Essay: Discourse and Acumen

 Concepts. What am I today in difference to days gone? I am older (and all which that entails). I believe that's where it ends. Am I smarter? What I can note is that if I were to compare what I  learned, as a child, from grade 1 to grade 2 , or later in college from one semester to another, I cannot say with determination that I am smarter if the accumulation of that amount of knowledge is what is to be judged. Do I know of more things that I knew then/yesteryear? Unquestionably. Do any of these things purport intelligence? No, they do not—on their own. I posit, the fact that I (or the average person) have read possibly millions of lines of text in my lifespan, where said words/text  had no coherent purpose—unless the repudiation of all ideas can be considered purpose for purpose’s sake—thus refutes reason and blocks comprehension which may very well work against the prospect of intelligence. 

I know, some may say, the sun spins around the sun, colloquially speaking. That statement does not denote intellect any more than children talking about how ants go to the bathroom. Arguably, speech is recognizable as some part of intelligence, but is it? Communication and intelligence must be different, right? In earnest, what is the difference between a message delivered verbally as “come here", as writing on a board spelled out, or with the gesture of a hand’s motion where a hand, palm faced inward, goes from far from the body to closer to it? The communication delivered is to approach. Is it intelligence though? Why would someone ask you to approach? What if the conveyance to approach is because they want to jokingly fart when you come near, or what if the monkey is holding some poop on their hand when they motion you to approach; is it intelligence then? What if the quiet hand motion to approach is to keep you from danger, would that qualify? 

These somewhat philosophical questions are at the heart of the concept of what many (average persons) believe intelligence to be. The fact that a person perceives a color one way and a colorblind person does not, says nothing about intelligence; or does it? Which, if either, is an observational/intellectual statement: a whale surfaced to breathe, or a whale surfaced because it saw the boat coming? Is an observation by definition then part of intellect? Can we call anything that is perceived by our senses as a form of or stemming from intellect? 

In an age where the profound sense of intelligence permeates social media, use of the word ignorance has become ubiquitous to stupid. I dare say that has become an endemic issue, one where a perceived-to-be ignorant person is labeled as stupid by a stupid and often arrogant person; there is need for this issue to be thwarted somehow. It could be argued that the person(s) using the word stupid in this context is not aware of the meaning of the word, and when they are aware, oxymoronically use it. This essay, in terms of opinion, juxtaposes a simple view about the belief of what is considered to be intelligence by a so-called-average person versus what the same may consider to appear to be ignorant and in so doing apply a label disproportionately; especially when arrogance is taken into account. Where a person is-or-not ignorant or stupid is not the subject of scrutiny here, but rather a belief that something is inherent in something else, be it intelligence, ignorance, stupidity, or the value inherited by the application of said label(s). I know not about the metamorphosis of the acumen of perceived  knowledge, where any form of discourse is being judged by all of its participants, in the same way that, I know not why there is value to be found in said discourse and acumen.

Short story: What happened?

 Darkened the parth with thorny brambles. Sludge, of wine-colored atonement, let free by malcontent. A ruse, likened to apathetic delirium, where professing love is a light sentence handed selflessly to oneself. What is I, depreciated life expectancy, when a stranger beckons? 

Dense the path, obscured by time, we must step over; uncaring and neglectfully ignorant. What is to care, the complexities of individuality, when wandering eyes see nothing. An agonizing thought, perverse but subtle, rummaging through forgotten aches. Lament, to live deceitfully, to accomplish no more than is. In wishing, serendipitous escapades, recollection is but a quiet friend of note.

Melancholy shrewd, implausible outcomes real, invading logic. A shroud, coveted realism of thought, befitting the prominence of lackluster ponderings. Longing for closure, desires fulfilled, for a reality of unreal hauntings.

-

I first saw the blood covering the flowers in a thickly dried surface formed by tears of regret after an argument. It was all due to anger, having reached unparalleled heights during a lover’s quarrel I got myself into. Nothing now but to wonder as to how long imprisonment will be when the cops come to the door.

It was dark already when I came to terms with what I had done. Never did I think I could do something so unbelievable. I can’t stop thinking about all the times we argued before and just walked away. Here I am now in regret going over the entire event over and over.

How could I/anyone in love do something like this? For too long a moment it’s as if I cherished the anger built up and put away during so many arguments before. In hopes of a better tomorrow, I killed the one I love and must now try to live without ever being forgiven. 

Essay: Cumulative Hate

 Nature has led me down. Some argue it's one thing, others don't care, and meanwhile I stand betrayed. To say, as an example:  the burned patch of land will recover, leaves but the comment of a hopeless romantic in harangued theory decompiling the canon which is their belief to the avail of nothing or anyone. 

Have I betrayed nature? I dare not besmirch truth by siding with the ignorance of my non-professional view and understanding of what encompasses what my vision compiles. To say, the truth to the eye of one is the truth of all who have eyes, is to deny the existence of choice; worse, the pain of an inheritance in culture. What lies at the heart of the problem is the heart itself. Confounding as it is, to believe the heart can have opinion on its own beyond its many life-assisting tasks, we put our feeling(s) ahead of reason. This is not a new thing or a generational push for change, it is nature at its finest.

Do I know nature? I ask, does anyone truly know what nature is as it comes up in text or conversation, or is it always a presumptuous arrival of what the person presumably understands the topic to be? When in reference to fauna, I ponder, it stems from a group dynamic of belonging. For instance hunter/predator, herbivores, or other. When in flora, usually the dichotomy to which a group may belong to like perhaps aquatic fauna versus fauna, or more distinctly as something being native to the arctic regions, tropical, or other. For nature to have led me down without positing descriptors to which type, I suppose I mean the whole. To question whether I have let the collective it down… Perhaps I have. Can both exist simultaneously? To betray, be betrayed, and ultimately without blame accept a mutual betrayal; were nature to have a voice in this? In text, I can read it just fine, but I am having trouble contextualizing it….

I no longer feel nature. Conflict has always existed, but there are times when it appears to rise to seemingly unfathomable heights. It is the year 2025, at the time of writing, and writing itself bespoke of thought, consideration for a reading audience, choice of language structure, and more, I face the ever-invasive nature of artificial intelligence infringing upon my intellectual credibility by taking the very nature of who I am as a writer and converting it into a disambiguous, non-inventive, plagiarized monstrosity without the merit beheld of humans (of me). Is that the problem? Am I right to feel this way, or must I adapt an inclusive sense of acceptance to my having to live in a world where my words have been stolen, where my work is being mimicked without reproach, and ultimately making my works (such as this one) having questionable authenticity? The nature of things made for the assistance of humans has its own arena of unknowns that betrays a current subset of humans while others step on their shoulders of the betrayed for monetary purposes at first, before a good, bad, or both types of approach to whatever the new thing is are established. Yes, there is much conflict in me about this. I presume, other artists may share this lack of feeling towards that type of nature this year.

Nature is always adapting. Change is beneficial for the ones with the bombs, but not so much for the others. I am the others. I leave this non artificial intelligence paper by asking if we are right (or wrong) to hold nature in contempt, during the rise of unscrupulous A.I. in what feels to be a cumulative hate.

The Loss of Self

I grew up poor. My family was on food stamps and my father's low wage job made dreaming the day-to-day game of the day; alongside hot wheels or the cobra figure that turned green under the sun. The figure would get on the top of the car and ride atop tree branches or thin, green, and fragile pea plants trying to reach a destination where Total cereal, powder milk, and powder eggs tasted different. Eventually the figure broke, the elastic that held the legs to the torso tore, and the car, which also changed colors in cold or hot water, stopped working and stayed in a weird in-between color.

Later in life the dream changed and it wasn't any longer about tasting foods in different flavors, but trying to blend in while in school. Being an outsider in a NY high school while attending ESL (English as a second language) classes was depressing; on top of living in a low-income building surrounded by thin walls, yelling neighbors, gunshots outside, the endless emergency sirens on the road, and the abuse in the home. The dream was just to get out alive.

Entering into young adulthood worsened when I ended up in the streets with no money or job in TX. Shortly thereafter trying to return home I was met with the disdain of a father who told me that I was nothing to him, less than a zero to the left of a number, and that he didn't even want me at his funeral... among other things. The dream was to die... yet, somehow I survived. 

Somehow, with nothing in sight, no prospect of ever getting out of the poverty-stricken circumstance that envelops the poor, and me back then, I looked onward with nothing in mind. Old aspirations somehow came about and a new dream manifested when I married. The dream was to make my wife happy. Simple as it sounds, the dream begun with leaving an addiction behind, moving from the ghetto I was living in at the time in Puerto Rico to FL in the United States and figure out how to shape the dream.

I joined the military after losing many jobs to migraines with the hopes of steady pay to make the dream come true. One year after I joined the military, September 11, 2001 was met with catastrophe and soon thereafter I found myself alongside my 82nd Airborne brethren flying to put our lives on the line for the America we love, its freedoms, and my dream to make my wife happy. Once deployed the dream changed once more to return home alive, a prospect harder and harder to realize with every day spent searching Al-Qaida camps trying not get killed by RPG (rocket propelled grenades), land mines, or other deadly traps (like women or children wearing explosive vests).

Once out of the military, after two deployments to the Middle East, the dream morphed completely and I no longer dreamed of a happy family. PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) changed my life. Between flashbacks, night terrors, and the hypervigilance, there was no time for life, let alone any dreams. Eventually, the years passed. Decades later there is no dream. The America I fought to defend, the freedoms I believed in, all somehow appear to have changed. Whether for better or worse I fear history will be the judge. 

In the end, while we all have problems, while we project our troubles into our everyday hassles, I lie here in daily pain, aging, and dreamless. Sure, life goes on and I couldn't be happier for those who can enjoy life and have much different dreams from the boy who had to stand in lines at the supermarket made specifically for food stamp users; having everyone looking at little me, and I with no idea as to why. I don't regret my life or the very many circumstances I found myself in. I've lost much, including my dreams and the desire for them. Above all, the one thing I have to live with now is the loss of self.

Poema: El relato del ave.

Vi un pájaro herido, 

su ala doblada,

no sé a dónde ha ido, 

allí sola su mirada. 

Una rama calló

mientras en ella dormía. 

El nunca la vió 

y así empezó su día. 

Cerca de él, 

un gato escondido, 

la vida es cruel, 

eso y estar herido. 

Con dolor y sin vuelo 

trato de salir de allí, 

sin la seguridad del cielo

pero entonces entendí.

Solo pasos para mí

pero una milla herido,

un perro estaba allí

entre salvación y lo temido.

Lentamente y falleciendo, 

el pajarito se encaminó 

su salvación siguiendo, 

al menos eso pensó.

Lejos todavía, 

el gato ahora corriendo

el ave moría, 

en su camino siguiendo.

El perro muy atento

vió el gato saltar

se paró muy lento

y decidió ayudar. 

El perro salió corriendo

en la dirección del gato

pasando pájaro y viendo

aquí termina el relato. 

La vida es frágil,

igual la naturaleza,

a veces, la muerte es ágil 

y trae tristeza.

Pero sea ave, perro, o gato

el animal también,

sufre por un rato

al no tener edén.

El ser humano a creado

fábula y cemento

y siempre a olvidado,

pues su olvidar es lento. 

Dos generaciones 

y nunca existimos. 

Olvidados corazones, 

mientras aquí seguimos. 

Más allá de mi abuela

no hay nombres de familia.

Y como el ave que no vuela

nada lo reconcilia. 

El perro no pensó 

en salvar el pajarito.

pues con la rama calló

un nido muy bonito. 

Los polluelos gritaban

nido grueso y seguro

gato y perro casaban 

y el futuro oscuro. 

Y así es el vivir. 

No miramos más allá. 

Solo queremos seguir

en lo que tendrá.

Tendrá mucho dinero.

Tendrá felicidad. 

Tendrá el mundo entero. 

Pero con necesidad. 

Pues la vida acaba. 

Seguro el fin de todos.

Y mientras yo miraba

pues me caí de todos modos. 

Era yo un polluelo,

en el nido que calló,

a allí en el suelo,

mi vida terminó.

Essay: What You Make of It

 Politics. 

The end.

In the United States—I wholeheartedly feel that’s how any conversation containing the word politics should start and end in these rather tumultuous times where discourse is no longer that. What once was a somewhat philosophical discussion on the ins and outs of what is or should be allowed by the government(s) has somehow become subject of confrontation leading to a type of animosity akin to rivalry. Clearly, debates are a lost form.

I have found myself unable to continue conversations embodying the displeasure of political rhetoric as a pivotal point of a discussion where something is somehow amiss. It is my belief, adults have the necessary language and maturity to be able to communicate succinctly. The use of crass lexical dexterity is/was often regarded as unfit for the parlance of common public spaces (today social media in most cases), thus reserved for closed-door lawless individuals/activities. Similarly, the need to use politically divisive  statements to indicate displeasure with a subject is at best as lexically deprived as the sneering of the underground establishment aforementioned. 

I like, I dislike, and anything else signified by an “I” in a statement, whether implied or not, goes to describe a personal stance. Personal stances are by nature opinions which carry no weight inasmuch as they are  unverifiable; in the sense that a conversation is occurring without a subject matter expert present. In that sense, no conversation—lacking said topic expert—should ever approach a point where a level of ire is reached. 

The orator in classical times of philosophy, I argue, was one whose control of varied subject matters could seduce an audience by denoting topically existing elements in any field. While the doctor, the mathematician, the biologist, or other scientific persons carried designed knowledge of their practice, the orator could sometimes carry a conversation with more fluidity than the professional; not to mean that they were versed in the particulars, yet knowledgeable enough to reach an audience of the common person. As such, philosophers could point to a specific point of a subject, whether politics, religion, or other charged affairs, and discuss various means of approach to it from the perspective of a thinking person as well as that of the ill-tempered one; all persons should be considered after all.

Intelligence cannot be brought into question in any setting. For every intelligent person there is someone smarter as well as there being less intelligent people under those of lower intelligence; dare we not in our erring delude ourselves into thinking we fit one of the four categories mentioned. There is great importance in understanding all groups involved in a loquacious imparting of ideas; regardless of intelligence and perhaps more so because of it, points of often unexplored corners of suggestion can be taken into account in order to further knowledge befitting of all involved.

Brainstorming in our society has reached a point where it is no longer about sharing ideas/thoughts, but about refuting everything in the account of a person being right over the other where the mentioned “I” rules the comments at every intersection. “I read somewhere”, “that’s not what I heard”, “can you be more ignorant”, and etcetera are what has become the pragmatic means of palaver subjects where even the professional is challenged by the average person. Respect is no longer part of the approach; which presents a peculiar problem where we all, who are part of society, depend on others in our busy lives. It has been argued that we cannot all be plumbers, or doctors, or botanists. We rely on those professionals to provide clarity in matters where we possess little-to-no knowledge.

To overlay the ignorance we all partake in while on social media, while torpid to knowledge we could be seeking, it bears mentioning this may be part of an endemic problem. Forums, blogs, podcasts, and other means of communicating ideas exist in all forms from the mundane to the scientific. Yet, there is a, I dare say, depravity that clouds what should be a thirst for knowledge, which permeates over all of us. We have reached a state where we allow our feelings to dictate our lives instead of conscious thought. From the person who wants to see the world burn, those who wish to incite thought, those who get a rise out of making others angry, the researcher, and more, we all are part of this magnificent thing we all share: life. For a society that so arbitrarily uses Newton’s third law of motion as a type of mantra, it is at times incomprehensible that knowing that every action will result or be met by a reaction that those who begin something are somehow not prepared for the results of that which they started.

Looking back at a time when there were no cars or phones, forward to television and computers, and later to beepers and compact discs, there is an underlying theme that is very hard to see at times and that is, we knew less yesterday than we do today. Maintaining a thoughtful mouth, silent fingers, absorbing ears, and turbulent machinations can lead to the wonders we have today transformed into the unknown of tomorrow; not while we are busy questioning without knowing, arguing without reason, reacting instead of thinking, and perpetuating it all by sharing. We are the whole of our life, from inaction to action, hate to love, life to death, and an empty brain to what you make of it.

Story: The Mountain and the Flower

 In a universe not our own, a flower sits atop a mountain with a view of an ocean that stretches into the galaxy beyond; a curved beyond enticing to the beauty in the dark. The star-filled skies are but one of the wonders that engulf the night sky with an array of games by celestial bodies just out of reach. As the flower observes the illuminated spectacle in the darkened skies it somehow knows that daytime lurks just beyond the horizon. The planet’s red dwarf always just beyond reach of the cold dark resting under the glimmer of nearby nebulae and dying celestial bodies. A flower, perpetually to watch the dance of planet and red dwarf in their tidally locked minuet, with its partner listening to the silence of motion as they turn once more. 

Vitality lost to that which cannot cease. An end when all is ahead; where a sense of eternity is the death of will, for what would the flower want, or ever so? Tireless, a mound above the lump of soil elevated to the right height for the flower to witness/marvel ever meaningfully into the reaches of a distance never to be travelled. For what would the flower be without the mountain and what arrangement would exist, if not this, if a lack of another were to be?

What is the meaning of the floating pebbles in the distance, ponders the mountain. Can the mountain share its query with the ever resting companion on its summit? If able, what would the message be? Why would an asteroid belt be the wonder to the mountain that the stars are to the flower? Is there a connection between the viewers that allows for juxtaposition, a sense of wonder, of radical thought? Why does the flower live? Why does the mountain not die?

The minuet in full turn reveals, with its contrasting theme, the beauty of yet another marvel beyond the curved veil of its ocean. Here, the flower contemplates a dark hole in the horizon slowly pulling the red dwarf and all of its host nearer to the ravager. During this turn in the dance, there is always a hole of empty darkness in the center of the end of perpetuity surrounded by such a distorted perception of the stars just beyond. How grotesque, to live with such beauty and emptiness abound in what seems but mere moments away in the timeless life of the flower.

I live and I die to this view every moment I return to it. I see but wish for blindness in this eternal struggle between titan and flower. A mountain, a flower, and an ocean in the vastness of a life well lived in the splendor of all that is and becomes not. What will it mean to rest in the darkness the flower observes? To be split from the mountain would surely result in trepidation. What malady would the ocean forgo to be without a captive observer? Would the minuet have meaning without the flower, the mountain, or the ocean, to supplement the splendor of the dance with thoughtful interpretation?

Wonderment and the sense of exploration alive once more, as the contrasting theme and spin takes us back to the splendor of the night-filled sky, the floating pebbles, and the galaxy beyond the curve of the horizon. Such wonderment, affixed the desire to remain in this view suffer they, the ocean, the mountain and the flower.