turkeyshoot

Graphic Novel

2009-03-20T18:41:00.002-07:00

So indeed I have been writing but like masturbating into a jar i needed time to collect my ideas. So I'm proud to say I'm almost halfway through my trek. I have a plot that I'm still filling out so it will take some time. Also, the story is a continuation of my character from this blog. So when it's done i will share it with you all and find some sort of decent, cheap artist to make pretty pictures. Thank you, San Jose and goodnight!

PS I am equally proud that i used the phrase "like masturbating in a jar"

A Moment, Movement, Improvement

2008-11-03T18:17:00.002-08:00

I sat in the park. Alone, unwanted and ostracized. Happily I gazed about me in wonder. The rain was pouring, people were scurrying quickly, and cars were making the water yell in anger. I stood up. My life up until this moment was leading up to this moment. I walked slowly, letting the water wash me of all my impurities. I filtered it all through my eyes but more my soul. I felt the water but I did not take notice of it. Most of the world is like that. Feeling but unaware.
These thoughts frightened me. Could I be coming to a logical conclusion? What is logic? The absence of chaos? The object of reason? If reason has an object then is insanity a verb? Yes, it is. That though unleashed a whole new perspective upon me. No longer was I weighed down upon by the laws made up. No longer was I weighed by the eyes of authority to do what is deemed right in their logical eyes. The park was now mine. I decided. Its a public park, I am the state. Gleefully, I ran through my drenched kingdom. This is where I shall build my throne, that tree must be gone. Who's statue is this anyway? I run up to it. An uncared for and little known green statue of a man wearing odd clothes looking what the artist deemed "heroic". I deem it not.
"Be free!" I bellow, uncaring if the unwashed, wet masses hear me. My mind is my own. No Big Brother camera to look at me. The rain blurs my vision and for a moment, a second and a breath, I see the statue nod. Amazing, I declare. The statue of the sailor/general/explorer/tradesman agrees with me. Emboldened by this I begin to climb his pedestal so I may join him. Forever to be green and a roost for flying rats.
The rock is hard at the base but the useless copper plauqe makes a foothold. I slip and slid my ten dollar sneaker onto it gripping with all my strength. I finally reach the top. The summit. Its a maginificent view from 3 feet off the ground. All I see is mine. The rain continues to pour and pool around me. I am happy sitting with my comrade in arms. He doesn't seem to be inclind to sit but thats all right.
I begin to watch the world outside my own. This small nature mecca surrounded by commerce, guilds, business. Millions of dollars flow like the water around these Babel towers. 10,000 languages all meaning the same word for money. Capitalism and and smaller world. I don't want this. I now have decreed no business is to be taken place in my realm. Then everything slows down.
I am unsure the cause at this point. Perhaps I've had an aneurysm perhaps something has kicked in. Perhaps I have reached a Buddha-like level of understanding. I could see every individual drop of rain. Every breath of wind. Every reflection of light on the wet world. This was my moment.I could take up the flag. Start the revolution. Flower Power, Gun Power, Socialism, Fascism anything was possible right at this moment.
Just as quickly as it stared, the world sped up again. An old time movie reel minus the squeal started it. Clips and disjointed images floated around me. Faster and faster more hectic and when it felt as if I would be sick or perhaps just lose myself they all seemed to make themselves unique and make it all work in a glorious symphony of sight, sound, smell and touch.
I was rear-ended back into my mind. The captain was staring down at me. Elitist fuck. I hopped off the pedestal. My body and clothes were trying to do an impression of a puddle. Squelching and slithering like I emerged from the primordial soup itself I stumbled off into the rain. My destination, unknown. One lone moment to make up for billions lost.

FIN

Recoil

2008-10-18T00:38:00.003-07:00

I miss the way you were,
- the twinkle in your eyes -
The spark within - of passion -
- of joy -
Ever flowing times of surprise.

But what has happened now?
- orbs all sunken in -
Despair encompasses; depression
- implies -
When shall you shed this -
- this unwelcomed disguise?

Solar rain

2008-09-09T05:19:00.006-07:00

We know well the saltburn sting, weaving uneven tracks,
pulled towards the center of the earth, sloppy.
Run for the low spots, evaporate and rain,
fall lightly on the ground, melt into the earth.
Crystal veins pour through viaducts of stone and earth,
tearing to the surface and flashing with muscular force;
crash amongst the rocks lining waterfalls,
and misty-rainbows fall in sheets.
Crisp maple leaves pop and crack, and fly with the summer breeze.
Drop into a fast flowing stream--
lifted floating into white water.
Surf waves around eroding stones,
carried downstream, to the vast oceans.
Ocean surf stings and parches;
great swells roll and push high unto the clear sky.
Green water by the pier- grey morning chop-
white crested rolls- and angry black seas.
Casting the sting of freezing surf,
to run for the low spots,
evaporate and rain.
Tides pull and jostle circular from icy poles,
to sweltering equator- past tropic and tepid-
and echo with life and force, and grace and depth.
Violent force of hurricane,
and smooth soft curve of slow waves push back
against the shoulder of earth,
leaning softly always into water,
with ragged cliffs, or pebbled shore-
constant dialogue between ever sinking earth,
and level seeking water.
Run for the low spots, evaporate and rain.
Land on your cheeks, feel a salt-sting,
and weave an uneven path
towards the center of the earth-
I kiss them off, evaporate, and rain.

Knight Night

2008-09-02T19:40:00.005-07:00

I was walking at 11:15pm. No direction or purpose. Much like all of life. I had just had an argument with a spoon. Since I live in my dingy apartment by myself I needed to fight with someone. So a spoon is my choice. That bastard had it coming. The spoon is merely a focal point for my irritation at my sudden dissipation of an elevation of self.
I walk slowly in my ten dollar sneakers. Hands thrust into my cracked leather jacket. I embrace the chill wraiths of night. My head is fogged and bewildered. Street lights deny me the right answer. Buzzing and busying themselves with lighting my darkened path. I go up to one such impudent whelp and begin to harangue it. It has no right to deem me not right. I then raise my left sneaker at a thirty degree angle and give it a sound kick which results in the adjective itself.
I limp slowly down the street. Cars are but a memory. The pavement has long since gone frigid without the grind and groan of mechanical beasts of burden and luxury. My head looks up and the barely seen stars. I was told that outside the city they are seen better. But since I am outside myself and simply cannot find my way home at this point and time then It'll have to do. It's 11:24pm.
This is the night that I have chosen to wander the earth. Like the undead I roam the earth. Not in search of my soul or an unsuspecting mortal. Although both would be entertaining. Heartened by this fact I look for someone.
Sounds fill my head. Whoops and hollers. Teens. Youths in the prime of adolescence. Free in their controlled freedom. Celebrating the night. Like a hero of old on a quest, they look to slay the night. To own it and make it theirs.
I see them with my dilated pupils. There's only 4 of them. Now six. Now 21,594. I shake my head before the numbers can latch on. Clever bastards. They must be in league with the spoon. The spoon. I hid that bastard where he can never get out. My fridge. I wonder if there's any mustard.
Again, I shake my head. Getting distracted from the rail of thought. The pupils are far up the street. I follow the yellow line road. Towards the Emerald City? If their a scarecrow, a lion and a wardrobe I'm out of here. I slowly weave like a rug towards them. What thoughts must run through their heads? What unspeakable horrors must they think I am? Will I scar them for life with my dishevelled looks and rictus smile? I gleefully and gladly think these thoughts when I realize I should've taken a left at Albuquerque. Avenue that is.
I wander slowly down the street. A park off to my left. Night makes everything frightful. Wishing I had a knight in shining armor to protect me from the sanguine darkness. I'm running out of time. Why is time in such a rush? I close of red eyes and breath in the night. It's cold and delightful in my throat. Clearing. There's a clearing up ahead. Deciding a decision I go towards it.
As I lay on this bed of grass full of warmth and chemical enhancers I look up to the satellites. This is my night. This night will remain forever in my mind. I am one with universe or perhaps an ace. The universe always has a card up it's sleeve. Like that bastard spoon. My smile remains fixed while my head is broken, my body swollen and my soul fractured. But I am well. Now I must think of an argument with that conniving fork.

I'm Not

2008-08-07T08:01:00.002-07:00

I'm not a writer. I'm not an artist.
I'm not a philosopher. I'm not a sociologist.
I'm not a professor. I'm not a pupil.
I'm not a dreamer. I'm not a nihilist.
I'm not a pessimist. I'm not an optimist.
I'm not a majority. I'm not a minority.
I'm not a gray area. I'm not full colour.
I'm not a revolutionary. I'm not a reactionary.
I'm not simple. I'm not complex.
I'm not in politics. I'm not the people.
I'm not an individual. I'm not the group.
Then what am I? Am I me?

As I sit with my head pressed against this door I think these thoughts in my dingy apartment. Then I realize.

I am a realist. There's more I'm not then I am.

FIN

Absolutely absolute

2008-06-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Absolutist Rationality as a worldview is, ultimately, a method of extreme control over the very world one seeks to form a worldview about. That every sensation, input or observation is ultimately determined by pure ‘objective’ rationality is to elevate the observer above the status of all observed. To demand of the world; of all conceivable thought, all observation, and, at the outer levels of understanding, all truths, sensations and possible entities, to fit within the tight confines of human reason and academic methodology is a frightening method of control.
In a letter of protest, eighteen professors, including Hugh Mellor, Rene Thom, David Armstrong, W.V. Quine, and Ruth Barcan Marcus stated that Derrida did not deserve an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University on the grounds that his body of work did not meet “accepted standards of clarity and vigor”. They go on to state: "Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university."
Such an utter dependence- whether one agrees with Derrida or not- on the flawed faculty of human reason hardly befits the nature of true philosophy, or of true philosophers.
No-one would argue the existence of Paradox, [capitalization most definitely intentional] but academia still seems to insist upon manufacturing what is essentially always a false logical centre for its arguments.
One asserts an accepted logical ‘truth’, and deduces from that the truth of a related, but not yet accepted, understood, or discovered idea. These truths and these deductions only exist on paper, and are, plagiarism aside, always a creation of their author.
Academic rationality could be extrapolated to prove almost anything, and thus proves nothing. The mere existence of paradox points to rationalities’ flaws, which makes the act of logically sound reasoning an exercise in futility. However, academic truths need not be denied or refuted, only understood to be isolated to the paper they are printed on, and the minds of those who hold them.
To pursue with such obvious vigor, the absolute academic rationality displayed by most modern philosophers, academics, scholars, and the institutions, governments, and populations that support them, displays the depths to which a desire for ultimate control will sink. Nothing in this world occurs with the frequency of contradiction, Paradox, and irrationality, yet we banish these things from academia, and therefore from common debate and thought; all in the name of control.
Academia, and the society which propagates and supports it, demands that arguments be cogent, logical- and exceedingly easy to follow, if you’ve any hope of reaching a mass audience. This is nothing short of a wholesale rejection of all things intuitive, mystical, and beyond rationality. At its root, it is a deep seated fear of what cannot be controlled and quantified; held in ones hand and examined on all sides- a fear of those things greater even than ourselves. Leaving the outer edge of philosophy wallowing in existential angst; rather than take that next tentative step into Paradox, mysticism, and rational irrationality.
Choosing to create a far more cloistered and controlled world, with rational rules, laws, and finite boundaries. A place where Paradox, contradiction, and irrationality, all the places truth chooses to hide, can be left securely outside the gate.
A group of frightened little men in suits and robes and sweater vests hiding from what they cannot possibly control, and wishing only to banish these ‘unknowables’ from their presence- a futile attempt to control truth itself.
To relive a scene between Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper starring in “Easy rider”:

“What you represent to them, is freedom.” Jack Nicholson says, as they sit in the fading light of a small fire. Dennis Hopper responds agitatedly “What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about.”
Oh ya, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about, all right. But talking about it, and being it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. But course, don’t ever tell anyone they’re not free, cuz then they’re gonna get real busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. Oh ya, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you, about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare em’.”
Dennis Hopper says with a quiet quiver in his voice “Ya, well, it don’t make em’ running scared.” “No.” Jack Nicholson responds quickly. “It makes em’ dangerous.”

Untouchable

2008-05-10T12:20:00.008-07:00

I am a pariah. I came to this conclusion last night while being outside a local coffee shop. Not one of those smooth jazz-playing, $6.95 soy latte with hazelnut drink places. I'm talking about a dark, beneath the city street, dimly lit, throw-back from the Beatnik era coffee shop. The place literally smells of history. The coying smell of tobacco smoke waifs through the air like an unhappy spirit. The shop is where I spend some days to escape the pain of civilized society. A underground resistance to the corporations and drones the work above us. This is where I met Ellie.
I had just finished walking on a cloudy day. It doesn't matter which day. They're all the same to me. I kept thinking that day that I am one of those people who aren't "mold-able". I don't want to be a working man. A bygone relic of the Nuclear Family. I am me. With that statement I realized I need to fill my body with something cheap and legal that can keep me in this frame of mine. Not necessarily nihilistic in my views but more apathetic. So I discovered a small hole in the wall shop.
"Asmodeus". A perfect name to this place. Who knows how many secrets have the walls listened into. I walk down the cement steps worn by the feet of the anti-culture. I move my ten-dollar sneakers down to the cracked, faded brown door. I open it and am brought into a room of silence and quiet anger. A cracked wooden bar painted black lies against the right-side of the room. The shop seems to devour the feeble light. Everything is dark. Moody. My kind of joint. Perfect for the frame of mind that I had painted for myself. I move my legs towards the bar. A blackboard with white chalk lettering tells me my 6 choices. I order a coffee.
I move to the back of the shop to a nice secluded corner. All the corners are secluded. I wrap my hands like a prayer around my cup. Staring intensely at the scratched, graffiti-ed table top. Does RG still love DW? Is Korn the best music? Doubtful to both. I try and think my way out of my box when she came in.
She was neither gorgeous or plain, neither fat nor skinny. She was classical beauty. Her hairy, a dirty blond, was like the after flash of lightning in the thunderstorm of the room. I won't go into more detail. It's best to let you imagine the rest. I couldn't help but stare. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the coffee buzz hitting me but I knew I had to talk to her. She turned to walk towards me. I froze. Could she be an FBI agent finally tracking me down? She didn't look like one. Her hair was uncombed and unkempt. Her gray sweatshirt was frayed at the collar. Even her blue jeans had tears and rips. She came right over to me. Sat down and started drinking my coffee!
Now, I had seen many things. Monkeys coming out of lampposts. Colors and scents that I can't describe, yet nothing in my world had competed with this...this brazen act of desecration to a mans coffee.

"Excuse me," I politely rasp. Last night must have broken my larynx. "Thats my cup".

"How very capitalist of you" she retorts. I think I am in love.

She reaches across the table. "Names Eleanor Horst, everyone calls me Ellie"

I gave her my hand and my name. This woman was amazing. We spent most of the daylight speaking of philosophy and humanity. Her grassroots ways mirrored my own. We were kindred spirits. If we had a sweat tent we would pass the peace pipe and speak of dreams that the Great Spirit gave us. Instead we talked in hush tones in a downtown, rundown coffee shop. We were on a wavelength that I never dreamed possible. This was my summer of '69.
Over the next weeks Ellie and I became closer. Nights laying on my mattress staring up at the ceiling while watching the smoke curl upwards. Nothing would be said at those points. We were back in the womb. Two people in such semblance that our words would probably shatter this moment. I have felt things in my life but this beats them all. I think I'm happy.
After two months our relationship ended. She became more optimistic. She even got a job. She wanted things out of this life. Me? I want to wander, to search for a higher meaning. To be like a Shaolin monk trying to reach enlightenment. We had to go our separate ways. For about three days after, I maintained a level of buzz that would've killed a lesser man. Then I realized that this was karma at play.
Was this a sign from above that I should make something of myself? Get a job? A wife? A car thats not older then myself? A white picket fence, 2.3 children, and a dog? NO! I refuse. I am a pariah. I need none of these things. I intend to wander this place searching for something that I can't search for. I need to be away from people. That is of course if Nixon doesn't get his grubby hands all over it.
Perhaps she really was a government agent. Sent by the Nixon commies to break me and make me become a lumping socialist. Well, it didn't work. I saw Ellie once and a while after that. Meaningless idle chatter about inane things. We could never get back those months of nirvana. Maybe she was a communist. Or a optimist. Same thing really.
I lurch back to this time period and space. My cup is empty in front of me. Like Ellie and I were. Once filled with steaming energy, now nothing is left but the lingering taste and the dregs at the bottom. I shake my long greasy hair. No, I don't think I will ever find someone like her. She's a good spirit. I am on a different path. Running away from Commies and other agencies that probably want to keep my brain in a stasis pod to be put into a robot in the year 2346 when the world is using cyborgs to take over the last remnants of free society.
I throw a few bills on the table and shuffle out. The place hasn't changed, but it seems my memories have given the black room a whitewash. I leave through the door and enter the brightness.

FIN

A Question on Humanity

2008-05-05T02:39:00.003-07:00

Recently, while trolling a political forum, I was asked a question on the nature of humanity. I responded with the following- unedited -for your amusement:

Define humanity. Ironically, that depends on which actual definition youre looking to define. As as already been said [in a previous response], humanity refers to human kind as a whole. of course, there are other definitions. such as humanity (compassion, etc.) or humanity (something that makes us human.)
In regards to this last one- pretty much nothing. It's impossible really to prove that anything physical exists. All science and philosophy is based on the assumption that it does ofcourse, but really noone knows. Therefore to define what makes a human a human you have to prove that a human actually exists. Otherwise you could just say that its a horribally abstact concept created through general interaction with other people. it's-to-say the interaction regarding people in general (or group dynamics, the forces of social conformity) because for all intents and purposes, "humanity" in this definition changes around the world and through out time. If a person were raised by wolves they wouldnt really *be* human. they would not possess humanity in this sence and would be an actual animal (as their "humanity" is now defined by a wolf, or any other dynamic.)

8:03pm sunset

2008-04-19T22:42:00.005-07:00

This place is so big, a vast expanse-
and I am so small,

BUT MY VIEW OF THIS PLACE,
IS MAGNIFICENT. orange,
pink, purple, and blue,
radiant and magestic, like-
that noble flock of birds,
winging their way out into it,
soaring out on a high wave of air,
above the deep-green trees,
towards the teal sea, into which the angry,
red sun plunges his seething brow,
as I raise my head, my eyes illuminate,
burn emerald green,
piercing flames reach out and grasp,
this vast expanse,
acsended.

All a man wants to do it show someone else,
his view.
If only you could see what my eyes,
have be-held.
If only I could be-hold what your eyes,
have seen.
Then we'd see-
Then we'd be-hold-

This place is so big, a vaste expanse-
and we are so small,
BUT OUR VIEW OF THIS PLACE,
IS MAGNIFICENT.

Making Sense of the Jest

2008-04-02T23:42:00.005-07:00

Young men ramble with their feet, old man with their words. I've been doing both since the day I learned to move myself in both these ways. A writer's work is an extended suicide note, a piece of paper left behind to explain to those who survive his heart's cessation where he might possibly have rambled in the time in which he took up residence in his transient body. An explanation of how he viewed the swirling miriad of phantasms which present themselves as reality to our beleagered eyes. When we read these words we stare into the empty eyes of the one who wrote them, both become aware that they are looking into a void deeper than their own. When those two perspectives fix their gaze upon each other a connection, that for one exquisite moment illuminates all of existence, assures both rambling souls that even if everything is nothing, they can maintain hope in being alone together, drifting through infinite layers of illusion until they reach the ineffable beyond any of the rubbish they thought they had been able to define with their previous languages. Someday I won't have feet or a tongue, but maybe someone someday with both will understand my words and then use his to respond and perpetuate the lost message I passed on while it was my task, while I was stuck in this land of wind and sand.

Mall World

2008-04-01T15:40:00.003-07:00

I escape the downpour outside. I have wandered the streets again in my quest. In an almost Taoist way, I look at the world. It comes and goes. Rebirth and a spin of the wheel. Poverty and riches gone like an egg frying on the sidewalk. Yet I cannot find a place of warmth. Of dryness and of dairy products. I must flee the rain. Everyone knows that the agents of evil lace rainwater with PCPs. I hurry along, my head covered by my cracked and worn leather jacket. I find a doorway. I open it.
Sound. Like a thousand angry lions or an army of ancient warriors waiting to fight their accursed foes, the sound washes over me. I still feel dirty. I lower my head out of my jacket and stare in wonder. Lights and shiny things draw your eye like a pencil. I can almost taste the neon coming off the signs. I say to myself, "Yet, this is only the beginning". Could more adventure be found. Or would I crumple under the pressure. Just lay on the soft mat until the security guards hall me away with their unfathomable power.
No, I decide, I must trudge onward. People around me are moving and jostling like cattle. Wheres the man with the prod? As that thought slinks across my brain I begin to panic. So many people. Who's real? Who's fake? Then I remember it's a mall. Everyones fake. I go toward the kaaba of the mall. The directory. Surely this would guide me like a Merlin to my quest. Whatever that may be. YOU ARE HERE, declares a angry red dot. I'm here? Who the bloody flux is watching me? I peer around and see the dark globes of Big Brother. I must stay calm. Mustn't let them know I'm on to them.
I randomly choose a place to run to. Where or what it is is of no matter. I move my lower appendages towards the destination. Cautiously I look back to see if the brown shirts are following me. Theres many brown shirts. Damn, I declare, why can't they wear a new colour? In any event I arrive in a clothing store. I will be cursed by Jupiter himself if I wasn't in the bowels of hell. Teenie boppers shopping for the latest fads wander the store. People that look like their in the Special Services patrol and fold clothes. I am so very frightened.
"Hi there!" exclaims a small overly-happy minimum wage thrall. I just mumble something. It might have been a greeting or a Tibetan curse. Who's to say? I continue deeper into the jungle of tight jeans and low-cut tops. Music is pounding through the speakers. A blend of pseudo-punk with so much sugar I feel a need to go to the dentist. I finally find my way to a brown leather sofa. I join the poor boyfriends dragged here by their shopaholic girlfriends. As I sit and try to get centered I am suddenly hit by a thought. These people are all insane. Granted I have had this thought numerous times and merely laugh about it, this time I can't laugh. Generally people tend to look at you odd when you laugh at nothing. Wierdos.
I decide it's time to leave before I kill someone or wrestle a manikin. That got me kicked out of a different store. I wander back out into the highway of people. The throng moves with experienced mall walkers racing like their shoes are on a fire to the little old couple who've been there since 9 AM and damned if they don't get their 10 mile walk. I walk with my head down staring at the squared, scuffed tiles. I need to get out of here.
In the ten thousand year history of man this is the only time that we have been completely cut off from nature. We can shop, eat, sleep and relieve ourselves at our leisure. All within the comforts of a room temperature box. Foods from a thousand nations are there for you to order and indulge. Peoples from all cultures and classes come together in this capitalist utopia. The mere fact that you can buy anything blows my mind. I think I even saw a human slave store. I digress.
I continue my meandering path towards one of the twenty thousand exits for those who can't go twelve paces without sucking tar. I head out one doors almost bowling over a old man. He glares at me. I don't care. I need to smoke tar. I light up a cigarette and finally get a clear thought. Traffic rumbles in the distance. The voices have finally stopped. I run a hand through my long, greasy hair. A truck backs up its warning sound getting all but the deaf and dead out of the way. I take a last pull from my joy-stick. I flick the butt to the ground. I'll need to steal another pack tomorrow.
I have no idea where I am or what I'm doing but I know one thing. I hate shopping centres. The idea of people following trends hurts my soul. Bored salesclerks peddle their wares like snake oil salesmen. I have no time for this. I have places not to be. I hitch up my coat and begin to walk away from the gargantuan maw of a mall. It begins to rain. Hard. I don't try to avoid it.
FIN

Snow in March

2008-03-28T10:58:00.004-07:00

After a night of fevered anxiety, a torrential soul ripping experience resulting in my dissolution, I awoke to see a gentle March snowfall beginning its blanketing work on the freshly power-washed cement outside my window. I beheld the snow-sprites dance up and down, tumbling head over heals to their repose on the cold hard ground which they longed to make their last bed. I watched as they swirled; I could not tell whether they were moving up or down, it seemed that my music was pushing them every which way, in a confused free-fall. I could not figure out whether I wanted to go up or down. To decend into enigmatic understanding or otherwise to loft my soul upwards to indeterminate spires of knowledge. What goes up must come down, but what goes down must also go up. There seems to be some sort of balancing peace which will not allow for one direction to be followed for too long. In order to save ourselves we must go in circles, but it isn't as boring as running around a lonely sport's-field. It's like the swirling of snow, come unexpected on a late March day, we hover in the air for only a short time and then meet our fate on god's freshly cleaned cobble-stones. I will never understand other peoples' lack of connection with the physical world. Why do we lose our child-like capacity to lose ourselves in a mythology of reality that we are creating with every thought on every step w take? Why do we lose our comfortablility with intimacy? Why do we forget that we too are mythical creatures, wandering down (and up) the strange roads and paths of some long forgotten fairy-tale? How can people miss the snow-sprite for the snow?

zikes

2008-03-15T00:38:00.002-07:00

Look at them dance and sway, those fragile sacrifices, how their young eyes dart to and fro in horrid anticipation of the horror that awaits them. They quake at the sight of their peers destruction, dashed up on the rocks of organised systems.

I too stand and watching this promiscuous scene, thousands of unwashed souls fit for the Seine, it isn't to long before they become outright, institutions of money grubbing greed for the control of peoples' souls. They deal in salvation, pay the stern man with the greying hair, he is the leader of your community. But who gave him his authority, did it come from God? Is it passed down by heretidy, no, by democracy, no, by any other sort of machination known to man? No, it is born of posturing and magic tricks, leading people along a beautious goose chace from which none of them will return. Deep into the nothing of an unrepresentative life.

I'm not so sure that I've made myself clear, are you all aware that I am stark raving mad. can you not see that I am a fool, a foolish piece of sausage just waiting to be fed to dogs. I am not even glorious in my downfall, I'm doing an ungraceful nose dive into a place far more wonderous that here. A place where you forget to fall when you trip. To just simply disattach your connection to the phsycial world, loom into a different place and find out that there are so many more perspectives on life than buddhas on bodi tree. I'm not talking about salvation, I'm talking about wandering, wondering about. I love the clean clear road with mountains and valleys, trees, rivers and towns. I ramble to these places in my mind. Take trips to places no one has even heard of, so that I can tell people a story that is really unique, not some half baked notion that some historian somewhere is holding the magic piece of the puzzle which makes it all make sense. No, there isn't one, no saviour of our aesthetic design for the unknowable G-D's blasphemed face.

Things got hairy back there did they. ummm yes, i do believe they did. well then, we'de best get out of hereI should say...but what are we to do about Tommy, we just can't leave that savage puke behind like that. i forbit it, I will find your mother and tell her that you are a little ninnie, if you do such an obscene thing. Now then, onto the killing fields of Cambodia, i rather like the right to that name. It is marvelous there in the spring.

Now I sit, all alone by the keyboard once again...hack...

Whose other coloured face is this in front of my knee-

leanin so far back he got cut by a lean mean fighting careening donut...

And that kiddies is why you don't talk to communists

fin

The sun sets during the sunrise

2008-03-13T06:45:00.002-07:00

Time flies like a bird. It skips and hops and rises on an air-stream, and pecks in the mud.
It grows like a strawberry vine, flat and fragrant, snaking across the field in waving rows.
We walk through a paradise of green, and admire the statuary; we imagine moving picture shows- morphing dolphins and great apes.
Trees muscle and claw from their hidden upside-down world, a very gradual anchor or great gnarled fingers. Such such huge organic lives, 125% bigger on the bottom than the top, and stronger pound for pound than steel, we casually walk past enormous beings as casually as we do a mailbox or a do-not-walk sign.
Music makes me float away; have to bodily rip away from it to keep from dissolving, a glittering crystal reaction dissolving into pure space.
I can see so deep into the rationalizations, the subtleties of everything around me; can feel the pressure of the air around me, can feel the urging, surging wave that pushes me along.
The music becomes a completely organic part of what I’m seeing and experiencing- a natural soundtrack to reality. Shrubs and bushes threaten to overtake the sidewalk, and I smile.
A neighbor has left a small wooden ladder feeding into the inside of the plant. It’s been there for months, and has grown into the bush itself, a ladder into another world, a teleportator, a true door to perception. I duck my head into the scratching blackness of another world, but am pulled back by Lucy, and her 15 foot leash.
I find my way home and I see an inclusive nothing when I look in the mirror.
We’re not honest enough with ourselves or with one another; we deny our feelings until they cannot be controlled. We’ve lost the instant communication of feeling enjoyed by animals. Filtered through our ego, our fear, and our social grooming, we haven’t the constant banter of a pond full of ducks and mallards, with great flashes of green ripping across their wings. Crying from one end of the pond to the other, there is instant reproach or reward for every action. Breeding rights, access to food and recreation.
We make noise about such different things than ducks, you think?
We’ve been conditioned to live so far away from ourselves; anything that brings you closer to yourself brings you closer to everyone else.
The world around you breaths as we do; in and out, distorting and waving like flags in uneven breezes, colours squeeze and pull into a painters palette dropped on a hard floor, swirling down the grout lines, scooped into the sink and combusted into dizzying patterns, snaking through our plumbing.
Sneaking into other houses, miles down the road; a wave of colour and dizzying reward crawling through the storn drain.
Colour is a refractive experience of reflection into the eye. Rejected light beams, caught by our eye, which is assumed to constitute reality. Only a human being could formulate a reality in which a known distortion of white light perceived as colour, could masquerade as fact.
Perception and thought have died a sloppy death.
I realize how little people usually observe- we look at everyone around us, and see only a perception of ourselves. A reality created by comparison.
The forest exarts a great pull on me, something about it is so evocative, to me, it has a hard, very heavy vibration to it, a swaying force in high wind.
I feel spirits in wood, affinity with the trees, kinship with wild animals, at home in wild places. Cities are more foreign to me, and hold that certain foreign excitement and charm.
But which seem more intolerable for their charm, when conditions go bad.
Any learned behavior or idea must be impressed into us, and it invariably leaves a mark, which is felt more or less based on ones sensitivity. To teach a child shame at their bodily functions is one of the deepest seated and difficult repressions in our psyche. It rips through our lives, with an irrational fear- we don’t usually recognize it, but at its most basic level, our lives are dictated by the whims of our bladder and bowels.
A thought or motivation that begins within is an outward explosion of inner energy propelled with violent force, and is the opposite of being taught or of learning, which is a force applied to you, a rape, a beating. Why allow learning to be associated with shame, pain and guilt?
Now the sun starts to crest the edge of the horizon, and throws its bulk against the earth. Under the new light of the sun, the walls settle into their foundations and cease to melt like cheap candles into a puddle on the floor.
A quietness and completeness is left to settle into an oil slick rainbow on the back of my brain, and I set beneath the horizon as the world wakes.

Sandman

2008-03-10T09:42:00.006-07:00

I went to sleep at exactly 1:25 am. Well, I went to my mattress at 1:25 am. In my shoe box apartment I wandered in from an unsuccessful success. I wandered the streets with my cracked leather jacket pulled tight around my frame. Staring at the cloud gray cement while the cement gray clouds poured liquid on me. I was like a barge ship. Every passer-by gave me a wide berth, for reasons I can't fathom. Maybe it was the growth on my face or the dirt on my twelve dollar jeans or the fact that I was mumbling about government Nazis. Such a rat race life we lead.
I got into my shoe-box apartment at 1:02 am. I pealed off my shiny, damp leather jacket and carefully hurled it to the floor. I then stumbled into my living room. Strange. I live in an apartment not a room. I lay my aching and weary body upon a couch that I found. I eat some mustard and apple sauce. The staples of my diet. After stepping into my biological experiment/shower, I rinse off the day and reflect. This has been a good day. I got nothing of worth accomplished. Such is my way.
I then bring my carcass into the bedroom. A stack of cement blocks serve as a nightstand and my mattress is my princely bed. I lay my weary head down and...
I am instantly thinking thoughts. My mind is whirring with endless possibilities. I get up and pace my darkened apartment. I can't sleep. The sandman has been lay-wayed or killed. I try to think of old wives remedies. Although, I myself have no wife. Old or otherwise. I drink warm cream. Does pass due milk heated in a can count? It's all coming together. My little mendula is now too much in the wind. Thoughts, ideas and conundrums collide like an Los Angeles free-way.
Perhaps its my apartment. I decide to go out into the hallway for a brief time. Maybe that will cure my insomnia or insanity. I walk out in my twelve dollar jeans and red-checked shirt. I run a hand through my long, greasy hair. Best to look presentable before one goes out. I open the door and step out into the dreary, barely lit corridor. I then slouch down right outside my door. I close my eyes and try to get my head straight. If it is indeed crooked.
The young couple are arguing again next door. A TV in a another apartment flares up in response. A baby squalls in the distance. A slamming door, a rushing footstep and the thumping of a fist against a wall. Is this what people dream of? I look up to a sudden creak in front of me. Its old Mrs. Leave-me-be. She peers out with a look of terror and/or anger. She sees me slouching by my door. Thinking I'm either too drunk or high to get into my apartment, she snorts like a bull and slams the door. That's not what I am. That was yesterday.
So this isn't working I decide. So I get up on my evolutionary advantage and walk back into my dark apartment. I quickly cross the dirty floor to the window. It takes a few tries but I finally manage to open it enough to crawl through onto the fourth floor fire escape. Good thing the Nixon commies aren't after me today. I go out into the cool night. I sit with my red checked pulled tight around me as I exhale fog from my mouth. I sit on the rusted metal and just listen to the sounds of the city.
A distant siren screams of danger, hurt, or death. The constant roar of traffic is like sitting near the ocean. The orange streetlights give somewhat illumination to the street. An airplane flies unseen in the raining clouds. This is my world. I fear silence. I need to be constantly assaulted by noise. Noise pollution some call it. I call it safety and sanctity. Being out in the woods alone with no noise but the wind frightens me. As a modern man I have been bred over the last two hundred years to avoid the wild frontier and enjoy the civilization around me. I don't want to get away. This is my vacation.
Suddenly as the thought came, weariness hit me like the butt of a pistol. I heaved myself slowly up and crawled back into my shoe box. I close the window without the same amount of effort as before. Strange. Damn Nazis. Always have to fix everything. I then tumble into my room which has a bed in it. I lay my head down and close my poor dead lights. I almost fear falling asleep. Will I wake up? What if some historic event happens during the time of rest? If I close my eyes will they be stuck like that forever?
This is no time for paranoia, I tell my brain. We can worry about that tomorrow. As for now, I need to recharge, re-energize, re-misfit. For tomorrow is a new day. I have two hours to sleep before I need to be up and in that alley. The early bird gets the worm. Worms do not have protein. It is exactly 3:12 am. I cannot sleep.

Sandstorms

2008-03-02T22:28:00.004-08:00

The other night as I watched a clip from Monty Python's "Life of Brian" a strange thought occurred to me. I was watching the scene in which Brian is fleeing a fervent horde of prospective acolytes. He is being chased because the crowd believes him to be their long awaited Messiah. As Brian flees he comes along a naked old man with a long flowing beard sitting in a desert culvert. The man waves him away and after some confusion, once Brian has caused him to break it, explains that he has been adhering to a vow of silence for 18 years. It struck me as insightful that a man would hole himself up in a desert not saying a single word for 18 years and suddenly all of his rigour would be upset by a man whom others believe to be their god. And not only that, but the protests of that man then lead to further misunderstandings about the divinity of Brian. It occurred to me that anyone who has anything worth saying can never articulate those things. It seems to me that understanding must necessarily remain uncommunicated, perhaps this is a quality inherent in real understanding. What then do we make of these blabber-mouthed mystics, these figures who unlike Brian, stand up before the multitude and profess to understand the answers to the question that no one in the crowd has even discovered needs to be articulated yet? They are devils of course, manipulators who are themselves manipulated!

What then does this mean for someone who feels the compulsion and dares to have the pretention to write down his thoughts and communicate his own experience to the world? Am I yet another prophet who seeks to channel the eternal into some limited grain of sand so that I can hold it before others and cry with great exhuberance, "LOOK I'VE FOUND IT, I'VE FOUND GOD, AND GOD IS YELLOW!" No! I will not do this, and this I think speaks much to the controversies which are sometimes conjured up around my writing. I often find myself accused of arrogance, of course I'm arrogant it stops me from evaporating, but I'm not arrogant in the sense that the word is being used, I am not attempting to assert control over people with my articulated perceptions. I am attempting to give something to the world, something of myself, but of course it is a selfish exercise too, I am desperately trying to weave together a fabric which I can wind about myself to stop my dissolving self from disappearing into the relentless march of time, into these torrential desert winds.

But, I am not trying to create some sort of post-modern relativistic art, some shlock of brickolage, a haphazard tip of the hat to chaos. I seek to go beyond that chaos, to breech the gap between oblivion and infinity and spread my arms wide in the dark abyss of shimmering eternity. I seek to say something firm amid this mire of watered down art I see around me. (As an aside, the reason I admire Helianthus' poetry is her audacity to put her swiven to rhyme in a generation of artists so desperately attached to irresponsible method and form.) This is not an absolute, or a weak absolute-for-only-myself, it is an absolute beyond perception, a deep understanding which really just brings me to silence. Am I then also a blabber-mouthed mystic, a fool who dresses up like a decent human being and dances his own sick pantomime infront of this crowd of people I think are before me? Can I reconcile mysticism with art? It would seem impossible as of now, since nothing I have hitherto written could possibly be defined as art. If a saintly hermit is seen by another, or even more, written about, are his experiences made void? I have a tentative answer: understanding must necessarily be complete, but the representation thereof must be acknowledged to be inherently partial. I am neither an absolutist nor a relativist, I see those extremes as rather the same thing, for when we perceive the world around us, we see that through to the nothing that everything is, to the oblivion existence is, and the unity that is apparent in that, this can only been seen of course, if you look deeply enough, past the layers of sand swirling in this raging storm. It is perhaps my task to represent with words all this that I see around me in partial form, but I must also be wary not to lead people to those amongst us whom I have seen residing in silence in their own desert culverts.

Work

2008-03-02T21:48:00.004-08:00

At secondary point
alone I sit
With nothing to ponder
and little to keep my mind a lit.

This job is grueling,
tiresome at best
Pushing me ever so greatly
- this physical test-

When shall they come and relieve me?
I cry
That I might leave this desk
- for but a moment -
not be left here to die

They wait there, they stand
in that line and glare;
For I shan't help them
- I just sit here -

For us both it is not fair.

Two days in a row
at this second point;
At first it did greatly me irritate
I know idleness here
would soon drive me mad
with nothing to do
I'd fast be irrate

So I sort cards through the day
to occupy time;
I won't wholly use taxpayer money
to linger here,
composing rhyme.

I recommend this choice
as you sit here too;
It will make the time go by,
your hours seem like few.

Cockroaches

2008-02-08T15:50:00.001-08:00

"Fuck"
Said my bus neighbor. "Fuckin' cockroaches". As I sit idly or ideally, by him I begin to inch further away. My fears are unjustified though. Why would this lumping proletariat riding the chariot of the people try to harm little whacked out me? These fears are inconsequential though for in that moment of time I thought like a rabbit in a snare. Minus the screaming and kicking. Although that did come to my noodle.
"Pardon?" I ask hesitantly. Pardon? Is that damn judge after me again? I digress however. After getting on this busing vehicle at a street that has no meaning or consequence in this story I went, naturally to the back of the busy. Don't want to hob-nob with the driver, a grumpy baby-boomer who wants nothing more then to let teens not beat the living Matlock outta him. I pay the man. Capitalism is still running smooth. I move my ten dollar sneakers to the back of the bus. Near a sketchy looking character. We are kindred spirits he and I. Shady, unsure of what we're up to. We mostly hang about in darkened alleys waiting. For what, you ask? You'll never know. WE don't even know. Or do we?
"Cockroaches, man" The raspy slightly drunk/high voice of my new found soul mate explains. "They're all cockroaches. Scurry around their pathetic lives and when they see the light the hide from it, Man." I am unsure why he thought I was the Man. I dressed much like him. My red checked shirt sheltered underneath a cracked leather jacket. These questions are meaningless however as I have seen his inner turmoil brought up.
"You mean these people?" I ask, fearing for not my life but the life of...well actually my life. These people who tend to rant to complete strangers usually end up on the bell tower wearing a viking helmet singing John Philip Sousa while popping off passers-by. Oh, wait. That's me. My friend, whom I will name Bob, nods his shaggy bearded head. His look of utter disgust and slightly vacant stare put me into his state of mind. We are one.
Silently I think that he's right. People are afraid of the truth. We hide when the great light of truth goes on. Shy away from its blatant oppressive staring eye. We run around putting on airs of superiority and strut like roosters in our proverbial roost. Kings and queens of all we perceive. Except as far as we can see is the plank. I look with a new found respect at Bob. He has uncovered what most never do. Granted, he had some chemical help but nonetheless he is at the apex of thought.
I stare in new vigor at this new Plato, this peon Socrates, this uncouth Aristotle. Hoping for more of his deep, Buddha like wisdom I eagerly await his new statement of truth. To which he promptly passes out. When I left the bus at a stop that was not mine (although I'm sure that someone has it) I walk with a purpose to a place I don't know. Bobs ramblings could be put down as nothing and I could carry on with my little messed up life and not ever think these things. Too many things rattle in my brain. Too much story, too much narrative, or maybe just too much.
I doubt if I will see Bob again or indeed if he will remember that fantastic Wednesday night. I'd like to think he will. As I lay my head on my mattress in my shoe box apartment I smile a smile of contentment. No cockroaches do I fear. People will be people until that orange ball kills us all. Its just the government Nazis I fear. Cockroaches some may be, but they are cockroaches needed to be turned to the light.

Scientists- the new prophets

2008-01-25T10:22:00.000-08:00

I've been seeing posters around campus advertising for some environmentalist get-together. Besides the innitial irony of such paper advertisements posted by folk who care about the trees another more perterbing detail has made me awaken from my long silence here on the blog. The get-together advertised is called "Smells Like Green Spirit". I couldn't help reading this without noticing the irony dripping from the organic ink of its grainy recycled paper. This title is an obvious reference to Nirvana's anthem for the early 90's, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", a time when people had become so disollutioned with the decadence and horrid gaudiness of the 80's that they began to proclaim en mass that they didn't give a shit about anything. The spirit of this song invoked images of raggedy teens swaying apathetically back and forth, arms akimbo, maws gaping, eyes vacant, all embrassing the utter stupidity of life without once cracking a joke about it. Why would an environmental group that obviously cares about something invoke the image of one of North America's most apathetic moments, or perhaps that is it. Perhaps they do not actually care about the environment, perhaps they too are merely wishing to be entertained, standing before their wizzened dildo David Suzuki, painfully aware that he has no capacity to perform anything but intellectual debasement. Incidentally, David Suzuki walked past me on campus last week. I felt to ashamed that I didn't tell anyone. Why didn't I at least do something horrendously strange to make hsi day a bit stranger. Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate he environment, I rather wish that trees and grass would grow over our cement prisons, but I just don't see any life or passion in the so called "environmental movement", or intelligence for that matter. I see politics for sure, people lobbing arguments back and forth in imagined public spheres, but their words mean as little to me as the vegitables thrown by the Paris mob.

Perhaps my issue in this circumstance just goes back to my loathing for isms and ists. If history shows us anything it is that the pulsating wave of human activity moves up and down the beach regardless of the puny humans caught up on it, desperately clinging to driftwood and if they're lucky, a surfboard, or maybe even a boat. Either way the wave will break, dissolution will set in and a new ideal will be set up for us to prostrate ourselves before. We will find a new entertainer who will be both our god and our slave, and we likewise will fullfill both rolls in reciprocation. And so we will find ourselves caught once again in a fruitless attempt to control history, to stack the blocks of each moment, so that we can achieve a dream we had about the future before we were born.

Neurotic as Hell

2007-12-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

I slowly wound my way around the 11th floor of Buchanon Tower, the 1st level devoted to the history department, a somber and stuffy precursor to its nexus on the 12th floor, the lofty perch of cardigan-wearing, pipe-smoking historians and their horn-rimmed secretaries who don't like to be asked questions. I walked down the dimly lit corridor and rounded the corner, but upon raising my eyes from the boring carpet I noticed her, my professor. The one whom I fear and loath more than a thousand devils dancing around a fire in the depths of a haunted forest. I saw her, at the other end of the hallway, packed up for the day, clearly headed towards the elevator. This struck fear into my heart as I too was headed towards the elevator. What was I to do? How could I endure such an awkward ride in a confined space with someone that I had laughed at the last time we spoke. She'd told me that I didn't matter in my writing; I opened up my mouth and laughed in her face. Now I was faced with riding in an elevator with this malicious bitch. What indeed was I to do? I broke out into a sweat! What could have happened? my bowels clenched tightly! The first possible future is that we could have reached the elevators at the same time, exchanging awkward head nods and muffled greetings followed immediately by a polite scuffle over who should press the button to call the elevator. What could have endured in those long moments while the ancient elevator rumbled up to the 11th floor? What sort of terse comments could be made, what awkwardly school-related questions could be uttered? This awkward silence would continue as we - on pins and needles- entered the elevator. "Oh you're headed to the ground level too, what a coincidence!" I would press the big G, my salvation from this tiny prison, I would hit the "close door" button to speed up the process. I would divert my eyes, look around at the floor and ceiling, the many luminecent buttons on the walls. Are these walls getting smaller, is the nauseous lurching of my coffin decending into death and redemption trying to drive me mad? Will I explode on her in this cage, will I go over the edge and tell her that in an objective study it was deduced that 9/10 orphans would prefer to have Ebenezer Scrooge and Michael Jackson as their gay fathers to one day in her company. I probably wouldn't say anything, just do my heart a little more damage. Finally, after painfully stopping at every other floor we'd reach the end of our painful decent, I'd allow her to get off first and then I would bolt, run, hide from this insane power structure. This is only one option though...what if, what if she, while waiting for the elevator, did something infinitely more awkward and asked me to take another elevator, or perhaps less severe made up some excuse that she forgot something in her office or had to use the washroom or had decided to take the stairs for a change. Would she make that awkward sacrfice to save us both from the even worse fate of that elevator ride? We would both know the reason for this last moment cop-out, we would both feel the lead weight of true hate buffet the bottum of our guts. We would both understand that hate was reciprocated, a relationship from hell, a feeling of intense loneliness.

What actually happened, in that dark corridor as her back was turned to me while she locked her office door, not really her office, she was a sessional? What did I do, I thought quickly, all of the awkward possibilities stood stark infront of me, and I like a brave young warrior lurched into an alcove in the corridor, I hid, trembling with the fear of so many horrific possibilities. Obfuscated my soul from the devil who lurked the hallways, trying to push us into hell's gaping maw. How could I let this woman ruin a day that I wasn't obligated to listen to her blather on for an hour and a half. And that is what I did, I avoided the impending disaster on my mood and found hope for the future on the wall. I found an advertizment for a class called Philosophy of History, the class I have been seeking for my entire degree. I enrolled that evening. I also got a B+ in this woman's class, how very odd...

First Thought Good Thought?

2007-12-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

If nothing gets done on December the 12th there'll be hell to pay and no one will be able to do anything about it. It'll pass by without a sound, without a thought, without a being. I'm not denying that it was ever there, just that no one will remember it, comfortably numb as we are. I think there's a show on the tube tonight, maybe I should watch it? Bother, bother, bother, what's my brother got to do with it? If I don't make an impression something dreadfully wretched will happen. Something like the skies will open up and angry monkeys with terrifying black eyeballs of pestilance will come scampering out like so many third graders onto a playground. Full of wrath, full of envy, full of pride, slothful and gluttenous lust- a slow kind of debauchery. There's nothing new under the sun and it's all getting less and less new, stained-tarnished like a rusted out toyota, but when someone does figure upon something new and unique, when life is created spontaneously from the most sorrowful depths of some poor mutants soul, it is magnificent, like a day that no one remembers, that slipped by on the calendar, undetected, a blank virgin piece of paper...

Sesame Seeds

2007-11-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

I sit in the old, tattered booth at a Denny's. Yes, Denny's. Cheap, on the slide food for seniors and poor folk. A gourmets joke. A horrible bastard offspring of well-to-do parents. Yet, here I sit. Listening to the masses around me as the gorge themselves on $9.95 eggs with some sort of shredded newspaper. Quietly, I watch the people. The old couple in the corner sipping coffee and not looking at one another. A young man looking like he either just woke up or hasn't even begun to yet. A harried woman trying to coral 3 young blurs, which I assume are children. All mingling and mixing around me. A cacophony of small talk. I sit with my five dollar coffee. Its 12:12 pm. This moment only happens twice a day.
A brazen waitress with a smile as plastic as the menu covers asked me if I'm ready. Ready? Am I ready? What's going on? Is there some sort of execution going on? Fearful of my response I stall for time by pushing my chipped and almost disinfected cup towards her. She slowly tips the vintage 1972 classic coffee pot and pours a large gallon of what could be warm dishwater or bad diesel. Then finally she leaves me in peace as I croak "Just a few more minutes...please". Please? Why do I have to be polite to her? She's in the service industry. Should she not be treated like a washing machine or coffee maker? Just tell her what you want and instantaneously she returns with steaming piles of "food"? These questions run trough my head.
I stare at the menu for the first time. Amazing delights that would tantalize the palate of any patron. Strange adjectives float off the page to me. "Sizzling", "Fresh", "Spicy", "Delicious", "Bold". My hands hold the greasy cover. What are they protecting anyway? The amazing paper menu of a lower class diner? It startles me. Then there are the pictures. Blown-up photos of food that looks like Zeus himself eats here. Too good to be true. I finally decide on a burger. It doesn't matter to relate what kind because they all end up tasting the same. It just matters what kind of mammal, reptile or invertebrate they used for the meat.
"Decided yet?", the suddenly appearing waitress asks. My eyes gaze up at her. Feeling like a minion in the presence of the Overlord. I look at her beige uniform. Its almost like a sack but a feminine sack. Her age range anywhere from 20-45. Hard to tell with the peroxide hair and make-up. She could be a goddess who merely has this form to ridicule us mortals. In either case, my time was up. I order. A risky way to go to be sure. What if I chose wrong? What if the highly skilled chef in the back is also my assassin? Poisoning every other burger in a sick attempt at world domination. In a Denny's. But there's no time to worry about that now. I can't stall anymore. I don't want to appear as the tripped-out, jean clad, red checked shirt wearing psycho who worries about the CIA. Although I'm sure they have a hand in this.
I forge ahead ordering my almost meal. She snatches the menu away and trots off to whatever hell they get the substance they give us groveling peasants. I sit waiting for my meal. Giving up on finishing the Che Guevara specialty coffee I start listening. I close my eyes and try to feel the sounds around me. Safe, quiet and work productive radio plays in the background. So PC that no one would even dream of complaining. Heartache, heartbreak, happiness, hairspray. The music washes over me like slimy pond water. I need a shower. I open my eyes. T
The old couple has toddled out. They'll be back. Every week until they die. They're just speeding the process by coming to Denny's. The young man is staring at me. Why? Is he so tired that he's asleep without knowing it? Or is it something malicious? I stare back. Neither of us breaks contact, knowing the first one who blinks knows the game is up. For what seems an eternity we stare. Then "WHAM!".
Startled out of my self-willed mind game a burger lays before me. The waitress looks down her imperious nose and asks if theres anything else. No, i say with confidence, begone wench, I think. My meal looks nothing like the picture. Disappointed? No, just saddened by the lies this world has told me. Then I see them. The seeds. Sitting atop my sandwich . Laying almost perfectly like a synchronized swimmer. I knew that at this time that the young man was trying to kill me. What are the purpose of sesame seeds? Decoration? Digestion? Disintegration? I had to act fast. I turn in my booth to look behind me. A trucker is sitting there. Wearing his traditional garb of jean jacket and namesake hat. He leaves to go to the washroom or the kitchen, I can't say which I stealthily place my poisoned food on his table. Hanging precariously over the booth seat trying not to disturb the plastic plant I slink back to the booth and make my way to the door, duck walking.
The young man is now trying to shovel eggs into his gaping maw so he's distracted. I reach the altar of the great hostess while remaining hidden from view. I reach into my pocket and place some bills upon the altar as an offering to the Denny's god. I scuttle like a crab out the door. Safe and sound. Sound as a pound. For now. For there will always be Denny's like cockroaches they will survive. I just can't wait to return to where my madness began. Medication be damned.

FIN

Consumerism, consumer, consume

2007-11-16T06:27:00.000-08:00

Once you have opened the packing
it will be entirely impossible
for you to suppress
the desire to overcome
such an exciting challenge of your tongue.
However, don't be dissapointed with your repeated failure;
you may continue with your habit.

Takes the thirst out of everyday time,
a pure whiff of oxygen, painting over a monochrome
world in primary colours.
We all know that
is why everyone loves fruit.

If dishes are nice, square ceilings become round.

What everyone can say, TASTY!
It's fresh, so mild, with some special coffee's
bitter and sourtaste.
LET'S HAVE SUCH A COFFEE NOW!

Refreshed and foppish sense,
and comfortable and fresh styles
will catch you who belong
to city groups.

Like smoke playing in the wind

2007-11-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

Pavement, hardened by countless days of traffic, clicks beneath us as we walk the vacant streets. The sound is sharp and clean in the night air, snapping from our feet and skidding across the road like a rock across the surface of a still lake.
The heavy brown leather of my boots squeak with the strain as we push up-hill, our eyes struggle to adjust to approaching headlights before they pass, and we slip again into darkness. I have little to say; my mind is weighing heavily on me this evening, so I let you speak. I’m just happy to be outside and alone.

You dance excited, your feet tapping rhythm across the road-- giving voice to your music, you croon and moan, drawing a quivering line to a freedom of compromise.
“They find a kind of freedom of their own”, you slide like a trombone through your idea, raging and stomping with the music of what you’ve seen. “They escape in their own small way, a small personal victory. They just don’t let it take that essential part of them”. You soar into a blaze, your rhythm pounding its beat off the walls of the houses, rattling the windows of cars as they pass us by.

Our eyes turn, adjusting to the shutter of headlights as they pass by in waves.
“Freedom can only be complete, by its nature;” now I speak, mellow, building to a fiery ember, purring and whispering with exhausted fervor. “It can’t live in compromise or limitation. Limited freedom is an oxymoron, it ceases to be ‘freedom,’” lashing the air with my fingers, I build and kick and twist, but this night had taken my power.

“You are all or nothing. You look for the path that is least safe, and you push ahead. Me, I always want to follow safety.” You speak simply, and the words whisper around us like a wind; tugging at our clothes, and hinting at the bodies beneath.

We walk on, the stillness of night absorbing our music, and wrapping us tight in her quiet arms. The cold bites through my thin sweater, but I don’t wish to be back with the others.
I’ve no place in the crowd- I’ve no place in the world. My uncompromised freedom has no place- is not valued, in today’s world. I wander voiceless the peripheries of a time made for others.
The ghosts of weakness and fear muscle my shoulders and whisper that this is stubbornness, pride, that this is the idle ranting of unproductive childishness.

We round the final corner and near our starting-place and destination; recognizing a noisy fountain, bubbling and laughing alone in the darkness.
Pushing aside the bodies crowding the door, we make our way inside, and I again felt alone. Soundlessly, I move to a quiet corner- you can disappear if you want, step into an optical worm-hole, light waves bend around you, allowing your unseen presence. It appears like rippling heat waves down a distant asphalt road in the July sun, marking the disturbance. I melt into the waves, and the world keeps turning, society keeps working, and I can just watch. The room turns, and the people turn and the world turns, so drink up because tomorrow the sun turns round the edge of the world and its back to work.

I can feel the presence of a human being in my worm-hole. Melting into the wave beside me, she takes my hand in hers, and we watch the world turn; watch the sun crawl through the sky on all fours, watch the people rise, scrape and die- always turning.
She leans into my side, and I feel her solid against me, soft and warm; her chestnut hair falls over the brightest blue eyes. A spirit of energy and life, imperfect—perfect.
She is with me in the wave of my worm-hole, a presence, a form to hold and feel, but exists without presence, without shape, outside it.
A ghost of woman.

I sometimes feel a richer, fuller presence, one without imperfection; a shapeless ideal that haunts my consciousness, sliding her slender hand across my back, resting a ghostly head on my shoulder. I smell her hair, feel her presence, feel her dissolve into ghostly wisps of pure idea. Cold, calm, dispassionate, she brushes against my side and settles against me.
Pressed tight to my side, I am enveloped by her energy.
Haunted by the spectre of absolute possibility, I am haunted by freedom.
I am left to lust after her, while I feel her dance about me like smoke playing in the wind.

I leave my quiet worm-hole, and feel the pressure of her hand still on mine, and the force of her perfect blue eyes on my heart. Glass litters the floor, shining cool and sharp in the buttery light. Glittering with the cold, quiet dispassion of freedom, daring us to test inevitability.
Slipping into my shoes, you join me by the door, and we push into the cold.

Light and shadow

2007-11-11T08:57:00.002-08:00

Oily light hangs in the air, settling on the walls and on our skin. Running towards the floor, it bathes in bacchal repose. It saturates our clothes, and runs down bare skin, holding against gravity in shining orbs until the weight of it presses for the low-spots.
Goin’ down, down, down to the floor where I’ll lay still and calm, reflecting blurry light to blurry faces.
Butter yellow, the walls sag and flow towards the floor in the heat of our breaths, warm and wet; the room grows soft.
I push trepidation in, while others watch faces pushed in; screaming and laughing and congealing in the ring, like gory ribbons of sticky maple toffee cooling on white canvas snow.
Laugh. laugh! Stuttered breath from my nose, pulsates with shoulder-humps, smile-- that was a laugh. That feels like walking on broken glass. Electric jumps.
I’ve had this dream before and it always ends with me feeling full and being empty.
Bloated and sick it pushes me to the floor and drags me with carpet-burn through reality.

Pool cue pass-- hop-along-the-frog. Balls go where they want they’re disappearing, dropping into a bowl of soup in Tanzania.
All this is an act, but I’ve no character to play; so smile, and shrug, and feel alone and unknown and close your eyes and feel the music.
Imagination is creation make a void out of space -or a space from void- there’s no stairs or walls or door jams, so moving a couch in will be easy work.

Push the music out your feet to the center of the earth, down where the bits of left-off gods, unincorporated (they get no postal service) hurl volcanoes at your feet, shooting like a ripe strawberry through the tiny holes in a stainless collander—a mass of congealing red viscera, boiling and heaving towards the bottom of your feet.

Vision is giant little straight beams of light reflected off of every object into your eye: up-side-down. We see what is not, what is is swallowed and held down queasy by everything.
As afraid as you of losing themselves, they swallow their true selves and clench shut to keep safe.
I want to see between the lines of rejected light; to see between the colour and the shape, between form and meaning. It’s designed to look pretty, but it makes it invisible.

We slip noiselessly and sit legs crossed on the floor, hurling words at distant planets.
Flying through space at an incredible rate, ‘projection’ crashes into a distant moon, and leaves an aggressive crater stripped from the surface.
‘Breathe’, and ‘stillness’ crash simultaneously into a distant world and bore through it; with an empty, hollow sounding reverberation, the world dissolves into an impossibility of particle and light.
‘Crystal Meth’ diffuses in a thick atmosphere and drifts down particulate onto the thin skinned amnesiacs with no words of their own. Bombarded by our diction, they prattle and gesture, creating vast symphonies with the words we scatter to them, like the music the birds scratch with their claws, eating the crumbs we toss. (Contractions fall like gentle rain)

The crash of shrieking voices drifts down the stairs like a child: clumsy and loud, but careful, on all fours, crawling to your feet and looking into your eyes with gentle sadness.
There is only one desired meet, and there is no presence for them, no shape to fill.
A ghost of woman, chestnut brown- bright blue.

The door slides open dully, and I roughly slip heavy leather past my ankles and press into the cold.
A spectre of purple hangs around us, weaves itself into the void within us, holds, release, bends to our shape and tempts its way around our bodies. A whispered sound and a gentle touch flows like woman around us in the cool night air.
Rows of houses, leering huge in the ghostly blue twilight of the streetlamps, sneer me past them, leaning their bulk against mine.
Who was turned around- you forgot we could both be wrong.
We stumble in the darkness writing the script to be followed in our absence by all eternity. They may miss choice, but will know instead certainty.

24 hours before; “you can take it all apart”, “you can rip this world apart- you have the ability, it is you, you have the choice to begin”.
“Thou mayest”, I say concise, knowing the truth in it, but reluctant to personalize it, to let it attach to myself, wanting to avoid this choice.
It is like choosing death; though one knows its inevitability, even if prepared and ready, the choice, the moment you breathe out, is so difficult to time.
Shoes click on the pavement, and we find our way back; we were creatures of the night, we were comfortable and lively and folded neatly into the blue darkness.

More words crash and reverberate around the room and through the atmosphere, but go astray and swirl faster and faster into a black hole. The words crush together, become a singularity and are quiet.
Quiet becomes heavy and thick, movement slows and thought slows; until you find a character, and find comfort and speed and movement in that.
I've retreated, haunted by the ghost of chestnut and blue- and sit in front of white sheets, waiting to be coloured with black. (The spaces between the black are as essential to meaning)

I stare at the white sheet, and the black words; look at the earth and past the gun-metal sky, and hurl my words into space.

Sea to sky

2007-11-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

Bathed in the icy cool, inky morning twilight, grey clouds hang onto the sides of the mountains-- gripping the rough tree tops, which hold this thick cloud cover like a warm comforter, pulled up tight to the mountains ears’, exposing only its snow frosted tip to the cold of the morning. Rough slabs of granite lay bare from the mountain; the cool smooth sheets of rock are in constant dialogue with the rough chop of the gunmetal sea, dipping a silent toe into the restless water.
This is that time when the early morning light bathes the world in grey, black and blue, the wet, misty peace broken only by bright white lights ringing the old mine, crawling up the face if the mountain, following deep veins of copper. At lower elevations, the evergreens cling to the last of the early morning fog, still thick in the dampness of the early day.
Road construction plows under the earth, ripping through felled and splintered trees.
Great rigor mortised logs are strewn carelessly along the road, uprooted and rotting.
The earth will reclaim what is hers, given time.
The collection of rock layers exposed by the road construction-- slashes through the mountain-- shine out black and white like an appaloosa pony in the approaching light of day. Deep gashes ringed by soft moss clinging to the ragged edges of the rock, and soaking in the west coast rain, thrive where soil itself is a luxury, and stand dark against the light heart of the granite.
Brash steel bulldozers rip at the mountain, and she bleeds from hidden arteries of crystalline streams, pouring into the grey sea through gates, locks and tubes; diverting the pressure and force of the water away from the foundations of the roadway.
A single tiny evergreen stands canted, peering over a precipitous ledge, holding firm with precious little soil to anchor it. A lesson in the futility of chance; as it grows larger, day-by-day its roots will find only rock and a winter storm will rip the tree from its perch, drowning it in the icy inlet.
This little tree will never pierce the morning fog, never peer past the sacramental veil of purple and crimson.
It already approaches its final days. Yet it grows on.
Feebly piercing the sky with its stunted trunk, it grows.
Vancouver hangs above the sea below the ridge, and across the inlet.
Piercing the morning softness with grey concrete, its rising light floating into the sky, lighter than air, it sits on the muddy headlands of the Fraser River.
There’s Vancouver down there. All lit up.

With Apologies to Nixon

2007-10-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

At exactly 10:05 am my sub-conscious took over my conscious. I was staring at the carcasses of the waffles that I had for breakfast. Their syrupy juices swirling together like a raging torrent. Then it happened. I stared at the bottle of maple syrup. A Canadian maple leaf was on the bottle. I froze. What's this? Is this what it is to be Canadian? Drinking beer and maple syrup while having five o'clock shadow, chopping trees with my red checked shirt on? I pondered this for some time. I couldn't grasp it. The sub-conscious had a grip on me. I was losing it. Then tearing my eyes off the bottle I glued them to my plate. I saw him. Nixon. His face, smeared and sticky, gazing up at me. I had to get away. I couldn't allow him to get me. So I slowly backed away, trying to appear calm in front of maple Nixon. I went around the room and decided my only chance was the window. I slowly, slowly, slowly began gather the provisions I would need for such a daring, and risky endeavor. I grabbed my shoes, no sense in running out in the cold without them. Wearing my leather jacket that I had slept in the night before I moved like smoke across the room gathering my needs. Two tins of beans, a lamp, three socks (not pairs), and my red checked shirt. I scrambled away out the window onto the fire escape, looking for any Nixon agents that were trying to halt my sudden discovery of the maple goodness of Canada.
I slowly went down my feet ringing like the bells of Notre Dame against the rusted metal. Every window could be the last I see. I crept with great care down, down, down like I was descending into the bowels of hell. Maybe I was, trying to escape Nixon, going to go to the very edges of reality. Or perhaps just mine. Finally after what seemed like minutes I reached the parking garage. I leaped and slid among the parked cars. Blatant shows of opulent wealth all around me. Or the inane desire to show ones superiority to another being. I finally reached my own chariot. I got the keys out trying not to make a jangling noise alerting my pursuers that I had taken the lamb. Opening the door which creaked in groaned in protest I threw my provisions for the trip in the back. I put the key in the ignition and turned it.
"Traitor" I exclaimed as the car roared to life, like a dragon woken by a vengeful knight. I couldn't stop now. I had to get out and fast. Pressing my 10 dollar sneaker against the pedal I screeched out of the parking lot leaving only smoke and a memory behind. I was free. For now.
Driving along the road I began to question my motives and wondering why all the trouble. But my sub-conscious was in control. I had no logic, no reason. My conscious self was locked in a metaphysical cage deep within me, powerless to help me. So I drove on. White lines were shooting across the blackened sky at me. Then I adjusted my head. The blue sky was now above with the sanguine darkness below. The white lines, like white lies were being hurled at me. Shot by the agents of Nixon in an attempt to stop me. But no one could. Green, yellow, red. Colours I should have known but didn't. At least not then. Red. Communists. Nixons' communists trying to put an end to my adventure. All around me people were braking in a uniform, proletariat way. I sped through. Cars yelled at me as I flew by. I paid no heed. Nixon can't win this round. I won't allow it.
On and on I drove. I couldn't turn on the radio for fear of the Nixon communists blaring propaganda ads at me. I knew my name would be on the news. Headline news. That's just what they wanted. They wanted me to turn on the radio, lose that second of concentration and crash my freedom ride into an unthinking tree. I could see the headline, "Man loses life on road, Nixon to make winning death". No, they wouldn't get me. I kept driving. The sky turned a communist gray. As if sensing the very thing that was keeping me moving. I knew my destination now. But saying ti would ruin it all. When I got there there would be agents waiting to grab me, hold me, take me to a 6-by-4 cell. So I stayed quiet. Just so they couldn't crack me.
Finally, at exactly 6:43pm I arrived at my sanctuary. Carefully listening to the gravel that cracked like bones beneath the balding wheels of my capitalist pride. I parked not in the driveway but a ways into the woods. The woods. Safe, primal, remote. No man could ever find me at this cabin, this castle. I procured my items from the back and rolled and dived to the door of the house of refuge. Can't let them get a clean shot. Nixon communist snipers waiting in the ancient ents around my fortress. I got the key to open the door to salvation. Then a thought oozed through my frantic mind. That's just what they wanted. To go through the door. In my mind I imagined Sergei and Boris Smith, two burly Nixon communists, waiting for that handle to turn and seeing my limp lifeless form fall to the cold earth. No, I couldn't go that way. So stealthily I slithered to the back door. Always got to go through the back door. I put the key in the lock preparing myself for either sanctification or salvation. The door creaked open.
Silence. Unyielding silence. I peered through with my peepers until I saw all of the one room shack. I hit the floor. Crawling on my belly like some Darwinistic fantasy until I was in the dead centre of the room. Leaving my belongings there I did a thorough sweep of the hut. No listening devices or agents of death I could see. So I had a few moments to collect and sort my thoughts like so many stamps. Wearily, I sank down into a vintage sofa. Then my sub-conscious pulled me again. I had to make it appear as if Nixon was here. So I got up, talking to myself in a most genteel sort of way, making it appear to all the world as if not a thing was worried about. When in my ramble and babble I got to the window I began to sketch the face I saw so long ago in that mess on my plate. Nixon. I drew him as I saw him. A leader of the pack. A mover and shaker. A bright star among dead worlds. I put his visage on every pane in that room. Satisfied at my clever ruse I went to sit on that chesterfield. Chesterfield. How distinctly Canadian. Where did that word come from. For a moment I was petrified. How could that word come into being? What was I becoming? Was I becoming a being?
Then I saw him. Nixon. He was everywhere. Snarling and laughing at me. I slowly bent down to the wooden floor and popped the top of a can of beans. Drinking and eating with Nixon all around me I felt the fear of a generation. A generator of fear was in my chest. When I had finished consuming the cold, slimy meal. I realized one thing. I was too late. My sub-conscious was pumping ideas and fears through my head like a heart. I left the cabin through the front door. Never use the back door for escapes. Their expecting that. I ran, ran, ran up a hill by the cabin, fleeing the caricature of Nixon. When my body gave out. I felt like a hundred and four. Wheezing and choking on my own ineptitude. I lay upon the summit. But still I heard him. A rumble from up in the clouds alerted me to his presence.
"Damn you!" I cried towards the heavens. My fears were reality. Or at least as reality can be when ones sub-conscious controls himself. I heard his laughter up in the stratosphere. Chuckling at my failure, guffawing at my lack of will, snickering at my hopelessness. I laid, spread-eagle up that hill when the spit from his sick jest came upon me. Slowly at first, then more and more until a torrent of saliva was on me. My jacket, leathery and cracked resisted the water but my red checked shirt sucked it up like it was dying in the desert. Wet, drenched, sodden, I scrambled like eggs down the mound. I couldn't believe it. He had won. Followed me to my place of dreams and now had invaded my state of mind. My sub-conscious strove to find a breadcrumb to the problem. Like a sledgehammer to a watermelon it hit me.
My conscious self was back in control. The raging maelstrom of ideas and thoughts were silenced to a trickle. My sub-conscious was tied and bind, chained and locked back within the dormant part of myself. I realized Nixon was dead. He and his Reds couldn't do anything to me or mine. I was free. I drove back reflective upon my sub-conscious expedition into the realm of the unknown. Was it worth it? I believe it was. To unleash the torrent of mad-cap insanity one must be willing to let go of ones perceptions. Now, I had returned to where it all began, but with apologies to Nixon.

FIN

War Mongering for Dummies

2007-10-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

I like CNN. They make me so very happy. I mean, you have such a wide range of characters, it makes a Shakespeare play look like a 4th grade science project. Larry King, Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer they all bring such good times to todays sorrowful world. But recently my little news addicted head almost exploded with pure raw goodness. Its a very special week for CNN. Its PLANET IN PERIL!!!! week. Oh joy. More of Sanjay Gupta yelling at me to change my light bulbs to those swillerly quasi-Star Trek ones. But I digress...
First on the list, Larry King, a man so old I'm fairly certain that his suspenders are the only things keeping him from collapsing into a pile of dust. He's interviewed thousands of the worlds most influential people. And Kid Rock. But lately he seems to be losing it. I mean, Larry King is an icon. Kinda like tri-cornered hats were when he was a child. But again, he seems to always be on the verge of yelling at "Betty" from "Arkansas" asking Paris Hilton what her dreams are. Poor Larry. If I get to ever get interviewed by him, I'll probably just be awestruck by his large head.
Lou Dobbs, the medias version of Dick Cheney. Ol' Lou has been on a bit of a tizzy these last few weeks. Hearing how now Turkey is going to invade Iraq. Now, I'm no analyst (though this one time at band camp...never mind) but it seems that since there already is a "Coalition" of the "willing". Invading Iraq is kinda like inventing the car. Been there, done that, spent 32 billion dollars. Just last night Lou Dobbs coined one of my now favorite phrases when he was arguing with some folks on his show. "bofo". Yes Bofo. He used it twice but with two different contexts. Once, when asked about how a New York governor giving licenses away to illegal immigrants the governor would feel good about himself. Lou responded with, "Well, good on you Governor, bofo!". At that point my mind blanked in sheer joy. I hadn't been this happy since the Soviets put up a wall. At another point he declared that if Turkey invaded Iraq with their coalition well then "bofo". Lou Dobbs is an isolationist. And man, I wish he was on for two hours. Then I think he'd start beating a gay, liberal, grass-roots protester with the constitution. Thats my fantasy.
As previously stated its PLANET IN PERIL!!! week on CNN. They changed the letters of CNN from red (communists) to green (happy drunken Irish?). In the series Anderson Cooper, a man I don't trust (who has two last names?), Sunjay Gupta (tell me what my children can take as cold medicine will he?), and Jeff Corwin (I'm pretty sure he has rabies), go all over the world telling us that we'se all gonna die (insert Bayou swamp witch voice). While I'm not going to watch it along with 79% of Americans, it might be interesting to note that while they were running about watching blackened earth, destroyed rain forest, dead animals they could've done it much closer to home. Just look at Georgia right now. See the similarities? Yes, our little green ball called Earth is getting destroyed by us. Now that thats outta the way who wants roasted condor?
Now, I have lost my point along this jumbled mess but make no mistake I love CNN. Wolf Blitzer frightens me, Lou Dobbs entertains me, Anderson Cooper chastises me and Larry King is the undead. Plus they have a segment called "This week in War". That just is capitalism at its best right there. So, if you feel the need to lower gas emissions, turn out lights and save pandas please do so. Me, I'm going to build a bunker big enough for 4 people. Three I've already mentioned and Larry King, along with Kieth Richards shall wander the earth stopping to interview one another. What wonderful world.
By the by, you can argue with me about anything I've written. Problem is I'll just deny your existence. Because if you're not real, how can you be arguing with me? Thats exactly what I did to Erica Hill. Not reply to my fan mail will she.

This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day; Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Bringing Sexy Back

2007-10-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday one of my professors compared my ideas to little bits of lace and silk. I took offense at first, although I did not let on to her how offended I was, but later I revalued the comment. What is made of lace and silk I thought? Why Lingerie of course! So, either my prof is incredibly horny and creepy, or I have the sexiest ideas on earth. That's right history department, it is I not J.T. who is bringing sexy back.

Yet, on a more somber note. This is not the first time I've been given this speech by a professor. You know, the old, "you're just an undergrad and you're confusing me therefore you must be an idiot." No bitch, I am an artist and by comparing my ideas to beautiful clothing you are just supporting that idea. I can make people with disgusting bodies feel good about themselves. Yet, everytime I try to articulate these ideas I come up against a wall. Will I continue to come up against this wall and futily destroy myself? Or, should I stand back for a time and wait and then with one great effort level the wall and all that surrounds it? I'd like to see a piece of lace do that...

roight

2007-09-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

In the early morning-
before the sun has fully risen-
when the air is yet crisp-
and the roads not too over loud,
Do you ever- before putting on your socks on your feet-
use them as sock puppets and say goodmorning to yourself-
so that you don't feel so lonely?

Really?

Fuckin' loser!

Another Coming

2007-09-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

To believe that the glass is half full is to limit possibility! How much more excitement is there in life when you always have the possibility of filling that glass with something new and furthermore even having the choice to do so?! You will all envy my half empty glass, for I am free to act, yet therefore damned beyond imagination.

If a pessimist sees the universe spiraling down and backwards he is relatively more hopeful than the optimist who only sees upward and forward motion, for in the moment the pessimist is always at the highest and best place that he will ever know. As that point continually slips away he clings to his blessed remembrance. The optimist, on the other hand, is always at the bottum striving to gaze up at that which he will never attain in the moment- nor in eternity.

Wiser still is the man who sees that everything is spiraling in both directions and that pessimism and optimism will loop around to meet one another, yet just at the point where they would conjoin- diverge off into the infinite.

Even though the falcon is now entirely deaf, dumb and blind at least it hasn't forgotten how to beat its wings in direct defiance of any sort of falsely imagined falconer!

I am (in) the Shit

2007-09-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

So here's the reason that I've given up on writing for the past month...

2nd History of the Holocaust Class:
I am shocked to hear that we will be doing an elementary school timeline approach to the Holocaust even in our papers.

I strap my seatbelt tighter and refuse to eat berries lest hemeroids appear.

3rd Class:
My project group and I develop a very inovative research project. We want to research how viewing the Holocaust as the central event of WWII and the past century affects how people remember and think about the Holocaust. Our idea is rejected and we are subjected to a webliography.

I seriously consider strangling her rather than trying to communicate at the level of a chimpanzee.

4th Class:
I have a major panic attack throughout the entire duration of the class summoning up only enough sanity to ask the professor "if we would be able to engage with the issues at a slightly more sophisticated level than fitting the triangle shaped toy into the triangle shaped hole?" These are my words verbatim, delivered in a clearly manic state, to a class of 70 people-most of them checking their e-mail accounts on their laptops.

She makes snide comments about sophistication for the duration of the class.

We watch yet another film that I've seen before about a timeline that I've known about since grade 11.

I later forget all about it and pretend that I am in a world in which elves, goblins and gnomes bicker over the most ethical, equitable and environmentally-friendly distribution of dew from the grasses of the magical meadow to all of Illuvitar's blessed creatures. I dance a frenzied dance.

Disheartened

2007-09-05T23:08:00.000-07:00

My professor said to my class today: "In this class we will be dealing with the who, what, where and how of the Holocaust and under no circumstances will we discuss the why." And this very statement, I thought to myself, is the reason...

I May Possibly Be Back

2007-09-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling a great deal of tension lately. My body, mind and soul torn asunder by conflicting forces, choices that I must make, steps I must take, words I must--spake? I've been pushed and pulled, up, down and everywhichway. But tonight I felt the sky open up, it cracked in half and it all poured away, trickling down into the gutters, into chaos and disorder. It is not order from chaos that I seek. It is the fluid movement of perpetual already destruction which I must learn to watch it ecstatic glee- change my perspective on the tragic scene which I am forced to spectate. If I continually attempt to exert my meager will upon the ineffable forces of the universe I will fail. I must lose myself, forget myself, feel the breeze on my face, the rain in my hair and let it all slide away to one single point that can spiral away in a aquatic backflip, drift down the stream, glide along the current, until I feel comfortable as part of the forces which are only painful because I won't submit to their inevitablity. There is no use in fighting the benign powers of nature. I have learned how to die and thereby how to live. Sorry for this figurative redundancy, but I'm still only human. Maybe soon I'll explain where I've been all month, but as for now I'm not entirely sure whether I've actually returned at all.

Purposefully Untitled

2007-08-03T03:20:00.001-07:00

A whiskey would help this flow, the young man nearly said aloud.
Pulling the cork with two or three twists, the brash vanilla flavour rose quickly as he poured the amber booze into his waiting cup; and setting it down beside his type-writer, put his fingers to the keys.
As he wrote, the type-frame edged to the left with each stroke, pushing his topped-up glass toward the edge of his small wooden table. He calmly but impatiently grabbed the glass and moved it to the right, continuing to type. He sat.
No words come easily, and he wrenched off the dust-cover from his old machine; an orphaned 'Viking: Deluxe 10' he had picked from his streets trash.
He wrestled with the dust-cover, breaking the seal of the rubber tabs; twisting it from beneath the charging handle. The neat mechanical rows of strikers now faced him.
A bare black and red ribbon staring gaudily at the blank, white paper.
Some dirty, spoiled oil leaked from the keys; the 'j', 'g', and 'p' still often enough stuck fast to give his rhythm a dramatic balance.
He took a long pull from his glass; it was smooth, and warm, smelled of vanilla and cedar.
It didn't help very much- very little inspiration came of it.
He tried to relate the smell one March evening; when the earth was damp and sweet, and rich cedars scented the forest.
He was romanticising, he thought; the the whiskey smelled as much of turpentine as of cedar. The forest had smelled sweet from simple organic decay. Starch - sugar - fermentation.
He wondered whether he fit with the decay, or the sweetness-- the decay, he thought without much hesitation.
He took another long drink, and finished the glass. It didn't help much.

Haunted

2007-07-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

We continue to add these petty pretty details to this house that we've been building for so long. It's almost done now. Even the last coat of paint is dry. Most of the workers have packed up their tools and have gone home. We've entirely forgotten to step back from these petty pretty details to which we devote so much time and energy and regard the entire house. If we were to step back, we'de see that this mansion is really a horrific haunted house. These details we've been adding are nothing but spattered blood and with every brush stroke, every song, poem, story, picture or film - or even every action- we make we kill ourselves more and more. We are creating spectres of ourselves, we are haunting this mansion we've made by destroying every scrap of humanity left within us by adding to its overlayden walls with our own blood. We are creating our own demise, we are creating horrific images of ourselves- phantasms. With the climax of this banshee moan our destruction will rush in like the wind through every door and window, slit and crack in the wall. Then with a great shake, a great spectacle of light and sound we will topple this mansion to the ground and nothing will be left. This is the state of our society. The horror grows daily.

More Doors Opened

2007-07-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

I must begin this post by giving the majority of the credit for the ideas herein expressed to my introspective friend who for some reason or other decides to remain silent, yet has indeed profoundingly influenced most of the writing that I have done over the past several months.

I discovered yesterday the identity of the missed call which for some reason or other spurred me to write a post which I find brings together a lot of the thoughts that have been flying around in my head of late. It was a call from a friend who was driving down the road and was suddenly gripped with such an intense realisation that he simply had to write it down lest the moment slip away. He was entirely unable to pull over so he decided to phone me so that I could write down all that he was understanding in the moment. Of course, I failed to pick up the phone and the notion dissolved from his mind before he was able to turn it into language on a page. This is in-an-of-itself a perfect illustration of missed opportunities and thoughts that will never be remembered, yet there is a second layer to the story which makes it all the more intruiging.

From the scattered fragments that my friend was able to convey to me, those pieces of the image which remained after the moment had passed and with it the coherent thought, I was able to see that much of what he had realised was very much alike to what I written in my latest post. His thought had come to him as he saw the lights of a car flicker just as I had seen the streetlights flicker on, he had seen a shift in reality in an instant, and that shift opened up a window through which he was able to see something clearly rather than the usual obfuscated reality we find ourselves in. This is where the Irishman's thoughts are being used. As I explained this occurance to him he commented that it was almost as though the thought which had been lost by my friend had transferred to me. His idea had not been forgotten; it had merely lept through space and time to trigger a process of remembering and coherence in my mind.

There are a great many mysteries in this world, but the enigmatic connections between friends are the most interesting to me. I am moving to Tofino in a few days, something I desperately need to do, but not without regrets. Even though I have not left yet I already miss the people whom I would otherwise be able to share life with here in Surrey. I am caught by my need to leave, yet now that I am leaving I feel as if I should stay. Should I stay or should I go now...I don't think that I will ever look down on the lyrics of The Clash ever again...I've always hated that song, but I am beginning to undestand some of the subtle nuances therein. I thought that the singer should obviously choose the decision which does not cause the double trouble, yet perhaps it is not the relative level of dispair that the singer is getting at. Perhaps he is commenting that no matter what choice one makes it necessarily precludes other possibilities. This is truly part of what tragedy is, to be damned no matter what one does, not because of optimal and suboptimal options, but because of that nagging question, which lurks everywhere. Lurks from the bright lights of a stage to an empty bottle to the twisted metal of a car crash. That haunting question heard from the lips of madmen, visionaries and the wind, what if?

That last paragraph has little to do with what my introspective friend said to me, but really it is the interaction of what he said to me that allowed me to continue on with the thought. It makes more sense to me now why so many writers and musicians spend such a great deal of their time thanking the people around them who in some way or other contributed to the creation of a coherent image, their art. Just as my post was a subliminally transferred notion across a city, so the conversations I have with other people help to construct and build the ideas which I then write down. I realized this a few days ago as I was speaking with a poet friend of mine with whom I love to hold discourse with, but it is very clear that we have almost completely oppossing views, although we are similar in some very important ways as well. I can always be assured that when I speak to a poet my words will be remembered and somehow given life through another pen than my own. In the same way those who speak to me and share their perspective with me can always have the hope that at least one person has listened to, interpreted, interacted with and tried to express who they are. It is in this way that we might possibly be able to find ourselves, in the responses of those who are listening to us.

End of an Era

2007-07-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

I am always put out of sorts when I miss a call on my cell phone. I will enter a room to find my expectant cellphone cheerfully and alarmingly informing me that I have missed a call, yet due to my technological ineptitude there is no call display to show me who had been so sorely disappointed to have missed me. Their identity is usually forever lost to me. Perhaps I am disturbed because I am entirely insecure and neurotic and am therefore emotionally devastated by the loss of a possible social excursion, or even a conversation with another human being. Yet, that indeed is it, it is the conversation! That chance communication with another being, lost by my absent mind-edness, that hope of connection with another being, that joke of a detatched engagement over a telephone signal. That missed call did not only represent a possible vacuous social enagement, but the possibility of one of those golden moments, one of those times that a friend needed to talk, and for some reason you dropped everything and went for a walk, went for a walk and talked, and together approached something which might actually be called a real experience of life.

Today as I was driving down the road in the early evening my eye caught the streetlights as they flickered on. In that split second I realised that I had just missed the flash of the dusk. I had missed that moment at which some city planners deemed the natural light to be at such a level that streetlights were necessary and that night should begin. During that flash, during that minute instance of dusk, I may have seen it, experienced it, but by the time the light had travelled to my eyes and I was able to process the stimuli in my mind it was gone. I've said it before, the dusk is something that cannot be seen nor comprehended easily. Yet, there is no point in writing, or even thinking about nostalgia because it will always come back to haunt you.

This theme of missed opportunities has been continually recurring in my mind today and for the majority of my life. A rather spontaneous friend of mine recently convinced me to move to Tofino where he has been living this summer, something I should have done 2 months ago. Instead I have been sitting around my suburb wishing that I was somewhere else, somewhere other than the blase tedium of the suburbs. I live too much in regret. I feel as if life has not yet begun because I am perpetually looking back. That is what I do, I am an historian, more to the point I am a human being, whose very existence is dependent upon the capacity to reflect and interpret the past. It is often said that he who forgets his past is doomed to repeat it, yet I have begun to see recently that the inverse is also true. The reason for looking back to the past is to learn how to forget that which we are looking at, let it recede into phantasmatic oblivion and allow oneself to drift on, unimpeded into the blazing glory of the infinite nonexistent yet eternal futures.

What was it about a missed cellphone call that made me think of this, to put together four thoughts from throughout today that I had thought I had forgotten. Irony indeed! Again, it is the possibilities incurred by the enigmatic caller. It makes me ponder what inumerable paths my life could have taken and could still take, what conversations I could have had, had and could have, people I could meet, faces that I might someday vaguely and hauntingly recognise. I will quote an introspective friend of mine to end my thoughts, "we don't know where we are, but we know HOW to get out of here." I don't know where I am going in this life, or even where I am, but I am confident that I know how to deal with that. Rather than fabricate a roadmap or religion, a purpose or a reason for any of this divine siezure that we call existence I possess the capacity to actually embrace all of it, the good and the bad, the dark and the light, the depressed and the manic... I have no need for trite answers or solutions, or even sight to see where it is that I am going, I just need to go...

Birthday Precious

2007-07-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

A strange thing indeed it is to have something new in one's possession. This thing, this machination of inumerable complexities that even to look at the outer shell of its being is entirely incomprehensible to me. To not be and then suddenly to be is truly terrifying, like being born, as I was 21 years ago today. That is in and of itself a mystery to me. The other mystery being this me fellow who seems to think that he is worth while enough to type on this fringe of a typing implement. Where this being goes is more interesting than who he is. Who cares what colour an object is, an arrow is boring, I would rather witness it hit the target. Impact is interesting, not the detailed rigormaroo which superfluates the literary world. This is why I am unable to write narrative, or perhaps I am creating a new idea of what narrative is. I am not interested in the process, I care about what it will accomplish and where it came from. I have a tendency to cut off the beginnings and ends of my sentances, I know the middle, so I care precious little for it. I want to see the beginning and end. Those two moments which we are robbed of by reality. Since it is impossible to be conscious at one's birth, since even an old soul is unable to understand the new stimuli of a newly born child. The end is where we must seek the truth, that moment of death. "This is the end" spoke the wise prophet...I or we rather, are looking for the end. The problem with our physical reality is that we forget that we are not looking for the end, but rather the beginning, that experience we are excluded from remembering. We are looking for a birth that we can never have again, and since the momory is lost we never really experienced in the first place. We spend our lives looking for the end goal, but all we really find is our continual yet elusive beginning. And so I type on my birthday, that I am growing older, today I am 21 and my liver just turned 40. I must become a child again and truly smirk the smile which would allow me to jump off the edge as if my hands were always being held by come ineffable force beyond anything I could ever imagine.

Some Wandering Thoughts

2007-07-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

It is not the wilderness that I desire, but the safety of hidden oases in the obscure corners of our steel and concrete prison. Those spots that no one notices because they are scuttling along too busy to see. Those spots where tree and grass and water and bird and flower thrive despite the pollution which surrounds them. To be in the system , yet melting its innards, eating it apart from the inside out, like ants carving a new kingdom out of a long dead tree.

I cannot wander, unheimlichen, without a goal or a home.
Even an arrow has a target.
There can be no peace or purpose without an end.
The mortal cannot hope to experience immortality.
Yet, in that is the answer, a mortal cannot hope,
but a mortal can merely do it.
Stop worrying about the future and live in the moment.

I don't think that it is possible for me to wander alone. For all the impossibilities of complete communication the mere presense of what may or may not be another person is enough to give my wandering a different element. There is a deeper texture to wandering with another; a texture which fades when I am alone. To wander slowly, saying little, focused on the rocks below your feet, yet forgetting them all as you move on, with a person of a like wander-prone soul gives more satisfaction than a vaste store of meaningless aquaintances.

A Dream in May

2007-06-30T15:02:00.000-07:00

The music grew louder and faster than ever before. The three musicians wrote and played in a dark ecstatic fury; they were acting out all of the pain and anguish, beauty and joy in the universe. Colours swirled, blended into darkness; and then they were gone.

Suddenly I noticed my gradual awareness of the musicians' absence. Yet, those who had surrounded them were left with their song as it's elegaic resonance echoed on. At first the people played the song of the musicians, but then they began to add their own songs to the song. They captured the music, it endured, it was frozen for a moment...

(This part of the dream has been omitted)

I wish that I could work this out; I wish that I had the courage to sing this song. The musicians never returned; the song endured only for a short time, but its lingering affect, a change in the air could be felt, something had changed in the process, but the people know not what. The people began to speak of themselves and their own songs. They forgot the melody and the harmony, focusing only on their single refrain. The song grew dim and crept into the darkness of a heart that could not understand its sounds and thereby come to believe that it was his song. The song was able to reside and survive in that humid and dark sanctuary; alive in the ignorance of its host.

It may just be bullshit, but it was the moment that I realised that truth was hidden, something to be dreamt, that I was able to appear as if I were playing the game well, appear intelligent. I am really more of a lazy dunce. I see through things rather, notice ripples in dark corners. I used to think that I was merely observant, but now see that it is that I have different eyes; I've seen my eyes now, they are strange. True joy comes to those who realise that they have eyes, yet then chose to close them, being more content in their imagination. To revel in blindness, complete ignorance. The world becomes more vibrant to me, more pronounced hues of colour caused by the impending darkness. To see this beauty one must see and dwell on the absolute transience of everything. Everything is forever breaking down (or up?) into oblivion, but once it reaches its end it will have become everything again and thereby repeat the process. The spirals continually become larger and smaller?

(This was all a dream)

Clarvoyance

2007-06-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

I try to run, outrun this flood, this torrential river, pursuing me, engulfing me, drowning me- Life! I claw myself out, make progress, see ahead- clarvoyance.

To do this I must decend to the depths, so that I can run on a solid surface. To elevate myself I must fall; I must drown to escape the crushing waters.

And I see, that glimmer, that shining hope beyond the myst and darkness, that something beyond the infinite which is our inner illumination. That is my sight.

Then, a gust from behind; I feel it coming before it hits, an echo of pain, a feeling that something dreadful is coming, like that static feeling before lightning, like contractions before a birth. I know that reality is about to take my feet from under me, undermine my progress. The river catches up. Did I slow down, did my sense of dread at the impending river cause me to falter, or did the river just gain speed? I am undone. I am again swamped in its confusion, mundanity, animalistic frivolity- meaninglessness. I have to start all over again, I must find my feet again and ramble on.

To do this I must decend to the depths, so that I can run on a solid surface. To elevate myself I must fall; I must drown to escape the crushing waters.

And so I escape to dark abstraction, a time of complete oblivion, but once I have passed through this night, a night more confusing than even the meaningless river, then I can move on once again. In the time that it takes me to decend life has moved on without me, I gain nothing, no understanding because the river is crippling my every attempt at peace and unity. I am caught in a perpetual cycle, futility. No matter how I struggle I can go nowhere. Perhaps I would do better to take the opposite, yet equally obstinantly defiant stance in refusing to join the river. What would happen if I were to decend and then plant my feet; let the river pass me by entirely. Could I stand long enough while the glacier melts, while a world of water flows past me? Perhaps I am not drowning thoroughly enough! So I have two choices:

I can remain in my cycle of defeat in which I try to outrun the river, or I can lie on the river bed and let the water move on while I dream of someday reaching that inner illumination, the light at the end of the tunnel which is actually myself...

Anchoured

2007-06-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

I've been languishing here where I sit, this grim repose, wasting time.
Pretending to wait, false anticipation for something that doesn't exist.
I lie about understanding, fooling myself into believing that I am standing under something.
under what?
life?
perhaps I am above it?
born dead, waiting to live, maybe once I've died?
So I fill my time with trivialities, leisure, luxury- destractions from boredom-
the alternative being industrious labour- which I revile.

It dawned on me today that I was not in my body yesterday, and have just recently returned.
I am a captive once again to this listless ship-
suffering in the dulldrums of mortal existence-
unable to raise anchour-
smiling gashes in my sails-
longing for a rough stong breeze-
to blow into me, through me, beyond me, to carry me away.

If I could but laugh about this more often than I weep, then I would have the answer,
but my lungs have been weak of late, and I cannot allow the first peal of laughter to ring from this cold stone monastery...

Force

2007-06-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

There's nothin' left to writ; it's all bin rot - ten away for so long that it would be scratchin' a stick in the dirt to make shapes of this shit.

Words count pecious little,
in the process of change, history.
Brute force continues to play,
the role of the dominatrix.
Thoughts count for even less,
vanishing even while they form.
Even if the pen be mightier than the sword,
and people remember words longer,
still...
a sword's a sword,
and a pen is just a stick full of ink,
and a thought,
unarticulated
is nothing...

Voices

2007-06-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

What does my reading voice sound like? I have many voices that mimic out the world around me, yet this internalized voice facinates me more than any. I remember the day that I learned to read " in my head"; I just chose to switch worlds. Perhaps it is its similarity to my dream voice, that voice which I am barely able to hear, mostly in muffled sputters, that makes it so desirable to me. It is a comforting voice, a deep voice, yet higher, somewhere out in the world of the text. It has traveled through the words of the writer, to his life, and then back to me, through my life. I si a sort of interface; perhaps then it is not "mine" at all. Perhaps it is an autonomous spirit, a guide who comes to me when I wish to understand another being. A spirit of empathy; MY spirit of empathy. A sprite, a ghost, a geist, a spirit of me- could it be my soul? Maybe it is me and I am an outside observer? The outer eye, beholding my inner me as it travels to other places, through the words of others. Maybe it is this outer eye of never gets high or even drunk, this "rational" being which eludes external affectation. Perhaps I have been approaching real experience, but I have never realized who I am yet? I have been looking at the wrong me! I am the elusive one; this spectator, who is even writing this, the one who is writing this is not me, it is a journalist of my being- an observer of genuine life- it is my spirit- just as real- but not as potently ME- as I AM- the ONE that can be in communion- unity...I am a coward...I cannot finish this thought, maybe I will someday...

Acceleration

2007-06-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

Fools with their sprinklers- I can feel the impending storm deep within my bones.
They can wash their cars- I can see the black clouds forming.
(tell me, do clouds no longer contain pictures, or have my eyes grown blurry)
They sit in their houses- the climate remains uncontrolled.
I hear the rolling thunder- they hear only the television.
I can feel the crackle in the air, I see the lightning stike
hot as the sun- perhaps?
as brief as joy- certainly!
The rain begins to fall, first in a dry sputter,
then it pours,
heaven opened up,
my downgoing,
is my exhaltation!
I can feel the storm, taste its power,
smell its lingering scent- O-zone?
I stand enraptured,
in its overwhelming strength.
I am in the storm, and it is me.
Together we will roll along the sky,
I- accelerated by its rampant degeneration- the storm killing itself,
raw power being acted out in an exquisite dance of-
light, sound, smell, taste and texture.

Within Cynicism's Grip

2007-06-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

On the very edge of substance
near humanity
miles away from awe
stands the dull conversation
of those who do not see at all.

If I were a swine
I'd grunt with the rest

I'd swill in my slop
and roll in the muck

then I would truly know
what happiness is!

Namaste

2007-06-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

It is impossible to see the dusk. It is an equivocal state of luminocity, in between day and night. As a child I would sit in a field and wait to capture a glimpse of the dusk. I was attempting to pinpoint the single instance, the flash, however brief, in which light turned into dark. When the restless illumination calmed to a peaceful and soft darkness. But, I could never find it. Try as I might my mind and eyes would either see day or night and then if I sat for too long then night would overwhelm, I would miss the dusk, the chance of finding the elusive, the chance to see the equivocal transition in which knowledge becomes understanding.

As I sat in the field people would walk past me. Some didn't give me a second thought; others were interested as to why I would sit in a field staring at "nothing"(nothing = not tv etc). I would tell my task to those who asked me, some laughed and walked away, others came and sat beside me. Some of those who stayed would claim to have seen the dusk and then leave, a select few would sit in longing frustration along with me. I have always been thankful for those who would sit and stare with me. It was more important that they be there than I knew at the time.

I think though, that I have seen the dusk now. I did not pinpoint it, it is not a flash, it is a becoming. In order to find the dusk I slowed myself down and stretched myself out. This can only be done by looking forwards and back and examining the process, the transition, the dialiectic, the image, art, an utterance of sight, of genuine experience. In the flashes of ecstatic sunlight and smooth dark understanding we see, but we cannot see the transition, the point where THAT WHICH IS, becomes real, when oblivion becomes eternity, in us, the fragmented pieces, the lens which gives existence to the luminescent/infinite infinity of spirals. In this drawn out moment, there is only holy laughter, intense laughter that is also weeping, pain and loss at having gained everything.

If only I could learn to reside in those drawnout moments of dusk, to experience the rending joy of equivocal/internally illuminated existence! To experience the connections of everything! Oh, it is certainly a good thing to sit with another, to share that moment, to be suspended together, twisted, inextricable linked in reality.

To sit in a field in the blazing hot sun- to be filled, dried and made incoherent and pregnant by knowledge.
To remain in the field while the elusive dusk passes by undetected- knowledge transforming into understanding.
To remain in that now-dark field, the stars and moon above, darkness enveloping life, a sea of contentment, a deep understanding, yet longing, a restless stirring, more satisfying than satisfaction, glutted appetitive satisfaction.
To pass through these three stages, especially with another person, that is hiros gamos, holy union with ALL THAT WHICH IS. This is what gives being to the infinite spirals of infinity. This is how the flint strikes the tinder. If we can reside with another within this process of becoming we can see and experience our role in creating, in being, in the infinite. WE ARE!

slip't away

2007-06-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

I am looking for a language,
not taught to me,
not adopted by me.
I need a language,
but they all seem to slip away.

If I could outshout myself; silence the chorus of other voices muddying the stream; I'd truly be able to communicate clearly. It may be brilliant and interesting to refer to a thousand different things at once, but for real coherent image to form with language it must be honed to a needle-point. Those of many voices shall touch many faintly, but none intensely.

I have never been able to ignore my surroundings, yet at the same time I am completely oblivious of them. I am jarred out of contemplation by countless distractions, yet they are the only things which stop me from disappearing into the air. I am caught, in a limbo, called life. I need to be born, I need to die, I need to do both at the same time. Perhaps my quest to be a master of language is impeding me, perhaps I must let go of my need for communication.

Is not the greatest wisdom to sit in the wild repose of understanding, touching the air, tasting the sun, hearing the colours, smelling the grass and seeing all of it at the same time? I'm going to slip away quietly, but my body might continue to go through the routines of life. This is my down-going...

Biographical Thought Process

2007-05-29T20:55:00.001-07:00

A number of people have commented concerning this blog, in the past few months, that it is a blog of some substance; in some way different than most of the shlock which fills cyberspace. I have taken great pride in those comments, yet...I do spend a great deal of time browsing other blogspot locations and at first I do agree with those who compliment my writing. For some reason though I have come across a thought which is rather uplifting to others and downgrading of myself. I must admit I do look with contempt on people of the most appitative constitution; those for whom everything is about satisfaction. Yet, when it comes to the cyberworld I do not think that the same can be said. It may very well be incredibly boring to read about what a person had for breakfast and what they think George Bush should do, but is my writing any different; that is, is it any less biographical. Instead of (what I consider) mundane trivialities I document the abstract development of my life of thoughts. I live in a world of thoughts, I am terribly detached from what most people consider to be the "real world", so I write them out. Instead of "toast" I might write "existential crisis". I therefore get bored and oftentimes angered at the inanities and insanities of life...

I've been writing a lot to myself lately. I kind of like that; to write on a piece of paper that no one else will see unless I chose. Anyways, once I figure out whether I actually want to communicate anything to other humans, then I will probably post more often or just stop...

Drop of Water

2007-05-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

A thought concieved in silence-

a poem written with invisible ink,
an image captured in the eye alone,
a melody hummed with the inner vibrations of the body,
a dance found in the misplaced shuffle of a foot-

These are the clear and obfuscated somethings that we seek.

tURN phOEnIx turN

2007-05-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

This thought comes from a poem that I was almost able to write back in January which entirely defeats the statement made by the poem. It was about how in the different seasons of the year I was either able to produce coherent and insightful thoughts and communicate them to other people and in other seasons I was not. Winter and Spring are my seasons of production whereas Fall and especially Summer seem to be marked by incredible silence. I should have been able to finish that poem in January. There is something about the scorching sun and aridity which leaves my mind empty. I have been heat stroked 3 times this week, oh how I hate earning money! All this to say that I most likely won't be writing online much this summer as I will need to use this season to retreat to my ignorant cogitation, my dark brooding, my complete mental anahiliation...

Listening

2007-05-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

I grew up listening to classical music. That isn't entirely true. I also spent a lot of time listening to my dad's Beatles, Moody Blues, jazz...to list would be boring. The point being is that I grew up listening to relatively "old" music, i.e. classical and jazz. In fact, I was often bothered by anything with a loud bass and/or drum. I really don't know why; maybe it was my supersonic hearing that was offended by the extremes of the audiowaves. I also spent a great deal of my life playing the trumpet, classical, jazz, the same as I listened to. By the time I was in senior highschool I was listening to some alternative and more contemporary music, but I was also beginning to really understand sound. I remember playing my trumpet alone, just listening to a note. Playing with another person, listening to where the two notes met. Playing with a group, hearing the interplay between the different sounds. It wasn't always good music; it wasn't always interesting; I just liked listening to the sounds; I found harmony in the music. I also began to listen intently to progressive jazz and found a music that I could float in as if it were a river of sound, dragged down stream (or up) by flying fingers on ivory. It wasn't until after highschool that I got more serious about listening to and chosing more contemporary music. I have not moved away from my live for classical (mainly romantic era) and jazz music though. I have found that the great musicians of the 20th century have all understood the past of music. They see and understand the music that has come before them and have added on their own sound which does not contradict, but rather harmonizes with the past. The progress of music in the world mirrors the progress of notes in a song.

Done Capitulating

2007-04-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

So I am finally done third year. I can finally read, write and think what I want entirely. I think that our entire social structure is ordered rather insanely. Childhood should be about joy and laughter. Adolescence about exploration and learning. Teenages about coping. Young adulthood about selfknowledge and shooting the breeze. Why do we torture ourselves with so much pointless work? We will have our whole adulthood to work hard and be unhappy. Why not enjoy exploring the universe while we are still young enough to want to? I guess the introspective irishman has been right all this time. Let's go climb another mountain. I love Simon and Garfunkel! The beats will ramble on again, and the road goes ever on...

More Firebranding

2007-04-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

The following is an article that I found on the web on how to avoid burnout. Is it just me or is this whole world insane. My favorite silly line is where it suggests to empty ones mind by reading a book, this just goes to show what kind of shlock people are reading if I book can empty a person's mind. Anyways, enjoy and hopefully be disgusted by humanities desperate attempt to avoid insanity. We will never find a way to alleviate the madness caused by our society; we must rather find an outlet from society, not imaginary, but real. I'll be in the forest if anyone needs me...

Strategy of Imagery:
Examine whether or not your burnout is a result of doing something you don’t like to do, yet you have to face. For example, if there is one aspect of your job you don’t like, but you are required to do, you could be facing burnout quite frequently. In such case, imagery could be a great solution. Picture in your mind an image that you like (i.e. a tropical destination, a loved one, etc.,) and substitute this image in place of the thing you don’t like to do. Somehow, the strategy of imagery helps to lessen the tiring weight of the thing you despise doing. In the process, your task gets done with less resistance on your part. It might even reach the point where you enjoy doing it.

Health Foods:
There is truth to the theory that eating well helps you physically and mentally. And there are certain health foods that are known to ease your mind.Most health food stores sell Ginseng, which is an energy food. You can either drink it as a tea or mixed in with your cooking for a wholesome meal. Ginseng comes in a variety of strengths. The more potent it is, the better your physical (and mental) performance will be. If you’re not very familiar with it, just ask someone at your health food store and they will help you out.

Let it Run its Course:
This may seem like a simple solution, but many people attempt to fight burnout as though it were a competition – them verses their mind. In reality, taking a timeout is the best solution. Take time out to regain your composure. A burnout can be equated to an individual who could use a timeout from the hustles of life. This is similar to a coach of a basketball team asking for a time out to come up with a winning game plan when his team is not playing at its peak. Take advantage of this timeout to meditate and relax those frenzied nerves.

Empty your Mind:
Take time out to empty your mind. Go play a round of golf or read a book. Or try something more therapeutic like writing in a journal. Start detailing your thoughts, your ideas, and your daily victories. You’ll soon wonder where the stress has gone!

Hobbies:
Adding on to the single timeout, you don’t need to wait until you achieve burnout to take a timeout. Find a new hobby that frees you from emotional drain. Go on a picnic with the family, a camping trip out in the woods, or a weekend excursion to a totally different environment. Play with your children or somebody else’s. Kids know how to bust burnout.

Relax and Indulge:
Soak in a tub or visit a spa. Listen to relaxing music, which lifts you up emotionally. You may want to choose specific sounds that can relieve you from burnout like soft, Classical melodies.If this kind of relaxation is up your ally, you might also enjoy scent therapy. Savor the fresh scent of nature, especially flowers. The sight and the fragrance that flowers bring can be great relief to a tired or irritated feeling. If you love nature, nothing is more invigorating than flowers and plants._________________stay cool

Brooding

2007-04-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

I've got this axe to grind
I must admit it's been quite some time
that I've been running its edge
on the hard cold surface of this stone.

Whetting it, sharpening it, getting it ready to chop,
you all want me to get on with it,
but once I get going it will be impossible to stop.

Oh this blade is getting sharp
I can feel the heat from the sparks.
It's almost ready now.
The idea will come, but no one knows how,

it

will

end...

That Old Firebrand You Used to Love

2007-04-13T17:50:00.000-07:00

I read this today...

"We are a progressive, innovative company offering activist opportunities in various Vancouver communities. We offer a flexible schedule, fantasticco-workers, rapid promotion potential, travel opportunities, and the chance towork with a group of like-minded individuals who want to make a difference. Ask us about our brand new scholarship program!No deadline: Expanding company with ongoing recruitment.

Activist Opportunities? They've corporatized the fringe. The centre cannot hold?...the damn edges canna even hold! I'm going to sleep.

Know Thyself?

2007-04-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

I used to have an intense urge to tatoo the word paradoxos on my lower left arm. I found that all of my beliefs and perceptions could be found within the word paradox, and I still do to a great extent. However, I have come to see the folly involved in such an action. To think that any word, even a word which admits ignorance and implies a disbelief in dogmatism, should be set perminantly in stone, or skin in this case, is folly. It is folly because it does not allow for progress in different directions. What if I come to disbelieve my prevailing assumptions? What if I no longer want to identify with a set of beliefs? Of course you can always add to a tatoo and draw it out all over your body, but at some point that developing picture would have to be completed because you are only working with a finite amount of flesh.

I do not need to encode my understanding on my skin, I do not need to express myself visably, or even through language, it is a mere bagatelle as compared to the secret understanding that I could be chiseling. Chiseling into the flesh of some infinite part of me. Carving with deft ability the shapes, textures, aromas, sounds or flavours that cannot be seen, felt, smelt, heard or tasted. I must allow them to be written in a secret chamber, carved on the walls of an out of the way ruin, splashed on the shores of an empty beach and echoed through the hallways of an abandoned prison. There is nothing in the finite world that can do justice to true understanding, all there is to do, is sit and stare at the clouds.

I will not put any constraints on my development. I will be a hypocrite, I will re-neg, I will contradict myself and I will not convince anyone of anything.

A truth will be written on my intangible skin in the dead of night, when neither me nor anyone else will be able to see the words. In that dark night I will hear my secret name, but comprehend it not, I shall have attained understanding, in the cool darkness of night, consumed in flames that will burn both hot and cold, and I will lose myself amongst the ever increasingly complex mosaic of my skin, which will be drawn for eternity, as I lay on the grass and dream...

Image

2007-04-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

Imagine-
A series of lenses - suspended - illuminated by an inner light which pervades the spaces between. Holding it, held by it, crafted by it, poured through it. Each of us, each autonomous cross-section of infinite, we are those lenses, reflecting and seeing eternity in a different way. We are but a layer in the strand of the infinite black star of infinity. -this is dialectics- We are the smallest part of the infinite because we are no longer a unified whole. We physical beasts are the only incomplete part of creation. We are imperfect. When the perfect and the imperfect connect there is life, there is existence. We are the cause and it is the cause. WE do not exist apart from one another. Our shattered fragment is the flint to the tinder of perfection. When we strike against one another there is life, there is existence. I AM is caused by this striking. We are all connected and this infinity is but a lens on the infinite spiral of a more infinite infinity.

Our Spare Time

2007-04-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Of Snowmen and Ice Sculptures

2007-04-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

There are two methods of writing. One is to begin with nothing and add words until an idea has been expressed. The other is to take all that could be said and whittle away all but one idea that you want to express. One is like a snowman the other is like an ice sculpture. One is prose, the other is poetry. I don't know which method I employ in my writing. Is a combination possible? More to the point, when the sun comes out isn't all of it going to melt anyways? Can a metaphor reverse itself on the writer and destroy him; does it gain power and get out of hand? What are these hands that we talk about while writing? It is as if ideas reside in the palms of our hands. Is this why fortune-tellers look at palms in order to tell the future? Is there much difference then between a rational analytic philosopher and a mystical fortune-teller? I think not.

And we see what has happened here. I allowed my idea to progress. I did not begin with anything, but came out with a conclusion. This means that my writing is prose. On the other hand though, perhaps I did start with everything and through my process of asking seemingly unrelated questions I did carve away and come up with a conclusion, an ice sculpture. And here again I find myself talking about hands. This is certainly something I am going to ponder some more. You decide what this post is about...

Finger on the Button

2007-04-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

Anarchists don't want chaos-
They want control.

No insane explosions-
They want a focused blast.

Huge, poignant and destructive-
but harnessed nontheless.

They are all fucking megalomaniacs-
They don't want freedom-
They want to put their finger on the button.

To light the fuse is truly and honour-
- the greatest kick possible.

I still havn't figured out how to use FUCk deliciously...

Symptomatic

2007-04-01T20:09:00.000-07:00

I read a quote from an Irish author; I forget who it was. He said, "I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, but a drinker with a writing problem." It occurred to me that this sardonic admission of substance abuse could very well be said for most writers if not most artists in general. I will reserve my comments for writers. It seems that those who feel the need to write are a tortured lot. We are seeking to forget some horrendous wound, or perhaps just existence, we are trying to forget, so we leave our memories on paper. We leave them there so that we don't have to carry them around anymore. We leave them so that we can move on.

But what about those things that we cannot pen? Those wounds that will not go away. Those truths that we are too terrified to utter, even to ourselves, even in the solitude of our minds. To even think these things, to allow these maddening thoughts loose even within our own skulls would leave us with nothing but ashes. So we try to leave those memories in different places. We try to leave them in other people, we give them so many words, so many false words that merely skirt around the real issue. words words words. We scream them into pillows or underwater where the sounds is muffled. We try to leave them in paintings, but even the thinnest water colour obscures the true meaning. We try to play them out of instruments, but they are altered by the bending of notes. We try to leave them in jokes, ironic twists of the truth which show more than even we are aware of. We finally turn to substances. We try to leave our scars in them. We try to escape everything, ourselves, others, past, present, future...

This is why most writers are the type who can sardonically say that they are drinkers with writing problems. The drinking isn't the problem, it is only a sympotom of being someone who is compelled to write, who needs to forget, but is incapable of doing so, someone whose very being is torture, whose very life is painful.

I wish that these words were what I wanted to say, but they cannot be, they are a lie, a facade of what is really going on...

Memories in the Wind

2007-03-31T19:50:00.000-07:00

My entire neighborhood is filled with the scent of woodsmoke this evening. As I walked along I breathed the heavy air in through my mouth and nostrils. It smelled like contentment and nostalgia. With every breath I took I recalled my other memories around woodfires.

Camping trips of my childhood, monumental bonfires, fires started in the snow, fires started in the sun, tiny dwindling pires, the fireplace in my home during a power outage or cold winter night, camp -fire songs at camp, the great Kelowna fires a few years back- the red glare of the Okanagan as the sweet yet bitter air blew towards us, camping trips of my later years, adventures, happiness, sadness, undescribable moments, wine, whisky, beer, song, tree fights, leaping over the fire, dancing around the fire, dancing in the fire, meeting a weasel in the wee hours of the morning, climbing mountains off the beaten path, dark and furtive conversations, brooding over a fire-cooked meal- that's not dirt you whiney bastard that's seasoning, battles with indubiatable squirrels, cigars, harmonicas, guitars, terrible terrible burns, weepy eyes from a friendly smoke stream, the red glow on the tent as the fire makes a final attempt at life although it knows that it has been extinguished, ghosts, stories, true, false, our own, someone elses, beaches, law enforcing park rangers, all imagined? perhaps, maybe not...

These are the memories that came to me this evening as I breathed in that sweet wood smoke scent. My memories carried in the air unlocked by a fire that I have never seen, flames which I have not warmed my hands on and smoke that has not stung my eyes. My life suspended in the wind, waiting to come back to me...

An Experiment

2007-03-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

Manic-Depressive--- a vague description. Bipolar--- a misnomer. To be a person who swings to such staggering oppositions, rises and falls between incoherent contradictory extremes, is truly a terrifying thing. Imagine understanding everything and then knowing nothing. I have said it before and I will say it again. The field of psychology is the second most futile attempt at understand that which cannot be known--the first being theology. I resent the labels that are placed on people to describe their "abnormal" behavior. I was thinking today of bipolar, a "disease" which I have been accused of. I believe that the name of this "abnormality" is misleading. It was chosen by people with very little understanding of the nature of the experience of being someone who is labelled bipolar. The main problem is that within the flluxtuating soul, there are no poles. There is a definite movement from one extreme to another, but there is no end. There is no mountain peak upon which a person is manic, and there is no end to the void down which you plummet in depression. Depression and mania are also not that different from one another. When you "go up" you think that you know everything, you see everything, you simply are, but then right at the edge of that understanding you find yourself at the bottum of dispair, you realize that you know abosolutely nothing and their is nothing, you are in the void. The pinnacle of the mountain is the same as the bottumless nothing of the void. The top is the bottum and the top is the bottum. But, all this talk of up and down is misleading as well. I might as well describe this as a horizontal movement or perhaps even a dementional movement that we cannot understand unless we are in that state.

You think too much, you are taking things too far, you are so fucking insane. You are a heretic, a sinner, an enemy of the truth. A flake!

Gotta write, gotta eewwzzzz out these words, gotta think, no hesitation, free my words, let my thoughts out, unfettered from the language they are masked by. Gotta get me out of the equation, gotta let true free though slide around on the screen, gotta believe that what is coming out isn't tripe, no editing, there I just did it, noo noo noo just thoughts, thoughts on a page. Write enough to fill up a novel, sell sell sell, justify your existence, don't be a drag on society, get a good job in city, dog in the suburbs, and all that goes along with that. Don't forget to have fun, storm the wall, be involved, be happy, don't swear around children they might be influenced, and never never never talk to strangers on the bus or you might start to realize that things are a lot more complicated than you thought they were.

I am thinking ahead of my writing, I have to stop this, I am causing it to go in a direction. I am writing a word with the intent of having another series of words after it. Words that I have not even typed yet are causing words that will exist after it before it is even written on the page.

I am not actually crazy. I am just experimenting with some modes of writing. I think that I can force my mind to experience things that it is not experiencing. I have always done this; now I am going to do it deliberately...

Implosion

2007-03-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

In description we often turns to comparison. In fact, we always do. Things do not possess characteristics in themselves, but merely exhibit what we perceive to be their content in that we are comparing them to other things. These do not have to be comparisons of things to things, but even things to qualities. We also describe things in relation to what they are not. Re: An Example of My Logic (the equation, A does not equal B, gives both A and B their substance). This task of describing is therefore futile since we do nothing but compare infinite numbers of substanceless things to one another. Every individual things in empty of meaning apart from contrast, they are all nothing. So, if we describe things in comparison to other things then all we are saying is: nothing is like nothing. nothing is nothing is nothing is nothing ad infinitum. Comparison is empty, definition is empty, everything is empty.

What then is the point of language if it continually empties things of their meaning? If language is dwelling of being then where does that leave us? Can I attain a state of understanding in which I no longer cling to defining myself by the universe I percieve around me and just accept that I am? I am...

Sylogistic

2007-03-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

We cannot have faith in fact, faith concerns that which cannot be known. Fact concerns that which cannot be known. Nothing can be known, therefore faith is concerned with everything and fact is concerned with nothing. Facts are meaningless, faith is fullness, but only when it is emptied. Only in complete ignorance can real faith come. Why then do those who profess to live by faith feel so certain that they have a grasp on things? I'm not talking about admitting that we don't know everything, I am saying that we know nothing. Most people who claim that they live by faith are desperately clinging to facts, drowning at that, and doing so with little style.

Wracked by physical pain by your absence. I know that this will last for an eternity, but I am saved in that I do not know that this will last for eternity. This is hope, this is what I have faith in, that the suffering will end. But, I don't have this hope because I know that it will end, but because I don't know that it won't. Ignorance, darkness, blindness and dispair are the only things that can truly bring release from this...mess?...

Fragments

2007-03-25T22:13:00.000-07:00

I've been writing a lot for school and other non-blog related ventures, so here are some scraps of my thoughts.

Human development is a process of learning how to throw progressively more sophisticated temper tantrums.

You can tell the worth of a poet by his use of the word FUCK!

When I was a child and my ear began to ring I would be gripped with the fear that the ringing would never stop. You've been ringing in my ear since before I was hearing, and your ringing will never stop, but my hearing will.

Peace

2007-03-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

I'm gunna flip out if these people don't stop starin' at me!

What?

These people, I can't stand them starin' at me...

Why? What people?

Their eyes!

Their eyes?

Yes, damn it, their eyes, they're bornig holes into my head!

No kiddin'.

What's that mean?

Nothin'

I've had just about enough of your skepticism; you think I'm crazy don't you?

Nooo...

Come on, admit it, sometimes you think that I am nuts!

Well...

Why do you think I'm crazy?

'Cause you're always talkin' to yourself.

'Cause I talk to myself? Everybody talks to themselves!

Not like you do.

How so?

Well, you're more tense, more physical.

Physical like how?

Violent...

Ya! Violent? I'll show you violent!

--a little ways off---

See, he does this all the time, just stands there as if he is having a candid conversation with another person, then bam, he just punches the wall or throws a chair. We've got to get him some help...

Why do we need to help him, who hasn't kicked a chair when they are anrgy?

Look, look he is choking the air, cho-king the air!

Maybe he is working out some frustration, maybe he just got dumped..or a speeding ticket...

Whatever, crazy fuck...

---back---

Finally they're gone. And you for that matter. Now for some peace!

---the body was found the next day---

2 litres

2007-03-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

I vaguely remember that somewhere in the Bible it talks about "giving milk to babies, but once a person grows up they should be fed with real food". It is a metaphor, you know, spiritual milk for spiritual babies...I have heard dozens of sermons/belittlements on this topic. They've always confused me. Why is this baby talking to me about his milk? Why does he keep spitting up? and Is that shit I smell?

I've done a lot of writing on what I think of Christian theology. It may seem odd. What is this angry young shmuck going on about? Its all about the milk. If you drink 2 litres of milk you will vomit...people need to stop drinking milk and move onto real food. I once got in trouble at a Bible camp for making kids vomit in a milk chugging contest...think of all the vomitting they will do from the spiritual milk that is pouring out of their eyes. They won't get that out of their system for year, but wait, more will be pouring in. Every sermon, every devotional book and every guilt tripping intervention will pour more and more milk into a system that can't stand anymore. No more fucking milk! Milk is for babies and cows udders...

I want a big fucking steak...

Desacralization

2007-03-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

I walked into the library at school yesterday and there were no books on the shelves. The ban on yelling in the library is to allow people to read books undisturbed. The ban on eating and drinking in the library is to protect those books from possibly being harmed. If the books are all gone from the library then what is the point in banning food and drink. If there are no books to be read then people couldn't be reading them in the library and yelling should therefore be admissable. If the books are no longer in the library then the bans on eating, drinking and yelling are therefore null and void.

If church buildings, and the laws that they represent, no longer house God, if they are no longer sacred spaces then why are we still confined by the religious bans imposed to protect the sanctity of the location, and the sanctity of the laws it advocates by its presence? If this new religion of loving relationships is so freeing then why can't I eat, drink and yell? Why can't I simply live my life? Why must guilt and shame structure my existence within the walls of the church building and its laws?

People should profane libraries more often...

dissolution

2007-02-26T11:11:00.000-08:00

It's what I know, yet not always where I stand;
Tis how I've been raised,
through this I have learned, becoming who I am.

Now they throw it away,
casting down the very hope
that it could be, that it is;
I want not to heed as they say.

In sooth I've not been one to follow
strictly the rules fortold;
I question, I beckon, &
this image doth my spirit wallow.

Held in so close, I hesitate so
to release my illusion
- if it be that -
I shant yet let it go.

And I will fight as I yearn further for truth
- I will keep going
til reality is found -
even if it be uncouth

Crippled Dialectics

2007-02-25T19:39:00.000-08:00

Two books which I read last summer that really pissed me off were GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy and C.S. Lewis' The Pilgrim's Regress. I have not been able to put my finger on exactly what it is about them which made me throw them across the room and spit their taste from my mouth, until now.

To begin with, both books are concerned with development. They discuss the idea of the development of the soul, the former philosophically, the latter allegorically. A few weeks ago I wrote a post called "fuck being a dirty word that comes out clean". It was concerned with some of my thoughts on dialectical development. I have not been able to put together my frustration with the aforementioned books with my thoughts on dialectics. I have now.

The conclusions of both books is that no matter what you learn, no matter what "new" thoughts you may have, you will always end up at the same place, ie submission to God and Orthodoxy. Chesterton's metaphor is of a man who goes sailing from the caost of Wales, gets lost in a storm and land back at Wales thinking that he has discovered a new land, only to find out that it is only Wales. Lewis follows the growth of a young man named John who seeks a far-off and mysterious island, but finds that it is only the grim mountains of God which he had fled. Both stories conclude that human life is cyclical. There is however; an important difference between the Christian notion of seeking the end and finding the beginning and a true dialectical development.

The problem with both Chesterton and Lewis (or perhaps popular understanding of them) is that the motion of their cycle is flat, it doesn't rise up on the y axis, let alone find z and the rest of the alphabet. Their conclusions are essentially saying "oh it is ok to go off and explore the rest of reality, but make sure you are back in your pew on Sunday". It is as if perpetual submission, shameful return from an upstartish journey and constantly being refaced with ones sinfulness is the limit of their dialectic.

A friend once told me that "there is no going back to your pew, only figuring out where to go from where you have travelled so far." The Welsh sailor does not return to the shores of Wales, he finds himself instead floating above the surface of the ground. Then, everytime he goes out to sea, he is highter and higher, until he is so high up that he can see the other side of Britain, then Europe, then the whole Earth, then the galaxy, then the Universe. How then can dialectical development ever bring one back to the same spot, kneeling before the same cross. If our perspective of reality has not shifted at all through a spiral of learning then we have not learned anything at all. To not progress above where you were is to be truly in a state of arrested development. Thank you Sigmund Freud!

I wonder where I am...

Road to Nowhere

2007-02-23T11:28:00.000-08:00

So I've been doing some travelling, not far, but I've been on the move nonetheless. The theme of wandering and traveling in literature and poetry of the 20th century is a common one. I feel a connection with that tradition and want to add my own thoughts on it.

It seems to me that we pass through this life like a ghost. Fleeting whisps of smoke or cloud, tearing down the freeway, billowing throught the highest limbs of a tree on top of a mountain, rolling along a forest path, filling a small cabin with its dense smell. Smoke and cloud have no particular direction, they just move, blown by the wind. I've read a lot of travelling accounts and it has always frustrated me how the writer is able to capture the raw viseral experience of life. To describe a slice of pie, a sunny hill or a pint of beer as the most spectacular experience possible. I crave the potent experience of life that good novelists are able to capture. No matter where I ramble, or how long I keep moving I cannot find the potent reality of a novel.

Why is the "imaginary" reality of a novel so much more real for me? Why do I feel as if this life is a hangover? Why can't I ever feel truly connected with the physical reality around me? Why do I drift about like a ghost? Perhaps...

Have you ever noticed how the myst parts as a person walks through it? Have you also noticed how a ghost appears to "pass through" a wall or other object? These two questions are related to one another. If we assume that the myst possesses less substance than a human because we perceive our bodies passing through it, why do we not carry this logic to a ghost walking through a wall? Would a ghost, being unaffected by the physical world, not be more real than the physical world?

If I am a ghost, am I not then more real than the world around me? Is this world not a reality of myst? Have I only to realize this truth to be entirely free from its limited grasp? Hangovers are truly a gift. For when we drink we die to our physical world and drift into the land of our dreams. When we wake up, we do not wake up into the reality we were in before we were drunk. We feel as if we are foreigners in "our own bodies". When you sit in the state of being hungover you experience the physical world for the illusion that it is. Even more so, when you wander around in that state you feel even more like a ghost, but it makes more sense. You understand the fact that you are just a ghost. You feel free as you drift like a passing shadow rambling down a road to nowhere- a road to everywhere...

Whispers of Concrete and Glass

2007-02-16T22:44:00.000-08:00

Turkeyshoot has adopted a new template, color, and subtext.
We feel the changes to color and template were a much needed update from the earthy tones of the previous, though the subtext shift may beg deeper examination.
Urban v. Urbane seems to me, the true heart of what we are hoping to accomplish here.
Both words deriving from the same source, the more modern split in usage is one of manner, style and expression versus the concrete, steel and glass of hollow monetary interests.
That of urban blight, corporate abuse, and yuppie materialism.
We hope to espouse true sophistication in worldview- that is, the fundamental desire to grow, learn, comprehend, and think, free of oppressive big-city dictums.
A sincere desire to explore, appreciate and express the full magesty, mystery and wonder of this earth, and all that is upon, above, and within.

A Man Called Horse

2007-02-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

Just a quick, sharp, rush of air is all it is. A quick, sharp, rush of air. A breeze of exhaust from the vent port. Just a blunt churl of air.

"But is smells, funny" said the first with the air of a git.
"But it smells, funny" repeated the second with a dull incantation, "that's just what it smells like."
"It smells like that?"
"It smells like that."
"Whys it yellow?"
"Whys it yellow," repeated again the second, "It's just yellow."

Such is the rambling of the decrepit, the eavesdropper thought, sticking his head out the window,

"That's just what the air here smells like for gods sakes!"

Their voices quickly faded to a murmur of pseudo-Charlie Brown "WA-wa's" as he slid the window down.

I'm not naturally angry, he thought, just under alot of stress, alot of stress, alot of stress.

There was a paper on the table, opened conveniently to the sports section, and the radio still whispered soft ocean noises. His hand print was still on the window, fading away when he stepped out of the elevator.

Work was never far. Only three blocks in the ugly Federal Building. Third story up. A promenade of short trees, laden with lights, bristling with that alternating red and blue holiday cheer, lined the road to work. A life of endless Thursdays. Another civil war of introspective struggle. The 7, 8, 9 clocks on the wall, endlessly, tirelessly mocking the entire office staff. Everyday they placated themselves with the concept of going home, going home, going home, until they realize there's always tomorrow, drink a few more sips of their cappuccino, smoke a cigarette in three drags and wail on their children.

But there's always another fucker at the office party. Last month it was advertising. Its always advertising. The boss doesn't like working with women hes fucked more than once. That's why he's still in business. The wife stays in her half.

On his way up, he stopped off at the cappuccino machine. Still thinking about those long, long legs on the porno he rented the other day. He'd only watched the first eight minutes. Came before she took her shirt off. And this, he thought, was his liberation.

A Brief Defence of Anarchism

2007-02-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

I must begin this post by making it quite clear that I have never, do not and never will defend the policies and actions of the National Socialist (Nazi) party of Germany of the mid-20th century. This clarification must be quite perterbing to my readers. What could he possibly be writing that could possibly linked to lending support to the infamous Adolf Hitler? Quite to the contrary I shall be writing in defence of Anarchism. This may insight many people to the same degree of trepidation as a defence of German fascism. Aren't Anarchists those people who throw pipe bombs into baby carriages and eat the flesh of invalids? Such have been the numerous false accusations of Anarchists throughout history. These accusations are for the most part false. I do admit that, as I call them, maligned Anarchists have been responcible for some attrocious acts of murder. I call any Anarchist who cannot get beyond the logical step of nihilistic destruction a maligned anarchist. I deliberately do not call them "bad" or "dark" anarchists because their actions are in many ways reasonable. However; I am not here today defending such actions. I would like to begin with a description of governmental force and violence.

To explain my previous comments on German fascism I would like to examine the Nazi Swaztika. Why is it that people get so terribly offended when they see someone wearing a Nazi Swaztika? Is it because of the 6 million Jewish and 6 million other(Poles, Slavs and Romas as well as political, sexual and mental "abnormals") death camp victims? It most certainly and fittingly is! We should abhorr it for that because the end of a strong government is always murderous totalitarianism. My objection is to the unthoughtful and anachronistic (unhistorical) criticism of the Swaztika based on the isolated incident of the Holocaust. The first irony I noticed in denouncing the emblem of the Swaztika was the numerous siccal and hammer shirts I see people wear. I don't care if you are a communist, I disagree with you, but I accept it as a political and economic system. I resent the use of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin's emblem which represents the grim deaths of 600 million Russians in Gulags. You may think that people disappearing into the dark night to die in the snow is trendy, but it makes me sick.

Now, before I am accused of being an anti-communist Capitalist Swine, I must tell of the progression of my thought. The victims of capitalist "liberal democracies" such as the US, Britain, Canada, France and Beligium(yes even Belgium, just go to the Congo) are also many and varied. One need not look to Vietnam or Africa to see massacres. The native populations of the Americas and even the very citizens of these countries have all been subjected to starvation and murder at the hands of their respective governments. If even the Canadian mapleleaf stands for genocide and injustice, why do we not feel the same indignance when it is raised on the flag pole? Why do we not remember the slaughter of the Philipinnes and Guam when we hear the star spangled banner? Why do we not see the dead faces of the Vietnamese at the sound of the Marseilles? Why not the armless children of the Congo when Belgium is mentioned? This is enough of the empirical evidence, however vague and scant it may be.

Now for a rational explanation of my argument. Since all government is based on the deferral of authority from the individual to a ruling body, there is no capacity for any system of government to operate without destroying freedom. Even if the government gives freedom to the individual it is still freedom that has been given, like a leash to a dog. There can be no freedom under any form of government. It is when people are especially conned into the idea that they need a sovereign to protect them from "anarchy and chaos" that they are suseptable to radically obsene governments such as Hitler's Germany.

Perhaps then it is only fitting that people should feel especially revolted at the sight of the Nazi Swaztika. Perhaps it subconsciously reminds people that they too give their government, their falsely imagined authority, the power to do what they fear the most. It is often said of Anarchism that it advocated a system in which people would be free to kill and steal at will. This could not be further from the truth. If people were perfectly free, the violence of those few deranged and psychopathic individuals could never compare with the total sum of violence perpetrated by the governments of the world. For, in the case of a psychopath, he/she must act alone, whereas Hitler, by legally aquiring politcal authority was able to wield the full strength of the entire nation of Germany. (and...to make everyone happy, George Bush can invade Iraq even though many Americans oppose the war, I am not even going to get into the issue of "forcing people to be free.) We give out governments the power to destroy! We are all guilty! By our capitulation we become a part of the sovereign which crushes the individual!

Anarchism is not about destruction, although frustrated and maligned anarchists have been driven to acts of violence. Anarchism is about allowing the future to unfold freely. To allow for open dialogue between people so as to peacefully order our political organisations. We must not fetter the future with our traditions and institutions! Marx's dialectic moves on ad infinitum, it does not end in a glorious communist revolution, although that could be a step! You are the only thing holding you back from achieving anarchism! I am the only thing stopping myself! We must get over this notion that we need a sovereign to dictate our actions! People, seek freedom, you have nothing to lose but yourself, and thereby find yourself...

"...fuck being a dirty word that comes out clean" -Jack Kerouac

2007-02-12T23:14:00.000-08:00

I'm wired and tired, so I'll write tonight. This post has very little to do with the title, although old Jack's work definitely influences some of these thoughts, but I maintain that I am not a Zen Buddhist.

I mentioned the notion of cyclical development and the two opposite ways it could be understood. I will ellucidate some of my thoughts on this topic.

Do you ever feel as if your life has been spent learning the same lesson over and over? Do you feel as if in every aspect of your life you consistantly make the same mistake? Perhaps this leaves you with feelings of futility or wretchedness? Deep down beyond the self-inflated humanistic veneer, do you feel like a worthless piece of human excriment. To quote Palaniuk "you are not a unique butterfly, you are a steaming refuse heap"...or something to that regard. This is certainly how I feel. It is very easy to fall into a mindset of furious desperation from this seemingly futile cycle, but I would ask you, to revalue this as well.

Think not that the cycle is on a flat surface, do not confine yourself to the ground. Rather, see that the cycle rises above the ground as it cycles around. Everytime you feel as if you are regressing in life, or failing, you are still on an upward spiral of self-actualization...I am not getting into that, I barely understand it.

What implications does this have for life? Are not self-destruction, loss, futility, darkness and confusion then the necessary negative aspects of positive advancement? As the Jewish poem goes...

"Why, oh why did the soul plunge
From the upmost heights
To the lowest depths?
The seed of redemption
Is contained within the fall."

The seed must fall from the farmer's hand to die within the earth. Once it dies, a plant is resurrected from the ground.
Destruction begets creation.
Death brings life.
Depression summons happiness.
Darkness calls light.
We must grasp the nothing, understand our negation to truly find who and what we are. Teenage depression should not lead to suicide, bitterness, non-conformity and then chastized and unsatisfied conformity at the 20 something age. It should bring about self-awareness, understanding, a self that is not satisfied to sit in a cubicle. It is when we treat depression like a disease to be medicated or talked away we must realise that it is a necessary part of our upward cycle to understanding. Then and only then can we free ourselves from the insane world in which we live. We simply must not remain on the first level of the cycle, we must allow ourselves to be elevated to other levels of being. We must spend our time struggling with our own consciousness, grappling with ourselves in intense thought thinking thought. Do not forget the aspirations of your youth, dream on, as it were, musicians and poets say this all the time. Do not confine yourself to mere physical survival. We cannot fail at being unless we refuse to move, refuse to deal with the negative and sit contentedly throughout our physical lives on our spiritual and mental asses. I digress...

The question yet remains, can we spiral down the cycle, is a reversal of being possible? Can we unbecome, or lose our development? But then again maybe there is no difference between up and down, maybe the beginning is the end, and whichever way you go, the cycle will lead you on and on, up and up to a pinnacle that cannot be defined and which never stops moving. Eternity...imagine a static plane, that is stagnation, refusal to develop. Now picture two spirals leading in opposite directions from that plane, one up the other down. (I believe a friend gave me this image a year ago and it only now makes sense) See those spirals coil around and meet in a circle. Now see each spiral as a coil of infinite other spirals, and those spirals are each composed of infinite spirals ad infinitum. The beginning is the end and it is endless. This is the entirety of existence, this is all that IS, this is eternity, inifinity, Yahweh, of which we are a part?

This is all getting rather out of hand and I am sure that I am contradicting myself, but really I am not trying to prove anything, just trying to fathom the unfathomable...

Nature as Metaphor for Spirit

2007-02-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

A week ago a friend of mine proposed the idea that our physical appearance is an enactment of our spiritual natures. Our physicality is a sort of metaphor or representation of our real spiritual selves. At the time I could not develop my idea of what that would mean for me. I have since done some more thinking and talking about it and have begun to form a possible connection between my appearance and my spiritual nature.

To be blunt, I am gaunt...and pale almost anemic, with reddish hair and perminantly chewed fingernails. I have the appearance of a person who has been locked in a coffin for 3 days and has given up scratching the box and is now proceeding to survive by chewing his own leathern belt. I have tense and toned, albeit minimal, muscles. I appear therefore to be weak, but I am rather more wirey and dexterous. I guess you could say that I look quite a bit like Gollum. I have the wired and jittery movements of a chain-smoking, coffee drinking insomniotic air-traffic controller. My eiree eyes have large black bags under them from lack of sleep. My indented cheeks are further ecsentuated by my satyr-like red goatie. Value Village clothing with excentric hats, canes and a pocket watch add to the "slightly off" image. My slightly crooked and elongated nose add to the Jewish comedian look. Hair usually trailing up into some sort of unorderly peak. I am incredibly gangly and flexible, my fingers are stubby yet remain spidery. I look like a character from a Charles Dicken's novel or a Lewis Carroll hallucination. This is a partial description of my physical appearance. What could these features possibly mean for my spiritual nature?

My most influential feature which affects most of my appearance is anxiety. I am a restless spirit. I am not satisfied with anything. I am constantly in motion, trying to stay ahead of the wave of existence which is pushing me forward and trying to suck me back. I am wasted by life; tired out by the constant movement. I am like a marathon runner who cannot stop running for fear of being overtaken. I am a wandering spirit...but I am driven. I would rather outrun a problem than face it, I view escape as a victory just as overpowering an adversary is usually thought of as victory. I am skin and bones yet still as hard as a rock from incredible tension. My compact and tired physical body is therein explained by my inability to be still.

Sometimes this anxiety comes out in a more furious desperation or manic movement. My wild eyes, chewed finger nails and kramer-like hair are indicative of this. My restlessness taken to its tiring and fathomless insanity leaves by body wild looking. I am also a freak. My spirit is just not normal! I have glimpsed more fully in recent days that I am truly and utterly socially insane. This explains the way I dress and also my comedic hair and "tv ugly" nose. Red hair is also usually a symbol of deviance. My eyes which have been described as "always laughing" are very deceptive, they are just seething green pools full of angry leeches. I'm not a people person, I am not an extrovert, I am a comedian because I am mortally terrified of being laughed at by other people. I try to assert myself as an outgoing comedian because I am terrified of allowing other people to see who I really am...a man trapped in a coffin, desperately clawing at the lid whilst I sup on my leather belt. G'ah! I would be a preppy if I wasn't so damn insane.

Sometimes the tension and restless wandering is too much for my spirit to endure so I get into depressive slumps, which is probably why I don't change much physically. I haven't really grown much since grade 11. Despite my constant movement I am in a state of static frustration. My body therefore remains 5'10" 130 lbs. (This seemingly fruitless cycle of futility can actually be seen in a more positive light, but that is another topic).

I pride myself on my flexibility, or "limberness". I like to think that my spirit is open to any direction that it may wander, just as my body stretches easily. Oddly enough both my spiritual and physical flexibility come from the imposition of external repressive forces. Interesting.

I really have no more to say on this. I am quite contented reading Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. I shall have to soon write a post defending the position that I am Not a Zen Buddhist, although the evidence would say otherwise...

an Example of my Logic

2007-02-08T18:40:00.000-08:00

The "other" can only be defined in the negative, it is, that which it is not. The "other" is not the self, or subject. B does not exist outside of the equation (A is not = to B), but neither does A exist independent of the equation. We see then that nothing arises independently, A and B are codependent and gain their being, or existence only in contrast, contradiction, dialogue, or relationship with one another. Other than that, they are nothing, yet let us look at this more closely.

What is nothing? It is the absence of substance. Since nothingness is only negatively defined then nothing and everything are necessarily linked in the same codependent relationship which we found A and B to be in. Oblivion and Eternity are therefore the same thing, in that they are binary "others". Let us think now what this means for theology and religion.

Instead of attempting to prove the existence of God, why not prove or even accept that God does not exist. If opposites are linked so essentially then one can begin to see how God existing and God not existing means precisely the same thing. What then is the lesson learned from Nihilism? Why, God does exist of course, but only because God does not and cannot exist. By destroying God the Nihilist creates a more powerful God than could ever be imagined! A God that has become nothing and therefore becomes everything! A God that cannot be ignored!

I am not going to get dogmatic now...for this God is much too Godly to confine. This God cannot be limited to an ethical law, a "relationship" or even to philosophical speculation. This God truly is God, unlimited, unconfined and eternal. Sure I don't have the assurance that I can "talk with my bestest pal Jesus", or be assured that I have lived or believed properly so that I can "go to heaven", but I have the understanding, the peace, the stillness to simply BE. I can become free by dieing myself, "crucifying" my mind if you will, doing what Christ did, doing what he saw the "father" do. God Is, and that is all I need to know, which ironically yet perfectly is nothing at all...

To Sleep To Dream To Fall

2007-02-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

And again I began to dream-
I dreamt I was falling,
rapidly, boundless from interminable heights,
falling forever in the dark.

And yet, I wasn't falling downwards-
I was simply falling.
See, when you are falling in the dark,
you don't know that you are falling down.
You just are-
suspended in that darkness- infinity.
Entirely still, yet moving at an unimaginably fast pace.
To be moving as quickly as possible with the sensation of stillness is-
simply unimaginable, inconcievable, unutterable-
Infinity.

When you are falling in a dream and suddenly waken-
why do you feel afraid?
Is it because you have just narrowly averted hitting "the bottum" in your dream-land?

This may be the generally assumed answer, but I have another idea.
Perhaps we are in the aforedescribed suspencion, limbo when we dream.
Maybe we are true spirit suspended in infinity when we sleep, unconfined by our bodies.
Our spirit free to roam the universe and find peace within the infinite speed of One.
When we are about to wake up, when we return to our bodies, we are suddenly jolted back into feeling. We are no longer obliviously suspended. We are jerked back into consciousness and the minute we wake up we feel fear. Fear at being jammed back into our bodies, fear of mortality.
This is why we long for sleep.
to sleep, perchance to dream-
and there truly is the rub-
to fall
to be suspended
in darkness
infinity.

He Who Burns

2007-02-02T19:47:00.000-08:00

I am a black lump of coal
And you all have need to fear
For I have within my soul
enough to consume anyone near.

Enough fule
Enough potential
To level a mountain to shale.

Sometimes I sit, a dark and cold coal
Then I begin to smoulder-
I come to life!
A fire ignites!
Within me resides the need to grow-
hotter-brighter-larger.

It takes naught but a slight breeze to rouse me into flames,
scourching those around me - remembering all God's names.

I long to burn entirely,

to be consumed by heat,

to evaporate into smoke,
to be entirely anihilated into light,
to join with One in the sky,
to be free from my cold and black carbon shell.

This is where the fear comes in. When I am roused, having imbibed a breath of the eternal-I am powerful. I speak with a voice that is not my own. I stare with eyes that are lost in mist. I issue forth a fire, a heat, a light which consumes those who would oppose eternity. I do not have within my soul anything, I am naught but black coal, but in union with One, I am a mighty fire. An unforgettable flame. Not often does this happen. These moments of rapture. These ecstatic glimpses of understanding. These moments of tangable spirituality which form true images from the white void of oblivion.

Perhaps this is why I like to smoke. I like to taste, smell and see raw physical material transform into something else. To be apotheosized into smoke and heat. To break down, yet rise up; elusive and ephemeral in the sky. It has occured to me again, this is my name. Andrew- Greek for "man". Gerbrandt- German for "he who burns". I am the man who burns. I am the burning man. I burn with desire. I burn with longing. I burn with love longing. I'm not talking about lust, sexual or sensual urges. Although, it is a lot like that. I seek to know the eternal. I find nothing but darkness. Can I know anything of the eternal while still in this cold and black body of carbon? Can coal understand the pure essence of heat and light? Damn-it, I sound like Plato...

unpretentious

2007-02-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

Nattering to herself,
-portly, she awkwardly stands.
The graying hair frays, & a whistle
dangles from her neck.
The idea with you lands
- a little gone - out of her head,
as her teeth -
crooked, gaping, norm off centr'd

Yet seemingly captured is something beneath
the crazy - through the eyes -
There is a sparkle.
Her annoying rambles hold a smile
as though she almost knows something
- a secret I could never bare.
Joy encompasses her every glance
peacefully in mind's storm.
Like reality is enclosed within,
seeking to escape

- and conquer

Selfish-Altruism

2007-01-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

In my experience, it is often glibbly and triumphantly claimed by academics that human beings are motivated out of intrinsically selfish and utilitarian purposes. Not only the Hobbesian philosopher, but the secular humanist(characterized by utilitarianism and materialism perhaps) would claim that ethics is not dictated by an "ultimate law", but rather are socially and historically developed conventions. This is an entirely pessimistic view of humanity and results in a belief that altruism or love is impossible. This seems wrong to me.

The Christian, or religious person, conversely posits a belief in an ultimate ethical code. God, or a higher power, dictates laws in which the person is entreated to do "right actions" towards the distinctly "other" being as well as the self(and God for that matter). Any action counter to these laws is deemed to be sin and therefore outside of God's will. Altruism and love are defined as adherence to the law. I am immensily repulsed by this idea as well.

I have long been searching for a third way or perhaps a synthesis of these two opposite, yet equally revolting opinions of the world. It dawned on me today as I was speaking with a friend of mine that an answer has been lying under my nose all this time. I was asked to do something by my friend which could have negative consequences for him. I flat out said no. My reason was that I did not want to see him get hurt. I then admitted that I also didn't want to live with the guilt of that. It struck me that it wasn't purely my care, affection or love for my friend which was stopping me from potentially helping him hurt himself, but my own self interest. I did not want to feel loss or pain at my friends potential pain. The materialists seem to be right, but my thought took another unexpected turn.

With all of the writing I have been doing about "self" and my tentative conclusions that there is no central "I", but rather the individual finds definition through interaction with the "other", I have found a solution to the imminent problem of this post. That is, can I act out of real altruistic love outside of the Christian/religious ethical code? I would like to invert the conclusion from my conversation with my friend.

If I reason from the assumption that nothing exists independant from other things, i.e. that the self is found through dialogue with the "other" then even if I act out of self interest I am actually acting out of altruistic love for the "other" simultaeously. Just as my motivation for denying my friend's request was both to protect him for his sake and my own, so also do I behave with altruistic love both for my own sake, but in the broader sense. If part of who I am is "the other" then my motivation for altruism is to benefit both myself and the other, but both at the same time as well. It is the broader "we" whom I seek to benefit. It is not even the collective good that I would be seeking, but self and other edification at the same time. It is only in the ridiculously individualistic and materialistic west, which I find myself in, that this concept of connectivity between "different" beings is entirely misunderstood. It is called maladaptive and naive and is often connected with Christianity. This claim could not be further from the truth.

It is fundamental to Christian ethics that there be a distinct "other". Christianity outright rejects the notion that the connectivity of selves preceeds ethics. At most, a Christian would accept that by living in "loving harmony" with one another we can become united. My argument is inherently different from Christian theology because the connectivity of selves necessarily preceeds ethics. Without this connectivity there is, as a good Hobbesian, moral positivist, utilitarian or materialist would say, no motivation for human beings to act ethically beyond the conventions of society which regulate their actions.

I will support and clarify these claims later, this is but a skeletal framework...

Abyss- 1

2007-01-30T20:43:00.000-08:00

Balance. To walk a tight-rope. To cross an abyss. To live. Life is a balance. Avoid hell, gain heaven. Minimize pain, maximize pleasure. It seems to me that every time I find some sort of contentment, understanding or happiness in life it is always balanced out with an equal or relatively worse event or feeling of shittiness. It is not merely an emotional low, but a period of intense confusion, darkness, numbness, hopelessness and motionlessness. Does this feeling of shittiness merely come from the relatively less pleasurable "norm" experienced after coming down from a point of ecstatic revelry? Or, is it that the universe will not allow for any concentration of contentment lest it should explode or implode due to an unbalance? Could there be a law of the universe which tends back to stability? I know, I know, scientists have many laws about such things. I am not expert enough to name them though. I am speaking in a psychological, or more precisely, a spiritual, ephemeral, mystical or esoteric sense, but who really knows?

Maybe I am just bipolar...but then again I believe that all "psychological abnormalities" are just more distilled manifestations of the human experience. Am I "maladaptively" endowed with a fluctuating psychie which takes me to the top of mountain-tops and then plunges me to the depths of the cold ocean floor. Worse still, a psychie which takes me to both places at once and leaves me in a completely and miserably insane world of grey.

I hate psychiatrists.

They are worse than church...I love saying that, as if church were a basis for guaging something's level of pestilense to my soul.

And I've slipt, so there is nothing more to write.

Abyss...

Writer's Block

2007-01-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

I would be really happy if "writer's block" was merely a delicious salt lick. Does anyone remember that Simpsons episode in which the doctor explains to Mr. Burns that the only thing keeping him alive is a perfect balance of every imaginable disease? This is the state of the ideas in my mind. They are all trying to get through the door at once, so I cannot get any of them out. That and I'm feeling lazy and contemplating further academic suicide. Perhaps something will condence in a little while. To anyone who reads this thing, keep checking around here every once in a while because some good stuff may surface without any warning. Like the bloated corpse of a long dead goose released from the cement shoes given it by the violent duck mafia...How's that for an alternate vision of the mighty Phoenix arising from the ashes...

Twilight

2007-01-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

Fire is glass
- encircling the calm mystique-
Reflection enhancing
casting shadows of th'above's unique.

The dimmonds glimmer -
vivid from beneath.
Light eclipsed -
yields a dazzling, muddled wreath.

Depth is unknown,
as the wind stirs the still
- amiable ripples intrigue;
the dusky colors fulfill.

Reinterpreting the Darkness

2007-01-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

In Latin the word for black is niger. “Nigger” is also a pejorative term used to degrade people with a “black” skin tone. The word black is also associated with evil. The Latin for white however; is candidus. It derives from the white togas worn by highly respected senators. It also carries a positive meaning. Juxtaposed to the evil meaning of black, white is often associated with good. Even to describe people with non-white skin as black therefore seems to carry with it a degrading meaning. I am not saying that all white people are racist(I myself am a Mic-Mac-Limey-Crout), but I think that our interchangeable use of the words black and white to describe skin tone as well as our conceptions of evil and good is telling of a fundamental danger in the development of human language. It is little wonder that fear and loathing towards non-white people has been so prevalent throughout western history. I would like to clarify that I do not believe that racism is a white problem alone, but my argument is concerned with the effects of language of thought; this is not a discussion about racism.

I will not here get into a nature/nurture debate because the result is always a compromise. I must assume however; that thoughts are imbibed by children as they encode meaning using symbolic systems known as languages. Thought does not entirely precede language. Bias and discrimination are learned, they are not inherent. This is nowhere more blatantly shown than in the early aversion to the dark by children. What? This seems to be a contradiction! It may appear to be, however; it may seem natural to say that children are afraid of the dark and therefore the dark is necessarily evil. I propose that while black/dark is frightening it is not necessarily correct to associate that fear with negativity. I propose an alternate meaning to the word black. Instead of thinking of black as the physical embodiment of evil think of what white looks like in relation to black. Is black not much more full than white? Does it not have more depth and mystery? In a completely illuminated room nothing is hidden. That is why it is not scary to sit in a well-lit room. To sit in the dark however; is frightening because there is an element of the unknown. If a light could illuminate the entire universe would it not make it so that one could see through everything and therefore see nothing? Is white not the absence of everything? Whiteness therefore becomes the embodiment of oblivion, not black. In blackness, in the dark, there is matter, there is form, there is substance, there is life. We cannot see or understand it, but it is something nonetheless.

This is why I believe that ignorance, ignoramus, is better than knowledge. To reside in your total lack of knowledge is to truly embrace reality, but that does not mean that you are embracing a depressing and “black” reality, a reality fit for suicidal nihilists. It is when you reside in a world which is entirely illuminated by your false sense of knowledge that you are truly residing in oblivion. To know something is truly a futile and depressing thing. Think now how devoid of substance the white person is compared to the “evil black person”. It is the white person who is a hole in reality, a white hole, a void. It is fitting how western culture, dominated by white people, has itself mimicked the skin tone of its lost makers. Our culture has reached oblivion with a form, the outline of distinction surrounding the white body. Perhaps my use of Oprah as an example of “Oblivion’s Torso” was wrong? I retract my statement about Oprah, Martha Stewart is the embodiment of oblivion, but then again, in all seriousness, maybe it is I…

At Least I Don't Live in Somalia

2007-01-18T19:44:00.000-08:00

too livid to live
too terrified to die
i linger like a spectre
a fleeting whisp of smoke
haunting myself
haunted by life
a prisoner of my own existence

The State of Affairs

2007-01-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

I have just stumbled onto an idea which will take me a considerably long time to write on decently. Something about history, myth and of course, ME. I may post bits of it from time to time, but at the moment I am just so excited at coming up with a way to articulate myself that I have no way which direction it will go. My egocentric searching may be silent for some time. It is time for that Irishman or perhaps that Penguin to keep things alive here. Poetry Helianthis, Poetry! Bring this abominable silence to an end!

Oblivion's Torso

2007-01-12T16:54:00.000-08:00

I have found that quite frequently I will encounter the same topic of an idea in the different venues of my life at the same time. This could be that I am merely looking for a certain thread and therefore find it everywhere, but it pleases me to think that there is a sort of progressive unfolding of understanding in my development. My most recent example of such an occurance happened earlier today.

My last post was ultimately concerned with, what in my view seems to be, the lack of definition for our current era. Today I attended a lecture from one of my first year profs, a man who has done much to free my mind from the slavery of dogmatism. He was lecturing on Hegel today and quite fittingly he began to talk about the ideas that I had been discussing in my last post. He was talking about the concept of Zeitgeist. I have been familiar with this term before, but it did not occur to me that Zeitgiest was the topic of my last post. In German Zeit roughly translates age/era. Geist has three meanings, mind, spirit and ghost. I do not know German, but it doned on my also that the Latin word animus also mean mind, spirit and ghost. The word Zeitgeist therefore means spirit of the age. It is the ethos of a generation, it defined the age, but it also haunts it like a ghost. Hegel believed that the Zeitgeist of his time was that truth was progressively unfolding through rational inquest. I have not actually read any Hegel, so please someone correct or expand on this assertion. Hegel lived in the 19th century when modernity and rationalism reigned supreme. Although those terms themselves are elusive and complicated I will not get into a discussion on them. I have always had a strong repugnance for the 19th century and the "enlightened" smuggness of modernity, so I am perturbed. I began this post by claiming that I think of my life as something that unfolds rationally. I will leave this idea for now because I don't know enough about Hegel to continue.

However; the idea that a Zeitgeist haunts every age is interesting. For, with the claims of my last post, it seems that I am discontented by the lack of ghosts to haunt me. Perhaps what holds true of horror films hold true here as well. The most terrrifying element of a horror film (a quality one at least) is not what is seen, but that which is obfuscated and enigmatic. A chimera is more frightening than a crazy texan with a chainsaw, or a Punk Rocker with a Norse Broadsword for that matter. Likewise the Zeitgeist of our present age is more terrifying than those which haunted previous generations because we have no idea what it is. My fear of Zeitgeist is not unlike my spiritual fears. The only thing I fear more than a malevolent god is no god at all.

So I am terrified, terrified because our age isn't even defined by decadence or waste anymore. We are haunted by nothing and nothing has therefore become material. It is not that our age is actually defined by nothing which terrifies me, it is that nothingness has taken a shape and now haunts us. We are haunted by a very real and powerful nothingness, rather than a benign and apathetic nihilism.

And now for something vecetious for a change...and that shape is Oprah, beware her gaping maw of nothingness...

Deadening Silence in the Midst of Calamatous Noise

2007-01-11T15:01:00.000-08:00

I am a historian. Some of my professors would spit blood at this claim, but it is true nonetheless. I am a historian because I constantly think of things in temporal terms. I do not simply evaluate ideas, situations, people or objects in an isolated moment, but take into account both the past and the future. I believe that it is vital to human existence to be able to do this. Since the present is ever fleeting the human condition is to be caught up in the act of memorizing, remembering and projecting those rememories into the future, so as to make appropriate choices and actions in what we commonly think of as "the present". Confused? I am! If nothing else, take from that an understanding that the study of history is not merely the memorization of facts. It is vital to human existence and I am therefore compelled to study it.

That last paragraph was more of a rabbit trail from what I actually want to discuss in this post. As a historian I am constantly evaluating the past, both my past and the past of the world as I see it. I read many different works, I watch films, I talk with people and I observe the world around me. I look back at different times in history and build pictures of what it must have been like to exist in that moment. For example, to be a teenager in the 90's was to be depressed and disillusioned. This is a vast oversimplification, but the job of the historian is to simplify the eternally complicated past. Needless to say, and this is essentially the reason why some of my professors hate me, all of history is a myth, which the historian recreates and tells in order to understand the past, present and future. There is no such thing as an objective historian. History is not written by the victor, rather it is written by historians. If such is the case then we must also realise that accounts of history are therefore entirely informed by the historian's own personal experience. Still I have not arrived at what I intended to write about today.

I have been reflecting lately about this first decade of the third millenium AD/CE. I have been wondering, by what characteristics will it be remembered. Has anything happened of note? Sure we have the Iraq War, but people merely call that "Vietnam", which is grossely historically false. Although the war is similiarly motivated by American Exceptionalism and Imperialism, to call Iraq Vietnam would be like calling chapter twelve of a novel chapter three. Our decade has also seen an increase in incredibly feel-good humanism both secular and Christian. In my view, people just seem to be saying nothing, and a hell of a lot of nothing. Take blogging for instance. I believe that the Introspective Irishman has been writing a post on this topic for quite some time. As far as deconstruction and disillusionment is concerned western culture seems to have hit a pinnacle. We can't get more beat than the beatnics. We can't get much more nihilistic than Death Metal and Punk Rock unless bands begin hacking their audiences to death with Norse Broadswords in teenage antiestablishment fueled rages. We can't get more hypocritical in the west in regards to "the environment-global warming-climate change", "poverty", "AIDS", etc etc...

We have really reached a nothingness in society and culture. Nothing is moving. There is no where to move...except Mars...or the ocean floor. Nothing is controversial. All the lines have been crossed...except perhaps the aforementioned Norse Broadsword idea. We have worked ourselves into such a stew of acceptance that reaction is coming. Christianity, hardly monolithic, is moving to become either completely the same as secular humanism or reaching back to strict dogma after terrying in the land of humanistic acceptance of diversity. Islamic countries are getting right pissed off at "The Great Satan-the US". East and South-East Asia are becoming economic powerhouses which threaten all sorts of global conflict. Africa is still in a bloody mess from the rape and pillage of the past 300 years. And here we sit in North America, in our urban yuppie apartments, our comfortable suburban ranchers, and we feel sick. We are so sick that we go faster, work more, play our Ipod a bit louder to block out the deadening silence in the midst of calamatous noise. There is no up and there is no down and nothing really matters, everything has been said before. There is no point in doing anything except to prolong our physical existence.

But, what is man if his chief good is to but sleep and feed? The words of the sage come back to me..."eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die...fear God and obey God's commandments". I refuse to attach some sort of imagined religious/relational purpose on the physical acts of life. That is what the likes of Rick Warren (the author of The Purpose Driven Life) would have me do. I saw a book last month which acclaimed Warren as the most influential pastor of our time. This is true. He has acknowledged the meaninglessness of everything and written copious amounts of drivel to insert an imagined purpose into human existence.

I'm still waiting for something to truly happen in this decade, but perhaps my problem is that I think that other eras have had purpose. Perhaps it is only the historical rememory of the past which leads me to believe that the past was any different from this era. See, for good or ill, I am a historian, in every sense of the word...

I Reside In Sanity

2007-01-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

I have never found any substantial evidence which would lead me to believe that the universe is an ordered and rational conglomerate. Neither have I been convinced that observable functions within the universe have the capacity to be operationalized, systematized and generalized. I have never heard a rational or logical argument which could convince me that an event or idea is absolutely true. By the nature of these very assertions I cannot ever prove that they are true. Does this mean that I am wrong? Do I contradict myself? Certainly, I am entirely incorrect, but only if I am incorrect. If I am correct though, I am also incorrect by the virtue of my being correct. Are my assertions therefore self-destructive? I will explore the opposite belief, that there is order in the universe and that truth is absolute, to deduce whether my beliefs ring true or are simply the ravings of a mad-man.

Some may argue that I cannot see order and symmetry in the universe because I cannot see all of it. In other words, they would argue that I am not God and therefore cannot see the "big picture". This perspective shares the same superficial contradiction which problematizes my own view. To claim that I cannot see "truth" because I have a limited perspective of reality is in itself a relativistic argument. This is much more a contradiction, hypocrisy and cop-out than my assertion that truth is essentially unknowable. To claim that there is a black and white truth which is God, while simultaneously saying that humans cannot "fully know" that truth is a cop-out. It is like having one's cake and eating it too. To use the more palatable aspect of relative truth while ultimately claiming that one can find the absolute truth upon submission and death is hypocritical and contradictory. This is the basis for the "relationship with Jesus" paradigm so deeply embedded in contemporary evangelical Christianity. It takes the harsh absolutist claims of Christian dogma and softens it by integrating the less problematic aspects of relativity. The core of institutionalized Christian dogma has not changed in 2000 years. The different social articulations of the dogma continue to change and flow with the rest of society, but the central tenet that man is unworthy and must submit to God remains the same. (don't get me wrong, I have fear of God, I just don't think that the God of black and white is God at all, but a devil concocted by power hungry and ignorant people) I have gone down a rabbit hole and must get back on track with my initial thought. My claim that the evangelical Christian articulation of dogma has not change anything from the "turn-or-burn" and physically violent manifestations of Christianity in the past is vital to my argument.

I have been told in numerous arguments and discussions that the Bible says that God is a God of order not of chaos. It is somewhere in the Old Testament, but I don't know the exact reference. My first criticism of that verse is that it is being interpreted shallowly. From a Jewish interpretation it might even say the opposite. I am not an expert of Jewish theology, but I am under the impression that it is permeated with contradictions, paradoxes and reversals. It is only the rational exegetical interpretation of Christian theologians which leaves no room for ambiguity. In the Gospel of John 8:32, Christ is said to have claimed that "...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free". How could something that is fixed and ultimately knowable set one free? I realize that I could now divert into an entire discussion on which sort of freedom I am referring to. I shall summarize. When I say freedom I do not mean the freedom to do anything, a state commonly and incorrectly referred to as Anarchy, or the much maligned concept of Anarchism. Neither Anarchy/chaos not Anarchism have anything to do with the Hobbesian concept of the violent state of nature. Freedom is a freedom of being bound to everything else, a freedom to coexist peacefully. It is this kind of freedom which sets you free, not the freedom of a sovereign and absolutist God who in His unending mercy will allow us to exist free in his Kingdom. What then does the freedom I am advocating look like?

To be honest I am not sure. I think that it might look an awful lot like the "Kingdom" which Christ refers to. Unfortunately western or perhaps human thought and action is marching further and further away from this Kingdom and freedom. Institutionalized Christianity is perhaps the most advanced in its drive towards a completely materialistic and ungodly articulation of truth. (I mean materialistic in the marxian/fauerbachian sense, not consumerism, although that is a symptom of the denial of a metaphysical reality) A Christian reading this may agree with this last statement, but I assure you, I am here claiming that the assumption of absolute truth is the most materialistic and ungodly perspective that a person can hold. The petty and shallow arguments and sermons which permeate churches are not the things of God, they are worldly things. The things of God are mysterious and can only be grasped by exploring those mysteries, not giving up, leaving it to an unmoving faith in certainty. Uncertainty breeds hunger, it compels motion, it is real faith, real understanding, real Unity with the eternal!

To bring this to a close, what does this exploration tell me about my initial assertions? The more "sane" belief that truth is absolute and is merely incomprehensible to humans leads to nothing but dead, materialistic and religious dogma and tradition, no matter how it is articulated. My "raving nonsense" is advantageous on many fronts. Practically, in interactions with other people, to enter a conflict with the assumption that no one is right leaves people more open to other perspectives. Spiritually, I am not creating any idols of God. I am not claiming any knowledge of God. That does not mean that I do not seek, it merely means that the eternal is not something to be grasped by mortal man. "The assumption of infallibility is the elimination of dialogue" -JS Mill. Certainty necessarily leads to destructive behavior. History shows this! Sociology shows this! Psychology and Philosophy show this! My claim that the only thing I am correct about is that I am incorrect is not a new idea. It's Socratic to the core. It has issued from the lips of every heretic and dissident in history. My assertion that truth is unknowable therefore rings true, but it is also very much like the ravings of a mad-man, for they are one in the same...

Unequivocal Light from Every Direction

2007-01-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

Eternity and oblivion
Everything and nothing
All directions and One Direction
they are all one in the same
paradoxos

The human being, the artist to be more precise, and the writer/speaker still more distilled, does not own the ideas that he expresses.
He is a conduit through which the realm of ideas, thoughts, the eternal expresses itself in a knowable form. An utterance of the unknowable. A clearing of the obfuscated.

The thinker must never assume to own these thoughts or even his particular articulation of them any more than Strauss' violin should claim to own the Blue Danube.

There is no reason to feel as it one's ideas have been stolen. This sight is copyright protected.
why?
Will I ever gain anything from what I write?
What is money?
What is fame?
They are all just dust in the wind.
Plagerism is not wrong because it is stealing from the person, but because it makes profane the sacred temple of art. It sullies the holy act of channelling the eternal.

The true artist lives in obscurity and dies unknown to the world with only the hope that their articulation may some day touch other hurt and lonely mortals.
To have the capacity to grasp the infinite to such an extent that one can create a piece of art reflecting it, is reward enough.

I am not arrogant about the learning I have done. I am not proud of the ways I have and continue to express the ideas I see floating in eternity.
I do not believe that I am right and other people are wrong.
I only protest when someone refuses to acknowledge this ignorance.

I hate dogmatism, people creating rocks out of sand.
I hate opinion, I have belief.
Against opinion, beyond belief---paradoxos!

I appear aloof and academic, but on the contrary, I deny ownership of knowledge. I find myself here again...I know nothing. I begin another chapter of my life back at this spiraling beginning and terminus.

May the thoughts, shapes, tones, textures, temperatures, sounds and hues of the eternal decend on me. Transform me into a glowing light, so that I can radiate its wondrous light. Illuminate the dark and ignorant world around me.

Save us all from this world of mirrors and illusions.

Through our art, let us express something truly and unequivocally real.

This cannot be reached through human means, our greatest art is equivocal, dark and obfuscated. We are but dull reflections of the radiant light. It is only through Unity with All That Is, that we truly become.

Our expressions and experiences of Art are but hints to the glory and ecstatic joy which we can achieve once we are free of our mortal trapings, our pride, ambition, anger, laziness, excess and small-mindedness...

I once said that all articulations of the eternal is idolatry. But, if done reverently(not to be confused with religious reverence mind you) they can help us achieve enlightenment. When we are enlightened we will have no need for art because we will be One with That which we attempt to mimic...

(with that the writer exploded into billions of miniscule light particles and vanished from human perception)

and the mystic within me breaks forth once again...

Admission of a Obsessive Compulsive Perfectionist

2006-12-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

I try to control the mundane details of life in order to create a facade which can mask the infinite chaos that is my life. I long to bring order and perfection to myself when all I am is laziness and inadequecy. Instead of dealing with the root of the problems in my life I busy myself putting everything into straight rows, placing everything just so, hoping to avoid cracks with my toes, making sure that all the doors are closed. I dot my i's and cross my t's, periods at the .beginning and end.

New Years resolution- bring order to something meaningful and allow the rest to go to shit...right after I uniformly scrape all the enamyle off of my teeth...

No Escape

2006-12-27T23:16:00.000-08:00

I realised last night that my answer, given in response to a question posed by a friend of mine, was false. I was asked what my fears are. I answered quickly that I fear being "unknown" more than anything else. This is a lie; a complicated lie granted, but a lie nonetheless. Where in one sense I do fear the fragmentation, isolation and solitude of the existence I see around me, I also dear the opposite of this. I fear being known. I construct arguments and theories which support my flight away from "the other". I latch onto the extreme of knowablity and claim triumphantly that because I cannot be known fully by a single person that it is futile to try to interact with and know "the others" who surround me. What does this extreme look like in more detail I wonder.

I am thoroughly convinced that human beings are not finite beings. This point ultimately brings me back to a point where one can be known, but I will return to it at the end of this piece. I shall begin my argument from the opposite of what I deem to be true. All human beings are finite. This should necessarily narrow the scope of aspects that a human can possess, making them effectively knowable. Yet, let us look at the different ways in which a person must be known in order to be known fully. This shall prove to be an infinite list, contrary to my starting point.

1. People can be known emotionally.
2. People can be known physically or carnally.
3. People can be known intellectually.

A scientist would look at these categories and collect data from numerous sources to create a centralized and agreed apon individual. They would ignore outliers from the data and create a very convenient and simple, albiet quantitatively vast, picture of an individual. This way of investigating an individual is inherently misguided and flawed. There are underlying complxities to these categories which force open the picture of the individual to an infinite spectrum.

The first is the difficulty of the perspective of the observer or interacter. Every person interacts in these three ways differently. For example, John Doe's wife and son know him in very different carnal ways. The notable difference is that his wife knows him sexually, but the son is a part of John's flesh and has a different physical relationship with him. Even John Doe's office affair partner knows him differently than does his wife because the physical sensations are different. The relationship is different. This is an example of the perspective difficulty in the physical sense, but also applies to the other two categories as well.

The second difficulty is the different tones and tinctures within even one observer. Emotions are not all the same. There are different intensities, durations and initiations of emotions which make an emotional experience different every single time. It is not the same thing to get angry at a dog for pissing on the carpet as it is to get angry at a person who has just shot your wife. Even the emotional response to the same person changes due to different circumstances.

I have some other thoughts of the differences. They involve remembering/history, reputation, the interaction between the three ways of knowing someone and irrationality. I do not have time to elaborate on them now, but I may get to it. I feel confident that the difficulties hitherto described are enough to support my claim that human beings are not as finite as they seem. All of the different ways of knowing a person makes it impossible to finitely nail down a definition. Perhaps to be known is to be known in relation to everything else in existence. Buddhists call this dependant origination. In sum, that everything arises in relation to other things and do not exist on their own, but in connection to one another. That is not to say that the self does not exist, but the falsely imagined lone sense of self does not exist. This brings me back to my musing on knowability.

Do I fear being known or unknown? Take for granted that we cannot be fully known by a single being. Yet, we can be known by the infinite fully. Perhaps this is what God is. I do fear being unknown, I fear oblivion, an existence without God, an existence without the connection. I also fear being known on a more primal level. I do not want people to know me deep down, because I, like everyone, have deep dark spots. I do not want those places to be found by people. But, can I escape the infinite, can I escape God. NO! To be known is to be fully exposed, something my mortality will not allow me to do.

I have to stop for length, sleep and sanity. I leave the question as open as it was when I began writing tonight, and I pose it to you my reader. What are your fears? My fears are simultateously to be unknown and known, a frightening paradox which threatens to tear me apart, from which there is no escape...

Epitaph For a Friend

2006-12-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

A man is a mosaic of all the different relationships that he has had in his life. Throughout life he makes inumerable utterances of who he is to all the people whom he comes into contact with. The mosaic of all these utterances is who that man is.

When a man dies all those people, carrying with them their piece of the mosaic, come together to sort out who that man was.

Is it possible for a Eulogy to do a man justice? Even if the speaker takes into account some surface differences of that man's relationships with different people, brother, son, friend, teacher etc, it is impossible, for no one person can understand let alone explain who that man was.

Can their be a person in a man's life who holds the guidelines to put all those pieces together?

I don't think so, and that is the loss, not only the physical death, but the fragmentation of the mosaic. The fragmenation of the person's memories, impressions, relationships, dialogue---self.

Those left behind are left with only the piece that they had. Some have small pieces, others large. All incomplete, broken, hurt.

It is the wish of all men to be known fully. This cannot happen in life, and it does not happen upon death, perhaps it can happen beyond death. Perhaps man has 100 senses and upon death we are awakened to the 95 senses that have lain dormant since childhood, only retained in the heart of the poet and the comedian. This is why the idea of heaven has been man's desire for countless aeons. We long for a place where we can know and be known perfectly.

We want someone who can read a dramatic epilogue in a sad film while the music reaches its climax and the shot slowly fades up into the clouds, until everything becomes light. This cannot be.

It's been 4 months, and I'll always remember the piece of Garreth that I knew while he was alive. To my most joyful friend who always smiled, especially when life was kicking him around...

hmmmm.....

2006-12-21T17:49:00.000-08:00

And today I wonder as to what this has become
whence we shallowly sit, awaiting to succumb
- to incolence and lack of minds -
wandering wearily in a dreary time.

I bring a plea to end all this,
for there is more to life than infatuated bliss.
To return and ponder the greater expanse;
that dim and dreadful may no more hold stance.

Clothed in Skin

2006-12-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

I am going to say something which very few people will believe. Ready? Wait for it...
My consciousness once spontaneously drifted out of my physical body and I lost all conception that, whatever I may be, I was not my body, but was something much more connected with the rest of reality, something more ephemeral, but at the same time much more than the tiny physical body which I so often mistake for myself.

I told you that you wouldn't believe it.

I tell this story because I have recently come up against some rather frightening medical problems involving my heart. It probably isn't anything, but nevertheless I have been gripped by fear for my mortal body. To quote South Park, "You know, I learned something today". Well actually I have known it for a long time and am reminded of it every time my physical body is in pain. I am afraid of death.

I don't think that I am alone in my fear of mortality, but I feel like a hypocrite in my fear. I must return to the inebriated blog which I deleted referred to in my last post. In describing my decietfulness I also discussed, albeit drunkenly, the fact that my blog name is thephilosopherone. I ranted drunkenly that I am a charlatan and that I do not deserve this title. I don't think that anyone really does. I have considered changing it, but that would just confuse me. I have developed this persona on the web and to change the name would be disasterous. I would like to clear up the misconceptions surrounding that name. I do not profess to have any answers. I do not profess to be intelligent. I read a lot, who gives a flying fuck! I think a lot, who doesn't! I am not trying to bring enlightenment to people, I do not possess esoteric knowledge. I strive to be free, to be free from knowledge, belief, faith...I strive to be free from mortality? So, I am a hypocrite. For all my talk, all my ideas about a loss of self, the fact that " I do not know" WHO I am, is all bullocks. When it comes down to it, I feel a strange attachment to this flesh suit which I think of as myself.

Am I merely like a new arrival to a nudist colony who is reluctant to remove his boxers? Is my attachment to my physical body something that will leave as I grow older? as it wastes away to nothing? Can I truly escape my dependance on my body in this life. The goal of the ascetic is to do just this, but prophets from Buddha to Jesus to Mohammed(don't worry no pictures) denied these practices. They stressed the importance of the physical body. I think that this is where gnosticism (the belief that the physical world is nothing but illusion) falls apart. Our physical bodies are important to our spiritual quests. To deny the body food and water entirely would make it impossible to search for some sort of enlightenment.

I have never fully understood the motivation of a martyr. I have heard many North American preachers exhorting people to praise martyrdom, but it never sat well with me. Perhaps there is something wrong with martyrdom? Could there not be as much value in uttering a few heretical words, but continuing to LIVE? Is not LIFE better than death? I am not denying that martyrdom is a noble thing, something to hold aloft as venerable, but I am just wondering why I would not be able to do it. I would not be able to choose death over life. I WANT TO LIVE! I have something to do, something to say, something to experience. I haven't finished with life. Jesus didn't die until he said that "it is finished". Jesus knew his thing to do (not that we have the faintest clue what that was), but I don't know what I have to finish. How can I ever die if I never find out what it is I am supposed to do, or be?

Perhaps I should focus on just that, on being, rather than doing, I have said this many times before, as has the Introspective Irishman, but when I try to focus on being I end up torturing myself mentally and spiritually and with this recent heart issue, physically as well. My vain struggle to find an elevated state of being leaves my physical body in ruin, which begs the question, should I just give up on seeking? Should I live a contented animal life? sleep and feed, sleep and feed. I can't do that without a lobotomy, so I can't and I must face physical ruin. Maybe then I will be able to shift off these clothes of skin and really start LIVING, finally begin BEING. To be a real living being instead of a shiftless anxiety ridden animal. For now I am caught in a cycle of compulsion to seek something beyond myself with the ironic result which makes me physically unable to seek anything but sleep and food.

I have probably been being all the time. I just want to be concious of that being which only seems to happen beyond my grasp. Oh well.

I still haven't ever seen the dusk...