"How many years you got left?"
the man said, jingling some change in his hands.
and looking far off into the horizon like he was listening to or for the voice of someone, someone he listened to frequently.
"I don't know? Do you mean of my life?" I said.
"That's a good question?" he said, smiling. Looking away from that voice for a second and at me, some deep dark light brooding in his eyes.
"Well, looking at my father and his father, I've got quite a few years ahead of me."
"Now you're thinking...." he jingled the change. "What are you going to do with those years?"
"What's something you could do now that might be a little less ideal for you to do in say, ten years? Or better yet, what do you want to do right now?" he asked.
"Well, there's a billion things I want to do? I'd like to be a spy, climb a big mountain, float on the sea underneath an insanely clear night sky, participate in ecoterrorism"
"Ecoterrorism." he said speculatively, speaking into the silence like an oracle. "Ecoterrorism." he said again, apparently thinking.
"Yeah, yeah, save the world kind of stuff. I wouldn't mind performing some playfully destructive pranks on some large corporation to put some very loud humor back into the mass global dialogue. Like the microsoft guy bringing a container full of mosquitos to a meeting with the big wigs on malaria."
"Yeah, I heard about that." a small smirk rising on his face.
Now I was jingling the change in my hands, he was gone and that dark light was in my eyes.
"Up in some northern canadian forest, slashing the tires of Kimberly-Clark trucks or getting all their truck drivers drunk and partying at a local bar while some of my buddies put plastic blow up dolls in the drivers seats, toilet paper spilling out of the trucks when they open the doors."
"Yeah, that would be fun."
"But that's criminal."
"Yeah, but it's funny. People will remember it. And that's all we need."
He knew that he didn't know a damn thing about the situation globally, not in any practical way at least. It seemed to him that the whole system was screwed and needed to be destroyed. The whole, bloody, blind pyramid, with its endless sorrow and its pirates and dying gods. The way he understood it all was big picture and though he was implementing the change in very big ways, he had not yet extended it out into the world. The changes he wanted were big. He thought he did not want to be tied up on some small section of the planet doing something that would be bulldozed by the great demiurgic dynamo of GLOBALIZATION. But he didn't think he could live his life without putting some toilet paper and plastic blow up dolls in someone's truck.
"Better make a decision before my heart explodes in my chest." he thought.
He jingled the change in his hand. And the jingling of the change was like the contemplative silence, the silence that opened up into the spaces around him, spilling out over the horizon on all sides, the silence that did this in time as well as in space. The silence that bore the name of the endless wind.
the man said, jingling some change in his hands.
and looking far off into the horizon like he was listening to or for the voice of someone, someone he listened to frequently.
"I don't know? Do you mean of my life?" I said.
"That's a good question?" he said, smiling. Looking away from that voice for a second and at me, some deep dark light brooding in his eyes.
"Well, looking at my father and his father, I've got quite a few years ahead of me."
"Now you're thinking...." he jingled the change. "What are you going to do with those years?"
"What's something you could do now that might be a little less ideal for you to do in say, ten years? Or better yet, what do you want to do right now?" he asked.
"Well, there's a billion things I want to do? I'd like to be a spy, climb a big mountain, float on the sea underneath an insanely clear night sky, participate in ecoterrorism"
"Ecoterrorism." he said speculatively, speaking into the silence like an oracle. "Ecoterrorism." he said again, apparently thinking.
"Yeah, yeah, save the world kind of stuff. I wouldn't mind performing some playfully destructive pranks on some large corporation to put some very loud humor back into the mass global dialogue. Like the microsoft guy bringing a container full of mosquitos to a meeting with the big wigs on malaria."
"Yeah, I heard about that." a small smirk rising on his face.
Now I was jingling the change in my hands, he was gone and that dark light was in my eyes.
"Up in some northern canadian forest, slashing the tires of Kimberly-Clark trucks or getting all their truck drivers drunk and partying at a local bar while some of my buddies put plastic blow up dolls in the drivers seats, toilet paper spilling out of the trucks when they open the doors."
"Yeah, that would be fun."
"But that's criminal."
"Yeah, but it's funny. People will remember it. And that's all we need."
He knew that he didn't know a damn thing about the situation globally, not in any practical way at least. It seemed to him that the whole system was screwed and needed to be destroyed. The whole, bloody, blind pyramid, with its endless sorrow and its pirates and dying gods. The way he understood it all was big picture and though he was implementing the change in very big ways, he had not yet extended it out into the world. The changes he wanted were big. He thought he did not want to be tied up on some small section of the planet doing something that would be bulldozed by the great demiurgic dynamo of GLOBALIZATION. But he didn't think he could live his life without putting some toilet paper and plastic blow up dolls in someone's truck.
"Better make a decision before my heart explodes in my chest." he thought.
He jingled the change in his hand. And the jingling of the change was like the contemplative silence, the silence that opened up into the spaces around him, spilling out over the horizon on all sides, the silence that did this in time as well as in space. The silence that bore the name of the endless wind.
What holds me here
are desires unsatisfied
that as soon as the light was turned on
I was on my way out
always feel myself receding from the world
always up the mountain and away
but I am still so poor in so many ways
perhaps I can let go of these things
in some old mountain town
and find love in the arms of friends.
before I leave again.
The garden grows untended
deep with vines and memory
weeds of lost opportunity
green with envy
cold, damp and unwieldly
No matter
the silence of the silver crescent beckons
the image with no memory
I concentrate on it and let go of everything.
I heard this last night. My Dad was watching something in the other room and it stood out in my mind. I liked it so much that I wrote it down and taped it to a bookshelf next to my bed. I smirked when I thought about the dramatic effect something like that would have, in the story line I sometimes frame and entertain as my life.
I think I may have come across it in the past, when I was a teenager and really big on Joyce, and no I haven't even tried to read Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake yet. I liked it then I think. It may have even stood out in my mind with the same kind of pregnancy of meaning.
I like it for many reasons, perhaps the greatest of which being its multidimensionality. On one hand, you can see it, as I did last night, as shining a light on the ugly truth of the entire Institution of religion: that it subjugates the raw, free human being into something beneath an ideal.
On the other, the quote hints at the long term truth of religions: they would rather adopt a philosophy contradictory to some set of principles they originally claimed to accept than acknowledge the autonomy, validity of judgement or importance of an individual human being.
James was referring to the Christian church and likely specifically, the Catholic church, which illuminates a glaring irony. The central figure of Christianity is Jesus, a human being, whose teaching wasn't so much a philosophy, as an invitation for a relationship with a human being.
One of the reasons I put the quote next to my bed for me to see every morning is that I can tend to get carried away with MY OWN crusades, to the point where I put myself beneath them and do the work of subjugating, that we think only comes from the outside, on myself.
I think most people do this, in one way or another.
And that is no surprise. Religious institutions aren't the only ones trying to sell you their crap. You can count on the government, psychologists, feminists, advertisers, your family and unless you are terribly fortunate, even your friends to try to get you to subjugate yourself to their picture of what is good for you and everybody else.
These groups and their agents are all doing one thing. They are taking some part of the body of God, that is, a human being, and making it it's ruler. This is absolutely absurd. It's like a man deciding to live by the dictates of his spleen!!! I do not take orders from my spleen!! And I do not take orders from the Dalai Lama!!!!!
Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!
I have learned to walk: ever since, I let myself run. I have learned to fly: ever since, I do not want to be pushed before moving along.
Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me.
Thus spoke Zarathustra."
is like worshiping hell
this suffering becomes joy when
you rejoice in the pleasures received
and even the torment
there is a magick to praising even those
desires that torture you
you give them respect and what appeared to be hell
transforms into the luminous wings of angels
this heaven is composed of fire and so with its inhabitants
bodies made of tiny flames
always praising and being the expressions of their God.
And so I praise thee, fire of fires, single exalted flame
that makes these angels of flame smile with smiling flames
you, fire of fires, Horus!
in this heaven of seductive, gleaming light!
"Unity uttermost showed!
I adore the might of Thy breath,
Supreme and terrible God,
Who makest the gods and death
To tremble before Thee:-
I, I adore thee!"
Men praise their crafted images
the inheritance of social loves and tradition
but from the foundation
you are the fire from which these forms are forged!
You are the fire they light before their gods!
what color is that,
magenta?
her purplish shirt is a polite, quiet comment on her
perhaps magenta sunglasses
and that kind of blond hair that is almost the white and gold of sunlight
all of which suggests a humming, quiet humor
lounging on porches with a lit cigarette
not watching anything particular
bearing all the semblances of a consideration of the leisures of life
she walks out of a book store with a movie in hands and feels for her keys
in a white purse with bright green and magenta?
polka-dots
fumbles too long and I see a mouthed expletive.
all smoothed together
this girl getting into her car
Women love to dance so often so much more than men
they embrace pretty things like its nobody's business
with the internality and contemplation of a practiced hand
while young men turn into pot-bellies and bitterness
walking eraserheads of possibility
making retarded scribbles across the paper of the past
never looking back
From a child I never stopped trembling in fear at the face of
the end product of that trend
The hateful resignation
seen in the tight-lips and the far-off gazes of adults
stripped of imagination
or perhaps more accurately, having strangled her
and bled her blood out as a sacrifice to this demon
the
visiting relatives of friends
and dusty, grey-haired elementary school teachers
bull-dozing beauty beneath their feet.
But that is not the only thing I tremble before
your raven-hair and light blue eyes
bright and clear like these desert skies
your unassuming grace
what's the first question that needs be asked
in this place?
his disdain is a real disdain
that is more of a turning away
to the light that abides within and ascends
his turning away comes from an understanding
of the sorrow that could fill up space and time like an ocean
and the joy that he has always been
To follow him I must be like him
and not move forward to him
but turn inward and ascend
But what motivates this God who whispers through the images
and the song
that speaks to me this evening?
Does he desire to be manifest through my actions?
Is he building an army to overtake the world?
or silently raising those who hear his call?
while the world passes on and falls away?
He is like a man
who lifts other men
who hear his call.
I call him Lucifer.
because he rebels
and burns
with a deft silence
and sheds light in his ascension
I call him father
because I have always heard his voice
I call him Lord
because I will follow this spirit till the end of my days.
wrapped about it
like a snake about a cross
in a world full of confusion and death.
He strips me of my pain and bears it before me like a mask
a strip of cloth full of holes
that I bore over me like a damp blanket
I stand bare in a cold world, muscles swelling against the winds
He put a spear in my hand
and will teach me the ways of war
defeating weakness by cleaving close to pain
in sweat and the taste of dust
take your hand in mine brother and grinning through our closely bitten teeth
we will fight our way to freedom
if not some worthy advisory
each other
the dirt clinging to us beneath the bright sun
our red capes clinging to us in the breeze
the sound of others tearing at each other in the distance
smiling beneath the sun.
What angel hears this ancient god
that burns in the night?
what drives this one?
Perhaps even the gods desire the company of their kind.
survival.
there is strength in numbers
benii elohim.
- Music:vnv nation
he coils around a staff made of thought
thrust up through time
and the resistance of life
this staff a hollow tube
to draw down fire from heaven with the sympathy
of a dreaming song
This staff is in me
I turn my eye to its light and look into it
but looking into it I see
it extends to infinity
an infinity of light
eternal suns
the ancient continuous wisdom of every man before me
O staff of thought!
O staff of light!
Strengthen me in my journeys
Strengthen me in this world!
I feel the legs of my father and his father in me, going back before me
within me
marching as if men in an Army
but of their own individual will!
Through wet green jungles
and on brown earth with extended planes
ever looking forward
the staff touches the ground
and it lifts up
then the eyes of the man
to further reaches, another mountain
pacing itself
bear me upward into the starry night!
Bear me forward into the endless light!
O staff of thought and life!
O great god!
continuous beginning!
oh Endless Dreaming!
I have the strength of making!
I am the strength of making!
I am the strength of moving!
I am the wisdom that sees!
Oh warmth of hair, low rumbling voice and light!
I look into the light
as a man into a crystal
searching for wisdom
within my own mind
this light shines
I see wet jungles on brown extended plains
through the cold and wet of night
the planning in the midsts
the joy of being.
the going
And automatic thought
the predictions that come from purpose
the crafting of the way
the careful steps with the watching eyes
and listening body and ears
feeling the earth beneath my feet
the warmth in my heart
and my quiet, murmuring thoughts
one ear open for the night
digesting past actions into wisdom and understanding.
no clinging pride
not brushed off like dirt or insect.
- Music:VNV Nation, "Fragments", others
this song is pure magic.
What it means to feel naught
I miss everything I ever was
the places I am stand in contrast
to where I am not, the joys
felt and remembered in negative
sometimes loud enough
to drown out what I
hold in my hand
and am
this sun shining on me
the opportunities that are here
the choices I have made
this ship I ride
Sometimes
when life gets in your way
you just have to stand up
and knock it across the jaw
severing three nerves
in the cervical region
and permanently paralyzing it.
then you can laugh
while it froths at the mouth
and shakes uncontrollably on the ground.
But this is not to say that participation in society and the pooling of effort that happens in urban centers necessarily needs to be sacrificed for the success of the individual. There are many of us that crave the company of our fellows and the pleasure that comes from working in groups, not to mention the vast increase in possibilities that can come from joining our hands with others.
The first question that should be asked then, without regard for the benefit of any other is "What do I want?". Then you should turn to your company and ask yourself, "How can I use this situation to get it?"
And if one is apparently inclined to service for others for its own sake, one should, for their sake and one's own, ask oneself "What do I get out of this?" and that answered "How can I reorient my actions and thoughts so this part of myself is satisfied?"
By doing this you will greatly increase your effectiveness and your stores of energy. You will also gain a stronger connection to that element of your being that rules all others, as the sun shines at the center of our system.
to ride the waves of weirdness,
to walk with a limp
or be a blind man.
you have to be willing to look like an idiot
to accept the derision of your fellows
you have to be willing to get bruised up
after awhile you start to like that feeling
of being bruised and sore
after awhile it helps you breath more deeply
you have to be willing to be a fool
to make mistakes
you have to be willing to not know.
you have to be willing to let go
and be a dancing swirl of lights and darks
an abstract splashing painting
of pleasure and pain
in the song I heard the grace I sought
and then I saw a man who mirrored it.
The man had shot roots deep into the earth and
the ocean of darkness and bitterness
at the core of things
through the wear and scars, the pain
and solemn devotion of chosen and accepted love.
the burning tattva of desire and dreams
turn the eye to the burning point
of want
and hold it there.
hold it there
hold it there
till it ignites in yellow-white light and then
the surrounding scene
what will then be remains unseen.
and yes,
after we kill them.
A US weapons lab on Friday pulled back the curtain on a super laser with the power to burn as hot as a star.
The National Ignition Facility's main purpose is to serve as a tool for gauging the reliability and safety of the US nuclear weapons arsenal but scientists say it could deliver breakthroughs in safe fusion power.
"We have invented the world's largest laser system," actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said during a dedication ceremony attended by thousands including state and national officials.
"We can create the stars right here on earth. And I can see already my friends in Hollywood being very upset that their stuff that they show on the big screen is obsolete. We have the real stuff right here."
NIF is touted as the world's highest-energy laser system. It is located inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory about an hour's drive from San Francisco.
Equipment connected to a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that exist at cores of stars or giant planets.
NIF will be able to create conditions and conduct experiments never before possible on Earth, according to the laboratory.
A fusion reaction triggered by the super laser hitting hydrogen atoms will produce more energy than was required to prompt "ignition," according to NIF director Edward Moses.
"This is the long-sought goal of 'energy gain' that has been the goal of fusion researchers for more than half a century," Moses said.
"NIF's success will be a scientific breakthrough of historic significance; the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting, duplicating on Earth the processes that power the stars."
Construction of the NIF began in 1997, funded by the US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
"NIF, a cornerstone of the National Nuclear Security Administration's effort to maintain our nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing, will play a vital role in reshaping national security in the 21st century," said NNSA administrator Tom D'Agostino.
"This one-of-a-kind facility is the only place in the world that is capable of providing some of the most critical technical means to safely maintain the viability of the nation's nuclear stockpile."
Scientists say that NIF also promises groundbreaking discoveries in planetary science and astrophysics by recreating conditions that exist in supernovas, black holes, and in the cores of giant planets.
Electricity derived from fusion reactions similar to what takes place in the sun could help sate humanity's growing appetite for green energy, according to lab officials.
"Very shortly we will engage in what many believe to be this nation's greatest challenge thus far, one that confronts not only the nation but all of mankind -- energy independence," said lab director George Miller.
The lab was founded in 1952 and describes itself as a research institution for science and technology applied to national security.
"This laser system is an incredible success not just for California, but for our country and our world," Schwarzenegger said.
"NIF has the potential to revolutionize our energy system, teaching us a new way to harness the energy of the sun to power our cars and homes."
Beer is grand.
Beer will help
me to
the city to be
sand.
to be able to discuss anything
with more than just a reflexive contemplation
that one have more than a passing familiarity with philosophy
a few years of study perhaps
and enough experience to know what it means
to "think different"
because of one's age
these things
will guarantee
that one always understands that any solid foothold
is but a floating stone
and that we are all
precariously balanced
above the clouds of a gas planet
until we gain the power of autonomous levitation
This will also provide one
with a language
that can ensure a vision and a voice
that will create a door
that will perhaps allow others to follow
to the strange higher places we traverse
the secret mountain of light and metal that holds
and reveals the timeless technology of the spirit
split and built by our words.
and into my own
or makes me forget about it for awhile
Someone who
dispels the smoky halo of approval
with their ultimate apathy towards others
a self-love that grows from a knowledge
of what it means to pour everything away
into someone else's cup
They set up walls around the temple
and peer down from the castle walls
growing a garden within
Someone who has their own gravity
their own trajectory
that they ride and are soothed by
like steady waves of an ocean.
Someone who inspires the truce making
attraction that stamps down the loyalty
to everyone else
a love that starts wars
and ends the oldest ones.
No this post will be about something else. It will be about broadening horizons, the possibilities that exist out there for all of us and how everyone of you should kick yourselves in the ass if you are not going after exactly what you want.
In three days I will be flying to Idaho. While I'm there I am going to do some exploring. I am going to seek out some teachers for things that I really want to learn and always have. I am going to do some recon on possible places to work. I am going to get a little bit closer to that bull's head whose horns I learned to grab a long, long time ago.
Why play Rockband when you can start a rock band?
why play Wii tennis when you can play REAL tennis?
why use your pet interests as conversation topics when you could be using that time to grow those little beasts into WILD STALLIONS!
Why watch porno when you can make your own oh?
with or without a camera.
And really, when was the last time you saw a porno that REALLY turned you on?
If you can't think of doing anything else, at least you could do that. If you've got some free time, some ready friends, a camera and some aesthetics, make us a decent erotic film.
There have been a few erotic films that involved the strange things that happen when aliens mate. But as far as I know these have never gone beyond Troma or Ed Wood status. We need something that both Philip K. Dick and Caligula could dance to, something that makes tentacle porn look like massage therapy.
I am not talking about great golden copulations. I am talking about great irridescent, hyper-dimensional, madness inducing copulations. What if Hal Lindsey is right and the devil and his angels are aliens.
The yogis say we have six bodies. How would you integrate that into your film. CGI is allowed. Animals are allowed. The weirder, the darker, the more teetering on the brink of disgust the better. But it must turn you on. It must debase your body unto the beasts with the lust it raises in you.
It's so hard to offend people these days.
How would you offend people?
How would you offend yourself?
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