redtree_innerview_tilt redtree if the world is a box, what does it have in it that makes it so heavy? (the_weight_of_the_world) 051110 ... . . 051113 ... tilt the heavy world is not a place for me to be; i cannot lift it. 051114 ... redtree where does your name (tilt) come from? 051115 ... tilt a hard_question. "A tendency to favor one side in a dispute, a seesaw, An implicit preference, An inclination from the horizontal or vertical, The act of tilting or the condition of being tilted. A combat, especially a verbal one; a debate." i can't tell you why i am tilt. there is no good reason. i did not choose to be tilt. i needed a name, and there it was, flashing in bright lights on my screen. every time i tried to cheat at pinball. TILT. i like it. 051115 ... redtree when i was a kid my neighbour had an old school pinball machine, the kind that had the counter instead of digital numbers. when you reached 25,000 points you would receive a free game and the machine would respond with a very loud knock, like the hard click of a tongue on the roof of the mouth.it also required a lot of body english to move the ball around...but not too much or TILT! so, i guess to tilt is to upset the balance. how do you define balance in your life? 051116 ... tilt a strange_question. as if balance is optional. or as if balance is something that could have different definitions to different people. there is always a balance though it may not always be equal, or healthy. how do i define *the* balance in my life would be easier to answer. my life is balanced between the future and the past, a cold logic, and a romantic vision that will likely never become a reality, and probably never was. they are in conflict, yes, but without conflict there can be no unity. we are swirling balls of chaos, random, but perfectly spherical. 051117 ... redtree right on. what is your romantic vision? 051118 ... tilt for my mind to get me to a place where my heart can be appeased. 051119 ... tilt or to combine the needs of both 051121 ... tilt random words 051122 ... tilt how bizarre. when i looked at this page today, i saw these words in place of my answer to the first question: "the and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their redtree" not by me; whoose words are these? 051122 ... redtree i know what you're talking about, except i once saw something different, not what you mentioned. i have no idea what's going on because now as i sit in the lobby of the chelsea hotel in nyc, blathering in the wake of dylan thomas, it reads normal. glitch or ghost? 051122 ... tilt I'd normally say glitch, but this is a definate ghost. google shows me that the words are from: of_giving ...on blue ...2 years ago is scared. 051123 ... wonders was i boring you? :) 051210 ... redtree absolutely not! i'm glad to see you are interested, so how about if we start from the beginning? who are you? tell us about yourself.... the basics...where you live, where you are going, what you do, where you work...if you have pets...family...all of the tiltness. 051211 ... tilt the tilt you were looking for cannot be found. see: tilt none of what you asked about is tilt. tilt is not about what i am. tilt is unusual. i am not tilt, but tilt is in me. sigh. i am tilt. i cant really say much more than that. i am the person who live where i do, does what i do - yes, but the *person* is more than that. tilt is the more that makes me unique in a profound way. I'm sure you have a tilt. I hope you know what I mean. i think a lot of people on blather know exactly what i mean. tilt is what lies beyond the normal clutter of life. i think when i spoke of needing to combine my heart and mind, i was talking about getting more like tilt. its sometimes hard to tell whether i'm tilt or 'my other alias' but i think tilt is more important. for a glimpse into two different tilts, see not_the_words_i_should_be_speaking. i'm not sure which one is tilt. i'm not sure if either are. sometimes im not sure tilt even exists. 051211 ... redtree i think i know what you mean, at least in my own means of personal interpretation. many skites, dating back to blather's origin know and read of of my struggles with identity. (fyn_gula, frAnk, and farmfish, crOwl, things we lost in the fire, log burning fire, smile of a dog, blueberries for you, blue sky with clouds, geschenke, geest en lichaam, ebber, channel island surfer, redtree) and the beauty of it all, they have supported me through it and continue to do so...but that's me. as for your tiltness... i disagree with you when you said, "none of what you asked about is tilt." and here's why: maybe you already know about this phenomenon...take a look in the mirror and divide your face in half from the top of your forehead down to your chin. if you were to take the two sides of your face you will find they lack symmetry, or there is a "tilt" to the balance. if you were able to replicate each side so there was an identical match to these two sides, you would create two completely different people, which in actuality reside in one person. what do you think? 051212 ... tilt you would create two different faces. is all i am my body? if my body was even the least bit important, then there would be discernable gaps in non-bodily communication, such as via text, eg blather. as far as i have experienced, conversations on blather are as rich if not richer than real-life ones. one might even say that the body is a hinderance. i don't think my body matters in the least to who i am. nor do such facts as age, race, sex, job, etc. they matter in an everyday way - human society would be very different if people had none of the above, but as i said, tilt is unusual. tilt is about the core of me that lies beyond these incidental facts. i do not mean to sound dogmatic or offended. i am neither. 051212 ... sway of course, there are those who assert that the body is the essential human being, that there is no soul. i don't beleive them, cases such as the mirror you described, and concepts such as brain-swapping help to show the difficulty with this view. we know that it is possible to transplant every organ in a body, including skin (grafts), and recently faces (http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/12/02/france.face/) if a person had all their organs(minus brain) replaced, all their skin, their face, hair, nails,everything, would they still be the same person? I'd say yes, but then what if we left their body alone but instead swapped their brain? or how about we only swap -half- their brain? what then? is the person contained within the brain? What if we created an artificial brain, and filled it with the same electric current as someone's brain, then removed the original brain and replaced it with the artificial one? Where does the true person lie? With brains it gets tricky, but I think it's clear that the person is not in the body. Perhaps the person is the total of all the things they've done in which case the brain-cases are not a problem - they're the same person, just that now they behave and think totally differently. If this is hard to accept, consider accident victims who become brain-damaged; are they the same person? perhaps our victim's friends might say "he's not been the same person since that accident", but in a sense he obviously is the same person - it's still Fred Jones, one minute he was walking along, the next he was hit by a car, the next he suffered severe brain damage and went mad. this all describes the same person, but he's just undergoing radical changes. i think sharp distinctions just aren't possible when thinking about personal identity. the idea that the brain really is the person is appealing in that it seems 'scientifically' true, but not appealing in that we (or at least i) would like to think that there's more to us than the physical. if there is, that's what tilt is. if not, tilt is just a twisted imagining best ignored. :-) 051212 ... tilt sway is my twin-brother, with blue eyes. i apologise for his intrusion. tilt will now answer 051212 ... tilt face split by broken mirror still i do not break i am only in my mind 051212 ... redtree wow...amazing response...fascinating and well-researched. it made a lot of sense to me. when my father died, i was fortunate to be at his bedside and witness the very moment his spirit was yanked from his body. although most of my life i was aware that the corporeal was a shell, it wasn't until i saw the brilliance of his eyes as he went from life to death, (realizing he really wasn't dead, just his body,) that the spirit was separate and eternal and was going on, continuing, perpetuating...to where and to what capacity i don't know, hopefully to its origin. although, he makes his presence known to me in many ways. the most recent being the date m youngest daughter received her college acceptance letter being his birthday and the street her school is on, 23rd st. in nyc, the year he was born. coincedence? fuck no. i believe completely in the trinity as it relates to one whole person, that is we are comprised within the body of spirit and soul. and of course, that is completely foundational thinking which affords a multitude of tangents shooting off from it. imagination, which is my longstanding favorite, being only one. still, i enjoy existing within a body, even though at times it is a hinderance, restraining me with a myriad of limitations. i love to see beauty and art in all its forms, and i even have a strange cumpulsion/repulsion bent to look at the opposite. i love to listen to music or the multitude of sounds that define life. i love to taste good food and possess the ability to discern what the mouth considers objectionable. i love to smell, how it initiates hunger or invokes memory or warns us of danger. i love to touch and be touched, to be able to walk, run, dance, move. we are fearfully and wonderfully made. we have the ability to reproduce. to care for an infant and responsibly raise it. yet, as you pointed out so well, blather is just one way we can communicate without the body. where the body isn't even necessary. words, sentences, essays, compliments, diatribes, and stories become our only means of representing who we are. the body can never do that without the soul. it's like a marionette that must have a force to operate it, lest it hang from a post by its wires, lifeless and inanimate. so, it is the soul and spirit that the body needs. the spirit and soul doesn't need the body. they leave it behind and move between worlds. like dreaming. like visions. like thought. the death we will all experience. however, to me, knowing what a person does, where he lives, who his family is, where he is going, although it appears on the surface to be external, it really is an integral part of who the person is as a whole. granted, it's not necessary, perhaps only expedient. when i asked you those basic questions it was only for the hope we could connect on some kind of level that would encourage further correspondence, that's all. but, even that attempt has produced a far better level of communication between us, of which i am grateful, because it reveals you to be a person of character, depth, meaning, and above all, humanity. 051213 ... sway :-) thankyou. 051215 ... tilt are you religious? 060112 ... crOwl there was one thing i remember when i was five years-old and my parents took me to sunday school at a methodist church in the small town i grew up in: taking the side of a pencil and scribbling away at a piece of paper and suddenly watching a picture of jesus magically appear. even though it was pre-conceived and anybody could do it, you couldn't tell me that. i believed jesus was appearing just for me. and i guess that's how i always looked at religion from then on. you just have to believe that jesus is there. that he will come when you scratch the paper of your soul. when i was in high school, i belonged to the typical christian youth group scene. meetings once a week. retreats to the mountains for a summer week-end, and fuck yeah, we got stoned in the woods and saw visions. we made out with each other's girlfriends on the bunkbeds, but the thing was, we would gather as a big group around the bonfire, sing tacky songs that gave us goosebumps, and have these awesome times of repentance and communion. we'd be all emotional and sorry for living godless. then we'd go back home, have sex with our girlfriends, drink, smoke weed, and go to church on sunday. yet, deep down inside i knew i had experienced something that was apart from this world. that the someone who was christ, who supposedly gave his life because his father wanted to sacrafice him as the ultimate example of love, also loved me and wanted to hang out with me. that always stuck with me. marked me for life. and so, eventually, i took "christainity" serious because the church told me i had to. i went through the whole "born again" thing. smashed all my "wordly" music, stopped smoking and drinking, even got baptized in the pacific ocean. my wife, kathy, who i met when i was 16 in the youth room of the basement of the same church, accompanied me. we got sucked into the whole do everything for the church, burn yourself out, anti-secular lifestyle and lost the real reason we were even there. we taught sunday school. i even wrote a whole curriculum. i did puppet shows about bible stories. meanwhile, inside the church, we watched marriages fall apart, heard about adulturous relationships, listened to people tear other people down, saw others fall back into previous drinking and drug problems, and realized it wasn't religion people need. we discovered that god doesn't exist in a church building. that god is the church. that god can be seen in every person. god is everywhere. god is love. god is goodness. god is life. and in the absence of god there is evil. we will all fail from time to time. but judgement and condemnation, pointing fingers, or expulsion isn't any way to treat the normal human. not one person has the right to think they are better than another. we are all equal. we are all made the same. if we are loving each other, then we are like god. we are not god. we will never be god. we are from god, him/her, the perfect mother/father. we are part of god. god's spit is in our flesh and bones. god's breath is on our lips. i realize it is risky to preach like this because i'm just a man and what do i know? and i'm sure there are a lot of holes in what i said, even contadictions, but that's ok, it just proves my humanity and reveals more of my need for god. i mean, come on, what's the use if there is no god? really. slit my throat now because otherwise it's a fucking waste of time. am i religious? fuck no. but, more than anything i want to know god and represent all that god stands for... to this world. will i succeed? maybe sometimes. not always. i think that's why christ had to die. i'm selfish. all i really want is to return to where i came from. i picture god as this huge living teddy bear. all i want to do is crawl up into its lap and listen to stories and eventually go to sleep. at least that's what i think god is right this moment. tomorrow it may be something different. but god is ok with that. 060113 ... tilt the god you describe has no name, and yet is called every name. why do you call it christ? 060126 ... crOwl god in the flesh lives among humanity, teaches them how to love, gives his life so they can have eternal life with god, comes back from the dead and his spirit can now dwell in those who believe... it's the greatest story i've ever heard. and i love stories. what is god to you? 060126 ... Lemon_Soda God is beyond my ability to comprehend. Any theory I've looked at, when viewed objectively, always falls short of so awesome a concept as a divine being, let alone THE divine being. I guess, because of my limited perceptions and cognisance(sp?) God is a distant parent figure, cliche'd into white robes and a white beard, watching the world as he made it come to fruition. 060126 ... Lemon_Soda forgive my intrusion. I didn't realize this was a one on one blath. I'll go away now. 060126 ... sway i do not mind the intrusion of something as delightfully fizzy and citrus as you, Lemon_Soda. to me, god is nothing. because I don't like to call it god; the word evokes much unwanted imagery including but not limited to the implied personification. i honestly don't know if there is a 'force' behind the (multi/uni)verse. If there is, i think it is way beyond petty human concerns, and is probably quite terrifying in its objectivity; it would probably have no concept of good or evil, seeing them instead as two sides of the same coin. that is to say, it would know and understand that good cannot exist without evil, and vice-versa, so to label one action 'good' and another 'evil' is to see things in a limited view; instead, it would see the infinite chain of events caused by each action, and see that every action causes as much good as it does evil, and so we would probably see it as totally heartless, but that's because we lack an infinite perspective. read spinoza's 'ethics', i agree with much of it. i don't think this god is at all concerned with us. though that is not to say that we should not be concerned with god. 060422 ... sway in fact, the wikipedia page on spinoza will suffice, though i am neutral on the final point about animals; i don't see this as a fundamental part of his philosophy - perhaps we should use animals as we see fit, perhaps we shouldn't, either way whatever we do do will be the result of a determined set of causes that are amoral in the eyes of god, which is not to say immoral, but rather non-moral - actions which do not have a moral 'value' set against them (in the eyes of god, all actions are amoral) 060422 ... tilt tilt cannot answer, i'm afraid. sway had to do all the work on that one. I (tilt) will try to answer at some point. 060422 ... redTree what are you living for? what would you die for? what would you kill for? 080505 ... tilt i don't think i can answer these questions. i'm not sure they make sense. i'm not sure they have truthful answers. if they do, they are hidden from me. the tilt you are looking for.... is here. but. at the same time, cannot be displayed. 080511 ... tilt tilt is not very good at answering questions. tilt still has to answer the god question. what is god to me? god is everything, the totality. and just as left+right is center, and good+evil is neutral, and high+low is level, so god is nothing. add it all up and the equation balances to zero. beautiful simplicity. 080511 ... tilt god is beautiful simplicity. 080511 ... tilt perfect like a cloudless sky. full of nothing, seemingly contradictory yet exquisitely, excruciatingly, minimally whole. 080511 ... u24 I agree more with tilt's answer than sway's on the god question. 080511 ... tilt i think i cannot answer more than i have done for the 3three_questions. what am i living for? - does life need a purpose beyond it's own being? what would i die for? - at the moment i don't have anything i believe in strongly enough to die for, else i would be dead already. in the future i cannot say. i do not know. beyond the obvious 'for something i believed in', there is little i can say. what would i kill for? - as above. 080514 ... tilt . 080519 ... tilt :( 080521 ... redTree you have been chosen as the world's new super hero, but you can possess only one power that you must select from the following two choices... 1. the ability to fly 2. the ability to be invisible which one do you choose? why? what will you call yourself? 080704 ... tilt The ability to fly. Too much possibility for drastic abuse of invisibility. I don't think it would do my soul much good. Also, you wouldn't feel different, being invisible. Flying would feel awesome. I've had a few flying dreams before. I tell you if they could bottle that feeling I would be broke within days. My superhero name? Tilt, I guess :) 100324 ... tilt missed the part where I've been chosen. I guess still flying, but I'd be a crap hero. Too lazy. And I'd be too busy flying all over the place to help anyone... 100324 what's it to you? who go blather from