul is forever condemned to dwell?

Around me are others, like me, who fell;
Death treads on our backs, but here we don't care:
The inferno of my personal hell.

Death swings his sickle, there are souls to sell
But I cannot care, for in this nightmare
My soul is forever condemned to dwell.

To those around me, all must appear well
For I cannot allow myself to share
The inferno of my personal hell.

Death knows a secret which he will not tell
Me, so I am left to ponder where --
Where shall my condemned soul forever dwell?
The inferno of my personal hell.

Kind of depressing, ya think? And in iambic pentameter, too.

The Unknown Teacher
(To Jg/16/A/95 This Styrofoam^TM Monument is Erected by Yours Truly)
(6 January 1994)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be,
As I shall herein humbly attempt to explain,
And I hope that all who read this will agree
That, in the euphemistic sense of a stale word, he was a pain,
For in everything he did he did with malice and savage glee
Even on the weekends, when we were so tired,
He gave to us homework so he could retire
And smear at his leisure our papers with red ink.
We thought he was weird, quite odd in his views,
For to him the need of sleep was in fact news!
(A psych. report once decreed him unsound,
Though the shrink in charge has never been found.)
It became obvious that the fate of that shrink
Would somehow befall each and every one of us one day.
He fooled us, he tricked us; with our young minds, he did play.
After such abuse, we all thanked higher powers we were insured,
Then we set to planning how to get our little problem... cured.
We both begged him and bribed him, but he didn't care.
Yet after all our planning all we can say is he's a very lucky man,
For we have tried to smash him under everything we can:
A phonograph, a radio, a car, and a frigidaire.
But researchers into Criminal Law are content
That such attempts of assassination are petty and mere
Distractions to him; besides, his head they would barely dent.
So, for the time being, we have put on our masks of veneration,
While behind his back we silently pray for our impending emancipation.
Other teachers complain that he interferes with our education.
Is he mad? Is he crazy? The question is absurd:
If anything was wrong, from the shrink we'd have heard.

Dedicated in loving jest to my AP Lite teacher, Mr. George Jeffcott.

Ode to Literature
(November 1994)

O, great Buddha! where art thou?
In the land of those who chant at the moon?
Or the land of those who worship the cow?
Nay, thou aret not there, nor there,
But within the shwll, the dark lair,
At the heart of human thought!

How I long for thine likeness to swoon
The core of my being, cold like a ghost;
Yet I know that such scenes are not soon
To occur upon my self. Yet how I long
For thine sweet, omniscient voice's song
To lead me through the darkness of though!

For the guide I seek is the most
beautiful personage in all of mankind;
Not only in physique, but in mind can boast
A breadth of knowledge most profound,
In the laws of man, memory quite sound,
And a comprehension of human thought!

A strange little poem I wrote following an intensive review of Siddhartha, which I feel compelled to recommend to everyone who is seriously interested in spirituality of any kind.

K
(3 April 1995)

The folio lay there for centuries
encased in layers of dust
form years of unuse and neglect;
A wondrous manuscript which surely must
contain all the secrets of
the dark within the human heart!

Beautiful embroid'ry graced its cover,
defining its contents
with a single goldent letter:
The letter was a "K," chosen by the
author to be a warning
of the knowledge contained within.

A wide leather strap held the cover tight
and like a suit of armor
guarded against all intrusion.
But the ancient volume's protection proved
to be no match for the young
growing lad's strong and lean muscles.

He released the strap and, ignoring all
warning, opened the cover
to reveal the first golden page.
Scrawled there, in an innocent hand, were the
eight words, "Beware all ye who
enter here!"; he hesitated.

A flicker of youthful innocense was
brutally smashed by a storm
of yearning curiosity.
He turned the page to find yet another;
but the writing here was small
and compact; no hand had wrote here.

But still he continued, and began to
read the story of a young
man, not very unlike himself.
But the reading was dull, and he could not
force himself to read any-
more; it stretched interminably.

The boy began to open random
pages in the book, read a
sentence or two, and turn again.
He had lost all continuity of
the story, and could only
recall selected incidents.

At length he came to the end of the tale;
he knew this because the page
before him was devoid of text.
Despite the evidence before him, he
could not believe, he would not
believe, that the story was done.

The boy began to frantically turn the
pages, searching for any
sign of writing or human thought.
He was incredulous that such a large
volume, hundreds of pages
bounded, could hold but a short tale.

Alas, it did not -- with a hundred
or two pages yet to go,
the boy again discovered text.
Yet it gave him only momentary
joy, for it read: "This is but
the beginning." Still, he read on.

The next page contained some hand-written notes
scrawled in an unreadable
hand, arrayed around a strange map.
Fantastic creatures littered the jungle of
names and symbols, and through
the center ran a great river.

"This," some readable writing read, "is the
Great River of Life. We are
but ships upon a vast unknown.
We may be able to hide from the pull
of the current, to fight time,
but we cannot escape the end."

Terrified by what he had just read, the
boy slammed the dusty cover
shut and stared at the folio.
The golden letter seemed to laugh at his
attempt to understand the
knowledge within its old pages.

But the boy would not be mocked! Endowed with
newfound purpose, he open'd
the volume and found his last page.
Sev'ral pages followed, all like the last,
yet each distinctly unique
in the boy's growing memory.

The boy read, adn learned, and he understood
what he had read; and he turned
back to the beginning story.
He read, and read, and again understood
that which he was reading; and
did not like what he discovered.

A solemn face read the final sentence
of the story; slowly, he
turned to the last page of the book.
There, with a steady hand and determined
purpose, he wrote: "I began
today as an innocent child
Unknown to the ways of the world; I end
today with the knowledge of
life and the darkness within man."

The old man refastened the leather strap and was seen no more.

Well... yup. That pretty much sums it up for me.

Beginning...

Religion I

Wierd Stuff I

Love I

Poetry I