Sunday, December 25, 2005

A Virtual Cathedral.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Now Comes the Sunlight of our Disinfect

We’re told results are what matters and it is often true that good results will ameliorate the impact of a lot of questionable behavior. It is also true that history is written by the victors. They say size matters too. They say that every dog must have its day. At the same time the size of the dog in the fight and the size of the fight in the dog are often strongly influenced by a home court advantage; just as it is on the playing fields of Choate if the sport happens to be Nepotism or Whist. Aphorisms, like so many things, have corresponding poles. And just as it is the case in metaphysics it often proves to be in real life; in math and in art, that two poles create a third, which postulates another opposition to that new pole whose fruit is yet another pole and so on and so on. Which is how you can get deeper into things; how you can understand what someone means behind the appearance of their words, how you can understand math and art and sometimes penetrate into the secrets of the human heart; possibly all the way to the gates of the divine.

We often stop far short of what we could have learned about anything. We very often miss the connections between what we are studying and everything else in the world and in ourselves.

This brings me to the tangled web so many weave. It brings me to results unforeseen and unintended on the parts of those who had all the reference points and advisors in the world to point out to them the things that I and some others knew from the very beginning; without the need for those advisors. Good advice is only good advice if the motivation pushing it has correctly predicted the best results for justifying the bad behavior employed to the argued result. Good advice is only as good as the results. Good advice is a very subjective thing. Most of the time the best advice is to do nothing; to think and reflect, to study yourself first and what you are contemplating after... even though we have heard, “those who hesitate are lost.”

In the case of the case I am addressing; going to be addressing, hesitation would have lost nothing. But of course in this case, self-inquiry was not a consideration. It was more a graphic example of the male goat seeking sexual congress. It’s an observable truth that male goats piss all over themselves in the process getting to it. I find the mythic implications ironic here; goats... horns... pissing... sex... results.

Long ago (just before the Iraq invasion) in a small forum far away, I pointed out a few things about the case I’m addressing. I pointed them out over and over and over again. I even had people I had never heard of before telling me that they had pointed it out before me, which I found as amusing as it was irrelevant. Some of the things I pointed out and was a great pains to point out over and over and over again were; there were no weapons of mass destruction, that the Muslim fundamentalists- being the most organized and pervasive influence about- would become the power and that Iraq would naturally split into three demographics which would effectively create what would amount to three separate countries. That would be one for the Shia and one for the Sunni and one for the Kurds.

We have heard, over and over and over about, “staying the course.” We have heard about free elections and democracy and we have heard whatever was possible in the realm of hyperbole in terms of the grand ideals of the kingdom of materialism in its altruistic largesse for the great oppressed, unwashed at a distance; neighbors and brothers and sisters in Iraq. We’ve had funny math that computes 3.5 dead Iraqis as actually equaling 1 dead Iraqi. We’ve had a whole lot things and we’ve had some results... but the real results were always off in the distance; seen through the wise and compassionate, far reaching and visionary eyes of the Mad Hatter with the Shroud of Turin elbow patches on his bombers jacket.

Well, the results are coming in and, as Gomer might have said, “Well, suuurprise, suuurprise!” Rather than argue the case I am just going to give you a hotlink

HERE

and you can read some of what you are going to be reading more and more about soon; or not... or might get through filters or re-shaped to reflect or represent how it might look if you lean over real hard and then bend down and look between your legs while holding your breath and closing one eye with the goats closing in from the sides. I’ve watched people spin this and spin that with the net result of a folded, mutilated origami project that got some passionate attention from the aforementioned goats.

You’ll probably want to read that link so that you can get an idea of the case I am making. Then again, it may be immaterial to my point; which is not the same as the case I am making except that they touch, as all things touch, in the world where everything is made out of the same stuff.

Some have had the majestic hubris to refer to Captain Flight Deck as a spiritual or religious man. I suppose his constant church attendance might speak to that to a degree. Then again, observing his works would certainly tell us something. Then again, his associates and their collective intentions would tell us something. Results, period, definitely tell us something. We’ve been told we must support the dupes. We’ve had many a flag, after the goats got through with them; waved in our faces. We’ve... we’ve... we’ve been had... or not. Some fight, some flee, some flee to fight and some... well, yeah.

The God that Captain Mission Accomplished refers to does not exist. I can tell you with real authority that this God does not exist. I can tell you that the God of Pat Robertson and many, many of the organizational front-bots for the Hollywood façade of a God tangled in the two by four supports behind the “Hello sailor” kabuki mask, does not exist. I can tell you that the God of the Wahabi Muslims does not exist. I can tell you that the God of the Zionists does not exist. I can tell you that 99% of the God defined is either non-existent or a badly drawn boy. What I cannot tell you is what God is. I still know the difference however.

For quite a very long time there have been... how shall I put this? There have been imposters... monkeys in the mirror... poseurs... astral con artists and elemental forces of considerable powers; such as you might see in the wind and the waters and the like, who have put upon themselves the costume of The One. And this accounts for the results. This accounts for the blood and the iron tongs and the courtrooms and fires, the bombs and the screams and the tears. Because every false God has its particular preferred sacrifice; it’s ‘burnt offerings’ if you will. Did you really think that a God of transcendent radiance far, far behind our comprehension would be attracted to this landfill by the smoke and stench of burning flesh? Who might be attracted to such a thing?

The most pleasant offering is a contrite human heart, its offering of unconditional love and the service provoked thereby; if you’re talking about The One. If you’re talking about the others, well, just take a look around. The key to The One is the restoration of the true regent to the throne. Following that it is all ‘self’ explanatory. Everything else on the throne prior to this restoration speaks for itself... in every way.

Do you imagine in your anthropomorphic dreaming that God is just a big YOU? Isn’t that how most people see God; who can’t be seen? ...As a larger version of themselves? Could anyone imagine that God would be represented by men dressed up like Elton John in concert? It’s funny when you read the so called actual words of The One and compare them to the actions that got interpreted; how the letter of the thing became the result.

That’s how you get God on your side. When you wonder how obvious hypocrites can reconcile scripture with bad actions... wonder no more.

Call it what you will. Don’t call it at all. Go on with your business in your brief hour or inquire as deep as your heart may compel... we all got to do something. There is something deep in the mix... deep in the center of all things; making them out of itself under every novice potters hand for a... demonstration... other... than... It makes everything, regardless of intentions and results, serve to demonstrate that there is something deep in the mix... deep in the center of all things. We may not see the mover but we do see the things that are moved. It certainly is fascinating. It certainly isn’t over; except for that timeless battle. It was won long ago. It’s the idea it is otherwise that accounts for everything else ongoing.

Visible sings: The eponymous Les Visible Music Album♫ In That Shape Again ♫
'In That Shape Again' is track no. 8 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album

Lyrics (pops up)

The eponymous Les Visible Music Album

Saturday, December 17, 2005

To be or not to be... Possessed by Demons.

For a long, long time; longer than any of us can remember and far longer than it has been recorded, humanity, or what passes for humanity, has believed in demonic possession as the cause of insanity and aberrant behavior. Basically, the devil made them do it.

On a parallel course there has been the consideration; maybe it came from the Greeks and maybe the Greeks got it from somebody else- that a lot of people’s problems had to do with the way certain internal forces combined. The Id and the ego, the super-ego, the libido and sundry and the way they operated with and against each other were the causes of problems and conditions; though they may have named them differently at the time.

Not so long ago, with the birth and refinement of certain sciences like psychology and psychiatry, the general world view was that personal problems were just that; personal problems. They came out of the way people were raised and how they adapted, or didn’t adapt, to society. Along came sociologists to add their two cents; adjusted for inflation.

Still, religionists and cults and the esoteric world continued to state that there were more supernatural reasons for human behavior; these ranged from the ridiculous interpretations of the purely dogmatic; the Rush Limbaugh as Father Flanagan mindsets, to the pronouncements of the Theosophists and New Thought movement. In our modern times we have new systems like Scientology and The First Church of Satan, along with things like The Solar Temple and the Raelians; these latter constructs bear enough similarity to each other that they could probably combine without too much conflict in doctrine.

Society is made up of people. People with similarities in purpose and principle make up societies. People with conflicting purposes and principles also make up societies. Just as the thoughts in a person’s head can be considered the individuals that make up the society of the person, people are themselves individual thoughts in the body of society. You get rules and regulations that define the permissible parameters of action on the part of these ‘thoughts’ as they move through the mind of the society. The cells in the human body make up societies within the systems that also make up societies within the body. They are complex things whether the system is large or small. Wars in the larger society are mirrors of wars in the smaller societies. Systems war against systems in the human body; cells war against cells. People kill themselves and each other, often working at both simultaneously. One strange feature is how the tiniest systems are composed of the same features and symmetries of behavior as the largest systems and that they are all made out of the same basic stuff; but is that strange? The only anomaly is in the human system and how it fails to adapt within all the other systems which, may actually only be one system after all.

Like clockwork, people appear in society bearing new ideas. Let the record of history show what happens to these people. If the person heralds a message that suggests changes in a social system and those changes are based on the greatest good for the greatest number of people, that person is usually subject to tremendous resistance on the part of those individuals who operate the control machinery of the society in which it takes place. Reflexively the larger body of society joins in this resistance at the encouragement of their controllers.

If the person appearing has a system or practice that benefits only a small group of individuals, beginning with themselves... or seeks to introduce a political system that means no good for humanity in any location where it is introduced, that individual usually finds a large support system for their venue. And regardless of the evidence of the past in respect of these things, off they go to power and riches.

Is it some evil in the basic makeup of humanity that continuously permits what is contrary to their good to flourish? Are there living forces, invisible or otherwise, that are not human, which engineer these conditions and cause them to flourish? Philosophers of all stripes have argued about this for a long, long time. Sociologists and economists and representatives of every area of speculation upon the nature of human events all have their ideas of what and why. Most of them have agendas too.

My question to you is; does it matter if it is demons or psychological components who urge a large portion of humanity to their destruction? Does it matter which one you believe to be the cause? Is it possible that the focus of the former is the manipulation of the latter?

Those schools of thought that argue for demons also include angels as agents of a divine regent. The rational schools maintain that the regent is all powerful. This implies that anything and everything that happens and exists, does so by permission of the regent. You can take all of this and re-interpret it into a psychological system, with you as the regent, and get the same thing. In the one case a God is responsible and in the other, you are. There is a God or you are the God. It is also possible, once again, that both of these are true. Possibly the problem with defining what is true is, most likely, that more than one thing is true; that contradictory things are eternal and true. It’s also possible, and likely, that one’s definition of things turns out to be the system by which ones life is defined and by which one’s fate is determined.

Does it matter whether the president of the United States is insane or possessed? Insanity seems to be contagious. We note that demonic possession has often proved to be as well; regardless of proof of demonic possession. Well, there’s Loudon and all those Hindu’s who used to march into the ocean by the hundreds and feed themselves to the sharks and then there are those entire countries and societies that used to be but aren’t now.

Religions seem to possess a great propensity for both insanity and demonic possession. We’ve seen the madness sweep across the plains/planes. A certain psychiatrist would have told you that this had something to do with the sex force being bent through inadequate tubing or directed wrong according to pressures. Political systems are the same.

My observations have led me to conclude that very few people are sane and that very few people are not possessed and that those individuals are in a constant danger from the inmates. My observations have indicated to me that sane people have to pretend to be insane while moving through dangerous coordinates. Unfortunately for some of these individuals there is an impetus toward healing and enlightenment. It may be that the one is uncalled for and that the other is forever premature.

How can you tell what is sane and possessed of a higher, rather than a lower order? You can judge this by the amount of people laughing at it, mocking it and being enraged by it. Why do systems allegedly set up for the greater benefit of all always seek to kill those individuals who work for the implementation of the essential tenets of the system; whether it be a creed or a constitution? If certain principles are collectively agreed upon to be in our best interest; to be right and fair, to be the ideal, then; why are those who work on behalf of, and in the interest of the spirit of these principles so often jailed, exiled and killed?

How can a system that espouses particular principles as truth, use those principles against themselves and go on appearing representative of those principles? How can simple truths be interpreted in so many diverse ways to justify anything; anything at all? Why does a society that includes some amount of intelligent members, consistently allow for the worst exceptions to the commonly accepted principles to flourish? Indeed, how can they applaud it as well?

Would you call this insanity of possession? Does it matter?

Sunday, December 11, 2005

A Place Called Gratitude

Malachi 3:10

"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."



Possibly the emotion I experience most often is gratitude. Sometimes it goes on for a length of time and I discover many other things in the process. It is as if Gratitude is a room, dimly lit. As you stand there your presence begins to emit more and more light and to reveal more and more of the contents of the room. Gratitude has attendants and handmaidens; joy, serenity, a feeling of awesome protection. I don’t notice these things initially. If my gratitude goes away too soon I do not see to the further reaches of the room. It takes a while for the dynamo to wind up and bring on the full orchestra of sights and sounds.

I’ve been in the presence of realized masters and it is evident to me, as it is to most people in the room, that there is something different about them. Probably one of the finest talents a person can acquire is to become a ‘trained observer’. In order to be a trained observer one needs to relinquish pre-conceived assumptions and natural prejudice because they taint the quality of your research. It could be said that when the gravity of our assumptions begins to outweigh our capacity to learn, then we no longer grow. Since growth is an imperative, pain enters the picture to offset that gravity. It’s apparent to me that many people have a higher pain threshold than I do. I can’t take it. Why should I? Why should I, when there are so many more refined stations of being than that of being whipped along the way?

So in watching masters and in reflecting afterwards; where real learning takes place ...because you can’t always remain objective in overwhelming presence. I have come to a conclusion about the way they breathe. The state of our minds and our emotions affect the regularity and depth of our breath. Alternatively, the way we breathe affects the quality of our mind and emotions. So I think about gratitude when I am breathing in and out. I am grateful when I eat and I imagine the food as being divine substance. I have to do this. It is a matter of self defense. If I am not eating and breathing consciously then some other agency may be doing it for me. Thoughts like this appear delusional to some and the example of new age mandarins also work against credibility on the part of those who have seen the naked emperor.

These masters didn’t get where they are in an afternoon or at a weekend seminar. Of course these things are advertised; like the Thighmaster and those round cages that do your sit-ups for you. My favorites are the patches with the electrodes that stimulate the muscles and turn you into Adonis while you are watching TV. The slenderizer creams are pretty neat and so are the space suits that eventually return you to needing only one airline seat. I haven’t seen Shamoo’s magic crystal and wealth amulets but I know they are around even if Shamoo is going by another name now.

It comes down to work and there is where problem #1 gives birth to a lot of other problems and the discouraging catcalls from the peanut gallery of entropic recidivism. There must be an easier way. And this is where gratitude comes in. Gratitude takes the inertia and resistance out of the ride. Gratitude promotes an eager willingness. Gratitude makes it feel good. We’ve no problem engaging in the things we love to do. If we don’t love it then it becomes work. I work all day long every day, a lot more than eight hours. I don’t get paid for my work in the way most people do but I do get paid. I get paid in gratitude; in the increased capacity to feel gratitude.

Gratitude changes you. It changes the cells in your body and makes you flexible and young. It neutralizes anger. Most people aren’t aware that depression is the result of turning your anger inward; turning it upon yourself. Most people also don’t realize that much of their anger comes from their sense of being denied something they insist upon having; whether that is an object, a world view, someone’s attention or their right of way on the way to whatever it is that they want or wherever it is they wish to be. Gratitude makes all of that unnecessary. The more grateful you are the more reasons you are going to have to feel that way. This follows observable laws of physics. As above, so below; what you observe taking place here takes place everywhere, whether you can see it or not. This is one of the scientific truths about faith. We take things that are only mathematical theory as everyday fact. We are probably unaware of this but we do. Many people would be quite surprised to find that they regularly practice things that they firmly attest they do not believe in.

If you would simply practice feeling gratitude, breathing it in and out, you would rather quickly become enlightened; or, if you prefer, more enlightened. As good as it feels, why would you want it all at once? Shouldn’t the increase in the increments of bliss take forever? Gratitude is a pair of rose colored glasses and a certain biblical coat. That’s what I call haute couture. Why wear sunglasses in a dark room? Because when you are cool the sun is always shining.

I don’t know it beyond a ‘shadow’ of a doubt but I strongly suspect that this is what masters do when they breathe in and out. Of course it may be Love and it may be Peace or Compassion but the origin of every virtue is in the ineffable, just as the colors, pre-prism, are in the white light. There isn’t any spiritual thing that can’t be understood in a practical, scientific way ...if you are so inclined.

Gratitude greases the wheels of movement into a better state of being. It is a sort of cosmic three-in-one oil. In this time of spiritual crisis you need all the help you can get. I do anyway. But none of this is relevant to my feelings of gratitude; merely attendant to them. I feel grateful because I am grateful. Of all the things that I could be engaged in, of all the people I could have been; see, even now parts of me are departing and I speak of myself as if I were in the past. Of all the things I could have, to have gratitude, well... that makes me a hundred times more grateful just thinking about it.

I feel held. I feel something inexpressible and the very best part is that I know I am not nearly grateful enough. No, I’m just playing at the margins of gratitude. Further on, the room changes into a world of music; the sounds of planets rubbing together, the liquid radiance of stars pouring into an empty cup and over-spilling beyond boundaries and limits. And this is only what I can imagine from the margins. This is only what I can see in the lens of imagination. Once again, science tells me that it moves beyond that. We know a great many things about the universe that we cannot see. How did we come to know these things? Scientific inquiry and tools adapted to the pursuit made it possible.

Thinking about this has had the result of making me even more grateful than I was and so the room has gotten larger. That’s good, because my gratitude makes me want to dance and sing and I need the extra room for that. Every breath of gratitude alters my cells some infinitesimal amount so that critical mass gets closer. This seems to tell me that, “It’s getting better all the time.” Will shadows fall? Sure... just as darkness will turn into light when darkness falls. Be grateful.

Patrick Willis narrates:



Visible sings:



Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Pale Rider

You look at the blue sky; if your eyes aren’t permanently affixed to the concrete below... but the sky isn’t blue, it only looks blue. It appears to be blue. This is just one example that can be given to ‘show’ that things are not ‘as’ they appear. Optical illusions indicate that comparable misinterpretations abound in the other senses as well; a woman screaming in the swamp is not a woman screaming but a form of wildlife. The wind can do amazing tricks with shapes that it moves over... my hand defines the symmetry of skin...my eyes are the guide dog of the mind. I am led as I am convinced of my way but is the path convinced as well? Is it the best thing for me or is it only what I want? Why do I want it? That is a very good question. That is the question few wish to ask. It might compromise the outcome.

If we have always known where we were going then we have always arrived where we chose to be. This must account for all of the happy and contented people that abound on all sides. If we have always known what we were talking about then the world is living proof of our prophecy. If the results of faith are certain then we have never known fear. Perhaps the greatest confusion is confusing something with itself. One serpent out of focus gives two serpents. The job of the surface parallels and exemplifies the work below. The serpent has often been called a worm. The same thing that trips us lifts us up.

Essssence always rules subsssstance. So the real problem with false idols is their lack of power to accomplish. “My daddy can beat up your daddy.” is sometimes true, depending on the answer to, “Who’s your daddy?” Conversely... or is it inversely; they seem to mean the same thing if you think about it in focus... the bigger the hoopla... the bigger the lie. The stars in the sky don’t have a soundtrack like the ones on the stage; and which is more enduring?

The problem lies with our wanting to be different and be appreciated for it as opposed to being ourselves. Being ourselves is not a demotion as it might appear to be. Falling back into the quietude doesn’t mean we don’t get heard.

You’ve got one thing you are dealing with and it’s got two applications. There really isn’t any more to it. As complex as it seems it really is nothing but ‘1’s and ‘0’s. I am. I am not. You are. You are not. Out of this comes the colorful disorder of the world and its unshakeable unity. Your question should be, “Who has the elixir?” Both claim to have the elixir... well, one claims to have the elixir and one isn’t claiming anything except the imperative of its existence. One is telling you, “You have a problem.” One is telling you, “There is no problem.” Then again, someone is telling you, “You do have a problem but we can fix it.” If you still have a problem after, then someone lied to you. But do not be dismayed, they say they can fix it again; ‘in for a penny in for a pound.’

It ‘appears’ that who you think you are needs to have an angle to make itself heard. It has to demonstrate its unique quality of being real in a triumph over everything else that just isn’t as real. You have convinced yourself that blondes have more fun and so you are blond, even if you weren’t blond before. You have convinced yourself that peace will come if the bad guys are eliminated. You have convinced yourself that being rich is somehow a protection against the dangers in yourself; a protection against everything really. You have convinced yourself of everything you needed to convince yourself of in order to possess it. But, let’s be frank here... you had help. From somewhere there came the convincing argument that you agreed must be the real deal because it justified everything you wanted. The golden calf stands a mile high in front of you and shines from coast to coast but you can’t see it because, “first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there it.” And dragons are mountains dreaming in temporary repose.

Who told you all the things that you came to believe? If life is perfect then never mind the rest of this. You can tell who is lying to you by the efforts they are making to convince you. You may not ‘want’ to believe this but it is true. There is a reason you don’t want the things you wanted as a child. You’re in a different market demographic now. If you refute the lie of transformed subsssstance on behalf of essssence you render the false power mute. You control the world.

The reason that Luddite forces have crystallized into landfills of defecating rumor and self defense is that they are passing and they don’t want to go. In a New York Minute, everything that was even older than that is attempting a comeback. Now you’ve got the pagans to deal with too and cannibalism and all the strange features of sex feedback are bringing you vampire rites and radio stations that give new meaning to the terms ‘underground’ and ‘offshore’.

Behind the noise and confusion is a quiet rider on a strong horse. He squints like Clint at the landscape. He’ll move when he’s ready. You can ride that horse as long as you know the horse listens only to Clint. Maybe you can’t see Clint but you have to know he’s there. If you try to ride the horse otherwise... heh heh, good luck.

If it’s confusing you it’s reaching for your pocket. If it’s not confusing you it’s got no need of anything in your pockets. You might say that the latter is the best friend you ever had but he’s the quiet type so that’s how you wound up on Broadway. Yeah, bright lights, big city, here I come. It reminds me of that Stevie Wonder song... there in the beginning where somebody wants you to carry this package across the street. “Living for the City” I think it’s called.

Now a whole lot of people don’t want to hear about all this and the reasons why have already been covered. Galileo is still a problem. Even if Clint showed them the holes in his hands it wouldn’t be enough.

So, how do you get to where you can see and not react? You have to meditate on it just like you are ‘already’ meditating on the other. It is a simple switch of focus. For thousands of years masters have declared that they can’t tell you; that you have to discover the truth for yourself. That sounds like a copout. Until the reality of what that actually means dawns over the banquet table in the cemetery and you really do see dead people everywhere, all the words in the world won’t allow the heart to swallow the mind. Come out Lazarus.

Some could say that these words are confusing and that they are therefore originating from the same place as the rest. I’ve been fond of repeating that, “What’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.” The thing is that you can’t ever know for sure until you find out on your own; which isn’t to say that Clint hasn’t been at the reins the whole time. How you can be a little more certain is to assess what it is that they want. It’s in the agenda and the shearing that you find out the intentions. You have to ask yourself, “What does this cat want?” “What does this organization want?” If you watch what they do it will become clear to you. There is a disappointment that comes when you find out the game is not only rigged but actually no fun. There is that period in which the green shoot cannot be seen above the ground. There is that period where the taste buds are in transition. You got to tough it out. You got to walk that lonesome mile and know you’re not alone.

In our struggle to be free we are torn by thorns. Clint knows the desert and he knows all about thorns. If you call out for Clint he’s gonna patiently disentangle you from the briar patch you threw yourself into and... no blame. Don’t let your guilt over your stupidity deny you the right to be free. Clint knew we were going to make mistakes. There isn’t any other reason he would spend so much time riding through dangerous country. It's what he does.

Visible sings: Songwriter by Les Visible♫ Gone Baby Gone ♫
'Gone Baby Gone' is track no. 6 of 10 on Visible's 2006 album 'Songwriter'
Lyrics (pops up)

Songwriter by Les Visible

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Stand on Zanzibar meets Childhood's End.

My days are long and I’m free range. Only so much happens inside the coop. In the coop time presses down on the captive flock, making them wider and, I suppose, juicier for the palate of other coop dwellers higher on the food chain. But all coops have some things in common and their share of pecking deaths. The more they press together, the tighter the insanity and the more combustive the explosions against the resistance of the mass.

In rat experiments, when rats are confined in a small space, the larger male rats will lose all interest in the females and begin to rape the younger males. Life-forms in captivity exhibit common pathologies that are mirrored in prison life and congested cities. Weird tics become commonplace and people talk to themselves. If you can’t go out and you get pushed in, alcohol and sundry open a larger landscape by altering the headroom of the earphones. Of course this is just a way of giving a different separation to the sound. It’s an appearance; an impression. It isn’t real. It gets less real as different unrealities are compared.

When insanity becomes the norm interesting rules of behavior emerge. Coping devices come into play to order irrational behavior along predictable lines. The cops can’t pull you over in your living room. If you need to color your world because of the chiaroscuro effect, that’s understandable. If it’s illegal but ubiquitous, then further adjustments are made to demarcate when and how you allow the unallowable. If the pressure to kill for space becomes too great it makes sense to do the killing somewhere else. The resulting pressure decrease is then felt at a distance from the blood-spattered walls of the proxy killing fields.

Pipelines of hatred and love are no different than oil and gas pipelines. Breathing allowances have to be made and the technology is formed to compensate for the vagaries of the product. The sex pipeline is the big one. The boiler room is impressive and the dials remind one of the cockpit of a 747. As the natural flow of the sex oil is routed through increasingly complex ways the interpretation of the following behaviors becomes equally complex. New rationalizations are required for things that people do; things that were once considered strange, even pathological, have to be discussed and described and made reasonable. Somewhere between Jerry Springer and the soccer-mom Wicca-weekends lies the holiday table set with the bounty of the land.

As the rules become increasingly complex the reactions from the overview multiply. The message on the t-shirt has to pass through filters. The conversation has to ride on rails. The eye contact must steady at neutral or go to pre-fab. While the controls on the personal tighten, the controls on the broadcasts become more lax. You can’t say what you hear. You can’t behave as you observe. Television is one thing, real life is another. So... the objective mind becomes a camouflaged, hunted beast and the subjective mind becomes a deranged wolverine.

Everything gets mirrored so, if you can’t see it, you’re not watching. Well, it’s not surprising when your entire makeup becomes defensive that you would lose objectivity; and then there’s all the makeup too. And you are told that what you see is not what you see. You are told what you hear is not what you hear and what you think is not what you think. You are even told you are not you. The outsider is way outside. As the press for individuality meets the resistance of enforced conformity, terrorism comes after the pipelines of human expression. It’s not terrorism actually; it’s the self looking for a way out. The individual route is perilous indeed. So group individuality takes over. Individual groups now compete where individuals once did. The pack mentality rises. Scientology Black is playing Raelian Red on ESP this Sunday. The tattooed biker moms merge with the pierced death rockers in detailed legal documents filed in the courts. A new lobby is born and the power of collected masses against collected masses wearing team colors fills the stands. A strange glossolalia of the new Pentecost is forming a holographic Jesus in the air above the high tension lines. This Jesus wears shades. This Jesus pimp dances with the Whore of Babylon. When you’re drowning in the ocean inside yourself and you don’t want to die you’ve got to split in two to find a helping hand and maybe split again. Not everybody likes everybody here. Somebody has to die.

As each new weird replaces the old, an army of therapists sort out the minutiae and new allowances are made. The bottom line in every transition is the adaptation of market forces to how the cereal box is going to be designed; Brother Love’s anal lube for the backdoor kundalini facing in. As the lost is more lost the private intensity must mirror your face alone. Everything else is too strange and so the image must increasingly be the solitary intensity of your face upon itself.

In strange tropical landscapes. market forces have determined that regulated bacchanalias are pipelining requirements to off-set the cubicle pressure and the polyester rash. Mad power presses against mad power presses have dictated the need for whips and chains and the ugly definitions of your bad self at the hands of Domination Mom. As the instantaneous appearance of products on the shelf meets the transforming puberty of the generational edge the mall becomes the paper route and the baby-sitting gig as the currency of flesh is exchanged for the currency of product and youth is recaptured by old men with money. It’s okay but it’s against the law. It’s really okay if your selective group mass has merged with the enforcement-end group mass. No matter what, examples have to be made, just for the salacity of the headlines and market forces. Sooner or later, Stand on Zanzibar meets Childhood’s End.

And what is all of this? How important is this moment and its strange apparel? It’s a belch at one end and a fart at the other. It’s just a temporary digestive condition brought about by a wide diet and stress at work. The six pack didn’t help but a good nights sleep will; pretty colorful dreams though, not that you can remember them now. The system is self-regulating. It wants to come back to the center. Of course, the constant repetition of behavior is where chronic got its name... but even that gets regulated. Everything gets regulated. Little systems get big attitudes. It probably comes about because the little system thinks it’s a big system. It’s like the kid in 3rd grade who insisted he was Superman. And as long as he didn’t try to fly from the top of the house it would probably pass. Some times it doesn’t and Superman has to get clever when he grows up.

Looking into the wheels in the watch can be a fascinating exercise. Nobody sane wants to be a cog and yet they never make the association between what they see and where they are. It’s as if they don’t think they are really there even though they discuss the details of the process more than anything else with everyone else. Minniver Cheevy dances with Paris Hilton in The Overlook Hotel ballroom. You would have to be drunk wouldn’t you?

Ah well, there’s nothing wrong with longing to escape. The problem is more a matter of how and where. In the meantime, one machine stamps out the goods and, at the other end, the same machine reduces the product back to the original elements and then feeds it on to a conveyer belt that loops back to the beginning. The soundtrack changes along with the lights until there’s nothing but the whirring of the projector in a dark room somewhere in LA as The Son of Group Therapy meets It Came from Beneath the Sea of Recovery.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Red Haze in a White Room... and so it goes.

He was born into a red haze in a white room, like most of us, and so was she- some distance apart and some time apart but none of that mattered in the small frame of their time and distance measured against immeasurable time and distance. And the both of them cried as they were forced from their nest into an upside down world full of new sensations that had to be catalogued and compared and somehow a sense of order and rhythm got into the mix. In the process pain pushed on one side and pleasure pulled on the other and the desire to know was greater than it would ever be again.

The two of them turned the world right side up and this allowed them to learn to walk- cause we all see upside down to begin with, just like those old cameras. And later it wouldn’t occur to them or us that learning to walk was a huge accomplishment. But there were so many huge accomplishments in that time, it was just another one and all the things ahead compromised any self reflection at the time, nor was there a capacity for it. In fact, the sense of self was very much a part of others. Later came the isolation consonant with the magnetic attraction.

They learned as they came to understand the language, that there were things they could do and things they shouldn’t do. Later they learned that these things were different for different people. One thing they knew at the time was that they wanted to belong. They wanted to be loved and needed and they never did get over that. It was a hard thing to learn. You had to pretend a lot of things so that similarities that didn’t exist would appear to exist. Some of them played nice and some of them didn’t. Some of them felt good about where they were and who they thought they were and some of them didn’t. There wasn’t any other world, just the world out there. And they forgot about the world they had been looking out of in their increasing identification with the world they were looking into.

After awhile their world divided. Where before they only had the occasional awareness of difference another curiosity began to flower; it was a part of the red haze from the white room. Now they had to learn to walk all over again and it was harder this time because they were thinking about it all the time. But they sort of got it, though some sort of didn’t get it and some never really got it at all. Time moves on though. It seems like just when you’re getting used to this you got to get used to that.

Hearts were broken in the process and with each new fascination part of the innocence from before died because they were finding out that things don’t go the way you want them to all the time, not even most of the time. And the harder you want it the more you have to push aside and the more you injure in two directions as you burn away whatever comes between you and what you want. And every time a part of the innocence died something disappeared until most of what they were was defined by what they saw. And most of what they saw was changing as they looked at it.

Whatever they had been was gone and now they were something else. She got a job and he went into the military and she learned that sometimes you can do something where you never see the meaning of what you do in terms of yourself. He found out that the spirited music in the movie soundtrack didn’t play in his own movie and that there are parts of yourself you never see until the red haze takes over and puts an end to white rooms and teaches you that the stars which shine in the gutter do so with a reflected light. He learned that you can do things you don’t want to remember and it made him wish that he had children so that he could teach them not to be like him.

She went on working and she gave herself away a few times while the interest rates kept dropping and then she met him in a bar where he was working while the thing that changed him sent him to school to learn to survive in another war where the enemy consists of the things you want. And they fell in love and didn’t stop falling after that; just falling away by increments from the point at which they met and the road divided- running parallel for a long time if you compare yourself to a butterfly.

They had a boy and they had a girl and they had a life that was framed by what they knew measured against what they hadn’t learned. So it was a blessing and a curse to find everything out after it had already happened and you couldn’t fix it. The furniture kept rearranging itself to accommodate the injuries and it got better and it got worse. Mostly it got wider and more compressed as the circumstances were to far apart to knit together and the people inside couldn’t get out.

The son went into the army and he died there somewhere in a desert and the daughter went off with someone who wanted to be far away and so there was nothing to hold them together and the roads bent away until you couldn’t see the other side.

Some years later they met at an internet forum and wrote touching things to one another because they sensed a kindred spirit but they didn’t know who they were talking to so nothing had changed except the way that it looked which may be one of the most important things and the reason why people lie to themselves. So they never knew and it’s for the best that they never met. They wanted to but he died from the drink and she cried when she heard and she wished so hard that she could have met this man instead and that her life could have gone another way. He died in a red haze in a white room and sirens caroled him to the bed.

She went on reaching but the weariness in her face only brought her into the company of people who made her more tired than she already was and so she watched television and her dreams became so real as they were played out by actors in a revolving script that she came to believe she was living them too. She began to forget the simple things you have to do to be independent; no matter how forgotten you are and so they took her to a place with other people who had lost their way and there they all talked at one another and the words hung in the air and pressed down.

When he died the last thing in his mind was that he didn’t know who his life had happened to or why it had happened. When she died it was the same. Bits and pieces of things swirled around on her exit and they blew away like confetti as she reached for them. She believed if she could hold any one part that the rest of it would come together but she caught at nothing until she blew away herself.

The fire in the haze... that burns in the gut... sets the world on fire when the eyes are young. As the fire is pushed from the eyes to the chest... and the heavy heart presses the dangerous flames downward... for safety from the intentions of the thing that endangers the norm with the risk of feeling... outside the parameters where pain is known to wait. That risk that was life became too much to risk and so...

The fire sucked inward and bent the frame and the body stooped and the shoulders curled and the spine twisted to one side or the other in view of escape and it went on and on playing hide and seek... going in and out... sweet to sour like the breath of age that has tendered permanence to form and all along the way if they had only asked, “Who am I?” “Who am I?” “Who am I?” Not the white room; not the red haze that blankets the world and courses through the rivers inside.

And they could have asked at any time and they could have gone on asking as if no single question had ever been so important. The pressure that was pushing them to ask got confused with the gravity that held the world in place and they will circle until the end of time, in and out of the seagull’s cry and the longing of the ocean. Someday there will be peace.