Saturday, July 31, 2010

Eccentricities

They refuse to see the world through the rose colored glasses of the masses nor through the cynical spectacles of the disenchanted. Rather they watch reality unfold as if on a psychedelic journey - finding deeper, more profound dimensions than most people imagine possible, finding inspiration in the ordinary. They exist on the fringes of society, never quite fitting in to the social mainstream of everyday life, usually preferring it that way. Astonishingly simple in their miraculousness and surprisingly intricate in their simplicities they inspire us and we, in turn, inspire them. Some call them strange, some call them crazy, some say they are fucked up, others say they are eccentric, most find them confusing, I find them beautiful.

They are artists in the purest sense of the word, masters of the amazing they are capable of drinking deeply from the wellspring of the void. The works they create speak to the depths of my soul, calling to that part of me that each of us share, the unconscious mind that is, in a word, human. The mediums through which they touch my life vary, from poetry to paintings, from music to movies, yet the manner in which their magic has shaped me is penetratingly universal. To my mind they are more enlightened, their souls have swam in the abyss and have discovered a higher state of being. Through the power of their vision they pull me through the looking glass, carrying me along on the wave of their eccentricity...

The words swim before me as the language fades, replaced by an immense dreamscape. I am carried along by the river as my mind wanders across mountains and meadows, through forests and plains. The landscape curves about me and the fathomless beauty of the poet's imagination consumes me entirely.

As I study the oil soaked canvas my thoughts sprout wings and take flight, lifting from my mind and soaring from this world. The power of those thoughts and emotions pull away the curtains of ignorance from my sight and lay bear to me the majesty and mystery of existence. Though the span of a thousand years separates us I am taken by the hand to unknown places, innumerable worlds, lifetimes unimagined.

Standing in a crowd the vibrations and tone fill my body, shaking the mortar that holds my soul in place, filling me so completely that there is no room left for my conscious self. I lift away on a crescendo, my body and the crowd are left behind as I drift along the current of sound. Impressions are lost within me and I lose myself inside of them. A journey spanning the heavens, I am the same yet fundamentally I am changed.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Seeds to Sprout

Go sing too loud.
Make your voice break, sing it out.
Go scream, do shout,
Make an earthquake...

You wish fire would die and turn colder.
You wish young eyes could see you grow older.

Go drum too proud.
Make your hands ache, play it out.
Go march through crowds
Make your day break...

You wish silence released noisy drummers.
You wish white noise surrendered to summers.

Just let yourself fall into landslide.
Just let yourself give into flood tide.

Tie strings to clouds.
Make your own lake, let it flow
Throw seeds to sprout.
Make your own break, let them grow.

You wish surprise would never stop wonders.
You wish sunrise would never fall under.
We should always know that we can do anything...


Harmony Of Dissonance

I sleep the sleep of ignorance, the sleep of the dead. Dreaming that my life is orderly and neat, controlled and fulfilled. Yet at times there are glimpses, moments of wakefulness in which I am exposed to the terrible, beautiful interwoven reality of our existence. I see the rest of the world slumbering along, blissfully unaware of the harsh truth that surrounds humanity at all times. I can see clearly the lies that I tell myself, the walls that I build around my heart, the blinders I hold over my eyes. I am alone and the solitude leaves me hollow, but I recognize that this loneliness is preferable to the numb illusion of the dream. Deep inside I can feel it calling to me, the dreamscape of self deception, dragging me back to the comfortable death from which I awoke.

I see now that the walls that once filled me with comfort were, in reality, smothering the breath from my body. Exposed before me lies the unfathomable bedlam that was masked by my orderly world of illusion and the beauty of its intricate chaos steals the strength from my soul. It is tempting, the sirens call of the abyss. To return to a world of black and white, of good and of evil seems preferable. The human mind has been adapted to organize and compartmentalize, and so I find myself drawn back by the sterile order of an existence in which reality can be cut and classified, boxed and labeled. But I cannot. A bell once tolled cannot be unrung, so I too cannot lay my head down and resume my slumber. She that once rested here is gone, I am changed and the exhilaration of this recognition terrifies me.

See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
Inviolable.
~ Ezra Pound


Tuesday, July 27, 2010

F@#k

My favorite word in the entire English language is... Fuck. I argue that it is not only the most enjoyable but the most important, versatile, and magical word as well. It can describe pain, pleasure, hate and love.

In language it falls into many grammatical categories.
It can be used as a verb, both transitive: "Drew fucked Heather."
and intransitive: "Heather was fucked by Drew."
And as a noun: "Heather is a fine fuck."
It can also be used as an objective: "Heather is fucking beautiful."

As you can see, there are not many words with the diversity of fuck. Besides the sexual meaning there are also the following uses.

Ignorance: "Fuck if I know."
Trouble: "I guess I'm fucked now."
Fraud: "I got fucked at the used car lot."
Aggression: "Fuck you!"
Displeasure: "What the fuck is going on here?"
Difficulty: "I can't understand this fucking job."
Incompetence: "He's a fucknut."
Suspicion: "What the fuck are you doing?"
Enjoyment: "I had a fucking good time."
Request: "Get the fuck out of here."
Hostility: "I'm going to knock your fucking head off."
Greeting: "How the fuck are you?"
Empathy: "Who gives a fuck?"
Innovation: "Get a bigger fucking hammer."
Surprise: "Fuck, you scared the shit out of me."
Anxiety: "Today is really fucked."
Love: "I fucking love you!"
Affection: "I'm going to snuggle the fuck out of you!"
Exasperation: "Fuck that shit!"

This is why if I had to choose one word to use exclusively from now on it would be fuck. Have a fucking great day!

Monday, July 26, 2010

Awakening

The present moment is all there is, the past and the future are just thoughts in the mind. Being in this moment, the present moment, all pain and discomfort cease. There are no distractions, no confusion and no trauma. There is no feeling of separation between the self and everything else. Within this moment there is tremendous potential, every second carries with it a glimpse of reality.

Ask yourself this...Who is it that's aware that I'm thinking? In this question lies freedom from the self and from suffering. The question is the answer. You are bigger than yourself, you are more than your body, you are everything and everyone. You are no longer a fragment of the universe, you are the universe, even if but for a moment.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Home

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. ~ Carl Sagan


I Am With You

When the rain begins to fall and the rainbows paint the sky, I will dance with you. When the winter creeps, I'll stand beside you and watch as the snowflakes fall like poetry upon the boughs. When the rays of summer's sun kiss our skin, I will hold your hand and lie with you in the grass making pictures in the clouds. And when the night falls upon us, I will dream with you.

When we are apart, just look around, you will always be able to find me in small and beautiful things: the leaves of fall as sunlight passes through, footprints in the snow, the song of windchimes, springtime flowers, April rains and the stars at night. You will find me in those places and in your memory, and above all, in every song that brings peace to your heart.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Scales

Reality exists on all scales at all times, from the subatomic levels to the galactic, even universal levels. Likewise we exist on all scales at all times, we are pieces of the cohesive whole that is existence, it is only our ignorance and a dependence on our finite senses that keep us shrouded behind a veil of illusion. This shroud over our minds is more ephemeral than smoke but can be absolutely opaque, keeping us ignorant of the true nature of our existence.

In much the same way that the philosophy of cyclic existence can be seen as a metaphor for the various states of mind that humans live their lives in, this multitude of scales ranging from the cosmic to the quantum can help us to understand the multileveled nature of consciousness. Just as I can focus my attention on the very real conception of my body as a collection of cells, molecules, or even atoms or my existence within the bigger picture of our earth, solar system or galaxy - all exiting simultaneously, so too can I direct my mind to varying levels of consciousness from being hyper-focused internally on my body or upon my surroundings, to daydreaming about the future and calling up memories of the past, from the foggy semi-attention that we spend the majority of our lives living in to the deepest meditative levels at which we become aware of the interconnectedness of all things.

Meditation is not a process that connects us to certain object like two cords being plugged into one another, we are always connected to things, to everything, at all times. Meditation merely allows us to access the levels of consciousness necessary to recognize this scale, the truest plane of existence. Like virtually anything we do in life, this process can becomes easier to complete through patient practice of meditation. This enlightenment through practice can be seen as another analogy, this one of the gradual enlightenment we each work to attain as we move across time, from one life to the next. Perhaps this is why humankind is living in an unprecedented state of enlightenment, technology, and social liberalism, we are carried forward as each new generation is born, slightly more enlightened than the one before.