Fifthwall Renaissance

What do you do if everything seems hopeless?

I'll answer this on my blog later today. I'll argue both sides. The strongest side (pessimism vs. optimism) will win. We'll find meaning, together.

Tell me, what really matters? As far as we can tell so far, we're alone on this universe. As far as we can tell, all we are is a bunch of biological automatons. As far as we can tell, all of life is fucking, eating, sleeping, and maybe doing a few cool tricks before we die.

I saw the Giant on the Hill one day. I went to check the mail, and there it was. Staring at me. It was naked and flabby. It had an unkempt mop of brown hair. Its eyes were wide. I think it knew me- I think it knew me quite well -though I had never seen it before. I think I knew the Giant as well- I think I knew it quite well -though I had never seen it before.

The Giant smiled, and its teeth were surprisingly clean.

Its eyes remained wide. It looked like it was brimming with excitation- as if it had some joke it wanted to tell me. I didn’t like the look on its face. Its eyes told me it knew something I didn’t. Its eyes told me the thing it knew was obvious- so obvious -but I simply didn’t know it. Its eyes told me that it couldn’t wait for me to find out.

I opened the mailbox. There was a letter- only one. I opened the letter and read it. I went back to my house and ignored the giant all the way back to my door, then went inside without giving it a look.

Inside, I hugged my daughter, and I kissed my wife. Supper was almost ready. I looked out the window. The Giant was still there, standing on the hill. I set the letter down in the living room, on top of a stack of other letters, and left it there to be forgotten.

When dinner was ready, we ate. We talked, I told my wife and daughter about my day. They told me about theirs. After dinner, I tucked my daughter in for bed. I took a shower, then lay in bed with my wife. When we turned the lights off, I looked briefly out the window. I could just barely see it in the moonlight, but the Giant was still standing on the hill.

I thought I could see its pale skin- if only barely -and, though I couldn’t be certain, I thought I saw its wide eyes glinting in the light. Its teeth. Its smile.

*

The next day, when I stepped outside. The giant still stood at the top of the hill. Smiling. Eyes wide. Still there. Still staring.

So, I ignored it and got in my car.

All the way to work, I thought I tried to think of other things. I tried to ignore the Giant on the Hill- even when I could no longer see it. Then, I thought I could hear it suppress a laugh- a whining giggle that crawled through the cracks of my car and inside to my ears.

I whipped around, but didn’t see it behind me. I turned back just in time to see the light turn red, came to a squealing halt behind a mini-van.

At work, I couldn’t get the Giant off my mind. What was it doing? What did it want? Why stand on that hill?

At my desk, I thought I saw a face staring at me from out the window. I turned and looked. Nothing, of course. Of course there would be nothing. That’s all there was. Nothing.

When I got home, my wife and daughter were at the grocery store. It was only me. I went to the kitchen, but, before I could make it to the fridge, there it was.

Its face took up the entire window. It was staring inside at me with wide eyes and a terrible grin. “Hee… Hee…” it stifled. Its eyes were manic, and the laugh it held down was filled with a violent unknown.

I walked away. I went into the living room. There, I saw its hand reaching around in front of a window. I diverted up the stairs. I would go into my room. I would close the shutters. I would watch television.

Before I got halfway up the stairs, an arm came down the hall, and reached down the stairs for me.

The front door opened. I turned and looked. It was my wife and daughter.

I looked back up the stairs. The arm was gone.

*

I could barely talk for the rest of the night. I could barely think. I was in a constant state of panic. What do I do? What could I do? How do I get it to go away?

“Are you alright?” my wife asked.

I nodded.

I went to bed. And I looked out the window, half-hoping the Giant would be gone. But, it wasn’t. Throughout the night, I could hear it occasionally stifle a laugh. Sometimes it would be just on the verge of bursting, but it didn’t want to spoil whatever joke it was waiting to tell.

I couldn’t sleep for hours. Just as I would be drifting away, “Hee… Hee… Hehehe!”

It never stopped.

Finally, there was a moment of thoughtless darkness, of silent vacuum. And then the day started again.

When I went out to my car, I could hear the Giant giggling away in it’s whining, manic way.

“Today,” it said, “today.”

I ignored it.

I closed my car door, and the giggling stopped.

There was no giggling all the way to work.

I saw no wide-eyed smiles anywhere.

Nothing peered at me in the corner of my eyes while I sat in my desk.

No Giant on the Hill for the entire day.

I drove back home. When I turned the corner of my street, I saw my house in ruins. The Giant was stepping out of the wreckage, laughing a deep-bellied laugh. At my driveway, I got out, and watched the Giant as it walked back to the Hill.

In one hand it held my wife. In the other hand it held my daughter. Though, it laughed so hard I thought it my drop them to their deaths. The Giant walked back to the Hill, and leaned over to set my wife and daughter on the other side. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there.

Then the Giant tried to turn around and tried to stand up straight, but it was laughing so hard, it fell to its knees and grabbed its stomach. Its eyes were shut. Its veins were bulging. It had to stop and gasp for air every few seconds, then began its braying laugh once more.

You know those “conspiracy theories” that everyone hates hearing you talk about (or maybe you hate hearing other people talk about them)? Well, MKUltra is one of those. Except, it really happened. I repeat, this is a conspiracy theory that really happened (and it’s a juicy one).

MKUltra is a CIA program that began in the early 50’s, slowly dwindled in scope after the death of JFK, and was finally ended in ’73. In short, they were researching the effects that a wide variety of drugs/substance, chemicals and interrogation methods had on individuals. Experiments were done with LSD (they did a lot of experiments with LSD), hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, and many others.

Here’s the thing. These tests weren’t done on willing patients. These were tests that were done without consent, and sometimes without the patient being aware that someone was testing something on them. And, while some of these people were other CIA agents, many of them were regular civilians. Many of them were even children, who would similarly be subjected to everything from substance-experiments to sexual abuse.

Here’s the other thing. These weren’t isolated incidents. These experiments, as well as abductions and stings related to the experiments, occurred all across the United States and Canada. There were at least 80 institutions (colleges, schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.) where MKUltra research took place, though it’s highly possible there were more. The MKUltra researchers would put up a front while working with patients at these institutions, and these institutions didn’t always know the researchers were CIA agents.

Woah. Like, damn, dude.

Bear in mind, this was in the fuckin’ 60’s, around the time they still thought lobotomies were chill.

Also around this time, we had the Cold War with the Soviet bloc, which was (allegedly) the reason for starting MKUltra (copping a feel on tripping college students was just an added bonus). The main focus of MKUltra was to develop better investigation methods that CIA agents could use on Soviet spies or American defectors, or learn how to counteract various Soviet interrogation methods that might be used on American spies in Europe.

It seems, however, that there’s more to it. Here’s a list of some of the research goals of MKUltra:

- Cause Soviet spies to defect against their will

- Develop mind controlling substances

- Create a truth drug

- Develop a drug that would erase someone’s memory

- Promote illogical thinking

- Increase/decrease cognitive function

- Increase/decrease rate of aging process

- Disable parts or all of an individual’s motor function

- Alter the personality or behavior of an individual

That’s just some of their goals, and it’s highly likely that there were agendas within MKUltra we may never be aware of.

Shortly after MKUltra ended in ’73, MKUltra- as well as many other CIA operations/projects -were investigated by the Church Committee and Gerald Ford’s Commission on CIA activities, and were brought to the public’s awareness.

However.

The CIA Director of the time, Richard Helms, ordered all of the MKUltra files to be destroyed before it was investigated. Those investigating MKUltra could only rely on the sworn testimony of agents directly involved in the research, as well the few documents that survived. In 1977, over 20,000 documents pertaining to MKUltra were uncovered. In 2001, even more information regarding MKUltra was declassified and made public.

This was forty years ago. This isn’t what the CIA is doing today, with all of the technology we possess today. This is what the CIA was doing forty years ago, with ice picks and LSD.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend believing every conspiracy theory you’ve ever been told.

I heard her walking up the stairs, but I ignored it.

This could be my own place, I decided. This could be my territory, my space, my home.

I was standing in the third floor of my tall, skinny, run-down building, looking out around me. It was in the middle of a forest. The trees were like willow trees, but not quite- they were something different. They obscured the view of everything around me. They were tall enough that I couldn’t see over them, even from the third floor of my building, and their willowy branches draped down just a foot above the ground. If I looked around the house, there would be trees in every direction, except where the cave was. I think I would visit the cave today. I think that’s what I wanted to do.

           Sometimes I would walk out into that forest- it went on forever, because I felt the forest shouldn’t have to end itself on my account. I would see things in the forest, usually only in the distance. I would see a man or a woman pass by. I would see someone’s house through the reeds, or I would see something large and dark lumbering through shade of the trees. They wouldn’t scare me though. Nothing here could scare me. I could get lost in the forest, lost in the dark, but I was never scared of that place.

Today, I didn’t go out into the forest. I just sat and watched. I leaned out my window and looked up at the sky. It was overcast. I like the sky when its overcast. Everyone talks about sunny days as if they were best thing ever, but I’ve never enjoyed them. I wanted an overcast sky, with the cool breeze that almost inherently comes with an overcast sky, so I made it so. I wanted the air to have silvery-blue quality to it that both contrasted and complemented the leaves of the trees, so it was there.

I wanted the light to be akin to the pre-dawn quality of the sky, when there’s light, but there’s no sun- that twilight of excitement, that alien light humans only catch short glimpses of before its either day or night for the next several hours. I wanted it to be like this here, without all the colors of the sun, only that very specific effect of the light, and so it was.

Thud Thud. “Are you in there?”

I looked around the room I was in. It was dirty. The wallpaper was bland and peeling. The wood floors needed to be swept. There were leaves that had blown in through the window- thin leaves from the half-willow half-other trees -there were a few bugs here and there- cockroaches frequented my home, as well as crickets, ladybugs, spiders and centipedes -and I’m sure there were mice, maybe rats, and possibly even bats in the small attic.

Once, I had seen a cat on the roof. A few times, I woke up in the middle of the night to find raccoons entering through the window of my room. I didn’t mind. I had seen a fox one morning, while I was venturing out into the ocean of willow branches. It never came into the house though. She was beautiful, and she lived right up the road, but I would never ask her to come to my house.

All this was how I liked it. Something about it seemed so real, so comforting to me, despite how it looked. Real. I think that was it. Something about it seemed real, and familiar, like a pleasant childhood memory of someplace you couldn’t remember the name of. And the animals and the insects, and even the leaves, were all my guests. They came and went as they pleased, and I never turned them away. I think they came because I wanted them to come, and I wanted these small creatures to feel safe here, just like I felt safe here, with all my beautiful things.

Today, I would visit the cave, but before that, I would look at all the beautiful things in my little building. In this room alone, I had a few paintings hanging on the wall. There were six total- there was one on either side of my window, two on the wall next to my bed, one above the headboard of the bed, and one on the wall between the staircase going up to the attic and the staircase going down to the second floor. Then there was a nightstand next to my bed, with a globe, a framed photograph, and a book.

Thud! Thud! “Open this goddamn door!”

First, I admired the paintings on either side of the window. The first was a Russolo, Memories of a Night. The second was a Boccioni, States of Mind II: Those who Stay. Both were originals. I walked over to my bed. All the paintings around my bed were abstract to the point of disassociation. I liked it that way, it helped me dream. One of the paintings next to the bed was Wyndham Lewis’s Composition, and the other was a Braque, Le Portugais. Then the painting above the headboard was In the Hold by David Bomberg. All originals, of course.

I took a quick look at the nightstand. The globe was old- I hardly touched it for fear of something breaking. The framed photograph was of Einstein, and it was actually signed by Albert himself. The book was a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was not signed by Friedrich himself, but by his sister, Elizabeth. I did not particularly revel in this, I didn’t like Elizabeth so much, but I cherished it nonetheless. Then I walked to the stairwell, ready to go on to the next floor. The last painting was another Lewis painting, Smiling Woman Ascending a Stair. This one was not an original.

The second floor was filled with things that hung from the ceiling. There were things made of paper here, which were strung together with thread, yarn and wire to form mobiles. There were three chandeliers- one from the Late Renaissance, one from the Baroque era, and another from the Victorian era. None of them could shed anymore light now, however. Hanging from the ceiling, there were metal sculptures balancing precariously on one another. In one part of the room, there was a model of our solar system hanging level with my chest, and above that hung clouds, stars, whales, fish and a single spaceship. In here was also a couch for me to sit, and several bookcases with a dense scattering of classics, contemporaries, and a few relatively-unknowns.

The first floor, the lowest floor- as I had no basement, unless you counted the cave -had a stove with an oven, a deep sink, a single, small table with a single chair, a wide desk for experiments and tinkering with little gadgets, and another bookshelf- but this one was filled with books on physics, chemistry, mineralogy, biology, medicine, pharmacology, machinery and mathematics. Then, there was a second, smaller desk in the corner of this room. This desk was special to me- more special than anything in this house, other than the peeling wallpaper and the raccoons that come in through my window. This was my drawing desk, and it had its own bookshelf too, which I used for drawing references, inspirations for ideas-

BANG! BANG! CRACK! “When I tell you to open the fucking door, you open the fucking door. Now you don’t have a door. Now, I come in whenever I want, and I don’t ask for permission.”

Today, however, I wasn’t going to draw, or tinker with any machines, and I didn’t feel hungry. Today, I was going to go into the cave. I walked out the front door, and there, twenty feet away, was the entrance to the cave. It was all tall grass- almost as tall as I was -and there was a wall of it, about twelve feet wide, I’d say. At the center of this wall, the grass was pulled to the sides, and it curled around in the shape of a thin ellipse, with angled ends where mother nature parted at the bottom, and where it came back together in the end.

I ducked into the entrance, and made my way down a tunnel. It began as a tunnel of tall grass on my sides, where the ground dipped down into a trench, but then the trench overcame you and the earth came over your head. Then it was a tunnel of dirt and debris- the stuff of life -and roots of the willow trees. It was dark here, but there was a light up ahead. I came to the end of the tunnel, to the source of the light.

It was a room made of clay. It was roughly in the shape of a semi-circle, and the back wall opened up to a waterfall. The waterfall covered the entire opening at the back end of the cave. I never looked to see what was on the other side, but light came in through this window, so I could see what I was doing in here, the spray from the water kept the clay moist and malleable, and if I was thirsty while I worked I would cup my hands in the water and take a drink.

What was so special about this cave was that you could make anything you wanted in here. I knelt down to the clay, dug my fingers into its surface, and pulled the clay up. When I did, I pulled a rose bush from the clay, and all the flowers were the colors I wanted them to be. There were blue roses, pink roses, purple roses, white roses- whatever I wanted. I grabbed a handful of clay and mashed it around inside my closed hands. When I opened them back up, a bird flew out and flapped around the room. It needed a place to land, so I pulled a tree branch from the wall, and it came to roost there. Safe and sound.

Phenomenology is more like many lovely ideas that are loosely connected around a perceptual framework. I hope that lost you, because Phenomenology is kinda like that. So, what is Phenomenology? A good place to start is with what Phenomenology is not.

Phenomenology began in the early 20th century, shortly after Friedrich Nietzsche claimed, “God is dead.” Why did Nietzsche say this? Well, because the advent of science essentially killed any objective foundation for believing in a supernatural being.

With the use of telescopes, physics and astronomy, we discovered that the Earth is not flat, the world is not 6,000 years old, and we are not at the center of our solar system. We were not created in the image of God as Adam and Eve, we evolved over billions of years- from the earliest single-celled life-forms -into the organisms we are today. We are not inhabited by spirits and demons, nor does it appear that we have a soul. Rather, we seem to be purely mechanical organisms. And, rather than base our decisions off of religious authority, we can develop non-religious, philosophical frameworks to guide our lives and do just fine that way.

Nietzsche was essentially responding to the scientific discoveries which led to a cold, objective, Cartesian view of life. We are “survival machines”, as Richard Dawkins said, who live on a small rock in the middle of space, far away from any other significant space rocks. The problem was that this emerging perspective was cold, lonesome and hopeless at times. There was no God. We are alone. There is no objective purpose to living.

Phenomenology arose in part as an opposition to this view. Phenomenology reversed the axioms of this thinking- which ignored subjective experiences, and focused on non-emotional, dehumanized, objective knowledge. Phenomenology focused on the objective study of the subjective experience- which is a difficult aspect of life to ignore. This, however, may not even be accurate, as many Phenomenologists rejected objective methods of analysis.

The purpose of Phenomenology is not to divorce the actual experience of life from life itself. Its purpose is to divine the actual constituents of life as we experience, rather than the constituents of life as we can objectively measure it or Empirically test it. The framework of Phenomenological thinking is that you cannot objectively measure what life is actually like. Which, in a way, is somewhat true.

But.

For all of it’s Romantic, Humanistic and Transcendent truths, Phenomenology still pales in comparison to Empiricism and the scientific method. The whole point of developing Cartesian and Empirical frameworks of thinking is because:

1)      Subjective experiences have their faults. Even our own memories are faulty, and we cannot rely solely on emotion and instinct as a guide through life.

2)      Even Rationalism and logic can be proven faulty, if the evidence shows as much. To quote Einstein, “Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.”

3)      Humans are, in general, faulty creatures. We’re not perfect. We make mistakes.

This is an eclectic blog and lit mag devoted to broadening one's mind, and exploring the boundaries subjective and objective reality.

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