Memories in the Wind

My entire neighborhood is filled with the scent of woodsmoke this evening. As I walked along I breathed the heavy air in through my mouth and nostrils. It smelled like contentment and nostalgia. With every breath I took I recalled my other memories around woodfires.

Camping trips of my childhood, monumental bonfires, fires started in the snow, fires started in the sun, tiny dwindling pires, the fireplace in my home during a power outage or cold winter night, camp -fire songs at camp, the great Kelowna fires a few years back- the red glare of the Okanagan as the sweet yet bitter air blew towards us, camping trips of my later years, adventures, happiness, sadness, undescribable moments, wine, whisky, beer, song, tree fights, leaping over the fire, dancing around the fire, dancing in the fire, meeting a weasel in the wee hours of the morning, climbing mountains off the beaten path, dark and furtive conversations, brooding over a fire-cooked meal- that's not dirt you whiney bastard that's seasoning, battles with indubiatable squirrels, cigars, harmonicas, guitars, terrible terrible burns, weepy eyes from a friendly smoke stream, the red glow on the tent as the fire makes a final attempt at life although it knows that it has been extinguished, ghosts, stories, true, false, our own, someone elses, beaches, law enforcing park rangers, all imagined? perhaps, maybe not...

These are the memories that came to me this evening as I breathed in that sweet wood smoke scent. My memories carried in the air unlocked by a fire that I have never seen, flames which I have not warmed my hands on and smoke that has not stung my eyes. My life suspended in the wind, waiting to come back to me...

An Experiment

Manic-Depressive--- a vague description. Bipolar--- a misnomer. To be a person who swings to such staggering oppositions, rises and falls between incoherent contradictory extremes, is truly a terrifying thing. Imagine understanding everything and then knowing nothing. I have said it before and I will say it again. The field of psychology is the second most futile attempt at understand that which cannot be known--the first being theology. I resent the labels that are placed on people to describe their "abnormal" behavior. I was thinking today of bipolar, a "disease" which I have been accused of. I believe that the name of this "abnormality" is misleading. It was chosen by people with very little understanding of the nature of the experience of being someone who is labelled bipolar. The main problem is that within the flluxtuating soul, there are no poles. There is a definite movement from one extreme to another, but there is no end. There is no mountain peak upon which a person is manic, and there is no end to the void down which you plummet in depression. Depression and mania are also not that different from one another. When you "go up" you think that you know everything, you see everything, you simply are, but then right at the edge of that understanding you find yourself at the bottum of dispair, you realize that you know abosolutely nothing and their is nothing, you are in the void. The pinnacle of the mountain is the same as the bottumless nothing of the void. The top is the bottum and the top is the bottum. But, all this talk of up and down is misleading as well. I might as well describe this as a horizontal movement or perhaps even a dementional movement that we cannot understand unless we are in that state.

You think too much, you are taking things too far, you are so fucking insane. You are a heretic, a sinner, an enemy of the truth. A flake!

Gotta write, gotta eewwzzzz out these words, gotta think, no hesitation, free my words, let my thoughts out, unfettered from the language they are masked by. Gotta get me out of the equation, gotta let true free though slide around on the screen, gotta believe that what is coming out isn't tripe, no editing, there I just did it, noo noo noo just thoughts, thoughts on a page. Write enough to fill up a novel, sell sell sell, justify your existence, don't be a drag on society, get a good job in city, dog in the suburbs, and all that goes along with that. Don't forget to have fun, storm the wall, be involved, be happy, don't swear around children they might be influenced, and never never never talk to strangers on the bus or you might start to realize that things are a lot more complicated than you thought they were.

I am thinking ahead of my writing, I have to stop this, I am causing it to go in a direction. I am writing a word with the intent of having another series of words after it. Words that I have not even typed yet are causing words that will exist after it before it is even written on the page.

I am not actually crazy. I am just experimenting with some modes of writing. I think that I can force my mind to experience things that it is not experiencing. I have always done this; now I am going to do it deliberately...

Implosion

In description we often turns to comparison. In fact, we always do. Things do not possess characteristics in themselves, but merely exhibit what we perceive to be their content in that we are comparing them to other things. These do not have to be comparisons of things to things, but even things to qualities. We also describe things in relation to what they are not. Re: An Example of My Logic (the equation, A does not equal B, gives both A and B their substance). This task of describing is therefore futile since we do nothing but compare infinite numbers of substanceless things to one another. Every individual things in empty of meaning apart from contrast, they are all nothing. So, if we describe things in comparison to other things then all we are saying is: nothing is like nothing. nothing is nothing is nothing is nothing ad infinitum. Comparison is empty, definition is empty, everything is empty.

What then is the point of language if it continually empties things of their meaning? If language is dwelling of being then where does that leave us? Can I attain a state of understanding in which I no longer cling to defining myself by the universe I percieve around me and just accept that I am? I am...

Sylogistic

We cannot have faith in fact, faith concerns that which cannot be known. Fact concerns that which cannot be known. Nothing can be known, therefore faith is concerned with everything and fact is concerned with nothing. Facts are meaningless, faith is fullness, but only when it is emptied. Only in complete ignorance can real faith come. Why then do those who profess to live by faith feel so certain that they have a grasp on things? I'm not talking about admitting that we don't know everything, I am saying that we know nothing. Most people who claim that they live by faith are desperately clinging to facts, drowning at that, and doing so with little style.

Wracked by physical pain by your absence. I know that this will last for an eternity, but I am saved in that I do not know that this will last for eternity. This is hope, this is what I have faith in, that the suffering will end. But, I don't have this hope because I know that it will end, but because I don't know that it won't. Ignorance, darkness, blindness and dispair are the only things that can truly bring release from this...mess?...

Fragments

I've been writing a lot for school and other non-blog related ventures, so here are some scraps of my thoughts.

Human development is a process of learning how to throw progressively more sophisticated temper tantrums.

You can tell the worth of a poet by his use of the word FUCK!

When I was a child and my ear began to ring I would be gripped with the fear that the ringing would never stop. You've been ringing in my ear since before I was hearing, and your ringing will never stop, but my hearing will.

Peace

I'm gunna flip out if these people don't stop starin' at me!

What?

These people, I can't stand them starin' at me...

Why? What people?

Their eyes!

Their eyes?

Yes, damn it, their eyes, they're bornig holes into my head!

No kiddin'.

What's that mean?

Nothin'

I've had just about enough of your skepticism; you think I'm crazy don't you?

Nooo...

Come on, admit it, sometimes you think that I am nuts!

Well...

Why do you think I'm crazy?

'Cause you're always talkin' to yourself.

'Cause I talk to myself? Everybody talks to themselves!

Not like you do.

How so?

Well, you're more tense, more physical.

Physical like how?

Violent...

Ya! Violent? I'll show you violent!

--a little ways off---

See, he does this all the time, just stands there as if he is having a candid conversation with another person, then bam, he just punches the wall or throws a chair. We've got to get him some help...

Why do we need to help him, who hasn't kicked a chair when they are anrgy?

Look, look he is choking the air, cho-king the air!

Maybe he is working out some frustration, maybe he just got dumped..or a speeding ticket...

Whatever, crazy fuck...

---back---

Finally they're gone. And you for that matter. Now for some peace!

---the body was found the next day---

2 litres

I vaguely remember that somewhere in the Bible it talks about "giving milk to babies, but once a person grows up they should be fed with real food". It is a metaphor, you know, spiritual milk for spiritual babies...I have heard dozens of sermons/belittlements on this topic. They've always confused me. Why is this baby talking to me about his milk? Why does he keep spitting up? and Is that shit I smell?

I've done a lot of writing on what I think of Christian theology. It may seem odd. What is this angry young shmuck going on about? Its all about the milk. If you drink 2 litres of milk you will vomit...people need to stop drinking milk and move onto real food. I once got in trouble at a Bible camp for making kids vomit in a milk chugging contest...think of all the vomitting they will do from the spiritual milk that is pouring out of their eyes. They won't get that out of their system for year, but wait, more will be pouring in. Every sermon, every devotional book and every guilt tripping intervention will pour more and more milk into a system that can't stand anymore. No more fucking milk! Milk is for babies and cows udders...

I want a big fucking steak...

Desacralization

I walked into the library at school yesterday and there were no books on the shelves. The ban on yelling in the library is to allow people to read books undisturbed. The ban on eating and drinking in the library is to protect those books from possibly being harmed. If the books are all gone from the library then what is the point in banning food and drink. If there are no books to be read then people couldn't be reading them in the library and yelling should therefore be admissable. If the books are no longer in the library then the bans on eating, drinking and yelling are therefore null and void.

If church buildings, and the laws that they represent, no longer house God, if they are no longer sacred spaces then why are we still confined by the religious bans imposed to protect the sanctity of the location, and the sanctity of the laws it advocates by its presence? If this new religion of loving relationships is so freeing then why can't I eat, drink and yell? Why can't I simply live my life? Why must guilt and shame structure my existence within the walls of the church building and its laws?

People should profane libraries more often...