Ivy climbs the northern wall of the edifice, twisting around corporate tresses. It reaches skyward to thwart the wood, to climb and leap and grasp hold of the walls, to grow on and into mortar and tear the building down, brick by crumbling brick. The suits behind the scenes say they are stewards of the environment, but Mother Nature has asked for no such thing. As long as there are SUVs and CDs, consumers and consumption, the vines will keep climbing.
Two vultures look on from atop parking lot lights, cold winds ruffling their feathers.
Two vultures look on from atop parking lot lights, cold winds ruffling their feathers.
I've been trying to get into songwriting for the past, oh, month or so. It's not long as far as these endeavors go, but I've always considered myself something of a writer so I thought, "Hey, I can do this. It might be a little rough at the start, but I should be able to bang out something mediocre with enough work, right?"
Well, fuck. I started listening to the Decemberists very recently and... fuck. I was hoping to be inspired. Instead, they are making me feel insignificant, like the smallest ant of the songwriting world. Even if I become my best like Eliza Dushku I will still be barely noticeable besides these guys.
Exhibit A, from "Los Angeles, I'm Yours":
"There is a city by the sea
A gentle company
I don�t suppose you want to
And as it tells it's sorry tale
In harrowing detail
It's hollowness will haunt you
It's streets and boulevards
Orphans and oligarchs
And here's a plaintive melody
Truncated symphony
An ocean�s garbled vomit on the shore
Los Angeles, I�m yours"
Boulevard rhymed with oligarch? Fucking madness.
Exhibits B and C from "The Infanta":
"Within sight of the baronness
Seething spite for this live largesse
By her side sits the baron
Her barrenness barbs her"
"And above all this falderal
On a bed made of chaparral
She is laid, a coronal placed on her brow"
Baroness/barrenness? Double fuck. Falderal/chaparral/coronal? Triple-threat-hattrick-fuck. Stop this song writing madness. I could go on, but I'd run out of ways to say "fuck". I bet that bastard Colin Meloy wouldn't, and he'd rhyme it with words I have never even heard of.
"I found myself moonstruck
offended by the muck-a-muck
more magick than Ms. Clutterbuck.
His genius leaves me awestruck,
it makes me want to run amok.
Fuck."
Is it wrong to feel offended by the brilliance of art, to be unable to appreciate it because of how it changes your opinion of yourself? I feel like I had a dinner date with the Mona Lisa and, at the end of it, she kicked me in the crotch--now you know why she has that smile. As I reeled, she touched her dry, chapped lips to my ear and growled: "No one will ever half-ass a smile like me, so don't you dare try."
Well, it might be like that if Colin Meloy knew I existed.
Well, fuck. I started listening to the Decemberists very recently and... fuck. I was hoping to be inspired. Instead, they are making me feel insignificant, like the smallest ant of the songwriting world. Even if I become my best like Eliza Dushku I will still be barely noticeable besides these guys.
Exhibit A, from "Los Angeles, I'm Yours":
"There is a city by the sea
A gentle company
I don�t suppose you want to
And as it tells it's sorry tale
In harrowing detail
It's hollowness will haunt you
It's streets and boulevards
Orphans and oligarchs
And here's a plaintive melody
Truncated symphony
An ocean�s garbled vomit on the shore
Los Angeles, I�m yours"
Boulevard rhymed with oligarch? Fucking madness.
Exhibits B and C from "The Infanta":
"Within sight of the baronness
Seething spite for this live largesse
By her side sits the baron
Her barrenness barbs her"
"And above all this falderal
On a bed made of chaparral
She is laid, a coronal placed on her brow"
Baroness/barrenness? Double fuck. Falderal/chaparral/coronal? Triple-threat-hattrick-fuck. Stop this song writing madness. I could go on, but I'd run out of ways to say "fuck". I bet that bastard Colin Meloy wouldn't, and he'd rhyme it with words I have never even heard of.
"I found myself moonstruck
offended by the muck-a-muck
more magick than Ms. Clutterbuck.
His genius leaves me awestruck,
it makes me want to run amok.
Fuck."
Is it wrong to feel offended by the brilliance of art, to be unable to appreciate it because of how it changes your opinion of yourself? I feel like I had a dinner date with the Mona Lisa and, at the end of it, she kicked me in the crotch--now you know why she has that smile. As I reeled, she touched her dry, chapped lips to my ear and growled: "No one will ever half-ass a smile like me, so don't you dare try."
Well, it might be like that if Colin Meloy knew I existed.
Everyone has a unique paradigm, a different lens through which they view the world. For a time it seemed that exploring each paradigm, feeling each thought and seeing each sight in the way of another was a path towards beauty. Now I feel the views are fracturing and fragmenting and diverging. No one ever saw everything the same, but now we see it all so differently. There is no community, no context for the thoughts or the feelings. Every definition is different and there is no hope to understand. Can you converse when there is no common ground? We fight futilely to have these conversations anyways but what results are different disparate entities. Our conversation is nonsense; my conversation and your conversation share only words, not meaning. These conversation are ballads of narcissism, and to fight it is to fight everyone. I wish, for just once, there could be something definite and real, something permanent and true. I wonder what happened to me which ruined the possibility of truth?
I know I don't really want that but I can still long for it, still weep silently when realizing that we will never, ever, truly connect with each other. Conversation is the world in a microcosm. We can fight to understand and remain locked in perpetual grayness and stagnant acceptance, or we can fight for our own unique-like-everyone-else paradigm and create avoidable conflict. Perhaps all conflict is rooted in enforcing our identities? What a tragedy: To be actualized, we must tear each other down and thus only a fraction of us may ever be authentic. It's like soul-capitalism and it fucking sucks.
I know I don't really want that but I can still long for it, still weep silently when realizing that we will never, ever, truly connect with each other. Conversation is the world in a microcosm. We can fight to understand and remain locked in perpetual grayness and stagnant acceptance, or we can fight for our own unique-like-everyone-else paradigm and create avoidable conflict. Perhaps all conflict is rooted in enforcing our identities? What a tragedy: To be actualized, we must tear each other down and thus only a fraction of us may ever be authentic. It's like soul-capitalism and it fucking sucks.
I feel the need to blog and don't feel the need to start a completely new blog. So, I'm coming back here.
---------------------------------------
The same lie gets hammered into our heads over and over by the soulless machinery of society. "Don't smoke!" they say. "Smoking isn't cool." Apparently somewhere along the line people had decided that smoking WAS cool, and then the GOVERNMENT decided they could fix that by disagreeing. Let me tell you, no one knows cool better than the Man, He Who Keeps You Down. I think a better thing for him to say would be, maybe, "Shit yeah, smoking is coo', dog. But imbibing nicotine will make your body stage a quiet revolution that goes unnoticed until one day in your late forties when you show up at your doctor's and he says you have the lungs of a 314 year old woman." Also, you might get cancer or emphysema or something. (Really, it is increasingly hard to make it through live without getting cancer. We freaking bathe in carcinogens. I challenge you to think of something you eat which doesn't have carcinogens in it. Got it? Well, too bad, you're on a computer which is giving you cancer with radiation. Hah. Also, it's a well-known fact that government ninjas break into your house every night to paint your sleeping body with uranium in order to make you more susceptible to government mind control.)
I'm here to tell you that smoking is cool. It doesn't have to be tobacco or pot or crack or anything like that, just the act of inhaling smoke from a burning tube is pretty awesome. I've been smoking Ye Olde Scale and Measure's Peppermint Dreams herbal smoke blend and I'm loving it. It calms me down, it won't give me cancer, it helps me mellow, and it won't get me arrested. That last part is pretty important if you like smoking in a public place, like... anywhere that isn't your house. I've always found it sexy, really. Maybe I have an oral fixation, but something about lips and cigarettes and smoke arouses me painfully. Ideally these lips belong to a woman, of course.
I'm rapidly fleeing my point, unfortunately. Pulling in the focus now: I enjoy the physical act of smoking regardless of what is being smoked. This is one of the reasons I find the herbal cigarettes to be so great; I get the feeling of smoking with some minor health benefits and minor drawbacks, but nothing compared to the dubious legality and pain of acquiring illegal smoke and nothing compared to the severe long-term health drawbacks of legal smoke. Hell, we haven't even talked about the cost.
All this talk of illegal drugs tempts me to write a post about the difference between entheogens and hallucinogens, but I don't really have the practical experience to back that one up. Never tried one. I do think it is a shame that they are restricted to use by native practitioners whose cultures have a history of their use. Peyote is a good example of this.
Hey, I bet my mom had a spiritual experience with LSD once. Does that mean I can take it?
---------------------------------------
The same lie gets hammered into our heads over and over by the soulless machinery of society. "Don't smoke!" they say. "Smoking isn't cool." Apparently somewhere along the line people had decided that smoking WAS cool, and then the GOVERNMENT decided they could fix that by disagreeing. Let me tell you, no one knows cool better than the Man, He Who Keeps You Down. I think a better thing for him to say would be, maybe, "Shit yeah, smoking is coo', dog. But imbibing nicotine will make your body stage a quiet revolution that goes unnoticed until one day in your late forties when you show up at your doctor's and he says you have the lungs of a 314 year old woman." Also, you might get cancer or emphysema or something. (Really, it is increasingly hard to make it through live without getting cancer. We freaking bathe in carcinogens. I challenge you to think of something you eat which doesn't have carcinogens in it. Got it? Well, too bad, you're on a computer which is giving you cancer with radiation. Hah. Also, it's a well-known fact that government ninjas break into your house every night to paint your sleeping body with uranium in order to make you more susceptible to government mind control.)
I'm here to tell you that smoking is cool. It doesn't have to be tobacco or pot or crack or anything like that, just the act of inhaling smoke from a burning tube is pretty awesome. I've been smoking Ye Olde Scale and Measure's Peppermint Dreams herbal smoke blend and I'm loving it. It calms me down, it won't give me cancer, it helps me mellow, and it won't get me arrested. That last part is pretty important if you like smoking in a public place, like... anywhere that isn't your house. I've always found it sexy, really. Maybe I have an oral fixation, but something about lips and cigarettes and smoke arouses me painfully. Ideally these lips belong to a woman, of course.
I'm rapidly fleeing my point, unfortunately. Pulling in the focus now: I enjoy the physical act of smoking regardless of what is being smoked. This is one of the reasons I find the herbal cigarettes to be so great; I get the feeling of smoking with some minor health benefits and minor drawbacks, but nothing compared to the dubious legality and pain of acquiring illegal smoke and nothing compared to the severe long-term health drawbacks of legal smoke. Hell, we haven't even talked about the cost.
All this talk of illegal drugs tempts me to write a post about the difference between entheogens and hallucinogens, but I don't really have the practical experience to back that one up. Never tried one. I do think it is a shame that they are restricted to use by native practitioners whose cultures have a history of their use. Peyote is a good example of this.
Hey, I bet my mom had a spiritual experience with LSD once. Does that mean I can take it?
Good afternoon, gentle readers.
I am sad to say I won't actually be participating in the WARP contest. Now that it is upon me I'm finding myself not at all interested in the marathon.
That book I offered as a prize will still be given away... I'll have to get it to Gaelyn to hold for the Last (Wo)Man Standing.
I am sad to say I won't actually be participating in the WARP contest. Now that it is upon me I'm finding myself not at all interested in the marathon.
That book I offered as a prize will still be given away... I'll have to get it to Gaelyn to hold for the Last (Wo)Man Standing.
There's no way I'm getting 400 words out of this.
http://infra-azure.org/main/?page_i
Check out that link. It leads to a program called Lunabar which places icons in your system tray that show the phase of the moon as well as the zodiac sign it is in. Clicking on the icons brings up a full astrologic almanac which gives incredible amounts of information about the sun, moon, and zodiac. It is way, way, way more information than I know what to do with. It's very handy if you care about astrological correspondences but don't want to do research. Like me.
http://infra-azure.org/main/?page_i
Check out that link. It leads to a program called Lunabar which places icons in your system tray that show the phase of the moon as well as the zodiac sign it is in. Clicking on the icons brings up a full astrologic almanac which gives incredible amounts of information about the sun, moon, and zodiac. It is way, way, way more information than I know what to do with. It's very handy if you care about astrological correspondences but don't want to do research. Like me.
If you've been following the internet recently, you may have heard of the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_H1N1_
It started in Mexico City, now cases are being reported in various places across the US. Texas, New York, California, and Kansas all have suspected or confirmed cases. I've seen the word "pandemic" thrown around a lot. The funny thing about this swine flu is it apparently is more dangerous to healthy young people because it provokes overreaction of the immune system. The stronger your immune system, the stronger the reaction. This reaction is called a cytokine storm. This is what happened with the Spanish Flu in 1918.
So, I am forced to conclude that I am going to die a terrible horrible diseased death by the end of the month. Therefore, I present to you my will:
No one gets anything. Bury me with my stuff so I can have it in the afterlife. I will rock that biznatch. When I meet my ancestors, they will be all like, "Dude, that's some awesome stuff." See, they are all really old, they've never seen an ipod before.
"Dude, verily, granteth me a listen on yon songbox." And lo, I will, I will granteth several listens. Then I will introduce them to the wonders of XBox and ramen. Maybe if they are nice I will give them some caffeine or socks. What did people do in prehistoric, pre-sock times? Those things are important. Seriously. Uh. Where was I?
Oh. Right.
When I have them addicted to modern luxury I will become their ruler. I will reign over my dead minions from my kmart futon throne and then, as the world's population dwindles and the ranks of my undead horde swell, I will marshal my forces for war. My phantom legions will pour forth from the gates of the underworld to take revenge on the architects of our destruction: the wretched, diseased swine.
When my vengeance is complete I will enjoy a bacon buffet of such caloric intensity that Morgan Spurlock will give me props. When my struggle in the service of humanity is long forgotten, this feast will still be remembered. Bards will sing songs about it. There will be epics written about it, and all these stories will be the only knowledge remaining to be unearthed by the spacefaring archaeologists who visit us after our the end of the human race in 2012.
So, in conclusion, Samuel L. Jackson was right. Pigs are filthy animals.
(432)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_H1N1_
It started in Mexico City, now cases are being reported in various places across the US. Texas, New York, California, and Kansas all have suspected or confirmed cases. I've seen the word "pandemic" thrown around a lot. The funny thing about this swine flu is it apparently is more dangerous to healthy young people because it provokes overreaction of the immune system. The stronger your immune system, the stronger the reaction. This reaction is called a cytokine storm. This is what happened with the Spanish Flu in 1918.
So, I am forced to conclude that I am going to die a terrible horrible diseased death by the end of the month. Therefore, I present to you my will:
No one gets anything. Bury me with my stuff so I can have it in the afterlife. I will rock that biznatch. When I meet my ancestors, they will be all like, "Dude, that's some awesome stuff." See, they are all really old, they've never seen an ipod before.
"Dude, verily, granteth me a listen on yon songbox." And lo, I will, I will granteth several listens. Then I will introduce them to the wonders of XBox and ramen. Maybe if they are nice I will give them some caffeine or socks. What did people do in prehistoric, pre-sock times? Those things are important. Seriously. Uh. Where was I?
Oh. Right.
When I have them addicted to modern luxury I will become their ruler. I will reign over my dead minions from my kmart futon throne and then, as the world's population dwindles and the ranks of my undead horde swell, I will marshal my forces for war. My phantom legions will pour forth from the gates of the underworld to take revenge on the architects of our destruction: the wretched, diseased swine.
When my vengeance is complete I will enjoy a bacon buffet of such caloric intensity that Morgan Spurlock will give me props. When my struggle in the service of humanity is long forgotten, this feast will still be remembered. Bards will sing songs about it. There will be epics written about it, and all these stories will be the only knowledge remaining to be unearthed by the spacefaring archaeologists who visit us after our the end of the human race in 2012.
So, in conclusion, Samuel L. Jackson was right. Pigs are filthy animals.
(432)
Surrounded by candlelight, drinking herbal tea, and soaking in a bubble bath I thought to myself, "Damn, I'm sure glad I'm secure in my masculinity."
I don't believe in hiding my religion. I never lie about it, never pretend to be anything else, never even consider it. Being completely open about it, on the other hand, is something else.
Due to my early teachings I hold the belief that an offering of food or water made to the gods should be buried or poured out upon the ground, not down the sink or into the trash. This is all well and good unless you live in a crowded apartment complex. After coming home from work today I noticed an offering of black coffee which I had left for my god the other night. It had been sitting out long enough for him to have his fill, I figured, so I had to dispose of it. I wanted to just pour it down the sink but of course I feel guilty doing that, as if I am not properly honoring the gods. So, as all the little children were making their way into the apartment complex from school, I wandered down my stairs and into the grass with a small glass full of old coffee. I don't know if anyone noticed me as I nonchalantly poured the coffee into the ground.
I expect that, normally, pouring an offering into the ground isn't much different from pouring it into the sink. The gods took note of this offering, though. It wasn't just the coffee I gave, I also made a sacrifice of my own comfort. I think they appreciated that, and I think they smiled a little when I forced myself to be brave enough to go do something weird for an audience. If people aren't looking at me funny when I am doing something magickal and interacting with the other world, I am probably doing it wrong.
That said, I still have 100 words to go! So, let's talk about being weird. (I define weird as being different from the norm in a way that doesn't make sense to most people, here) It is a little peculiar to be weird just for weird's sake, but if we are being weird for another reason we might as well enjoy it, right? If I start pouring drinks out to make people look at me funny then I just want attention. While I'm doing it for spiritual purposes, however, I may as well enjoy my differences and whatever funny looks they bring.
415 words, or thereabouts. No editing on this one. Wasn't flowing. Oh well.
Due to my early teachings I hold the belief that an offering of food or water made to the gods should be buried or poured out upon the ground, not down the sink or into the trash. This is all well and good unless you live in a crowded apartment complex. After coming home from work today I noticed an offering of black coffee which I had left for my god the other night. It had been sitting out long enough for him to have his fill, I figured, so I had to dispose of it. I wanted to just pour it down the sink but of course I feel guilty doing that, as if I am not properly honoring the gods. So, as all the little children were making their way into the apartment complex from school, I wandered down my stairs and into the grass with a small glass full of old coffee. I don't know if anyone noticed me as I nonchalantly poured the coffee into the ground.
I expect that, normally, pouring an offering into the ground isn't much different from pouring it into the sink. The gods took note of this offering, though. It wasn't just the coffee I gave, I also made a sacrifice of my own comfort. I think they appreciated that, and I think they smiled a little when I forced myself to be brave enough to go do something weird for an audience. If people aren't looking at me funny when I am doing something magickal and interacting with the other world, I am probably doing it wrong.
That said, I still have 100 words to go! So, let's talk about being weird. (I define weird as being different from the norm in a way that doesn't make sense to most people, here) It is a little peculiar to be weird just for weird's sake, but if we are being weird for another reason we might as well enjoy it, right? If I start pouring drinks out to make people look at me funny then I just want attention. While I'm doing it for spiritual purposes, however, I may as well enjoy my differences and whatever funny looks they bring.
415 words, or thereabouts. No editing on this one. Wasn't flowing. Oh well.
Take a look at that quote in the subject line: "We have each chosen to be born into this time." I found it in an excerpt on the Four Quarters site. http://www.4qf.org/_Beltaine/index.htm
That's a pretty powerful idea right there. Stuff is going down. We are perpetually on the brink of war. We're running out of oil. Global is warming. The Mayan calender cycles. Everywhere you turn you can find doomsday predictions--I recently read about one called The Greening in a book by a Gede Parma, who said that there'd be a crazy apocalypse orchestrated by the gods to bring forests back to cover the world. (I discounted this immediately, then the next day saw the same phrase used in an incredibly unlikely place, so... could it be a message? Regardless, "'The Greening' of (my company)" will continue as more people choose to receive their EOBs online instead of in paper form, according to our company's intranet)
With all of this chaos, one might be tempted to sit and ask, "Why me? Why now? Why do I have to be around for the end of the world?" Oh, stop being so dramatic! But seriously, we CHOSE to be here for this. If bad stuff is going down, we came here to be here for it. Did you choose to be here to experience the end? Or did you chose to be here to do something about it? Either is valid, I'm sure, but I am inspired by this idea. I think my soul is a go-getter soul. If my current personality carries over at all between incarnations, then I know exactly what my soul was thinking when it saw the world was going to end: "Man, I'm going there, and I'm gonna kick some butt." It gives me some insight into a bit of my life's purpose. I'm here to make things better some how because trying it will be fun for my soul. Maybe I'll lose, but my soul tends not to do that very much so it probably didn't plan for that contingency.
I bet my soul likes extreme sports.
I get the feeling that, if the world were to go all apocalypse on us, I'd end up as some form of shaman for a tribe of unwashed wasteland folk. Don't know why... it could either by a vision or a product of reading too many fantasy novels and occult books. Still, someone has to take care of the spiritual needs of a people with practical magicks, and someone has to be ready to step in and diplomacize with spirits who are probably none to happy with humans for armageddon.
Am I saying I came to this earth to do that? No, not at all. I don't really buy in to any doomsday prophecies and intend to continue living a non-doomed life for many decades. However, it does give me strength to know that I chose to come here for whatever tests may appear in order to defeat them soundly. "Everything happens for a reason" makes more sense when I am the reason.
(536 moowooooooords)
That's a pretty powerful idea right there. Stuff is going down. We are perpetually on the brink of war. We're running out of oil. Global is warming. The Mayan calender cycles. Everywhere you turn you can find doomsday predictions--I recently read about one called The Greening in a book by a Gede Parma, who said that there'd be a crazy apocalypse orchestrated by the gods to bring forests back to cover the world. (I discounted this immediately, then the next day saw the same phrase used in an incredibly unlikely place, so... could it be a message? Regardless, "'The Greening' of (my company)" will continue as more people choose to receive their EOBs online instead of in paper form, according to our company's intranet)
With all of this chaos, one might be tempted to sit and ask, "Why me? Why now? Why do I have to be around for the end of the world?" Oh, stop being so dramatic! But seriously, we CHOSE to be here for this. If bad stuff is going down, we came here to be here for it. Did you choose to be here to experience the end? Or did you chose to be here to do something about it? Either is valid, I'm sure, but I am inspired by this idea. I think my soul is a go-getter soul. If my current personality carries over at all between incarnations, then I know exactly what my soul was thinking when it saw the world was going to end: "Man, I'm going there, and I'm gonna kick some butt." It gives me some insight into a bit of my life's purpose. I'm here to make things better some how because trying it will be fun for my soul. Maybe I'll lose, but my soul tends not to do that very much so it probably didn't plan for that contingency.
I bet my soul likes extreme sports.
I get the feeling that, if the world were to go all apocalypse on us, I'd end up as some form of shaman for a tribe of unwashed wasteland folk. Don't know why... it could either by a vision or a product of reading too many fantasy novels and occult books. Still, someone has to take care of the spiritual needs of a people with practical magicks, and someone has to be ready to step in and diplomacize with spirits who are probably none to happy with humans for armageddon.
Am I saying I came to this earth to do that? No, not at all. I don't really buy in to any doomsday prophecies and intend to continue living a non-doomed life for many decades. However, it does give me strength to know that I chose to come here for whatever tests may appear in order to defeat them soundly. "Everything happens for a reason" makes more sense when I am the reason.
(536 moowooooooords)
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