lucidity

I had a lucid dream last night or early this morning. A persuasive vignette of a gauzy afternoon in my own living space. Laughs in extended echoes that recalled childhood discipline like boards of Canada introductions. A burbling fugue pushing up a mound of sand as evidence for its presence. A conversation with familiars that was anything but, and a sudden impulse to see what time it was.

The scene lacked something, or rather held some surrealistic quality that dispersed me haphazardly across a tightly scheduled calendar, and bound me in the vagaries of sunlight in midsummer. The clock, identical in construction to the one I regularly reference, displayed a dynamic and nonsensical barrage of images. I knew then that I was asleep downstairs, and I resolved to check in on myself. There was no fabled ability to fly, no ability to conjure fantastic animals or part bodies of water. Perhaps I could have done these things, however I found myself lacking in grand ideas or even the leftover brain wattage to muse creatively. I was intently focused on holding together the small universe that I knew existed only in the confines of electro-chemical mechanisms. Whole rooms constructed elementally and organically within my memory that showed no flaw simply because it would be impossible for me to recognize. I had to go see myself.

The dream ended when I made it to my room and flicked on the light. I think my brain may have been unable to deal with the implicit paradox I was about to create. I woke for a brief second and then fell back into a nightmarish vision, filtered in red, of urbanized hillbillies and their retarded spawn. I'll save the details.

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The Tiva has Landed

At first she was a little uneasy . . . .




Then she hid for a little while . . . .



But she finally came around and seems to like it here . . .

I'll take good care of her, I promise.

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Gutteral, godless, gone

I hesitate to post this, because I can't give it much context. All I can say is that it belongs in the same larger piece as this.


They rode 6 deep in the van; noxious vapors trailing behind their dilapidated conveyance as they shuttled along the canal. The driver, Umberto, was an immigrant with no allegiance to any system but Umberto’s; he was in it for the scant 50 pieces a week it afforded him. Riding shotgun was the nameless elder statesman of the revolutionaries and former chief of the Palanq tribe; his 90 year-old eyes looked out over the dashboard in anticipation. A faded black tattoo snaked up his neck to his ear. Between them Charlie, a scar-faced teenager and former speed junkie, racked the chamber on a Kalashnikov and signaled back to the twins for ammunition. The Ignatio twins, olive-skinned and battle hardened, took a pause from smoking exaggerated “war spliffs” to slide a bandolier across the scratched floor of the van. They snickered in their private language.

G rode in the furthest back seat, olive dungarees rolled up around his knees and a holey white-tank top pulled up around his neck like a Palestinian’s scarf. He rested his arms on the cracked vinyl to either side of him, absorbing some flittering cinematic element, inhaling evanescent blue smoke from the twins along with exhaust, the pungency of guano and the sulfuric miasma of their dying homeland. Today was to be their day, even if it were their last.

G sat up from slouch and took the spliff from the twins, hand-rolled private stock from a shaman who’d carried on the teachings into modern times and died by helicopter gunship for it. It was partially for him that G now carefully loaded the RPG launcher, lined up the indicators and fingered the shoulder-strap into the ready position. Murder was not the sin that They’d committed, for death is an easy thing. But oppression, the malevolent will to power, willful ignorance of the consequences; these were acts to be avenged. The death of Mol’twiki had been the catalyst, the final piece of evidence in the case that his people must fight back or be buried alive next to him. There was a rage at the base of G’s spine that distanced from the cannabis; serving to objectify it and attach strategy.

The van bounced along the rutted gravel road running next to the putrid Kumpuerto Canal. Those still cognizant enough to pull themselves out of their hovel made a living rowing boatloads of ayahuasca and mushrooms 17 miles up the canal to Kumpuerto; a village that once thrived on export of bananas and small plastic components, but now lay a veritable smoldering heap of industrial waste. Umberto slowed the van to allow a spindly legged old man cross, he was swathed in a purple robe befitting a centuries dead ruler of the basin. He looked through the windshield, all the back way to G’s prominence and furrowed-brow leadership. The old man, Ip, had once owned a dime store just north of town; G recalled his kindness to even shoplifting local children. He hobbled across, letting their van pass.

Ip now fished for mutated Boto corpses out of the canal, and piled them up on the side of his dwelling: a crouching hut made from Fed-ex boxes he had obviously fished from the stench as well. G double-checked his weapon. Charlie threw an apple out the window into the dirt where Ip could easily reach it.

G’s attention turned to the twins, that personified duality of hindsight and foresight, who gestured up the road to a white delivery truck careening towards them. The side of it pockmarked with bulletholes, the driver’s door a rusty flap slamming back into the frame with each bump. A passenger in black uniform kicked a local woman out the back doors, her arm breaking as she hit the hard-pack at 35 miles per hour. These were corporate men, heathens from Panama or Texas whose actions were even more despicable then their bosses. These men did not even make fortunes from the exploitation of Kumpuerto, they merely did as they told.
“It starts now!” G yelled, sparking Umberto’s fishtail to align the broadside of the van with the delivery truck’s face. The men inside barely noticed, still laughing imperial hyena laughs at the poor women writhing in the dirt behind them. Charlie popped through a crude hole in the van’s roof, supported by the old chief’s remarkably strong shoulders, and unloaded a spurt of rounds into the windshield of the truck. The men in black uniforms died without so much as a yell.
“Umberto, get that truck back down to the Coves before the copters fly over, Chief take Umberto’s spot. We’re taking this van right up to the gates!”

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i learned something yesterday . . .

There is much to be said for semantics, that is the meaning of the particular components of language that we use. Variations in emphasis between individuals lead to a staggering fraction of our arguments. Our ability to even communicate about vast fields of thought (quantum physics, existentialism, etc) is limited by the mere lack of terms capable of describing it. This is not a concept to be dismissed; that is, a disagreement over semantics is quite notable chiefly for the reason that our word-symbols are the most direct facsimiles of our thought-symbols. The reason I can discuss this with You is because we have as human beings (and to a lesser degree as English-speakers) come to a general agreement on what each of these words means.

I raise this issue because I want to talk about the word God. For many thiests it calls to mind a nearly-physical entity of semi-predictable features and uncanny similarities to you and I. For agnostics, the word refers to a possible entity consisting of something between energy and spirit. For athiests its a spark of foolishness, an old term no longer relevant. And yet, one cannot deny that there is something at work that we cannot understand. Even the most diehard fanatics will reach the point, in argument with their athiest counterparts, that we just don't know. And even if we can pretend to know some vague details about this "god", it would hardly inform us to a greater depth about what our relationship with it should be. The word god, for all intents and purposes, has lost meaning whether there is something in place that would fit 'neath that descriptor's umbrella or not.

So here's what I propose: Let's replace the word God with the word Life. Stretch an extant symbol to cover something we do not universally understand anyway. I think that a Christian or Muslim would agree that God is a fundamental component of this thing we already call Life: steering it, perpetually adjusting it, initially creating it. And I believe that athiests would agree that this word is big enough and powerful enough to deserve a reverence on par with that which the religious bestow upon their diety. "Life" is sweeping, comprehensive, and belies, at the very least, that some fundamental structure is at play. It suggests that there are in fact "rules" whether or not there is in fact a "ruler".

So, how does this work? Consider the direct replacement of the word life for the word god in these predictable quotations.

"God will test you" becomes "Life will test you"
"Thank God for my good fortune" becomes "Thank life for my good fortune"

It sets up, even in the skeptical, a certain reverence, understanding and appreciation for life that can keep one quite grounded in reality and balanced in perspective. It even allows for practical prayer to serve the purpose of indoctrinated reminder of how great life really is. What I mean is, what if every day, no matter how bad you felt, you knelt down and meditated on the vast beauty and reward of life. Not to thank some elusive god or ponder your adherence to inapplicable rules, but simply to wonder in the complexity and profundity of waking up in the morning. Wouldn't this generate a healthier mental state, a gradual understanding of oneself, a firmer dedication to exuberant joy? Wouldn't this be a realistic and more effective spirituality.

What's interesting as well, for the convert, is that trying to subsitute Life for God in our more superstitious mantras automatically points fingers at the wrong-headed:
"God wants our praise" becomes "Life wants our praise", a ludicrous statement that suggests something as ethereal and vast as life and the universe is a victim of the same petty emotions as us.
Likewise for a phrase such as "God punishes us" becoming "Life punishes us", there is no punishment, Life merely is and either we are an unfortunate statistic or our choices doom us.

Anyway, my point is, who needs god when you have Life?

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Sometimes I can be a bit reactionary.

This frustration requires
some third party patience
to assuage it
and some schooled fan of truth
to resuscitate my batt'rees
A hand to clasp when I'm terrified
and a matching knack for many things.

And what a statuesque solution she is . .
and what a forward thinker.
With every passing moment further
reveals her inner figure.

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DUNE

I recently read Dune by Frank Herbert.
I don't want to summarize to a great extent, but a comment on its scope, precision architecture and character design is neccessary.
The story is vaguely familiar to Lawrence of Arabia and containing other elements that would eventually influence most likely every science fiction novel after it. Simultaneously, which I understand is often imitated but never quite as good, it works in all the political and family dramatics of Shakespeare and the hero myth of Mycenean Greece (and in fact both the themes common in mythology and the theme of mythology are handled beautifully within it). It has an interesting comment about the action of chemicals on the brain (perhaps what influenced me to write this) and their potential relationship to the evolution of man in both memetics and neurology. In my opinion, it tackled some difficult concepts of literature that I don't feel educated enough to talk about yet. And did it as good or better than many "great" writers of the mainstream (I'm looking at you Sinclair Lewis and Tom Wolfe)

After spending a great deal of time sweating and pacing out the details of exactly how a story will fall together (and anything I've done is an Aesop fable compared to this), I could appreciate how nuanced the chain of events were. How high-context and weighted the interplay between even second-tier characters.
And the main characters suit their roles like gloves. The Baron Harkonnen is a piece of filth and I truly hate him. Paul Muad-Dib is in the bad-ass hall of fame in the best way possible. His father version 0.5 of him, with regal trimmings. And on down the list.

Anyway, recommended highly.

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" We are all, if we already knew it, already there"

"Little boy you're not allowed to stay
You have to evolve inevitably
And I've sure come a long way

The road up ahead is so unclear
Back slidin down the bottom of beer
Nobody knew if I would make it here"
-Cee-Lo Green

I've been embroiled in a mythological love story since sometime shortly after the day I learned to fly. Eye-gouging tales of deceit and passion be damned; my scars are all healed and my eyes, while intact, see the overwrought capacity for everything around me to fail or succeed. What I've learned in the last few years screams a clarion across the physical path I've taken. She-I sits next to me-her. She-I keeps me-her going. From the laps of mediocrity to the slum of all slums, across this once-free nation to a place that reminds me of the future I always dreamed of. This is her path too.

Fuck prophecy, I refuse to bolt-down anything as dustblown as the day after tommorrow. And yet there's no faking it. Some of these things were meant to happen. Even if the only divnity steering them was some universal element of me. Something we all have and wield when we need to. And while no words I send will make you understand this, I've seen everything with that third eye.

There's nothing hard about this, except admitting that. Even in the most severe declines your bhindu-prana will carry you. Even in that darkest day death can be your solace or your impetus. I don't want to die yet, I know that, and I don't think I could until I'd given it my best. I want to be the Buddha freeing my fellow man from his mental chains, etching lessons upon the rocks, subsisting on the impossible margins simply to bend reality. I want to be Nietzche, leaving a twisted, contradicted memoir of my dreams so that young children will have the courage to defy their parents. I'm humbled by my inability, but I want these words to change the world.

I've known fear, still know it well. But have come to understand it's place. There are times to spit upon it, times to neglect it, times to sail into it guns blazing, and the very rare time to acknowledge it. This is not the fear of violence or rapists in the alley, this is the fear of life itself. Forgive my sudden spirituality, but we were not born by an act of fear. And neither should we live by them.


Pull a lesson from this ethos; like a flower from a meadow. Time heals no wounds, and yet I can only credit my occasional tendency to float in it's cool current to any success. Sometimes point feet downstream and grit teeth, sometimes fight for air and relief, sometimes reach the opposite shore and bask in the sun survival proves you worthy of. Always know when it's time to swim again.

I feel wise sometimes, like I should gather children around to tell stories to. But when they appear, laughing and creating, I see that I still belong among them. And I hope that I always will.

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