I've gotta feva, and the only cure is...

And now, for something completely different. On a bus ride to Nampa, Idaho from Bellingham, I asked some teammates to give me a theme or topic to try to write a rap about. You see, I had bought an album from K’naan and was so impressed by his craftsmanship that I too, as John Dorian would put it, wanted to play with words. I figured the best exercise would be to receive a random topic. My teammates thought it would be clever to offer me “being lovesick, but with actual symptoms of being sick.” At first disheartened, I then boldly took on the task, the results of which are displayed below. The rhythm is bad, but I’m proud o’ me rhymes, yo.

I'm burnin up/ I've got a feva
I don't exaggerate/ I'm not a deceiva
so listen up/ become a believa
I say this is real/ and this is true
I got an infection/ brought on by thoughts a you
my blood's pumpin' faster/ to kill the invader
lettin' you close/ my biggest failure
and now I'm breathin harder than Darth Vader
Turnin' way greener than that Ralph Nader
they're outta control/ my swollen lymphnodes
nose is runnin' out on parole
hearing sounds like Depeche Mode
white cop cells cruising patrol
brain punchin' emergency codes
cause she thought it'd be slick
that scrawny girl Cheryl
to see me rap bout being lovesick

So, why include this in my blog? Well, we’d be really lost if we didn’t have symptoms. Symptoms, much like pain, let us know something is wrong. The difference lies in that symptoms are the effects of the body fighting, and pain is the body letting the brain know that it is being damaged and something should be done. These two mechanisms often collide, however. What to do when the symptoms cause pain? The body needs to fight, but the nerves are picking up distress signals. We are spurred to action, to relieve the symptoms and consequently the pain. Or as the case may be, we are spurred to inaction, to rest and wait it out.

It is interesting, that no matter which version of myself I am portraying (all versions are legitimate, of course), in the physical world the symptoms and/or pain will effect me equally, and this may be evident to others likewise regardless of with whom I am interacting (classmates, family, friends). But it is in that other realm that these corporal concerns stop short, and the only effects may be what the symptoms have on my sanity.

Sickness is contagious, it goes from person to person. What does my self have to fear from interacting on the internet? Is my internet avatar not only safe from the plague of real life but also immune to distresses in the internet world? Nay, I say. (I will disregard computer viruses.) Given that my avatar has no real internet body in which it can ground itself into an internet world of boundaries and laws, and since it is just a mental projection, I theorize that it is that more susceptible to the mental projections of others. When I am not careful, these influences will and do trickle their way to me, the source. Things are typed without the customary layers of filtering because there is far less fear of things being traced to the source, but in actuality this is the opposite, it is a false sense of security.

These raw thoughts perpetuate themselves, go on to influence others, and will in turn reach the source in the form of changed reality, changed interactions. I might argue that it could easily be a bad thing, since I feel that thoughts should and need to be weeded, trimmed, and refined to the sophistication complementary to our dignities as human beings. Degenerate thoughts are unfiltered thoughts, and when they become more and more the norm, so people start to feel it’s more and more alright to lower the fences and bars. We start to think of the world and especially people differently, for the worse, and the worst is that our minds, the source of our language, have answer to no symptoms of their own, no nervous symptom to warn that something is wrong.

Follow conspiracy theories, our minds wide open to propaganda beyond that of what we realize...

Anti-resurrection

An interesting thought that I have not typed until now: vampirism is an anti-resurrection. In the Christian idea of resurrection souls go to heaven and bodies rot in the ground. With vampires, the soul is trapped or absent (my best guess, anyway) and it is the body that continues its animation (anima- soul, spirit, breath in Latin). Whereas the Christian ideal is to proceed to heaven, and the Roman Catholic teaching that souls in heaven pray for those on earth, vampires instead prey on those on earth, cursing them to a hellish fate rather than blessing them on their own way to heaven. To be in heaven is communion with God, the vampire is repelled by Godliness. God rocks, vampires suck. Nothing too ground breaking, but I found it interesting that since vampirism seems to be the exact opposite of what people would hope for after death, it must be what is most dreaded, and perhaps impurely, guiltily appealing: to be driven by desire and the primal rather than a higher and harder calling. It seems a consensus in a lot of Vampire literature, however, that it is indeed no way to live, die, or to be resurrected.