{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Why Holden Caulfield would probably think the Internet’s full of phonies, too

Dominic Basulto wrote:

If his fictional character Holden Caulfield were to spend 24 hours on the Internet, he’d be convinced that we’re all “phonies.” Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o would likely be one of the leading contributing factors to that conclusion. Te’o, the Heisman Trophy candidate at the center of an elaborate Internet hoax around his dying imaginary girlfriend, appears to be a modern version of the phonies that Holden sought to escape at his prep school by taking the train to New York.

The social media revolution once promised to make our digital selves more “real.” But is it possible that, instead, it’s just making it easier to become the type of “phony” that Holden hated?

Today’s Internet phonies no longer use social media as a tool for self-exploration and discovery — they use it as a “crummy” public relations tool for broadcasting a carefully curated version of their lives to others.

My parents would not let me be. All I need is a small dark corner to hide in,but that is too much to ask for.They can have everything,even the dark corner.

As I was reading these words in my little corner in a small room in the corner of a small "apartment-house," my mother was blabbering on and on about the grocery list.   Some government funds to be invested in a little food security ... gonna be smoking from a (BLACK) pack of class A "Natural American Spirit" cigarettes today, for sure.

I do not envy your position, my friend.  At least I am passed the point of no return, so to speak - my age, that is ... my skinny gruffness, my rotten teeth.  This lets me off the hook.   There is nothing I have to offer a woman except for a worldview that might not be very conducive to her mental health. 

There was an elderly (over 100 years old) woman here in Amerika who survived "the virus."   She was shown clinging happily to a package of Vanilla Oreo Cookies, her favorite.   I thought of what you had said about a grandmother of yours ... how, even up to the very bitter end, she was saying YES, YES, oh god! yes! to the cookies, to life, to time and sugar.

At least when I say YES, please! YES, to Tobacco, the tobacco is supposedly bringing me that much closer to death.   The Health Fanatics of Wellness will never be able to convince me of the benefits of longevity.   

Good Old Annoying Mom is still talking about the groceries ... it never stops ... Puppets of the Will-to-Live --- we are these worms, these tubes ... If I am out there on the road, and my bowels should desire to ooze out, I will reflect upon raul's recently posted video.  How can we not find ourselves ridiculous?

We do not belong to ourselves.  We belong to the Great Black Swine that moves our appetites and our bowels.  Some find the whole thing so utterly glorious, while we, like Ernest Becker, have not developed the capacity to deceive ourselves about the horror of being this cancer with a conscience.

Oh, Holden, may your reflections find their way to a future audience in India!   You will have a cult following in the distant future.  You will be like Ligotti to them, leading them to the few who could not help but come to similar conclusions as your Siddharta.

Write now while you are living, or forever hold your peace, as they say.

For now, I must venture out as a worm among worms to snatch up my daily bread from the Lord the Market Place.   It is what it is, and I can neither be ashamed nor enthusiastically grateful.

PEACE.   Keep writing, please. Thanks ahead of time.

PS:  There is something weird on my end of the Internet.  Some of my posts seem to end up in limbo ... I will have to worry about that later.   The willful woman is pecking ... and I'm like Kafka in the Matamorphosis ... it is my duty to crawl out of the hive to collect our future poop.

I found myself singing a quiet, toned down version of My Way [-punk- sex-pistols version] mixed with Couldn't Get it Right.  I can't get it right because there is no one right way, and I suppose anything we blurt out, however it comes out, is the spirit of punk rock, after all.

And yet, the gort-in-me-as-great-black-swine-Will-to-Live does like Pecan Sandies [cookies], as did my paternal grandfather.  How much of our own existence do we allow ourselves to experience "honestly," as eater-of-food, as Strange Thing with appetites and anxieties ? …



All the stories have been told
Of kings and days of old,
But there's no England now.
All the wars that were won and lost
Somehow don't seem to matter very much anymore.
All the lies we were told,
All the lies of the people running round,
They're castles have burned.
Now I see change,
But inside we're the same as we ever were.

Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Living this way, each day is a dream.
What am I, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?

Now another century nearly gone,
What are we gonna leave for the young?
What we couldn't do, what we wouldn't do,
It's a crime, but does it matter?
Does it matter much, does it matter much to you?
Does it ever really matter?
Yes, it really, really matters.

Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?

Now another leader says
Break their hearts and break some heads.
Is there nothing we can say or do?
Blame the future on the past,
Always lost in blood and guts.
And when they're gone, it's me and you.

Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line,
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?
Living on a thin line.

If it is any consolation to you, Holden, please understand that the only thing that a handful of people in the USA would read from me is a kind of confession about how "my way of thinking" has proven to yield an uneventful life.   I don't mind not being taken so very seriously as this helps me not take myself too seriously.

You know my secret mission is to leave some very detailed modules for the solitary study of mathematics.  Whenever my mind is calm and stable enough, I peck away at this humble task.  I incorporate modern C++ programming when suitable and educationally novel.   I would never expect to be acknowledged as a great mind nor a great man, for I am neither.   It is ok to be exactly who one is.   There will be someone, maybe not in "the New India," but someone somewhere who will appreciate your honest appraisals. 

You might try writing in the spirit of your distant ancestors, the ones Schopenhauer was so impressed with, using your eyes and mind, articulating what they might have to say about the nature of our existence at this time.  The situation is all-too-ironic!  Please nurture that dark and bitter sense of humor.

Don't let the bastards grind you down!  The situation you explain has caused me great confusion over the years, the disparity between what one may romanticize about certain "peoples," and then witnessing the vulgar traits spawned by materialism.  Although, as you relate the story of Suryakant Nirala and his A Life Misspent,  which I am interested in exploring, there may be a way to approach "the literary world" in the comic tone ... with an extra dash of bitterness, of course, by all means!

UPDATE:  After doing some research on the text, the dreaded topic of sexuality rears its head.   I would have to overcome the fear of that topic - as if one might be "contaminated" simply by reading about it.   I am interested in the subject of caste systems and the phenomenon of "the untouchables" in India, but the other taboo subject intimidates me.  That is, I may have been influenced by homophobic culture ...

I would have to approach the book with the utmost maturity, I suppose.

1.I mentioned the book merely in passing. Please do not feel obliged to read it.

2.At your end,the book is selling for about $4.99 and at my end,for merely, $1.6.

3.If you really wish to read it,then, I would send you a soft copy-but please do not feel compelled to read it.I do not want you to spend even a single cent unnecessarily.

4.Some people have speculated that Nirala was homosexual but that is all it is -mere speculation.

5.Furthermore, he was primarily a poet and not a prose writer.That might not be his best work.I will try to translate his best know poem called Memories of Saroj(Saroj was his widowed daughter who died very young,leaving him crestfallen).

This is how his poem ends( This is a rough translation):

( The poet addresses the dead daughter,speaking of dead daughters...I wonder what Schopenhauer would have to say.)

Did you leave so early so as to plead* with God and beseech HIM,on behalf of your father, to make an exception for your father...,so that when he arrives at his appointed hour of death,weak and clumsy,to cross River Styx, and would have no coins to offer to the ferryman because of his poverty...and would be stranded...
having obtained special permission from God( because you sacrificed your life to obtain it)...you will banish the ferryman, take my feeble hands in yours and row the boat yourself and take my soul across the river...

*Like the ancient Greeks,the Hindus  believe that the soul is required to cross a river after death.In Hinduism, it is believed that only the son can perform the last rites of the father and only after the said last rites,can the soul  cross the river.The poet had no sons..just a daughter..also because of his poverty he had no money to facilitate the last rites properly.


6. I remembered him, because I read this poem when I was in grade 10, it was deeply moving then,as it is now and I remembered doing that because I was trying to recall a time when I was rather good at maths. But then, my father,as I told you, ordered me to drop the subject.I earnestly wished to attend a great university  then.




7.Now, I do not wish to attend the Harvard University any longer, only the Hauser University.

8. Sometimes I like to write like Wittgenstein, some have speculated that he was a homosexual,but I am not interested in that. What interests me is the suspicion that I might be on the spectrum ,like him, of Asperger's.

9.The only kind of sexuality that I wish to possess is asexuality.