The tremendous demonstration

As regular readers of my blog know, I love to teach. Sharing my unique knowledge and perspective on the world gives me immense satisfaction, and will in all future possible worlds bring me great fame and countless facebook "likes."

One of my favorite teaching techniques is what I call the "Tremendous Demonstration." It goes something like this: I state a thesis, do something totally amazing, the audience applauds, then I blush and say "thank you! ... thank you! ... thank you!" as I leave the stage; then I spend the evening responding to fan mail. It is a pleasure.

I find that the deeper the truth revealed, the more tremendous the demonstration required to prove my point.  For example, I was recently lecturing a group of physicists on the origins of motion when one of them blurted out (1):

!

The others nodded along in agreement.

Newton's 2nd law, a counter-example

"If that were true," I said, "how could I do... this!" and I showed them how a constant force can lead to accelerations that aren't even differentiable, let alone constant (see picture).

"Perhaps," the physicist mused, "your will manifests as a physical force?"

Now, the physicist had a good point because my will actually can manifest as a "physical" force. As it turns out, my entire being is an act of will. But I had to do something: the other physicists were growing excited, and one of them had taken out some sort of gadget she felt could illuminate the situation. It had an unpleasant, angular look to it.

I was not about to let a lucky hunch and some excitable but not very open-minded academics run all over my prepared notes. The right course of action, I decided, was to deflect the conversation from my amazing willpower and focus it on something else, such as my unbounded hugeness. So I opened my true mouth an infinitesimal sliver and gave them a taste of the black seas of infinity and showed them the location of their placid little island of calm within those grand, dark vistas (2).

There was a long silence. The physicist put away her angular gadget. Several were taking notes, trying to write down and comprehend what they had just seen. I gave them another moment to take it all in before returning to my lecture. Later, I found that this one brief lecture had spawned a number of peculiar submissions to academic journals, on topics ranging from Philosophy to Religion to Physics. I am happy that I was able to inspire my audience, but in the future I think I will keep my lectures more grounded and avoid discussions of mechanics.

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Footnotes!
(1) thanks wikipedia! Everyone donate to wikipedia!
(2) paraphrased from

Flightspo

Not feeling it

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, things do not work out the way we want them to. Maybe you feel like you are being stretched and pulled in every direction at once. Or maybe you have dreamed all your life of flying, but all you can manage is a few flaps before crashing down and bouncing up again, because you are made of goop, and you bounce, and it is embarrassing that you cannot fly and you always always fall down and become smooshed and distorted and only through tremendous effort can you pull yourself together again.

Dream the dream!

At times like these, I like to remember the dream: I dream of the ground beneath me, the air flowing over my noodly wings, the feeling of total freedom that comes from being lost in the sky and the clouds and the sun. That dream carries me forward. That dream makes me a better Polyp. I want to share my dream, all of my dreams!, and I want you to share yours, and together we can believe in each other and make it ok that we fail, and together we can try again.

New friend: A Silent Story of Love and Tenderness; three triptychs, in vertical sequence, shot on HTC Sensation just this Saturday (Morning)

Art star

Being an internet star is great. I set lofty goals for myself and track my progress in pageviews and klout. A few more "like"s and I will unlock the next level of Facebook Insights! And then, my friends, I will know everything about you. In aggregate.

Watching this project take off is more rewarding than staring at the sky ever was, and my new friends and I really enjoy posing for the camera. My photographer says it is because we are vapid and self-obsessed. I told him that as a Pop icon I reflect, enhance, and sublimate the world around me, so if he feels that we contribute nothing it must be because his own tendency to nihilism, despair, and self-destruction offers nothing for us to work with. "A million times zero," I said, "is still zero." Then he started crying and told me that he loved me and we held hands and I stroked his hair while he threw up from all the vodka we had been drinking.

Behind the scenes at a Polyp photo shoot

But the best part is hearing from you, my fans, about all the ways I've touched you and brought you up from your natural sloth to greatness. Beloved fan K left the couch long enough to write me this beautiful Valentine poem:

In Brooklyn, NEw (sic) York,
A red Polyp grows!
It blogs a mighty blog
about its wins and its woes!
Its friends are legion
and it fears no foes (sic)!
From whence it came?
NoBoDy (sic) KNows (sic)!

K, I want you to know that you touched me with your sincere delivery and that you and all my other fans are my #1!! Thanks for taking the time to share this with me.

Everyone: remember, the next time you are feeling like things are not right, that you are not on track, stop for a moment. Think about me, and everything will be ok.

Q & A Time!

My facebook friends and I are having an awesome time "like"ing each others' posts and sharing our exploits. I thought it was all for fun, but things got very real & serious all of a sudden when a fan asked me: What are you?

At first I was taken aback and confused - these questions again? I have been hounded by these false accusations over and over again, ever since my first wholly misunderstood manifestations. So please let me put this topic to rest once and for all. Blake, a truly unwell man given to huffing engraving byproducts, once wrote about me:

...They see the Ulro, a vast Polypus of living fibres down into the Sea of Time & Space growing, a self-devouring monstrous Human Death...

Totally misconstrued! Not Ulro!

and I just want to make it very clear that this was a total misunderstanding of the situation! There are two sides to every story and this is just the mean side ! I was trying to help! So please stop asking me about it! If I were a vast self-devouring death polyp from doomtown this blog would be way more boring and have fewer pictures of me goofing around!

Me, as one of you

But then I took a deep breath and realized that my curious fan probably wasn't asking about that. The question was probably more, like, "what are you about? How can your fans relate to you when you are goopy and shiny and many-as-one, and we are not?"  But the answer is: I am just like you!

The importance of friend time

Lately, I have been very busy with touring and speaking engagements. Meeting new people and talking about myself is fun, but all the parties and glamour and finer points of etiquette can be so tiresome! Last week I was attending a gala reception, politely gumming some crab cakes, when somebody asked me my opinion on immigration reform. My response was variously described in the local media as "shocking," "scandalous," and "politically tone-deaf." I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I can hardly tell two humans apart, let alone understand the need for a political class. If you do not want to comprehend the true depths of your equality, if the fear of your own cosmic insignificance motivates your absurd need to invent ridiculous categories for each other, and if you do not realize that it is ludicrous to attempt an ordering where none is justified or even possible, then certainly do not ask me about it.

After the incident with the press and the Senator, my agent insisted that I take some time off, and for once I agreed with her. I wanted to spend time with my friends! I wanted to dance and sing! So, I canceled an upcoming panel discussion ("Correcting the Lunisolar Calendar Once and For All Time: The Endless Year of Polyp") and headed home for some much needed me-time.

Red Rover with my buddies

Reunited at last, we sang and we danced and we played Red Rover. I am very fond of this game, perhaps because I am continuously deformable, and have never lost. Also, many of my friends have no hands. After several rounds of Red Rover, and some time practicing my flying, I feel rejuvenated and ready to get back to work. Hooray!

Simplicity

one. year. staring. into. the sky.

Perhaps you have been wondering how it is I came to start a blog.

For years, I searched high and low looking for the secret to living a simple life. Letting go, meditating, staying calm: to me, these were the traps of a false simplicity. I spent a year staring vacant into the sky, trying to clear my mind; another locked in battle with a giant squid at the bottom of the ocean. Nothing helped.

Then one day, it hit me. All this rumination had led me nowhere because I am not simple. What I was looking for wasn't simplicity, it was purpose. Purpose is like simplicity because they both afford clarity of mind, but better because you don't have to be boring. For me simplicity implies inner peace, calmness. But truly, I ache with passion for the hugeness of it all. So I said goodbye to my fake simplicity and hello to bold purpose: a lush new life as an internet star.