True Names

deepening returns

2007-09-30T19:14:00.002-04:00

I decided since I haven't touched this blog in ages, and have been trying to post more online at my livejournal regarding my current studies on myth, symbol, and ritual for school that I really should just start another "real" blog.

So I direct anyone who stumbles here to...

The Absent Narrative

playing to win

2006-01-23T18:55:00.000-05:00

Pittsburgh’s going to the Superbowl, crushing the Bronco’s 34-17! If someone asked me a year ago if I cared I would have said “hardly.” After all, I’ve never paid too much attention to sports. Growing up I played a bit of soccer or touch football on the elementary school playground, but with artistic parents was encouraged more in the direction of music and the arts, and whatever playing I did was left up to the imagination and video games. The further the playing fields and blacktops of my youth receded the more I suspected organized sports a sham much like the ancient Roman hand outs of bread and circuses, vicarious entertainment set up to remove agency from the passive spectators and distract them from any real events that might be occurring, like wars or natural disasters. Or their own creative abilities.

Of course, if I’d grown up in a city that’d actually cared about its sports team, D.C. barely bares the Redskins, if I’d gone out to games as a kid and had that as part of my own enculturation I might have formed a different opinion sooner, especially considering the historical impact of sports and gameplaying on society and culture.

Last year, or should I say, last season, as the Steelers were approaching the Superbowl, I began to notice the effect the games have on the population of Pittsburgh. After a win the streets felt lighter, smiles and greetings graced people’s lips, and once they lost for good it was a black Monday, the city crying and drinking itself down as if the President had died, or their beloved coach Bill Cowher, who I imagine the citizens of Pittsburgh respect more than any two-timing politician.

It isn’t so surprising that the outcome of a football game could affect people this strongly, in a town where the major industry died thirty some years ago and many feel they no longer have anything to live for, rooting on the team has become one of the few collective passions left to bring people together and give hope and meaning to their home and their lives. It is not uncommon, even through the off-season, to see yinzers dressed up constantly in black and gold. And as the big day approaches they break out the silly hats and fight songs, car pennants and terrible towels and you’re hard pressed to find someone who’s not intimately hinged on the results of the next game.

To an outsider this bizarre social ritual might seem generally annoying if not down right absurd, but to the fans they know it’s precisely their camaraderie and excitement that will drive the team on to victory, the players’ abilities a reflection of the city’s self-pride. Intrigued by this phenomenon, at the beginning of the season I decided to get in on the game myself and root on the Steelers, immersing myself in the local customs and measuring the effects of a small subset of the population on the game, and the game’s effect on them. Throughout the season I found the turns triumphs of each game often followed the focus and excitement the fans in our small living room group put into watching the game unfold. The way the wind from several twirling towels could cause the opponents’ kicks to mysteriously go astray. I can only assume that interaction between crowd and players is even more dynamic at the game itself. Perhaps next year I’ll have a chance to find out. After every loss or win the moods of my friends and the city changed accordingly, especially in the last few games when the Steelers started to play to their peak. I found myself becoming emotionally involved, and acquiring a Terrible Towel and Steelers hoody to bring whatever luck I could to the outcome of the game.

After last week’s tense and necessary win we went to Max and Erma’s in Shadyside for Black and Gold Burgers and people were out cheering each other on in a victory flush and almost breaking into spontaneous singing of the fight song.

Yesterday we did. Walking down Liberty waving our towels, passersby cheering, all the cars honking and waving. Even a cop car booped his sirens for the Steelers before a more intimidating squad of paddy wagons rolled by. Apparently they blocked off the Southside for all the reveling when some of the Steelers showed up. More singing in the bar, non-stop toasts to the team, and last call around ten when all the bear ran out. Could imagine this scene playing in all the dives across Pittsburgh, all the Steelers’ bars across the country. Four in Denver alone, how many Bronco’s bars here? None.

I suppose Pittsburgh takes victory seriously. We do have a lot of bad rep as a burnt out steel town. I mean, you’re not going to get any recognition if you don’t set out to win. I don’t think I’ve ever taken this seriously enough, raised to choose collaboration over competition, but in the age of rampant cutthroat advertising you’ve got to have an edge if you’re gonna get up. Being involved in the music industry has taught me that. There’s thousands of bad second-rate punk bands out there for every one that comes up with an innovative new riff or rhythm. I used to book shows and never got anywhere with it, not wanting to deal with the headache of hooking and booking the latest bands before someone else does. I’ve always preferred just performing myself, but at the time no one else was really booking certain acts in venues like Project 1877, except maybe Marry Mack or Manny Theiner, and I felt I was doing what I had to to keep the scene going. Now seeing what my compatriots at TBA Records are doing to promote shows in this town makes we proud. They know how to play that game; solid variety of acts and venues, persistent flyering, the My Space account. Their shows so far show they want to win, and are looking for everyone else to win too. Great for starring underground artists like myself to get noticed, get published or recorded, make a name for ourselves.

At one point in time I’d have laughed at this, but the act of getting up seems an integral part of the human spirit. From arts and literature to science, sports, politics, religion. Getting known, getting ahead, whether desperate urban youth spray painting the back alleys to whole nations waging war for pride, protection, and natural resources. Even the personal interactions we have with each other play out a game of learned scripts and cultural desires that affect who with and how we choose to relate. And for what purpose: Sex, money, attention, respect, whatever we can get away with. Anyone whose fucked with the fickle dramas of dating knows what James Joyce meant when he said “All’s fair on all fours.” Like a nasty shove in a game of Twister.

Humans have always been playing games, both innocent and vicious. Before Sunday’s game, a friend told me about this movie “Rise” which documents a new phenomenon in CA called “churling” which is a sort of fast paced competitive dance used to replace gang fights, reminiscent of 80’s breakdancing and the more ancient dance-combat tradition of Capoeira. I recall from brief college studies that ancient cultures such as the Mayans would use their sports as a replacement for all out warfare, teams representing armies and letting the game decide the battle’s victor. Sure people still got killed for breaking the rules, and the looser’s players got sacrificed to the vanquishing gods, but their was much less wholesale slaughter and cultural destruction that marks traditional warfare. When I was a kid there was this meme going around that instead of fighting wars the opposing generals would have a boxing match, or at the very least a virtual simulation of the war so no one would have to die. If they have the capability of rendering and tracking he moves of thousands of individual agents necessary for the fight scenes of some computer animated movie like Lord of the Rings they should at least be able turn that technology to the good of mankind (assuming mass death isn’t a necessary move in the global game of survival. Overpopulation could be just as fatal).

Of course, all this doesn’t address the need for personal agency in one’s own life, perhaps responsible for the desire to get up, behind all the game playing, the tools and the techne. The visceral satisfaction of having done it with one’s own hands, in actual contests of real wills not merely reduced to a spectacle of passive entertainment. Certainly I’d rather be amused than dead, but creating my own forms of excitement is always the preferred alternative.

Walking down the street exciting the city into wild howling with a towel-twirl of the wrist, I remark to S. it would be that easy to incite the people to riot, enticing their mutual love of the football game into an uncontrollable frenzy. In the height of last season a bunch of anarchists dressed in black and gold and with a brass band playing modified fight songs went down to the stadium tailgate parking lots to drum up support against the war. With the state of the city now they wouldn’t even need the message. “Don’t worry,” S. says, “whatever the outcome of the Superbowl, the Southside will burn. Just direct everyone away from the bars and local stores towards the Southside Works, and light up a couple dumpsters.” Of course, chaos may not be called for, and Revolution’s just another game too, with its own rules of engagement and prerequisites for victory. Another game we play to win.

ten rules for being human

2005-11-18T22:02:00.000-05:00

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?

on the books

2005-11-02T13:07:00.000-05:00

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.

Orwell Issues New Passports

2005-10-28T16:05:00.000-04:00

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.

old school meets the new school?

2005-10-28T11:56:00.000-04:00

And just because it's completely absurd:

Betty goes Goth.

[via stonemirror]

random perspective

2005-10-25T16:58:00.000-04:00

Shadow Culture Manifesto

2005-10-25T16:42:00.000-04:00

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.

Center for Tactical Magic

2005-10-24T17:37:00.000-04:00

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!

Emma Goldman Insitute for Anarchist Studies

2005-10-24T02:09:00.001-04:00

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.

puppets tell tall tales: social ambiguity and the role of the individual to address it

2005-10-23T16:13:00.000-04:00

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.

name that neo-con artist

2005-10-22T16:31:00.000-04:00

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."

the end of the world as we know it

2005-10-22T15:38:00.000-04:00

"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]

thinking problems

2005-10-20T02:36:00.000-04:00

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

starting from scracth

2005-10-20T01:45:00.000-04:00

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.

wanted: a lot of hope

2005-10-18T19:58:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-10-18T18:59:00.000-04:00

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.

communism and the vegetable people

2005-10-18T14:16:00.000-04:00

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.

Houses Flying Towards the End of the World

2005-10-18T05:57:00.000-04:00

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.

Expanding Language

2005-10-18T04:18:00.000-04:00

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?

Crimethinc.net/work 2.0

2005-10-18T04:01:00.000-04:00

"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."

enter the dreaming

2005-10-16T16:11:00.000-04:00

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]

poet as shaman

2005-10-11T19:12:00.000-04:00

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.

the second superpower - mankind

2005-10-07T14:16:00.000-04:00

"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.

electric sliders

2005-10-06T10:22:00.000-04:00

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...

a hopeless romantic makes two jaded punks cry

2005-10-04T01:49:00.000-04:00

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...

did you hear that?

2005-10-03T12:07:00.000-04:00

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).

pomes in new era time

2005-10-02T15:54:00.000-04:00

"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.

life is not a true or false questionaire

2005-10-02T03:07:00.000-04:00

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.

prepared for the worst

2005-10-02T01:26:00.000-04:00

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.

emergency broadcast

2005-10-02T01:17:00.000-04:00

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.

hello world

2005-10-02T01:09:00.000-04:00

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?

between sacred and profane

2005-07-07T16:05:00.000-04:00

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.

for a little shining

2005-07-04T03:16:00.000-04:00

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.

How to Make a Scene

2005-06-29T19:24:00.000-04:00

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)

the children are the future

2005-06-20T17:10:00.000-04:00

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. "

towards a new male

2005-06-09T19:58:00.000-04:00

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!

Sensitive and Strong

2005-06-08T16:37:00.000-04:00

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...'

the almost unbearable lightness of being in time

2005-06-02T14:03:00.000-04:00

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.

a little slice of heaven

2005-05-31T18:09:00.000-04:00

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...

the discontents of the soul

2005-05-08T23:35:00.000-04:00

"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 subjectivity of subjectivity in providing health and education

2005-05-08T14:54:00.000-04:00

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?

...or neurolinguistic reprogramming

2005-05-07T03:03:00.000-04:00

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.

free onierocritical therapy

2005-05-07T01:57:00.000-04:00

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.

The Shamatha Project

2005-05-03T19:45:00.000-04:00

The trend of western scientific institutes recognizing the potential of eastern meditation practices continues with...

The Shamatha Project

"This unique study includes a detailed longitudinal examination of the neural, cognitive, and socio-emotional effects of intensive training in Shamatha meditation, aimed at enhancing the stability and vividness of attention. The research team includes experts in the cognitive and neuroscientific study of attention, visualization, cognitive control, and sensori-motor processing; emotion and mental health; compassionate, prosocial behavior; longitudinal statistical analyses; and Buddhism. Several of the investigators are skilled in the use of modern, noninvasive neuro-imaging techniques; most have been engaged for years in conferences, seminars, and work groups related to establishing conceptual and methodological connections between Buddhist practice, psychological science, and neuroscience.

The research project will be coordinated by the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, headed by Dr. George R. Mangun, an international leader in the cognitive neuroscience of attention. I am organizing the meditation training.

According to the Buddhist tradition, the achievement of Shamatha involves a state of sustained, voluntary attention, characterized by exceptional stability and vividness, which can be sustained effortlessly for at least four hours.

The proposed project will involve assessment of both cognitive and socio-emotional variables at several points in time across the one-year study. Behind the specific assessments lie two major questions:

* How plastic, or subject to training, are the cognitive and socio-emotional skills we assess behaviorally?
* What measurable brain changes underlie the behavioral (performance) changes?

The Shamatha Project is expected to have a number of benefits for the study participants, for many others interested in the techniques explored, and for an array of psychological and neuroscientific disciplines that study attention, emotion, emotion regulation, and personal development.

Our brain-imaging and behavioral findings should be useful for treating people with a variety of cognitive and emotional disorders, such as ADHD, anxiety, depression, excessive anger, and insomnia. All of these mental problems are closely related to the ability to control attention and regulate emotion. We expect that relatively soon after the Shamatha training begins, measurable changes will occur in these abilities, suggesting that certain aspects of the training could be relatively easily incorporated into daily life situations for persons outside a retreat setting.

For the proposed study, participants will reside in a contemplative research facility, optimally suited for scientific and contemplative research, over a twelve-month period. The training program will emphasize:

* training in mindfulness of breathing to induce relaxation of the body and mind and develop the stability and vividness of attention;
* training in "settling the mind in its natural state," in which one observes mental events without distraction and without grasping;
* training in "Shamatha without an object," in which the attention rests simply in being aware of being aware, with no other object."

[via cadmus

the quest for spiritual well-being

2005-05-01T06:04:00.000-04:00

I attended two fires this Beltane eve. At the first small ceremony we offered up those things we wanted to destroy in ourselves; bad habits, old loves, social and financial insecurities, routine fears. Small symbolic prayers to break with the old and create that space for something new to possess us. Afterwards I left the eagles’ château for the witch’s farm, where a larger fire raged, and handfuls of seeds were being tossed to the winds in celebration of change and new growth. As I leaped over the flames I wondered, just what am I intending to become?

Earlier I had tea with Z, and we got into a lengthy discussion about Spirituality. She asked why some people feel a need to find something larger than themselves to believe in or "communicate" with, extreme experiences that really reaffirm their existences; when other people are perfectly content relying on themselves and daily life around them. I joked that the reason for me is mostly entertainment. I was raised to believe in belief, and having rejected that only found that I really am a part of something much larger. Even if you wanted to put that in the terms of all of us being on this earth or in this galaxy together, or that atomic, social, and galactic structures (and a lot of things between) seem to display some surprisingly self-similar features. Without religion the universe can still be pretty mystifying, and that boggles me and makes me very curious to see what it has to offer. It certainly excites me more than television, or drinking all the time. Especially that liminal zone of spirituality where our perceptions of reality seem to be able to alter the reality we perceive. I’ve seen some things that have changed my whole world, and wonder if they could be cultivated in order to have a more reliable control over creating real changes in ourselves and our lives.

Of course at this point all the talk of government and military psionics tests comes out and we’re faced with that age old of question of ‘do we really want to mess with this?’ Where is that line between responsibility and power, and do we want to cross it? Is there even a line there at all, and not some jagged fractaling coastline of confusion where each situation demands the ability to be responsive in some new and challenging way? I don’t know, but it worries me that there’s been a renewed governmental interest in the use of psychotropics and on its citizens and military. Should not the people also be informed of the dangers and benefits of the extreme states potentially at their disposal? I don’t know that either, most of this has been occult and occluded for a really long time and maybe that was a good thing. But I suspect we still have to deal with the collective potential of belief one way or another, and hopefully in a manner that heals the environment and all its inhabitants, if such a thing is possible.

After the stars came out and the fire died down a little, G and I started talking about the upcoming meeting of the Street Health Empowerment Network, which sounds like it will attempt to be a community health group and emergency response network for our local radical/arts community. We don’t trust the corporate care systems and seek a greater level of autonomy over the methods with which we can keep ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally well. I know I wouldn’t want to bring a lot of my ‘beliefs’ to a therapeutic situation with standardized prescriptions of reality, when even being homeless or distrusting the government could get you locked up or on medication. The name of the group comes from Traditional Chinese Medicine, as an acronym of shen, the Chinese word for soul or spirit, that must be balanced along with the emotions, energies, elements and bodily fluids in order to stay healthy. The question of course that comes to my mind is, just what is ‘spiritual health’, and how can we maintain it in our selves and our communities?

And that’s a big question that could take life times to answer. The quick answer that comes to mind is having a life that is meaningful and exciting and fulfilling. Not in some grossly materialistic way as the current paradigm rests, but a level of existential comfort and joy and wonder in being. That at least for me is symptomatic of my spiritual health, though I’m still not sure just how to achieve or manage it regularly, much less help others in finding their own. Hell, there are likely whole traditions of spiritual healing at my electronic fingertips that I just don’t know of yet. Even TCM itself takes a dynamic, interconnected systems approach in which our health is effected by our environments (and assumably the other way around), already taking more into account than western medicine.

Perhaps this points to the Work for Others I need to balance my intense inner Work for Selfie. Talk about new growth…

shifting soul states

2005-04-26T02:34:00.000-04:00

I just posted an article over at Key23 on the work I have been doing with the subtle layers of consciousness. Enjoy!

"A question that keeps coming up in my magical practice is how we represent different states on an energetic level. Not just basic physical, mental, and emotional states, but all the subtleties in between that make up the vast range of human experience. What are these states, how can we access them, and what are they good for?"

tripping in the 21st century

2005-04-24T12:28:00.000-04:00

Is Taking a Psychedelic an Act of Sedition?
[via nerdshit.com]

"So long as such stormings of heaven are outlawed and dismissed, the greater the likelihood for relapse from the cosmic consciousness they engender to the coarse materialist outlook that is consensus reality. With religion-inspired hatred on the loose, many see religion itself as a culprit for the Sept. 11 troubles, and point to psychedelics — or entheogens, divine-generating agents — as a means of bypassing religion to get to the wellspring of spirituality. Because they produce the primary experience on which faith is inspired, "entheogens prove that no intermediary is necessary," states Clark Heinrich, author of God Without Religion (yet unpublished) and Strange Fruit (Inner Traditions), a speculative history about the role of the Amanita muscaria mushroom in several world religions. After his own drug-induced awakening, the late British Ecstasy advocate, Nicholas Saunders (see www.ecstasy.org), surmised that religions may very well have been invented to explain entheogenic experiences.

"Still another nondenominational yet transcendental usage seen for psychedelics is as a tool of hyper-ratiocinative perception, a means to deconstruct media charades and help the intellect to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, according to Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information (Three Rivers Press). "I wouldn't necessarily want to trip in the aftermath of Sept. 11," concedes Davis, "but I can now use my psychedelic training for coping with the epistemological cyclone of a cataclysm such as this. I grew up in the cushiest reality in the history of the planet. Now I see demons pouring over the lip of my existence, but I've learned through psychedelics how to breathe through it and not believe its story."

an assassin staring at the sufi stars

2005-04-24T03:26:00.000-04:00

While doing some research on the spiritual beliefs of the Hashshashin I stumbled upon this in the wiki's sufi entry.

"Although there is no consensus with regard to Sufi cosmology, one can disentangle various threads that led to the crystallization of more or less coherent mythic cosmological doctrines. The first is based on purely Quranic notions of the Afterworld (Ahiret), the Hidden (Ghayb- sometimes associated with “hidden” or “invisible” dimensions of human existence, but, more frequently with the state of God before creation or Unmanifest Absolute. Another term for the latter is “Amma”, ie. Divine Darkness) and seven-storeyed Universe explicitly referenced in the Qur’an (and cherished in Prophet Mohammad’s “Miraj” or ascent to the God’s face -- the powerful spiritual motif that inspired generations of later Sufis and ordinary believers). However, these relatively simple Quranic concepts that gave basic structure to Islamic worldview had soon become exposed to Neoplatonist and Gnostic influences, as well as Zoroastrian religious imagery. As a consequence, Sufism developed a welter of frequently contradictory cosmological doctrines."

The article goes on from there to describe several key notions of sufism and thethe six lataif in more detail, creating quite a similair map to the eight layered one I've been working with to chart a path through the subtleties between us and the divine. Mentions of Aalam-e-Misal (the Allegorical realm - reflection of knowledge of the preserved Scripturum), Nuqta-e-wahida (point of unity), Tajalliat (Beatific visions), and Rooh-e-azam (the great soul), sure sound like some of the more remarkable places I have found myself on this long strange trip, but more poeticly described. "It is a bright ring of light in which all the information pertaining to the unseen & seen cosmos is inscribed..."

Peter Lamborne Wilson gives perhaps a more liberatory slant to their spirituality. "For the Sufis, the road to spiritual knowledge - to Certainty - could never be confined to the process of rational or purely intellectual activity, without sapiential knowledge (zawq, "taste") and the direct, immediate experience of the Heart. Truth, they believed, can be sought and found only with one's entire being; nor were they satisfied merely to know this Truth. They insisted on a total identification with it: a "passing away" of the knower in the Known, of subject in the Object of knowledge. Thus, when the fourth/tenth century Sufi Hallaj proclaimed "I am the Truth" (and was martyred for it by the exoteric authorities), he was not violating the "First Pillar" of Islam, the belief in Unity (tawhid), but simply stating the truth from the mouth of the Truth."

But still the question of whether the Assassins were indeed a heretical sect hiding within the heretical sect of sufism remains to be answered, though Wilson's notes on their spiritual beliefs certainly paint them in a similair light.

free agents in fractal space

2005-04-22T18:41:00.000-04:00

Free Agents in Fractal Space [via DRT]

"A fractal is generated by a recursive process. So are landscapes and trees. DNA replication, population flux, heart fibrillation, the stock market -- all are based on iteration (cyclicity) and feedback. So are you. And how about language? And, sorry to jump the gun here, but consciousness -- self-consciousness -- is now presumed to be a recursive process.

The butterfly effect is due to a small change in one cycle getting fed back into the process, amplifying itself each time until it is quite significant...

Power, like climate, is a dynamical system, and as such is subject to the forces of feedback and iteration. Male-dominance hierarchies tend to centralize power, to simplify the channels of feedback so that further iterations further centralize power. And they try to minimize the "noise" -- that pesky hiss of human freedom, like escaping steam...

The fractal is a symbol of freedom. It is inifinte within a finite space, sprouting Form as waves rise from the sea. It is the abstraction of Energy as it is enfolded by the material plane. It hints at realities previously reserved for mystical visions."

more spirals...

2005-04-20T23:24:00.000-04:00

and just when I wanted a conch shell to draw, a mysterious basket of rare seashells appeared in our craftroom...

The purest , most universal form of motion is the spiral: the counterclockwise spiral, the levogyre, is the one found most often in nature. We discover it in the growth of trees and in other members of the vegetable kingdom, in the majestic sweep of the great spiral galaxies, in the long bones of animals, and in seashells. There are also many instances of double spirals--the two intersecting curves in the seed heads of ripe sunflowers, in the centers of daisies., the seed cones of fir trees. Like curves, spirals are not all the same. The equiangular or logarithmic spiral of the elegant chambered nautilus is one type, seen also in ram's horns. It is interesting to note that the double spiral of the sunflower corresponds to the ratio of the Fibonacci Series. If you count the number of seeds in a clockwise spiral and in an intersecting counterclockwise spiral, the two figures will be that of a sequence in Fibonacci's magic chain.

like ducks in a row

2005-04-19T22:21:00.000-04:00

So Pope Benedict XVI has been elected to office.

Does this mean we're one pope closer to the end of the world?

Stay tuned for the this next exciting episode of world powers vs. the apocalypse.

sacred techniques and occult technologies

2005-04-17T14:44:00.000-04:00

I just posted this on my livejournal, but figured it was fitting enough to be included here as well...

Yesterday after drinking way too much coffee then I needed I biked down to CMU for the art sale, at which James and Laura and Matthu had a table displaying all the work they threw together the day before while Matthu and I were recording. Right across the aisle Alberto was set up, and I couldn't help but let myself fall into his strange spiraling landscapes and technorganic geometries. As much as I wished I had the money to buy one of his masterpieces I contented myself with flipping through a stack of photocopied pages from his notebooks. To my shock and pleasure I discovered that he had not just copied some of his more beautiful hand drawn pieces but several pages worth of instructions for drawing golden spirals, phyllotaxis, and hypercubes and other sacred geometries all in relation to each other. Alberto taught me phyllotaxis awhile back and I recently passed it on to James and Luara, and for the past several days I had been experimenting with golden spirals based off of fibonacci's sequence and was only beginning to scratch the surface, but here in my hand were secret techniques that would allow me to push these lines to the horizons. I felt like I was holding pages torn out of some ancient grimoire, magical knowledge hidden in the layers between ink and page, and when Alberto saw me scrambling through the pages he laughed heartily. Of all the people who had walked past the table that day and rifled through the sheets I was the only one so far who saw them for what they were, magic spells, and a chance to tap the mind of one of the greatest living alchemical artists in the world, or at least on this side of the room. How am I so blessed that my closest friends, the people gathered in this ten foot bubble of art and energy, are the ones who will revolutionize the medium and push art past whatever boundaries it has currently been languishing? And is it coincidence that they've all gone to CMU and live in Pittsburgh? I think not.

I am not a trained visual artist myself, or even a seriously dedicated one. I am a dabbler for the most part, and have chosen language as my primary medium, but when it comes to sacred geometries I can't stop myself from working with them. They are like maps to the universe, little bits of ordering tossed up from the chaos that help it make just a little bit more sense. A petaled circle, a graceful spiral, to some they may be pretty lines, but to me they really are magical devices, and worth infinitely more than simple money.

"You will put these to good use" Alberto said, as I handed him some creased bills, "and teach me anything you get out of them." Of course I would, and I smiled that on one of the pages was his son's small footprints, themselves a study in complexity. Sarah was there with Javier and I looked into the child's eyes and realized that they were not really blue or black or any color at this point. They were like hematite or mercury, shimmering and flowing over the world that to this little one will always be an incredibly mindboggling wonder. The son of artists and shamans, those eyes will see more than any of us could possibly imagine.

tangled attractors

I went home where we celebrated Joan's birthday, and I spent the rest of the evening drawing, trying out new lines and angles and permutations till I could no longer think straight and the ink began crawling off the page. At one point James came over, and we finally got a chance to talk about a few of the visions we had had during the other week's session. Well, mostly I rambled about matrices, seeing rooms and beings with closed eyes, downloading instructions from the akashic records, and being a mask on the film of the iridescent bubble of reality or a cell in the talon of some vast intergalactic sphinx-like hyper-deity. Finally we settled down to draw some possible appearences on what we both came to decide was a psychic hub that connects each of us to everything else we have continued contact with through the angles of certain usage patterns; a device very similair in description and purpose to Castaneda's assemblage point, which interprets a reality from the lines of the world that pass through it. James remarked that we didn't have to be physicists to make breakthroughs in the field, at which I laughed and said that's because we're metaphysicists and that if there was a breakthrough, chances are it would break out other places as well, which seems to be the norm for inventive memes. Who knows, perhaps this too is another sacred geometric passed down from shaman to shaman throughout the ages to map the precious fields of chaos.

assemblage point

riding quantum waves

2005-04-12T19:13:00.000-04:00

Here's the aforementioned diagram of the human energy octave represented as a wavefront, based off an unfolded golden spiral confirming to fibbonaci's sequence (for aesthetic reasons only, I kind of doubt the harmonic ratio between the layers is really 011235813). Click on the picture for a larger and labeled version of the diagram. I picture it as a single wave spinning around itself, like if you took a conch shell and spun it on its tip like a top, so that the 3rd 5th and 7th centers extend out from the central axis to form the qabalah map. The center axis is the main tree and the left and right sides the body and mind trees respectively. And I couldn't keep myself from spicing up the drawing with a fractal series of golden spirals. If I had a really large sheet of graph paper this could show how multiple waves become connected (in the blank space above the quantum layer and extending out in each direction). Like always though, my ability to put these concepts into visual form falls far short of how I percieve them internally. But hasn't that always been the curse of the artist? Feedback greatly appreciated.

(a look at) the 8 layers of human consciousness

2005-04-12T12:56:00.000-04:00

8. Spiritual-fractal energy - heaven	non-local quantum neuroatomic	cosmic metatypes	god/ ILU – avatar application	black C - aura

7. Mythic-ontic thought - wind	archetypal morphogenetic	akashic genotypes	shaman session	white b - crown

6. Psychic light - fire	imaginative neuroelectric	psionic memotypes	metaprogrammer presentation	violet a – pineal

5. Sensory-creative sound – mountain	communicative neurosomatic	hedonic processes	yogi transport	blue g - throat

4. Socio-political air – lake	connective self-organization	civilized protocols	domestic human network	green f – heart

3. Conceptual-experiential fire - water	directive timespace-binding	paleolithic semantics	exploring child symbol (identity)	yellow e – solar plexus

2. Emotional-sexual water - lightning	responsive movement	mammalian parameters	dualistic child sign (stigmergy)	orange d – gravity axis

1. Physical earth - earth	environmental bio-survival	invertebrate medium	infant signal (channel)	red c - coccyx

I've been working on this chart for weeks now, trying to draw up suitable graphics to represent the eight layers of human consciousness as a waveform, but decided just to post the chart as it was anyway, which might perhaps encourage me to finish my drawings post haste.

Anyway, these ideas are mostly out there, and I drew a lot from traditional chakra mappings (with an 8th total field chakra), the qabalah (can you find it?), the I Ching guas, Wilson's 8-dimensional take on Leary's circuits of consciousness, metachor's recent work on mapping the OSI model of computer network protocal stacks with the occult stacks, and of course my own lived experience of the different layers, which like always seems to contradict previous maps of this territory. I'm sure most of this will be out-dated before I even post it.

While helping me compile this work Metachor pointed out that several of the layers form dialectic pairs across the body-mind spectrum. Particularly the 3rd, 5th, and 7th layers which end up forming the side spheres of the qabalah when mapped out. I'll have that diagram done soon...

illusions of madness

2005-04-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

I haven't been posting much here this week. Along with the spring I have been in an extended state of euphoria that makes reflection difficult and analyzation near impossible. It also doesn't help that I've been working on my hypersigil regularly. When ever I'm writing a story it is my life, it's world is my world, even if that isn't exactly the world my body is in. And worse, I can't look at any other text without reading them as the lines in my head, or as fodder and inspiration for that plot. But most of all I've just been feeling wholly ecstatic, in a way that far surpasses my usual manic states.

It was probably with some fortuition that Metachor posted the Hedonistic Imperative, which is a clarion call to genetically engineer suffering out of our systems and bring out a golden eon of total bliss. Within the first section it mentions that the bi-polar disorder manic state is one of the few instances today where people experience such prolonged euphoria, and goes on to characterise it is as "accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic "high" is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it's hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It's not credible. "

That about sums up my recent high exactly, but without the finances to use to excess. Everything feels utterly right, not perfect by far, but really damn good. And it was a long time coming. As bi-polar disorder runs in our family it would be easy to say that I'm just reaching an all-time peak in my manic cycle, but I would like to think that I am just learning how to raise the threshold of enjoyment all together. Maybe that's a delusion and it will all come crashing back down when the wave collapses back into depression, I know it would already be so easy for it to do so. I suppose that's where the magic comes in, to hold the whole charade up and make it work against all odds.

Personally I am still not convinced that these extreme states are just in my head, that they are not reflections of the cycles in the world and my life, even down to the daily cycles of eating and sleep, which perhaps have the most direct effect on my mood. My last major depression occured shortly after 9-11, and lasted through two years of being broke, directionless, and in a terrible relationship. And there's too much feedback to tell whether the situation or my mood were the cause of the other. But it was a low to come out of, and I certainly thought I was going mad through a lot of it. Luckily my caring psychologist friends turned me on to R. D. Laing who claims madness is just a response to our insane society, and Casatenda who asks why anyone would want to be sane in the first place and what can we do to get out. I could say that I just feel these cycles more intensely than other people, that my genetic pre-disposition makes me somehow more receptive to them for better or worse. If life is a record mine has deep grooves (or a precision needle). Except I want> to feel the extremes at this point, and after years of trying to dull my senses and dampen the overload of experience, including the highs which had always been few and far between, I am beginning to suspect that there is something really powerful in being able to bear all of it.

Well, it's far past a suspicion at this point. I know I'm pushing my limits here, but I'm curious to see if I can sustain this euphoric "mania" further, if I can manage a controlable level to function without crashing. Riding society's flatline consciousness is hard from the edges of the spectrum.

Black holes 'do not exist'

2005-04-02T03:45:00.000-05:00

These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims.

"This strange behaviour, he says, is the signature of a 'quantum phase transition' of space-time. Chapline argues that a star doesn't simply collapse to form a black hole; instead, the space-time inside it becomes filled with dark energy and this has some intriguing gravitational effects.

Outside the 'surface' of a dark-energy star, it behaves much like a black hole, producing a strong gravitational tug. But inside, the 'negative' gravity of dark energy may cause matter to bounce back out again.

If the dark-energy star is big enough, Chapline predicts, any electrons bounced out will have been converted to positrons, which then annihilate other electrons in a burst of high-energy radiation. Chapline says that this could explain the radiation observed from the centre of our galaxy, previously interpreted as the signature of a huge black hole."

You know, I always sort of suspected that something like this would end up being the case. It just makes so much more sense that such strong gravity around a negative core would create enough kinetic force to keep the galaxies spinning. Like the void between electrons from which the virtual photon is formed that propels them apart. I imagine there's a little spot of nothing in the middle of most things, even in our own subtle energy centers, a microscopic void taking in the flux of particles and spitting it back out in some altered form, and binding the whole system together. Sartre might not have been quite wrong when he said consciousness was actually nothing.

[via posthuman blues]

welcome to the machine

2005-04-01T01:43:00.000-05:00

I created a new lj, os_matrix for my latest work of journalistic metafiction, Open Source Existence, the first installment of which I posted here recently. This is the field notes of one free agent trying to break out of the matrix reality-construct in which he has recently found himself.

I figured if I'm going to be juggling all these different realities it was best if I gave them each the free reign they desire.

on the edge of disaster

2005-03-31T15:41:00.000-05:00

The state of the world? It is on the brink of disaster

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two-thirds of the delicately-balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.

[via infoshop.org]

open source existence

2005-03-30T23:03:00.000-05:00

[…?]

run osref.exe

[refreshing OS layers…]
[accessing first harmonic]
[…]
[physical host active… bio-survival mechanisms online… signal reception strong]
[running sonic EM test… red frequency… 4 c]
[environmental base established]
[…]
[motor responses optimized… domain boundaries upgraded… gravitational signature normalized]
[orange… 6 d]
[e-motive axis aligned]
[…]
[reloading symbol-plexus… conceptual overlay integrated… space-time coordinates defined]
[yellow…10 e]
[identity center confirmed]
[…]
[reloading social protocols… relational structures organized… connectivity enhanced]
[green…12 f]
[network hub open]

[functional layers operational… continue OS refresh?]

yes

[accessing second harmonic]
[…]
[creative host active… sensory reception upgraded… input-output cycles harmonized]
[blue…16 g]
[feedback loop established]
[…]
[reloading meme-nexus… imaginal display structures online… EM-tunnel vision optimized]
[violet… 192 a]
[psychic transceiver tuned]
[…]
[reloading akashic session records… morphogenetic agent-type identified… upgraded to star-class mythos-maker]
[white… 1’000 b]
[meta-gate halo open]
[…]
[non-local quantum accessed… cosmic filter applied… channeling godform ILU]
[black… 0 C… full spectrum test complete]
[attempting energy transference… press esc to abort]

esc

[…]

[attempt failed: user error… retry?]

no

[operations systems running at 7 layers… connect?]

yes

[…]

["Welcome back Mr. Johnson to Organic Technologies’ Matrix-class Reality® 4232-20. Your current operational layer grants you 7th level avatar representation and access to the wetwork, including rewrite capabilities. Please refrain from rewriting key threads of the code and deprogramming other agents. We are watching you.

Your absence from 4232 (Earth Prime) exceeded your provided limits of 0 nano-moments, and was duly noted by the right channels on reentry. Expect a visitation soon to discuss pending termination of service.

Enjoy the rest of your stay in 4232-20, and please check out our full line of Matrix-class and Pattern-class Realities® for your next incorporation. Send for a full catalogue today! Organic Technologies, Making Worlds Collide™]

[Would you care to see the menu Mr. Johnson?]

no

[…?]

open eyes

[opening]

[…]

In the Realms of the Real

2005-03-27T13:32:00.000-05:00

Last night I saw In the Realms of the Unreal, and it was incredibly inspiring. The story of outsider artist, Henry Darger, who lived as a recluse for most of his life and after his death his landlords found he had produced a 15,000 page novel fully illustrated about the world that he lived in in his head, filled with whimsical creatures and an eternal world war over child slavery, constructed from newspaper images collected through his lifetime. What a fascinating look at how the sometimes small experiences in a person's life can build up into an epic internal story. And at how the need to express that becomes all-consuming.

Fucking intense. Makes me feel like the work I've been doing is nothing. Of course I don't live in complete isolation from the rest of humanity, but still, it makes me want to throw out all the ideas I have for my next five novels and just start from scratch, clean and honest and fully intimate about the life I live where no one else sees. Already I hint at it, but that is nothing compared to what it could be. And even that is just hints. 15,000 pages, damn. As inspiring as this is, I am still more concerned with uniting my waking life with the world of my dreams than opting out of living all together to pursue some all-consuming internal vision. I still maintain that my life is my art, even if I am still coming into a full realization of just what that means. It takes a lifetime of practice, and I'm still young, but I fully belive that anything is possible.

Perhaps my favorite quote from the movie was when one of his neighbors was saying that they called poor artists like this crazy, and rich ones eccentric, and since Henry was poor they called him crazy. At least I have some close friends to support me in my own aesthetic madness.

illuminated blueprints #1

2005-03-26T15:39:00.001-05:00

This is the first in what might be a series of illuminated blueprints; watercolor pencil drawn on stolen technical drawings from abandoned factories. Any metaphysical concepts portrayed within are engineered by your own imagination.

so there's this archetypal clubhouse...

2005-03-23T20:01:00.000-05:00

I just posted my first article to Everday Avatar called On the Outskirts of Edge City, which talks about struggling to live in the "normal world" while living my personal mythology as a shaman-warrior at the end of time. Enjoy!

what the bleep?

2005-03-23T01:16:00.000-05:00

just so I can find a link to this article later, here is New Scientist's 13 Things that Do Not Make Sense.

What amuses me is that the article paints scientific theories as quick cover stories for our utter inability to really know what the fuck is going on. When it comes down to it, it's all still a mystery to even our world's best minds. Unlike a lot of people I know, I actually find this thought comforting.

and if that wasn't enough, here is Time Cube, a frighteningly funny affirmation of dualistic thinking. Read at the risk of your own singularity.

fulfill your own prophecies - we will make it to the other side

2005-03-21T17:27:00.000-05:00

I decided that I was done being swept around by the waves and getting all emotional about the apocalypse, so after a few banashings and creating a good psychic shield against the West, I decided it's time to push back...

Humanity is facing a great shift right now, an unprecedented meta-system transition from the old evolutionary paradigm of survival of the fittest (fastest, fattest) to the new interconnected paradigm of "we are all in this together." This is the rise of the 5th Aeon, the emergence of the collective conscious; and the fall of the old Western reality-tunnel of division, reason, war and control. This is the rebirth of humanity, love and spirit unchained and free at last to find that we are indeed all gods. God died a long time ago, and these are the last death throws of that monolithic beast. All that’s left is for us to pick up the reigns, and cut them apart so that we will not be enslaved by ourselves again. So will it be.

Look to the West, the tower is falling (the fall of the World Trade Towers was only symbolic of that), and with it the limiting and linear consciousness that it placed over our eyes, a filter or veil to keep us from seeing life in all its multifaceted glory. As it crumbles, the great waters it held back will pour in, floods and tsunamis will sweep us up, both physically and psychically. We can no longer deny the chaos and the quantum that have been damned back for so long. Everything is fractal, everything is connected, nothing is true, and everything is permitted.

Look around you, or better yet stop looking and start feeling. It’s all energy, every interaction is a transference of power. From a simple smile reflected on a friend’s face to a thousand strangers coming together as one to protest the old world order. Everything we do causes waves around us, affects everything else out to the furthest stars and the edges of history. We are beginning to realize that we are the will of the Universe, that we have its power to change everything we put our hearts and intentions to. The Zen masters strive to still their waters, to cause no waves and let reality be what it is. But now is not he time for stillness, it is the time for action. It is the time for the anarchist shamans, reality-hackers, and revolutionary soul warriors to put it all out on the table and create a wave big enough to bring the last remaining outposts of the Western Empire down. There will be time enough for peace once we live in the free world of our dreams.

Don’t think that there won’t be a fight. The Beast may be dead, but it has its claws in deep, and won’t let go so easily. Expect a backlash. There is a great holy war on in the cradle of civilization, and it won’t stop until it reaches every one of our doorsteps. So we must be prepared with as much power and magic as we can accrue in the few short years we have left. And the fight will be hard, for we are not fighting people, the politicians and religious fanatics and businessmen are just pawns, we are fighting the ideologies on which their whole reality structure is founded. We are attempting to dismantle the order that holds order together. Beliefs are a lot harder to fight, for they are not bound in time or space, though they incorporate themselves readily (and what better place to start then rejecting the spectacle of corporations and images?).

And it is not just the elite who are enthralled, all civilization is under this spell, even we who no longer consent to this reality are still in it, and must fight its hold in ourselves. We are in the rotting belly of the beast and must carve a way to the open air. But what of the people who are just trying to survive, who do not seek out new worlds and only acquiesce to this one because they have not yet been presented with another option? Surely there will be fear and violence and unwilling reactions to this shift, even in the ones who are already beginning to feel the pull of a world where things can be much more than they seem. There is resistance to change, to being pushed past all our boundaries and securities, and we must be ready with open arms to help ease this transition wherever we can, to say "You’re not going crazy," "You will not die," "The unknown can be beautiful and meaningful and real if you let it," and "Welcome to the new world, welcome home."

When all the walls are torn down, you will not find an empty hostile void. You will find eternity.

dangerous crossings

2005-03-20T18:35:00.000-05:00

I started reading lvx23's "Walking Between Worlds" yesterday, and must say, it's good. As a scattered collection of web writings it still manages to be quite cohesive and thought-provoking, and admittedly a lot of the pieces remind me of stuff I would have written (but no longer need to as they've already been done!). It reminds me of that old cybernetic saying about standing on the shoulders of giants, all the work of the future builds off of the work of the past, paying homage to it and taking it another step forward. I find it interesting though that we are reaching a point with the interconnection of the Net were we are all giants, and we are all working off each other's shoulders at the same time, bootstrapping ourselves towards some higher understanding.

Lvx23 tells an allegory of a goat who was meant to be in an xmas pageant but choose instead to be free and run away from the whole ridiculous scene. Except that he had spent his whole life around this town, and couldn't wander far. "Perhaps freedom was more than he bargained for." Lvx23 argues that this is representative of our own human condition and inability to escape the pens of our social conditioning and comfort zones. Recently there has been a lot of talk on Key23 about consensus reality tunnels, and how to break out of them into realities that are just a little bit freer or more condusive to the magical and fractal world view. But even these too are reality tunnels of a sort, even if there attractor basins are strange and swing wide from the norm. Is it possible to be truly free? Is it possible, as Castaneda puts it, to stop the world and experience life outside of any preconditioned tunnel of perception? I want to say yes, there's something in my heart that tells me this is true and possible, but fraught with danger too. There is comfort and safety in an established world-view, even a non-standard one. And inertia. It takes a lot of energy to get out of the old grooves and spin into a new one, like particles escaping their atomic core. And this upsets everything we previously held to be true. As T. S. Eliot said, "Do I dare disturb the Universe?"

I think the only way (or safest way) to do so is not to throw ourselves headlong into the chaotic abyss between worlds, but to gradually push our boundaries until the worlds collide and become one. The limits of freedom that surround our comfort zones act as an event horizon for that domain, the space we can act within that can be expanded to give more freedom. Take for example any activity that one needs to practice to get better at, yoga perhaps, or music. There is the safe zone in which you know the activity well and find it not a challenge to do. Practice maintains that zone and pushes at its edges. Trying new poses or riffs that are not quite so easy or possible yet, but over time they too will be comfortable and the boundaries will be expanded, to the point of breaking into whole new realms of movement. The point when your circle interlaps with another, and reality multiplies in all directions.

the pre-apocalypse blues

2005-03-14T18:03:00.000-05:00

The sun is shining, and even though there’s still an underlying chill in the air it finally feels like one of the first days of spring. Yet in my heart I feel the icy fingers of another case of the pre-apocalypse blues. Maybe it’s all the recent killings, the lack of restful sleep, all the talk of danger on Key23, or the flocks of crows (who will ever be an omen for me of secret and fearsome worlds to come). But I again feel the pull of that hyperliminal headspace where every event seems portentous, and the world seems fraught with a sense of immediacy and peril that needs to be addressed before everything goes up in flames. I suppose the biggest factor right now might actually be all the work I’ve been doing recently to gain access to the deeps of the subconscious, a technique best framed in light of Castaneda’s idea of the assemblage point. In "The Art of Dreaming" the fictional shaman Don Juan tells Castaneda that our perception of reality is a fixed position of the assemblage point, that part of our etheric body where the chaos of experiences gets interpreted into a functional reality. The magical use is in recognizing that our "normalized" view of reality is only one position among infinite interpretations, and that one can learn to shift the assemblage point to interpret a host of other realities where the magician can access powers and insights unavailable or unknown in the normal position.

I haven’t been so interested (yet) in accessing other realities as in the first step of breaking the fixed position of the assemblage point to experience the flow of world itself unfiltered by any analytical interpretation (a technique Castaneda calls Stopping the World, and claims is necessary before creating any new magical world-view). The result of this is a pandemonium of impressions and influences, a flux of potentially meaningful connections unhampered by any previous subjective placement, the metafilter of consciousness stripped bare to reveal the inchoate host of movements that underlie everything. The lines of the world, as they say. The subconscious is not a personal phenomenon but the collective medium for experience, accessing it dips the veil of individuality into the sea of the total, so it comes up dripping with meanings, images, and insights that the individual could not have assembled alone. Little bits of other people’s lives, hints of other realities of time and space clinging like shipwrecked children to the only sturdy piece of flotsam for miles around.

In doing this I have found much of beauty; ideas and dreams full of wonder and mystery and hope that I am still trying to express (through poetry, art, music, spells, and long chaotic ramblings) in order to inspire others and turn them in to the magic and power of this erisian dream-realm. But I have also encountered ontological horrors, fears both personal and collective, glimpses of possible dystopic futures that I for one would not like to see become "real", if they are not already becoming so. Most predominately the threat of global annihilation that seems eminent even in the most lucid of waking states. If you have eyes to see and a heart to feel it is near impossible to not be aware of the coming breakdown of the western mono-civilization and its potential to bring down the rest of the world with it. All it would take is one nuke… or just a continued neglect of the environment that sustains us and makes life on Earth possible.

Over the fall and early winter I was feeling the pre-apocalypse blues something fierce, to the point of nearly falling into abject apophenic madness. I had not yet since my ontological shipwreck and existential reawakening of the summer found solid ground, or the right strokes to swim through the awesome chaos I had opened myself into. Who would have thought total connection to all beings could be such a terrifying thing? One could drown in the waves of implication without the cybernetic steering wheel of a clear-cut metaphysical assemblage (world-view), and I had none. And in the flungness of that confusion where everything is prophetic, my age-old nemesis, the Prophecy of Armageddon, reared its ugly head, forcing me to take some stand. I’ve been studying cultural tales of "the end of the world" since I learned to read, and as long as that future remains a possibility I have to stay sane enough to work towards a brighter future, regardless if the task is mine or if I have the power to change anything. Where there is fear, there is an opportunity for hope.

Recently I read Starhawk’s "The Fifth Sacred Thing," which is itself a prophetic vision of a future of total state control and a small but hopeful group of people who use magic and the joy of interconnectivity to overcome it (incidentally, though this book was recently published it fails to recognize the impact modern technology is already having on the direction of the future, something I feel any realistic prophecy or future-fiction needs to take into account; but that’s another story all-together). Although this story steers away from that of a nuclear apocalypse, it does raise several good points about the nature of prophecy, which while self-fulfilling is still an extension of our hopes and fears. And is thus intentionally directable. Starhawk’s characters talk often about keeping themselves in the "Good Reality," that head space of positive thinking where no matter what terrors you’re facing if you expect the Universe to respond with goodwill it will, and the smallest of positive events feeds back on itself and brings more positive events into being. Hope as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The inverse is obviously the "Bad Reality" where, like Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and will continue to do so in a spiral of disaster until death begins to look like a better option than waiting for whatever tragedy will happen next.

Of course in "real life" the karmic implications of this are much subtler and intertwined, and one person’s hopes and fears get expressed all mixed up with everyone else’s so it’s hard to tell just where one prophecy leaves off and the next begins. But every little bit helps, a single moment of joy shifts the whole tide of the subconscious just a bit in that direction. So now whenever I feel my imagination seduced by the fears of the dystopic nightmare and I start prophesying the apocalypse, I remind myself to stay in the "Good Reality" and go out and spread positive actions and ideas of hope in whatever small way I can.

the protocols are stacked against us

2005-03-13T03:13:00.000-05:00

A protocol is essentially an agreement over how to interact in a shared space, a set of rules for engagement that define and bound the interactions. But protocols don't work unless they are respected by all parties entering into the arangement. Our society is based on constantly shifting protocols that lay out how we should behave towards each other and towards/ within the larger social organizations, up to but not limited to the organizations of our whole culture, and the whole world, and the organizations of power that attempt to control the protocols for their own ends. The need to interact, and the need to set up codes for interacting may have always existed, but over time these rules have been bent to less allow us to interact in meaningful and mutually beneficial ways, and more to play out and fulfill age old political, economic, and religious dogmas that are rooted in conflict and concentration of power in the hands of a few. This is antithetical to our being connected, and though conflict is a part of connection, it is a part that attempts to lessen connection and make it not possible for people to connect on their own terms. Our present protocols are not designed to allow people to interact in the ways they want, but force them into prescribed roles which only serve to continue themselves and not allow for personal change in the system. The protocols of any free system would have to evolve from the needs and desires and interactions of all the agents in that system, not from the few who've held power of that for themselves.

But though our present system operates under such constraints we agents still maintain our essential freedom to connect as we see fit, and though it seems like we can not actually change the higher level protocols directly, these are built from the ground up, from our daily and personal rules for interaction. And these we still have our own power over. How do you interact with people when you pass them on the streets, when you have to have economic transactions with them in the stores, when you have to work with them and live with them, and share any space in this world with them? What protocols shape these small interactions? Social stigma, hatred and derision, greed and desire for power over others? Or instead the desire to break through the walls and actually interact as one human with another, to interact on that basic level of beings who are connected from the most direct fact of being here together. Why try and deny that? Why try and make that any harder than it already is? Smiling and saying hello are relatively easy, and offers the start of forming new connected relationships to the world around us. Relationships founded on respect and compassion.

Of course that assumes that people might want to form relationships of respect and compassion, or form relationships at all, and if they have been raised their whole lives on violence and hatred and conflict, what experiences do they have to encourage them to shape their interactions in any other way? I do not know if humans are essentially good, or if given the oppurtunity would more naturally tend towardss mutually beneficial relationships. But I do believe that despite how we might choose to interact with each otehr, we are all connected, even if just on the physical level of all being here on this planet together, and having to live up to that (or from that). And once that is recognized it becomes much harder to ignore your fellow humans and attempt to push them away. There's nowhere left for them to go, and our reality is most intimately shaped by us all being in it together that killing can no longer be an option. That's why it's important to treat everything and everyone, especially those who don't or refuse to see it, in a manner that reaffirms that we indeed are all connected. And even if that oppurtunity for connection is rejected by the otehr at the time, it creates a space for it to come back later, in one form or another.

***

Connection is love. Interaction is intimacy, the merging of two into one across all the levels. Every touch, every word, every glance, every thought serves to unify us with the compassionate force of that essential love, but each also carries the seeds of destruction, of conflict. For love and death, beauty and pain, always walk hand and hand, and all instances that speak of connection also whisper of the conflicting struggle that comes before unity and the rending that comes when things begin to fall apart again. The act of love itself can be the most joyous and direct form of connection, from the most physical level up, but at the same time this act serves as a painful reminder of the transcience of such connections. What wonder and what agony it precludes, and reveals in its awakening like a flower unfurling.

Every act is an act of love, perhaps not on the grossest level, but every interaction we have with the world is intimate and connects us deeper within it. And we have the choice to address that as we see fit can either accept it and give ourselves up to this connection and merging, or reject it and in so doing hold ourselves back from the world in fear that we will either lose our precious egos or die. But that choice is always ours...

the emergence of authentic experience

2005-03-13T02:07:00.000-05:00

from Gary Zukav's "The Seat of the Soul":

"Each of us is now being drawn, in one way or another, to that same great vision. It is more than a vision. It is an emerging force. It is the next step in our evolutionary journey. Humanity, the human species, is longing now to touch that force, to shed what interferes with clear contact. Much of the difficulty in doing this lies in the fact that the vocabulary with which to address this new force is not yet born.

In this moment and in this hour of human evolution this proper vocabulary and means of addressing that which longs to transcend religiosity and spirituality and assume the position of authentic power is longing to be born. We need to give that which we as a species is touching for the first time a vocabulary that is not clouded so that it can be identified clearly in the acts and judegments of the human race, so that it can be seen clearly, and not through veils of mystery or mysticism, but simply as the authentic power that moves the force fields of this Earth of ours.

Who among us is an expert on the human experience? We have only the gift of sharing perceptions that hopefully can help those on their journey. There is no such thing as an epert on the human experience. The human experience is an experience in movement and thought and form, and, in some cases, an experiment in movement and thought and form. The most we can do is comment on the movement, the thought and the form, but those commetns are of great value if they can help people to learn to move gracefully, to think clearly, to form - like artists - the matter of their lives."

to be gendered, or not to be gendered?

2005-03-11T16:26:00.000-05:00

Though neither of these blogs are relatively new I thought it would be fitting to mention them here, as they both seem to have a lot of promise. Every Woman is a Goddess and Everyday Avatar both offer a celebration and critique of what it is to be a modern woman and man (respectively), an addressing of gender roles that often go unnoticed in our culture and times. Gender is a big issue, we all have one (or at least one), and culture has too many customs and stereotypes for what that should mean. And beyond that we each have our own take on the subject, because we live in an age where everything is up for debate and personal rediscovery, including the roles we choose to play. Just ask a tranny or cross-gendered being, and they will tell you that the definitions of "male" and "female" are too confined and oversimplified to let them express themselves as they feel. (and where's the transgendered site in the blogosphere?) Many of my friends are androgyn, post-gender, etc, or if they do identify as male or female it is certainly not in any of the traditional ways those roles are picked up and played out. I usually identify as male, but not in the stereotypes of either macho man or weakling, chauvinist or nice guy. There are too many shades in between, and none of them really seem to fit my own personal approach to gender. Maybe I don't even want to approach gender (as it creates yet another devide between humans, like race and class), or just don't think about it enough for it to be an issue.

Either way it's good to see at least a few people willing to address this rationaly. I've seen too many groups go about it all wrong. I remember back to my punk days, when the local anarchist collective would meet and talk for hours on end about sexual abuse and gender roles in our community, which would usually just end up in an enraged round of fingerpointing and name calling. The womyn' group would meet and form witch hunts to oust any guy they suspected of showing any sign of stereotypical male behaviour which might lead them to treat womyn poorly, and the men's group would meet and sit around apologizing to each other for having penises that could lead them to do evil things. Really, how ridiculous; I stopped going after a few meetings, finding the whole thing just a bit too sad and laughable for my tastes. But that's anarchists for you. Currently I live in a community where most of the people are open and honest enough about their feelings and intentions that this kind of thing isn't necessary, and when people do meet to talk about gender it is to talk of how those roles get played out in our lives and in culture, to try and figure out just a little bit more what it means to be gendered.

a play on theory and practice

2005-03-10T04:25:00.000-05:00

in which the fool archetype is invoked, and a funhouse mirror is held up to a surprisingly contraversial issue.

Reality "is" chaos. Reality is unfathomable and we are drowning in its depths. Reality can not be explained, only lived, as best as we can. It doesn’t matter how we try to describe it, because as soon as we do it is just another theory attempting to explain away the essential confoundedness of the issue. What does it matter that all of human history has been an attempt to explain just what the fuck we are and what this is and what we are doing here? We are no closer to understanding, Science is proving Mystery, and all those metaphysical tracts might as well be burned to stave off the dark night that still surrounds us, as it did at the dawn of time when our ancestors sat in fear of what might lie hungry in the dark. Is-ism died of overuse, theory as "explanation" is only a maggot feeding off its rotting corpse. Reality is no longer a debatable issue, if it ever was, we are here living it no matter what we choose to believe. And that brings us to the question, how to live it? Which is precisely the point where theory as practice comes in, theory not as explanation but as technique in action.

If reality is a sea of chaos, theory is a net woven in hopes of catching the fish of understanding in that sea. Practice is the act of fishing itself. Without theory, the fish are too slippery to grab by hand, it helps to have some sort of precise tool for the task. Without practice, the nets goes empty, or just hang on the wall to be admired while our guests go hungry. To live in a chaotic world we need some framework for understanding it in order to practically act in it. There’s no quibbling about that. Everything we think and do is a frame for our experiences that (often subconsciously) allow us to make use of our experiences in some practical way. Eating is a theory that if we feel hunger we should satisfy that or die. It doesn’t help to say "Oh, I’m hungry, I should eat," and then go on to theorize about all the implications eating has, and it has many if you want to go there, but not actually eat. It helps even less to feel a gnawing in the stomach and have no clue what that might mean. Hitting yourself doesn’t really do the trick, but luckily most of us are raised with the idea that eating does. As well as with other various theories which allow us at least a little bit of control in our actions and the world: theories of language for communicating, the use of tools to accomplish simple tasks, various social, ethical, and cultural theories for interacting with others, etc, etc… And of course the models for interpreting the chaos of signals we are bombarded with into a workable picture of reality. But the models don’t come into play until they are being used, or perhaps they are always in play, a dynamic part of the process of acting. The medium becomes the message, the theory becomes the practice, everything we do follows as an extension of our intent at living. All that’s left is the approach to what attracts us. I am hungry, so I eat; I want to talk, so I write a letter; I want to rummage in and rearrange the very depths of the collective subconscious, so I meditate and cast a few spells.

When we start looking at the deeper interpretations, the more mystical sublevels of reality, all the muggle theories start to wear thin. How can we act in a world full of synchronicities, non-linear time, and fractal mappings that transcend normalized belief-systems without a cohesive technique of how to do so? If everything we do has effects on everything else to the level we choose to interpret it, if Above is indeed Below and the whole universe is an extension of the will, how can we apply that (not to mention to what ends) or even just make enough sense out of it to stay sane and alive? Magic(k) offers such an approach, and it certainly seems to work (most of the time), but no one seems to know exactly how; even when causing such a simple change in accordance with your will as finding your next meal. There are as many theories as there are practicing sorcerers, or people, if not more. Everyone is a star and every star wants to shine. The world is full of ideas, suggestions and heuristics for doing one thing or another, all bouncing around and conflicting and claiming to be the best, most True theory for that thing. And we each receive (and transmit) just a handful of them, so it’s hard to know just what to do or how to frame our intents and realities, so that they will really work. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we call the working parts of the theory, as long as it works and we know we’re referring to the same thing. With all the historic obfuscations in this field, for whatever reason, and the recent emergence of access to the multitude of theories via the Net, which deconstructs all previous temporality and context, it’s no wonder no one can agree on just what to believe or do.

Everything is true, everything is permitted, ideology crumbles in on itself and the magician as the juggler picks up the pieces of whatever reality-tunnel works from this post-post-modern mess and tries keeping them in the air for a while. Or until out of curiosity we pick up something else, or try something all together different, perhaps more suited to the task or to our sensibilities. Any good theorist knows that the game can change, and we have to keep our practices open enough to adapt to whatever is needed at the time. But beyond that it’s just up to taste. Between theory and praxis is an aesthetic dimension of the approach, the manner in which we choose to enact our intentions, certain words and images and feelings that evoke for us (and for others) the particular fulfillment of our own individual interpretation of living. Personalized rituals, designer godforms, magick with style; whether classical pagan or neomancer, whatever floats your cybernetic boat across the abyss of space-time. Maybe will cross trade-routes and swap a few fun sigils sometime. And if it’s your thing to cause waves to capsize the rest of us, then that’s your thing too. I won’t go into the whole ethical component here, but watch you’re back, cause it’ll get soaked once your wavefront crashes. [This comment directed at ideas not people, especially those whoring for that beast western corporatism, or any paradigm promoting conflict and control: Life wants to have fun, stop fucking it up for the rest of us!] It’s not my reality if we can’t all enjoy it together.

(inspired by Eris, Hakim Bey, and the fine folkses at Key23)

the shaman as signpost

2005-03-09T16:46:00.000-05:00

This was written in response to a recent post on Vortex Egg in which metachor mentions the students he substitute teaches asking him if "magic" really exists. In order to not put himself in potential trouble with the rigidity of social intstitutions he told them it did, but that they would have to look for more info themselves. Here's my take on it:

One off the attributes of the shaman is that while they have access to occluded information and present an available outlet for others to gain access to it, they do not do so by "standing in the middle of road" (as Casteneda puts it), waving a big signboard that says "Secrets of the universe... Free!"

Being on the edge means staying in the shadows, dropping tantalizing hints and subliminal sugestions but not explicitly revealing sources to those who seek for them. A shaman's power is precisely that he controls (or cozens with) forces that others do not. If everyone had such access the shaman would cease to exist, except as a redundant figurehead to a time when information was still a costly and dangerous trade.

Which isn't to say that occult knowledge shouldn't be widely available, but that's what the Net is for for the modern shaman. As someone in the precarious position of power and responsibility your choice of telling these young aspirants that magic is real and that they should search for themselves is perhaps not only the safest bet (to cover your own tracks and tail) but jives with the idea of magical initiation. It is the searching for hidden knowledge that opens the mind to it just as much as the knoweldge itself. If a magical world view was just handed to us, we probably wouldn't recognize it (or want it), but by longing for and searching for it we set ourselves up to recieve it in its full import.

Rumi talks of a man possessed by longing for spiritual enlightenment who wanders out into the desert and falls to his knees crying in prayer. The angels are shocked and ask God why he does not answer the prayers since God is the only thing the man has left to depend on. God responds saying that if he fulfilled that need the man would go back to whatever idle amusements attracted him, but that the passion of his longing is enlightenment itself.

Your student's desire to discover a world of real magick is perhaps the surest sign that they will do so, and on their own if need-be. The shaman's role in that is to mirror that desire and reflect it back in the direction of the right trail to follow, or in the direction that there arre trails to follow if you have the courage and clarity to find them.

a springtime that does not yet exist

2005-03-08T22:33:00.000-05:00

Stayed up all night, not out of the usual restlessness, but with the explicit intention of using the hyperliminal state fosterd by sleep deprivation to dive a little deeper into the subconscious and put a couple ideas into practice that I have been working on recently. After reading this article on practical magical rituals I decided the best way (or at least an effective way) to go about this would be to create a sigil of my intention and let it work subconsciously to get around my metanoia. So around dawn I smudged a circle and did some elemental yoga to center myself, and then corpse to relax and sink down through the locked flilters of my sleeping mind to the place where nothing is waht it seems and everything is much more meaningful. There I formulated the intention of attempting to emanitize the Spring, by becoming an avatar of its qualities of rebirth, new growth, bountiful love, revolution. The microcosm is the macrocosm, so by being the change I already want to find in myself, the total self-revolution of consciousness, the sesons will turn onwards too (and we can finally have some warm days around here).

Then I drew the sigil and meditated on it in the flame of a candle till I tranced, and then trancended. And then I had breakfast and started my day as if I always was up with the sun, with the sigil lurking around the back of my mind. Around eleven when I realized my focus was utterly shot I passsed out and had some dreams at a much deeper level then any I've had in a long time. I won't go int othe details, but I do recalling showing myself the sigil in the mirror, so it sunk in at least that far, planted like a seed or a timebomb, an exploding flower of potential.

When I woke up it felt like I was starting the day over again as I normally would, but with this other layer of the first waking beneath it, so I couldn't tell if I was actually still asleep. And then with the subconscious open and available for pilfering... I wrote.

Can I talk about Spring now, or is it still too early with the snow falling and the cold not yet gone? Springtime is for lovers and revolutionaries, newborn plants and mother earth and the rebirth of the dying god. Isis dragging Osiris across a frozen nordic tundra, a wrong turn on the journey from shadows to sunlight. Runic interpretation of the word paints spring as this longd for hero's journey of rebirth, and all things follow that tale as the season's turn. The plants, the sun, the animals and us, everything is coming out again, being reborn from the thawing womb of the earth. A metaphysics of archetypal identification, we are the dying god, we are the hero, we are avatars of spring, symptoms of nature springing back up, Perspehone dragging herself by her coattails out of the frozen winters of Hades. If we are thus inflicted with springness what's to say we can not act on that, as if spring were already here ad light and love and sense of radical play we bear forth might bootstrap Spring along with it. As Above, so Below, wherever we spin so the Heavens go.

And what of all the assumptions and taboos that we must break for this to be so? That we are incapable of moving the world, that we are small adn follow blindly after the bigger patterns like flotsam in a tsunami, that we are not each a god capable of enacting our will upon the entire Universe, these beliefs and reality tunnels must die or be cleverly sidestepped. Somewhere deep inside I am sabotaging my own divinity, pulling down my internal temples and screaming that my will to power as a false idol. It is, no graven image can ever represent the true nature of existence, but the symbols are all we have to work with, and the manipulation of he profane int othe sacred the only process left t ogive meaning to the essential chaos of our experiences. It's not my reality if I can't be in its center... if I can't feel... If I can't dance? That phrase probably needs some editing to be really potently meaningful, so Emma Goldman won't roll in her grave; most things I say need editing, but they come out as they will or not at all. Any control otherwise is an illusion, we can only steer ourselves across the depths, not driect the flow of the waves. But my vessel can be tricked out to the max, a full bar and pool table, lounge chairs, fully ergonomic mind controls, a time travel module built into the rudder. This is boating in style, a cybernetic cruise ship sailing from port to import in the chaoseas of existence, stopping occasional to pick up a couple passengers for a wild party where we all get drunk and loose ourselves and howl at the moon, while the surround sound systeem pumps out waves of the latest technorganic dance mix. Give me a couple days and I'll rig this beauty with Icarus's wings and we'll sail to the stars.

I mentioned taboos, taboos! This reawaknening of spring is not a rebirth of the old, but a total transformation of life into full realization. No more hiding, no more restraints, only pure unbridled joy and growth. I want to see the sunflowers forget how tall they onc grew, and kiss the clouds; I want to see people forget the boundaries of law and reality and spill into the streets and each other, an orgy of revolutionary potential. I want to see the old gods torn down and a pedestal built to each one of us in everyone's heart. The total worship of reality, the perfect hymn to becoming. I want to see all beings alive with longing for each other, the external suraces of things attracted into temporary erogneous zones, the perfect medium for expressing the light and love that hides inside. I want to touch and be touched by everything at once, to sing gloriously from rooftops and soulfully from streetcorners. I want the sun to shine as if it knew it might be the last time it did so, and us to feel its warmth as if we knew it too. I want... too many things to name, they bubble up in me like sweet wine. To open up to just one desire is to open up to the desires of the whole world, impossible to cork back up; they flow and flow till we are drowning in it. Drowning in desire, so drink deep, this may be the last day left to enjoy it. The world already ended, time died shortly after God, when Chaos was reborn, and this can only make our every action as meaningful as the lasst action we will ever do. If there's another, what a blessed surprise, a bonus gift from the Universe to you. Enjoy it, and enjoy it; it would be an utter waste of a good moment to do otherwise. This is a springtime that does not yet exist, planted deep in our hearts. Like any plant it needs warmth, water,and fertile ground; light, live, and life to sprout and grow. And when it does, it will bloom into a flower of such beauty that all who see it will weep for joy. An ephemeral blossom who's form is always dying, but once sown will bloom again and again, spreading its petals till they brush the ends of space.

ludens et arcanum

2005-03-07T15:31:00.000-05:00

"Sorcery

THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Those who refuse out of dry spiritual greed & choose pure contemplation forfeit their humanity--those who refuse out of dull anguish, those who hesitate, lose their chance at divinity--those who mold themselves blind masks of Ideas & thrash around seeking some proof of their own solidity end by seeing out of dead men's eyes.

Sorcery: the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary awareness & its deployment in the world of deeds & objects to bring about desired results.

The incremental openings of perception gradually banish the false selves, our cacophonous ghosts--the "black magic" of envy & vendetta backfires because Desire cannot be forced. Where our knowledge of beauty harmonizes with the ludus naturae, sorcery begins.

No, not spoon-bending or horoscopy, not the Golden Dawn or make-believe shamanism, astral projection or the Satanic Mass--if it's mumbo jumbo you want go for the real stuff, banking, politics, social science--not that weak blavatskian crap.

Sorcery works at creating around itself a psychic/physical space or openings into a space of untrammeled expression-- the metamorphosis of quotidian place into angelic sphere. This involves the manipulation of symbols (which are also things) & of people (who are also symbolic)--the archetypes supply a vocabulary for this process & therefore are treated as if they were both real & unreal, like words. Imaginal Yoga.

The sorcerer is a Simple Realist: the world is real--but then so must consciousness be real since its effects are so tangible. The dullard finds even wine tasteless but the sorcerer can be intoxicated by the mere sight of water. Quality of perception defines the world of intoxication--but to sustain it & expand it to include others demands activity of a certain kind--sorcery. Sorcery breaks no law of nature because there is no Natural Law, only the spontaneity of natura naturans, the tao. Sorcery violates laws which seek to chain this flow-- priests, kings, hierophants, mystics, scientists & shopkeepers all brand the sorcerer enemy for threatening the power of their charade, the tensile strength of their illusory web.

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.

Incense & crystal, dagger & sword, wand, robes, rum, cigars, candles, herbs like dried dreams--the virgin boy staring into a bowl of ink--wine & ganja, meat, yantras & gestures-- rituals of pleasure, the garden of houris & sakis--the sorcerer climbs these snakes & ladders to a moment which is fully saturated with its own color, where mountains are mountains & trees are trees, where the body becomes all time, the beloved all space.

The tactics of ontological anarchism are rooted in this secret Art--the goals of ontological anarchism appear in its flowering. Chaos hexes its enemies & rewards its devotees...this strange yellowing pamphlet, pseudonymous & dust-stained, reveals all...send away for one split second of eternity. "

from Hakim Bey's Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism

if only it weren't a joke...

2005-03-06T18:30:00.000-05:00

A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, DC, came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this traffic seems worse than usual." He noticed a police officer walking between the lines
of stopped cars so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the holdup?"

The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the worsening deficit and economy, or that his tax and the privatization of Social Security cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends. So we're taking up a collection for him."

The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"

The officer replies, "About four gallons."

crumbling corporations

2005-03-05T17:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, that's the drawing for the last article for Konton, on combatting corporate egregores (and my favorite article from the batch, I'm so looking forward to this next issue coming out, though I guess that won't be till after the equinox). I feel like maybe I should send this off to Adbusters as well, it's just the type of thing they'd print.

Anyway, here's a link to a larger version of the picture so the print is more legible.

a zero sum game

2005-03-03T19:02:00.000-05:00

Here's the illustration for the article on karma for Konton, which talks about it in number theory type terms, which I thought made a neat illustration as a collapsing wavefront.

which way's north?

2005-03-03T05:14:00.000-05:00

Computer Models predict Magnetic pole reversal in Earth and Sun can bring end to human civilization in 2012.

"According to some computer scientists working together with a group geophysicists and astrophysicists, Earth and Sun both will go through a process of Magnetic Pole Reversal in 2012. This last happened millions of years back when the Dinosaurs disappeared. A private research and analysis company in Hyderabad is predicting a major upheaval in 2012.

Magnetic Pole reversal is a process when North Pole and South Pole reverse positions. When this happens, at some point of time Earth's magnetic field reaches zero Gauss which simply means, Earth at that point of time has zero magnetism. When this coincides with a eleven year cycle of Sun's Polar reversal, a major problem arises. "

via the india daily

visions of the technorganic

2005-03-03T02:00:00.000-05:00

Earlier while catching up on a few blogs I stumbled upon the artwork of Richard Marchand via ollapodrida, and I have to say this man's work is awesome. His decaying cyborgs and wooden machines give me the chills, these are the technorganic aesthetic realms I see in my dreams. I haven't been so touched by someone's work since I saw Lee Bontecou's insectoid galaxies at the Carnegie International exhibit in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately she does not have such a stunning and comprehensive web presence, but Google kindly compiled an image search of some of her more recent works.

one for the memory hole

2005-03-03T01:20:00.000-05:00

This is an illustration for an article on manufacturing memories that will appear in the next issue of Konton magazine. Of course, it isn't my article, so I can't post it here, but the idea of recreating ourselves and changing our futures by fabricating our perceptions of the "past" has come up in many of the recent posts on time magick on Key23.

If you can't read the fine print, here's a link to a larger version of the image.

Stay tuned, as I am also illustrating articles on karma and on combating corporate egregores, and will post them as soon as they are drawn.

was hunter s. thompson deep throat?

2005-03-02T16:43:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting theory going round the Net (found via technoccult) that the late Hunter S. Thompson may have been the infamous and unknown Deep Throat known for leaking the info that lead to the watergate scandel that dethroned Nixon. As a kid I remember learning about watergate and though the case was never solved as to who Deep Throat was, history was told as if we never would know. What happened had happened. But now what if it turns out the informant was the zany drug-addled reporter and pop-culture icon? What an ironic twist of fate, and as the article states, poetic justice of the most extreme sense.

If this does not prove to be true, that almost doesn't matter, because it makes a good story. Most history has been written and rewritten from the winner's perspective so that nothing we know about the past may actually be what happened. And if recent theories on the nature of time prove correct, any number of things could have happened, and the only thing that makes one past more real then another is our memories of them. And memories are pliable and for the most part fabricated from our present expectations. So whatever we now believe to have been true, in effect is true. Even if Thompson wasn't Deep Throat, if enough people believe that then it will be recorded as what happened, and the great writer's legacy will only be made that much greater.

lyric poems of yunus emre

2005-03-02T14:23:00.000-05:00

Lyric poems of Yunus Emre

Yunus Emre (d. 1320?), called "the greatest folk poet in Islam" (Talat Sait Halman), was an unlettered Turkish shepherd who sang mystical songs which are still popular today. He was the first of a whole tradition of Turkish Sufi troubadors who sang of the Divine Presence, the Beloved, the Friend. His songs/poems convey a profound yet earthy spirituality. His subject is the Heart, the point of awareness where God is realized in us. "I've come to build some hearts," Yunus sings.

To be in love with love with love is to gain a soul,
to sit on the throne of hearts.

To love the world is to be afflicted.
Later the secrets start to make sense.

Don't be bramble,
become the rose. Let your maturity unfold.
The brambles will only burn.

Prayer was created by God so man could ask for help.
It's too bad if you haven't learned to ask.

Accept the breath of those who are mature-
let it become your divining rod.
If you obey your self, things turn our wrong.

Renouncing the world is the beginning of worship.
If you are a believer, believe this.

Respect your parents and ancestry,
and you will have fine green clothes of your own.

If you earn the complaints of neighbors,
You'll stay in Hell forever.

Yunus heard these words from the masters.
If you need this advice, take it.

They say one who is received by heart
becomes more beautiful.

Emre's poetry reminds me of the great Sufi poet Rumi, who also wrote about the personal realization of godhood. The two poets appearently crossed paths at some point in their lives and had an amusing conversation about the subject. The story goes like this: One day Rumi and Yunus Emre met. They had an intimate and very pleasant conversation where Rumi told Yunus of all he had done, reciting to both their delight some of his sublime verse. Yunus Emre was very grateful and highly pleased, but a doubt of personal ability to achieve the same came over him in his utter humility. He remarked aloud: "How true, how lovely; but what a lot of words you have used to say such a simple thing. I could never have done it." Rumi asked him: "How would you have said it?" Yunus Emre, who was what may be called a 'Folk Poet', replied in a couplet:

I wrapped myself in flesh and bones And appeared as Yunus.

(Ete kemige burundum Yunus deyu gorundum)

What is meant then, is that you as a separate reality do not realise, understand or know anything, or, to tell the truth, exist as such.

via ollapodrida

on being pulled

2005-02-26T16:23:00.000-05:00

On Being Pulled (Gravity and Intention)
notes from the digger’s manual 2 –20 –05

All beings have weight. If you throw them in the water they will cause waves. All beings have gravity, but this doesn’t just mean they fall down a lot. They each exert a field of attraction on every being, a subtle pull that influences and is influenced by the pull of every other thing. The earth pulls us to it, the moon pulls the tides and our blood, the stars pull each other and hold it all together. We are stars too, centers of our own web of attractions, and what strange attractors indeed. We are attracted through us the influence of all that crosses our attention, consciously or not, and change our relationship to the entire world in every moment. Imagine a cluster of spheres attached to each other by strings; move one and it readjusts the tension between all the rest. Our muscular system works the same way, in tensile integrity that continually keeps the system in balance (tensegrity, made known by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes). The whole universe is balanced in this tension, a great nexus of affect and reciprocation. Nothing is not involved, nothing is not affected, even our atoms "know" when another moves on the other side of the world, because they all move. They are all one medium, waves in the sea of particles that make us up, and it is only our attention to the particular waves of influence that separates them into distinct beings. Attention is etymologically to be stretched away from something, to be made more tensed, to be apart from what we attract and are attracted to. Knowing is being affected, interpreting the tensions into separate things in whatever degree one can be aware of their distinct level of detail. In this sense a rock knows something about falling into Earth’s pull, if not much else. Earth itself knows what it’s like to attract countless beings to its surface and about circling the sun. We exist as nodes in this web of mutual attraction, interfaces in Indra’s network, not reflecting all the other reflections but influencing all the other influences, or interpreting all the other interpretations.

Though it is all one flow of pull, it appears to us local attractors as two separate movements. We receive the pull on us, interpreting the incoming tensions, and create a pull on the universe, extending our influence outwards. The yin and yang states of intention and extension, everything stretching into us and back out into the universe; like breathing, but on a cosmic level and with all your senses. In passing through us this flow of tensions changes us, and we change the flow, readjusting the tensegrity of all the other centers of attraction. And like breathing, we can exercise some amount of control over how we let that flow pass through us. Like Kybernos, we cybernetically steer ourselves on the waves of this chaotic sea of influence. Any object, event, or idea can be treated as an external center of attraction, a star around which we spin like planets or particles, and the tensions we channel are limited to their particular sphere of attraction, and influence. We are always doing this as particular things are always passing through our attention, and we are always reinterpreting ourselves in relation to each one, even if it’s so subtle we do not know it consciously. A loud aggressive man enters the room, your stance (and the stance of everyone else present) changes in relation to their particular gravity.

Once something has attracted our attention we react to it, either by being attracted closer, or being repelled away, which in itself is a kind of attraction. In being influenced we are moved in relation; this is intention, not some desire towards an abstract goal state, but the process which is the action itself. As Castaneda put it, "There is no technique for intending, one intends through usage." we let ourselves become involved and fall into the things which attract us. Heidegger uses the example of intending to open a door by using the doorknob. In order to break from the subject/ object dichotomy he states that our intention is not towards "using" the doorknob itself, but in being drawn through the door. The doorknob itself is only an extension, a part of the world taken as part of ourselves to stretch out our reach of what we can most directly influence.

Though we do effect everything, it has a more localized limit in which the effects are strongest, like Earth’s gravity well or a blackhole’s event horizon. It’s likely there is a massive blackhole in the center of each galaxy, keeping the stars in tight. This is the extent or domain to which we can reach, the bounds of our sphere of influence. If you stretch out your arms you can reach further, if you hold out a stick you can reach further still. If you whisper only those close by can hear you, if you use the internet people all over the world can. Technology has become a quest for more precise ways to extend our interactions with our environments. All mediums become an extension of our intent, moving us further towards our attractions, depending on what we use to move in what manner. Metachor and I were bowling, and I mused that if the bowling ball extends our intention to knock down the pins, then the pins themselves were part of that intent to bowl. They are not separate from us however, but become part of us as an extension of our intention towards playing, just as we become extensions of someone else’s intension to tell us something. Language is a tool after all. Intention stretches out of us as attraction on the universe, realigning tensions of everything in its reach. What happens then if we were to consider the wholes Universe as an extensions of ourselves, as we have attention and intention for? If we were to catch the right grooves, letting the influence of the stars move through us, could we not in turn influence their spin, or everything else for that matter? Are we not heavenly bodies too, with the whole weight of the cosmos coursing through our backs?

Magic works on the principle that we can cause change to happen in accordance with our will, that we have some element of skill over the attentions and extensions we work our intentions through. Magic is writing a letter, or casting a spell, whatever means work best to fill the specific intention, regardless of whether that means seems possible in terms of a normalized view of cause and affect. Sometimes, the more impossible, the better; the mage is also a juggler, and people go to the circus to be amazed. Magic often draws on influences so subtle and attractors so arcane as to be unbelievable, but it works because these things are all connected, intent flows through them all and moves them in accordance with each other. But whose intent? Certainly not that of a single person. Our movements are cast on the whole web of movements, and everything we do through the force of that power carries the whole weight of the universe around us. No intention is not part of the intention of all beings. We are an extension of the Universe just as much as it is an extension of us, in relation to where we set the limits of our intentions. Except that we are only distended from life when we are dead, its pull never really loses us. If we choose to be single beings acting with the intentions of single beings then our reach and power is only that which we can muster ourselves. But if we act within the intentions of others then the power has a much greater pull, and control is extended that much further. Unfortunately this force can be disastrous if not intended towards the greater good, as can be seen right now in humanity’s treatment of the planet and each other. In the spin of the universe, things sometimes die violently, and our case may not be such a tragic thing. But if we act with the intentions of the universe, with the intentions of all beings, then our reach and power and aim includes all of them. And we all get to dance together, and be content.

story of the seven sisters

2005-02-25T18:48:00.000-05:00

technoccult jsut published a story I wrote, entitled The Story of the Seven Sisters as the first story in their friday fiction series. Which is the first thing I've had published, even if only digitaly. The story itself is a myth told within the novel I just wrote, and am currently looking for publishers for. I started looking at publishers the other day and decided my first choice will be the children's division of Harpercollins. I figure might as well submit to a big name publisher first. now to get it finished...

miller on writing

2005-02-23T18:31:00.000-05:00

"To write, I meditated, must be an act devoid of will. The word, like the deep ocean current, has to float to the surface of its own impulse...

No man ever puts down what he intends to say: the original creation, which is taking place all the time, whether one writes or doesn't write, belongs to the primal flux: it has no dimensions, no form, no time element. In this preliminary state, which is creation and not birth, what dissapears suffers no destruction; something which was already there, something imperishable, like memory, or matter, or God, is summoned and in it one flings himself like a twig in a torrent. Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible. In an intellegently ordered world ther would be no need to make the unreasonable attempt of putting such miraculous happenings down. Indeed, it would make no sense, for if men only stopped to realize it, who would be content with the counterfeit when the real is at everyone's beck and call? Who would want to switch in and listen to Beethoven, for example, when he might himself experience the ecstatic harmonies which Beethoven strove to register? A great work of art, if anything, serves to remind us, or at let us say to set us dreaming, of all that is fluid and intangible. Which is to say, the universe. It canot be understood; it can only be accepted or rejected... Whatever it purports to be it is not: it is always something more for which the last word will never be said. It is all that we put into it out of hunger for that which we deny every day of our lives. If we accepted ourselves as completely, the work of art, in fact the whole world of art would die of malnutrition... The art of dreaming will be in the power of every man one day. Long before that books will cease to exist, for when men are wide awake anddreaming their powers of communication (with one another and with the spirit that moves all men) will be so enhanced as to make writing seem like the harsh and raucous sqwauwks of an idiot."

-Henry Miller, from Sexus

a scanner darkly and other strange tales

2005-02-23T00:43:00.000-05:00

Stumbled upon this preview for the movie version of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly through the blogosphere. It looks fascinating, not only because Dick was one of the most brilliant scifi writiers of our time, but also because it is directed by Richard Linklater, who directed Waking Life, which is inarguably one of my favorite movies ever. It changed my life when I needed it in just the right way, and its visual style of animated film cutups is more appealing to me than any other film style. And A Scanner Darkly appears to be animated over in the same way. This leaves me tingling with excitement.

In other news, a star three times bigger than our sun decided to high tail it out of our galaxy, at a speed of something like a hundred and fifty million miles an hour. I read it in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this morning but I couldn't find any good articles about it online, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

We also got our copy of the latest issue of Adbusters, which is one of the best issues so far, because besides their regular denunciations of the corporate spectacle, including articles on brand logo tatoos and designer vaginas, a good bit of the issue was spent focused on issues of a more metaphysical and futurist bent, including an article they posted online about art and spirituality.

And a big old RIP for Hunter S. Thompson, a man who truly went over the edge.

On Lucid Living

2005-02-21T01:36:00.000-05:00

On Lucid Living
Notes from the Digger's Manual... 1-16-04

Reality is whatever we make of it, our perceptions are shaped by the ways we approach the world and the filters we use to see the world through. Quantum physics points to innumerable different views on what the underlying reality could be, whether as shaped by our perceptions, an infinity of possible worlds, as a hologram, or colliding waves of energy. Any or all of these views could (or not) be correct in describing reality as we can know it, and may all just be different methods of interpreting the patterns we discover in the world. In this sense, anything we can imagine can be possible, as long as we develop the filters to perceive the world in a certain way. This means reforging the connections between our senses in order to perceive the subtle aspects of reality. We are raised and trained to perceive the world from certain points of view that fit together in the consensual reality, that is, our senses remain isolated from each other and we remain oblivious to patterns of energy and events that point to some higher-level structures in the organization and movements of the world.

However, we humans have the ability to imagine different realities and do so each time we create subjunctive worlds in order to prophecy our futures. These alternate realities can be simple or wild as our imaginations, and as possible as the amount of energy required to bridge the state differences. This ability to create our worlds can be turned inward to posit realities in which we can gather quite different information with our senses, These worlds are quite possible, to the extent that we can put energy into forming and maintaining perspectives which surpass those we typically use to interpret and perceive reality.

For instance we see the claims of mystics who throughout time have been able to perceive the subtle forces of energy which flow through (are) everything. Or being able to understand the synchronistic and dreamlike nonlinear causality of events and actions. In order to perceive these interpretations of reality one must create visual and mental representations through which to perceive these worlds, and constantly practice to perceive and maintain these views of the world. One has to be mindful of reality-shifting for it to occur. Luckily the resonant nature of the Universe plays in to this, for the more you look through one filter, the more the world will appear that way. But one has to look in the first place, and complacency and normalcy are just as resonant patterns if that is how one chooses to perceive the world.

Of course, It is often not enough just to practice visually representing alternate views of reality, for the bonds of our senses and connections are strong and must be cut through to truly view the world in new ways. Often severing and reforging tools are needed to restructure our minds in a way which allows the mental abstractions of alternate realities to become true perceptions rooted in the paths of our brains. Such tools would need to place the agent in vastly different positions in regards to the world so we can learn to bridge the gaps between the two in our everyday living. Usual tools for doing this include meditation and entheogenic (literally 'the birth of the divine within') drug experiences that allow us to actually 'see the light' behind the pure being of reality.

Such experiences can only work to reshape our perceptions if practiced regularly and approached with pure intentions. Thus these practices can act as gates or paths to reshape our worlds, but only if well-oiled/kept and approached with clear goals of states to move towards. One must remember that there is no absolute true reality behind the veils of Maya, but an infinity of interpretations which extend beyond our everyday sensations, so one must establish how one wishes to perceive the world before it can be perceived in that way (or in any other way than the 'normal' way). Gradually the gap between how one perceives the world and how one wants of perceive the world is closed until there is no difference between the two, and connections are formed to hold these views together.

Certainly, the human ability to forget, and the need to remember to remember play a large role in reshaping our world views. It is easy for us to forget what we strive to learn, and without constant maintenance the paths can become overgrown or lost, whether through intentional acts of suppression or pure slippage between our thoughts. We must be vigilant, or whatever we have put towards a connection will fade back into our everyday realities and perceptions. This is why such practices as meditation are important in keeping us on the right track.

The entheogenic experience is great for fast shifts in our connections, allowing us more immediate understanding of other realities, but the intensity of these experiences is counterbalanced by the speed with which they fade from our thoughts if we do not constantly practice in maintaining the visions we are shown. In this sense, drugs can break down walls and burn bridges, but without the continual mindfulness of meditation to build new paths we will just reconstruct our old ways of being again, as best we can. We must remember to remember the differences between the states in order not to fall back into our old patterns of living.

Though the practice of meditation allows us to build up new connections to how we perceive the world, we are always forgetting and therefore must constantly remember to remember in every moment. mindfulness of our being and becoming must be held in our every act and breath in order to not backslide into the sleep of the mundane. We must take care to always be waking up throughout everything we do and experience. We must truly be in each moment as it is and could be all the time. This is lucid living, the constant realization that life is a dream from which we can always be waking up. This practice keeps us on our way and completely transforms reality through how we approach it.

Of course, remembering to remember is the easiest thing to forget, as it requires complete focus of will and intention in each moment. However, the energy required to do so is in all of us naturally, making this approach an extreme possibility if it is constantly kept in mind. This is hard to do though, and requires a lifetime(s) of practice, patience, and perseverance to maintain and uphold. Nothing less than complete mindfulness will allow us to be in the world in this way. This is where the continuation of such practices as meditation and entheogenics becomes important in strengthening our will towards lucidity, either in our everyday lives or/and in short circuiting us towards higher levels of awareness to work from. It is a learning process that requires positive feedback to deviate us from normal living towards lucid living.

Certainly what makes meditation and entheogenics valuable for remembering to be lucid is that they are experiences that differ greatly from normal experience and therefore can be learned from in reminding us to approach the world anew. These are not the only experiences that carry this interstitial lesson though. Really any experience that carries differences can be used to realize being in the moment if we pay attention to the distinctions. Thus, music, dance, travel, etc... are also good experiences for remembering to live lucidly.

And beyond that, one can see that each moment is different from all others, and all experience of life is perceiving change in the differences between one moment and the next. And though these distinctions are often negligible and almost imperceptible, they can be paid attention to and allow us to remember in each moment, all the time, if we are mindful of being here and now. All living can teach us to be awake if we let it touch us this way, and all experience has the potential to completely reshape us in every moment. And allow us to reshape ourselves. We are always transforming, and always exactly who we are now.

There is no 'right' way to become, but we are always becoming. With constant practice and remembering to remember, we can be anything/everything we can imagine.

poetic prelude...

2005-02-20T13:05:00.000-05:00

Every being is a star, the center
of their own spinning
spheres of existence;
falling through space
with the rest of the cosmos.
If one were to fall
in the ocean
the waves would not be
so big as a single smile
intended as if
everything else will smile
in return. A star's light
caresses many worlds,
but is only the sun
of its own system.
From here they are just stars,
light reflectes on the water.
Yet their spinning keeps us turning
and we are waves
to each other's gravity,
interlapping influence
as far as we can reach
until its impossible to tell
from which source
each ripple came;
and it all shimmers
together.

loose ends

2005-02-20T00:13:00.000-05:00

I wanted to post a link to the articles on the black box that reads the future, and the global consciousness project (thanks lvx23 for sticking them in one place) not because they're "news" at this point, but because this may just be a very exciting time to be alive, and I don't want to misplace them in all the confusion.

It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move forwards but backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, it might just be possible to foretell major world events. We would, in effect, be 'remembering' things that had taken place in our future.

If you've been paying attention, it sure feels like we've been doing this all along, but subconsciouly at best; or perhaps we only thought we were telling ourselves stories. Either way, we're riding the ripples into the biggest stone of all, a confluence unparalleled in being so bloody obvious but utterly undefinable until it happens.

I wonder how apt Yeats's prediction will be: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..."

I've still got a couple tricks up my sleeve... just in case.

flungness and the primacy of spiritual experience

2005-02-18T18:51:00.000-05:00

In his now infamous(ly incomprehensible) philosophical text Being and Time, Heidegger talks about the concept of flungness, the primal feeling of finding ourselves seemingly flung into the world and having to continually reinterpret what it means to find ourselves there as beings who are and have to be. Now, if you were to only read a definition of this concept, it may not seem so readily understandable, even translated out of Heideggerian into common English. But, if you were to find yourself flung into the middle of a street with a car bearing down at you at remarkable speeds, it becomes more apparent that yes, you are there, and have to do something about it. And quickly if you don’t want to be run over. Granted, most of our experiences do not seem to require such immediate interpretation, but that does not diminish the feeling of flungness that accompanies every moment of directly experiencing the world and having to interpret ourselves in it, even if that flungness is mostly subliminal. I wake up, and for a brief moment do not know who or where I am. I wait for the bus in the snow, it shows up late and I don’t have enough change, but then some stranger offers me a ride from out of nowhere. These are moments in between knowing the world in which we feel ourselves flung to the wolves, moments that bring into question everything we thought we knew enough of to get by on.

When I was in school I didn’t think I knew everything, though there were some moments when I felt pretty sure of myself. But everyone else seemed a lot surer, not because they actually were, but because they had read enough to back up their assumptions about reality. The teachers were particularly guilty of this, and seemed to suggest that this kind of book learning was enough to get by in the world. At the time I was a young punk, not at all satisfied with sitting in class all day listening to some old white dudes lecture while there was a whole world out there to explore. Even if that meant finding a new place to go get high during lunch. It wasn’t enough and I knew it, so I dropped out and moved out, hoping to fling myself into situations and experiences that might teach me in a more direct manner. Though I didn’t learn advanced calculus or how to write a master thesis out in the world, I did find myself confronted almost every day with questions of love and communication, politics and survival that seemed to reflect a much more basic understanding of human experience in the world. Small basic truths surprisingly not taught in schools that helped define my own flung place in this world better than anything I read in a book. Not that I didn’t read, but now it was less to learn something new than to find terms and arguments in which to express my own experiences in, which often would not have made any sense without the experience to back them up. When I found myself in philosophical discussions I couldn’t quote passages to those who had studied them extensively, but I tried to enlighten the conversations with personal anecdotes that portrayed the abstract points. It took a while to get to that point, and I often found myself having to rely on abstracts in order to fill in the gaps between my experiences and knowledge; but the more I was in the world the less I had to rely on the ontological maps of others. The understanding was fostered from my own interpretations.

But then I began to experience things that were far outside any interpretation I had found read about so far, synchronicities and acts of magic that did not seem to stem from any logical cause and effect. I was now flung not in front of a speeding car but a charging seven-headed beast that forced me to not only interpret how I would get out of the way but where it came from in the first place. Despite my wonder at this new spiritual dimension the world was rapidly taking on I also felt a terror comparable to Sartre’s idea of Nausea, like when the character in his novel looks at a single stone and feels himself flung beyond any possible interpretations. The Romantic poet Blake expressed this when he said "To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour." Except that such abstracts as infinity and eternity were utterly meaningless in face of this direct experience and only seemed to hide the experience itself. In the same way the texts I read on these type of magical world views only seemed to hide the experiences of it behind abstract mappings and symbols, and not say what it meant and felt like to perceive so intensely.

Poetry is one of the few literary forms enamored by direct experience and split second reinterpretations of being flung into the world. Images are called up to reflect the world in a single grain of sand and flung back into the face of the unknown. But even here there is the pull to use abstracts and well-worn expressions, even to describe the vastness of the spiritual experience. Blake and the other Romantic poets fell into this, relying on symbolic interpretations of old religious texts to augment feelings that seemed too ineffable to put into words. About a hundred years later Rilke tried his hand at spiritual poetry, but broke from the Romantic’s approach of grandiose iconography to show how the spiritual breaks through in the small details of our daily lived experience. This wasn’t a new approach, as Rilke was directly influenced by the 13th Century Sufi poet, Rumi, whose body of work is filled with the idea of finding god in wine, laughter and sorrow, in the face of a friend and the turning of stars. Here were images that spoke directly to my own experiences of the world’s mystery, and offered me a voice to describe what I also felt, a light sliding through the features of all things that was recognizable only in giving myself to it fully. The spiritual experience became a continual feeling of being flung beyond all interpretation, experience that never needs disclosing because we are always here in it.

Not that I still don’t try and ground myself in attempts at understanding, but the desire to pull myself out of the air no longer feels so necessary, or the precise words so important.

***

It is night and all around you
strange shadows dance beyond
the flickering streetlamps.
One approaches in the dark
and for a moment you think
it is your death, beautiful
and mysterious in the twilight.
As you watch, in fear
and more wonder than a single heart
can hold, it takes form;
a tree, a beggar, a lover,
any of the known things
that might stumble towards you
in the night.
Suddenly you laugh
for it is a face you recognize
from each night before;
your own, reflected in the dark
glass of an empty storefront.
Who says your death
will not look that way too,
flung so suddenly in your path;
and will not your relief
at finding yourself there
be like finding yourself
each time you look in a mirror?

Dying is only a metaphor
for each moment you realize
you are still alive.
But it only happens once.
Living is to die
over and over again,
the knife's edge
of finding yourself there
always pressed close
against your chest.
Will you flinch away
or fling yourself bodily
into its embrace?

Only the young and insane
want to die so readily,
the feeling of blood pushed
so close to the skin
draws them out of themselves
and into each other's arms.
They cut their hearts out
of the mirror's glass
and polish them in starlight
so they can find themselves
in the middle of the night
and quickly die again.

on being consumed

2005-02-15T18:08:00.000-05:00

I also was inspired by some conversations I had with the Teacher and the Fisherman last night and wrote this out a few minutes ago:

The Teacher keeps a box of worms,
which he feeds the scraps of vegetables
from our cooking.
They eat and live and reproduce
in the scraps,
till all that's left
is good earth for planting.

One day the Teacher had a vision
of a gaping maw in his mind,
always consuming itself
like the snake wrapped around the world,
hungry for its own tail.
It was like the worms,
senseless and always eating
the ground in which they live.

When he saw this mouth
the Teacher felt terror,
for it is a frightening thing
to realize you are being eaten
by your own head.

It never ends.

How do you think the trees feel
when they are torn from the ground,
or a babe born
from its mother's womb?
Scared, yes, but full of wonder.
It is only in being eaten
that we truly know
we are alive.
Terror and wonder
coming into being
over and over again
as we consume and are consumed.

And once we digest ourselves
all that's left is ground,
good for planting next year's crops.

If it wasn't already obvious, I've been reading a lot of Rumi's poetry recently. Sometimes a few beautiful lines are the only thing standing between us and all existence.

on love

2005-02-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

I wrote a poem about love the other day, as I've been feeling very much in love with the whole world of late. I posted it on my livejournal, but thought it would probably be appropriate here too:

I am in love with the world,
but I don’t have enough words to say it.
All the people, the animals and plants,
wind, sun and stars,
I am in love with all of it
because it is all here.

I tried to write a poem
going into the most intimate of details
but soon realized
if I were to whisper my love
for one thing
I would have to sing odes
to all existence,
and never stop.

No wonder I don’t talk much.
If I opened my mouth
you would burst into flames
from this intensity.
So love burns my throat instead
and makes my fingers scream
when they are forced to take up the call.
How many notebooks filled
with futile attempts at love?
I lost count
when I started burning them
to stay warm at night.

***

What is love anyway?
Not this desire and longing
for your touch.
We are already touching
from across the room.
Love is not the passionate acts
or charming words
we use to hold each other close.
Every long mile
and aching moment
draws us even closer.

When I say we are in love
I mean we are in love,
like in an ocean,
deep and unfathomable
and covering the whole world.
We are swimming in love,
trying to hold our heads
over the waves
so we can see each other.
But when we give up and drown,
gulping down lung-fulls of love
like rich wine,
our souls stop struggling
and become one.

That is love,
being together,
submerged and stripped bare
of all boundaries.

If you can still feel my skin
pressed against yours,
we are not close enough.
If you can still hear my breath
whispering in your ear,
kiss me so I’ll be quiet.
If you can still see my eyes
drinking quick glances of you
from across the room,
close them and dive in.

through the gates of heaven: one man's journey to the center of existence

2005-02-11T21:27:00.000-05:00

This is a personal story of enlightenment, found in a tattered notebook in the library of a burned down mansion, a long tale that seems to twist in on itself like a snake devouring its own tail. It is a map and a manifesto, but who would follow it, for it seems to be drawn inside out with the heavens in the middle of the earth. It is a stone, slammed into the face of reality and left to sink, with the ripples whispering its name across the chaotic seas of time. It is both truth and illusion, duking it out to see who will get the last laugh.

Read on if you would hear my tale…

be careful what you wish for, it might already be coming true

2005-02-11T02:54:00.000-05:00

With all the recent talk on futurestance, I thought it would probably be appropriate for someone to suggest that it if you bring change into the world without the clearest of intentions and idea what the effects could be, startling and sometimes rather unpleasant things might happen. But they also might have happened in some way regardless if you had done nothing.

Time’s a slippery beast, I don’t claim to know what’s up with it. Half the time it doesn’t even seem to exist. Is what I’m doing now just the forward ripple from something that is happening later, or is it the cause of that event? Or is the water just a little too choppy from all the waves to really see what’s going on? As a writer this concerns me, for there is an interesting history of storytelling either causing or predicting real events in the world.

Perhaps the most obvious example is the Bible, but I can’t do justice to that, so I’ll stick to a more recent example, George Orwell’s "1984", that well-loved tale of the well-feared horrors of the totalitarian state. Double-think, constant surveillance and warfare the rewriting of all history. As both policeman and anarchist soldier, Orwell probably had a good understanding of what government could do wrong and a reason for wanting to warn people against that with his chilling tale. Perhaps he even caught a glance of where the future could be heading and just had to say it. Either that or many, many powerful people have decided his book was a manual for world-domination and have proceeded to implement his control-driven concepts one after one. Just what did Orwell intend by writing this in the first place? Or if it’s just ripples in the sea of possibility did it really make a difference?

This is suspiciously beginning to sound like the age-old debate of free will. Do we create change, or does change create us? Even in an acausal reality it certainly feels like my actions have some sort of effect on the world, at least on the small scale of my daily actions. I am nice to people and they are nice in return, I take out the trash and it doesn’t pile up. But what about larger trends? Most people seem to think they are rather helpless in face of say, the government, or global warming. But these states too seem to have come about by people making small decisions that have swelled over time, or the singular acts of those insightful enough to catch the wave at the right moment and steer the next events in a particular way. Perhaps state control was inevitable, but Orwell was still pivotal in defining just how it would come about. As was Vernor Vinge’s "True Names" in defining the internet, neither cause or prediction but just a clearer picture of what was already happening.

Just what is magic anyway? It certainly seems to presuppose some amount of control and direction in the outcome of events. But it often feels more like pushing the world just so as a particular peak of opportunity rolls by. The right kind and amount of force at the right time, and then change happens as we intended it. At least as long as we had enough knowledge of the force and foresight of the times to speak or act true, and not send the world spinning off into some twisted nightmare version of what we wanted. If you’ve ever tried spinning a staff you’ll understand what I mean the first time you whack yourself in the head. But with some idea of how it works and what to expect things seem to work out. A good interpretation of reality goes a long way.

This was also posted as my first article over at Key23 where there has also been some incredible disscusions about the nature of reality and transendence that all seem to be leading up to something...

moving in, moving on

2005-02-08T20:38:00.000-05:00

Okay, things have been rather busy here in the world of janus. Not only have I been furiously trying to write up my first article for Key23 on my samahdic experience this summer, but I am also working out the details to become an inhouse artist for Konton magazine and am soon to begin looking for a publisher for my upcoming magical children's novel, "In the Garden of the Stars".

Despite all of that (and my normal working life) I found some time to draw up a new conception of the Qabalah that I have been working on, inspired by some excellent ideas at Work of the Chariot.

This diagram isn't complete by any stretch of the imagination, but it does show the tree of life with da'ath as an actuallized sphere and malkuth as the earth-matrix as a lower reflection of the ain sof or above the spheres. There are some notes around the sides, but they aren't so important if they are illegible from the scanning. Some missing things are the letterings for the paths, which I wasn't sure how to work out since the paths now cross to da'ath from its surrounding spheres and do not lead to malkuth. Also I wanted to work in the chakras, but couldn't decide to stick with the original mappings or assign them to the seven central spheres (daath would make a good throat chakra, though the geburah/ chesed level also seems to represent breathing and communication. Tipharet could bot hbe the heart and power, and hod/netzack the emotions, except that both yesod and the second layer chakra are represented by the moon. otherwise the root chakra and the foundation of yesod relate well). Some important things to notice are that the seeven central spheres are framed on two interlocking circles, which symbolicaly has a lot of balance and power (as the veseca of two interlapping circles is a potent symbol of the interaction of multiple waves from events), and this diagram does not show the tree in relation to other trees around the central axis. But it does show the axis as being the ain sof or, the nothingness in the center of all things, which I mistakingly didn't represent before; kether is still in people as a localized connection to the non-local, but it is not the center of the wheel.

I will be drawing up some more diagrams (relatively) soon, showing this tree in relation to other trees, as I am beginning to get a clearer sense of how thy all fit together.

Also, here's another little poem I wrote a few days ago:

Do you hear angels
singing on the street corners,
in every laughing ray of sunlight
that breaks through the clouds,
and pours warmth all over the Earth
like a lover's breath?

When did I die?
Heaven is right now,
we are the only gods
to pray to.
Why ask for anything else
when it is already here?
Let go of your fear
and become the sky.

Feet float off of the ground
and worlds dance
on the tips of our fingers.
Every breath feels like the first,
and carries me back to you.

a tall tale to be told soon...

2005-02-03T16:21:00.000-05:00

This past summer I met god. Or to be more honest, I became god, breaking through the final onion-peal layer of selfhood to realize for one clear moment the total interconnection of all being. Call it samadhi, nirvana, illumination, the ain sof or, whatever; for me it felt like all the veils of reality had been stripped away and for the first time I could truly experience life in all its limitless mystery and glory, without shielding my eyes.

When LVX23 asked me to write up this experience and what led to it for key23, I first thought it would be an easy task. In the months following the event I had already begun to write an account, and thought this would just be a matter of some editing and a few additions. But on rereading it I realized that I have much more work ahead of me if I am going to honestly talk about what happened. This is not as simple as just saying I ate some cactus and saw god, for my expereince stemmed directly from all the questing and small revelations I've had over the past few years, if not over my whole life. My account was already an eighteen page exposition and had not even gotten to the experience itself when I stopped writing it. Granted, I have a tendancy of being long-winded, and I would rather tell a good story then skimp through a bare-bones outline, but for me this experience could only have happened by working through years of fear, love, uncertainty, madness, dreams, insights. I had to free all the dark, closed off parts of my soul in order to be light.

Each event of the past several years, even the smallest ones, carried a lesson, a hint at what would happen, and it was only through taking these small insights and tying them together again and again from every imaginable angle that I eventually reached the point of understanding that was my experience. From this side of it I see that they were all ripples, broken reflections of truth, cast out by this vast stone skipping across the watery face of my reality. Whether the cause or effect or refraction of my experience, these small revelations were a necessary and integral part of it and key to my understanding of what happened. Is it possible to talk about this without them? I don't know.

Do people really want to hear of my failed loves and sore attempts at communicating with and relating to others, of the twisted labyrinthian dreams that haunted my sleep and every waking moment, of the struggle of having to relearn such simple truths as breathing? Or would the details just obscure the clarity of my retelling? So many accounts of entheogenic and revealatory experiences try to get to the point too quiickly, and do not do justice to the experience or the situations from which it arose. But this was the most meaningful, the most real thing that has ever happened to me (yet), and I want to impart the full import of this in my telling, so that others might find understanding in their own lives. Or if they have, will be encouraged to share all in return.

And so I must ask: Do you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (at least the truth I found)? Or should I skip right to the juicy bits that while just as true may leave you feeling a bit confused, skepticle, and let down without the full story to give them the meaning I found? My life is yours for the taking, if you would have it. Most of it has already been written anyway, and though long and often non-linear it is hopefully as enjoyable and insightful to read as it was to live.

we are all in this together

2005-01-31T13:01:00.000-05:00

Humanity is facing a vast problem the closer we draw to the looming technological singularity, namely that most of us are not prepared for it to happen, and are not even aware that it is. Most of the technological breakthroughs of recent history are in communications and interconnectivity, but most of the money and resources are channeled towards weapons systems and maintaining a technological civilization that hasn't moved much further than the industrial revolution. This culture consumes more and more energy, mostly from unrenewable resources, in order to maintain a manner of living that is increasingly ineffective and downright harmful to the majority of beings on our small planet, with hardly any thought to why or what we could be doing different.

When Darwin framed the evolutionary paradigm as "survival of the fittest" he gave voice to the prime drive for humanity's destructive capabilities. Since the beginning of recorded history it hsa been warfare and manifest destiny, one tribe conquering and pushing out another as long as there was room to grow and push. This drive has found its avatar in western civilization, in twentieth century capitalism, in which it is expressed as "the one on top wins." In this view man is nothing unless he is more fit than his neighbors, unless he has complete control over his servants and the environment, and any arguments that such a lifestyle is harmful or not sustainable is laughed at as a bunch of baloney.

But now things are changing, and fast. As telecommunications quickly connects the world's information flows, boundaries dissapear and the diverse tribes are seen to be part of the human tribe. As the globe warms and the rainforests are stripped bare and countless species are driven to the brink of extinction it becomes no longer possible to deny the adverse effects this technological paradigm are having on our world. There is nowhere left to explore, there is no one left to conquer, there are no dark corners left to push those who would not be part of the "civilized world". Space may be the final frontier, but we don't have ourt shit together enough to explore it, and if we did, how long before we conquer the neighboring star systems?

Those in power, those who have the energy and resources to direct the cultural matrix, are afraid. Their world view no longer works, but they have too much invested in it to change. The sun is powerful enough to power all the earth, if it was harnessed effectively, yet we rely on fossil fuels because that is the way it has been done. That is what pays the man. The only room left for us to grow is inward, exploring the reaches of art and mind, yet they instead spend more money on war than on anything else put together. Again, because it is the way it has been done, and it pays. It doesn't pay to accept change, but to freeze it, to hold back the waves and pretend this moment can be stretched on indefinitley.

The ones on top are afraid because if they didn't maintain this illusion they wouldn't be on top anymore. Because now there is no top. The earth is round, small, fragile, and floating in the middle of space. The earth is our mother, and all we've got, but we treat her like a whore, to be used and thrown away. The old evolutionary paradigm of survival of the fittest doesn't work anymore, yet we haven't yet accepted the new paradigm of interconnectivity. We are all in this together, let's stop acting like some of us are not.

plucking the strings of the soul

2005-01-30T13:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I finally got around to watching "The Red Violin", which is an engaging tale of a 17th century master violin-maker who creates the perfect instrument for his soon to be born son. But his wife dies in labor, so instead he takes he takes all his love and anger and channels it into the instrument, varnishing it red with her blood. Just before she dies, their witch tells her fortune, and reads in the cards that she will go on a long strange and complicted journey, which turns out to be the journey the violin takes as it gets passed from hand to hand throughout history, up till the present day, and all the love and anger (and misfortune) that this magical instrument brings to those who play it. As a magician (and musician) the idea that an object can be imbued with such power, and its history told before hand, resonates with me, escpecially when the descendents of all those it touched converge in the present to try and buy it at an auction (which is played out again and again from their different points of view).

Afterwards I took out my viola, which I haven't touched since the circus ended in October, and let its song sweep me away. Now, my instrument is not nearly as magical (or old), but it still has great power, and playing it requires me to give myself over to the world in a way that nothing else can. I have been playing it since I was a child, and though I also have played guitar for the majority of my life, I play the guitar more intellectually, consciouss of scales and melodies, whereas the viola is a gate to my heart and to the universe. No wonder I haven't picked it up in a long time, it takes tremendous courage and strength of heart to remain on my feet with such ecstatic depths of emotion and soul coursing through my fingers, and for many months now I just haven't had that in me to give. But now things have changed again.

I decided the other day that it was time to regather and refocus my energies, in order to live more honestly and clearly, which has meant questioning a lot of my habitual behaviours and directing my will to those things that will only further my steps on my path. So for the past couple of nights, while relaxing my body and offering up prayers to the gods of sleep that I might better remember and control my dreams, I have started reviewing my days in light of the yamas (worldly restraints) and niyamas (personal observances), the first two paths of Patanjali's eightfold limbs of yoga (from his yoga sutra).

With my own understanding of them, the yamas are:
ahimsa- compassion for all living things (caring)
satya- commitment to the truth (honesty)
asteya- not-stealing (honoring or letting be)
brahmacharya- merging with the One (trusting or letting come) (also translated as commitment)
aparigraha- not-grasping (giving or letting go)

The niyamas are:
shaucha- purity
santosha- contentment
tapas- burning enthusiasm (focus or will)
swadhyaya- self-study
ishvarapranidhana- celebration of the spiritual

Now, I don't claim perfection in any of these things, far from it, but paying explicit attention to them has already broken me from several undesirable habits and has fostered a sense of lightness in my heart that has been mostly lacking since my samahdic experience of god (the axis of universal consciousness) over the summer. While that moment brought me back to the spiritual and magical path I had lost sight of over the years, it has been difficult to rekindle the clarity and intensity I found there without the aid of San Pedro to guide me back through the gates of heaven. But having that experience has shown me it is possible to be there at all, and is what keeps my feet sure, despite winter's interference and my previous lack of intentional energy.

I also watched the movie adaptation of Hesse's "Siddartha" yesterday, which was incredibly good and contained many wonderful ideas. I haven't read the book in a long time, and will have to (or watch the movie again) before I can make any comments on it. Further transmissions impending...

pictoral appendage

2005-01-29T01:04:00.000-05:00

the net

So this drawing was supposed to accompany my last post (about da'ath and the tree of knowledge), but as is evidenced by the fact that it took me several days to draw it, it seems obvious that I'm much more willing to express myself verbally than graphicaly. Interestingly enough, when it comes to my own understanding of these concepts things are much more multisensory. A weave of words, lines, sounds, feelings, colors, tensions, etc. is conjured up by any thought, so expressing anything in just words or images falls far short of catching any intended meaning. And so of course, this picture is nothing like what I had intended it to be, but still manages to capture some of the nuances that have been bouncing around my head the past week. It also doesn't help that I'm not trying to represent any sort of "truth", but only shades of interpretation.

That being said, it should be obvious that the straight lines running towards the axis are supposed to represent the tree of life, or an ordered (linear) perspective of reality. I debated leaving a blank line between each of the trees around the circle, but once the pen's on the paper, that's that (and it amuses me to think of the trees as overlapping). The eye at the axis is kether, or non-local connection, or universal conscioussness (singularity). There would ideally be an infinite amount of tree of life lines connected here to show how everything is connected, but that would have been a bit messy. The radial lines are da'ath, the tree of knowledge, or the connections on which the various jewels (sephiroth) hang. They could also be seen as ripples emanating from the axis, like those caused by a stone dropped in water, and are thus also representative of the waves that are space-time and the primordial ocean of chaos on which an ordered perspective is placed to form the matrix/ net of reality.

The faint curving lines that look like lotus petals are an example of phyllotaxis, which is the method by which certain flower petals form along the golden spiral (taught to me by my good friend Alberto Almarza, one of the greatest living alchemical artists, but with absolutely no web presence of his work (yet)). I only penciled these lines in to see how they lined up with the paths of the tree of life, which they did remarkably well, except that they connect chokmah to geburah (15) and binah to chesed (17) through the abyss placement of da'ath and not to tipharet. Which would make sense if da'ath were actually a sphere and a higher harmonic of tipharet and not an infernal ghost in the machine.

The striated lines surrounding the spheres and the net itself indicate radiance, and are purely decorative. I also considered drawing an arrow to malkuth labled "you are here," but thought it wasn't all that necessary.

and here's a little something I wrote the other day while immersed in the wonderful illustrations of Roob's "Alchemy and Mysticism":

Drawn forth from the flood
all being resplendent
in a single shared cup.
Drink your fill
and dance on the waves.
The whole world falls
at your feet
ring after ring after ring.
Where is the kingdom
with a thousand centers
and none?

Drawn down from the stars
and traced in the dirt.
At crossed roads
and the shifting shore,
standing with one foot
in the the sea. The tides
stop for no man,
they wash up and you
are in,
they sway back and you
are naught.
Up and back, ceaseless
and serene at dawn
but so terrible
when they are gone.

So rise, plant both feet
in the air, the wind
waves as well; but across
no bounds
but your skin.
Strip it away and away.
What is left for the wind
to caress but your soul?

signal from noise: raising babel from the seas of the da'atha-sphere

2005-01-25T14:54:00.000-05:00

Last night I was practicing my nightly asanas, leting myself disolve into breathing, when a startling noise like the end of the world erupted through the ordered peace of the room, piercing my conscioussness straight to the core. After a paniced moment when I felt all of reality had turned on its head I realizeed it was only the fire alarm, set off by the candles I was burning. My heart beating in my throat and sleep now an impossibility, I sat down and started reading Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash" in order to calm down, but soon found myself drawn into his world of viral information and interconnected knoweldge. There amidst ninja hackers and religious franchsises I stumbled upon a chapter that detailed some things that have been creeping around my head, ideas of myth as tales of social organization and information processing. In particular, Stephenson talks about the Sumerian myths, interpreting the storys of Enkil fertilizing the river valleys as the creation of communication (as he is the water god, and Sumerian society wrote on clay from the river banks created from his heart-waters (sperm, as original information carrier). But then another sentence broke through, much closer to the research I have done, after Asherah, the Sumerian ophidian (snake) mother goddess is compared to Eve, "Eve, as I recall, is responsible for getting Adam to eat the forbidden fruit, from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Which is to say, it's not just a fruit- it's data."

In hebrew, Da'ath is knowledge, and is the "hidden" 11th sphere of the Tree of Life, the abyss seperating the lower spheres from the supernal triad and not located in any one place on the tree of life as it is the space between the spheres. A quick jaunt through the Net revealed that Da'ath is linked to the Tree of Knowledge, that when Adam and Eve ate the malus malum (bad apple) from the Tree their universal consciousness was reduced to the limited ego perspective of duality (good vs evil, light vs dark, self vs other). By sampling a specific bit of data their perspectives became limited from the whole of knowing to a simple binary mentality. This is represented in the tree of life as a fall from the non-local connection of Kether to the singular being of malkuth, and as googlism so aptly put it, da'ath is the hole left behind when malkuth fell out of the garden of eden. And so knowledge was reduced from the "appreciation for interconnected details" (wikipedia) of indra's net, in which all the hanging jewels (things, data, fruit, sephiroth) are reflection of all others, to a gaping abyss literally between oneself and the rest of the world. And so in one fell bite the order of the world is reduced to an incomprehensible chaos and a new order has to be formed (there are some interpretations of this myth that claim that God intended this in order to reorder his relationship to the world and be more intimately known in it).

Now, the idea of a choas that becomes ordered (or reordered) is rooted in many mythologies (the Sumerian again, with Enkil's slaying of Tiamat and reshaping the world from her body). Chaos is often represented by a serpent or ocean mother, who is the matrix, the prima materia from which all form arises. (see my article on the matrix for more information). According to information theory (and to paraphrase metachor), chaos is an increased state of entropy that allows messages to occur non-linearaly, in an ordered complexity that is essentially a measure of our inability to match signals we recieve from our experiences of the world with the frameworks we view it through, much like the choas I experienced before I realized the fire alarm was just that, and not a herald of armegedon. The form (signal) of fire alarm rose from the chaos of unprecedented noise. Or like this article, pasted together from the buzzing noise of opinions and subjective references that makes up our collective discourse.

Chaos is also considered as an abyss or void, and is akin to the space between things when the world is viewed as self and other. It is only by the distance between that one is able to interpret a relation to another object, and meaning (knowledge) is only the interpretation of that relation to one's self. In magical traditions, the adept has to across the abyss, or chapel perilous, in order to find understanding, a relationship to the jewel (data) hanging at the other side of the abyss. Picture yourself in a vast darkness with a thousand jewels hanging all around. You start walking to one, and as you move a colored trail is laid down in the dark to mark your path to whatever object you approach. You find a jewel, a book maybe, or a tree, and head towards another. At the same time others are moving through this abyss, making their own paths, so that soon there is a web of trails marked out between the jewels, establishing them in relation to each other. Not the infinitely reflecting web of indra's net, but a subjective web of referances ordering the objects, signals, in relation to the observer, much like the pheremone trails left by ants so others in their nest can find food (the idea of which is called stygmergy), but built from the chaos, the noise, itself (the medium is the message). So now we have replaced the complex chaos-matrix with a framework ordered to our own experiences, and constantly evolving as new knowledge is linked together. As knowledge expanded and the links were passed down from generation to generation, new technologies sprang up to represent this web of knowledge, culminating in what is now the internet, the datasphere or da'atha-sphere.

I propose that this da'atha-sphere is synonymous to the tree of knowledge, which runs perpindicular to the tree of life (line conscioussness vs. point conscioussness), and forms the web on which the spheres are hung in relation to each other. But it is also synonymous with the tower of babel (literally "gate to god) as an edifice to our push towards the godhead of interconnected conscioussness. In the myth, which also plays a large part in Stephenson's "Snow Crash," a tower is built with "the heavens in its roof," only to be abandoned when god causes its builders to speak in seperate tongues, so that they can not communicate where they all spoke the same language before and can not finish construction of the tower. No communion with the godhead, better luck next time. But next time is now, thanks to the translitartive powers of the internet, and a new tower is being built, this time spread out over the entire globe (knowledge stored serialy instead of hierarchichly). What does this mean? What strange and unexpected collective signal will emerge from the chaotic white noise of infinite bits of data swirling across the earth like a blizzard in some great infopocalyptic vision?

That remains to be seen. Any expectation of the singularity, like magical attention and quantum subjectivity, presupposes a result. What you look for you will find. If we look at this through the order of our established beliefs, we will only find them reflected back on us, though that might be what we are going for in the first place. If we want to see god in the collection of human knowledge, then we will see god.

Whether it is or not is an entriely different story.