No rights, just homage.
A great cartoon and a great cameo.
No rights, just homage.
A great cartoon and a great cameo.
I passed a snake sunnjng its belly on the path.
Unconcerned and un-aggressive.
I passed two small, white-tailed hares that quickly scampered home into the bramble.
I cried for a man i miss painfully today.
Is it just the alchemical appartus comprising a story? An alchemical apparatus used to drive the plot, scaffold the structure, and act as a skeleton key to unlock meaning?
Such an apparatus drives the substance of letters and words towards catharsis. Our story-tech equipment enables a bunch of words to be read by an audience. The collection of words becomes greater than the sum of its parts. This is a non-linear phenomenon, akin to complexity theory.
Confluence. Convergence.
This is how the array of letters constituting the matrix of each page transmutates scrawlings into Art.
The reader undergoes the cathartic process like catalytic enzymes provoking biological reactions.
Recall how good it is to lay on down?
Yeah.
Me too.
Hot, red plasma circulates with my blood cells.
Mouth goes dry; becomes difficult to swallow; breath rages ragged through opened throat.
It’s drawn to me smoothly, in swooping slides, over every atmospheric inch.
How I howl at the peals of divided bells.
I feel loose energy collect within my solar plexus.
Drawn, it smoothly slides to me, from every atmospheric inch.
The knots in my muscles, of my shoulders, and of their blades, tied tautly by ligaments and tendons, loosen.
Flowing like an Atlantic trade wind current.
Centralizing into two, respective, congealed spheres of non-corporeal matter.
Aflush and blushed at being
caught while not
upon my toes and ready,
to repel your compelling compulsion.
I turn my face until mostly obscured.
Setting in: slight, wide-eyed, grin
The Sufi tradition practices a personalized method of aspiring to study the alchemical arts. Raised as a member of a Methodist church as a youngster, I became disillusioned with organized religions during my teenage years. Studying physical/medical anthropological at university, I came to realize that the practice of Academia faculty seemed quite similar to religious institutions. I grew disillusioned seeing how much more interest professors appeared to put towards their own research. Perhaps, these are burdens imposed on them by the administration. PhD candidates and grad students served as substitute teachers and ghostwriters.
Coming from the Dirty South, the debate between religion and science gets a little extra hairy. Scientists were speaking with the same pomp and pretense and puffery as those they were accusing of being ignorant. University professors preoccupied with needing to make tenure. University professors who made tenure and should have retired long ago. I then investigated the esoteric, hermetic groups and loved their texts and mythos, but I do not like secrets.
Sometimes the appearance of a secret is more alarming than the content of the secret itself.
I came across several wonderful texts by Sufi writers over the last three years. What resounded most for me was the simplicity of the practices recommended. There is no dogma to be institutionalized, no one forces their thoughts on others, but neither do they fear engaging in a lively discussion. These practices are so wildly simple. They made such a substantial difference in my life over the last year that I wanted to share some broad strokes.
BREATHWORK
Four fundamental models of breathing correspond to four fundamental alchemical processes.
Consider each mode of breath as a re-attunement to the world around you.
Perform each mode of breath three to five times before moving to the next breath.
Each mode of breath begins on the exhalation.
The rhythm of breathing must be natural. No retention of breath.
(i) Filtering: exhale through your nose/inhale through your nose. EARTH. Yellow Square. Taurus sigil. North.
(ii) Liquifying: exhale through your mouth/inhale through your nose. WATER. Silver Crescent. Scorpio sigil. West.
(iii) Burnishing: exhale through nose/inhale through your mouth. FIRE. Red Triangle. Leo sigil. South.
(iv) Distilling: exhale through your mouth/inhale through your mouth. AIR. Blue circle. Aquarius sigil. East.
On breathing, think to yourself: I am turning within; withdrawing from any external environment and into myself. I am drawing the environment into myself to convert and transmute it.
Between inhalations and exhalations, suspend any thoughts other than preparing to resume your breath. Note that there will be a rest, a tacet/tacit pause in between the inhalation and exhalation & again between the exhalation and the inhalation. Feel that slight pause and think only of preparing to change the direction of your breath.
“Sense the emergence in yourself of something new–not the way you ingest the environment–but something that lay in wait within you and that emerges when catalyzed by its counterpart in the environment. We are recurrently reborn” (p40).
The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing: A Manual of MeditationBook by Inayat Khan
The line is not: You pay for what you get.
The steganographia is not the encryption is not the transcryption,
Nor is it the ostensible coding.
Encoding=scribing.
The poison is the dose.
The doz>s>e is the poison.
The map is not the region.
“Here I do have a theory: Perhaps we got across because we sailed on the ocean and not on a map.”
THE RA EXPEDITIONS
Thor Heyerdahl
DOUBLEDAY publishing
Page (ostensibly) 341 aka M(42)
Imagine that ( x ) = x in subSCRIPT
Here you find (sub)SCrypçione
The lyric is: you get what you pay for.
No rights, pure homage.
A person mentioned this song recently.
It suits my day today.
Of course, there is always Joni song that suits any given day.
Cheers.
A dancing string is a strummed and fretted wire
Upon which I perform my own tightwire act.
Balance aloft on shakey footing.
There is no safety net should the string snap.
Freefalling into sound endlessly, a runaway elevator in an interminable shaft.
Heaven is in the drone of sounds in stereo
Someone said to her, “get off your high horse.”
She recoiled into the obligatory southern american gal moment of embarrassment.
She winced twice because trying your best can hurt when you do not express your mind well.
Shame was dispensed heavily during her childhood domestication.
She used to ride a high horse up to her ivory tower.
They preferred her then.
Then the horse’s hooves were hacked off by wildlings. So she took to being (a) pedestrian and horse caretaker.
Humbled like the hobbled.
On occassion she would stand on her toes
Just to try and get closer to eye level with her contemporaries who still sat atop unhobbled mounts.
She must look nuts in the midst of the herd and hoard.
But, many of them allowed their high horses to be rode hard and put up wet.
And, though it appeared she was on toes to walk on the eggshells of her little life, she walked on toes to break her feet in, like a proper bolt of denim should be.
Her pride had been broken several times before, in nearly fatal, near death moments that the universe presented suddenly.
She woke from society’s dreams to find herself a strange bird in a strange land with the zen archer behind her, bow pulled taut and ready to wake her again.
Thankfully, as she now knew, she could handle embarrassing herself and rebuilding from scratch.
Hard work.
She wonders.
Do the people telling her to get off her phantom steed know that-
To her mind’sí-
They are equestrians of horses fifteen hands high themselves?
Moreover, did they know that it is okay to have high horses as well as to go it by dint of one’s own feet and breath too?
She could stay out of sight and out of mind, but she would still care for the horses of all, to the best of her ability.
Horses are put into boxes called stalls.
People are stalled by the prescriptive boxes placed around them by others.
Antimony parsimony came in a dream.
Hoarding of elemental medicine in the loam of the gods.
Midden mounds dotting figures lying recumbent underground pushing forth the skin of the earth.
Ancient open secrets waiting for uncovered discovery.
The sun stayed high until nigh on midnight.
The moon became their noonday sun.
They lived in sleepy embraces, bare and pressed close.
They breathed the oxygen emitted from the pores of one another.
The musk of life making them happy and high.
She smiled as his breath changed, as his muscles spasm into a shallow sleep,
Like a sleeping pup let lie until twitching into dreams of chasing Ingpen white hares.
Effie here. Hiya. Recovered notes from Parçiful are transcribed below. These are the earliest of journal entries that speak to her metaphysical confusion.
From VVönderland.
(Note: this is transcribed directly as it was found.)
She knew they were disappointed, angry perhaps, that she had not told them what they thought she knew. She was disappointed no one spoke directly to her. She was a strange bird. She shape shifted her appearance, she had odd eyes when lost in thought. She had been so sugary sweet for so long, people had come to expect it of her. Her family viewed it as unhappiness because she used to be so happy. Well, yeah, we all were once many things. She began remembering strange things. She began knowing things that were impossible for her to know. She carried memories of others that they could not remember. She overcame her disdain of silicon only to find the internet stranger than she remembered. But then again, maybe she had never used it.
We live in a pool of energy. Your consciousness is at once in your mind and all minds. Your attention is the key. You can live lives without memory if your consciousness was not there, not attuned.
She could not understand her own opinions on drug use, much less explicate a formal point of view. However, she started rattling off every synonym for sanctuary she could think of when she smoked, for a while. The idea that drug taking was a sacrifice for the sanctuary of others crossed her mind. A little self harm balancing the world of pain and sensation. Maybe that was backwards, maybe drug taking hurt other people.
Her senses might have been too highly attenuated. Too much fight or flight. She felt observed by Socratic circles. She felt like an A&R man who would get fired at any moment. She felt like she had been used again and again. She did not deny she was imperfect. She never claimed to be the perfect partner. She could turn codependent if she was not careful. She could retreat into her mind for weeks and leave her partner floundering alone.
She felt she had a special thing with words. Reading them. Sometimes, as she took notes, what she wrote read like someone else talking to her. But, what a crazy, unspeakable notion, the kind they call women crazy for asserting. She tried to speak of it to her father and sister, but it did not go well. She explained her thoughts on the magicians use of the mystics to N.
The mystics had been played, tooled with, used, and judged. Many people with mystic proclivities seemed unaware and frequently received diagnoses and medication that had little to do with an ailment. The magicians had a questionable stance regarding their right to use others. They knew this though and she had a strange intuition that she was new. Go figure. So, they were trying to level the playing field, but she could tell they were scared of her, of what she might say. Ludicrous. She would not be believed. No one would listen anyway.
She sent a single page email and was told that it was long. Made her right sad to hear. One page? If only she could figure out how to use effing memes to get the point across. What would these idiots do without their wifi?
She was over it. She had been ready to share and speak for ten years. Hopeful she could, in fact. But, now she was tired, alone. She did not care for what the world had become. She felt so old compared to her contemporaries. Their fun just was not hers. Once you read too much, there is no going back.
Empiricism is the imperialistic prerogative…at least as my mind marks it, and, it does so pseudo-empirically.
But, my concern is: if the observation of an object of inquiry actually changes the behavior of the object itself, what can be said for the metaphysical methodological underpinnings of ‘social science’?
The most basic of examples may be found in the early writings of Margaret Mead. The locals sang a different tune to her than the true song by which they lived.
Í speak in harmonies scaling octavial heights.
Centurians guard my air. Í breathe angels. Í exhale fire. Í burnish with every breath.
Breathless, noiseless despite despots.
The rows planted in keystone symmetry; puzzling eyes ampersand I’s in motion,
Like two horses dying of thirst beside a fresh water stream. The query of the quarry destroyed their shodden hooves. Chipping like fingernails opening soda tab tops.
Lone pylons.
Radio and cellular towers feigned as trees and the refrain repeated from which none refrained.
A bridge over dry dirt.
Í let the bonsai tree grow over one hundred feet. Held fast, bent and hobbled by wire wrapping extended limbs like the necks of Nubian queens. Clutching with cruel vigor the extension as though the feet of geishas.
Incidentally, í never cared for hearing anecdotal evidence, yet í sure evidence anecdotes as offerings to others.
To live and die in the service industry: this is the new Dixieland. Bereft of prejudice.
Barely. The meek shall inherit your tips.
A gnarled bonsai branch slaps me in the forehead as if to say, “oh dear, how could you not remember?”
We watched the weather change three times in ten minutes. He seemed unsurprised. This surprised me.
The rapeseed fields burned yellow like a terranean sun. My eyes nedded shielding, but í looked on and stared at the faux-star. Í beat a path by following the doppleganger affected bleating of sheep. Little lambs of woolen and warm like cherubs. They whispered, “If you jump the stone fence on the horizon, you will freefall forever.”
Í said, “You cannot see the ocean below for your clouds.”
Í stood on the slanting stone stele before slipping into a slide, my leg [em]purpled on impact like the time í slipped on the hotel’s hardwood. Í had had to leave an entire continent to find a bit of breathing space. But, í do breathe more deeply than many.
Vapor fume whisps from my nose with each burnished breath.
Í am the dragon called serpent-bearer. He stays my hand, wrapped around my forearm. He hisses, hides, and hides me. Protectors and protectorates in one. We laugh together in snarling tangles. He hangs like a tentacle. He hangs me upside down by my ankle, correcting the orientation of my perspective.
We appear cruel to the uncruel.
We are cruel to the cruel. Humiliating them unmercifully through unwarranted kindness. Adoration melting cruelty.
My eyes go hard.
My lips narrow and purse while my kindness cuts ampersand maims.
The behemoth bonsai bursts into flames. I howl in feral pleasure.
Mine is water; fire, the serpent’s.
Diabolical excellence arouses
Making ire irie.
The awareness to insert [i] pro/e/duces accordingly.
“…all that was beyond reality penetrated almost violently into the boy’s senses. And sense impressions are a deeper soil for growing memories than the best systems and analytic methods…Knecht had more to learn by his feet and hands, his eyes, skin, ears, and nose, than his intellect…No doubt they were really seeking the same ends as the science and technology of later centuries, but the went about it in an entirely different way. But one thing was utterly impossible for them: not in their most audacious moments would it have occurred to them to meet nature and the world of spirits without fear, let alone to feel superior to them. Such hubris was unthinkable, they could not have imagined having any other attitude but fear toward the forces of nature. The various systems of sacrifice kept fear at bay. A man who had been able to ennoble his fear by transforming part of it to awe had gained a great deal.”
I once thought to myself, in one of those moments of passing lucidity: Is the point of life to remember how to enjoy breathing? Is it the most basic pleasure?
Breath.
Breathe.
Breather.
Breathers.
Did you know the word “panic” does derive from Pan? Look it up, might be buried deeper than a single dictionary.
Did you know that Freud posited that the idiosyncratic, neuroses afflicting individuals in society are a result of human civilization itself, not some inherent biology deficiency?
Involuntary loss of control over voluntary processes. Inability to breath.
Breathless. Is that not the quintessence of smoking, smoking anything, inhaling anything?
Taking in the air around you seems inane or futile. Breathing reaffirms life.
Music and speech force breath and leave breathless. Breathing through your nose,
closing your throat to prevent air slipping through
renders speechless.
Ineffable
Here are the things I’ve been thinking/reading over the last few years:
iPagan. Edited by Trevor Greenfield, 2018. Textbook for learning organizational & historical of “naturalist” sects.
The Glass Bead Game (Master Ludi). Hermann Hesse, 1990. Henry Holt
Foucault’s Pendulum. Umberto Eco, 1988. “A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”
On Literature. Umberto Eco.
The Confessions of St. Augustine. find the Oxford version. Read it as though your narrator is being completely ironic.
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
Kantian Reason
Bertrand Russell’s efforts to formalize systems
Sartre’s Being and Non-Being
Consider: Euclidean/Non-Euclidean Space ; Gödel’s sentence G ; a priori methods formalizing almost axiomatically ; the difference between linear/non-linear equations ; consider the different types of numbers and the number line ; consider the difference between permutations and combinations
Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. Rebecca Goldstein 2005.
Gödel Escher Bach ; Metamathematical Themas ; Mind’sI. Douglas R. Hofstadter
Gödel’s Proof. Ernest Nagel, James R. Hofstadter, 2001
A Mathematician’s Apology. G.H. Hardy, 1940
Introduction to Logic. Patrick Suppes, 1957
Short Stories: The Circular Ruins (Jorges Borges) ; The Beautiful Dream (Hermann Hesse) ; The Dream of Poliphilius ; The Great God Pan Arthur Machen
Consider and draw the Sephirotic Tree.
Consider the nature of words and language: Use Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements as introduction
Consider Parzifal (A.T. Hatto’s translation of Wolfram Von Eschenbach)
Danse Macabre. Stephen King.
Plato-Socrates: The Apology, Phaedo, Swan’s Song,
Random Rabbit Holes: the concept of godess/godheads, female and male sexuality/Hesperus is Phosphorus/a book’s copyright page, Odysseus, Ajax.
The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing: A Manual of Meditation. Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, 2014.
The most interesting question that comes from all this reading, in my opinion: What is the subliminal symbolism of sexuality?
Silence cannot speak violence; violence never spoke in silence.
The man who photographs his nightmares.
Grey scale.
Not one but two.
The Brothers not The Lovers.
Breathe.
All time Fave flow
Promo on the link for song
Howl, yes. Like reluctant headliners, look who is back on the scene?
Still clear and up to their resources. No doubt.
I hope they never change their attitude.
Their dog says that he will try anything, don’t you know.
Help ’em out.
They are kind enough to share on YouTube.
You can get more music here. Like their entire catalogue for $30.03. That has to be someone’s lucky number.