Atheist vs Anti-theist

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hey, name-calling as an argument online ... what an interesting new development.

Maybe when you can formulate a cogent line of reasoning to support your point, you'll get more attention from me.  As of now, I'm not going to feed your complex.

Say, do you have any of your works online?

I think you know what I mean when I say that part of creating art is not irrational. This means to say, the fact that you allow it to influence your work is rational in itself.

Sorry for calling names, though. Sometimes I get frustrated when people are being to focused on only one part of the problem failing to see what the other might mean overall. It's hard to transmit clearly what you mean over the internet for it would take a very long time if when the person you talk to is bound on understanding everything in only one (subjective) way. Rather, you should try making sense of what the interlocutor really means by paying attention to context.

I haven't published online. I actually haven't written anything in a long time. That doesn't necessarily mean I don't know what I'm talking about. I hope you'll agree, given what I just said above.

I am curious as to what you have published though, since you brought it up.

Well, I ain't a published writer, meaning I don't make money doing it -- which may or may not be a critique on my skill, you can run with that as you see fit. I was talking about the creative act itself, though, not the career aspect of creativity. I'll drop a chapter from a book I wrote in the hide tag at the bottom of this post, though, so you can see that I'm not talking out my ass. I'll also link to an original composition/performance, and some other stuff I've done. I've never been published as a writer. I have gigged as a musician, and I won a small scholarship for art out of high school about 541 years ago.

In terms of this discussion, I'm not focused only on one thing, anyway.  I'm not saying art cannot use rationality -- of course it can, and moreover, should.  However, it should also make equal use of the irrational emotions in the moment, in my view, in order to give the piece its own stamp. I'm not saying art is completely irrational.  I'm saying art makes good use of the irrational at times.

In that sense, irrationality is useful, and doesn't poison the basket.  That was my point.

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25. Possum Kingdom

.....The dam stood to our right, huge, grey, imposing, slotted cleanly into its cleft, and where it joined the rock one could see no seam, as if its edges ran clean into the bones of the abutting hills.  The May sun had yet to reach the top of the sky or the bottom of our notch; the day was still young.  And as it grew older, it would be getting hot.  We'd just finished with five days of record rainfall, as if my home state were seeing us back to Iran with a deluge.  Once the day did heat up, it would be mighty humid, too.
.....The four of us got busy unloading canoes from the trailer-rack, and fetching supplies from the bed of the truck which brought us up here.  The old and abused Ford F-100, which might once have been dark green, was now the color of the Brazos River we were getting ready to canoe, a dull clear olive with tan foam scudding upon the eddies.
....."Beautiful day for it," said the driver who'd brought us out twenty-four miles from the rental shack.  "And the river's high, too.  Y'all picked a good day for a trip."
.....My cousin Coon -- James Norris was his given name, "Coon" was the cross he had to bear -- eyeballed the river cautiously.  "I'd rather have rafts, what with the water this high.  It's bound to get quick if'n the river narrows."
....."And that it certainly does, young man," answered the driver cheerfully as he coiled up a nylon line, "about ten miles downstream."
....."Bailey Canyon, ain't it?" my dad asked.
....."That'd be the one, yes sir.  You do want to watch out around there.  Even in normal stage it's got some funny currents in it."  He slammed the tailgate home on the old Ford, saw that it didn't catch, and slammed it again. "And because that's mainly overhang, when the river floods, it gets skinny, and fast, too."
....."You been there, Johnny?" my uncle asked.
....."No," Dad answered, "I just remember seeing an old Corps of Engineers map with that marked a little downstream from the dam," and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Possum Kingdom Dam, which managed to be gloomy even in the broadening morning.
....."Ain't nothin' to sweat," said the driver, "so long as you're well away from the banks.  Some funny shore current there, and as like as not to drag you onto some rocks."  I helped Dad launch our canoe, and lashed it to a treetrunk with a bowline-and-loop.  "Y'all check your emergency kits?" the driver asked.
....."It's there," said my Uncle Rip with a grin.  I checked the one in our boat discreetly, standing knee-deep in the bracing water.  It was there, the emergency pack, and probably had been there since Christ rode a mule through Jerusalem, to tell by the looks of it -- the latches were rusted pretty well shut, and the stenciled Red Cross had faded to a sickly pink.  The high-impact plastic had apparently been tested by impacts and found wanting, cracked at the corners, and a long gouge across its front.  I didn't want to inventory its contents.
....."We'd best not need it," said Dad.  "We miss that plane Tuesday and I pay our way back to Iran."
....."Well, don't y'all pay any mind to it, I'll be seeing you back at the shack this afternoon," assured the driver as Dad slipped him a tip. ....."Remember, don't stand in your boat, and stay the hell out of the trees."  With that, he turned over that old 302, which sputtered twice before catching with a roar and plenty of blue smoke.  The head gasket was going bad.  He pulled out onto the old Farm-Market route, I think it was FM 16, with the empty trailer behind the truck clattering in rhythm, and then all we could hear was the muted roar of thousands of gallons of water crashing through the spillways, and into the Brazos River.  Dad looked at Uncle Rip.
....."You ready?"
....."Mmhmm, I reckon so."
....."Well, let's didimou, then."
.....So I clambered into our boat, sitting on the middle spar, and busied myself with lashing down our cooler as Dad followed me in.  "Sit still, damn it," he mumbled and he sat down, dry despite my jittering the canoe, and he tugged the loop of my bowline, pulling the rope aboard.  The line slicing through the water reminded me that with a flood this high and a day this pretty, there were bound to be plenty of water moccasins out for a swim, and plenty of rattlers trying to stay dry, and that we needed to be careful ashore or afloat.  I dug my oar deep into the muddy bank so as to give us a good shove, and then the current grabbed us and we were off.  It was a beautiful spring day, with a riotous bloom of wildflowers scenting up the air, which was warm and thick in the way that only North Texas after five wet days can get to be.  Somewhere ahead of us, a junebug started a long, steady buzznote.
.....Here, some forty miles northwest of Weatherford, Texas, the Brazos River cut through some rough country, rocky hills some six or eight hundred foot high, and while the river was broad and slow when we'd started, it was a deceptive calm.  It was broad and slow because seven open floodgates on the dam had raised the river's level fifteen or so foot, and the wider river ran slower -- now through copses of black and white oak, cypress , and some elm which marched up the hillsides.  Further in towards the middle of the river, little islands of foliage broke the smooth flow of the water like leafy snorkels.  They were the tops of inundated trees.  I looked nervously back at Possum Kingdom Dam and, as I watched, one of the two remaining floodgates opened up, releasing water into another sluice with a deep rumble.
.....Another floodgate was being opened.

.....Out in the middle of the river, the current picked up, and so I laid my oar across my lap and spread out my lifejacket underneath me.  The spar that was my seat was hard, and I didn't much care for the rope holding the cooler in place trying to crawl up my ass, either.  The lifejacket eased my backside, and so I sat and watched the hillsides sheathed in emerald velour slide past at a steady six miles per hour or so.
....."I wished I'd remembered my rod," hollered Coon as their boat pulled ahead of us. "I done seen a couple of good largemouth already."
....."Yeah, or that .410," I called back, motioning to a flock of turkeys roosting in a black oak near ashore.  My favorite bird-gun was back in Pittsburg in Uncle Rip's cabinet, four hours away.  Overhead, a couple of buzzards wheeled, dark slashes against the blue.  Not enough for a carcass. They were just picking up some height for their search.  Didn't see any moccasins -- maybe the water was too cool yet.  I pulled my eyes back to the river at a word from my dad, and resumed scanning for the eddys which might mark an inundated tree.  We didn't want to get askew the current in a canoe, because we came to boat, not swim.
.....We made good time and had covered about a quarter of our course when we found a fine sandspit on the inside of an oxbow.  We stopped there for lunch, pulling our boats up onto the sand.  The far side of the river, at this point about a hundred yards across, was an escarpment in which erosion had exposed tree roots, which hung out the side of the cliff.  The face was dotted by weeds and bushes, and a small oak tree scraping out what had to be a miserable time of it.  I ate my sandwich, silent.  A fat catfish was nibbling at the chicken-bones Uncle Rip had thrown into a shallow, and we wished for tackle once more.
....."You think that's big, you ain't seen a thing," Rip said around a mouthful of potato salad.  "The ones they bring up from 'hind the dam got to be ten foot or so."
....."Now, don't go pullin' their legs, Rip."
....."I ain't, I ain't," he chuckled  with his wicked grin.  "Why, up at Lake o' the Pines, Bert pulled one up 'bout as big as one of them canoes.  Said he had to tow it in behind his bass-boat, and it almost won."
....."Dad swigged the last of his beer.  "Yeah, Bert's never told fishin' stories," and they both let loose that loud Jessup laugh.
.....We made ready to leave, and I noticed the clouds getting darker and lower on the northern horizon, big pregnant blue things, and it looked like we were going to get wet even if we stayed in the boats.  We shoved off.
.....The river was running quicker, and the gate I'd seen opened had made its impression -- the high-water marks on the tree-trunks were now a few inches over the lichen and moss which had been dry when we landed.  Treetops which had broached the surface when we pulled in were now only whitecaps in the quickening current.  They could still upset our boats, so we had to work slow and hard, working between the eddys and whitecaps.  The view before us was amazing.  As we rounded the switchback of the oxbow, an enormous rock wall, perhaps seven hundred foot high, rose on the south bank, rock veined grey and white and rusty pink.  Under that massif, the river, now, perhaps two hundred yards wide, dwindled into seemingly nothing.
....."Damn it, Jim, swing her over," barked my dad.  Uncle Rip and Coon were hung on a treetop and spinning to our left, so we picked our way cross-current, tacking into it to get upstream, and then an eddy caught us and we swept past them.  We almost collided, and Dad took the opportunity to give them a shove free with his oar before we passed them and pitched down into a sink and then we were in it.  Our speed had about doubled and in front of us  were many treetops and eddys scattered to Hell and back.  "Right, Jim, to the right!" Dad hollered, and I dug my oar in deep to the left, dug in with my oar to the handhold, shipping water, to get our nose around to the right so we could get a slower current.  Then we were there, and as we slowly entered a low tunnel of elm and oak boughs, I turned around and saw that both Dad and I were laughing.  My uncle and cousin were a ways back, upright, and having a helluva time angling for our current.
As we passed through the trees, the current picked up, but the ride was smoother because here the trees weren't swamped.  All we had to do was avoid the trunks.
"We got a turn coming up, Dad, to the left," I called, digging in to the right again.  I could feel Dad dragging his oar, bring us smoothly into the turn as we sped up and then we saw it right in our path and it was too late to do a goddamned thing about it -- an old white oak covered in Spanish moss.  Dad was hollering to get the nose around, dig in, goddamnit, get that nose around, and the nose came around but too slow and I dug in shoveling water back and to the right as I saw that bastard tree getting bigger and then our keel slid broadside right up that goddamned trunk and my world turned airless and wet and green as I grabbed for a spar flashing by overhead and missed and then he was pulling my hair, fuck all, but that hurts, but it woke me up out of my panic.  I caught a handhold on our capsized hull and came up for air as we exited that tree-tunnel and re-entered the main current.  Dad released his grip.
....."You okay, boy?"
....."I'm fine, you?"
....."I lost a boot and my smokes.  We still have the cooler?"
....."I don't know, Dad, I can't tell.  But you lost your hat too.  I still got my oar."
....."Good."  He thought for a moment.  "Get up on this boat, and start paddling.  I'll swim in the back and steer."
.....We were now back in the mainstream, sideways and adrift.  I thew a leg up, got beaten back, tried again and failed, and then hooked it the third time.  It was like mounting a skittish mare bareback, us bobbing in the current and all.  Dad started steering us to tack into the current, and I looked back just in time to see Rip and Coon run into that same bastard tree, but I couldn't watch much, just enough to see them get turned over like a dicecup.  Coon yelled.  The we sloughed into an eddy and my only thought was to stay up on the hull and let's get onto some goddamned ground already.  We had to get out of the river before that beautiful grey and white and rusty pink cliff got hold of us.  Stroke --  grip the legs tighter -- are they okay? -- deeper, dig deeper -- stroke --
....."They lose it?" Dad shouted.
....."Uh huh."  I looked around again, and redoubled my paddling as Dad swung us into the current a little so we could tack upstream.  I alternated my strokes side-to-side, and we held our position.  I looked back again as my uncle hauled himself up  laying on their hull. Coon I couldn't see, but I could hear him cussin' back towards the Tree and that told me he had air.
....."Knock that cussin' off, boy!" shouted my uncle as he caught a trunk and stopped himself.
....."This piece-of-shit tree ain't had done with me yet, Dad," Coon shouted back.
....."Get up out of the water and stay put, and knock the swearin' off too!"
.....My dad and I couldn't make any headway upstream.  "Let's get across this jube, boy.  Get over to that sandbar and set this thing right there."  He turned and yelled at my uncle.  "We're gonna land and walk upstream, we'll come down and get you.  Stay put!"
....."When you come back down," Rip shouted back, "fetch up Coon first.  I'm okay here."  But as we approached the north bank, a shore-current pushed us back out again.  The sheer face of Bailey Canyon's south side looked as big as the sky now, looming half-a-mile downstream; the current was fast and rough and we didn't have much time.  I tried not to think of those rocks as my back muscles ached with effort, but two more tries failed, the rapids were damned close, and my strength was waning.
....."Come on, boy, now we do it.  I know you can, we're almost there.  That's it.  Let's get it.  Okay, bring 'er around, son, there you go."  Dad's words were grunted through his straining.  And then we were very near a pool that was isolated from the shore current, maybe a foot or two deep, so I jumped for the sand bar and got it.  Mud ran into my boots, but they were still laced and so they stayed on through the suction that helped anchor me for pulling the boat in.  We got the boat up and over, and then I crawled on all fours to the nearest dry sand and fell down, exhausted.
....."You okay?"
....."Yeah, I just need to catch my wind."
....."Take some time, we can't screw this up again."  He turned to look at the river.  "Coon's still treed and now Rip's cussin' too," he smiled.  "You sure you're all right?"
....."I'm fine, just tired is all."
....."Three more minutes, and then we got to hump this sonofabitch upstream a ways."
.....I got up and went to the boat, which rested on its side in the sand.  The cooler was still lashed in, and so I got a couple of beers out and handed Dad one.  He eyed me closely as I popped the other one and took a long, ugly-tasting drink.
....."Go easy with that, we still gotta get them over," he said.  I took another drink, not as long, and set it down.  
....."You ready?"
....."Yessir."
....."Let's didimou, then," he said.
.....It took about twenty minutes to get the boat upstream to a good launching point, but the work was easier than fighting a current with it upside-down.  We let the current carry us across.  The time we picked our way through the shore currents in that tunnel and so didn't get the Tree again.  We found Coon easily enough. He'd lost his oar and was deadweight, but he still had his backpack, so when we got to his dad (who'd kept his oar) in their boat, he could steer by dragging that, which made theirs a working boat.  We crossed the river again and drew up on the same landing.  The crossing was much easier with the hull upright.  .....We had another beer, but the remaining sandwiches were soaked.  After resting a spell. we set off again.
.....The last half of the trip was anticlimactic.  Bailey Canyon itself proved to be a mostly uneventful passage.  Although the river's level continued to rise, once past the canyon the rise slowed the current and, while making for a safer back nine, increased our work.  Being shy two oars, we kept near the shore, and ended up carrying our boats at a couple of spots where the alternative was clearly unfeasible.  We didn't dare run the mainstream again in our state.
.....We arrived at the rental shack around six in the evening.  We had to shoot another rapid and under a bridge to get to the landing, but after the ride we'd had that afternoon, I felt like I could sail a brick through a typhoon.  We were sunburnt to Hell and gone and I'd felt like some turned me upside-down and poured me out as we climbed out of the boats and walked into the shack.  Our driver looked up, and then down at our feet, and then up, slowly.
....."About five months ago I saw a thee-car wreck on I-30," he said as we paid up our fees for losing their gear and whatnot.  "Y'all look like them poor SoBs I pulled outta them wrecks."
....."Well, amigo," said my Dad quietly, "You might could say we've been rode hard and put up wet."  We all laughed, and it was a good, tired, honest laugh.  It was short, too.

.....The drive back to Grandma Vaughan's home in Grand Prairie was mostly quiet because we were beat and wanted nothing more than a bite to eat and a soft bed, but at one point, as Hoyt Axton was singing in the background about boney fingers, my dad up and out of the blue looked at me and said quietly, "Jim?"
....."Yeah, Dad?"
....."I'm proud of the way, the way you handled yourself today."
.....I didn't know what to say. "Well, thanks, Daddy," I said finally, "I was just doing what anyone else would do."
....."No son, I mean it," he said. "Not just anyone would do that, what we did, what you did, today."
....."I guess you're right," I said after a spell.  "It takes a Jessup to do a damnfool thing like canoe a flooded river."
.....He laughed.  "Ain't that the truth?"

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They’re all so cold,
and distant,
utterly unconcerned,
emotions unreturned.
They sleepwalk their way through the day with
nothing really real to say.
You can try to lay circuitry, but there’s no electricity --
why wire your emotions when there’s no telegraph?
Empty words, empty stare,
between me and them there’s only empty air,
molecules stilled by fears gone a-flutter,
a window made useless by the use of a shutter,
for their eyes might be open,
but their hearts seem closed
and any attempt at reaching inside seems predisposed
to failure.
Why even try?

Every so often, the façade cracks open.
Every so often, the dam is broken.
Every so often, I catch myself hoping that
our smiles are more than just empty tokens.

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https://soundcloud.com/thumpalumpacus/lookin-for-five-0

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Each of those pieces had both rational and irrational bases. I find utility in the irrational in my creative endeavors. If you don't, I'd recommend you look into it, because it might help you get where you want to be in your art. Just a thought.