After Theatine Church

Minimalism is not limited to the reduction of features into its essentiality. To induce the reduction of hues into monochromality is to attach emphasis onto the physical features of the intentioned object, i.e. carvings, depressions, reliefs, and so forth. Thus, such a thing as selective minimalism exists; to apply minimalistic principles to a particular facet of the intentioned object is to bring out the elaborations of the others.

Therefore, to compose an object with the intention of beauty is not necessarily limited to the application of minimalistic principles to all aspects of the intentioned object. Rather, minimalism in selectivity serves to bring out seemingly frivolous details into the forefront without resulting in gaudiness or other offenses of the eye.

Thus we can construct a relationship between minimalism and intricacy similar to the Chinese principles of yin and yang - pure intricacy may impress the soul initially, yet a certain fatigue may be induced with the endlessness of the details painstakingly crafted. Conversely, minimalistic reduction of the intentioned object’s features into its essentiality can involve the generation of experiential beauty, yet the basic human need for flourish is no longer appealed to in this state. Beauty, after all, is partly generated from extravagance just as much as it is formed from frugality.

This is not to belittle the power of the purely intricate nor the purely minimalistic, however - the humanistic taste for extremes will never go away, and thus each state of physicality and aesthetic possesses its own time and place.

However you phrase it, the white church retains its power.

A mistake

I think that bringing me out of Japan was the worst mistake my mother ever made.

Thought Fragment II

Someone else posted that “nationalism is bullshit”.

After some thought, I think I agree with regards to nationalism targeting birthplace. How can you have such love for a place which you had no choice in belonging to? Isn’t that a sort of Stockholm’s Syndrome?

Thought Fragment

Once, I read a Japanese post saying that to defeat someone in an argument is to deconstruct the reality which they have believed so strongly to be authentic. Thus, the act of arguing, attacking, anger itself is to shatter their reality.

I truly believe this.

Where the green starts to bleed into the red

As I thought, a sense of poignancy is truly where I belong when it comes to my own mental state of affairs. The lights seem brighter than before; the sheet of water sliding down the bottom of my glass as I drain it down clings to the somehow not-authentic glass in a desperate attempt to remain liquid and individual.

I don’t understand people. Where they come from, what they see in each other, why they make each other happy. It may be that I simply possess a detachment from societal values, but I thought I lost it. Today, my more cynical self was triggered once more. Or is it a failure to say that it was brought about by one single event? Perhaps it was a combination of recent events that unlocked this colder, sharpened, silent self. Whatever may be the case, the words and the thoughts are sliding down my fingers like the water that slid down my glass - but this time, not desperate. The laborious pacing to and fro in my apartment to push out words from my head and onto the keyboard and into the computer is gone. It is like a wall has been removed; demolished. A metaphorical floodgates that has been released releasing its bounty of muddied waters, held stashed away too long, splashing down into the arid world. May they all drown.

Somehow, something in me has clicked into place. Or is it that something has gone askew? I myself cannot tell. You, who lies outside my radius of the reality I have constructed within my head: tell me, who am I to you? Can you find the words stunning enough, spectacular enough, real enough to convey to me the state of my existence from an external point of view? That is what I am curious to know right now. Because in this world, where people have been reduced to merely barely sentient entities that go about their business which I fail completely to comprehend, it seems I have become the only important thing to myself.

Would you say that is a bad thing? I myself do not know, as is the case with many other things.

I suppose this is what they call “the need to write”.

Know?

There are many things I don’t understand. For instance, I don’t understand why I’ve neglected this blog that I’ve spent so much time and effort into in the past so easily. Yes, academics, work, and other things have jutted into my life, but does that make the throwing away of time that can never be brought back excusable? I believe that this is a trend: perhaps it is the essence of youth all around the world to lack a total sense of the infinite, unquantifiable preciousness of time. Or perhaps it is the total understanding of the sense of the frivolity of the time we spend when we return to the inorganic nothingness from which we came from? Either way, I do not understand.

Another thing I don’t understand is family. What is family? With a confused mother working in Qatar to escape the debts that she has incurred here - a fact that I have learned more about than I would have like to in her absence - and a father generating money from unknown sources in Japan, who do I look to as parents. What are “parents”? Can my experience with my nuclear family be considered a proper “parenthood” and “childhood”? Is transnationalistic familial ties even a good thing? Have we as a human species reached too far beyond our borders, stretching our own psychological, mental, and personal ties so far that they are on the verge of fraying? I do not know. Nor do I think I will ever find out. It is no longer my place, as an individual striving to be freed from the burdens from family - because for me, my “family” is honestly nothing but a burden to me right now - to comment or wonder about what it is about family that makes them so essentially human. Call me senseless; call me heartless. That is my own truth of the matter. Ironic, since this truth is something that I do not understand.

Love is another thing that I do not understand. What is love? Why does it drive so many people so crazy all the time? Is what I am feeling currently love? What does love mean? What are the implications of love? What is love’s purpose? Is love frivolous in the end? Can love be meaningful in the end? Is love even meant to have meaning? Has the usage of the word “love” so mystified the meaning of the sense that the word itself is no longer an accurate representation of the primal sensation that human beings so value? I do not know. I do not know if love can be genuine, or if love has penetrated my own world view to become a tangible existence that I can grasp within my metaphorical heart. My own love is embraced by confusion - but one piercing ray of clarity: I can say for sure, honestly, purely, that I do not love my parents. Pity, yes. Fear, yes. Worry, yes. But love? I’m not sure what that means. So how can I know if I do love in the conventional sense of the word? Is it something that I must figure out on my own? Is there an epiphany waiting for me that will reveal to me all the intricacies of the abstract concept “love” and everything it entails? What is the difference between love, obsession, and fondness? Are they one part of a huge umbrella of emotion; multiple facets of one highly abstract sensation that we, as a species, have failed to identify? With finality, all I can say is that I do not know.

And perhaps I will never know. From where this sadness comes from I will never know. As I kneel on the floor picking up the pieces of my utterly shattered reality, the road ahead remains steeped in confusion, fog, the unknown. And we all know that there is nothing people fear more than the unknown. That is the root of all phobias, I think. Or is it after all? That, I do not know either.

But perhaps a good place to start is to consider the implications of how I will put myself back together. Cracks can be a good thing. Or not. How would I know?

Never have I been more anchored in my life. And somewhere, the wilder side of me longs to melt away all the chains that ground me to the earth, so that I can unfurl my waxed wings and fly, fly away, until the scorching rays of the sun melt away the source of my inspiration and height; until the distant darkness of what appears so close to us on the Earth pushes itself in from the eyes and drowns, drowns the heart until all that remains is silence.

I do not know.