moon nectar
slows me to a gentle song
stirring the pinestraw in my bath
a cool water constellation
rippling triumphantly at dawn
yes at dawn the hunter eats moss
and dims himself
dims the snake's breath
dancing on mountains behind the sun
now the foundlings of magick
with stone-tipped beaks
and lunches still warm in sacks
ripen along the reaching path
their bushy wisps and
fragrant trolling
chant in the rhythm
of pine pine pine
at dawn I am sleeping
hunting slow and clean
I am finding earth
emerging from its own wilderness
my foot slips
and I am comforted by falling
arrows of precious heat
scattering across time
Sunday, February 28, 2010
No Matter, Never Mind
by Gary Snyder
The Father is the Void
The Wife Waves
Their child is Matter.
Matter makes it with his mother
And their child is Life,
a daughter.
The Daughter is the Great Mother
Who, with her father/brother Matter
as her lover,
Gives birth to the Mind.
Pontypool
Pontypool...
Pontypool...
Pontypool...
Just kidding.
How can a film recapitulate so viciously every desire I ever had for a spontaneous language driven by pure novelty? Does anyone get it? Do I? I hope so. I dope so. I rope slow. I pope slow.
It seems like a very, very large chunk of human communication could be mindless repetition. Rush Limbaugh, or insert any other proud moth-filled mouth here, drops a phrase, the appropriate aural mirrors reflect it in an endless circle, and everyone in the middle of that ideological boundary just repeats a few words without any explanation behind it. Lately I see "socialism" as the buzz. Obama is a Socialist! Obama is a Socialist! Osama is a SoCal Fish!
But what does that mean? Try to explain it without depending on synonymous replacement chants, please. How would you like it if all dictionaries were thesauruses? How would you stay connected to the original spark of innovation? By infusing the words with emotional fury, the only thing that breaks through the numbness of mechanical action, of course!
People mistrust any politician who explains things in logical terms, for he becomes an intellectual elitist, while preferring those who explain nothing and seek to spread blind passion. But fuck, that's just something I read on the internet.
Screaming saves the dying word, right? But a tolerance builds and it becomes harder and harder to pretend that a direct experience of meaning is contained within the words, so you scream louder and louder, and eventually you're in a rage and the savageness of desperation is the only thing that exists, having outlived any conscious acknowledgment of a word's dynamic implications.
At that point, you're a zombie, or the word is a zombie, and you are reduced to a singular desire, to consume and spread, to be replicated through destruction and thus justified in all of your rage. You are now the religious zealot of a meme, who can only find validation in knowing that someone else can be infected with the same strain of virus. Good job, parrot. Your blog is a hit now!
Burroughs and Joyce suddenly stand before us like Buddha and Christ. Every poet who ever swung around the alleys of the mind with a jazz-like unsteadiness seems to have actualized a natural philosophy which aims to avoid the ever-increasing tangles of our mental wire. Association increases in complexity within even loosely defined borders and the only thing that brings a sense of clarity sometimes is a burning sword slicing through established relationships in language.
But how do you talk of this, as you surely want to do, without committing the crime yourself? Do you become the holy man in the temple who expresses himself necessarily through a chalkboard? Do you keep speaking but allow a fever dream to drive the content of your speech as you invent an entirely new universe?
The trick might be outside of language entirely. It might not be relevant how, or if, you speak at all. Because expression follows perception, perception must be the source. Shock the system, shock the monkey, sledgehammer tongues falling to the ground. See. You are a fucking infant. You are in it to zen it.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather with the quantum foam, where the buffalo roam. Can you hear me now? Beneath anything mechanical in our world, no matter how much strength it gains, no matter how much its agents seem to bear good tidings, there is the upset conveyed by spirit, or chaos, Hermes, Thoth, Trickster, Bugs Bunny, Eris, that clump of dirt, that star, that scratch on your cornea, your farting god. It's time to be paranoid. If you inspire paranoia, you better also feel it yourself.
"The soft overcomes the hadron collider." -Tao Teh Kinky
Things are moving in all directions. Try to contain it and an energy becomes more volatile and you feel more and more like a schmuck even though you're getting better and better at pretending that you're not. Maybe it doesn't matter what we say. Maybe verbal communication is a form of social grooming. I read that on the internet once!
It's not like we're actual zombies, that words become murderous at every level of stale interaction, right? I don't expect the spirit of liberation to ever have any continuing cult - that devotion belongs to the word. But a mad laugh blasts at what is innately disruptive and it won't feel any need to justify itself. There is no need for redemption when your goal is to exhaust every possibility of this existential singularity. So I am saying nothing, I hope. With any luck, these words will fall on deaf ears.
If you put the sound of one hand clapping on a loudspeaker, you hope that people don't start humming the tune. They'll pin you down in your isolated booth where you broadcast everything you found relevant from the wire, they'll dig for your voice so they can also surf out of the void on radio waves, and they'll eat you, eat away all illusion until you realize that you are one of them, as you always have been.
Now... the upset.
I really had you going, didn't I?
This was all a joke. A yolk. A soak.
The thing is, viral interpretations of memetics would frequently hope for expression as an alienated harmony of disparate cells. Conversely, there's flowing resonance, ripples in continuity to which we are all subject. We wouldn't call a wave in water a consequential villian spawned by the evil ocean, would we? It's okay to be a zombie, folks. Here, have my brains and I'll have some of yours. Lather, rinse, repeat.
All we ever wanted is to let the energy flow through us, to animate us in its passing. I couldn't blame anyone for that. We are all fools stepping off of that cliff and that requires no justification. Purpose would be contrived, and so it shall be. Contrive, motherfucker, contrive and thrive. You're alive.
History repeats itself to the extent that you recognize cycles. If the reference points seem a bit arbitrary and begin to dissolve, then it is not repetition so much as awareness reaching out for anything, which, amusingly, occurs at the beginning of a cycle. Truth may be best expressed in any old instance of paradox. Shock the system. I read that in the sky once. Why must you return? No, really, ask yourself that.
Repeat it until the bomb drops.
The Bomb Drops.
The Bomb drops.
The bomb drops.
the bomb drops
bomb
FIN
{translated as: I hope this doesn't feel conclusive}
Pontypool...
Pontypool...
Just kidding.
How can a film recapitulate so viciously every desire I ever had for a spontaneous language driven by pure novelty? Does anyone get it? Do I? I hope so. I dope so. I rope slow. I pope slow.
It seems like a very, very large chunk of human communication could be mindless repetition. Rush Limbaugh, or insert any other proud moth-filled mouth here, drops a phrase, the appropriate aural mirrors reflect it in an endless circle, and everyone in the middle of that ideological boundary just repeats a few words without any explanation behind it. Lately I see "socialism" as the buzz. Obama is a Socialist! Obama is a Socialist! Osama is a SoCal Fish!
But what does that mean? Try to explain it without depending on synonymous replacement chants, please. How would you like it if all dictionaries were thesauruses? How would you stay connected to the original spark of innovation? By infusing the words with emotional fury, the only thing that breaks through the numbness of mechanical action, of course!
People mistrust any politician who explains things in logical terms, for he becomes an intellectual elitist, while preferring those who explain nothing and seek to spread blind passion. But fuck, that's just something I read on the internet.
Screaming saves the dying word, right? But a tolerance builds and it becomes harder and harder to pretend that a direct experience of meaning is contained within the words, so you scream louder and louder, and eventually you're in a rage and the savageness of desperation is the only thing that exists, having outlived any conscious acknowledgment of a word's dynamic implications.
At that point, you're a zombie, or the word is a zombie, and you are reduced to a singular desire, to consume and spread, to be replicated through destruction and thus justified in all of your rage. You are now the religious zealot of a meme, who can only find validation in knowing that someone else can be infected with the same strain of virus. Good job, parrot. Your blog is a hit now!
Burroughs and Joyce suddenly stand before us like Buddha and Christ. Every poet who ever swung around the alleys of the mind with a jazz-like unsteadiness seems to have actualized a natural philosophy which aims to avoid the ever-increasing tangles of our mental wire. Association increases in complexity within even loosely defined borders and the only thing that brings a sense of clarity sometimes is a burning sword slicing through established relationships in language.
But how do you talk of this, as you surely want to do, without committing the crime yourself? Do you become the holy man in the temple who expresses himself necessarily through a chalkboard? Do you keep speaking but allow a fever dream to drive the content of your speech as you invent an entirely new universe?
The trick might be outside of language entirely. It might not be relevant how, or if, you speak at all. Because expression follows perception, perception must be the source. Shock the system, shock the monkey, sledgehammer tongues falling to the ground. See. You are a fucking infant. You are in it to zen it.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather with the quantum foam, where the buffalo roam. Can you hear me now? Beneath anything mechanical in our world, no matter how much strength it gains, no matter how much its agents seem to bear good tidings, there is the upset conveyed by spirit, or chaos, Hermes, Thoth, Trickster, Bugs Bunny, Eris, that clump of dirt, that star, that scratch on your cornea, your farting god. It's time to be paranoid. If you inspire paranoia, you better also feel it yourself.
"The soft overcomes the hadron collider." -Tao Teh Kinky
Things are moving in all directions. Try to contain it and an energy becomes more volatile and you feel more and more like a schmuck even though you're getting better and better at pretending that you're not. Maybe it doesn't matter what we say. Maybe verbal communication is a form of social grooming. I read that on the internet once!
It's not like we're actual zombies, that words become murderous at every level of stale interaction, right? I don't expect the spirit of liberation to ever have any continuing cult - that devotion belongs to the word. But a mad laugh blasts at what is innately disruptive and it won't feel any need to justify itself. There is no need for redemption when your goal is to exhaust every possibility of this existential singularity. So I am saying nothing, I hope. With any luck, these words will fall on deaf ears.
If you put the sound of one hand clapping on a loudspeaker, you hope that people don't start humming the tune. They'll pin you down in your isolated booth where you broadcast everything you found relevant from the wire, they'll dig for your voice so they can also surf out of the void on radio waves, and they'll eat you, eat away all illusion until you realize that you are one of them, as you always have been.
Now... the upset.
I really had you going, didn't I?
This was all a joke. A yolk. A soak.
The thing is, viral interpretations of memetics would frequently hope for expression as an alienated harmony of disparate cells. Conversely, there's flowing resonance, ripples in continuity to which we are all subject. We wouldn't call a wave in water a consequential villian spawned by the evil ocean, would we? It's okay to be a zombie, folks. Here, have my brains and I'll have some of yours. Lather, rinse, repeat.
All we ever wanted is to let the energy flow through us, to animate us in its passing. I couldn't blame anyone for that. We are all fools stepping off of that cliff and that requires no justification. Purpose would be contrived, and so it shall be. Contrive, motherfucker, contrive and thrive. You're alive.
History repeats itself to the extent that you recognize cycles. If the reference points seem a bit arbitrary and begin to dissolve, then it is not repetition so much as awareness reaching out for anything, which, amusingly, occurs at the beginning of a cycle. Truth may be best expressed in any old instance of paradox. Shock the system. I read that in the sky once. Why must you return? No, really, ask yourself that.
Repeat it until the bomb drops.
The Bomb Drops.
The Bomb drops.
The bomb drops.
the bomb drops
bomb
FIN
{translated as: I hope this doesn't feel conclusive}
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tutencocaine and the Crackbaby Mummies
It's true. Cocaine and nicotine have been found in Egyptian and Sudanese mummies, dating from far before any *known* contact to the Americas, where coca and tobacco originate.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/mummies.htm
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Atheists 'just as ethical as churchgoers'
Taken from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7189188/Atheists-just-as-ethical-as-churchgoers.html
The team behind the research found that most religions were similar and had a moral code which helped to organise society.
But people who did not have a religious background still appeared to have intuitive judgments of right and wrong in common with believers, according to the findings, published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Dr Marc Hauser, from Harvard University, one of the co-authors of the research, said that he and his colleagues were interested in the roots of religion and morality.
"For some, there is no morality without religion, while others see religion as merely one way of expressing one's moral intuitions," he said.
The team looked at several psychological studies which were designed to test an individual’s morality.
Dr Hauser added: "The research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit religious commitments.
"However, although it appears as if co-operation is made possible by mental mechanisms that are not specific to religion, religion can play a role in facilitating and stabilising co-operation between groups."
He added that the findings could help to explain the complex relationship between morality and religion.
"It seems that in many cultures religious concepts and beliefs have become the standard way of conceptualising moral intuitions,” he said.
"Although, as we discuss in our paper, this link is not a necessary one, many people have become so accustomed to using it, that criticism targeted at religion is experienced as a fundamental threat to our moral existence."
Atheists are just as ethical and have as strong a moral compass as churchgoers, new research shows.
People who have no religion know right from wrong just as well as regular worshippers, according to the study.
The team behind the research found that most religions were similar and had a moral code which helped to organise society.
But people who did not have a religious background still appeared to have intuitive judgments of right and wrong in common with believers, according to the findings, published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Dr Marc Hauser, from Harvard University, one of the co-authors of the research, said that he and his colleagues were interested in the roots of religion and morality.
"For some, there is no morality without religion, while others see religion as merely one way of expressing one's moral intuitions," he said.
The team looked at several psychological studies which were designed to test an individual’s morality.
Dr Hauser added: "The research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit religious commitments.
"However, although it appears as if co-operation is made possible by mental mechanisms that are not specific to religion, religion can play a role in facilitating and stabilising co-operation between groups."
He added that the findings could help to explain the complex relationship between morality and religion.
"It seems that in many cultures religious concepts and beliefs have become the standard way of conceptualising moral intuitions,” he said.
"Although, as we discuss in our paper, this link is not a necessary one, many people have become so accustomed to using it, that criticism targeted at religion is experienced as a fundamental threat to our moral existence."
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Baby Bizarre
Being weird is the most normal thing you can do.
The desire to determine normality is the desire to find an average with which to measure one's own uniqueness in a process of individuation. Though it can be used oppressively, at its heart this behavior is a means to feel out the self.
Weird, ain't it?
The desire to determine normality is the desire to find an average with which to measure one's own uniqueness in a process of individuation. Though it can be used oppressively, at its heart this behavior is a means to feel out the self.
Weird, ain't it?
Monday, February 8, 2010
I'm setting the whole damn woods on fire.
"The bigger you build the bonfire, the more darkness is revealed."
-Terence McKenna
-Terence McKenna
Documentary: Know Your Mushrooms
KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS follows uber myco visionaries Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans (two of the more expert and unforgettably mercurial characters in the community) as they lead us on a hunt for the wild mushroom and the deeper cultural experiences attached to the mysterious fungi.
Combining material filmed at the Telluride Mushroom Fest with animation and archival footage along with a neo-psychedelic soundtrack by the Flaming Lips, KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS opens the doors to perception, takes the audience on a longer, stranger trip and delivers them to a brave new world where the fungi might well guide humanity to a saner, safer place… with extra cheese…
CONSUMER WARNING: Don’t Go Into The Forest Without This Movie!
Combining material filmed at the Telluride Mushroom Fest with animation and archival footage along with a neo-psychedelic soundtrack by the Flaming Lips, KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS opens the doors to perception, takes the audience on a longer, stranger trip and delivers them to a brave new world where the fungi might well guide humanity to a saner, safer place… with extra cheese…
CONSUMER WARNING: Don’t Go Into The Forest Without This Movie!
If you know your mycology, this movie might not be the most informative piece of media for you, but I recommend it nonetheless because it is entertaining, sometimes even cute. It starts out quite normal, maybe to rope in the squares, and eventually gets very McKenna-esque. Though the movie is brief, they do try to cover every possibility in the relationship between humans and mushrooms. The characters are enigmatic old hippie wanderers in a sense and yet know their stuff very well. I learned from one of them that reishi mushrooms can be very effective in treating psoriasis.
One should be able to find a torrent of the DVD rip online, just as I did. You probably won't regret it.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
May This Blog Find You Disturbed
"We must always be disturbed by the truth."
-Dogen, a thirteenth century Japanese Buddhist teacher
-Dogen, a thirteenth century Japanese Buddhist teacher
Mother's Elf
Just as one accepts the physical body as an immediate reality, so too should one accept the emotional body in its present manifestation. It is what we have to work with, our brightest means of discovery. And just as it is with the body, we should feel it fully and follow it with utter devotion as a puppy follows its master.
This isn't to say that we are mistaken in the desire to change our momentary modality, however, for to accept the emotional state in its connection to the great primacy is to accept also its transformative aspect as all things are light-hearted with the spirit of change. Alchemy has a very loving approach to what it seeks to transmute, I think. When a mother pushes her child to grow in the world, she does so out of love.
We can be mothers to ourselves. We can love ourselves unconditionally, no matter what forms appear as the emotional body, and we can always provide encouragement. The mother understands that everything happens in baby steps. She never faults her child for stumbling. She accepts her child in its awkward, innocent state, for that is its expression of beauty.
This isn't to say that we are mistaken in the desire to change our momentary modality, however, for to accept the emotional state in its connection to the great primacy is to accept also its transformative aspect as all things are light-hearted with the spirit of change. Alchemy has a very loving approach to what it seeks to transmute, I think. When a mother pushes her child to grow in the world, she does so out of love.
We can be mothers to ourselves. We can love ourselves unconditionally, no matter what forms appear as the emotional body, and we can always provide encouragement. The mother understands that everything happens in baby steps. She never faults her child for stumbling. She accepts her child in its awkward, innocent state, for that is its expression of beauty.
Friday, February 5, 2010
There Are No Misteaks
From Morgan's Tarot Deck.
The ancient Chinese said this to each other before business negotiations.
Whatever happens on the relative plane, the cosmos as a whole makes no errors. The uncreated, unborn and unmade always provide new alternatives. There is no possibility of ever straying from the path, whatever its turns may be.
This is not a license to do anything but an assertion that the ego or the illusion of ego tends to create problems.
Anal Beads... I Mean, Happiness
In trying to put the concept of happiness in the proper context, I'm avoiding philosophy, or worse yet, ethics. Energy in our squishy little world seems to go through a cycle. Part of this cycle, one might say, is happiness. Or perhaps happiness is the ability itself of the cycle to be completed rather than hung up on one part.
The latter might be more akin to happiness as the yogi's acceptance, where one accepts all that comes with equanimity. That state seems dismal at first, but if one sees it through it can flower into something much more redeeming, something that could be explained rather crudely as "happiness." Ah, well, crudeness is simple, so this is not without appeal. I am happy to exist, however that turns out.
Wilhelm Reich's version of the cycle (tension -> charge -> discharge -> relaxation) works for me. Just as there is no orgasm without an initial sexual tension in the muscles, happiness also must follow certain tensions. It will come and it will go, all the while providing us with an indigenous chemical reward system that guides us through the terrestrial matrix.
I've noticed this cycle occurring many times over in my life thus far, and not by chance so much as by an equal balance of points and counterpoints. You can't avoid either side of the coin. Even when I've tried to remain in a sad state, I've failed terribly. Or failed rather joyfully, you might say. The best we can do, as far as I can tell, is be an honest witness to change.
So, just breathe, I guess. Fuck, don't look at me. I don't know.
The latter might be more akin to happiness as the yogi's acceptance, where one accepts all that comes with equanimity. That state seems dismal at first, but if one sees it through it can flower into something much more redeeming, something that could be explained rather crudely as "happiness." Ah, well, crudeness is simple, so this is not without appeal. I am happy to exist, however that turns out.
Wilhelm Reich's version of the cycle (tension -> charge -> discharge -> relaxation) works for me. Just as there is no orgasm without an initial sexual tension in the muscles, happiness also must follow certain tensions. It will come and it will go, all the while providing us with an indigenous chemical reward system that guides us through the terrestrial matrix.
I've noticed this cycle occurring many times over in my life thus far, and not by chance so much as by an equal balance of points and counterpoints. You can't avoid either side of the coin. Even when I've tried to remain in a sad state, I've failed terribly. Or failed rather joyfully, you might say. The best we can do, as far as I can tell, is be an honest witness to change.
So, just breathe, I guess. Fuck, don't look at me. I don't know.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Multimedia, Schmultimedia
A Visual Album by Danny Perez and Animal Collective.
http://www.oddsac.com/
A Visual Album by Danny Perez and Animal Collective
Monday, February 1, 2010
Khalil Gibran, Giving Me a Soul Boner
"For in truth it is life that gives unto life- while you,
who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness."
-Khalil Gibran in The Prophet
who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness."
-Khalil Gibran in The Prophet
Fuck Referring to Anything as "Untitled"
where tender words are felt harsh
a humble archer aligns the incomprehensible
with that which is even less understood
what will we become, fair darkness?
I in you and you in I
in strange orbit we do not belong to ourselves
in deep earth heaving into night
we will give all that is bare and sacred
all that flowers beyond itself from youth
we will give it to a love of fire
for it is the same force that makes a child
that also makes a man in the wilderness of dreams
a suffering of gentleness and light
received in the swaying days and nights of feathers
where tender birds are felt harsh by the tree
and awakening is seen with awkward, sore delight
is it a wise man who walks with our strange desire?
is it fair to admit a divine pattern formed
dwelling only in the flow of waters dark
to ever a broken poet without a word for home?
can we tell now why spellbound minstrels
with broken wet singing lips come to his nameless abode
where windows of every color lay shattered
where thieves in ancient moods come to pay respect
to his loving, thriving abyss?
can such a valley bristling with its lowliness
know of giving as its eternal mode?
of giving space itself to movement
of giving much empty thought to time?
I will be his witness in silent feeling
his grace heaped entirely upon my mule
pressing forward through veils undreamable
tearing at skins still screaming from birth
I will be the fragile whisper of those who came before
yet disappearing over mountains of themselves
I will be life fulfilled yet yearning
I will be a glittering sea of corpses sucked at
by weeds turning over heavens with mineral kindness
I in he and he in I
we shall further our knowledge in love
where tender words are felt harsh
and ever a humble archer is he
aligning his heart with the long sway of the stars
we shall ever be this flaming arrow
a broken, ageless thing without any word for itself
knowing ourselves as what is given freely
to darkness smiling within
a humble archer aligns the incomprehensible
with that which is even less understood
what will we become, fair darkness?
I in you and you in I
in strange orbit we do not belong to ourselves
in deep earth heaving into night
we will give all that is bare and sacred
all that flowers beyond itself from youth
we will give it to a love of fire
for it is the same force that makes a child
that also makes a man in the wilderness of dreams
a suffering of gentleness and light
received in the swaying days and nights of feathers
where tender birds are felt harsh by the tree
and awakening is seen with awkward, sore delight
is it a wise man who walks with our strange desire?
is it fair to admit a divine pattern formed
dwelling only in the flow of waters dark
to ever a broken poet without a word for home?
can we tell now why spellbound minstrels
with broken wet singing lips come to his nameless abode
where windows of every color lay shattered
where thieves in ancient moods come to pay respect
to his loving, thriving abyss?
can such a valley bristling with its lowliness
know of giving as its eternal mode?
of giving space itself to movement
of giving much empty thought to time?
I will be his witness in silent feeling
his grace heaped entirely upon my mule
pressing forward through veils undreamable
tearing at skins still screaming from birth
I will be the fragile whisper of those who came before
yet disappearing over mountains of themselves
I will be life fulfilled yet yearning
I will be a glittering sea of corpses sucked at
by weeds turning over heavens with mineral kindness
I in he and he in I
we shall further our knowledge in love
where tender words are felt harsh
and ever a humble archer is he
aligning his heart with the long sway of the stars
we shall ever be this flaming arrow
a broken, ageless thing without any word for itself
knowing ourselves as what is given freely
to darkness smiling within
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