Done Capitulating

So I am finally done third year. I can finally read, write and think what I want entirely. I think that our entire social structure is ordered rather insanely. Childhood should be about joy and laughter. Adolescence about exploration and learning. Teenages about coping. Young adulthood about selfknowledge and shooting the breeze. Why do we torture ourselves with so much pointless work? We will have our whole adulthood to work hard and be unhappy. Why not enjoy exploring the universe while we are still young enough to want to? I guess the introspective irishman has been right all this time. Let's go climb another mountain. I love Simon and Garfunkel! The beats will ramble on again, and the road goes ever on...

More Firebranding

The following is an article that I found on the web on how to avoid burnout. Is it just me or is this whole world insane. My favorite silly line is where it suggests to empty ones mind by reading a book, this just goes to show what kind of shlock people are reading if I book can empty a person's mind. Anyways, enjoy and hopefully be disgusted by humanities desperate attempt to avoid insanity. We will never find a way to alleviate the madness caused by our society; we must rather find an outlet from society, not imaginary, but real. I'll be in the forest if anyone needs me...

Strategy of Imagery:
Examine whether or not your burnout is a result of doing something you don’t like to do, yet you have to face. For example, if there is one aspect of your job you don’t like, but you are required to do, you could be facing burnout quite frequently. In such case, imagery could be a great solution. Picture in your mind an image that you like (i.e. a tropical destination, a loved one, etc.,) and substitute this image in place of the thing you don’t like to do. Somehow, the strategy of imagery helps to lessen the tiring weight of the thing you despise doing. In the process, your task gets done with less resistance on your part. It might even reach the point where you enjoy doing it.

Health Foods:
There is truth to the theory that eating well helps you physically and mentally. And there are certain health foods that are known to ease your mind.Most health food stores sell Ginseng, which is an energy food. You can either drink it as a tea or mixed in with your cooking for a wholesome meal. Ginseng comes in a variety of strengths. The more potent it is, the better your physical (and mental) performance will be. If you’re not very familiar with it, just ask someone at your health food store and they will help you out.

Let it Run its Course:
This may seem like a simple solution, but many people attempt to fight burnout as though it were a competition – them verses their mind. In reality, taking a timeout is the best solution. Take time out to regain your composure. A burnout can be equated to an individual who could use a timeout from the hustles of life. This is similar to a coach of a basketball team asking for a time out to come up with a winning game plan when his team is not playing at its peak. Take advantage of this timeout to meditate and relax those frenzied nerves.

Empty your Mind:
Take time out to empty your mind. Go play a round of golf or read a book. Or try something more therapeutic like writing in a journal. Start detailing your thoughts, your ideas, and your daily victories. You’ll soon wonder where the stress has gone!

Hobbies:
Adding on to the single timeout, you don’t need to wait until you achieve burnout to take a timeout. Find a new hobby that frees you from emotional drain. Go on a picnic with the family, a camping trip out in the woods, or a weekend excursion to a totally different environment. Play with your children or somebody else’s. Kids know how to bust burnout.

Relax and Indulge:
Soak in a tub or visit a spa. Listen to relaxing music, which lifts you up emotionally. You may want to choose specific sounds that can relieve you from burnout like soft, Classical melodies.If this kind of relaxation is up your ally, you might also enjoy scent therapy. Savor the fresh scent of nature, especially flowers. The sight and the fragrance that flowers bring can be great relief to a tired or irritated feeling. If you love nature, nothing is more invigorating than flowers and plants._________________stay cool

Brooding

I've got this axe to grind
I must admit it's been quite some time
that I've been running its edge
on the hard cold surface of this stone.

Whetting it, sharpening it, getting it ready to chop,
you all want me to get on with it,
but once I get going it will be impossible to stop.

Oh this blade is getting sharp
I can feel the heat from the sparks.
It's almost ready now.
The idea will come, but no one knows how,

it

will

end...

That Old Firebrand You Used to Love

I read this today...

"We are a progressive, innovative company offering activist opportunities in various Vancouver communities. We offer a flexible schedule, fantasticco-workers, rapid promotion potential, travel opportunities, and the chance towork with a group of like-minded individuals who want to make a difference. Ask us about our brand new scholarship program!No deadline: Expanding company with ongoing recruitment.

Activist Opportunities? They've corporatized the fringe. The centre cannot hold?...the damn edges canna even hold! I'm going to sleep.

Know Thyself?

I used to have an intense urge to tatoo the word paradoxos on my lower left arm. I found that all of my beliefs and perceptions could be found within the word paradox, and I still do to a great extent. However, I have come to see the folly involved in such an action. To think that any word, even a word which admits ignorance and implies a disbelief in dogmatism, should be set perminantly in stone, or skin in this case, is folly. It is folly because it does not allow for progress in different directions. What if I come to disbelieve my prevailing assumptions? What if I no longer want to identify with a set of beliefs? Of course you can always add to a tatoo and draw it out all over your body, but at some point that developing picture would have to be completed because you are only working with a finite amount of flesh.

I do not need to encode my understanding on my skin, I do not need to express myself visably, or even through language, it is a mere bagatelle as compared to the secret understanding that I could be chiseling. Chiseling into the flesh of some infinite part of me. Carving with deft ability the shapes, textures, aromas, sounds or flavours that cannot be seen, felt, smelt, heard or tasted. I must allow them to be written in a secret chamber, carved on the walls of an out of the way ruin, splashed on the shores of an empty beach and echoed through the hallways of an abandoned prison. There is nothing in the finite world that can do justice to true understanding, all there is to do, is sit and stare at the clouds.

I will not put any constraints on my development. I will be a hypocrite, I will re-neg, I will contradict myself and I will not convince anyone of anything.

A truth will be written on my intangible skin in the dead of night, when neither me nor anyone else will be able to see the words. In that dark night I will hear my secret name, but comprehend it not, I shall have attained understanding, in the cool darkness of night, consumed in flames that will burn both hot and cold, and I will lose myself amongst the ever increasingly complex mosaic of my skin, which will be drawn for eternity, as I lay on the grass and dream...

Image

Imagine-
A series of lenses - suspended - illuminated by an inner light which pervades the spaces between. Holding it, held by it, crafted by it, poured through it. Each of us, each autonomous cross-section of infinite, we are those lenses, reflecting and seeing eternity in a different way. We are but a layer in the strand of the infinite black star of infinity. -this is dialectics- We are the smallest part of the infinite because we are no longer a unified whole. We physical beasts are the only incomplete part of creation. We are imperfect. When the perfect and the imperfect connect there is life, there is existence. We are the cause and it is the cause. WE do not exist apart from one another. Our shattered fragment is the flint to the tinder of perfection. When we strike against one another there is life, there is existence. I AM is caused by this striking. We are all connected and this infinity is but a lens on the infinite spiral of a more infinite infinity.

Our Spare Time

Of Snowmen and Ice Sculptures

There are two methods of writing. One is to begin with nothing and add words until an idea has been expressed. The other is to take all that could be said and whittle away all but one idea that you want to express. One is like a snowman the other is like an ice sculpture. One is prose, the other is poetry. I don't know which method I employ in my writing. Is a combination possible? More to the point, when the sun comes out isn't all of it going to melt anyways? Can a metaphor reverse itself on the writer and destroy him; does it gain power and get out of hand? What are these hands that we talk about while writing? It is as if ideas reside in the palms of our hands. Is this why fortune-tellers look at palms in order to tell the future? Is there much difference then between a rational analytic philosopher and a mystical fortune-teller? I think not.

And we see what has happened here. I allowed my idea to progress. I did not begin with anything, but came out with a conclusion. This means that my writing is prose. On the other hand though, perhaps I did start with everything and through my process of asking seemingly unrelated questions I did carve away and come up with a conclusion, an ice sculpture. And here again I find myself talking about hands. This is certainly something I am going to ponder some more. You decide what this post is about...

Finger on the Button

Anarchists don't want chaos-
They want control.

No insane explosions-
They want a focused blast.

Huge, poignant and destructive-
but harnessed nontheless.

They are all fucking megalomaniacs-
They don't want freedom-
They want to put their finger on the button.

To light the fuse is truly and honour-
- the greatest kick possible.

I still havn't figured out how to use FUCk deliciously...

Symptomatic

I read a quote from an Irish author; I forget who it was. He said, "I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, but a drinker with a writing problem." It occurred to me that this sardonic admission of substance abuse could very well be said for most writers if not most artists in general. I will reserve my comments for writers. It seems that those who feel the need to write are a tortured lot. We are seeking to forget some horrendous wound, or perhaps just existence, we are trying to forget, so we leave our memories on paper. We leave them there so that we don't have to carry them around anymore. We leave them so that we can move on.

But what about those things that we cannot pen? Those wounds that will not go away. Those truths that we are too terrified to utter, even to ourselves, even in the solitude of our minds. To even think these things, to allow these maddening thoughts loose even within our own skulls would leave us with nothing but ashes. So we try to leave those memories in different places. We try to leave them in other people, we give them so many words, so many false words that merely skirt around the real issue. words words words. We scream them into pillows or underwater where the sounds is muffled. We try to leave them in paintings, but even the thinnest water colour obscures the true meaning. We try to play them out of instruments, but they are altered by the bending of notes. We try to leave them in jokes, ironic twists of the truth which show more than even we are aware of. We finally turn to substances. We try to leave our scars in them. We try to escape everything, ourselves, others, past, present, future...

This is why most writers are the type who can sardonically say that they are drinkers with writing problems. The drinking isn't the problem, it is only a sympotom of being someone who is compelled to write, who needs to forget, but is incapable of doing so, someone whose very being is torture, whose very life is painful.

I wish that these words were what I wanted to say, but they cannot be, they are a lie, a facade of what is really going on...