tURN phOEnIx turN

This thought comes from a poem that I was almost able to write back in January which entirely defeats the statement made by the poem. It was about how in the different seasons of the year I was either able to produce coherent and insightful thoughts and communicate them to other people and in other seasons I was not. Winter and Spring are my seasons of production whereas Fall and especially Summer seem to be marked by incredible silence. I should have been able to finish that poem in January. There is something about the scorching sun and aridity which leaves my mind empty. I have been heat stroked 3 times this week, oh how I hate earning money! All this to say that I most likely won't be writing online much this summer as I will need to use this season to retreat to my ignorant cogitation, my dark brooding, my complete mental anahiliation...

Listening

I grew up listening to classical music. That isn't entirely true. I also spent a lot of time listening to my dad's Beatles, Moody Blues, jazz...to list would be boring. The point being is that I grew up listening to relatively "old" music, i.e. classical and jazz. In fact, I was often bothered by anything with a loud bass and/or drum. I really don't know why; maybe it was my supersonic hearing that was offended by the extremes of the audiowaves. I also spent a great deal of my life playing the trumpet, classical, jazz, the same as I listened to. By the time I was in senior highschool I was listening to some alternative and more contemporary music, but I was also beginning to really understand sound. I remember playing my trumpet alone, just listening to a note. Playing with another person, listening to where the two notes met. Playing with a group, hearing the interplay between the different sounds. It wasn't always good music; it wasn't always interesting; I just liked listening to the sounds; I found harmony in the music. I also began to listen intently to progressive jazz and found a music that I could float in as if it were a river of sound, dragged down stream (or up) by flying fingers on ivory. It wasn't until after highschool that I got more serious about listening to and chosing more contemporary music. I have not moved away from my live for classical (mainly romantic era) and jazz music though. I have found that the great musicians of the 20th century have all understood the past of music. They see and understand the music that has come before them and have added on their own sound which does not contradict, but rather harmonizes with the past. The progress of music in the world mirrors the progress of notes in a song.

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...

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...