#really i think i’m due for a media consumption marathon where i’m not trying to actually CREATE anything

[dirtbra1n]

okay I NEED to write a post that’s not just me taking the piss out of my mind palace and I need to write it like RIGHT NOW because I WANT to admit that there are things I’ve said that I think could be better or more accurate. there ARE bits and pieces I’ve neglected . and there are things that I haven’t articulated yet that I want other people to KNOW ABOUT!!!!

like with things other than himself masato’s poker face kind of sucks. with his older brother he’s way more open about how he feels, but he’s still not saying some critical SOMETHING. masato and tashiro, sometimes, occasionally, (frequently) just talk very easily. their dynamic is like astonishingly….. nuanced? like some days it’s taaaaashiiiiiiiiroooooo-kuuuuunnn and other days it’s

and some days, in my mind, masato is sitting very quiet and still watching tashiro do nothing in particular, and he’s torn between wanting to run away and stay right where he is until he stops breathing, or at least until his heart stops beating so damn hard.

and I definitely haven’t highlighted enough how legitimately functional and . well. “normal” . masato is externally despite his nights being plagued by dreams. or how so much of his angst is because, despite everything, he’s still just as young at heart as his friends are. in the space of his family, he’s still just a kid. he’s not unflappable he gets flustered and caught off guard he’s silly and expressive but he’s hard as hell to read sometimes. he lurks around corners. he’ll oscillate wildly between reflective and flippant. he’s PETTY.

he’s someone younger brother, and he’d rather be at his death bed than admit whatever fundamental something it is that he’s avoiding so hard.

like it’s. meaningful, that’s something I haven’t really gotten to. it’s meaningful that masato is always a few steps away from death, or half a dozen steps past it. he can even wear a detectives hat—it might be the only way he would ever, EVER open up. like. I’m going to loosely quote sunnnfish’s textbook but You can do things to a dead body that you can’t do to a living one.

but I also think that if I went back and altered the. dirtbrain hanzashiro canon, I guess. I’d make it easier to remember that masato isn’t 100% steeped in miseries. because I definitely think that I make it sound like that. like I should say that I don’t revel in his misery. not because it’s true necessarily but because I put so much of myself in front of and also into him that it reflects badly on me if I don’t. but anyway he still has his fun his distractions work it’s just that he’s plagued by dreams. the river is the metaphor for his burdens. that’s the bottom line. so it’s not that he’s being plagued by feeling nervous AND the river. they’re the same. the river is a prominent image in his mind, as it is in mine, but when he thinks of it he’s not thinking of it as the physical manifestation of his burdens, he’s not tying them to the river. they’re distinct in his mind, because he refuses self reflection.

also I’d play into the crime scene thing more. I like masato I want him to have fun and I think he deserves to wear a detective’s hat and dance around dgs holmes style. even if he does still have that massive puncture wound in his chest. even if he is still bleeding all over. like masato’s a weirdo but he’s not in isolation, is what I mean. not practically. he isolates HIMSELF but that’s because he’s ashamed of his vulnerability, not because of any external rejection. he has fun, still, but when he grows quiet, when his eyes open, when his expression is, ironically, even harder than usual to read, he’s being burdened by himself. but otherwise it is out of sight out of mind and hanzawa masato does so enjoy being silly and weird.

the thing, though, is that tashiro, from his outside perspective, DOES think of the river as it’s own entity. how could he not. he hasn’t been filled in yet on the things masato’s been putting up with in that freaky head of his, so he thinks of a river washing hanzawa senpai up like any regular corpse and it’s.. scary! if he could, masato would dance around his own corpse, investigating the lividity and wound in his chest with detached enough vigor, but tashiro isn’t like that. tashiro CAN’T be like that. tashiro had been surrounded by red lighting, flickering, buzzing, and saw the body in the water, and decided that he was here to do something, and he went and pulled him out and bandaged him up. which is a scene I’ve been struggling to write. and obviously “decided” is a bit misleading, because there was nothing else to do. like what sort of demon would tashiro have to be to see someone floating down a river in a scary environment like this and just LEAVE them there?

it’s like as far as chronology goes tashiro’s interactions with the river are complicated. because in MY chronology like as in the order they were written by me. in my capacity as writer. tashiro’s in reality first, only seeing trace unrealisms following masato around (the lanterns in the hallway, the blue hour, etc.) but in THEIR chronology. tashiro, who’s unacquainted with dreams mostly, suddenly is viscerally aware that he’s in one, and there’s a river in it. and while I haven’t gotten to saying so explicitly yet, like with a lot of things, the closest tashiro gets to being in the river is a dangled foot over the side of the pavement, skimming it. not taking a proper step into that world, but getting a feel for it. and then he takes hold of masato’s wrist, then hand, and pulls him out of the murk. bandages him up. mapping intimacy, hands brushing against masato’s ribcage.

and it’s obvious for me to say, I live in my brain and all of these details click together in ways that are mostly going unnoticed, this is before any realizations are fulfilled on tashiro’s part. he’s doing this because he found hanzawa senpai basically Dead in a river and he could help. he’s doing this because he’s himself. he’s doing this because he has no idea why else he would be here.

it’s just like. dirtbrain’s hanzawa to tashiro is a struggle between my capacity as a writer and my understanding that I could tell the story I want to tell so much better in a visual medium that I don’t have access to. so basically while I work out my own shortcomings everyone join hands with me so we can send harusono sensei psychic pleas for news on hanzawa to tashiro. or at least the over 10000 words on hanzawa masato. etc.

#hanzawa to tashiro #AUGH. artistic expressions tiring. i need a drink #sorry for a long post that’s not. 100% one thing. but also i’m really not i could have spent allllll day today #finishing up the post i started last night that RAPIDLY spiraled out of control. that one’s probably two separate posts if done right #and again neither of them particularly narrative in any meaningful capacity. but one points out a detail i’ve been stuck on since august #and the other serves much the same purpose as this one in trying to fill everyone in on the Dirtbrain canon #so that i don’t try to fit all that context into the narrative ones. it’s for the greater good. sort of #really i think i’m due for a media consumption marathon where i’m not trying to actually CREATE anything #but all those posts about how making art i don’t necessarily love is better than keeping it in me. because it’ll make me sick if it festers #yeah. that. whatever. so in the meantime i’m crawling back to being an ideas guy #and as we all know. ideas guys of my caliber just can NOT shut the fuck up. love and light #dirtbrain digression

[blogkeenstudenttiger]

Day 3 9/6/18

Society/Economic/Cultural

Woke up late this morning and consumed a nice ride on public transit, just in time. I complain a lot about transport, and it was compounded by my trip home today. The Westbound 3 line is how I get home from school, but it was a 30 minute wait; therefore, by simply walking the few miles home, I would arrive sooner. I was pretty pissed off; why even get a bus pass if it isn’t making life any more convenient. The walk gave me some time to reflect. I live just over two miles away from McNeal and it takes around 45 minutes (if you walk slowly) to get from point A to B. While I was griping to myself on my walk home, it began to dawn on me how privileged I was acting. 2 miles isn’t very far and if it was truly such a big deal, the mode of transport does exist and is quite accessible. However, in so many places, that simply isn’t the case. The luxury of transport is something I take for granted quite frequently. I tried to remind myself of the many places I had been where I didn’t have the luxury of easy transport and would walk upwards of 20 miles per day, simply getting groceries and being outside. While I was simply a brief visitor in these places, the communities of people who live there experience and appreciate transport so much differently than we do. 

On top of the walk be quite brief, the weather outside today was absolutely fantastic. It sucks that I find myself inside so often, sucked into a consumption of the indoors. I actually long for the summers where my dad would lock me out of my house between the hours of 10 and 5; it seemed harsh at the time, but it made me really appreciate the outdoors. Now, it seems like all I do is spend time indoors. Another luxury and concept which is far different than much of the world and even other people in my very community. In Maslow’s Hierarchy, safety is the second level of basic needs, after psychological. Usually, safety is equated to a secure place/environment to live and inhabit. For me and many others, we actually get too MUCH of this basic need; mindlessly laying around indoors on beautiful days, accomplishing nothing other than another Netflix marathon. 

This level of the hierarchy is simply met by having a place to sleep and protect oneself from the harsh conditions of the outdoors; instead, for some (many?) it has become our entire world with accompanying online immersion. This prompted me to consider my consumption of the “indoors”. So, today I woke up in my bed (thankfully...), walked outside for sub 5 minutes and got on a bus. Rode the bus (which I would consider indoors). Walked 15 minutes to McNeal. Spent 8:20AM-6PM inside McNeal. Was “forced” to walk 40 minutes home. Spent the rest of the evening indoors (at least we had the windows open). So, if I go to bed around 12AM or so, In the past 17 hours, I will have spent about 1 hour outside. The other 16 hours (23 more accurately, if including sleep) inside. That is at MOST 6% of my day spent outside (nearly 75% of which was not by choice). 

When I think about how little time I spend outside (even though I usually enjoy the outdoors) it makes me wonder about how much it this fact influences our complete disregard for the environment. If you only experience/”do” something 6% of the time, can you really say it matters to you? If a person says they really care about their religion, but only go to ______ 6% of the time, do they really care? Social media seems to exacerbate this instance in the all too common “Instagood” outdoor scenes. I, like many others, am guilty of this sin. You go to a place, do the thing, and get a sick Insta post for all of your friends to be jelly of. Then, patting oneself on the back can commence as one retreats back inside. 

What I suppose I’m getting at, is that going outside becomes a spectacle. Like, seriously, doing something not indoors warrants praise and adornment? For so many people around the world, being outdoors is simply the way of life; which, I believe, changes the mindset of how one thinks about the outdoors. It becomes less of a “its nice when I want it” to “this is my environment, which I am a part of”. The wise idiom of, “don’t shit where you eat” comes to mind. Our disconnected world is clean and pristine, as we don’t associate our accumulating filth with where we live. However, in many places where decentralized waste (and the sheer ability TO waste) is not possible. If many other communities were to erode the world similar to how we do, the results would be much more immediate and affecting. 

However, a weird phenomenon is occurring. In developing countries (such as India) such waste and destruction is occurring and the facilities are not present. Therefore, the latter scenario is unfolding. Having spent time in different parts of India (in hostels and far from pampered) I have witnessed, firsthand, that humans are very much capable of eating where they shit. Now I am in NO way shaming or trying to “disapprove” or look down on India. It is simply an observation of the lengths people will go through to maintain a more “luxurious” lifestyle. 

It seems the escape from the outdoors/the disconnect from one’s environment is a rampant disease. It sucks. People suck. People suck (and by people I am most definitely including myself :)) and refuse to admit they suck. People suck and admit they suck, but don’t do anything to change it (that’s me!). We all fall victim to game theory (once again) and are all worst off. 

Solutions? A lot. Lots of hippy dippy environmental philosophers love to speak drearily of such things all day. However, one of my favorite solutions isn’t even someone’s smart thinking (well, I guess it is, but it isn’t really a solution, because it preceded the problem, so a “prelution” if you will). Hutterites. They were once (still are?) a community which found a nice solution to human sprawl and disgust (oh, and the tragedy of the commons and, kind of, corruption). Their communities were commune based and small. Once the community reached a certain size, a portion of the community relocated, as to preemptively resolve the issues which come with greater expansion. Mistreatment of land/resources/etc have an immediate effect on not only you, but the people you depend on to survive. Obviously everything comes with flaws, but it’s a nice gesture; and, they weren’t even trying to be pretentious and create some awesome argument, they were just living. 

Okay, another quick aside; I enjoy environmental philosophy because it has a weird cross-section of individuals. Obviously, all of them are philosophers, but you get the economic philosophers, the biocentric philosphers, and the non-biocentric philosophers. And sometimes the biocentric philosphers (if you can even call them that) are just hippys who are outrageous. One of whom, is Freya Matthews. She is an Aussie philosopher who has some “great” reads. She is really into panpsychism (belief all things have consciousness), so that should kind of tell you where she’s at. However, one of her papers talks about how the only solution to all of our ecological/environmental issues should be this: allow everything to be reclaimed by the earth. Everyone just stop doing the thing and do the nature thing instead. A few pages later you realize, wow, that’s it, huh? Yup, just leave your homes, cars, factories, roads, schools, stadiums and let the earth slowly reclaim it all. She doesn’t really give a good way to deal with the whole, pretty much everyone would die due to lack of food/shelter/medicine, etc. But, you know? I dig it. I don’t think it’s a solution, but more of an idealistic dream - like world peace. 

If you haven’t noticed, I enjoy these blogs way more than I should and just kind of barf my thoughts into text. I have always hated the idea of blogging/writing for the sake of writing (I hate my writing; but I hate most people’s writing, if I’m being fair), but now that I know someone else HAS to read it, it makes it  more bearable. Knowing there’s a reason above my own satisfaction is comforting. See, being the prick that I am, I feel as though I have turned the tables; instead of me resenting this writing exercise, I am thoroughly enjoying it. And, though I don’t assume you enjoy reading people’s *cough* *garbage* *cough* work, I feel better for it. See, this is the mindset I have developed after years of resenting the educational system and fitting into Mrs./Mr. _____’s little box to get the cookie. This is pretty ranty and probably pretty cringy.