20043351

    So you have certain things, or I guess they have you, that are shadow-things.  They linger about and haunt us from the corners of rooms, and the corners of our eyes, and from corners in our minds, and they make us do things.  Bad things, out of fear. These are called shadow-things because when we look at them directly, stuffing fear down a choked gullet to be dissipated by a strong, reliable belly, we destroy them by realizing that they do not exist.  One's life is plagued by  nasty creatures;  in fact they make themselves quite friendly with us as they do their work of getting one to comply, to shut down, to just get through, to assimilate.
    Thus it is best to always be hungry for healthy portions of one's own fear. 
    Those are the shadow-things, and where they lurk our brains take on a dull, brownish hue inside and rationality works against us, backward from judgment to reality, backing us into traps that have been glamoured to appear as choices.  Beware logic isolated from sensation as the favored weapon of the shadow-thing; when you find yourself in a morass of anxiety, take quick pains to find an egress!  (Here the reader must be advised that in the thick of shadowy magicking, very often one finds oneself required to manufacture the appropriate portal thru which to achieve said locomotion; the author recommends acquiring and learning the use of some sort of instrument or mechanism that may be stored in the mind and retrieved in needful situations. The labrys and bokken are obvious choices, but some individuals may prefer the use of fire or of flood to make an escape, and the very strong may simply use hands and feet.)
   
    Now, also there are in this world elements of light.  Light, like air, most often goes unnoticed and unacknowledged for its omnipresence. Yet it is the substance that actualizes the vibrance, the color of all others.  And gazed at very closely we find that it does have a sort of matter to itself, although a very strange one.  So it is that one finds sometimes an unseeable light.  Perhaps it is the resident of some psychic, or some spiritual dimension.  Perhaps it is the soul of that more familiar light which is sourced in the sun and other fires; or, alternatively, perhaps it is light given off by our own souls. 
    Probably such matters are best left to scholars.
    As it is, this mysterious substance can best be comprehended by laypersons through its inverse nature to that of shadow-things; when looked at directly, this time not in the face of fear but of self-doubt, one finds it to be not only solid of meaning, but exponentially more substantive than one had dared to hazard.  Looked at and recognized as real, such elements leap out at us, and from us, and nowhere at all because they are leaping from a solid center, expanding in breadth and depth in our mind's eye so that, just as the looked-upon matter reaches far enough into waking reality to physically move us-- a smile perhaps, or the choice to pick up a particular book or to set a pen to paper just so, or the making of a career-- we realize that we have been walking through a world saturated with the stuff our whole lives-- and that it seems more than a little to be magical. 

    Of course, an acquaintance with such aspects of reality must be made at least several times over,  as one repeats the name of an enticing individual encountered only on certain festive occasions, with significant heaps of experience-time in between: each encounter markedly different; yet each markedly more familiar. 
    Eventually, awareness of the omnipresent becomes replaced by perception of it. 



   

    It's pretty horrible, because the Self/Other-destructive ways of Being-- those processes by which we commit the essential act of Violence that is the psychological, physical, social, et cetera severing of "self" from "other" and that are implicit in and simultaneous to the more visible manifestations of these acts (such as imprisoning beings in factory farms, or dropping bombs on them, or consuming pornography):
    The ultimately alienating ways of Knowing that undergird all destructive ways of Being are rooted horribly (and i write this in the active sense of something purposefully rooting them there) in the personal pain of each human being who has been subjected to this culture.
    It has for a while seemed to me that an innocent human response to an environment that is assaultive to the Self is to become, in that wondrous propensity of living beings to harmonize with their surroundings, Self-destructive on some level.  Here we have a summary of human childhood and growing-up.
    To harm Self is to harm those labeled Other, and vice versa-- but here i need to add that when I write Other I refer to whatever aspect of genuine Self that may linger or, rarely, burn brightly within the bounds of culturally/socially/economically enforced deathlike roles, that divine spark that has no physical presence and encompasses galaxies, that alone traverses the spaces of Aloneness and is the only vehicle to true connection with other living beings.
    We have all been initiated into the cult of Self-destruction, by virtue of an exposure to massive evil that is at once terribly personal to each of us, as well as the most fundamental, perhaps the first political/social act.  Our hate is not just intimately linked to, it is our neurosis, as we move, animated by that seed of oppression now lodged deeply, forcibly within our hearts, to commit The Act of Self-destruction-- which is the violence, psychic and physical, that rends Self from "other".
    To harm another is not to fulfill the requirements of that Otherness, but to create Otherness.
    We cling with terrified tenacity to our hate, which is our Self-destructiveness, as the key to easing the cognitive dissonance of that first experience of what will always be agonizingly unjustifiable violence.  And it is so that we are assimilated into the cult of death that is this culture, and become its minion, fragment of a faceless legion of undead servitors.

6/09

People are part of their environment. If a child is disrespectful to women, it is because he has been around others who are this way. It is bigger than just doing what we see others do. Our environment as a whole shapes us. Often, ‘learning’ has very little to do with it, in a conscious sense.
In fact, this can mislead us to thinking we can consciously, logically, or rationally override this phenomena. We cannot. What we can do is change our environment. Or, on a more long-term level, perhaps over time and with much work, we can transform the belief systems we have that act to catch and to process our experiences of our environment into behavior. For example, learning to respond to a destructive environment not by being self-destructive, but by taking action to change it (?).
[I have definitely noticed a pattern since working at the shelter of coming home from work and basically wanting to self-destruct on a minor level with some frequency– like spending four hours on the internet last night simply turning off my mind. More often, I engage in activities that present a combination of support and destruct, like spending time with people that is less than intellectually enlightening, that in fact helps me stop thinking for awhile, but that is also mostly emotionally supportive in its simple solidarity. I think that there is certainly room for this as a way to cope and to re-energize; it is the urgency, the experience of a desire that seems to border on an immediate need, that bothers me about this.]

6/11
So, the reason that we’ve all become ‘sexually liberated’ and still move in a world of woman-hate is that the myths that color the world are of Cartesian rationality, of the isolated ego/brain that can see thru to what is right regardless of physical/emotional/moral/et cetera surroundings.
Previously (or so we are led to perceive) people’s sexuality in this culture was repressed (as all other aspects of their lives) due to the outside force of religious or state oppression. Now, with all of our ‘choices’ as consumers, our ‘freedom’ of religion and speech, we are just as trapped because, of course, our spiritual and physical surroundings have not greatly changed– at least not insofar as they are able to support us in freeing ourselves. I would argue that in some ways–not all– the latter have actually deteriorated in this respect.
We need to develop an ethic of– ethic? I don’t even know if this concept will apply anymore– of knowing with our whole selves. We have been forever fragmented, oppressed from one direction or another, parted out and then parts of us numbed, dead, dying with the pain. I’ve read that when we experience ‘unbearable’ pain or terror we become temporarily insensate, going into total shock or a state of calm, or just losing feeling in an injured body part. I think that there are parts of our Selves that are in so much pain, under such brutal torture so constantly from birth that they remain hidden to us, perhaps for a lifetime, in their protecting sleep.
We need to develop an ethic– I say this ironically now, because an ethic is a cage for those semi-human beings who live isolated in the rational mind, and who must rely on the crutch of a false, a memorized structure to replace the knowledge kept in their bones, their emotions, their sexuality, their sense of taste and of smell– we need to develop an ‘ethic’ of seeing and knowing, of Being from wholeness. Only from wholeness do we make choices truly our own. [I think the phone rang here... was @ work.]

I can't remember/figure out how to change the headline thingie that says about snuggling!
(it's kinda funny.)

strength thru diversity.

diversity thru Self.

Self thru connectedness.

Here, i wrote this a bit ago. there's...stuff in between my last substantial posts and this one, but i haven't gotten around to recording that, and i just wanted to get this up.

(oh, and this isn't really a rant about veganism: it's just an example.)

Okay. So another really crucial point at which the seemingly fluffy concept of ‘meaning,’ or the dry, intellectual consideration of existentialism meets the concrete world of activism and real social change:
People not only are completely alienated from themselves and their surroundings, they’ve forgotten that being integrated and connected is even important. People will hand you plastic-wrapped packages of butchered meat with a smile– not because they are evil, or stupid (in the sense of lacking in intelligence), but because it doesn’t occur to them that eating, or anything else for that matter, with a select few highly socially emphasized exceptions, could be a source of meaning. Giving up meat and all other animal products is seriously COMPLETELY FUCKING EASY when you reconnect–or rather, observe the connection that is already there, between oneself and, well, anything– the food you eat certainly included.
In a society in which ‘meaning’ is scoffed at by anyone bright and thinking enough to revile Hallmark sentiments, all actions must be reduced to “supposed to,” or “path of least resistance,” or “it feels good,” all of which eating meat apparently embodies. (The fact that we are taught by the media to believe we take pleasure in certain things is a separate matter. Fast food, for example, is pretty literally trash, yet many people sincerely believe that it is a treasured pleasure to partake of.)
Without the possibility of meaning that comes from knowing you are reifying the connections between yourself and those creatures of comparable sentience through your dietary choices, why would anyone willingly give up the perceived pleasure of animal products?
It isn’t that people are idiots. We’ve been systematically taught that there are no opportunities for meaning in daily life, none outside of those held out to us by the hands of those in power: Get married! Have a kid! Work hard to earn the prize of feeling that you deserve your existence, and save up for an entertainment system produced in a sweatshop to create true quality time with the family! Go out to dinner and as a special treat indulge in a classy steak or lobster dish; that aristocratic feeling, power-by-proxy, will make your family feel like it is truly worthwhile. Go to church. Or don’t. Be a scientist. Above all, keep the system running.
We’d never stay at the wheels if we hadn’t been robbed of the meaning of daily existence, taught it was impossible to achieve in the first place in the void of drudgery that is life, then held out these carrots to keep us running in place.
And once we see past them, to the web of reality that connects us to all life (including, of course, the less ‘active’ counterparts of our existence like soil and rivers) not only do these prizes no longer hold us in thrall, not only do we scream at the alienation we feel in being forced, now disillusioned, to remain in place, but we are torn apart by the agony of the world around us that we rightly perceive as akin to, or arguably as, ours. It is this sensitivity that is the base for a world of meaning in day-to-day existence when we are freed from a collective lifestyle of exploitation. For the converse, of course, is joy, and a sense of being-ness in having the reality of our connectedness confirmed by conscious and compassionate living.
I mean, seriously. You hang out with friends, you do nice stuff for each other, you feel good. Simple as that.

I have the zen anger!

No need for unpleasant actions: the mere presence, the being of these people in my house makes me furious!

A fascinating phenomenon!

Fucking scene-sters, eat shit and die!

More random thoughts, transcribed. with random dates here and there. am almost current. didn't write much in december except a paper i've already posted. working too much.

A big part of change is giving yourself time after you make a change to let it sink in and to fully experience its effects. Otherwise, you are just acting on dogma. Sometimes, this can mean being uncomfortable, or even in pain as you take in the destructive– or even constructive– consequences of a certain choice; if you do not actually experience them, but merely move away out of fear, guilt, or shame you will not really learn anything.
Other times, it means being patient and not jumping ahead to gorge on more and more of “a good thing;” you have to be still and listen to what an experience has to tell you, rather than seekign to exploit it for its beneficial feel.
These waiting times are spaces in which to make changes in other layers of life. Perhaps, if you are soaking up the teaching and benefits of a positive change, you will feel strong enough to make a riskier change elsewhere. Perhaps not.

I hate how afraid we are–I am, of a world without the invasive noises of industrialized technology. Sounds that imprison us as they penetrate our every moment, thus shaping our every thought and feeling in some ungraspable way. I have always assumed that fear of silence is fear of aloneness: of being in a wilderness unsafe from the terrors of sudden death, unfriendly native.
Go outside. Go to a park. If at all possible, find one relatively isolated from busy streets– a populated wilderness reserve, if you can. Go on the weekend, and listen. The hoots and laughter, the irritated squeals of children, the reassuring yells of mother, the chirping of birds tell me: What you are afraid of is not isolation, for there is none apart from the alienation of the city street. What you are afraid of is freedom.
And the trees, leaves glowing with sunlight, let me know with good humor that they are there to help me get over my ridiculousness. Whenever I choose to ask.

With grass, with the trees, with clouds, I know a sense of belonging and experience a vitality that begins to become what could be– if I had just a little more time; if there was just a little less concrete, car noises– magic. I begin to see shadows of worlds I have carried about in my mind since early childhood. The earth, it seems, is sleeping in these moments, and I catch amidst the wasteland of its ubiquitous nightmare the intense yet fragile glimmerings that are the pieces of its waking reality.
Cities, deforestation, strip-mining: these are all madness. The golden fields, the magic of my imagination are what is real.
I want to write something else here. There is a beauty in cities. It does not stem from well-manicured shrubs, or high-cultured architecture, or even efficiency of street design. It is the beauty of decay, of rebellion, of culture. It is all of the things that remind us, in one way or another, that we are alive, and that we are all born having inherited the Earth, as it has us, and what we are worth more, and are destined to have more, than the rulers of civilization would have for us. This is jazz music; it is a crumbling or vibrant old building in defiance of square people-boxes; it is grass and vines bursting forth outside of where they belong; it is people’s imaginations doing the same; it is, most overtly, punk music, as musicians and young kids try consciously to shrug off the shackles upon their minds by demanding revolution in creative ways.
This is why the best culture in civilization is slave culture; or at least that of the socially conscious. Because, essentially, any real culture in civilization is about that. It is important to remember that these things are all bittersweet in reacting to the filth and tragedy they are immersed in.
You can have this culture. It is beautiful, and familiar, and full of hope. Or, you can have magic.

Okay: the place of the elderly and the wise in all of this revolution. There is absolutely room for pillars of strength, of deep-rootedness. The wise and the learned (who often happen to also be the old) can incite change by showing us things we cannot see. And then who becomes the one resistant to change if these things are perhaps uglier than we want to deal with? These are the witches of society. We fear the things they know that we don’t, that we don’t allow ourselves to know. We call them evil because they have their own power in their knowledge. In this sense, we find an example of how nature-based, tribal knowledge or modes of being can in fact represent revolution, rather than stagnation. After all, nature is itself change. Being able to read, interpret, and voice the changes nature is telling us about can appear terrifying.
The old, just like the queer, or those of all manner of various backgrounds, can have unique and valuable perspectives and ways of being. At the same time, I think many young people experience a unique drive to make change happen, to be its vehicles, its hands and voices. Everyone has a place. Or, at least, everyone listening to who they really are has this. And we need everyone’s unique contributions to survive. This is not an aphorism– it is a concrete, fucking practical reality. Those in power are killing everything, including themselves, because so many voices are being ignored, contributions compromised. What this means is that it is not any one category like “the old” that should be targeted. However, at the same time it is obvious that many people are doing significant harm by they way they are. This means that they are not paying attention to who they are– are betraying the world by denying their responsibility to the self. It is those who seek to achieve or maintain a status quo that are the enemy.

So many of us, including those who are most oppressed by the system, seek to settle into some sense of status quo, because just having a place of one’s own to settle can feel like the remedy to having your life controlled on all fronts by outside forces. But the reality, of course, is that this is an illusion. While the need for deep-rootedness is real (my resourcing in things like the punk movement, choosing your own, or rather finding your own family and history, your tribe) the reality is that even finding our creating a space of one’s own does not preclude drastic changes.
We were lied to and told that change is in all cases negative, and then learn this from childhood every day as we are forced to change, to mutilate our true selves to accomodate the system that oppresses us. Some of us become so disfigured that our selves vanish altogether, forever. But truly finding one’s place, grasping true agency has to do with discovering and sliding into one’s niche, not in permanence but in process. We must each of us take up our unique position as agents of change.

11/01/06
Another important part of the understanding of individuals as bearers of unique perspectives is seeing that each of us (those who are actually individuals) carry withing them a unique and entire world. This world represents the embodiment and articulation of our unique ideas about life. Usually what happens is that people’s worlds come to resemble the images fed to us by our culture, and we try to control “reality” to fit this world, the world of the status quo. These worlds are dead worlds; they are static; they are composed of elements that cannot exist. In part because they are often contradictory, but perhaps more basically because they do not admit to the basic quality of life that is change.
Yet an individual’s inner world is a sacred thing. It is one of our most fundamental duties to attempt to shed some of the magic properties of our vast, little godworlds upon the one we all happen to share. What makes this a positive rather than static thing is that if you are an individual, this means you are always changing. You are constantly sounding the distance between the world inside and that outside, and as you consume new experiences, you fidn that the inside has, of course, morphed. It is your duty to know the world inside as you know the route to your home, the color of the sky, the way objects fall when let go in this world, in order to act as proper emissary from that world.

Okay, so part of the whole “magic” concept has to do with art. A piece of the puzzle is that peopel who do art of make music are seeing, behaving, being in ways that are (theoretically) totally unique. If the art or music is good, anyways. If this can be pulled off, something magical happens. One reason music, as opposed to some visual arts, is so viscerally mind-blowing, and world-shattering, is that it so fully embodies the process of spontaneity– particularly live music. What I mean is that each piece (or maybe group of pieces) is unique to each moment it shares. This is vividly true– you cannot hold onto music, you can only actively make or listen to it, one moment at a time. Of course, it is also true that many musicians have a script for the stuff they play; songs are usually pre-written. In any case, what this means is that to make life have that kinda magic that is in music, you need to “play” on a moment-by-moment basis. In other words, pay very close attention to what is going on and don’t let yourself be run by habit. You must live your life always as an artistic expression of the truth of each moment.

Spend more time doing nothing. You have to just be to figure out what you are and what you need to do. You need to lose your bearings on what you “should be” doing.

We’re afraid that if we stop and look we’ll discover that we are empty. The truth of what we fear is that we are in fact full and complete inside, and in our connection with our world– but we have so long been turned away. We are like drug-addicted parents afraid to come down and see the beauty of the child we have neglected.
Boredom is not boredom. Life is not fucking boring. Boredom is the itch to act intensely when we are immersed in an oppressive situation. Something is wrong and you itch to respond. For so many in our culture, we are so thoroughly immersed in negativity that is so pervasive we think it is just the way things are. We do not truly question our situation; neither do we truly look at ourselves. Instead, we think inside the system, assuming the problem is a lack of stimulation– “there is nothing to do.” What is true is that being in ourselves is wonderful. Boredom is not a lack of things to do, but being in an environment that keeps of from the experience of being in ourselves.

1/11/07
Things in our culture feel so empty because nothing is appropriately names, or understood, for what it is. Corporations are seen at best as misguided, or even “evil” outgrowths of our natural economic systems. We don’t acknowledge that these creatures actively seek to destroy us an all we care about. They are monsters.
T.V. is seen as harmless, if mind-numbing, entertainment, rather than an active, purposeful brainwashing mechanism.
Of course, this deceptiveness is necessary, and equally purposeful. Were we, the exploited and fucked, to clearly recognize the dividing lines and tp perceive our enemies, we would fight. As it is, we are so brainfucked that if we believe ourselves to have enemies, we see them in those singled out and intensely targeted for exploitation and extermination.
All of this has been said before. My point is merely that these realities create a kind of hollowness, an absence of everyday meaning. When we cannot call a thing by its name– out loud, or even in the sacred space of our own minds, life assumes a sort of dull haze. I’ve just never been very good at lying to myself– most of the time, anyways– so I am very unhappy a lot. And I worry about being perceived as a fuck-up. Aren’t we supposed to quit focusing on the negative things and instead feed ourselves pleasantness, so as to be more productive? The lies only make things more depressing for me.

I'm writing this down because it is true and also to remind myself when I begin to fade into self-deceit.

Almost everything in my life feels utterly meaningless. This is compounded, for better or for worse, as this makes it inescapable but not my fault, is the fact that my brain happens to agree with my emotions: this lifestyle is shit.
Almost nothing in my day-to-day existence offers any sort of existential siginficance to me. I don't know why I do a lot of the things that I do. Actually, this is a lie. I do many of them because I've been told that it is worthwhile, for example, and makes one happy, to create mindless experiences of pleasure with one's friends.
Sometimes I simply get tired of trying to makes this sort of thing feel more meaningful than it will ever have the potential to be.
I'm really not writing this to be dramatic. I am not upset right now. In a way, it is actually a relief to look up from routine and suddenly notice that I am completely out of the stuff that keeps me moving in a status quo direction. "Well. Can't force myself to do THAT in the all-too-obviously vain attempt to create happiness and meaning anymore for awhile."
Of course, the problem now becomes one of which new direction to face. God, all I can think of that is truly worthwhile is more of what I already spend close to all of my free time doing: reading and writing.
Which, of course, I still consider absolutely to be of the finest ways to spend my time.
Variety, however, more than being the spice of, is essential to life. One starts to feel confined and restless on such an experiential diet.
I don't know what else to say right now other than to add, because it is related, that while I am feeling basically fine right now, I am really sad most of the time, but in a dreadful, dead way and without the comfort and release of that sharp agony of tears, because I hate nearly everything around me, and because this hate is for absolutely sound reason, and because those things I do not hate I watch in a forced slow death.
Um, yes.
I think that figuring out how to transcend this place/problem is the main purpose of my life right now, and that when I eventually find myself free, I will discover myself to be born a new person, full of wonderful new, or old and improved, gifts. I suppose I can comfort myself-- and I say this with a complete lack of sarcasm-- with the observation that this IS currently my life's mission, as it ties into my own well-being and that furthering of those "causes" I care about, as moving beyond this sense of dead, meaningless uselessness will, of course, lie in discovering more precisely what my life's work shall be, and roughly how I shall begin to achieve this. So, really, I can alleviate a lot of the anxiety that accompanies these thoughts and feelings by reminding myself, "Hey, don't give yourself a hard time. You are struggling with your life's mission right now. It's a big deal, and you are doing the best you can." Sometimes I feel-- okay, a great fucking deal of the time I feel as though there is something really wrong with me that I can't just be fucking happy.
So there. That is sort of sorted out. I'm sure it will continue to plague me nonetheless, but I have faith as I do in little else, (I have to given that it is my life's work) that a little understanding, layered over time, always helps.