× epiphanies mindfulness self illusion free will levity pain logic code all

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finding nothing is
nothing like what it's like to
not find anything

not every port will
see you through the storm and be
safe when the storm ends

even the concept
of mental models is just
a mental model

the stories we tell
to ourselves about our lives
are not always true

it is not about
making great art; it's about
art making life great

something will kill you
in the end - don't let that thought
kill you before then

living in time is
strange to me, and it's strange that
I find that so strange

what's strange is that it's
not strange because it is strange
and we don't notice

it has always been
like this, in that it's never
been like this before

may your happiness
not depend on life always
being just pleasant

equanimity
nothing harshes this mellow
learn to be at peace

when thoughts emerge, feel
the temptation to be moved
observe them unmoved

the goal is to have
no more goals; the trick is to
use no tricks at all

can I sit with this
desire to narrate life
and not act on it?

any clinging to
the ephemeral ends with
empty arms grasping

the experience
of experience is all
I experience

the experience
of no experience is
hard to imagine

if what you seek is
an end to all seeking then
you are truly lost

until I noticed
I didn't even notice
I didn't notice

this is the story
of refraining from stories
hear the silence now

this is the moment
that I've been concerned about
all my life; thrive now

finding this moment
what else have I been missing
while tangled in thought?

when am I alive
if planning and memories
fill every moment?

when silence fails, try:
brevity, simplicity,
and parsimony

when clarity feels
so clear that I'm transparent
simplicity reigns

perceptions of the
outside world, perceptions of
thought, simply arise

trapped in the head trips
we mistake those head trips for
our actual lives

when locality
as a thought form disappears
reality floats

this is pure torment:
ongoing mental chatter
drowning out the void

this is paradise:
the quiet of my own mind
simply observing

The "I" I think lives
my experience is just
experience too.

because self is a
thought, or an overtone to
thought, it vanishes

when awareness is
filled with perception alone
self can not be found

self is narratives
death is decomposition
stories unravelled

this first person voice
which appears in consciousness
likes to think it's me

I am a story
I tell myself ~ silence now
reveals clarity

stop the narrative
find solace in the silence
transcend that small self

when my mind is rapt
in the current moment, self
ceases to exist

this subjective life,
mysterious to its core,
thoughts emerge from where?

why did I do that?
even I can't be certain
about my motives

I cannot choose this:
the extent to which a choice
feels volitional

volition is just
one of many overtones
arising with thought

what authors my thoughts?
my consciousness receives them
whole from deep within

try to think a thought
before your inner voice speaks
I can not do this

the you you accept
as you is that voice inside -
you hear, not author

subjectivity
confirms determinism
when observed closely

determinism
is not fatalism's twin -
actions do matter

the me who chooses
my choices is not the me
who I think I am

no one else chooses
my choices; it's just me, but
not my conscious self

my conscious mind does
not make decisions; it is
informed once they are made

despite how it seemed
my mind was simply misplaced
not lost completely

forgetting that I
am able to remember -
that thought vanishes

it shows poor judgment
to judge yourself so harshly
mellow out a bit

take seriously
your moral duty to be
not so serious

be at peace knowing
you will never be at peace
this is life - just laugh

don't let distraction
distract you from focusing
on your distractions

Dear Captain Ahab,
sometimes white whales just happen
learn to live with it

I would rather be
not thinking I'd rather be
thinking something else.

you are mistaken
it's not that I am bitter;
I'm just well seasoned

I'm American
what gadget can I purchase
to solve my problems?

see hedonistic
habituation at play -
I still want more toys

thirty years ago
no bra was sexy - now it's
a tripping hazard

composing verses
about the need for silence
laughing at myself

liberally apply
patience and sense of humor
be kind to yourself

I will be screaming,
"Rosenhan seventy three!"
from my strait jacket

my only problem
is that I think I have a
problem when I don't

I'm feeling profound
success habituation.
There's still more to do.

find yourself losing
yourself until laughter is
all that's left of you

a life well lived is
not predicated on the
absence of all pain

heed the hero's call:
rip bravado's thin veneer,
weep with tenderness

with lighthearted joy
find the needless suffering
purge it from your life

when you must resist
that which I have never craved
moral praise is yours

fear is an illusion
the future remains unknown
plan, but abide now

the paradox of
placebos: strong delusions
become what is real

from my point of view
an effective placebo
is the cure I sought

corticosteroids
set brevity on fire
with manic mayhem

brevity lost to
prednisone's verbosity
rediscovered here

brevity returns
in packets of seventeen
syllables like these

I must learn to tame
this raging desperation
patience is long gone

suffering and pain
are never commensurate
when at peace with truth

this rumination
reflecting on reflecting
is its own problem

endless recursion
tangles the mind in itself
laugh about the void

rumination's end
is this moment lived fully
mindful and awake

here in my body
only ten percent of cells
are mine, are human

my microbiome
owns ninety five percent of
active genes in me

biofeedback is
quantifying my mellow
please, friend, don't harsh it

what freezes mellow?
ontological fantods
howl at me like ice

this breath connects me
to every breath since my birth
and each until death

before my first breath
mother's each breath links backwards
to mother's first breath

follow these linked breaths
the chain stretches back in time
to the dawn of life

with each breath you take
savor that true connection
sense that majesty

the end of pain marks
a pragmatic forgiveness
love transforms the harm

find the safest place
it is very often right here
where you are right now

fear is the flavor
of some anticipated
distant suffering

the uncertainty
may fuel that powerful fear
sit at peace with it

do not fear that which
may never enter your life
plan without that pain

if, in this moment,
I'm inured to what is real
past worries were amiss

all the fears I've felt
were about this moment now
I am just fine

when fear overwhelms
take refuge in the present
it is all that's real

soften those demands
not striving for more progress
is itself progress

motion causes pain
agony in every step
migraines force stillness

vampire migraine
ghostly pale, light is fatal
stay still in darkness

migraine altered states
have no street value - money
can't buy or sell them

sudden exhaustion
as if my brain were on fire
and spent all its fuel

rejoining the world
after migraine induced sleep
I am lost, strange, warm

this migraine malaise
settles like fog obscuring
all that might be clear

lost in migraine haze
the world is mired in fuzz
what was I saying?

contrast youth with age
all body and not much mind
time tips that balance

hoping can distract
from the real work of coping
with life just as it is

become inured to
the reality of death
this is true wisdom

teen age and mid-life:
my body never behaved
quite like that before

giving up all hope
to embrace reality
is life affirming

beware your own mind
if you care about the truth
don't fall for its lies

notice how sweetly
fictional tales seduce you
comfort is not truth

prefrontal cortex
is willing, however the
amygdala's weak

to be a skeptic
is to finely calibrate
your bullshit filters

fallacy phantoms
distorting all we perceive
haunt us with strangeness

shots then autism
post hoc ergo propter hoc
inoculate them

that we do not know
is the hardest thing to see
belief feels so safe

sunk cost fallacy
devotion to failed efforts
wastes time and money

no evidence here
argument from ignorance
some god takes credit

wishful thinking fills
gaps in our understanding
ignorance breeds hope

we ignore data
when the facts fail to support
what we hope is true

we attend closely
to evidence which supports
the truth we long for

that which is sacred
deserves our close scrutiny
and sharp attention

living life well past
two standard deviations
savoring the tails

sample size of one
zero degrees of freedom
what will be will be

in this average life
where the mean can be so mean
take refuge in tails

a skeptic's life is
immersion in emergence
taste complexity

ideology
often obscures perception
hiding what is true

ideology:
this is what my tribe believes
do not question it

moral fortitude
keeps belief in proportion
to the evidence

skeptical ethics
celebrates uncertainty
which softens all hearts

all arguments are
tautological except
for those which are not

two ints and a String
walk into a code review
scrutinized to bits

dead-end rabbit holes
cause dents in my desk where I
bang my head all day

if the code you called
does not respond, let it go,
clear the cache, be still

who knew what havoc
a carriage return might wreak
bad, bad, char thirteen

between the try and
the catch a coder's visions
will shatter or hatch

never check in code
on a Friday afternoon
or when you're tired

that code snip should be
"NOT IN" not "in" otherwise
the logic is wrong

swimming in these code
snippets, I'm led to the place
where nothing follows

I have spent my days
in ecstatic coding haze
transcending logic

it's a day of much
technical difficulty
and little progress

in this script you'll hear
the sound of one hand typing
thanks, AutoHotKey

so, obviously
it's not something obvious
causing the problem

just take this import
one field at a time, patience
at each line of code

in order for the
code to run, it must first be
written, compiled

the code will run as
it was written; if you want
something else, write that

the code may be well
written, but you get nothing
until you call it

after death, the bugs
you did not fix will become
someone else's task

gremlins planting bugs
help pollinate this software
code changes blossom

swimming in these code
snippets, I'm led to the place
where nothing follows

the open parens,
number nine's alter ego,
begs for zero's close

that logic still haunts
all developers who dared
to comprehend it

in vb there is
no null ~ there's just nothing and
also not nothing

much sighing happens
while waiting for localhost
doldrums of the void

I sit and think and
type until the pain is extreme:
this is binge coding.

many suffer from
solitude anxiety ~
programmers, rarely

I show up and I
do what they tell me to do
and they send paychecks.

if flowers thrive on
bullshit, I too can survive
and thrive at this job

this is what spills out
when minds get locked in meetings
and crack wide open

if it isn't an
intermittent null pointer,
coder, be at peace

progress is moving
to the next error message;
one line at a time

taking it one line
of code at a time is the
way of wise coders

this machine virus
haunts us like covid-19
will this ever end?

confusion on the
part of developers is
not to be ignored

communication
skills include writing haiku
for fellow coders

weekend push? hot fix?
stored procedures? binaries?
these builds fog the mind

I was looking for
my cursor. This delayed my
meeting un-muting.

concatenate and
minify and obfuscate
serve it up like that

the first noble truth
of software development:
change is a constant

constants may never
change but change is a constant
in the world of code

I have spent my days
in ecstatic coding haze
transcending logic

haiku and code © 2012-2023 cynzu