The Problem of Morality

May 7th, 2022

I spent most of my days in the northwest with my eldest brother Ted as a result of my parents contracting the coronavirus. The unfortunate circumstances of my job meant that I was always limited in the length of my visits, and I often had to ration myself amongst my siblings and my parents. It was a strange though I dare not say pleasing result that I was allotted more time with Ted, whom I have always desired to share in company, and whom I perceived shared this mutual comfort of conversation. With a regretful yearning poisoned by fear and hesitancy I would eventually see my mother and father, who both later recovered slowly but surely from the virus, but I'll speak of that another time.

Ted and I, be it through our heritage or shared upbringing, carried on ourselves similar dispositions, although the lore of the family always liked to cast me as the more stubborn and less agreeable of the two. Regardless, we tended to trade philosophies, though I admit that's being a little generous on my part. The reality was that growing up, Ted seemed to come to his revelations first, and these ideas would then trickle down to Andrew and I who, enamored with his words, would take authorship of them amongst our peers. I suppose this stream of belief was not unique to our relationship. After all, do we not all collect our thoughts from others, known and unknown into ourselves?

But perhaps now, detached from him in these latter years, I had some semblance of ideas of my own to share, and we often spent long nights rambling to each other in streams of conscious thought barely articulated and comprehensible and yet piercing deeply within each other's hearts. I speak only for myself of course. I can only hope that in age my words have had a fraction of the effect on Ted the way his words did on me.

On this occasion, spurned on by an interaction on the street, Ted and I trailed off into a discussion about the proper etiquette towards the homeless and eventually into the pitfalls of traditional morality in the context of western Christianity. I found myself shamefully eager that Sam was present to witness us in the midst of these conversations. Apart from the pride in my falsely perceived intellect which I confess is a hideous fault of mine (not to be confused with the "burden of intellect" itself, which would be a ridiculous thing for me to confess), I had a genuine desire for Sam to engage in our discussion or at the very least for Ted to interact with her more directly, such was my deep love and admiration for both of them. But of course, it was within the character of Sam that she paced behind us, quietly, attentively listening, and I was afraid to ask if she was deep in contemplation or slowly losing the thread of our incoherent conversation (I suppose it was a bit of both).

Surrounded by the luminous green of the late spring forest, densely packed in the cool, humid air of the northwest, I had a faint recollection of New York and the fringes of a memory so distant enough as to become indecipherable from a dream. The content of our dialogue was perhaps only meaningful to us at that point in time, and what might now still feel sharp in the torrential swirl of ideas in my contemporary mind will soon fade into obscurity and irrelevance; thoughts incapable of being recalled though they may still reside in me like lost volumes tucked away in the back rooms of a library. What will remain in bursts of lucid detail among other things will be the color green, the rapid trill of a speculated song sparrow darting among the enveloping branches, the company of those I loved amidst the gentle overture of spring mist, and beyond me, jpegs on a hard drive and places temporary.

The Philosophy of Sensitive Design

The evening of May 6, 2022. Drew’s house and a local dive with Andrew.

Sam and I connected with Andrew in the afternoon of our second day in Vancouver, and my brother treated us to a few sequestered locations south of Ted. In conjunction with my exploration of liminal space and dream photography, I was once again interested in digital noise as an aesthetic, and I switched over to shooting entirely on higher ISOs in an attempt to rekindle my desire for spontaneous photography. However, for the moment, I mostly kept my camera sheathed during my time with Andrew until later in the evening.

We reconvened with Ted at his brother-in-law's house, and it was here that I found inspiration in his cat, Viggo. Drew was hosting a party, and once I got the chance to meet Viggo, I took it as an opportunity to remove myself from socializing. I hid in Drew's room and began photographing Viggo, who timidly endorsed my presence. He clearly perceived some kind of activity happening outside the door, but whether he was internally curious, I could not tell. He waltzed about the room casually, not particularly excited or anxious, and it was hard to distinguish if this was his normal disposition or if he was stirred by the party. He was somewhat aloof as all cats are. I did, however, detect a bit of bravery and nobility on his part, fitting of his namesake. I was surprised he heeded me at all, invading his space and photographing him so incessantly.

At some point, I had a desire to share his company with Sam, but my sweetheart was busy participating with the guests outside, and I reflected on my own habitual exhaustion with socializing. It was one of the many things she did to enrich my life that I felt a temperate pressure not without a small bit of comfort to rejoin the party. Luckily for me, Viggo later followed, if only just to investigate the noise. Several other companions would also make appearances: a timid wiener dog I believe was named Charlie and an unnamed cat that only ventured its head outside the threshold of the stairway. Ted and Kara had also brought Reu, who was of course very excited and received plenty of admiration in return, although her energy would slowly drain over the course of the night.

I returned to the party as Sam was discussing the role of design in a culture that was more ingrained in social issues and which had a larger platform to express dissent. We later participated in a more elaborate (some might say convoluted) game of charades, of which I expressly refused to join, but through a collective pressure and a bit of internal pushing, I yielded. In that moment and more so later, I wondered why I so desired to avoid such direct social contact despite knowing quite clearly how it poisoned my happiness. It was an irrational stubbornness akin to my tantrums as a child when I would refuse to learn the alphabet. In that righteous and effective stubbornness was formed an internal, selfish pride that became difficult to exorcise. I likened myself to a man who was resolute and uncompromising, and had firmly made up his mind, being an intellectual of high thoughts.  And much worse still, I sensed an unadmitted desire to remain isolated and ostracized and thus find sinful comfort in my sadness.

Such were these dialogues which spun too quickly in my mind so that in a sense I thought nothing in particular other than a resigned sadness and self-loathing. But I was indeed happy when I joined the game and I was actually quite good at the charades, although most of our team's success was the fortune of drafting one analytical and overly-competitive guest as is often the case with party games.

Once again, my eye was drawn to the mundane and the overlooked elements of the party, and occasionally to Viggo, who nestled himself stealthily in the corner of the room and watched the party-goers with an intense eagerness.

You'll Be There Too

May 5th through 7th. In the early hours of the morning between the walls of perception.

As those under the roof of Ted and Kara one by one fell under the soft shadow of the night's shroud, my fear of sleeping kept me vigilant, and I once again wandered the halls in the late hours, an intruder and a witness to the spirits that lingered in the walls and above my head. I was joined in company by Juneau and Nellie, who, unaffected by my presence, darted to and fro gathering letters from others' dreams. Winston lay slumped in the corner of the couch and watched, the late years of his life weighing on him as did the weariness of desired slumber on his body. Reu was beyond any of us, on the other side, but her body lay soft and still in the sleep of her cage. She was joined by Ted and Kara and Sam as well. Each warm breath shuffled across the ceilings of the house to meet each other, but they were each out of reach, and their dreams remained separate and lonely.

The moments that I existed, living in this state between the walls of perception, were intermittent. I was lulled here by the day itself and only for a little while before the night finally claimed me. The fear I felt falling asleep was the same I feared in death, and I fought it with every last muscle in my body, its hooks digging in my skin. I was afraid of the spirits that might exist on the other side of the wall; I saw them now, but only on the boundaries of my eye. Juneau and Nellie saw them too, and Winston as well, although he would never admit it to me. The blanket of sleep twirled in my pupils and my eyelids dragged. I tried in vain to claw my mind out of that delirious state. And I was afraid, more afraid that those spirits were only flecks on my brain. And in the waking hours, I was afraid that I couldn't recall at all how I had fallen asleep. How clearly I could measure the hours I was gone by the minutes marked on my phone, knowing that I could barely perceive them in those periods of anesthesia.

The children of the lion took pity on me and in the early hours of the morning they awoke me. I felt the nustle of Winston's soft wet nose on my forehead followed shortly by the flick of his tail as he circled my frame. He was asking to leave my cell and carry out his final parcels before the morning birds began their dawn chorus. I arose from the bed and opened my door, and the elderly cat sauntered out into the dark hallway. I sat on the soft carpet floor and gazed at the shuttered window as the neon glow of the early light seeped under the blinds and around the edges of its frame. I peered outside and saw my car parked against the curb of the street, the overhanging light radiating on its foggy windshields. In the sharp cold air of the morning, among the cascading calls of the finches, I saw more clearly than I did on the other side of the wall, and more clearly than I ever would in the waking world.