Last night I was having dinner at my friend's, and she'd invited over some aging New Agey sorts, if we're going to go about categorizing. Everything seemed to be going okay, and the night started to progress while the one fellow had busted out these pendant-things made of tree resin with bits of some crystal inside. It looked like some sort of opal, but I'm not a geologist. Either way, the shared experience was nice, but the demand and insistence surrounding these was distressing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for stones and crystals. I pick up resonance with ease, to the point that it distracts from, well, most everything else going on around me. However, I recognize that the majority of the populace has other things to worry about, whether narrated by flickering TV screens or through sensible, fundamental instincts like family care and community. It was a comment mentioned through one of the folks going through word-association that really set things in motion: "It gives people what they need..." That kind of thing... terrifies me, especially when considering the recent heebie-jeebies surrounding consumerism as of late. It reminded me of a regular customer when I used to work at Stellar Coffee who would go on paranoid jags, discussing how human consciousness was some fabrication by a crystalline intelligence to reposition their placement around the world to create some new resonance. The way the metaphysical community, myself included, reacts and practically worships crystals, I begin to ponder the validity of this.
With that strong resonance in mind, how much transphysical essence bullies us around into these pockets? Why do so many folks in the metaphysical community sound like the same person? Why is it so often about "joining" and where do we draw the line between community and cult-like idol worshippers? Why do we flock to find objects that will mean something to us when, deep down, these objects have little or no meaning outside of our own associations? How do you point a person past the fascination with the object and toward the individual interaction with it that provides a simple signpost for what non-physical consciousness/wavelengths want to communicate (and this may or may not be anthropically-oriented. We're talking Nature, here.)?
I spent that night sitting on my bed, looking at the wall of collages before me, a swirling expanse of faces and words, and felt like I was sitting on a precipice overlooking the Abyss, like in the Neverending Story. I wonder how many people would fall screaming into it, and how many found a way to climb back into the world, found a way to get back Home; not the regressive home where responsibility is nil and life stagnates into a parody of itself, but that area where we could explore safely, without feeling exposed or self-conscious. I've been adventuring too long in my own wilderness. It's time to get back.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Metropolis vs. Transylvania: a Guidebook to Modern dreck
Yup. Feeling a lot better, today. Just like any cycle, the uncomfortable skin has been shed and new eyes look outward into the opened system until it finds the closure, and newer eyes manifest. Yay Lunar Churning!
"America: Fuck yeah."- Team America theme.
"Are you being sarcastic?" "I don't know any more." -Simpsons "Hullabalooza" episode in the '90s.
Today's been all Superman and Vampires; Final Crisis in a nutshell, I guess.
I wish people could see the Evil Empire in themselves, and I'm not talking about just the Suits and gelled-hair yuppies; I'm talking every person who involves themselves in this mess. If we attempt to push it away, we end up the "enemy" of the Evil Empire, raising flags in opposition and presenting them with a target as much as we ourselves have painted one on "them," with the presumption of an Us vs. Them scenario. It's been exploited too damned much.
See, that's something we forget about Superman: he doesn't give a flying fuck what Lex Luthor does in his spare time unless it fucks with people. He doesn't hate Lex, since Lex is just the opposite end of the Superman spectrum of amplified humanity. Lex's brilliance is all geared toward reflection and validation, where Superman's actions are, in his mind, just what he does. He places no more importance on moving the Earth in and out of orbit than he does saving that kitten from a tree. He doesn't agonize over what he can't do, but enjoys what he does. To put in simply, Lex is the separation of self from collective, and Superman is in unity.
I guess when we're considering the Sun and Superman, we can get into vampires as well. I'm a bad blogger cuz I forgot the link, but someone put down that vampires fear the notion of self-sacrifice that the Cross embodies. The idea that someone chooses to avoid a predator/prey relationship, to avoid victimization for one's own benefit, makes the Vampiric essence go cross-eyed. The lack of a reflection represents just that: lack of reflection. The Vampire, despite being a night creature, has a remarkable lack of self-awareness. The instinct and Will to Power override all higher cognitive aspects. It's the sociopathic aspect of the animal instinct and solitary non-mammalian critter. The coldness and deadness are remarkably reptilian (If I hear any bollocks about Lizard People I am going to fucking scream). Warmth has a metaphor in human language as reciprocity, and the lack of it displays that inner Void so well. There's no way to fake Dead Body Cold. It's too chilly and squamous to pass off as bad circulation. The wooden stake, fire, and sunlight represent pretty much the same thing: Life. The stake was cut from a living entity and will eventually decompose. Fire is a chemical reaction with remarkably life-like characteristics. The Sun, our relative position to it, etc. is that reductionist source of Life. All three act like Wilhelm Reich muscle memory to send the frozen essence back into the living cycle of elements. Garlic seems so basic that it's confounding. It's a bulb, it's living potential, it promotes circulation, it's an overwhelming spice... it just seems the opposite end of the vampiric spectrum of Subterranean Entities.
Vampires, to me, feel more Saturnian than anything else, and getting acquainted with that sort of energy in oneself's pretty daunting, but useful. Vampires have gone from Apotropaic funerary ritual to modern Frost Giant, calcified elements of human nature that require recirculation when left unaware. Like Frost Giants, their position is ambivalent instead of purely pernicious, not unlike the "Asura" in Hindu literature. The key comes to getting that Vampiric part to see itself in the mirror, to enact that self-recognition that accompanies a cognition of one's soul. (I'm of the idea that everything condemned to existence has a soul, but self-awareness and sentience have the unique prerogative to examine it.)
When we consider the Killer of Monsters, from the Winchesters, to Buffy Summers, to Batman, to Thor, we consider the symbolic utilization of destructive instincts for the cause of Life. Sam Winchester flirts with his possession of demon blood, Batman toes the line of power-mad and oppressive Hades, and Thor's brutality and characteristics make him almost indistinguishable from the Giants he bludgeons to death. That said, all have romantic ties, for good or for ill, to members of their quarry. Sam and Ruby, Dean and Anna the Angel, Buffy with both Angel and Spike, Batman to Thalia al-Ghul and Catwoman, and Thor to Jarnsaxa.
In conclusion, to be effective in counteracting the demons which we feel compelled to spit upon and villify, we must understand sacrifice without power-over, we must understand the deed as villainous instead of the perpetrator, and we must, in some way, romance that evil in order to combat it effectively. Love is what conquers all of it, and in the end the poles shall collapse on themselves and become distinct from their previous nature, just to find new oppositions and repeat the process. (Thor and Jormundgand annihilate each other, and find reconciliation in Magni and Modi, a dual-divinity at Rangarok.)
"America: Fuck yeah."- Team America theme.
"Are you being sarcastic?" "I don't know any more." -Simpsons "Hullabalooza" episode in the '90s.
Today's been all Superman and Vampires; Final Crisis in a nutshell, I guess.
I wish people could see the Evil Empire in themselves, and I'm not talking about just the Suits and gelled-hair yuppies; I'm talking every person who involves themselves in this mess. If we attempt to push it away, we end up the "enemy" of the Evil Empire, raising flags in opposition and presenting them with a target as much as we ourselves have painted one on "them," with the presumption of an Us vs. Them scenario. It's been exploited too damned much.
See, that's something we forget about Superman: he doesn't give a flying fuck what Lex Luthor does in his spare time unless it fucks with people. He doesn't hate Lex, since Lex is just the opposite end of the Superman spectrum of amplified humanity. Lex's brilliance is all geared toward reflection and validation, where Superman's actions are, in his mind, just what he does. He places no more importance on moving the Earth in and out of orbit than he does saving that kitten from a tree. He doesn't agonize over what he can't do, but enjoys what he does. To put in simply, Lex is the separation of self from collective, and Superman is in unity.
I guess when we're considering the Sun and Superman, we can get into vampires as well. I'm a bad blogger cuz I forgot the link, but someone put down that vampires fear the notion of self-sacrifice that the Cross embodies. The idea that someone chooses to avoid a predator/prey relationship, to avoid victimization for one's own benefit, makes the Vampiric essence go cross-eyed. The lack of a reflection represents just that: lack of reflection. The Vampire, despite being a night creature, has a remarkable lack of self-awareness. The instinct and Will to Power override all higher cognitive aspects. It's the sociopathic aspect of the animal instinct and solitary non-mammalian critter. The coldness and deadness are remarkably reptilian (If I hear any bollocks about Lizard People I am going to fucking scream). Warmth has a metaphor in human language as reciprocity, and the lack of it displays that inner Void so well. There's no way to fake Dead Body Cold. It's too chilly and squamous to pass off as bad circulation. The wooden stake, fire, and sunlight represent pretty much the same thing: Life. The stake was cut from a living entity and will eventually decompose. Fire is a chemical reaction with remarkably life-like characteristics. The Sun, our relative position to it, etc. is that reductionist source of Life. All three act like Wilhelm Reich muscle memory to send the frozen essence back into the living cycle of elements. Garlic seems so basic that it's confounding. It's a bulb, it's living potential, it promotes circulation, it's an overwhelming spice... it just seems the opposite end of the vampiric spectrum of Subterranean Entities.
Vampires, to me, feel more Saturnian than anything else, and getting acquainted with that sort of energy in oneself's pretty daunting, but useful. Vampires have gone from Apotropaic funerary ritual to modern Frost Giant, calcified elements of human nature that require recirculation when left unaware. Like Frost Giants, their position is ambivalent instead of purely pernicious, not unlike the "Asura" in Hindu literature. The key comes to getting that Vampiric part to see itself in the mirror, to enact that self-recognition that accompanies a cognition of one's soul. (I'm of the idea that everything condemned to existence has a soul, but self-awareness and sentience have the unique prerogative to examine it.)
When we consider the Killer of Monsters, from the Winchesters, to Buffy Summers, to Batman, to Thor, we consider the symbolic utilization of destructive instincts for the cause of Life. Sam Winchester flirts with his possession of demon blood, Batman toes the line of power-mad and oppressive Hades, and Thor's brutality and characteristics make him almost indistinguishable from the Giants he bludgeons to death. That said, all have romantic ties, for good or for ill, to members of their quarry. Sam and Ruby, Dean and Anna the Angel, Buffy with both Angel and Spike, Batman to Thalia al-Ghul and Catwoman, and Thor to Jarnsaxa.
In conclusion, to be effective in counteracting the demons which we feel compelled to spit upon and villify, we must understand sacrifice without power-over, we must understand the deed as villainous instead of the perpetrator, and we must, in some way, romance that evil in order to combat it effectively. Love is what conquers all of it, and in the end the poles shall collapse on themselves and become distinct from their previous nature, just to find new oppositions and repeat the process. (Thor and Jormundgand annihilate each other, and find reconciliation in Magni and Modi, a dual-divinity at Rangarok.)
Sunday, September 6, 2009
In the cold light of the Hyperborean sun.
The past week has been rough. A chill wind from the winter had hidden in a drawer and escaped while I folded laundry. I stared at my e-mail inbox, with another open-ended rejection, reinforcing my belief that I'd be better off a castrated hermit living on the side of a mountain, subsisting on dirt and prayer, or covering my face in lacerations so that all of the middle-aged hausfraus who tell me I'm beautiful can shut the fuck up and stop imagining me in poses designed for Harlequin book covers. Once more I feel better off as the King of Jerusalem, the hideous leper in a gold mask, sexlessly meandering the halls and appreciating beauty like a eunuch, because God forbid that I seek romantic love or display an active sex drive, that I display the level of rancor I have toward the general ignorance of the world, and the smug superiority of those who stare down their nose at those who lack their particular insecure quality of banner-waving, that I seriously do not care about the useless details that fill the air with banal, soul-crushing chatter.
However, it's the easy, stupid way out to spit bile and justify the emotional defensiveness of the world. It's too easy to release all of this on some poor, unsuspecting individual set on their path in life, thus becoming that smug sense of superiority so despised. The cycle continues: showing oneself causes the other to recoil or misunderstand, and thus retreat digs one further back, propelled in reverse like a nautilus from a hungry octopus, further and further back until an unrecognizable speck in the sea, even more inscrutable and dismissable than before, to begin the cycle again. Those who care stop looking at the person and instead begin smothering, selfishly throwing themselves into realms of admiration and guilt, shrieking for approval and validation for inconsequential acts from a source that finds the whole affair sickening, coddling and crushing it like a lapdog.
I wouldn't feel this much vituperation if I didn't have an equal amount of veneration. The two extremes seem irreconcilable. Perhaps it's from a lack of self-cultivation, a lack of socialization or just because I'm a hypocritical douchebag, but I still find myself alienated from just about everyone. In every circle I've attempted to join, I've felt disinterest in the internal secret handshakes and the pursuit of their social cues, left out in discussions that revolve around experiences shared by core members and unconsciously yet persistently marginalized and invalidated, especially by those who claim friendship (a repeating pattern). Much as I enjoy the individual company of many people, the larger body, the clique, the banner will, by the devices of myself or another, cast me into the outskirts and render me irrelevant.
The human animal is, by nature, a social one. We're formed too awkwardly and too weakly to subsist on an individual agenda, and thus we seek collective clustering to form a superorganism, which have applications as irrelevant and diverse as computer usage, political inclination, genetic heritage, athletic inclination, stylistic/aesthetic inclination, and so on. Competition has greatest strength when intercollective, with intracollective or individual competition serving to excise weak/sick elements from the collective. A human being can take only so much rejection of the collective, initiated by self or other, before pondering the relevance of its being.
In the mire of all of these conflictions, I began to question: why don't I want to die? Why do I want to stay alive? Why can I not fathom leaping in front of an oncoming vehicle like I used to? Why can't I shut myself out from the prospect of the pain and madness I'd cause my father? Do I have some other reason to stay around than simple financial obligation? If so, why don't the people closest to me seem to want me around? Why do I have to rely on a mentally ill person to provide me with the facsimile a familial setting that each day reminds me more and more of my actual familial setting in which I spent endless amounts of time taking care of my physically ill mother whose death was a tempest of guilt and relief? If I seek acceptance and independence, why do I put only nominal amounts of energy into finding a more substantial form of employment? Why do I avoid the idea of taking medication? Why do I worry about the time that I spent living instead of carving myself into pieces to achieve some basic form of credibility, when I really, really don't give a flying fuck how many degrees a person has? If, somehow, all of my decisions and inclinations are valid, then why can't I see the point of my existence? Why can't I get some kind of reward, some kind of kick-back or signpost to let me know what I'm doing right or doing wrong in the cosmic scheme of things? I mean, even Peter Parker, who has a shitty life, gets to be Spider-Man at the end of the day. Where's my reason to be here?
I felt okay, this morning. My emotions were level, and I was happy to see the cats, and as far as I can tell, they were happy to see me. Cats, especially those belonging to someone else, are a pretty poor barometer. They'll forget you exist when you leave the building, and it won't have much consequence on their life if you disappear. Either way, I can make a cat genuinely happy through my actions and observe it, and that brings some validation. I went through my ritual of heading to the coffee shop to do... whatever it is I've decided to do there while guzzling stimulants. Today saw me nestled into research, where I came across some astrological articles of Dana Gerhardt's regarding Venus and the Moon. Maybe it was the subject matter, the music playing at the time (The Rapture's "Been Down for So Long"), the caffeine, or that my brain chemistry reached a breaking point, but I remembered how I felt reading All-Star Superman. Somehow, that story got it into my head that whatever it is that Superman represents, the working-class superhero, the avatar of Vishnu, or any other thing that doesn't matter, that symbol, that primary-colored farmboy from space believes in us. It's the same feeling I got as a kid when I thought about Santa Claus. Much as people would say that Santa had a naughty/nice list or wouldn't give presents to non-believers or some exclusionist hateful shit like that, the real spirit behind both Superman and Santa Claus is that if we let them, if we just, for a minute, drop the skepticism and the snide barriers we've set up to be a rebellious teenager, we're fully permitted to think that there's something out there that believes in whatever we do, that believes we can be great, that loves every single one of us even when we turn our noses up at the red briefs or the jingle-bells. Don't get me wrong: I still hate most Christmas music with a fire that could completely sublimate the polar ice caps into perennial storm clouds, but with the Fortress at the South Pole and Workshop at the North, I'd rather ignore them entirely and learn to just do what I do with the full belief that something bigger than anyone I know, anything I can conceive believes in me, and has wished a happy ending for all of us if we'll have it. If we won't, it still believes we know what we're doing. Ha.
However, it's the easy, stupid way out to spit bile and justify the emotional defensiveness of the world. It's too easy to release all of this on some poor, unsuspecting individual set on their path in life, thus becoming that smug sense of superiority so despised. The cycle continues: showing oneself causes the other to recoil or misunderstand, and thus retreat digs one further back, propelled in reverse like a nautilus from a hungry octopus, further and further back until an unrecognizable speck in the sea, even more inscrutable and dismissable than before, to begin the cycle again. Those who care stop looking at the person and instead begin smothering, selfishly throwing themselves into realms of admiration and guilt, shrieking for approval and validation for inconsequential acts from a source that finds the whole affair sickening, coddling and crushing it like a lapdog.
I wouldn't feel this much vituperation if I didn't have an equal amount of veneration. The two extremes seem irreconcilable. Perhaps it's from a lack of self-cultivation, a lack of socialization or just because I'm a hypocritical douchebag, but I still find myself alienated from just about everyone. In every circle I've attempted to join, I've felt disinterest in the internal secret handshakes and the pursuit of their social cues, left out in discussions that revolve around experiences shared by core members and unconsciously yet persistently marginalized and invalidated, especially by those who claim friendship (a repeating pattern). Much as I enjoy the individual company of many people, the larger body, the clique, the banner will, by the devices of myself or another, cast me into the outskirts and render me irrelevant.
The human animal is, by nature, a social one. We're formed too awkwardly and too weakly to subsist on an individual agenda, and thus we seek collective clustering to form a superorganism, which have applications as irrelevant and diverse as computer usage, political inclination, genetic heritage, athletic inclination, stylistic/aesthetic inclination, and so on. Competition has greatest strength when intercollective, with intracollective or individual competition serving to excise weak/sick elements from the collective. A human being can take only so much rejection of the collective, initiated by self or other, before pondering the relevance of its being.
In the mire of all of these conflictions, I began to question: why don't I want to die? Why do I want to stay alive? Why can I not fathom leaping in front of an oncoming vehicle like I used to? Why can't I shut myself out from the prospect of the pain and madness I'd cause my father? Do I have some other reason to stay around than simple financial obligation? If so, why don't the people closest to me seem to want me around? Why do I have to rely on a mentally ill person to provide me with the facsimile a familial setting that each day reminds me more and more of my actual familial setting in which I spent endless amounts of time taking care of my physically ill mother whose death was a tempest of guilt and relief? If I seek acceptance and independence, why do I put only nominal amounts of energy into finding a more substantial form of employment? Why do I avoid the idea of taking medication? Why do I worry about the time that I spent living instead of carving myself into pieces to achieve some basic form of credibility, when I really, really don't give a flying fuck how many degrees a person has? If, somehow, all of my decisions and inclinations are valid, then why can't I see the point of my existence? Why can't I get some kind of reward, some kind of kick-back or signpost to let me know what I'm doing right or doing wrong in the cosmic scheme of things? I mean, even Peter Parker, who has a shitty life, gets to be Spider-Man at the end of the day. Where's my reason to be here?
I felt okay, this morning. My emotions were level, and I was happy to see the cats, and as far as I can tell, they were happy to see me. Cats, especially those belonging to someone else, are a pretty poor barometer. They'll forget you exist when you leave the building, and it won't have much consequence on their life if you disappear. Either way, I can make a cat genuinely happy through my actions and observe it, and that brings some validation. I went through my ritual of heading to the coffee shop to do... whatever it is I've decided to do there while guzzling stimulants. Today saw me nestled into research, where I came across some astrological articles of Dana Gerhardt's regarding Venus and the Moon. Maybe it was the subject matter, the music playing at the time (The Rapture's "Been Down for So Long"), the caffeine, or that my brain chemistry reached a breaking point, but I remembered how I felt reading All-Star Superman. Somehow, that story got it into my head that whatever it is that Superman represents, the working-class superhero, the avatar of Vishnu, or any other thing that doesn't matter, that symbol, that primary-colored farmboy from space believes in us. It's the same feeling I got as a kid when I thought about Santa Claus. Much as people would say that Santa had a naughty/nice list or wouldn't give presents to non-believers or some exclusionist hateful shit like that, the real spirit behind both Superman and Santa Claus is that if we let them, if we just, for a minute, drop the skepticism and the snide barriers we've set up to be a rebellious teenager, we're fully permitted to think that there's something out there that believes in whatever we do, that believes we can be great, that loves every single one of us even when we turn our noses up at the red briefs or the jingle-bells. Don't get me wrong: I still hate most Christmas music with a fire that could completely sublimate the polar ice caps into perennial storm clouds, but with the Fortress at the South Pole and Workshop at the North, I'd rather ignore them entirely and learn to just do what I do with the full belief that something bigger than anyone I know, anything I can conceive believes in me, and has wished a happy ending for all of us if we'll have it. If we won't, it still believes we know what we're doing. Ha.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)