while digging through some old files for scraps of writing for the novel, I came upon this old list originally posted by metabloom on livejournal.
10 Rules for being Human
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "Life."
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is nopart of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you are alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here," you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7. Other people are merely mirror of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers tolife's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this. Isn't That Fascinating?!
Everything in Your Outer Life Happens Inside First.
Did you know that everything physical in your life is just a reflection of everything going on inside you? Your physical life is an "expression" or "pressing outward" of your inner landscape. Some people call this process "out-picturing."
It is the process of takingyour inner thoughts and feelings and making them real. If you are avoiding someone and hoping with all your heart that you do not run into that person, guess what? Chances are that youwill see that person. Why? Because it is an expression of the film that you have been playing over and over in your mind. So if you have a recurring problem on thephysical plane, do not try to fix it with physical solution. You won't get anywhere fast and it is hard work! Work on your inner landscape instead. Take a look inside...
What are your thoughts? What are your feelings? What are you chewing on inside? What are you obsessing about?
When you catch yourself obsessing about something, just smile and say to yourself, "You"re doing that thing you do again!" Keep catching yourself at your own game. Once you get through the initial anger andfrustration, you will find yourself amused athow often your mind will return to the same subject. Then the feeling goes from obsession to humor.
Once you can see the humor in the situation, your outer situation will change. When you can laugh at yourself, everything in your outer environment automatically fixes itself. You won't have to lift a finger. Fascinating, isn't it?
Friday, November 18, 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
on the books
okay, I may be taking another short break from posting here, so I can work on my novel for National Novel Writing Month. so far I've got one chapter down and 48,000 words left to go.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Orwell Issues New Passports
All US passports to be RFID chipped [via american samizdat]
"All US passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued on Tuesday say passports issued after that time will have tiny RFID chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitised photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitised data such as "fingerprints or iris scans"."
I've been following the potential use and privacy abuse of Radio Frequency Identification chips for years now, ever since I heard that companies like Wal-Mart weave them into the hems of their clothes in order to track inventory (and deter theft). Also in the governmental works at one point was the idea of weaving the microchips into the new twenty dollar bills, so that companies can keep tabs on if you're likely to make purchases when you come into their stores. I don't think that actually went down, but sometimes I hear stories of Hollywood movie stars implanting them in their pets and children.
And my passport was recently stolen, so it looks like I've gotta get another real quick before this law goes into affect.
"All US passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued on Tuesday say passports issued after that time will have tiny RFID chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitised photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitised data such as "fingerprints or iris scans"."
I've been following the potential use and privacy abuse of Radio Frequency Identification chips for years now, ever since I heard that companies like Wal-Mart weave them into the hems of their clothes in order to track inventory (and deter theft). Also in the governmental works at one point was the idea of weaving the microchips into the new twenty dollar bills, so that companies can keep tabs on if you're likely to make purchases when you come into their stores. I don't think that actually went down, but sometimes I hear stories of Hollywood movie stars implanting them in their pets and children.
And my passport was recently stolen, so it looks like I've gotta get another real quick before this law goes into affect.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Shadow Culture Manifesto
Shadow Culture Manifesto.
(still) in progress:
[transcribed from Adbusters, #62, the Precarity Issue]
01 This time we’ll get straight to the point.
02 The act of asking for less, not more, is a radical act. It may be the most radical gesture of out times.
03 Even though, you know, it is usually overlooked.
04 Consumption is the foundation of civilization as we know it, far more powerful than, say, religious faith or political ideology. This society stands or falls on consumption. Consumption is our daily contribution and most intimate connection to a doomsday system.
05 Did we say a doomsday system? We did. Can anyone still fail to see that we live in times genuinely different, more fragile and uncertain than ever before? Human societies have faced terrible threats and instability in the past. But not every human society, at the same time, in every corner of the Earth.
06 In exchange for some of us living as the wealthiest and most privileged humans ever to exist, we have fettered ourselves to eye-poppingly complex systems that we depend on for our survival. Trouble being that these same systems are now failing or being actively withdrawn at almost every level. The degree of interconnectedness is incomprehensible. Imagine a castle somehow suspended in the air. It’s walls, floors, turrets and dome riddled with hairline cracks. Where will the first total failure occur?
07 This is the vertigo of collapse.
08 Anyway. Take away the endless growth of consumption and you need to come up with a radically different system. Do you see where each of us has a role in this?
09 On this point, nothing has changed. Certainly not since the day the President of the United States of America told his people to keep on shopping or the terrorists win.
10 (Don’t they seem to be winning? Or at least, not loosing?)
11 What is changing is the sense of urgency. We are in the process of imagining the next civilization while living within the existing one. Some came to this purpose because they felt disturbed or repelled by the culture that we live in. Many more, now, are just looking for a softer landing when we go spinning off the ragged-ass end of this falling star.
12 There’s a wild kind of energy to it, a tearing off in all directions. The proof is in, again, that the key component of advance in any sphere – innovation – has nothing to do with private interest or ownership or the exchange of paper money.
13 We are inventing a way of life with less. We are asking the following question: Take away consumerism. What does the next culture look like?
14 And? Are we finding any answers? Seeing any patterns?
15 Let’s be bold enough to say, yes.
16 We are finding a next culture that looks something like the barn-raising parties of our grandparents, the community canning kitchens of the Second World War, the quilting bee, the teach-in, the village shaman, the underground economy, the monastery, the potlatch, the agora, the cooperative, the commune, the squat.
17 Except different.
18 We have never had so many people with so much knowledge, so much power to share, so much longing to work toward a new and different purpose, and so much need to do exactly that. Those who ask less have more to give. The hunger to contribute and to learn doesn’t vanish as our own demands diminish. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.
19 If we went in for slogans, this might be the one:
20 Self-reliance and mutual aid.
21 Might we say this is what democracy looks like? We might. More than that, it is a kind of freedom.
22 But the pierogi-making party instead of the blockbuster Hollywood film? It sounds corny. It even feels corny. Then again, a lot of things are done in this world that seem strange when observed with the benefit of distance. Like spending 15 hours a day in front of different types of glowing screens. Like paying for food that would grow out of every crack in the pavement if someone would plant a seed. Like watching golf on TV.
23 Does this make us outsiders? Not at all.
24 We refuse to be outsiders because we refuse to cede the culture. Far more is at stake than following our bliss. Ours is not a lifestyle preference but a moral imperative.
25 Still.
26 We have the capacity, more than ever before, to decide our own terms. We can generate energy and treat our own waste. We can build homes, raise food, create new forms of community and family. If we choose, it is possible to design and produce any product we require. We may do so locally; we may do so globally. What we cannot do is do it all alone.
27 In every respect we are working to produce the impossible, prototypes of a parallel way of life. The working model looks something like this: a sphere composed of interconnected clusters. At any given moment, some nodes are forming, others are dissolving. Seen at the level of the individual, it is a galaxy of possibilities and a person might contribute to none, one, ten or an infinite number in series. At the system level, it is a network. More metaphorically, a net.
28 We are the people, sitting on the porch, sharing a meal at mid-day, asking more and more from each other but less and less from the earth and the state – less of its schools and shopping malls, its trade rules and tax regimes. We are the people who serve to remind that there are other ways to live, and that anyone can join in that imperfect search.
29 We are living from beneath, on the fringe, in the shadow.
30 A shadow culture.
...
Looks like the Ultraculture's got some competition, or more like some allies.
(still) in progress:
[transcribed from Adbusters, #62, the Precarity Issue]
01 This time we’ll get straight to the point.
02 The act of asking for less, not more, is a radical act. It may be the most radical gesture of out times.
03 Even though, you know, it is usually overlooked.
04 Consumption is the foundation of civilization as we know it, far more powerful than, say, religious faith or political ideology. This society stands or falls on consumption. Consumption is our daily contribution and most intimate connection to a doomsday system.
05 Did we say a doomsday system? We did. Can anyone still fail to see that we live in times genuinely different, more fragile and uncertain than ever before? Human societies have faced terrible threats and instability in the past. But not every human society, at the same time, in every corner of the Earth.
06 In exchange for some of us living as the wealthiest and most privileged humans ever to exist, we have fettered ourselves to eye-poppingly complex systems that we depend on for our survival. Trouble being that these same systems are now failing or being actively withdrawn at almost every level. The degree of interconnectedness is incomprehensible. Imagine a castle somehow suspended in the air. It’s walls, floors, turrets and dome riddled with hairline cracks. Where will the first total failure occur?
07 This is the vertigo of collapse.
08 Anyway. Take away the endless growth of consumption and you need to come up with a radically different system. Do you see where each of us has a role in this?
09 On this point, nothing has changed. Certainly not since the day the President of the United States of America told his people to keep on shopping or the terrorists win.
10 (Don’t they seem to be winning? Or at least, not loosing?)
11 What is changing is the sense of urgency. We are in the process of imagining the next civilization while living within the existing one. Some came to this purpose because they felt disturbed or repelled by the culture that we live in. Many more, now, are just looking for a softer landing when we go spinning off the ragged-ass end of this falling star.
12 There’s a wild kind of energy to it, a tearing off in all directions. The proof is in, again, that the key component of advance in any sphere – innovation – has nothing to do with private interest or ownership or the exchange of paper money.
13 We are inventing a way of life with less. We are asking the following question: Take away consumerism. What does the next culture look like?
14 And? Are we finding any answers? Seeing any patterns?
15 Let’s be bold enough to say, yes.
16 We are finding a next culture that looks something like the barn-raising parties of our grandparents, the community canning kitchens of the Second World War, the quilting bee, the teach-in, the village shaman, the underground economy, the monastery, the potlatch, the agora, the cooperative, the commune, the squat.
17 Except different.
18 We have never had so many people with so much knowledge, so much power to share, so much longing to work toward a new and different purpose, and so much need to do exactly that. Those who ask less have more to give. The hunger to contribute and to learn doesn’t vanish as our own demands diminish. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.
19 If we went in for slogans, this might be the one:
20 Self-reliance and mutual aid.
21 Might we say this is what democracy looks like? We might. More than that, it is a kind of freedom.
22 But the pierogi-making party instead of the blockbuster Hollywood film? It sounds corny. It even feels corny. Then again, a lot of things are done in this world that seem strange when observed with the benefit of distance. Like spending 15 hours a day in front of different types of glowing screens. Like paying for food that would grow out of every crack in the pavement if someone would plant a seed. Like watching golf on TV.
23 Does this make us outsiders? Not at all.
24 We refuse to be outsiders because we refuse to cede the culture. Far more is at stake than following our bliss. Ours is not a lifestyle preference but a moral imperative.
25 Still.
26 We have the capacity, more than ever before, to decide our own terms. We can generate energy and treat our own waste. We can build homes, raise food, create new forms of community and family. If we choose, it is possible to design and produce any product we require. We may do so locally; we may do so globally. What we cannot do is do it all alone.
27 In every respect we are working to produce the impossible, prototypes of a parallel way of life. The working model looks something like this: a sphere composed of interconnected clusters. At any given moment, some nodes are forming, others are dissolving. Seen at the level of the individual, it is a galaxy of possibilities and a person might contribute to none, one, ten or an infinite number in series. At the system level, it is a network. More metaphorically, a net.
28 We are the people, sitting on the porch, sharing a meal at mid-day, asking more and more from each other but less and less from the earth and the state – less of its schools and shopping malls, its trade rules and tax regimes. We are the people who serve to remind that there are other ways to live, and that anyone can join in that imperfect search.
29 We are living from beneath, on the fringe, in the shadow.
30 A shadow culture.
...
Looks like the Ultraculture's got some competition, or more like some allies.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Center for Tactical Magic
As opposed to the university-fed Emma Goldman Institute for Anarchy, we give you...
The Center for Tactical Magic! [via exploding ardvark]
"The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research, development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic. A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal, and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction, and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation."
Blurring the border between art, shamanism, and activism, the CTM's actions include everything from agit-prop seminars to free occult clinics to passing out donuts at protests to both protesters and police officers alike!
The Center for Tactical Magic! [via exploding ardvark]
"The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research, development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic. A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal, and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction, and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation."
Blurring the border between art, shamanism, and activism, the CTM's actions include everything from agit-prop seminars to free occult clinics to passing out donuts at protests to both protesters and police officers alike!
Emma Goldman Insitute for Anarchist Studies
Emma Goldman Institute For Anarchist Studies or, the capitulation of a movement into history.
$368 Million
Federal Grant Funds, & Gift from Securitas Inc.
from the official site:
"While the EGIAS exists only as a plan at the time of this writing, the positive impact such a center of study could bring to the world could never be more needed. Anarchist ideas influence our everyday life from peer relationships to modern business management theories to open source software development. Anarchist organizing for social change has brought about a more peaceful and just world while slowing the movements towards hegemony, violence, and injustice. For one, the Anarchist Institute will help clear misconceptions about anarchism. First and foremost anarchism's incorrect equation with violence and riots - as Emma Goldman said herself ""It takes less mental effort to condemn than to think." The EGIAS will also function in further advocating, promoting, and developing anarchist thought."
Once built, the EGIAS will house:
* The Chomsky Anarchist History Museum - Spanning from pre-columbian native precursors to anarchism up through the modern day peace movement and into the future of anarchism in our world. A hall of Anarchist fame will honor famous anarchists like John Cage, Mother Jones, Henry Miller, Utah Phillips, Mark Rothko, Joe Strummer, Henry David Thoreau, Emiliano Zapata, and the modern day Zapatistas.
* Birth control distribution center
* Bakunin Center for Applied Anarchist Research - An anarchist think-tank.
* Kropotkin Café - serving coffee and light meals into late night hours. Live music every Tuesday - Saturday.
* Goldman Dance Studio - adjacent to both the Kropotkin Café and Bakunin center for easy access.
* The Sacco & Vanzetti Memorial Learning Center will serve as a classroom for the departments of Peace Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Labor History.
as mutato nomine sez: to kill something, build an ivory tower around it.
$368 Million
Federal Grant Funds, & Gift from Securitas Inc.
from the official site:
"While the EGIAS exists only as a plan at the time of this writing, the positive impact such a center of study could bring to the world could never be more needed. Anarchist ideas influence our everyday life from peer relationships to modern business management theories to open source software development. Anarchist organizing for social change has brought about a more peaceful and just world while slowing the movements towards hegemony, violence, and injustice. For one, the Anarchist Institute will help clear misconceptions about anarchism. First and foremost anarchism's incorrect equation with violence and riots - as Emma Goldman said herself ""It takes less mental effort to condemn than to think." The EGIAS will also function in further advocating, promoting, and developing anarchist thought."
Once built, the EGIAS will house:
* The Chomsky Anarchist History Museum - Spanning from pre-columbian native precursors to anarchism up through the modern day peace movement and into the future of anarchism in our world. A hall of Anarchist fame will honor famous anarchists like John Cage, Mother Jones, Henry Miller, Utah Phillips, Mark Rothko, Joe Strummer, Henry David Thoreau, Emiliano Zapata, and the modern day Zapatistas.
* Birth control distribution center
* Bakunin Center for Applied Anarchist Research - An anarchist think-tank.
* Kropotkin Café - serving coffee and light meals into late night hours. Live music every Tuesday - Saturday.
* Goldman Dance Studio - adjacent to both the Kropotkin Café and Bakunin center for easy access.
* The Sacco & Vanzetti Memorial Learning Center will serve as a classroom for the departments of Peace Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Labor History.
as mutato nomine sez: to kill something, build an ivory tower around it.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
puppets tell tall tales: social ambiguity and the role of the individual to address it
Went to one of those wild events last night, the kind where I get to see all my friends working on a project that is far beyond my chosen capabilities and leaves me in tears of joy and rage, the 7th annual Black Sheep Puppet Festival. For several hours we sat in the back of the dark Brewhouse auditorium as several acts told incredible and absurd stories of the state of the world through the use of handheld puppets and elaborate box sets.
First up was the Coalition of Humans Invested in the Future, who presented a series of panel experts addressing some of the big questions of our times: is the past important, what's wrong with today, where is the future going, and where does stuff belong? The experts included strange animals and plants, a unitarian anteater, dayglow flounders, and the possibility of missiles falling form the sky and being mistaken for obnoxious viruses. Extremely postmodern when they began dissecting social divisions through the dream analysis of a dog dreaming he was a human fetching sticks and living out the endless cycle of going to work and to home watching screen after screen... or was it eating from the bowl and pissing in the litter? As always, it strikes me right here how perceptive art can be when taken to extremes.
Next was Clare Dolan's "When Little Pieces of Very Big Things Break Off and Fall," a script ripped from testimonies related to coal mining disasters bearing on he destruction of the environment and crumbling of the arctic shelf. Brief surreality ensues when the performer finds herself in an artists' coop with several dead philosophers and eventually has to run from death, all while talking about the nature of art to lead us to more meaningful ways of addressing ourselves in the modern world.
After this, a short sweet play by Stranger Theatre called the "Counterfeit Marquise" adapted from an old Mother Goose fairytale about a man who grew up as a woman and suddenly finds herself confronted with falling in love and learning who "she" really is.
The fourth act, by Drama of Works out of NY, impressed me greatly, as it touched on one of the greatest artists of our time, who I've formed a bit of an obsession with recently, Andy Warhol. Telling the story of his life through a series of phone interviews, movie ads, and memorabilia of his days growing up with his mother in Pittsburgh, this show really captured the essence of Warhol's artistic vision, pop art as the easily reproducible and easily recognizable, the assembly line creative process where output and fame are greater than individual creativity. Perhaps most poignant was the portrayal of Warhol, his family, his schoolmates, and coworkers all as Campbell's soup cans. Which of course raises the question for me I think was posed by Warhol's work, are we really all alike?
After another brief intermission smoking down cigarettes in the cold rain, we went in for the act most of us were there to see, the Indicator Species. Comprised of the infamous Etta Cettera and members of the Hollow Sisters, a life size prison cell was erected made entirely of letters from prisoners sent to the local books to prisoners project, Book 'Em, and a heart rending tale was told addressing murder and the age old societal problem of what to do with offenders. Unlike the other pieces presented in the evening, this one was not told through the use of humor or absurdity but was a brutal attack on the hearts and consciences of the audience presenting four separate cases based off real life incidents portraying the moral ambiguity of how to deal with this issue.
Now this piece would have been immensely touching in its own right, if I hadn't known any of the people involved, but hit too close to home as I watched Etta have an actual conversation with a prisoner and then they presented the story of Frank's murder. They didn't mention Frank by name, but it was obviously about him, the kid with a mysterious smile who wandered around town everywhere and into the hearts of everyone he crossed paths with. Last summer Frank was brutally and randomly shot by several kids who had stolen a police woman's gun and car and he is still tragically missed by everyone in this community. As soon as I saw what they were doing I broke into tears, unable to attach emotional reality from the art and uncertain if they were abusing Frank's memory to get their point across. If anything though it only honored his memory and answered the question, no we are not replaceable, we are all individual beings with our own unique lives. And even when we do something that paints us at being at fault to ourselves and our neighbors and society, even when we murder, we are still worthwhile human beings who deserve a chance to exist and express ourselves in our own ways. And despite the stigmas and laws of society, that is something no one should be allowed to take away from us.
First up was the Coalition of Humans Invested in the Future, who presented a series of panel experts addressing some of the big questions of our times: is the past important, what's wrong with today, where is the future going, and where does stuff belong? The experts included strange animals and plants, a unitarian anteater, dayglow flounders, and the possibility of missiles falling form the sky and being mistaken for obnoxious viruses. Extremely postmodern when they began dissecting social divisions through the dream analysis of a dog dreaming he was a human fetching sticks and living out the endless cycle of going to work and to home watching screen after screen... or was it eating from the bowl and pissing in the litter? As always, it strikes me right here how perceptive art can be when taken to extremes.
Next was Clare Dolan's "When Little Pieces of Very Big Things Break Off and Fall," a script ripped from testimonies related to coal mining disasters bearing on he destruction of the environment and crumbling of the arctic shelf. Brief surreality ensues when the performer finds herself in an artists' coop with several dead philosophers and eventually has to run from death, all while talking about the nature of art to lead us to more meaningful ways of addressing ourselves in the modern world.
After this, a short sweet play by Stranger Theatre called the "Counterfeit Marquise" adapted from an old Mother Goose fairytale about a man who grew up as a woman and suddenly finds herself confronted with falling in love and learning who "she" really is.
The fourth act, by Drama of Works out of NY, impressed me greatly, as it touched on one of the greatest artists of our time, who I've formed a bit of an obsession with recently, Andy Warhol. Telling the story of his life through a series of phone interviews, movie ads, and memorabilia of his days growing up with his mother in Pittsburgh, this show really captured the essence of Warhol's artistic vision, pop art as the easily reproducible and easily recognizable, the assembly line creative process where output and fame are greater than individual creativity. Perhaps most poignant was the portrayal of Warhol, his family, his schoolmates, and coworkers all as Campbell's soup cans. Which of course raises the question for me I think was posed by Warhol's work, are we really all alike?
After another brief intermission smoking down cigarettes in the cold rain, we went in for the act most of us were there to see, the Indicator Species. Comprised of the infamous Etta Cettera and members of the Hollow Sisters, a life size prison cell was erected made entirely of letters from prisoners sent to the local books to prisoners project, Book 'Em, and a heart rending tale was told addressing murder and the age old societal problem of what to do with offenders. Unlike the other pieces presented in the evening, this one was not told through the use of humor or absurdity but was a brutal attack on the hearts and consciences of the audience presenting four separate cases based off real life incidents portraying the moral ambiguity of how to deal with this issue.
Now this piece would have been immensely touching in its own right, if I hadn't known any of the people involved, but hit too close to home as I watched Etta have an actual conversation with a prisoner and then they presented the story of Frank's murder. They didn't mention Frank by name, but it was obviously about him, the kid with a mysterious smile who wandered around town everywhere and into the hearts of everyone he crossed paths with. Last summer Frank was brutally and randomly shot by several kids who had stolen a police woman's gun and car and he is still tragically missed by everyone in this community. As soon as I saw what they were doing I broke into tears, unable to attach emotional reality from the art and uncertain if they were abusing Frank's memory to get their point across. If anything though it only honored his memory and answered the question, no we are not replaceable, we are all individual beings with our own unique lives. And even when we do something that paints us at being at fault to ourselves and our neighbors and society, even when we murder, we are still worthwhile human beings who deserve a chance to exist and express ourselves in our own ways. And despite the stigmas and laws of society, that is something no one should be allowed to take away from us.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
name that neo-con artist
Miers and Bush: Pro-Death [Common Dreams]
"As president, George Bush continues to err on the side of death. Not only has he brushed aside health care and environmental protections that value life in the broadest sense, he has sent our troops into a war that they cannot win on a pack of lies as thin as their armor.
And while Katrina exposed the lethal neglect and bungling on the home front, some worry that with Bush dragging his feet on anything other than photo ops, the worst is yet to come..."
Name that War (by Tom Engelhardt)
"So somewhere along the line, administration officials and various neocon allies began testing out other monikers – among them, World War IV, the Long War, and the Millennium War – none of which ever got the slightest bit of traction."
Katrina: How Quickly They Forget [alternet]
"After the tragically mismanaged response to Katrina, President Bush pledged, "This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina." But the White House and conservatives allies are back to their old ways. Katrina has become another excuse to push through right-wing initiatives that were rejected by Congress and the public in the past."
No DeLay [metafilter]
"An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday and bail set at $10,000 for former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay ahead of his first appearance in court on money laundering and conspiracy charges."
Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy (Edward Alden)
"Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday."
Cheney Resignation Rumors Fly [From the Wilderness]
"Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."
"As president, George Bush continues to err on the side of death. Not only has he brushed aside health care and environmental protections that value life in the broadest sense, he has sent our troops into a war that they cannot win on a pack of lies as thin as their armor.
And while Katrina exposed the lethal neglect and bungling on the home front, some worry that with Bush dragging his feet on anything other than photo ops, the worst is yet to come..."
Name that War (by Tom Engelhardt)
"So somewhere along the line, administration officials and various neocon allies began testing out other monikers – among them, World War IV, the Long War, and the Millennium War – none of which ever got the slightest bit of traction."
Katrina: How Quickly They Forget [alternet]
"After the tragically mismanaged response to Katrina, President Bush pledged, "This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina." But the White House and conservatives allies are back to their old ways. Katrina has become another excuse to push through right-wing initiatives that were rejected by Congress and the public in the past."
No DeLay [metafilter]
"An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday and bail set at $10,000 for former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay ahead of his first appearance in court on money laundering and conspiracy charges."
Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy (Edward Alden)
"Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday."
Cheney Resignation Rumors Fly [From the Wilderness]
"Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."
the end of the world as we know it
"No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Brief History of the Apocalypse
"The 21st century has begun in earnest! And despite the cries of doomsayers, psychics and prophets, the world has not come to an end!
Is the idea that the End is near a recent phenomenon? Far from it. Indeed, Chicken Littles have crying doom since ancient times. The aim of this page is to debunk end-time prophecy by listing hundreds of failed doomsday predictions, allay the fears spread by end-time preachers, and demonstrate that doomcrying is nothing new. I also hope you will derive amusement from some of the more bizarre prophecies.
I have strived for accuracy through careful cross-referencing among source materials. I'm constantly adding new information and correcting mistakes, yet there may still be some errors.
Please journey with me through the wild, wacky and wonderful world of failed doomsday prophecy!"
[via Posthuman Blues]
A Brief History of the Apocalypse
"The 21st century has begun in earnest! And despite the cries of doomsayers, psychics and prophets, the world has not come to an end!
Is the idea that the End is near a recent phenomenon? Far from it. Indeed, Chicken Littles have crying doom since ancient times. The aim of this page is to debunk end-time prophecy by listing hundreds of failed doomsday predictions, allay the fears spread by end-time preachers, and demonstrate that doomcrying is nothing new. I also hope you will derive amusement from some of the more bizarre prophecies.
I have strived for accuracy through careful cross-referencing among source materials. I'm constantly adding new information and correcting mistakes, yet there may still be some errors.
Please journey with me through the wild, wacky and wonderful world of failed doomsday prophecy!"
[via Posthuman Blues]
Thursday, October 20, 2005
thinking problems
Thinking [via Bodarniset]
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzy and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..." "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!" "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors... They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting.
At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
Today, I registered to vote as a Republican...
Source: /Kate/A/blog
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzy and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..." "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!" "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.
She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors... They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting.
At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
Today, I registered to vote as a Republican...
Source: /Kate/A/blog
starting from scracth
Alchemical Braindamage [via mythropolis
"So. What I want you to do, provided you're interested in playing along, is to make a list of what you want. Let's say ten things. Ten things you want that are achievable from your current perspective. You may want to be a rock star, but if you don't think it's possible to be a rock star, for you right now, then leave it off the list. As well, for the moment, I suggest you make as many of the things on the list as possible relatively short term projects. The reason is, you want to be able to complete some of these relatively quickly and turn over your list a little bit. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. By the same token, you want the things on your list to have bit of emotional juice to them. Wanting to make a sandwich is not so great. Wanting to drive for three hours to the nearest Arby's is better. Wanting to own your own restaurant chain is better still. And yes it's perfectly alright to want utterly banal and trivial things. That's part of the point when we start. That's the base material which we will proceed to refine."
I think I may have to play along with this. I love making lists anyway for my goals, but turning it into a magical experiment should up my intentions a bit.
"So. What I want you to do, provided you're interested in playing along, is to make a list of what you want. Let's say ten things. Ten things you want that are achievable from your current perspective. You may want to be a rock star, but if you don't think it's possible to be a rock star, for you right now, then leave it off the list. As well, for the moment, I suggest you make as many of the things on the list as possible relatively short term projects. The reason is, you want to be able to complete some of these relatively quickly and turn over your list a little bit. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. By the same token, you want the things on your list to have bit of emotional juice to them. Wanting to make a sandwich is not so great. Wanting to drive for three hours to the nearest Arby's is better. Wanting to own your own restaurant chain is better still. And yes it's perfectly alright to want utterly banal and trivial things. That's part of the point when we start. That's the base material which we will proceed to refine."
I think I may have to play along with this. I love making lists anyway for my goals, but turning it into a magical experiment should up my intentions a bit.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
wanted: a lot of hope
and in other news, James Gyre just told me he found out that the builidng he and Lara are trying to buy on Penn Ave. for a new community center is being signed for tomorrow, either by them or the other group that submitted a proposal. So he asked that anyone who cares (and you should cuz this space will be awesome) should put out some positive energy that things go well at the meeting (8pm tomorrow) and everything turns out for the best. If it ends up in their hands this project could really become a necessary turning point for the Pittsburgh radical arts scene. So put your hopes out there.
Living Storybooks?
The other day my friend Aurelia and I started working on our new project, mapping out a social genealogy of our local "scene" (however you want to define that. We are interested in seeing how all these people we know met, why they are here, what their goals are, and how they interact with each other in order to gain a better understanding for ourselves and our community of the interconnected nature of human interactions in an intentional microcosm. How we learn to define ourselves and our world in relation to each other. Our approach to this seeks to be multidisciplinary, drawing from socialogy, psychology, anthroplogy, etc... interviewing people about their lives and experiences here and eventually creating a multimedia art exhibition drawing in objects writing diagrams music etc... After one meeting it's obvious that what we're trying to do is big, complex and is going to take a lot of work to pull off, even if it will hopefully continue as an ongoing effort to keep drawing this place tighter. We figure the best place to start is interviewing each other and just working out the connections from there.
For me of course, there is a not so hidden agenda in interviewing all my friends. Have to get that research down for character studies for my next novel (based off of the local arts scene and its response to the rapidly deteriorating state of the world), and if there's any defining mark of our scene here it is that it is a community of extreme individuals. Talking over it neither of us are sure how this could have happened, so many people trying to live their own lives in their own unconditional ways and all working together to find a place where these diverse goals and lifestyles can intersect and encourage new growth, somewhat stigmergically. The question is, what events in people's lives could have led them to reject the mundane standards of their parents and society and forge out into new territory of creativivty? To some degree this city is an example of one aspect of that, the major industry here collapsed 30 some years ago and it still has a cultural image of being a dead burntout steel town where nothig's going on. According to some people, that's exactly why there can be a rennaisancce of art and music, precisely becasue it is invisible to the greater public eye, which leaves room for us to work within and redefine our lives as we choose. As the city fell apart some people decided they needed to respond to this by creating viable alternatives, which is a microcosm of what's happening on the global scale as the capitalist agenda of consumer monoculture reaches it limits and exhausts its resources, leading many to seek these alternatives and an ultraculture which can actually survive whatever transition will rock the face of humanity.
But even still, what led these people to attempt to lead such revolutionary lifestyles in the first place? Something that Aurelia and I considered is the cultural factor of growing up exposed to literature and film and music that encourages that kind of approach, from the rebel alliance of star wars to the rebelious stance of punkrock, taking the stories and scripts presented in their youth and choosing to live them out as reality. This is somewhat opposite of the magical technique of hypersigils, by which someone creates a work of art (often a fictional tale) which portrays how they want to live in order to change their lives in that direction. Instead, we have kids taking all previous works in this light and growing up with the understanding that they really can be anything they want. For example, our friend Spat grew up reading the beat poets and listening to rock and roll, and now is living out that tradition of being a hard edged poet and rock star. We see this time and time again in our community, people living their stories as musicians, artists, writers, anarchist organizers, djs, withces, etc, the romanticization of living a particualr life, even down to one girl whose life long dream is to be a punkrock dentist. And she's doing it.
But turning to the internet to find a better understanding of this phenomenon we've had no luck whatsoever. We don't even know how to frame our search query. So, a question to toss out into the greater hinternet, has anyone else had experience with this type of thing, or know of any articles in relation to it that we might peruse to gain a better understanding of where we're trying to go? Any help would be much appreciated, for the sake of curiosity and human understanding.
For me of course, there is a not so hidden agenda in interviewing all my friends. Have to get that research down for character studies for my next novel (based off of the local arts scene and its response to the rapidly deteriorating state of the world), and if there's any defining mark of our scene here it is that it is a community of extreme individuals. Talking over it neither of us are sure how this could have happened, so many people trying to live their own lives in their own unconditional ways and all working together to find a place where these diverse goals and lifestyles can intersect and encourage new growth, somewhat stigmergically. The question is, what events in people's lives could have led them to reject the mundane standards of their parents and society and forge out into new territory of creativivty? To some degree this city is an example of one aspect of that, the major industry here collapsed 30 some years ago and it still has a cultural image of being a dead burntout steel town where nothig's going on. According to some people, that's exactly why there can be a rennaisancce of art and music, precisely becasue it is invisible to the greater public eye, which leaves room for us to work within and redefine our lives as we choose. As the city fell apart some people decided they needed to respond to this by creating viable alternatives, which is a microcosm of what's happening on the global scale as the capitalist agenda of consumer monoculture reaches it limits and exhausts its resources, leading many to seek these alternatives and an ultraculture which can actually survive whatever transition will rock the face of humanity.
But even still, what led these people to attempt to lead such revolutionary lifestyles in the first place? Something that Aurelia and I considered is the cultural factor of growing up exposed to literature and film and music that encourages that kind of approach, from the rebel alliance of star wars to the rebelious stance of punkrock, taking the stories and scripts presented in their youth and choosing to live them out as reality. This is somewhat opposite of the magical technique of hypersigils, by which someone creates a work of art (often a fictional tale) which portrays how they want to live in order to change their lives in that direction. Instead, we have kids taking all previous works in this light and growing up with the understanding that they really can be anything they want. For example, our friend Spat grew up reading the beat poets and listening to rock and roll, and now is living out that tradition of being a hard edged poet and rock star. We see this time and time again in our community, people living their stories as musicians, artists, writers, anarchist organizers, djs, withces, etc, the romanticization of living a particualr life, even down to one girl whose life long dream is to be a punkrock dentist. And she's doing it.
But turning to the internet to find a better understanding of this phenomenon we've had no luck whatsoever. We don't even know how to frame our search query. So, a question to toss out into the greater hinternet, has anyone else had experience with this type of thing, or know of any articles in relation to it that we might peruse to gain a better understanding of where we're trying to go? Any help would be much appreciated, for the sake of curiosity and human understanding.
communism and the vegetable people
Quote of the Day: [via inspector lohmann]
"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers..."
-William S. Burroughs, The Job
of course, he goes on from their to talk about communism, vegetable kingdoms, and the inevitability of world war III.
"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers..."
-William S. Burroughs, The Job
of course, he goes on from their to talk about communism, vegetable kingdoms, and the inevitability of world war III.
Houses Flying Towards the End of the World
Dream Symbology: Houses Flying Towards the End of the World [by Anumaatii. via irreality]
"Everyone dreams. If you think that you don't, there's a good chance you simply aren't remembering them, as this is a far more common occurrence than not dreaming at all.
I am certainly no dream expert, but I do take pleasure in attempting to derive some meanings from symbols- and dreams tend to be chock-full of symbolism. Such symbols do not necessarily occur only in dreamland; meditations, for example, can include them, as can the novels and stories that arise from the imaginations of authors. Mythology, too, is often imbued with symbols.
There are some common motifs that I have found running through my own dreams, and I've also noticed them in the reading of journals, blogs, and other such places. In this essay, we will take a look at three symbols that can be quite important and powerful: houses, flight, and end-of-the-world scenarios."
Funny, I often dream of houses and the end of the world too. Also good punk shows and late night walks between bars and backalleys, and excavating the ruins of 20th century megamalls. I guess it all comes down to what you pay attention to. And as usual, instead of paying attention to the flying houses of my mind's eye, the six a.m. church bells are ringing down the street and I'm still wide awake and in the interweb. I'll blame it on the lunar eclipse.
"Everyone dreams. If you think that you don't, there's a good chance you simply aren't remembering them, as this is a far more common occurrence than not dreaming at all.
I am certainly no dream expert, but I do take pleasure in attempting to derive some meanings from symbols- and dreams tend to be chock-full of symbolism. Such symbols do not necessarily occur only in dreamland; meditations, for example, can include them, as can the novels and stories that arise from the imaginations of authors. Mythology, too, is often imbued with symbols.
There are some common motifs that I have found running through my own dreams, and I've also noticed them in the reading of journals, blogs, and other such places. In this essay, we will take a look at three symbols that can be quite important and powerful: houses, flight, and end-of-the-world scenarios."
Funny, I often dream of houses and the end of the world too. Also good punk shows and late night walks between bars and backalleys, and excavating the ruins of 20th century megamalls. I guess it all comes down to what you pay attention to. And as usual, instead of paying attention to the flying houses of my mind's eye, the six a.m. church bells are ringing down the street and I'm still wide awake and in the interweb. I'll blame it on the lunar eclipse.
Expanding Language
While trying to do some research on hypersigils the other day, I stumbled instead into its definition in the Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary, which like the similair Urban Dictionary sports such edgy words as slobberknocker and cocaine bugs, but also goes beyond the call of posting just any new definition to track extensive citations through cultural usage. Yes, it does trace hypersigils back to Grant Morrisson.
"Double-Tongued Word Wrester records undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English. It focuses upon slang, jargon, and other niche categories which include new, foreign, hybrid, archaic, obsolete, and rare words. Special attention is paid to the lending and borrowing of words between the various Englishes and other languages, even where a word is not a fully naturalized citizen in its new language."
But my question still remains, if a hypersigil is a creative work, often a story, intended to bring about change (and all good storie do), then what is the process called whereby a person takes previously existing stories and art and uses them to shape the story they choose to live out in their own lives?
"Double-Tongued Word Wrester records undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English. It focuses upon slang, jargon, and other niche categories which include new, foreign, hybrid, archaic, obsolete, and rare words. Special attention is paid to the lending and borrowing of words between the various Englishes and other languages, even where a word is not a fully naturalized citizen in its new language."
But my question still remains, if a hypersigil is a creative work, often a story, intended to bring about change (and all good storie do), then what is the process called whereby a person takes previously existing stories and art and uses them to shape the story they choose to live out in their own lives?
Crimethinc.net/work 2.0
"After years and years of failed attempts and results so horrendous as to boggle the mind, we open for public participation the newest attempt at a CrimethInc. networking site, CrimethInc.Net/work 2.0. There are a lot of bells and whistles here—an events calendar, a cell directory, user blogs, a recipe database, art galleries—all of which are begging for content created by you. This site is only as valuable and useful as y'all make it, so let's work together to make this an indespensible resource for ambitious lunatics all over the world. A good place to start after registering is the .net owners' manual."
Sunday, October 16, 2005
enter the dreaming
Woke up with the wind and clouds blowing fast across. Cold and strange dreams again. Someone's been writing them down, digital fiction Dreaming Methods. Scrawled multimedia surreality as if Dave McKean had rewritten Myst while trapped in a Waking Life neverending dream cycle. Stories told from the bowles of the subconscious. This is what I see when I close my eyes.
"I dreamt that I stopped a speeding train by reaching out from the sides of the track and dragging the carraiges to a halt. The train screeched and smoked, the carraiged tipping and tilting, some collapsing onto their side on the embankment. I ran from the scene." -from Inside: A Dream Journal
[via Scarab Dreamer]
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
poet as shaman
A friend has started working on an essay for her school about the thread of divinity in poetry, the ways it has been approached and how its expression still has very simlair elements over the centuries, whether you're talking the ecstatic love of Rumi's enitre cannon or the beat worship of Ginsburg's postscript to "Howl." She asked me for some examples of poets who expres divinity, and besides those two, and the classic examples of Blake, Yeats, and the other romantic poets, I suggested my personal favorite, Rainer Maria Rilke, who was influenced heavily by Rumi's style of personally addressing the divine as a Beloved.
During her research my friend stumbled upon this fascinating article analyzing Rilke's poetry in the context of how the poem and poet metamorphosize in relation to each other and the experience of the world.
"Each poem can be seen as a birth canal, a metaphysical tunnel, an entrance into reality which effects a distinct change in the man who travels through it. Although it is, in some sense, the poet who writes the poem, there is another sense in Hass of the poem changing the poet-writing him, as it were. "
This idea of poetry makes it very simliair to the shamanic rebirth experience, but one in which the poet is constantly being reborn in new perceptions of the world. As my friend, the redneck poet Johnny "Squibb" Menesini, put it, "everytime I write a pome I think I'm dying."
The article goes on to paint Rilke as a man who would go running out into the street clutching a white iris to his chest in order to escape the torment of the images in his head, which brings up one of my favorite past times and role of both poets and shamans, solitary walks, when alone with the world (whether country or city) the divinity and clarity imminenet in all things starts to break out and become real. When the mundane transcends itself, and crystalizes in an image that can be passed on which, as Blake put it, shows the whole world in a grain of sand. Very much like the chaos magician's use of a simple sigil image to encode much deeper levels of information within the psyche.
and as I told my friend, this is something that fascinated me greatly too, and it looks like we may have a bit of friendly competition trying to tie all this together. look for an essay about magic poetry on key23 soon.
During her research my friend stumbled upon this fascinating article analyzing Rilke's poetry in the context of how the poem and poet metamorphosize in relation to each other and the experience of the world.
"Each poem can be seen as a birth canal, a metaphysical tunnel, an entrance into reality which effects a distinct change in the man who travels through it. Although it is, in some sense, the poet who writes the poem, there is another sense in Hass of the poem changing the poet-writing him, as it were. "
This idea of poetry makes it very simliair to the shamanic rebirth experience, but one in which the poet is constantly being reborn in new perceptions of the world. As my friend, the redneck poet Johnny "Squibb" Menesini, put it, "everytime I write a pome I think I'm dying."
The article goes on to paint Rilke as a man who would go running out into the street clutching a white iris to his chest in order to escape the torment of the images in his head, which brings up one of my favorite past times and role of both poets and shamans, solitary walks, when alone with the world (whether country or city) the divinity and clarity imminenet in all things starts to break out and become real. When the mundane transcends itself, and crystalizes in an image that can be passed on which, as Blake put it, shows the whole world in a grain of sand. Very much like the chaos magician's use of a simple sigil image to encode much deeper levels of information within the psyche.
and as I told my friend, this is something that fascinated me greatly too, and it looks like we may have a bit of friendly competition trying to tie all this together. look for an essay about magic poetry on key23 soon.
Friday, October 07, 2005
the second superpower - mankind
"There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights. This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole—and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one."
"How does the second superpower take action? Not from the top, but from the bottom. That is, it is the strength of the US government that it can centrally collect taxes, and then spend, for example, $1.2 billion on 1,200 cruise missiles in the first day of the war against Iraq. By contrast, it is the strength of the second superpower that it could mobilize hundreds of small groups of activists to shut down city centers across the United States on that same first day of the war. And that millions of citizens worldwide would take to their streets to rally. The symbol of the first superpower is the eagle—an awesome predator that rules from the skies, preying on mice and small animals. Perhaps the best symbol for the second superpower would be a community of ants. Ants rule from below. And while I may be awed seeing eagles in flight, when ants invade my kitchen they command my attention."
This sounds an awfully lot like the principles of stigmergy and swarm intelligence in action that Metachor's been talking about for years now.
"How does the second superpower take action? Not from the top, but from the bottom. That is, it is the strength of the US government that it can centrally collect taxes, and then spend, for example, $1.2 billion on 1,200 cruise missiles in the first day of the war against Iraq. By contrast, it is the strength of the second superpower that it could mobilize hundreds of small groups of activists to shut down city centers across the United States on that same first day of the war. And that millions of citizens worldwide would take to their streets to rally. The symbol of the first superpower is the eagle—an awesome predator that rules from the skies, preying on mice and small animals. Perhaps the best symbol for the second superpower would be a community of ants. Ants rule from below. And while I may be awed seeing eagles in flight, when ants invade my kitchen they command my attention."
This sounds an awfully lot like the principles of stigmergy and swarm intelligence in action that Metachor's been talking about for years now.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
electric sliders
I'd always wondered if there's been some research into the phenomenon of walking under a streetlamp and turning it off. turns out there is, and street lamp interference is in the lime light. (article via dubpulse)
The first time I encountered a SLIder (as this article calls em) was an old girlfriend and her family, who are all somewhat psychic and blink streetlamps like crazy, and over the years got my own intuitive antennas more in tune with the world. This past spring I was highly curious about this and was affecting electronic devices wildly by my pressence, which didn't really surprise me as our whole nervous system's are electric and not closed systems. But as to whether that's useful...
The first time I encountered a SLIder (as this article calls em) was an old girlfriend and her family, who are all somewhat psychic and blink streetlamps like crazy, and over the years got my own intuitive antennas more in tune with the world. This past spring I was highly curious about this and was affecting electronic devices wildly by my pressence, which didn't really surprise me as our whole nervous system's are electric and not closed systems. But as to whether that's useful...
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
a hopeless romantic makes two jaded punks cry
a hopeless romantic makes two jaded punks cry
(posted at everyday avatar)
"and suddenly I find myself having faith in humanity again. How could you not?"
and when I got home, I found my copy of Generation Hex had arrived...
(posted at everyday avatar)
"and suddenly I find myself having faith in humanity again. How could you not?"
and when I got home, I found my copy of Generation Hex had arrived...
Monday, October 03, 2005
did you hear that?
Appearently last night in DC. the Kennedy Center held the opening of their month long Festival of China, which started with a seven minute long fireworks display unlike any seen here before. It was so unprecedented and the loud noises so remniscient of "machine gun fire, bombs, or cannon balls," that local police and fire departments were swamped by panicked phone calls worried that this was the beginning of a terrorsit attack or nuclear bombing on the nation's capital. Now this city may be grond zero, but it's still shocking (and somewhat amusing) to hear that the "fear of the bomb" is so strong in people's subconscious here that they were more likely to expect the end of the world than a joyous celebration.
In other news, the post reported on the global impact of the current oil crises which has culminated in massive civil unrest and the possibility of sevral countries having to declare bankruptcy in order to finance their citizens' habits of driving to work everyday. Looks like it could be time to move to Venezuela, where gas remains at 15 cents a gallon. Chavez must be doing something right (like not exporting his oil to the US).
In other news, the post reported on the global impact of the current oil crises which has culminated in massive civil unrest and the possibility of sevral countries having to declare bankruptcy in order to finance their citizens' habits of driving to work everyday. Looks like it could be time to move to Venezuela, where gas remains at 15 cents a gallon. Chavez must be doing something right (like not exporting his oil to the US).
Sunday, October 02, 2005
pomes in new era time
"A poem can act as a spell & vice versa--but sorcery refuses to be a metaphor for mere literature--it insists that symbols must cause events as well as private epiphanies. It is not a critique but a re-making. It rejects all eschatology & metaphysics of removal, all bleary nostalgia & strident futurismo, in favor of a paroxysm or seizure of presence."
-Hakim Bey, Sorcery
slice of life or occam's nib pen, the written word has much power to influence the ways we percieve and think about the world we live in, especially the age old art of poetry, which even today still continues to be a valid and valuable discourse on the state of humanity and where we might go next. On one hand it allows us to draw startling and worldly conclusions from the smallest moments, the ripples of a stone skipped across a pond, and on the other continues a lively discourse between those few sould who continue to stand on the shoulders of giants and reach even further for the stars.
last night I had the fortune of stumbling upon "You've a Nail," (caution, .pdf), the chapbook of wu, of mutato nomine recently printed on Lulu.com and spent most of the wee hours of the morning stumbling through this twisted and often abstractadly lucid one man's map of whatever god this is we call reality. I doubt that much I can say will really do it justice, so download the .pdf yourself (or better yet support an artist and by the sucker!) and form your own opinion.
but of course since I was in the middle of another insomniacal manic binge I coldn't help but forming my own the following poetic ramble:
Override
for wu
3:33
Another smoke curls
digital morning tea leaves
in a stranger's chapbook.
Somewhere fingers
wander alpha-numeric
replies that may never come,
home away from home away from
home.
- Where are you?
Jacket torn off the hook
dangles imperceptable
filaments raw and rerouted
to flatline buzztone crickets
and occasional drunken doppler.
No answers in the machine
roll under cracked date palms
tonight, the heart is just a muscle,
infamous in lack of metaphorical content
and unable to keep a steady beat:
a vice grip with your name on it
twisting lemons for tularemia.
Keep lurching interweb alleyways
like there was a roadmap of God
in some deadend bitrot dumpster.
- Stars? What stars?
Anywhere is not a place
to forget you're never alone.
-Hakim Bey, Sorcery
slice of life or occam's nib pen, the written word has much power to influence the ways we percieve and think about the world we live in, especially the age old art of poetry, which even today still continues to be a valid and valuable discourse on the state of humanity and where we might go next. On one hand it allows us to draw startling and worldly conclusions from the smallest moments, the ripples of a stone skipped across a pond, and on the other continues a lively discourse between those few sould who continue to stand on the shoulders of giants and reach even further for the stars.
last night I had the fortune of stumbling upon "You've a Nail," (caution, .pdf), the chapbook of wu, of mutato nomine recently printed on Lulu.com and spent most of the wee hours of the morning stumbling through this twisted and often abstractadly lucid one man's map of whatever god this is we call reality. I doubt that much I can say will really do it justice, so download the .pdf yourself (or better yet support an artist and by the sucker!) and form your own opinion.
but of course since I was in the middle of another insomniacal manic binge I coldn't help but forming my own the following poetic ramble:
Override
for wu
3:33
Another smoke curls
digital morning tea leaves
in a stranger's chapbook.
Somewhere fingers
wander alpha-numeric
replies that may never come,
home away from home away from
home.
- Where are you?
Jacket torn off the hook
dangles imperceptable
filaments raw and rerouted
to flatline buzztone crickets
and occasional drunken doppler.
No answers in the machine
roll under cracked date palms
tonight, the heart is just a muscle,
infamous in lack of metaphorical content
and unable to keep a steady beat:
a vice grip with your name on it
twisting lemons for tularemia.
Keep lurching interweb alleyways
like there was a roadmap of God
in some deadend bitrot dumpster.
- Stars? What stars?
Anywhere is not a place
to forget you're never alone.
life is not a true or false questionaire
It wouldn't be a proper family renuinon unless at some point, preferably after everyone's got at least a couple drinks in them, someone brings up politics. Of course, in my family this is less an argument over which party is in the right, as much all around laughter at how little any of actually believes in the system and the lies it continues to spew forth on a daily basis. After reading the article this morning on the biological attack on the proteters in DC last week, and hearing that it was extensively covered in other media I began to wonder, does it really matter if it's true?
To some degree, yes, the idea of our government being so low as to poison its own population is horrendous, and needs to be addressed, but even more horrendous is that regardless of whether it's true or not, the possibility that they very well could is utterly believable. What makes something true anyway? These days, that seems to rely less on whether a particular event did or did not happen and more on how widespread the belief of its possibility is. Shortly after the Katrina debacle, on reading in multiple sources that Bush staged photo-ops of rebuilding levees and soup kitchens only to have them torn down when he left, I tried telling this to a number of people, only to find utter shock and disbelief that any human being could be so callous. What do you believe? Even if it's not true, could rumors alone impeach a man or mark him up as one of the most heinous war criminals of all time?
Truth is a sketchy issue, and one that's fascinated me for some time, becuase no matter where or how far you look for it, it's not there. At least by any objective standards of validification. Certainly you could toss out hassan i-sabah's old bromide that "nothing is true, everything is permitted," or, as Siga pointed out earlier, "truth comes from within" and we alone can determine what we believe, but even then it comes down to value judgements and a defined sense of morality than cold hard facts.
Let's face it, the media lies to us, and not just the corporate sponsered newscasts. About nine tenths (or more) of everything we read or hear is shadings of truth, spin and counter spin of events aimed at getting across certain ideas and agendas till our heads are dizzy and we fall down under the hubris of inaccurate information. In one might be the greatest conspircy of them all, the "Illuminatus" trilogy (which is itself only one book full of misinformation), Robert Anton Wilson coins the term fnord, which is the almost audible sound of the full truth not being disclosed. Open up the newspaper and read any article with a critical and detached frame of mind. You can almost visibally see the gaps in logic and will to suspend disbelief that lie embedded in the slick writing. Just what is not being said? And how are we to believe any of it?
Inspired by Alfred Korzybski's general semantics and assertion that "the map is not the territory" (nor really an actuall map itself but just a word), R. A. Wilson eventually formed the idea of Maybe Logic, which "consists of never regarding any model or map of Universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial." Not looking for concrete validity but for the suggestion of possibility, including the possibility to disregard one's own standards for validity.
Take your deepest held beliefs. The one's you never question and live your every moment as if reality depended on. Ask yourself, why do I believe this? (and don't answer "because it's true"). Dig into the roots of the issue, morals, upbringing, social mores or lack thereof. Here's one that used to haunt me (and is a rather minor issue when it comes down to it), vegetarianism. I used to be vegan, now I occasionally eat meat. Do I care about animals any less, did I suddenly decide that my reasons for not consuming them were fallacious? No. The more I looked at why I was doing it, the more I realized the whole issue was far more complex, far more gray than my individual actions alone would ever be able to address. I still refuse factory farmed animals, I still (and even more so than ever) am conscious of how my actions affect other living beings, but I realized that the basis for that black/white decision was based more on what I should do in toto than taking any given situation for what it was and acting accordingly. I still listen to records and ride a bike, and vulcanization requires bone marrow. There's the possibility that sometimes you can not fight every battle. There's also the possibility that we create rules and guidelines for ourselves that are just as stringent and confining as any law created by impersonal governmental polocies. And the best way to not get caught in rules (or stagnant beliefs) is to occasionaly break them. Out with the cop in the head, and all that. If you haven't already made up your mind it's never too late to change your opinion.
Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Don't believe everything you read. But don't disbelieve it either. Entertain the possibility that it's possible the US government released bioweapons on its citizens or that it's all a big conspiracy. And then laugh and go to bed and make sure to watch your health. Sweet dreams and don't let the tulerimia bite.
To some degree, yes, the idea of our government being so low as to poison its own population is horrendous, and needs to be addressed, but even more horrendous is that regardless of whether it's true or not, the possibility that they very well could is utterly believable. What makes something true anyway? These days, that seems to rely less on whether a particular event did or did not happen and more on how widespread the belief of its possibility is. Shortly after the Katrina debacle, on reading in multiple sources that Bush staged photo-ops of rebuilding levees and soup kitchens only to have them torn down when he left, I tried telling this to a number of people, only to find utter shock and disbelief that any human being could be so callous. What do you believe? Even if it's not true, could rumors alone impeach a man or mark him up as one of the most heinous war criminals of all time?
Truth is a sketchy issue, and one that's fascinated me for some time, becuase no matter where or how far you look for it, it's not there. At least by any objective standards of validification. Certainly you could toss out hassan i-sabah's old bromide that "nothing is true, everything is permitted," or, as Siga pointed out earlier, "truth comes from within" and we alone can determine what we believe, but even then it comes down to value judgements and a defined sense of morality than cold hard facts.
Let's face it, the media lies to us, and not just the corporate sponsered newscasts. About nine tenths (or more) of everything we read or hear is shadings of truth, spin and counter spin of events aimed at getting across certain ideas and agendas till our heads are dizzy and we fall down under the hubris of inaccurate information. In one might be the greatest conspircy of them all, the "Illuminatus" trilogy (which is itself only one book full of misinformation), Robert Anton Wilson coins the term fnord, which is the almost audible sound of the full truth not being disclosed. Open up the newspaper and read any article with a critical and detached frame of mind. You can almost visibally see the gaps in logic and will to suspend disbelief that lie embedded in the slick writing. Just what is not being said? And how are we to believe any of it?
Inspired by Alfred Korzybski's general semantics and assertion that "the map is not the territory" (nor really an actuall map itself but just a word), R. A. Wilson eventually formed the idea of Maybe Logic, which "consists of never regarding any model or map of Universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial." Not looking for concrete validity but for the suggestion of possibility, including the possibility to disregard one's own standards for validity.
Take your deepest held beliefs. The one's you never question and live your every moment as if reality depended on. Ask yourself, why do I believe this? (and don't answer "because it's true"). Dig into the roots of the issue, morals, upbringing, social mores or lack thereof. Here's one that used to haunt me (and is a rather minor issue when it comes down to it), vegetarianism. I used to be vegan, now I occasionally eat meat. Do I care about animals any less, did I suddenly decide that my reasons for not consuming them were fallacious? No. The more I looked at why I was doing it, the more I realized the whole issue was far more complex, far more gray than my individual actions alone would ever be able to address. I still refuse factory farmed animals, I still (and even more so than ever) am conscious of how my actions affect other living beings, but I realized that the basis for that black/white decision was based more on what I should do in toto than taking any given situation for what it was and acting accordingly. I still listen to records and ride a bike, and vulcanization requires bone marrow. There's the possibility that sometimes you can not fight every battle. There's also the possibility that we create rules and guidelines for ourselves that are just as stringent and confining as any law created by impersonal governmental polocies. And the best way to not get caught in rules (or stagnant beliefs) is to occasionaly break them. Out with the cop in the head, and all that. If you haven't already made up your mind it's never too late to change your opinion.
Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Don't believe everything you read. But don't disbelieve it either. Entertain the possibility that it's possible the US government released bioweapons on its citizens or that it's all a big conspiracy. And then laugh and go to bed and make sure to watch your health. Sweet dreams and don't let the tulerimia bite.
prepared for the worst
I posted this on Key23 the other day, but for some reason, the site has fallen off the far edge of the hinternet, so I'm's repostin it here (and there may be a bit o' that for a bit)
Pre-Apocalypse Preparedness Manual
or The World’s Ending and All I’ve got left is this Stupid Towel
(All right’s reversed, please copy and redistribute)
Throughout history many cultures have claimed that the world is going to end, but look at the headlines today: The world is already ending! Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, wars in the Holy Land, rioting in the streets, devastation of the environment and the end of unrenewable resources, power outages, etc… You may not be in the middle of these disasters, you may not even believe they’re really happening, but here we are, the 21st century and the beginning of the end of the world.
Our purpose in writing this manual is not to be scaremongers, the last thing we want you to do in the face of imminent social environmental economic collapse is hide cowering in your basement or pretend that nothing is actually going on. As shit gets worse, and it very likely will, and our own illusions of security and stability are stripped away, the best thing we can do is be ready for the worst. Possibly nothing will happen, but even more likely it will be like nothing we could ever expect. So on that note, we give you the PAPM.
Before you do anything else, remember the catchwords of the infamous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic! If you want to keep your head above the water (quite literally) then don’t forget it. The end of the world will be quite frightening and there are a few simple things you can do to keep from freezing up or going insane.
Breathe. Regular deep breathes supply oxygen to the brain and prevent shock and panic and allow for clear thinking, especially if you feel the tightness of the Horror welling up in your chest.
Be informed, but not too informed. It’s good to know what’s going on, you don’t want to get caught unawares in a surprise military lockdown, but you also don’t want to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the disasters. Read useful newsclips pertaining to your local area/ escape routes, but stop gawking over those pictures of dead bodies and burning buildings.
Face your fears. This is hard, really hard. Fear is the mind killer, but fear does not in itself exist. Not to say that these disasters and things you are afraid of don’t exist, they certainly do, but the more they happen or the closer you get to them, the easier it becomes to see there are just concrete actions that can be taken in each moment to get through the situation instead of panicking. Focus on these and not the bigger picture and you will survive.
Be prepared. That old boy scout motto never was so apt as when you might have to flee a hurricane or gang of rioters at a moment’s notice. Start planning now so you have the skills and tools you’ll need to survive no matter what happens. And remember, be ready to go, don’t worry so much about school, your career, car payments, etc… these won’t mean too much when you’re on the road or in the woods.
Basic first-aid/ wilderness and urban survival skills. You should know how to dress wounds, give CPR, etc… in case you or anyone you encounter gets hurt and there is no other medical attention available. Also know the basics of what plants are edible or medicinal in your locality, how to build a fire and shelter, how to skin an animal for food (even if you’re a vegetarian or can’t hunt, there’s always road kill when you’re starving), the best routes to leave the city, and stores that could be “looted” for supplies along the way.
Yoga/ martial arts. Yoga is important for relaxation and staying healthy. It keeps your body limber and mind clear. Martial arts should speak for themselves. It’s necessary to be able to defend yourself from panicking civilians no matter if you’re armed or not. You could (and should) carry a knife, but keep in mind that when a knife is drawn in combat both parties are likely going to get cut. And then you’ll have more wounds to deal with.
Escape plan/ network. Know how you’re going to get out of the disaster area. Determine somewhere safe to go, or several possible locations around the country or world. Talk to your friends and neighbors to work out details of how to help each other escape. Stay in contact and rehearse evacuation drills. That way you know someone’s got your back and will make sure you don’t get lost or killed.
Escape kit. If you have to flee suddenly, make sure you have all you might need already ready and in an accessible place. Think about essentials, pack light, and make sure in advance you can carry your pack comfortably and securely. Make sure to wrap any items you don’t want to get wet in plastic and put in the middle of your sleep sack. Also, forget all those useless valuables, either liquidate them now or move them to your safe zone in advance, including pets. If you have important information/ work documents, move it, memorize it, and back it up on hard copy and multiple web servers (though there’s no guarantee the net won’t fail either). Some things to consider packing:
good frame pack, sleeping bag and ground mat, matches/ flint and tender, non-perishable food, knife (tool and protection), leatherman, maglite, towel, rainproof/ warm sturdy clothing, good walking boots, small spiritual or inspirational text, maps (local and national) with marked routes, compass, notebook with pens, cell phone (if still in service), contact information, ID passport and other important documents, edible plant guide, first aid kit, seeds, money (no guarantee will still be worth anything, but have cash just in case).
other things to consider: gas mask, ear plugs, side arms, flares, small tent, deck of cards, inflatable raft, etc…
Survive! This is your objective. Not looting plasma tvs, not shooting cops and rescue vehicles, not being a hero (though these circumstances may arise), but staying alive. As cold as it sounds, selfie comes first, though survival is much more likely if you have other people to rely on. Make sure you’re prepared, not just to leave town but to start a completely new life somewhere else. Make sure you have or can get food and shelter, even if the grid or economic supply chains collapse. Get off the system as much as possible now so you’re used to having to live in desperate situations. Ride a bike, exercise, talk to your neighbors for information, establish communities that can take care of themselves. Learn to farm, sew, etc… If you end up in a small rural community after the collapse, make sure the members can supply their own food, healthcare, entertainment, skill shares, etc… DIY and sustainability are key. Don’t be afraid to be alone however, or to make new and unexpected friends.
We’re all in this together. Don’t forget it. When people get afraid they close off and take care of just themselves, at the expense of everyone around them. Look at Nola, looters shooting each other and downing rescue helicopters. But the reality is we’re all dealing with that same problem of survival. If disaster occurs on a global level this is crucially important for us to recognize. The Earth is a small planet in the middle of space, and we don’t have off world colonies. If things really turn to shit we have nowhere else to go, and so human survival depends on us not killing each other off for basic needs or to take control of whatever’s left, since we’ve already given up on taking care of our environment. When encountering other victims, especially if they appear to be dangerous (madmen and the military) but not immediately hostile, don’t pick fights but remind them of being in the same sinking ship. Ask how you can help them and if they can help you. In the event of a national crises, please ignore all ineffective collective and governmental institutions, they’re just individual people trying to survive too.
Perhaps most immediately important: Have fun. If you’re already prepared and not in any immediate danger, then keep living your life as passionately as possible. Don’t ignore the potential situation but don’t let it consume you either. Go to shows, get drunk, make art and love, continue doing those things that are necessary and important for you to feel you’re leading a solid and satisfying existence. If these are truly the last days, work and school are completely unimportant, but do what you have to do to get by. Use this as an opportunity to get out there and talk to people, find out what’s going on and make new connections in your community. Travel to find new safe spots and to get used to being on the road. If there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to do but were putting off till later, do it! Now is the time to live your wildest dreams.
Proactive measures, are also immediately important towards building a better future after the collapse (and potentially staving it off!). Inform yourself and others about what’s going on and how you can take control of your own lives. Campaign for alternate fuel sources, establish networks of compassionate and dedicated individuals working towards sustainable models of living. Be aware of how your actions (especially what you consume) might be adding to the world’s burdens and not be afraid to suggest to others how they are behaving. Copy and distribute this zine so others can be prepared.
And remember, keep loving, keep laughing, keep fighting. I don’t know about you, but I like being alive.
Pre-Apocalypse Preparedness Manual
or The World’s Ending and All I’ve got left is this Stupid Towel
(All right’s reversed, please copy and redistribute)
Throughout history many cultures have claimed that the world is going to end, but look at the headlines today: The world is already ending! Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, wars in the Holy Land, rioting in the streets, devastation of the environment and the end of unrenewable resources, power outages, etc… You may not be in the middle of these disasters, you may not even believe they’re really happening, but here we are, the 21st century and the beginning of the end of the world.
Our purpose in writing this manual is not to be scaremongers, the last thing we want you to do in the face of imminent social environmental economic collapse is hide cowering in your basement or pretend that nothing is actually going on. As shit gets worse, and it very likely will, and our own illusions of security and stability are stripped away, the best thing we can do is be ready for the worst. Possibly nothing will happen, but even more likely it will be like nothing we could ever expect. So on that note, we give you the PAPM.
Before you do anything else, remember the catchwords of the infamous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic! If you want to keep your head above the water (quite literally) then don’t forget it. The end of the world will be quite frightening and there are a few simple things you can do to keep from freezing up or going insane.
Breathe. Regular deep breathes supply oxygen to the brain and prevent shock and panic and allow for clear thinking, especially if you feel the tightness of the Horror welling up in your chest.
Be informed, but not too informed. It’s good to know what’s going on, you don’t want to get caught unawares in a surprise military lockdown, but you also don’t want to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the disasters. Read useful newsclips pertaining to your local area/ escape routes, but stop gawking over those pictures of dead bodies and burning buildings.
Face your fears. This is hard, really hard. Fear is the mind killer, but fear does not in itself exist. Not to say that these disasters and things you are afraid of don’t exist, they certainly do, but the more they happen or the closer you get to them, the easier it becomes to see there are just concrete actions that can be taken in each moment to get through the situation instead of panicking. Focus on these and not the bigger picture and you will survive.
Be prepared. That old boy scout motto never was so apt as when you might have to flee a hurricane or gang of rioters at a moment’s notice. Start planning now so you have the skills and tools you’ll need to survive no matter what happens. And remember, be ready to go, don’t worry so much about school, your career, car payments, etc… these won’t mean too much when you’re on the road or in the woods.
Basic first-aid/ wilderness and urban survival skills. You should know how to dress wounds, give CPR, etc… in case you or anyone you encounter gets hurt and there is no other medical attention available. Also know the basics of what plants are edible or medicinal in your locality, how to build a fire and shelter, how to skin an animal for food (even if you’re a vegetarian or can’t hunt, there’s always road kill when you’re starving), the best routes to leave the city, and stores that could be “looted” for supplies along the way.
Yoga/ martial arts. Yoga is important for relaxation and staying healthy. It keeps your body limber and mind clear. Martial arts should speak for themselves. It’s necessary to be able to defend yourself from panicking civilians no matter if you’re armed or not. You could (and should) carry a knife, but keep in mind that when a knife is drawn in combat both parties are likely going to get cut. And then you’ll have more wounds to deal with.
Escape plan/ network. Know how you’re going to get out of the disaster area. Determine somewhere safe to go, or several possible locations around the country or world. Talk to your friends and neighbors to work out details of how to help each other escape. Stay in contact and rehearse evacuation drills. That way you know someone’s got your back and will make sure you don’t get lost or killed.
Escape kit. If you have to flee suddenly, make sure you have all you might need already ready and in an accessible place. Think about essentials, pack light, and make sure in advance you can carry your pack comfortably and securely. Make sure to wrap any items you don’t want to get wet in plastic and put in the middle of your sleep sack. Also, forget all those useless valuables, either liquidate them now or move them to your safe zone in advance, including pets. If you have important information/ work documents, move it, memorize it, and back it up on hard copy and multiple web servers (though there’s no guarantee the net won’t fail either). Some things to consider packing:
good frame pack, sleeping bag and ground mat, matches/ flint and tender, non-perishable food, knife (tool and protection), leatherman, maglite, towel, rainproof/ warm sturdy clothing, good walking boots, small spiritual or inspirational text, maps (local and national) with marked routes, compass, notebook with pens, cell phone (if still in service), contact information, ID passport and other important documents, edible plant guide, first aid kit, seeds, money (no guarantee will still be worth anything, but have cash just in case).
other things to consider: gas mask, ear plugs, side arms, flares, small tent, deck of cards, inflatable raft, etc…
Survive! This is your objective. Not looting plasma tvs, not shooting cops and rescue vehicles, not being a hero (though these circumstances may arise), but staying alive. As cold as it sounds, selfie comes first, though survival is much more likely if you have other people to rely on. Make sure you’re prepared, not just to leave town but to start a completely new life somewhere else. Make sure you have or can get food and shelter, even if the grid or economic supply chains collapse. Get off the system as much as possible now so you’re used to having to live in desperate situations. Ride a bike, exercise, talk to your neighbors for information, establish communities that can take care of themselves. Learn to farm, sew, etc… If you end up in a small rural community after the collapse, make sure the members can supply their own food, healthcare, entertainment, skill shares, etc… DIY and sustainability are key. Don’t be afraid to be alone however, or to make new and unexpected friends.
We’re all in this together. Don’t forget it. When people get afraid they close off and take care of just themselves, at the expense of everyone around them. Look at Nola, looters shooting each other and downing rescue helicopters. But the reality is we’re all dealing with that same problem of survival. If disaster occurs on a global level this is crucially important for us to recognize. The Earth is a small planet in the middle of space, and we don’t have off world colonies. If things really turn to shit we have nowhere else to go, and so human survival depends on us not killing each other off for basic needs or to take control of whatever’s left, since we’ve already given up on taking care of our environment. When encountering other victims, especially if they appear to be dangerous (madmen and the military) but not immediately hostile, don’t pick fights but remind them of being in the same sinking ship. Ask how you can help them and if they can help you. In the event of a national crises, please ignore all ineffective collective and governmental institutions, they’re just individual people trying to survive too.
Perhaps most immediately important: Have fun. If you’re already prepared and not in any immediate danger, then keep living your life as passionately as possible. Don’t ignore the potential situation but don’t let it consume you either. Go to shows, get drunk, make art and love, continue doing those things that are necessary and important for you to feel you’re leading a solid and satisfying existence. If these are truly the last days, work and school are completely unimportant, but do what you have to do to get by. Use this as an opportunity to get out there and talk to people, find out what’s going on and make new connections in your community. Travel to find new safe spots and to get used to being on the road. If there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to do but were putting off till later, do it! Now is the time to live your wildest dreams.
Proactive measures, are also immediately important towards building a better future after the collapse (and potentially staving it off!). Inform yourself and others about what’s going on and how you can take control of your own lives. Campaign for alternate fuel sources, establish networks of compassionate and dedicated individuals working towards sustainable models of living. Be aware of how your actions (especially what you consume) might be adding to the world’s burdens and not be afraid to suggest to others how they are behaving. Copy and distribute this zine so others can be prepared.
And remember, keep loving, keep laughing, keep fighting. I don’t know about you, but I like being alive.
emergency broadcast
this is frightening, very frightening: (and yes I know it's been posted at american samizdat but I read it in the paper this morning since I'm down in dc with my folks and this was my immediate reaction).
"Biohazard sensors showed the presence of small amounts of potentially dangerous tularemia bacteria in the Mall area last weekend as huge crowds assembled there, but health officials said they believed the levels were too low to be a threat." (via Washington Post)
I need to do more research on this, but it sure sounds like the US Government released a biological weapon that it created on the anti-war protestors who assembled last weekend on the mall. They claim it's not contagious person to person, and yet almost everyone I know is suddenly sick with symptoms that sound an awful lot like those of the released disease, tularemia.
please keep in mind this may not be true, but the article does not go into great depth of detail. Either way, the mere possibility that our government is attempting to infect protestors, or endanger the lives of its citizens in any way is enough to make me sick, and could infuriate people nationwide. Reminds me of the last big protest there where several people died of menengitis.
Please spread this information, and if you have came in contact with anyone who was in dc last week and you are showing signs of this disease, please seek medical attention.
"Biohazard sensors showed the presence of small amounts of potentially dangerous tularemia bacteria in the Mall area last weekend as huge crowds assembled there, but health officials said they believed the levels were too low to be a threat." (via Washington Post)
I need to do more research on this, but it sure sounds like the US Government released a biological weapon that it created on the anti-war protestors who assembled last weekend on the mall. They claim it's not contagious person to person, and yet almost everyone I know is suddenly sick with symptoms that sound an awful lot like those of the released disease, tularemia.
please keep in mind this may not be true, but the article does not go into great depth of detail. Either way, the mere possibility that our government is attempting to infect protestors, or endanger the lives of its citizens in any way is enough to make me sick, and could infuriate people nationwide. Reminds me of the last big protest there where several people died of menengitis.
Please spread this information, and if you have came in contact with anyone who was in dc last week and you are showing signs of this disease, please seek medical attention.
hello world
ah, back online.
for some strange reason, namely out-of-dateness, both my browsers decided to stop letting me post anything on blogger for months now. or access just about any other decent website for that matter. of course, the fact that it was summer, and I had a zillion and one other things I was trying to do (release a cd, write a book of poetry, get my heart broken, not freak out about the rapidly deteriorating state of the world, etc...) didn't actually encourage me to write much I'd feel like posting here anyway, or attempt to fix the problem.
and then I got a new computer, and so I figured there's not much excuse.
so.
where were we?
for some strange reason, namely out-of-dateness, both my browsers decided to stop letting me post anything on blogger for months now. or access just about any other decent website for that matter. of course, the fact that it was summer, and I had a zillion and one other things I was trying to do (release a cd, write a book of poetry, get my heart broken, not freak out about the rapidly deteriorating state of the world, etc...) didn't actually encourage me to write much I'd feel like posting here anyway, or attempt to fix the problem.
and then I got a new computer, and so I figured there's not much excuse.
so.
where were we?
Thursday, July 07, 2005
between sacred and profane
So my friend and I have a deal worked out, if she goes to church with me, assuaging my curiosity to see what a service at her Unitarian Universalist church is like, I will willingly go to a strip club with her. Which may be just as enlightening of an experience, the way things have been going in my life. Amidst all the intense partying that's been going on lately I've spent hardly any time trying to understand the intense spiritual urges that have resurfaced in my life over the past year, much less learn how to put them into practice. I got a copy of Gustav Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation today and what impressed me through reading the introduction was his insistance that it is not enough just to theorize (or theologize) about the need for the Christian faith to embrace and assist the poor in radicalizing themselves, but to actually get down into the streets and do it. Of course I'm in a very different place in my own spirituality right now. Though I was raised Catholic I never bought their conception of an external and anthropomorhised God, but at the same time I don't reject that there is something useful in the myth of being more than just one individual self at odds with the rest of the world. Call it a communion with life, perhaps, or a celebration of the diversity that coexists in our world. The Unitarian Universalist faith, from what I understand in having read little about it, practices a faith in which there is no set creed or religious dogma, asking that its particpants adhere to a set of seven principles promoting human dignity, justice, truth, interdependence, etc, which I already stand behind in my own life, and peculiarly remind me of the layers of consciousness. Talking to Katie about her experience with the UU she mentioned that their rituals were often pagan influenced and there was no mention of God in their teachings (if not a downright disbelief in "Him"), favoring instead an emphasis on the human community.
Of course, my own beliefs as they now stand are perhaps a bit more radical leaning and self-transcedent, being shaped as they are by intense personal experiences of interconectedness to all life and a great deal of anarchist and quantum physics thought. Not that these beliefs are at all formalized, and if anything change too much with each day to really be pinned down into a cohesive theology. Not that I don't try. Ironcally I don't often get much chance to "talk religion" amidst all the insane parties and art shows, and it doesn't come up much in conversation, even frightfully little among my housemates who could perhaps be classified as zen existentialists, and much more inclined to wax spiritual than other of my dear friends. Especially the anarchists, who in their ideals of "no gods no masters" often find it fit to reject the benefits of spirituality and faith alltogether and deride those among us who are spiritual for being weak or closed minded and hypocritical. I know a few punks who are openly christian, but don't talk about it for fear of repreisal, and even the Pittsburgh Punk legend's Gunspiking's singer wrote a song called "Methodology of a Book Burning" to address all the shit she's gotten from her peers for being an anarchist catholic. Which isn't to say that this keeps anyone from practicing their beliefs however they choose, and even I still manage to sneak in a few "prayers" before my band goes on stage.
Oddly enough, a good number of my most intense spiritual experiences have happened at raging parties, or when walking down the street and paying attention to the social climate and crumbling buildings of the city. I don't have my Rumi book in front of me, but a good number of his poems extoll the illuminaing virtues of getting really drunk. I guess that would be one of the tenants of my practice, that even the most profane or mundane of situations can contain the same element of meaning found in meditation or ritual worship or the intentional use of certain mind altering chemicals. In fact, there have been many times when I was a kid at church when I found the whole situation to be absolutely banal, if not most times, and more recently many occasions that ought to be considered potentially spiritual where the mind rebels and just can't believe the absurd zealousy of the whole thing. I would rather have a sunny day in Bloomfield or a late night porch talk about the most inconsequential of things. The spiritual dimension is not in the events but in the way we approach them, more a mindset or an openess towards the importance of an event in not just our own lives or "God's life" or society, but in a synthesis of them that still leaves room for us to have no clue towards understanding the essential mystery of being here in this weird world.
Of course, my own beliefs as they now stand are perhaps a bit more radical leaning and self-transcedent, being shaped as they are by intense personal experiences of interconectedness to all life and a great deal of anarchist and quantum physics thought. Not that these beliefs are at all formalized, and if anything change too much with each day to really be pinned down into a cohesive theology. Not that I don't try. Ironcally I don't often get much chance to "talk religion" amidst all the insane parties and art shows, and it doesn't come up much in conversation, even frightfully little among my housemates who could perhaps be classified as zen existentialists, and much more inclined to wax spiritual than other of my dear friends. Especially the anarchists, who in their ideals of "no gods no masters" often find it fit to reject the benefits of spirituality and faith alltogether and deride those among us who are spiritual for being weak or closed minded and hypocritical. I know a few punks who are openly christian, but don't talk about it for fear of repreisal, and even the Pittsburgh Punk legend's Gunspiking's singer wrote a song called "Methodology of a Book Burning" to address all the shit she's gotten from her peers for being an anarchist catholic. Which isn't to say that this keeps anyone from practicing their beliefs however they choose, and even I still manage to sneak in a few "prayers" before my band goes on stage.
Oddly enough, a good number of my most intense spiritual experiences have happened at raging parties, or when walking down the street and paying attention to the social climate and crumbling buildings of the city. I don't have my Rumi book in front of me, but a good number of his poems extoll the illuminaing virtues of getting really drunk. I guess that would be one of the tenants of my practice, that even the most profane or mundane of situations can contain the same element of meaning found in meditation or ritual worship or the intentional use of certain mind altering chemicals. In fact, there have been many times when I was a kid at church when I found the whole situation to be absolutely banal, if not most times, and more recently many occasions that ought to be considered potentially spiritual where the mind rebels and just can't believe the absurd zealousy of the whole thing. I would rather have a sunny day in Bloomfield or a late night porch talk about the most inconsequential of things. The spiritual dimension is not in the events but in the way we approach them, more a mindset or an openess towards the importance of an event in not just our own lives or "God's life" or society, but in a synthesis of them that still leaves room for us to have no clue towards understanding the essential mystery of being here in this weird world.
Monday, July 04, 2005
for a little shining
The sky is filled with light and noise, a barrage of fireworks and rescue helicopters and the nonstop glow of the city. It's hard to imagine that once upon a time you could look up and see the full glory of the heavens spinning off into infinity. Now, a few stars twinkle resolutely, as if to remind us that there are still some mysteries that haven't been solved, some dark corners left in the universe where we haven't yet explored and left dirty footprints and candy bar wrappers and brochures reading manifest destiny. Why do humans have this insatiable need to shed light on everything, to turn over every stone, as if it was really possible to gain some solid understanding of our lives and the world we live them in. Tomorrow they're crashing a large hunk of metal into the comet Tempel in order to see if the material in its core really is the stuff from which the whole Universe arose. So even the stars aren't that sacred anymore. These days not much is. It's all about control and concrete facts. Will we really be any closer to enjoying life if we wake up tomorrow and they say they've found the answers to everything?
Swinging in the hammock in our dark yard, feeling the cool summer wind stir the trees and watching a few lightning bugs pretend to be shooting stars. They haven't forgotten what the sky once looked like. Somewhere bats and trains call out to each other and in my head 1905 sings "I don't want to look at the stars with you until you can look at strangers with me." Let's look up anyway, even if we can't always bear to look at each other. Perhaps the stars can reflect just a bit of the light that we hide from each other. I am enamored by the stars, and their fading, and beautiful phrases that express that things can actually change. "Everyone is a star, and every star wants to shine." Even if sometimes we get dirty and lost and want to hide a little. It's funny, trying to figure out who the fuck we are and what we want and how to deal with being our selves in this weird and often times hositle world, this too is trying to shed light on the dark corners of our hearts, trying to turn ourselves inside out and see what we are made of. Patterns of behaviour, little fears and insecurities and annoyances. Needs to control and let go. And desires, unqunechable desires. There was a stamp Selena made for her art show yesterday which read "without desire I cease to exist." Desidero ergo sum. Is that really all that sets us apart from each other, those specific wants and needs, individual hopes and dreams that pinpoint us in the constellations of our social lives? Or is this too a myth, and do we each shine with some common light that happens to be displaced just a little in space and time so that we each appear to desire different things when really we all just want to be happy and free then die knowing that we lived our lives satisfactorally?
Or does it even matter? We are here, the night is young, the stars are fading and I know you want to shine despite all the dirt history has shoveled in your path. I don't think there are any right answers, at least not any that we glorified lemurs could understand. And certainly no easy ones. So let's just rewrite all the rules for human interaction as we come to them, one trembling heartbeat and timid smile at a time. Maybe next time we look up together we'll see two new stars flickering small and bright above the city.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
How to Make a Scene
The other day I found myself on some pseudo-fancy cruise ship down Pittsburgh’s dirty riverways, and while sitting up on the deck trying to ignore the innocuous blaring muzak and outrageous drink prices I watched two drunken frat boys loudly harassing the other passengers and eventually getting them to do the wave in their seats. Part of me imagined the crowd’s compliance to this request was out of fear of reprisal, or out of utter boredom of being stuck on this boat without much else to do; but what struck me was that in that moment these two yinzers had unwittingly assumed an undeniable position of authority that enabled them to make something interesting happen.
(posted at key23)
(posted at key23)
Monday, June 20, 2005
the children are the future
You've got to plant your hopes to grow tomorrow
"Already I see my friend's children, just starting out in their lives, but so full of wisdom and autonomy and the desire to live, and I can't even begin to think what they will accomplish twenty years down the road. The word miracles comes to mind. We may be leaving them a world full of problems, but we are also building the foundations to leave them the tools to fix it and that spirit necessary to actually do so. "
"Already I see my friend's children, just starting out in their lives, but so full of wisdom and autonomy and the desire to live, and I can't even begin to think what they will accomplish twenty years down the road. The word miracles comes to mind. We may be leaving them a world full of problems, but we are also building the foundations to leave them the tools to fix it and that spirit necessary to actually do so. "
Thursday, June 09, 2005
towards a new male
But maybe there is some hope yet that the macho role models like Schwarznegger and Stallone are giving way to a more caring type of male.
Move over Rambo, you're cramping new man's style
"PARIS (AFP) - Macho man is an endangered species, with today's male more likely to opt for a pink flowered shirt and swingers' clubs than the traditional role as family super-hero, fashion industry insiders say.
A study along these lines led by French marketing and style consultants Nelly Rodi was unveiled to Fashion Group International during a seminar Tuesday on future strategy for the fashion industry in Europe.
"The masculine ideal is being completely modified. All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned," said Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency's managing director.
Instead today's males are turning more towards "creativity, sensitivity and multiplicity," as seen already in recent seasons on the catwalks of Paris and Milan."
thanks to Cap'n Marrrrk for the link!
Move over Rambo, you're cramping new man's style
"PARIS (AFP) - Macho man is an endangered species, with today's male more likely to opt for a pink flowered shirt and swingers' clubs than the traditional role as family super-hero, fashion industry insiders say.
A study along these lines led by French marketing and style consultants Nelly Rodi was unveiled to Fashion Group International during a seminar Tuesday on future strategy for the fashion industry in Europe.
"The masculine ideal is being completely modified. All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned," said Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency's managing director.
Instead today's males are turning more towards "creativity, sensitivity and multiplicity," as seen already in recent seasons on the catwalks of Paris and Milan."
thanks to Cap'n Marrrrk for the link!
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Sensitive and Strong
A few scattered questions on the deplorable lack of positive male archetypes in our culture, posted by yours truly at Everyday Avatar.
'...she laughed and said "I don’t date pansies."
I don’t understand where the idea came from that sensitivity is synonymous with weakness. As far as I see it, it takes a near infinite amount of strength to be a caring male in our culture. Or just a caring person...'
'...she laughed and said "I don’t date pansies."
I don’t understand where the idea came from that sensitivity is synonymous with weakness. As far as I see it, it takes a near infinite amount of strength to be a caring male in our culture. Or just a caring person...'
Thursday, June 02, 2005
the almost unbearable lightness of being in time
Everything still feels really intense right now, as if I had been walking around in my sleep, and suddenly woke up and opened my eyes for the first time. Everything still feels fragile, but in this really beautiful way where I can take each moment for what it is and then let it slip through my fingers like grains of sand. Yesterday when I was walking home from work I was looking at the sunlight breaking around the passing clouds and falling through the leaves of the trees, and the joy I felt at being alive and witnessing this was indescribable. It was filled with sorrow too, in not being able to hold onto it, but for perhaps the first time I was able to look at that first hand and be able to bear it. To paraphrase Castaneda in Journey to Ixtlan, the art of being a warrior is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive. To be able to look at all the things we have lost along the way, and all the things we can not control now and in our futures, and to smile at this though tears threaten to break in every moment. Because that's all we can do.
I don't know why I have always been obssesed with change, with the finality of endings and the unexpected unknowns of beginnings. Maybe because that's really all we can percieve in this world, the small differences from one moment to the next, and how our own actions are inextricably tied in with the world around us. As Octavia Butler put it in The Parable of the Sower "All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change." Permanance is an illusion, our experience is one of coming togethers and falling aparts. And admittedly that can be a frightening thing to try and recognize head on. Maybe it's because I grew up in a dysfunctional family near the dysfunctional city of Washington DC, reading too many myths about the apocalypse and noticing too many of the tragic endings that accompany living near the country's psychotic center of government. Certainly things have only gotten worse there as time goes by. It looks the same on the outside, but it is falling apart day by day. Hell, even our bodies are falling apart on a daily basis, the skin cells shluffing off and collecting in the corners of our rooms as dust. Thankfully our bodies regenerate, at least until they don't anymore. Our society doesn't seem to be blessed with that ability, and has been rotting away since they wrote up the Constitution.
"Things fall apart, the centre can not hold." (Yeats)
I used to lie awake at nights as a child and imagine what it would feel like to be dead. The utter horror of it was that I realized I couldn't imagine not being able to feel anything. So I put it away somewhere and tried to forget that one day I too will end.
In the one year I attended college I took an honors class called "thanatos: the many meanings of death", which looked at how death is one of the biggest taboos of our culture, utterly played down and yet we are desensitized to its overexposure in the media. There is no mourning and no learning process for our dead and how to face it in our own lives. And if we were to learn to face it for what it is we might be able to take our own lives head on and live them literally as if the next moment might be our last. Because it just might. Beyond asking us to keep a journal of our emotional content, which was the point when I started writing regularly, our teacher also said that if we are doing something in our lives that doesn't make us happy then we shouldn't be doing it. Even if being in class right then was boring, and we felt we had much more exciting and worthwhile things to do at that moment, then we should get up and walk out of class and go do them.
To paraphrase Castaneda again:` I insisted that to be bored or at odds with the world was the human condition. "So change it." he said "if you do not respond to that challenge you are as good as dead."
And so I did, and walked out of going to school and living in Dead City as well. I can't say I've spent every day of the five years since then living my life fully, and there have been some major periods where I was most certainly not happy and didn't try to walk out of it because of some illusion of stability, but looking back now I can't say that a single moment has really been boring. I think I made a pact with myself that day when I stood up from the table and said I'd be much happier going down to the river with my guitar than sitting in class that I would try and never be bored again. That life is too short and too sweet to not live it passionately and intentionally. Why else do I believe in magic and hopeless romance, and play music without ever recording it, and write so many stories and poems, and wander aimlessly at night watching the stars, and do all the things that are there to be done and give my life meaning and fulfillment? Even walking down the street from work has to be packed full of the utmost feeling, because I am there feeling it, and may not be again. The wind on my cheeks and rustle of leaves in my ears could be just that, but it can also be the sighs of the world knowing that it too is falling apart and moving on, and my acknowledgement that this transience is almost too beautiful to bear. But just enough that I can blink back the tears from the corners of my eyes and laugh.
I don't know why I have always been obssesed with change, with the finality of endings and the unexpected unknowns of beginnings. Maybe because that's really all we can percieve in this world, the small differences from one moment to the next, and how our own actions are inextricably tied in with the world around us. As Octavia Butler put it in The Parable of the Sower "All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change." Permanance is an illusion, our experience is one of coming togethers and falling aparts. And admittedly that can be a frightening thing to try and recognize head on. Maybe it's because I grew up in a dysfunctional family near the dysfunctional city of Washington DC, reading too many myths about the apocalypse and noticing too many of the tragic endings that accompany living near the country's psychotic center of government. Certainly things have only gotten worse there as time goes by. It looks the same on the outside, but it is falling apart day by day. Hell, even our bodies are falling apart on a daily basis, the skin cells shluffing off and collecting in the corners of our rooms as dust. Thankfully our bodies regenerate, at least until they don't anymore. Our society doesn't seem to be blessed with that ability, and has been rotting away since they wrote up the Constitution.
"Things fall apart, the centre can not hold." (Yeats)
I used to lie awake at nights as a child and imagine what it would feel like to be dead. The utter horror of it was that I realized I couldn't imagine not being able to feel anything. So I put it away somewhere and tried to forget that one day I too will end.
In the one year I attended college I took an honors class called "thanatos: the many meanings of death", which looked at how death is one of the biggest taboos of our culture, utterly played down and yet we are desensitized to its overexposure in the media. There is no mourning and no learning process for our dead and how to face it in our own lives. And if we were to learn to face it for what it is we might be able to take our own lives head on and live them literally as if the next moment might be our last. Because it just might. Beyond asking us to keep a journal of our emotional content, which was the point when I started writing regularly, our teacher also said that if we are doing something in our lives that doesn't make us happy then we shouldn't be doing it. Even if being in class right then was boring, and we felt we had much more exciting and worthwhile things to do at that moment, then we should get up and walk out of class and go do them.
To paraphrase Castaneda again:` I insisted that to be bored or at odds with the world was the human condition. "So change it." he said "if you do not respond to that challenge you are as good as dead."
And so I did, and walked out of going to school and living in Dead City as well. I can't say I've spent every day of the five years since then living my life fully, and there have been some major periods where I was most certainly not happy and didn't try to walk out of it because of some illusion of stability, but looking back now I can't say that a single moment has really been boring. I think I made a pact with myself that day when I stood up from the table and said I'd be much happier going down to the river with my guitar than sitting in class that I would try and never be bored again. That life is too short and too sweet to not live it passionately and intentionally. Why else do I believe in magic and hopeless romance, and play music without ever recording it, and write so many stories and poems, and wander aimlessly at night watching the stars, and do all the things that are there to be done and give my life meaning and fulfillment? Even walking down the street from work has to be packed full of the utmost feeling, because I am there feeling it, and may not be again. The wind on my cheeks and rustle of leaves in my ears could be just that, but it can also be the sighs of the world knowing that it too is falling apart and moving on, and my acknowledgement that this transience is almost too beautiful to bear. But just enough that I can blink back the tears from the corners of my eyes and laugh.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
a little slice of heaven
Walking back from work today I ran into one of the city's street angels, a homeless man with a big smile named Kevin who for weeks I have seen sitting on the steps of the Cathedral of Hope or on one of the benches that line Penn Avenue in East Liberty. Whenever I walk past we smile and wave and occaisonaly exchange a few words with each other, and I would be lying if I didn't say his presence wasn't one of the reasons I continue making the 45 minute walk each day instead of rushing to get my bike fixed.
Kevin has never asked me for money, though today I did give him a cigarette. He motioned for me to sit on the bench next to him and he asked how my life is going. I said "wonderfully" and gestured to the lovely day around us; and then he started asking about what I do, and why I dropped out of school, nodding his grin as I told him I have learned so much more about myself and life from being out in it and not stuck in a classroom. "Of course" he said, "you look happy because of it, quite comfortable in your skin. And there's nothing more important than being happy." He laughed, and then asked about my religious beliefs. "That's a tricky question to answer these days" I said.
My friend Z and I have an ongoing debate about spirituality, in which she claims she doesn't understand why people need to look for something larger than themselves to believe in. Personally, I was raised Christian, but never believed in their conception of God. But I did learn that being able to believe in more than youreself is a good thing, and since I was young the world has done nothing but show me that this is true. Even trusting in this community we have is believing in something larger than myself, much less trusting that our whole civilization has to operate together to survive, or that the sun will rise tomorrow. It's kind of kin to the myth of self-sustainability, I can't deny that I am just a little part of something much larger. Escpeically with how mind-bogglingly complex and mysterious it all seems to be.
As for "spirituality," that word is one of the more loaded terms I'm stumbling around these days. It comes from the Latin spirare, which means "to breathe." And as far as I am concerned, that is all spirituality is, being aware of my every breath, and with it being fully present in every moment of being alive in this crazy world. Of course, the common usage of that term has so much more packed into it; churches, and communions, and elaborate rituals that have very little to do with the simple act of breathing, and so it is difficult to have people understand what I mean when I say I am a spiritual person. Not that I don't practice rituals, or even once in a blue moon attend mass at the Cathedral of Hope, but for me it is not about "praying to God" or "summoning spirits" but about being directly focused on my actions and their affects. All the symbolic hoopla just gets in the way sometimes, as amusing as it can be. I can reach the same state of awareness from washing dishes that I can meditating in front of a candle flame, and on the more brilliant days everything I do is done with that same presence of care and intention.
"Well, Kevin," I smiled, after explaining a little of this to him, "right now my religion is being here and talking to you, and enjoying the sunlight in the clouds, and the smell of spring flowers that is still noticable through the rushing traffic."
He smiled, and said that if there is a place we go when we die he hopes we run into each other there.
I laughed, and said that I am sure we will run into each other many more times on this street while we are both still here.
Perhaps tomorrow...
Kevin has never asked me for money, though today I did give him a cigarette. He motioned for me to sit on the bench next to him and he asked how my life is going. I said "wonderfully" and gestured to the lovely day around us; and then he started asking about what I do, and why I dropped out of school, nodding his grin as I told him I have learned so much more about myself and life from being out in it and not stuck in a classroom. "Of course" he said, "you look happy because of it, quite comfortable in your skin. And there's nothing more important than being happy." He laughed, and then asked about my religious beliefs. "That's a tricky question to answer these days" I said.
My friend Z and I have an ongoing debate about spirituality, in which she claims she doesn't understand why people need to look for something larger than themselves to believe in. Personally, I was raised Christian, but never believed in their conception of God. But I did learn that being able to believe in more than youreself is a good thing, and since I was young the world has done nothing but show me that this is true. Even trusting in this community we have is believing in something larger than myself, much less trusting that our whole civilization has to operate together to survive, or that the sun will rise tomorrow. It's kind of kin to the myth of self-sustainability, I can't deny that I am just a little part of something much larger. Escpeically with how mind-bogglingly complex and mysterious it all seems to be.
As for "spirituality," that word is one of the more loaded terms I'm stumbling around these days. It comes from the Latin spirare, which means "to breathe." And as far as I am concerned, that is all spirituality is, being aware of my every breath, and with it being fully present in every moment of being alive in this crazy world. Of course, the common usage of that term has so much more packed into it; churches, and communions, and elaborate rituals that have very little to do with the simple act of breathing, and so it is difficult to have people understand what I mean when I say I am a spiritual person. Not that I don't practice rituals, or even once in a blue moon attend mass at the Cathedral of Hope, but for me it is not about "praying to God" or "summoning spirits" but about being directly focused on my actions and their affects. All the symbolic hoopla just gets in the way sometimes, as amusing as it can be. I can reach the same state of awareness from washing dishes that I can meditating in front of a candle flame, and on the more brilliant days everything I do is done with that same presence of care and intention.
"Well, Kevin," I smiled, after explaining a little of this to him, "right now my religion is being here and talking to you, and enjoying the sunlight in the clouds, and the smell of spring flowers that is still noticable through the rushing traffic."
He smiled, and said that if there is a place we go when we die he hopes we run into each other there.
I laughed, and said that I am sure we will run into each other many more times on this street while we are both still here.
Perhaps tomorrow...
Sunday, May 08, 2005
the discontents of the soul
"Our modern word unconscious has become a catch-all, collecting into one clouded resovoir all fantasies of the deep, the lower, the baser, the heavier (depressed), and the darker. We have buried in the same monolithic tomb called Unconscious the red and earthy body of the primeval Adam, the collective common man and woman, the shades, phantoms, and ancestors. We cannot distinguish a compulsion from a call, an instinct from an image, a desirous demand from a movement of imagination. Looking into the night from the white light of the dayworld (where the term unconscious was fashioned), we cannot tell the red from the black. So we read dreams for all sorts of messages at once -somatic, personal, psychic, mantic, ancestral, practical, confusing instinctual and emotional life with the realm of death.
The pronounced distinction between emotion and soul, between emotional man and psychological man, comes out in another of Heraclitus' fragments: "...whatever it [thymos] wishes it buys at the price of the soul." Thymos, the earlier Greek experience of emotional consciousness or moist soul, did not belong in the underworld. So, to consider the dream as an emotional wish costs soul; to mistake the chthonic as the natural loses psyche. we cannot claim to be psychological when we read dream images in terms of drives or desires. Whatever counsel an analyst gives about emotional life, supposing it drawn from dreams, refers to his own experience, which he reflects from the dreams. It is not in the dreams. He is "sup-posing" them, that is, he is "putting into" them what he knows about life.
What one knows about life may not be relevant for what is below life. What one knows and has done in life may be as irrelevant to the underworld as clothes that adjust us to life and the flesh and bones that the clothes cover. For in the underworld all is stripped away, and life is upside down. We are further than the expectations based on life experience, and the wisdom derived from it."
-James Hillman, from The Dream and the Underworld
The pronounced distinction between emotion and soul, between emotional man and psychological man, comes out in another of Heraclitus' fragments: "...whatever it [thymos] wishes it buys at the price of the soul." Thymos, the earlier Greek experience of emotional consciousness or moist soul, did not belong in the underworld. So, to consider the dream as an emotional wish costs soul; to mistake the chthonic as the natural loses psyche. we cannot claim to be psychological when we read dream images in terms of drives or desires. Whatever counsel an analyst gives about emotional life, supposing it drawn from dreams, refers to his own experience, which he reflects from the dreams. It is not in the dreams. He is "sup-posing" them, that is, he is "putting into" them what he knows about life.
What one knows about life may not be relevant for what is below life. What one knows and has done in life may be as irrelevant to the underworld as clothes that adjust us to life and the flesh and bones that the clothes cover. For in the underworld all is stripped away, and life is upside down. We are further than the expectations based on life experience, and the wisdom derived from it."
-James Hillman, from The Dream and the Underworld
the subjectivity of subjectivity in providing health and education
So I am beginning to think that learning to interpret others' dreams wouldn't be all that useful in a therapeutic situation, since we each form our own interpretations of our dream imagery. Instead what might be useful is trying to determine techniques through which others could interpret their own dreams, and then learning the ways to pass this information on. Of course, this too might be a futile task, because not only do we each form our own interpretations but also we each form our own methods of interpreting. Just because I know the processes by which I substitute symbols for content in my own psyche doesn't mean your own processes may even resemble mine in the slightest. If their is a deeper physiological structure to mental processes these get taken up in radically different ways, and all the work that has been done to a establish a deeper collective mythological or archetypal interpretation of our experiences might as well be thrown out the window. The collective subconscious is still only approached from our own perspectives, and that includes the possibility of building psychic structures that reject it altogether.
The problem with such radical subjectivity however is that it seems to break down the possibility of being able to provide techniques for healing and education to anyone, even on day to day levels. I may think someone's excessive drinking is potentially unhealthy to them (and to othes), but for them drinking may offer a social lifeline without which they might feel stranded and even less able to deal with the contents of their lives. Suggesting to them that they consider not drinking, or find other less destructive social activities might actually be inimical to their well-being on a whole. Where is the line drawn between what a care-provider thinks is good for a person and what the person thinks is good for themselves? As a community interested in promoting collective well-being is sharing any set of techniques only reinforcing our beliefs about what we might think others might need, just as interpreting someone else's dream reinforces your beliefs about what the images might mean to them. Even the subjectively self-empowering presuppositions of neuro-linguistic programming, which attempts to model useful techniques in order to pass them on, has fallen prey to being used as a tool to get other people to do what you want them to do. Mind control doesn't seem such a health-promoting thing.
Even education systems whose primary concern is the proliferation of ideas do so with little regard to the individual learning methods of the students and to the actual validity or value of the information being passed on. You can't just have one teacher per student, because even then the teacher still may be teaching from their own set. And when politics and religion become too involved, and public education becomes little more than a vehicle for reinforcing memetic norms... Where are the individual needs in that?
So then the question is raised, if it is near impossible to deal with individual health on such a radically subjective level, and it is equally as harmful to deal with it purely from the collective level, is there a balance between the two that respects individual concerns and situations within the broader context of the community (and the world)? If all the maps of this desert territory deteriote as quickly as they are drawn up, how can we ever find the oasis, and quench our thirst?
The problem with such radical subjectivity however is that it seems to break down the possibility of being able to provide techniques for healing and education to anyone, even on day to day levels. I may think someone's excessive drinking is potentially unhealthy to them (and to othes), but for them drinking may offer a social lifeline without which they might feel stranded and even less able to deal with the contents of their lives. Suggesting to them that they consider not drinking, or find other less destructive social activities might actually be inimical to their well-being on a whole. Where is the line drawn between what a care-provider thinks is good for a person and what the person thinks is good for themselves? As a community interested in promoting collective well-being is sharing any set of techniques only reinforcing our beliefs about what we might think others might need, just as interpreting someone else's dream reinforces your beliefs about what the images might mean to them. Even the subjectively self-empowering presuppositions of neuro-linguistic programming, which attempts to model useful techniques in order to pass them on, has fallen prey to being used as a tool to get other people to do what you want them to do. Mind control doesn't seem such a health-promoting thing.
Even education systems whose primary concern is the proliferation of ideas do so with little regard to the individual learning methods of the students and to the actual validity or value of the information being passed on. You can't just have one teacher per student, because even then the teacher still may be teaching from their own set. And when politics and religion become too involved, and public education becomes little more than a vehicle for reinforcing memetic norms... Where are the individual needs in that?
So then the question is raised, if it is near impossible to deal with individual health on such a radically subjective level, and it is equally as harmful to deal with it purely from the collective level, is there a balance between the two that respects individual concerns and situations within the broader context of the community (and the world)? If all the maps of this desert territory deteriote as quickly as they are drawn up, how can we ever find the oasis, and quench our thirst?
Saturday, May 07, 2005
...or neurolinguistic reprogramming
Something else Wilson mentions when talking about the mesopotamian use of dream interpreters is that the process of breaking down dream symbology may have been very similar to that of unpacking meaning from their newly created pictographic written language, which radically cahnged the way they approached the world. One might even wonder if their language came from an attempt at trying to represent their interpreted dreams in a more readily communicable form. The shift from dreams to memes, perhaps.
Sifting through lj, I came upon these presuppositions of neuro-linguistic programmingin an article about trance induction and biurnal beating in the chaosmajik community, which basically seeks to identify and pass on skill sets based on modeling "patterns of excellence," in the same way that high end memes operate. These suggestions reminded me of some of the guidelines we were trying to come up with today for providing radical health care that takes into account the subjective nature of people's expereinces, and the desire to pass on the skills necessary to enable others to take care of themselves in the way best fit for them.
"The fundamental presuppositions of NLP are:
1. The ability to change the process by which we experience reality is more often valuable than changing the content of our experience of reality. (i.e. Changing the structure of our communications and/or sensory
representations tends to make much more difference than changing the
content.)
2. The meaning of your communication is the response you get. (i.e. It's the responsibility of the healer/magi/communicator to change
their behavior if they're not getting positive and effective results, not the client's.)
3. All distinctions human beings are able to make concerning our environment and our behavior can be usefully represented through our visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory senses. (i.e. Everything we're able to do is driven by a corresponding set of
neurological processes, and can be modeled and understood in terms of how we're using our five perceptual senses.)
4. All of the resources an individual needs to effect a change in their life are already within them. (i.e. Human beings are whole and complete by nature, and all of the states and strategies we need to learn and do anything are already possible by recombining and/or restructuring what we already know in new ways.)
5. The map is not the territory, but the territory is the map. (i.e. Sensory perceptions are representations of our experience, not the
experience itself, and words are not reality, but merely subjective representations of reality. Although we create and change reality by
deriving behaviors from our internal models and resources, it's very valuable to have an open mind and the willingness to learn constantly from new experiences.)
6. The positive worth of the individual is held constant, while the value and appropriateness of internal / external behaviors is questioned. (i.e. There is no such thing as a "bad" or "evil" person, and all human beings are inherently good / spiritually perfect by nature. However, within most contexts, some behaviors get better results and/or tend to be more socially acceptable than others.)
7. There is a positive intention motivating every behavior, and a context in which every behavior has value.
(i.e. Even behaviors that seem overtly negative on the surface are still being driven by positive values and worthwhile motivations, although these may well be out of awareness for the person performing the behaviors in question. Correspondingly, most "problem" behaviors tend to represent past adaptations to challenging or incongruent environments that ensured survival and success for the individual, but have been overgeneralized.)
8. All results and behaviors are accomplishments, whether they achieve the desired outcomes within a given context or not.
(I.e. There is no such thing as failure, only feedback. Every strategy produces whatever results it does consistently within any specific context, even if the results are not the ones desired. In addition, the ability to do anything and get any set of results represents an act of neurological learning for the individual; thus, with appropriate restructuring and contextualization, negative content and ineffective strategies can be transformed into positive and functional resources.)"
Of course, I imagine these techinques could just as easily be called metaprogramming, or cultural deprogramming, as the word programming itself at least in my mind carries with it some severely mechanistic interpretations, and NLP itself fell from its original intentions to become a toolkit for marketing agents and ad creeps. Like the sumerian me if you had the instructions in your hand for how to get people to do things and wanted money or power, what would you do with them? If I'm not mixing my myths, isn't hoarding this knowledge why babel fell in the first place?
Remember, always share information responsibly.
Sifting through lj, I came upon these presuppositions of neuro-linguistic programmingin an article about trance induction and biurnal beating in the chaosmajik community, which basically seeks to identify and pass on skill sets based on modeling "patterns of excellence," in the same way that high end memes operate. These suggestions reminded me of some of the guidelines we were trying to come up with today for providing radical health care that takes into account the subjective nature of people's expereinces, and the desire to pass on the skills necessary to enable others to take care of themselves in the way best fit for them.
"The fundamental presuppositions of NLP are:
1. The ability to change the process by which we experience reality is more often valuable than changing the content of our experience of reality. (i.e. Changing the structure of our communications and/or sensory
representations tends to make much more difference than changing the
content.)
2. The meaning of your communication is the response you get. (i.e. It's the responsibility of the healer/magi/communicator to change
their behavior if they're not getting positive and effective results, not the client's.)
3. All distinctions human beings are able to make concerning our environment and our behavior can be usefully represented through our visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory senses. (i.e. Everything we're able to do is driven by a corresponding set of
neurological processes, and can be modeled and understood in terms of how we're using our five perceptual senses.)
4. All of the resources an individual needs to effect a change in their life are already within them. (i.e. Human beings are whole and complete by nature, and all of the states and strategies we need to learn and do anything are already possible by recombining and/or restructuring what we already know in new ways.)
5. The map is not the territory, but the territory is the map. (i.e. Sensory perceptions are representations of our experience, not the
experience itself, and words are not reality, but merely subjective representations of reality. Although we create and change reality by
deriving behaviors from our internal models and resources, it's very valuable to have an open mind and the willingness to learn constantly from new experiences.)
6. The positive worth of the individual is held constant, while the value and appropriateness of internal / external behaviors is questioned. (i.e. There is no such thing as a "bad" or "evil" person, and all human beings are inherently good / spiritually perfect by nature. However, within most contexts, some behaviors get better results and/or tend to be more socially acceptable than others.)
7. There is a positive intention motivating every behavior, and a context in which every behavior has value.
(i.e. Even behaviors that seem overtly negative on the surface are still being driven by positive values and worthwhile motivations, although these may well be out of awareness for the person performing the behaviors in question. Correspondingly, most "problem" behaviors tend to represent past adaptations to challenging or incongruent environments that ensured survival and success for the individual, but have been overgeneralized.)
8. All results and behaviors are accomplishments, whether they achieve the desired outcomes within a given context or not.
(I.e. There is no such thing as failure, only feedback. Every strategy produces whatever results it does consistently within any specific context, even if the results are not the ones desired. In addition, the ability to do anything and get any set of results represents an act of neurological learning for the individual; thus, with appropriate restructuring and contextualization, negative content and ineffective strategies can be transformed into positive and functional resources.)"
Of course, I imagine these techinques could just as easily be called metaprogramming, or cultural deprogramming, as the word programming itself at least in my mind carries with it some severely mechanistic interpretations, and NLP itself fell from its original intentions to become a toolkit for marketing agents and ad creeps. Like the sumerian me if you had the instructions in your hand for how to get people to do things and wanted money or power, what would you do with them? If I'm not mixing my myths, isn't hoarding this knowledge why babel fell in the first place?
Remember, always share information responsibly.
free onierocritical therapy
What a day. I feel like everything has changed. I can't remember the last time a day hasn't felt like this, and it keeps getting more intense. So I guess it must be true.
A long night of wonder, little sleep, crazy dreams, and heading over to the bookstore early for the meeting of the street health empowerment network, or the community health collective, or whatever we end up calling it. I can't believe how smoothly things ran, like an intimate conversation where we shared our stories and hopes and ideas for dealing with becoming a viable resource for helping us learn to support the health of ourselves and the people around us. I feel good about this, really good. Certainly it's a big task we've set out for ourselves, but personally it feels like a challenge I've desperately been needing to take up. And this is the time for it. The next meeting may focus around our experiences with dealing with mental health issues and crises and could feature some more of the roleplaying that played such a surprisingly insightful role in today's session. Giving reign to a creative chaos sometimes accomplishes so much more than any well ordered process, and the tangents offer a break from our routine ways of handling our lives. Perhaps psychotherapy could benefit from such an approach shift as well.
After my evening siesta I enjoyed the last bit of sun on the porch, reading Peter Lamborn Wilson's book on initiatic dream traditions in sufism and taoism, "Shower of Stars", as I have taken on a renewed focus to processing the contents of my dreams. Not only do I find some of my best inspiration from the oneiric realms, but regularly use their symbolic content to analyze and gain just a bit more insight into the often subconscious tensions that build up through each day. And with this recent relapse of intention I am beginning to suspect that I can use my dreams to get beneath some of the deep set fears and inhibitions that have plagued my life from an early age. What if I were able to turn this outward and develop the skills necessary to help others break through there own processing blocks with the keys they have already been given? The symbology of our dreams is radically subjective, as they seem to spring from the personal meanings we give to the experiences of our lives, so that no two people have the exact same imaginal constructs of any given concept. Which of course has kept anyone from writing a good dream dictionary or symbol directory. There may be some generalized collective interpretations, but a bee may not represent wealth or labor to someone who had a trauma of being stung by one as a kid. But many cultures, as far back as the sumerians, have employed dream interpreters that played a large role in determining the secret desires of people and kingdoms, using not only these archetypal interpretations but a long time report with the personal sybology of the specific dreamers they are working for. I don't know whether dream analyzation plays much of a role in modern psychotherapy, but I imagine as a culturaly-necessary position, the dream interpreter has gone the way of palm readers, tarot readers and other such divinatory oracles.
Personally I suspect the bubble's going to burst on the whole post-modern 'appearence is appearence devoid of meaning unless we put it there ourselves' take on life, and people will move on to taking their own subjective interpretations of reality as the standard with which to live their lives. Fostering a sense of the individual's own story and desires as being just as vaild, if not more so, than the consensual (and monoculturaly proscribed) norms. In such a world maybe there would be a place for onierocritical therapy, and a simple dreamer like me could find some honest work doing what he loves. At least until people learn to unpack their own dreams.
Right after I put down the book, Z called and told me about a dream she had last night of dropping two apples and not being able to pick them up, and asked me if I knew what it might mean, even before I could tell her about my schemes. But she's just intuitive like that, and would be the first person for me to practice on, since our relationship runs long and deep and I already have a bit of a lead on what her take on these symobls might be. And later J told me his dreams, and both seemed satisfied by my interpretations (well, J seemed much more blown away than just satisfied), and it occurs to me that people often share their dreams with me unprovoked. I guess the next step would be to start paying a lot closer attention, and do some research on previous work in the field.
A long night of wonder, little sleep, crazy dreams, and heading over to the bookstore early for the meeting of the street health empowerment network, or the community health collective, or whatever we end up calling it. I can't believe how smoothly things ran, like an intimate conversation where we shared our stories and hopes and ideas for dealing with becoming a viable resource for helping us learn to support the health of ourselves and the people around us. I feel good about this, really good. Certainly it's a big task we've set out for ourselves, but personally it feels like a challenge I've desperately been needing to take up. And this is the time for it. The next meeting may focus around our experiences with dealing with mental health issues and crises and could feature some more of the roleplaying that played such a surprisingly insightful role in today's session. Giving reign to a creative chaos sometimes accomplishes so much more than any well ordered process, and the tangents offer a break from our routine ways of handling our lives. Perhaps psychotherapy could benefit from such an approach shift as well.
After my evening siesta I enjoyed the last bit of sun on the porch, reading Peter Lamborn Wilson's book on initiatic dream traditions in sufism and taoism, "Shower of Stars", as I have taken on a renewed focus to processing the contents of my dreams. Not only do I find some of my best inspiration from the oneiric realms, but regularly use their symbolic content to analyze and gain just a bit more insight into the often subconscious tensions that build up through each day. And with this recent relapse of intention I am beginning to suspect that I can use my dreams to get beneath some of the deep set fears and inhibitions that have plagued my life from an early age. What if I were able to turn this outward and develop the skills necessary to help others break through there own processing blocks with the keys they have already been given? The symbology of our dreams is radically subjective, as they seem to spring from the personal meanings we give to the experiences of our lives, so that no two people have the exact same imaginal constructs of any given concept. Which of course has kept anyone from writing a good dream dictionary or symbol directory. There may be some generalized collective interpretations, but a bee may not represent wealth or labor to someone who had a trauma of being stung by one as a kid. But many cultures, as far back as the sumerians, have employed dream interpreters that played a large role in determining the secret desires of people and kingdoms, using not only these archetypal interpretations but a long time report with the personal sybology of the specific dreamers they are working for. I don't know whether dream analyzation plays much of a role in modern psychotherapy, but I imagine as a culturaly-necessary position, the dream interpreter has gone the way of palm readers, tarot readers and other such divinatory oracles.
Personally I suspect the bubble's going to burst on the whole post-modern 'appearence is appearence devoid of meaning unless we put it there ourselves' take on life, and people will move on to taking their own subjective interpretations of reality as the standard with which to live their lives. Fostering a sense of the individual's own story and desires as being just as vaild, if not more so, than the consensual (and monoculturaly proscribed) norms. In such a world maybe there would be a place for onierocritical therapy, and a simple dreamer like me could find some honest work doing what he loves. At least until people learn to unpack their own dreams.
Right after I put down the book, Z called and told me about a dream she had last night of dropping two apples and not being able to pick them up, and asked me if I knew what it might mean, even before I could tell her about my schemes. But she's just intuitive like that, and would be the first person for me to practice on, since our relationship runs long and deep and I already have a bit of a lead on what her take on these symobls might be. And later J told me his dreams, and both seemed satisfied by my interpretations (well, J seemed much more blown away than just satisfied), and it occurs to me that people often share their dreams with me unprovoked. I guess the next step would be to start paying a lot closer attention, and do some research on previous work in the field.
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