Philosophistry

Haikus, Tankas, and Japanese Love Poetry

(a pic of an azalea [1])

I picked an azalea
And brought it home.
Now when I contemplate it,
In its crimson dye
I see the color
Of my lover's robe.
—Lady Izumi Shikibu

I used to ridicule Haikus and other short Japanese poems for being what I called "wanna-be zen." But as I'm digging in, I'm unlocking their hidden beauty.

click here to look inside this book I'm reading

Here's the trick to reading them. Take an index card and cover every line except the first. Read the first line outloud. Think it through and visualize what is being said. Repeat this for the other lines. And then re-read the poem quickly from top to bottom. Soon a strong dream-like scent should manifest, and in some cases, it will put a light sting into your heart.

Haiku syllabic form is 5-7-5. And Tanka's are 5-7-5-7-7

Here's a Tanka I just came up with:

In fall's cobalt dusk
A reminisce of you heats
My hands in caress.
Hand-in-hand we used to stroll
Down the middle of the road.

Writing this down kind of makes me shiver.

Let's see if I can write a Haiku

Microwave love notes.
Papercut your right pinky.
But let your heart bleed.

.
.
.
.

I've never been a fan of poetry. Or let me correct that. I've never been a fan of reading other people's poetry. Writing poetry is a different matter. Self-expression is what I'm into.

Hmm, but I'm starting to like these condensed form poems. In a way, "the medium is the message" once again; the short form forces compressed impact. Haikus and Tankas are short on story and narrative, but strong on straight emotive wiff.

And, I've been going this route on my mind blog with various one-liners:

• I'm looking for my peace-maker.
  
• you're going to poison your ontology
  
• why do I check my e-mail?
  
• I'm trying to get from A to B, but I just don't know where B is.
  
• free will is the ability to back intention with action.
  
• metallic paper cuts
  
• dream about washing machines
  
• virtual blood transfusion
  
• filipino sand castle
  
• 60 minutes of awry.
  
• Dreaming of ostrich eggs
  
• all your candy-colored lipstick smears
  

In these short-forms, I'm looking for sweet partnerships between words and concepts. A conceit laced over the right thoughts can drop a mini atom-bomb. datz why I like poetry.
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ATM

PhilDhingr: ATM. At the moment.
PhilDhingr: In this particular moment, my headphones are on too loud.
PhilDhingr: In this particular moment, you, the primate-cum-computer is processing these words.
PhilDhingr: At this moment, everything could collapse, but it doesn't.
PhilDhingr: The now is in such a rush to become the past.
PhilDhingr: History is a wheel.
PhilDhingr: Boethius.

In other news

Placebos!

http://www.healthtalk.ca/placebo_09192004_7832.php
A survey conducted in Israel suggests placebo use among doctors and other health care professionals is running at about 60 percent. And in most cases, patients are told they are taking real medication.

Isn't that a trip?

Imagine, if 60% of what you said were lies? Time and the rest of the universe is lying to us right now. Or maybe the neurons are our placebo-dispensers.

These kids shoudn't be called doctors, they should be called placebo-ists.

But they cure right? they do the job? it gets the job done. The lie, the deception. Time decieves us, and it gets the job done. We have no time and so we work. We have free time, and so we play. Good enough for you and me, right?
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Thimple Thoughts from Un-Thimple Minds

the comedy of infinite sadness

the punctilio of tryptamine

punctuated equlibrium, is just another old white man's dream of beating Darwin.

patricide is the soft genocide resulting from mass twentysomething angst

punch-drunk love is subconsciously sober

incontrovertible evidence suggests that introverts have all the real parties.

the silent conspirational spying eyes.

the dance goes on in his/her imagination.

while as the extroverts' goes on outside the body, in the liquid of hands, hips, and hellos.

the heliosphere combines the heat of hell and the sweet of heaven concept.

mafiosos wear chains with christ on their necks to form a resigned halo that is choking them with guilt.

preface your pre-face with good intentionality if you desire to let your neurons do your bidding's will.
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Mix my Meshy Mind, Mandy More Mint! Me Me Me

Below is my quote un-quote Dadaist insightful freewrite of mine.
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write or wrong, why do they both start with dubya. Dubya started with nothing and still has nothing. Jesus, couldn't someone have at least taught the airhead to speak. elocution is probably just a 6-week course somewhere.

Anyways, so facing the current rubberband, the matchstick men want to cavort and saunter over the mickey mouse fallow. Tilling fields has never been the right aside, nor has taking tokens for rides.

I shake my head, every once in a while, like man, why did I shudder. My shutters are sometimes blinders, and often I wonder, what it must be like to be split asunder. The CIA would spell it usunder, like usama bin laden. I like how FOXNews shakes it up, sometimes saying usama or osama, or al-qaeida, or al-qaeda, etc.

Bill O'Reilly, that, well, whatever.

Enough about the phox, the phox box. That's what it really is, just one big loud box.

okay, enough. fascism, that's an interesting word. worldly thing, this fascism is. That fascism is fashion.

L'Existentialisme est un Humanise or something, or J'Accuse, or Le Monde.

Add to that..

L'Fascise est un Fashionise.

Archdiocese, die old please. Please, i can't understand why there must be so much banging around here. I hear you but not listening to you. I think flirting is important. I I I. why is everything about me me me.

If it feels good do it. Sure. Don't be ascetic earning man.

It takes one to know one, but sawing two halves in three can carry you to the whatever.

Yeah, whatever. Dada in Idaho. I like that description of Napoleon Dynamite. His brother's name is Kip.

This is not quite freeassociative randomness, as I am straying from certain topics, like serious prose. But, back to your regularly scheduled pseudo-randomness.

Oh yeah, on free will.

1) If all that exists is the past, and you didn't choose the initial conditions, how can you have free will?

2) No seed chooses where it is planted.

Check out my poetry

I've added a poetry section to my site. If you scroll to right you'll see the past three days' entries and the current associated "pastiche." I'm also experimenting with spoken-word, and have included links to mp3s of me reading these poems.

The poetry is a once-a-day poetic interpretation of life. I try to mix in some emotional dramatization of my sentiments combined with at least one or two concrete details from my day.

This poetry section was previously hidden at different location. I've now decided to place this section with greater importance since I enjoy poetry so much.
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Phoetry: Rambling

http://www.itstimetorambleon.com/ @overcastedshadows.NET#sharp, ,,.128.64.32.netscape www.mordor-gollum....netcomeduorg...nothing naught.ch. ch.channel ch.ch.zc... .com http;//ftp;//gopher;//3141452629,929@compuserve.net bhet everything2.zip2.cc.sexxxx.google;//friendster:// orkut:// napster(.uk).
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Phoetry: Ovearching Complexes

Overarching complexes floating in space.

But space is here, and the Big Bang of technological explosion has closed all mind and space.

CO2 but we all see through this, let's do this. After the war is over, can we have a party?

I'm mouse clicking, speed surfing, sifting through the foils beneath the silicon surface. Blades and screens, and xerox machines. Nothing but cheese is oozing from this, super-sized AMD anthlon XP.

From this little machine by my right foot pumps the philosophistric mind candy to the masses. Or mini-masses. We bloggers are the mini-bosses, moving with the pen, oh whoops, keyboard. Taking out pages of bits in our table of wit.

Get with the program, jack yourself into the Matrix. Let's get on, with the spe-ci-fix.
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Stranger Attitudes

I'm not going to look at strangers anymore. The habit of people-watching is utterly useless. I never gave my casual meandering glances any thought until I realized that subconsciously I was expecting inspiration, looking for kindness, and hoping for beauty and intelligence. I've been disappointed, unfortunately. The masses are dull and unintelligent, and in America, they tend to have an adversarial stance toward one another.

What good has any stranger done for me? Even at those conventions with mixers where you exchange business cards.. do you ever follow up? Did you exchange any useful information except the mission statements of your respective companies?

Or if I'm standing in line for a burger and a blond bombshell walks in wearing a short-shorts and a halter-top stands a few places in line behind me. I turn around, give a flirtatious glance, she smiles back, and then what? The exchange is over.

Even in the larger sense, why should I care about my "fellow man."

NOTE: Entering critique of the "Bleeding Heart" and the "Terrorist"...

I woke up in this world to a series of infinite choices I would have to make, but I did not choose what came before me nor did I choose the actions of others. So then why should my responsibility be connected to those of others? Perhaps you think this is selfish. Indeed it is... having a worldview that concerns only that which concerns me... my family, my friends, my body, my world. (Well, I didn't choose my family, but I choose to love them)

So why should I care about what's happening around the world? Castles burn down, and castles rise. People suffer and people experience elation. This is the movement and wave of things that surround me. I didn't ask for things to be terrible nor for things to be good, they're just there as they are.

The only "reason" I can see for helping strangers is that I have a natural attachment to the suffering of others, and as a result, in order to alleviate my own personal suffering, I should try to alleviate the suffering of others.

This is important, this is compassion. You'd be labeled "soulless" otherwise. But can't this natural inclination go overboard when you start to care about people a thousand miles away from you or about the politics of temporary nation-states?

Like who is Arnold Schwarzenegger anyways? Is him being governor of California going to make any change into my life? I will still have to call the phone company to get Internet access, I will still go to the same restaurant down the street for a Philly cheese stake. And Einstein will keep ripping me off when he tries to sell me rugs. How will Arnold factor in? And what about Kobe?

Now, I'm not against helping nor participating in the world--I'm just trying to make a point. Your notion of helping should be colored with the understanding that first the world does not need your help. Second, it won't necessarily thank you, and if it does, it will do so inefficiently. Third, you may not even want to help the world in a large way. Interfering with the affairs of others brings more responsibility and angst on your shoulders since you have to be completely sure what you're doing is right or wrong. And even then, what's to say your notion of right and wrong is accurate enough to be enforced over others. Who is to say you even have the right to.

And it's all deterministic anyways. Your notion of compassion has been programmed into you by the great Principhers so that you may more effectively keep the engines of Earth lubricated. Compassion is just another module that can be switched on and off and is not sacred (like everything else).

And is your notion of compassion even consistent or worthy? Females tend to be more compassionate than others, correct? Well, I was pondering over the idea of the myth of feminine compassion... (but then realized I was just being a sexist pig)... but then I thought about the myth of parental compassion or the myth of human compassion in general. If parents were so naturally compassionate, they there wouldn't be those groups of parents who push their kids to join every sport, after-school activity, Chinese lesson, SAT prep courses there is. If they could really see how sad their kids were, as would be implied by their so-called compassion, they wouldn't aggravate them so much.

False modes of compassion come from having false senses of what is truly "good" for someone. If you're going to lay the smack down on your child for his own sake, you better be damn sure that what you're doing is going to be good. Discipline, you've learnt is good, but there's a lot of other torture that's tenuous and possibly inspired by the influences of the media telling you what's good and what's not.

Like if you truly want to help the world, become a teacher, or fund education so that mankind can better take care of things. Doing technology is not necessarily going help people, becoming an activist may very likely make things worse, and even influencing dogma's like pro-sodomy v. anti-sodomy is relativistic and it just reduces to your opinion vs. somebody else.

And despite all of this... I blog.

Peddling Thoughts

The trumpet's in the living room of the lion's tongue. Inside the pink peddler is trying to sell his soul to the orange biker. Together, they form the dynamic red-orange team, an offshoot of the spiraling shitzu cult that found its home in the incisors. They wonder about the putrid smell and hired a prophet to guess what the various smells meant. In other worsd, the Lion is the God and they are the lemmings awaiting their fate.

Orange Speedo man, call him Carl, talks to the Red Peddler, Jimmy.

"Jimmy, what is it that is so important for you and your peddlings"?

"Carl, you don't understand. You never will understand. Knowledge is power and you have none.

"I seek intuition, I seek feeling, I seek, bikes"

As Carl took his bike and moved around, the lion's tongue was tickled. The incisors opened and closed.

I felt in disorder upon seeing this scene, I wanted to pull the lino's moouth oen to understand why these germs were plaguing him. He wouldn't let me, so I just took my laptop and smacked him in the face. Fortunately, he was drugged up and not in his usuafeeding frenzy, otherwise I would've been bored to death watching him feast on leftover snakes that I had put in a bucket.

I wonder if he has a preference, boredom or death.

I sat back down and I too pondered, why, why must I think? Is there a purpose. Does the Lion think? What would he think if I sat on his back and started to use him as a tool for my amusement, like in an amusement park.

The prison gates of this cell that the Lion was in was kind of haunting, I wished I too was out. I needed a job to get to work. But back to the biker and the pddler.

The Peddrel was watching the sights that would come across his mind, and the biker came back up to him, said, hey, Jimmy, why are you so dreamy?

"Because it helps me understand the universe"

"Why?"

"Always with the why, and the when, and the questions, the questions"

"What is the most vexing question that you have to answer"

"I think, life" Whathat is life for people like you and me. I get bored sometimes man, imagination feels the spaces.

I try to go biking every once and a while, that's my boredom.

"Aren't you just buying time?"

"And what do you call hat you're doing"

"Progress"

Ironically, they were both peddlars, one of knowledge, the ohter of bikes. Both of progress, one of the mind, the other of physical space.

I too, was a peddler of sorts, of drugs for this Lion. I took it upon myself to do a handstand. thought that maybe if I could get my shoes to touch the ceiling, gravity would be reversed.

But, my teacher Mr. Madkins told me something about cost-benefit analysis, and then I had to start thinking about whether it was truly beneficial to reverse gravity.

Beyond the gate was Kelly B. Kelly B be the cutest lionkeeper co-worker that any teenager could dream of.

She liked me, I could tell. There was something about the look in her eyes that said, "I am going to get you"

"Hey Phil, do you want to sleep with me?" .. I imagined her saying.

I decided to be arrogant that day, I hadFrench wine or I saw the Merovingian in the Matrix who reminded me of french. Somehow I felt that arrogance was expedient. I said no, a second time.

"No, no"

"What are you saying no about?"

"I'm frustrated with this lion, it has terrible germs, and I can't clean them"

"Let me help and massage your back" ... I imagined her saying.

She opened the prison walls and sat next to me, thinking, understanding.

I decided I would touch her, but I didn't. Kelly B started to talk, or at least move her mouth open and closed. She had gum in her mouth, pink gum I could tell. She did that thing where she takes the chewed gum, puts it halfway outside of her mouth in between her incisors so somehow someone else could see it.

I didn't think it wsa attractive at all, this extra tongue that was coming out.

"What do you want to do tonight?"

... this I wasn't imagining her saying. I hoped. I responded anyways, but gave a vague response so that if I was wrong, it could look like I was talking to myself.

"Go to the movies."

Apparently I failed in that ambiguous statement.

"Which one?"

Good, she did ask me.

"I want to see, Tiger Eat Cantalopes"

"Wasn't that on Discovery?"

I decided to invoke arrogance again and remained silent.

Silent except for the chewing and the rustling of the Lion.

Water started to seep into the room, it got my feet wet. Kelly kind of was stressed out by it. I fancied that maybe I had somehow changed gravity enough so that a new tide came in. That would've been nice, to change the sea through gravity. I herad the moon does that occasionally.

Bac kto the Peddlers.

"Carl, why are you so gay?"

"Please, none of that derogatory stuff. It's bad enough that the incisor people won't talk to me, and now I have you."

"Aight, I'm just making coversations."

Why wouldn't Kelly B sleep with me.

"What, excuse me, did you say something?"

"Yeah, why is the canopy opening over me?"

"Is that why you think it's getting wet?"

No, I bet you're getting wet.

pause...

good, she didn't hear that.

"Well, I'm going to see the supervisor."

"Yeah, you go do that"

"No need to be so sarcastic Phil."

"Uh, um... OKAY Kelly"

Kelly left and I was all alone with the lion, the water, and the peddlers. I wonder if I could speak with the peddlers.

The Birthday Present

My eyes were open, I saw through a rectangular artifice that I remembered was labeled "window." A sense of inside and outside emerged, and I felt I was on the inside. Inside was attached with a sense of calm, of peace, and beyond the window was the opening of vastness that I sensed existed "out" there. My vision was blocked somewhat by the window, but since distant objects came into view simultaneously, almost on top of the window, I knew I was looking "through" the window. There was a continuous plane of green items under a homogenous plane of an opposite color. The label of this color popped into my head. "blue" I thought. Superimposed, but not exactly, were comparisons to other scenes "through" the window. The scenes were darker, less green and less blue. Immediately, I felt like what I was seeing was good. This was odd because I was inside, and not outside, but immediately, there was a quickening of the pace of my thought, a releasing of tension, and I felt some muscles a little bit below my eye tense up. If what I felt before I noticed the green-blue scene, or what I later knew was a "landscape," was a negative, then I felt a positive, it's opposite. The weather was good.

I moved my head around and noticed that there was a desk around me with a computer a few pixels ahead in the y direction. Thanks to the shapes and some automatic system, I recognized that the computer, or rather the monitor, was above and further back, hovering around the desk. My hands and body definitely weren't hovering. I felt rooted to my seat and henceforth, so I concluded that the monitor was on top of the desk and not the desk being on top of the monitor. Upon looking at the monitor, I had a sense that this monitor was a part of me. An infinitely long vision of previous prescences of me in front of the monitor confirmed that it was a part of me, and hence I felt like it was mine. If this monitor was no longer on top of this desk, I think there would be an space cut out inside of me. I later found that the term for this sentiment was "possession."

A new image appeared and replaced the old image. There was a rectangular trapezoid. The side closest to my right eye was shorter, the other side longer. But this image was shaken and stirred as the relative length of the sides changed. A golden circular object half way down the previously longer side grew a little bit. The door was opening, I thought.

While I was stationary, the images changed. I couldn't recover the older image and meditation of the "through the window" scene, nor was I looking at the monitor. Those previous recognitions had since disappeared and were forever lost. Now I was fixated on this door opening. Because of the permanence of losing the previous scene and the immediacy of the door opening, I divided the previous scenes from the current scene. The previous scenes, as you can tell by my usage of language, were in what I already knew to call, the "past." As for the scene in front of me, that I coined as part of "now." It was easy to distinguish the past because I was no longer looking at it. Determining the now was difficult because I didn't know whether the trapezoidal movements in flux should still be considered the now or should the state be called now now, of the door stationary and opened.

Nonetheless, I felt like this current scene would also change. What popped over the image was the thought of doors opening associated with a tall figure appearing immediately thereafter. I figured there must be a third division, the "future" I knew to call it, where this image would arrive, in a more solid way, and replace the now. The past, the now, and the future, these coincided in into a nice, homogeneous whole. One followed the other consistently everywhere. The future was going to be a tall figure, and so my head turned to greet this figure.

Upon glancing upon the figure, I felt a sense of roughness, a sense not unlike looking at the trees. Here was a man, I thought. I also had the same sense of possession that I had with my computer. This figure had been in my view permanently over time, yet I knew him in infinitely different situations yet almost in every situation I could look back. In certain places where I had been, he had usually been. Images of my mouth moving and his mouth moving appeared a lot, along with a whiff of images of me and him moving together in faster moments. These were all in the past and were spotted all over the time period. It became apparent this was not a stranger.

Then, I looked at the tall figure and I had a sense that I was looking through him and seeing another image. I saw another figure that I couldn't discern easily, but I sensed it was myself. Then it came to me that a part of me was inside of this person. This was a little foreign because indeed I was sitting here and he was over there. The initial foreignness sparked some movement in my head. My mental pace quickened a little more and I felt other parts of me start to animate in a way that felt special or ordained for this figure. Then I realized, that indeed, I was in this person because were part of the same one. This one was a group of other images I had collected of other figures who were scattered often in the same place but throughout a large sequence of time. The one was my family and this man my brother.

I then realized something, this "now" was actually a date, and that date was one of many dates, but a more important one at that. It was a date that was of special importance to my brother. I realized that an event I was supposed to be responsible for was lacking, and alas, I realized, I forgot to buy him a birthday present.

Campo-mato-Mo-Mo: The AIR BAG is full, the sun and green wake, Woody Allen, happy eagle. Don't cry son.

UPDATE: Dah, I forgot to use a new Dictionary.com Word of the Day. Well, I would have done something like, uh, and in the susurrus of the sounds creeping through the door or over the landscape, or some other nonsense. susurrus, susurrus, susurrus. There, it's in my brain and hopefully, in yours.

rain-drop metaphor

It's so easy to find suggestions in nature. It's raining outside and I can see a million little raindrops wandering the surface of solid land. At every connection between the numerous drops, at every size of a junction, the resulting formation is completely different. Drops land on an awning, stream to the lowest point of gravity, fall off the edge like a river, then land onto more tiles which funnel and distribute them along splitting paths. The different forks lead the original droplets to collude into superstructures, sometimes making new friends, sometimes flowing solo. The interesting part is that the environment with which the rain interacts was not intentionally planned to allow for the wonderfully different dances that the droplets animate themselves into over the course of their journeys. Every time it rains, the symphony is unique and serendipitous. The drizzle then makes me wonder about the drivel that other people set themselves into. The human world has got to be gargantuanly more complex than rain, so then why do people think that their best bet is to draw a single straight line from here to their objectives. The best path has got to be the one that w(a|o)nders. That is, unless you prefer marching to dancing.

UPDATE: if you need a single smooth line, at least choose an arc or a spiral.

UPDATE2: or "multilayered perfect circlez placed upon each other" as yoshitama refers to spirals

Singularity Poem

Did an open mic for the first time today at Galokas in San Diego. I dressed in all black, had my hair combed ultra normal, and did a few twisted things that I doubt anybody noticed. Nontheless, it was really fun. I was hella nervous before, and going up there to stand and deliver was not what I expected. I expected to just be nervous and wanting to dish out what I said, but instead, it turned into something powerful. After I said, "Man is just" I paused in silence for a good five seconds--eternity in spoken word--and then, bam, bam, bam, like the daggers of thought I intended to lob, I delivered. The applause I got was comparable to the others, which was comforting.

I had criticisms of all the other spoken word artists, but in quickly sharing it with others, I find that it's just not popular to share such a high bar for art. I always believed in Nietzsche's conception of the Superman, and I wished others would try to make their art rise beyond the mundane. See, already, you are hearing the negative vibes: pessimism, cynicism, arrogance, and just plain bitterness. Why? Why? This is why I don't like revealing my personal thoughts or relating my personal experiences at times. The Truth, or at least my Truth hurts. So when people ask me questions, I try to only tell the part of the Truth that doesn't ruin the conversation into a wrestling match. The match usually ends with me losing and the winner being somebody who just stands over me and says, "See, you can't say X". Don't get me wrong, I enjoy everything. The ceremony of spoken word that processed before me was dope. It was funny, entertaining, and clever. But I must be honest when I emphasize how much I desire improvement and higher forms of art.

Hmm, something is wrong here.... I feel it's a waste, self-indulgent, and plain boring, to talk about my "standards" of art though. I think the compromise I can make with my socially "arrogant" attitudes and my desire to be a generally nice guy, is to be silent and prove my ideas through example. What you say says nothing. Action is what counts. And yet, with friends, especially close friends, I think speaking your mind is still a strong imperative.

I spent the time there with Chaz and Elaine. Elaine had heard of the place and helped me get the link on the left ("Urban San Diego"). It was really nice having friends with me. You can have all the theories in the world, but when you sit down after speaking and a friend gives you a handshake, it feels good. Plus, NOW, there's a whole world of San Diego culture to conquer! (dah!... maybe I should just go screw it, this is my blog, my space, let the arrogance flow like spit)

Here is the poem that I spoke:

"The Gay Funeral"
By Philip Dhingra

Man is just
An informaton processor
When we follow our passions to make love
and subsequently have sex
We are merely exchanging and merging blueprints
To create more information-processors
Who
Through the course of their life
Will struggle to exist
And repeat
what you started.
Now
That is not what life is ALL about?
At least for non uber-hormonal college students.
There is
ART
There is
science
and there is
war

As I take quiet walks
--a rare task these days--
I am always surprised by how
unaware we are of the superstructures
mushrooming around us

From drugs
such as TV
religion
courtship
shrooms
and real mushroom clouds over Bahgdad

The question then emerges
Who
Rules this earth?

Nietzsche once said,
"God is dead.
And we have killed him"

I revise and say,
"Man is dead.
And we have killed him"

Man first died when he chose to speak
When he chose to love
When he chose to submit his activities
To a greater good.

We are gathered here today
For another kind of greater good.

A pow-pow of the most
meta
significance

And we are also here to mourn
the impending death of man

But this will be a death
with little bloodshed

And as the movie The Hours
showed us
Death can be a gift
unto the living

But
What will live on?
Who will live on?

The struggle for existence continues.

I'm in no hurry though
I want to enjoy the Singularity
one precious bit
at a time.

###