A Case of Supervenience: An Incredible Case of Supervenience

This was INCREDIBLE and could not be made up. FUCK THIS. TRUE STORY.

So, after a ten week bender (I literally got drunk for ten horrible days), I sobered up for an even four days. Four days. OK? Four days.

Still hazy from this bullshit, I had to go back to grad school (I had even missed one week on accident). So after four days of hazy sweaty, cold, nightmare nights of sleep I went back to school, and I was on the brink of feeling better. I spent the whole first day back to school well, but that night was (unsurprisingly) nasty. Still though, I went to "sleep" (AKA hurtful bolking, routing, rucking, eructating, whatever-you-wanna-call-it, weird dreams, not sleeping, endless thinking, weird thoughts, et al.).

AND HERE IT COMES.

The second night, around eight post meridian (PM), I was seriously about to crash and go to sleep sleep. I was so joyful! I literally walked into my car and nearly fell asleep. Let me explain.

After ten days of binging, you don't get much real sleep. And after four days of "sleep" your body starts getting used to the idea of sleep. And then, your body really wants sleep. So, around eight post meridian on the fifth day of my sobriety, and after one day of hardcore philosophical grad school, my mind and body was ready to fucking rest. I mean really fucking ready to rest peacefully.

BUT NO.

I was falling asleep, and responsibly I made myself eat a quick meal. I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was SO happy. I was falling asleep asleep. I parked my car next to the school at that time, which meant that all the kiddies had gone away too, and there was an abundance of parking right next to the school—free parking right in front of the school. Wow. Thank God. I ate. I crawled to the back of my car and fell asleep.

I sleep in my car in Los Angeles when I come up for school three days out of the week for my Master of Philosophy program at Biola University.

I dozed off. I was gone. I had headphones on, with Coldplay whisking me away to sleep. And I went to sleep.

At four ante meridian (AM) or around there... I WAS JOLTED AWAKE BY MY BOWELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I literally have to put that many exclamation marks to make my fucking point. At four ante meridian I was forced straight up from my sleeping position into a sitting position.

I held my gut so HARD.

OH SHIT... LITERALLY.

I fucking grabbed my gut and made my way to the driver's seat. Nope. This SHIT was literally going to SPILL out of me that instant. I jumped out of the car holding my gut.

What could I do? I looked across the street? Could I take a fucking shit in the bushes across the street? Could I even make it that far? This SHIT was coming fast and furious and out of nowhere.

No.

I couldn't make it across the goddam street.

I leaned on my car and groaned. HOLY FUCK. Was this really happening to me at four ante meridian??? It was fucking still dark out. I groaned. It was happening. Either I was going to shit myself on the spot, or I was going to run to a nearby bush (stuck to the school) and shit behind it.

I hobbled like a fucking Hobbit behind the bush next to the building of the school. I found a strange square contraption next to the bush. I squatted. I pulled my fucking PJs down to my ankles and took a crazy shit right there on the school's property. I could literally hear the security guards making their rounds around the building. Can you believe this? This is a true story that happened to me on February 19th of the Lord's year 2013.

I squatted like a bum behind a bush and took a full shit. There was no thinking about: where is the toilet paper? who is looking? what do I do after the shit? how do I go on as a real human after this? what is normal and OK to do as far as being a respectful human? None of that could matter, when SHIT was splurting and splashing and exploding out of my fucking ass without asking me if I could wait to find a proper venue!!!  There it was. A big fucking messy, shitty (literally do I have to say), wobbly, holy hell, fuckup, nasty, brown, black, nasty mess of a wet mess of shit was beneath me.

It was an incredible case of supervenience (look it up).

I was so incredibly relieved. I mean, when you have to take a shit, I guess you just have to. And I took it–right there and then I had to.

And now... there I was with a weird mess of shit to deal with and a dirty asshole (as if assholes aren't dirty enough already).

What do you do? Ivan? Ismael? Josh? Daniel? George? Sam? Priscilla? What do you do?

Phew, it was a relief though. I stood straight up (all 5'4'' of me) with my pants down and looked at the splashy mess. And then...

OH SHIT, I thought. I can't just leave my asshole unclean and a pile of shit at my school's bush! So, I took off my pants off, grabbed my underwear and wiped my ass real hard (only once), and then I grabbed all of my real shit on the ground (as much as I could) with my wiped-ass underwear, and then I was left with a ball of underwear shit and a half cleaned ass.

I was left with a ball of underwear with shit in it, and my ass was half (or less) cleaned. Every time you wipe your ass, you check it at least several times. This time I could only wipe my ass once and be done with it! I pulled my pants back up and clenched my ass, until I knew what I would do next (you know, so that I wouldn't get ass-shit on my PJs).

After a couple cars drove by, and after I could hear the guards weren't around, I ran to my car with shit in my hand and threw it behind one of the wheels of my car. What else could I do? This is no joke!!!

And then I breathed a sigh of relief.

It was all over. I didn't have to shit anymore! It was over! I was human again! I didn't have to grab my gut out of nowhere and wonder where I was going to take an immediate shit anymore! I felt amazing...

BUT...

There was still a ball of underwear with a bunch of shit in it behind my wheel, my asshole was still only half cleaned, it was still around four ante meridian, and there was still some shit left behind the bush next to my school's building.

I took a deep breath. I smelled my hands hard to see if there were any specks of shit on them (as far as I could tell [and after being in such a bad spell of being hungover and curing myself] there was no shit on my hands). I jumped into my car. HAH! I put on some clean underwear, and I thought to myself...

"Well, it's supposed to rain today. Maybe the rain will wash the rest of my shit away from the bush."

And there I sat and tried to sleep again in the ante meridian, with a half cleaned ass in clean underwear and questionable PJs.

THIS REALLY HAPPENED. IT HAD NEVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE, AND NOW I AM MORE UNDERSTANDING OF "BUMS" WHO PERHAPS HAVE TO GO THROUGH SIMILAR THINGS ON A REGULAR BASIS.

All of this was quite amazing.

I hope it rains today.

I Never Asked to be Born! Stations in Life!

I grabbed my skull.  Oh!  I grabbed my skull!  But I didn't quite grab my skull.  I only put both of my hands on my head, and my head was made out of skin, hair, and all sorts of other shit, including a skull and a brain.  In that manner, I grabbed my skull.

And I huddled in a corner.  This corner was in a corner of a dimly lit room.  Yes, there was some light in there.  I didn't know where it was coming from.

What's my name!?  I didn't only ask the question in my head... I shouted it.  Well, my name is Danny Castro, and my name is Daniel Castro on my birth certificate, but I go by Danny.  Ok.  My name is Danny.

I grabbed my skull in the aforementioned manner.  I thought about my brother Ismael and all his wild ideas about light, color, and sight.  On his own, he had figured out that we never really see anything but reflections of light.  I never get to see Ismael Ismael, and Ismael never gets to see me me.  I tightened the grip on my skull.  Let me explain.

The human eye can only see because light shines into it.  If there were no light, the human eye would not be able to see what it sees.  The human eye is a mechanism that picks up light.  That light--and the colors and gradations of that light--is then interpreted by different parts of the brain, and then we "see" what light has reflected.  I'll try again.

If there is no light whatsoever, our eyes see nothing: only darkness.  They see nothing because no light enters into our eyes, and our eyes need light in order to see things.  So, all our eyes really see is light.  So, when there is light, what our eyes see is light reflected off of other things.  The sun shines on different parts of Ismael, and those are the parts that I see, so then I "see" Ismael, but what I really see is a reflection of Ismael.  The light.  Our eyes only see light.

I thought about that because, when I thought I was grabbing my skull, I was really grabbing a bunch of different things.  And when I think I am looking at something, I'm really only looking at the reflection of light off of that thing.

Oh!  Strange things filled my mind.  The room was empty, but there was a dim light coming from somewhere, and I was in a corner grabbing my skull.

All this honesty was thrashing around in my mind.

"What do I do?"  I thought to myself.  "I didn't ask to be born into this."  Outside of the door was waiting my normal life.  I was born in Southern California, and my parents loved me, and it was hard to swallow, because so many people were suffering around the world.

"I didn't ask to be born!"  My mind raged.

I imagined a twelve year old girl born with AIDS in Africa.  There in my corner all huddled up and grabbing my skull fiercely, I thought about her (I also thought about my perfect grammar).  She was poor.  She has had AIDS since she was born, and I forced myself to think hard about this.

She sat in an empty room clutching her skull.  Outside, there was chaos, and there were her siblings waiting for her to take care of them, because their parents were long dead.  The HIV had taken them away.  And her mind raged, "I didn't ask to be born!"

"What is fair?" I thought to myself.  Nothing is fair.  Is it fair that I was born in Southern California to a nice family and she was born in subsaharan Africa with AIDS?  Who the fuck decided to put us where we were born?  Why wasn't I born in subsaharan Africa, and why wasn't she born in Southern California?  Maybe she was?  Maybe I was?  Maybe we were all everybody, and maybe everybody was everybody else!  Why was I thinking so abstractly?  Mark done said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."  Maybe everybody was everybody!

I clutched, and I was losing my mind.  Nobody deserves anything.  I thought hard, and I thought logically.  There must be a god.  Ipso facto, when/how/why/where we were born was not arbitrary, nor meaningless.  Considering the massive implications of all of this, I came to a conclusion.

We are all orphans, to an extent.  What do we deserve?  Almost nothing.  But not nothing.  Something. We deserve something.  For he we are!  We exist!  What do we deserve?  Do we deserve to be rich?  Do we deserve to be poor?  We can't deserve those things, for we had no say in which station we should be born into.  What do we deserve then?  For, we do deserve something.

We deserve love.  Every single one of us deserves love from everyone else.  And we deserve to love everyone.  "Love your neighbor as yourself."  We should be hard on ourselves and on everyone else, in a loving way!  That's the way we should love ourselves and others!

We deserve the chance to be loved.  More importantly, we deserve the chance to love others.

And most importantly, we deserve the chance to be saved.

And so have we been.  Drowning and seemingly without hope for one last gasp of air, we have been saved.

Although it seems that nothing in this life is fair, there is hope and at least we do deserve something and not nothing.  That is fair.

I let go of my skull.  I walked out of my room.  I hugged my family.  I got on my computer.  I sent a couple bucks to whatever organization givewell.org told me to.

I went back to my room.  I closed the door.  I got on my knees.  I was humbled.  I don't deserve any of this.  Hell, I don't even deserve to be alive, probably.  I thanked god and I took George Harrison's advice: "Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait; and love one another."

I heard U2 in the background.

I went back on my computer and thought about true love.