Closets and Caves

So there I was, minding my own business, reading my political blogs and not expecting anything particularly interesting because Bhutto's assassination has used up all the news oxygen, when I read this:

A Rudy Giuliani campaign booster is standing by his comments that the U.S. needs to defeat "the Muslims" - or "chase them back to their caves."

And this:

John Deady, co-chair of the New Hampshire Veterans for Rudy group, told The Guardian of London, "We need to...keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or in other words get rid of them."

Asked if he was referring to all Muslims, Deady said he was.

"I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims," he told the TPM Election Central Web site.

"When I say get rid of them, I wasn't necessarily referring to genocide," he said.

In the last thirty years, there have been a lot of closets left empty, because the country has become liberal and open-minded enough that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people could find acceptance and be (largely) left alone.

Can we maybe fill those closets with these fucking conservative republican bigoted pinheads, and nail the closets shut? I thought we were well past the era when it was acceptable for people to spew vile shit like that in public. I couldnt care less if they want to sit in their darkened cross-filled abodes and rant and rave like rabid dogs, (freedom of speech and all) but when this stuff is spewed forth in a political campaign, the response should be derision, laughter, and rejection. I am not talking about laws here, I am talking about what OUR response should be. The LISTENERS.

Our 200+ year long national conversation about freedom of speech has almost always focussed on the speaker and her/his rights. The listeners to speech have no rights except the right to not listen, to change the channel, turn down the volume or walk away. But don't the listeners have an obligation? Especially if those listeners are journalists, there is an obligation (in my opinion) to point out the vileness, repeat it, satirize it, shout it from the fucking rooftops, "Did you hear what this guy said?"

For years the press has refused to call Bush a liar, even when it was obvious and incontrovertible that he was, in fact, lying. Now Rudy, who wants to run the whole country the way he ran New York -=twitch, shudder=- has hired a guy who wants to "get rid of" the Muslims, and is anybody shouting about it? Anybody but me and a few DFH bloggers? Not that I can see. And as of this morning, this dangerous microcephalic moron STILL WORKS for Rudy.

I am a bit of an amateur historian, concentrating on the consequences of the fall of the roman empire. How does this relate to anything? After Rome collapsed, the Catholic Church basically burned every bit advanced scientific knowledge they had gathered, plunging most of the west into what we now call the Dark Ages. But they couldn't get everything, because Spain was ruled by - you guessed it - the Muslims. If it were not for those Muslims and their innate love of knowledge and reason, we would not have the works of the ancient Greeks. You know, unimportant shit like Logic, Reason, Coherent argument, Medicine, Astronomy. Aristotle, Plato, et al. The folks who pretty much invented western thought. When the Muslims conquered someplace, they didn't BURN books, (like we ignorant, unwashed and illiterate white Europeans did) they COPIED them. Translated them. Distributed them. Taught from them. Saved them.

Islam today is not what it once was, and a small (but very very loud) minority of Muslims have abandoned reason, logic and science for fanaticism and self-immolation. Much like Europe did under Catholic domination.

We don't need to fight Islam, we need to fight stupidity, ignorance and generalized race-hatred. Stuff them in the closets and see how THEY fucking like it.

If I had the time, I suppose I could have found a better way of saying this, but I am too angry, too upset, and too scared to really pay attention to literary merit. The idea that one of the Rethuglican candidates might win the next election (and the more chaotic the world gets, the more likely that is) leaves me with a fervent desire to move to Greenland.

Family Holidays

They sit together,
mother, father, son and daughter
enjoying each-other's company
a bond of love
apparant and tangible.
They like each-other,
as well as loving.

It is a thing I have no memory of,
and do not understand.
but I know that once I did,
because seeing it in others
clenches my teeth to breaking,
and lights me with hate and anger
that I can barely stand.

What I remember is an absent father.
And a mother and daughter
eager to find any excuse to banish me to my room
so that they would not need to deal with me
while they sat together
mother and daughter,
enjoying each-others company
while I cried, alone and confused.

At Christmas, they made an effort,
and usually let me stay for an hour or so
but it was forced, uncomfortable,
and when she had had enough,
my mother would create the opportunity
to send me away
crying.

And hating.
A fury so strong and loud within me
that it bursts forward and engulfs me
if I am not very careful.
It sits inside me,
scheming, planning revenge
on people I don't even know anymore.

And now I am the father
and I am not absent.
and I like my wife, and I like my son,
and of course, I love them both
and there are no people I would rather spend my time with.
I have broken the line of anger and hate
I will not pass it to my child,
as I believe it was passed to me
as it was passed to my mother from hers.

Later there were beatings, whippings.
humiliations unending, isolation and total control,
and all of that is forgiven, all is past.

In a strange way, this means I must keep it.
I refuse justify the harm done to me
by passing it on to my child
and forgiving my mother by it's inevitability.

Even if it kills me, it is mine
and I will never pass it to anyboy else.

But I know that once, we were happy together.
I don't remember it, I was too young,
but I know it was there
because it's ending maimed me
apparantly for life.

I cannot celebrate holidays,
no matter how hard I try
because the hate and rage are too close to the surface,
too near to my mind, my tongue and my temper,
too raw, too real
because it was just yesterday,
even tho I can't remember it.
The hate and rage have never forgotten it.

Patriotism, and two movie reviews

This is hard for a good bleeding heart liberal to say, but I am a patriot. Not a pinhead-patriot like the jingoist flag-waving conservative christian dipshits that have rallied around America's Stupidest President, but a Patriot more along the lines of Earl Warren (Chief Justice of the supreme court in the 60's and before) who understood that his DUTY as a powerful American was not to lie subservient to the past, but to see the shortcomings of our country and try to address them.

We are not perfect. We engaged in genocide against the natives, war crimes against the Vietnamese and the Iraqis (and probably the germans (dresden) and the japanese (too many to name, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki cover it) and mass oppression against the Africans, Chinese and others that we brought here to build our country, willingly or otherwise.

How can a patriot say such things? Because they are true, and to refuse to say them is, well, intentional idiocy. MY Patriotism is not mutually exclusive with honesty.

What am I a patriot about? The rule of law, political, religious and expressive freedom, and a free press. We have none of these things, but we are closer to them than any other country. But we ceaselessly try to be as close to those ideals as we can.

I saw two movies recently that really exemplify what I mean when I say Patriotism. they are:
"Swades", and "Chak De India". Obviously, they are not American movies.

"Swades" (rooughly translated as "homeland") is the story of an American resident Indian engineer who works for Nasa. He retuns home to bring the woman who raised him (nanny, foster-mother) to the U.S. so that she can have a comfortable old age. In the course of his travels, he falls in love with India, and the small villiage in which she lives, and, of course, a woman. This film is about the beauty and majesty of India, but it is also relentlessy critical of Indian culture, especially the caste system. Mohan (the engineer) confronts the villiage elders with their own hypocracy in several well-written and superbly acted dialogues and monologues. I will not go further into detail because I hope I can convince somebody to watch the thing.

Also in Swades is a musical scene (this is a Bolleywood movie, there is ALWAYS a musical scene) that is very descriptive of the Animist philosophy, and is very beautiful.

Shah Rukh Khan stars, and I can give no higher praise than this: he emotes so well that I ocassionally let the subtitles flow by just to watch the performance, not really caring about the words. 'course, I downloaded the movie, so I can watch it several times. My son CrowBear asks for me to play the songs repeatedly.

The second movie, also starring Shah Ruhk Khan, is "Chak De India" ("Come On India") and is a -- wait for it-- Women's Field Hockey movie. It is a fairly standard sports flick, with training montages and motivational songs (really good ones. Bolleywood kicks everybodies ass at musical scores). This is a lighter, less meaningful movie than Swades, but it is great fun, where Swades is sometimes brooding. It has a men-versus-women riot in a MacDonalds that is quite enjoyable, and a lot of the Field Hockey action is well planned and VERY well filmed. This movie is also very critical of Indian mores and culture, in the way women are treated, and in the way India is fragmented into many different and frequently fractious states. The girls (I was never able to really tell how old these women were, and the film itself refers to them as both girls and women) are presented as strong, independent and intelligent, and some are presented as noble, some as manipulative, some as jealous, some as megalomaniacal, but all of them real characters.
Khan is generous with screen time, surprising in a bolleywood megastar.

Both of these films are works (in 'swades' case, masterworks) of patriotism in the sense that I use it: these films are, in the course of loving India, trying to fix it.

I wish these were American films, because they express a sentiment I find very lacking in our cinema.

I have had a long obsession with Bolleywood films, but these are the first two I am not embarassed to like.

So I'm Evil. Whoop-de-fucking-do

I got expelled from another pagan forum.

Seems they don't much want to defend beliefs that are different from theirs, and animism is too anarchic.

The issue at hand: a small piece of verbiage spewed out of the vile, drug-addicted, incredibly brilliant mystical comedian named Aelister Crowley. You wont hear him described this way by anybody else who knows about him, I am distinctly alone in my belief that he acted as a comedian all his mystical life (mystical slapstick combined with literary brilliance, acerbic wit and an ability to produce bullshit on demand and in quantity that dwarfs anybody in history with the posible exception of L. Ron Hubbard. I refer anybody with questions to The Book Of Thoth, the most incomprehensible mystical guidebook ever written)

The verbiage: "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of the Law, love is the law, love under will"

Many Wiccans and many other pagans have adopted a creed which truncates Crowley's statement and ads a perfectly rediculous caveat "An it harm none, do what thou wilt" and in the course of modifying it, made it into vacuous bullshit.

"An it harm none?" So, like, you can't hurt anybody. Hurting people is against the rules. Right? So people who adhere to this credo are pacifists, that would, under no circumstances, harm another? Well, no, not really. The VAST majority of the pagan community who pay homage to the drivel will tell you that harming is fine in self-defense and in due defense of another. So "An it harm none" is conditional. And kinda vague. Can I harm animals? Is that against the rules? Simply to ask the question is offensive to some. "NO!" they say, usually in leather shoes. Some talk about how it is ok to kill animals to survive, in a hunter-prey sense, and some of the animist traditions revere this (Not mine, I am an anti-hunting wuss)

With so many exceptions, I cannot swear by the damn thing, and that seems to mean much to some people, who seem to be as willing to make their own exceptions as often as they like. There is just this overwhelming fear in some circles (the more dangerous ones, the more fringe ones where I hang out and chat about mysticism and hallucinogens, ritual sex in mysticism) that unless this one principle is genuflected at, the fringe will lose the suppo0rt of the orthdox wierdos (my special term for the people who follow paganism in a much more subdued, conformist way than does the fringe)

I can't say that harming another is against my rules if it isn't. If there is a judgement call to be made, it is subjective, and thus not really subject to oaths like that. If the oath allows the oathtaker to bend the rules, IT ISN'T A VALID OATH, as nothing is actually being promised.

I am almost always then offered an out by whatever group is desiring this autodafe, "But this is a technical objection, right? You don't object to the principle"

Yes, I do. I object to you telling me what to do, and I object to bastardizing one of the most significant (in my opinion) moral statement about people who choose a path of their own design, people he called Magickians (looks aweful, no? He was attempting a designation that would differentiate between stage magic and what he was attempting to do) in order to do it.

Crowley's words are brilliant in choice and composition, and they are ion a kind of code that he used. I do not have the time here to go into the specifics, but this is MY take on the Law of Thelema:

" 'Do what thou wilt' shall be the whole of the law" -Crowley
This is his fundamental state of being. If you choose to walk a path of your own design, YOU ARE COMPLETELY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO. You can't claim society made you do it, you can't blame it on a god you probably don't believe in, nor can you blame it on your upbringing (all of which said NOT to tread your own path), all you can say if things don't work out right is "oops, my bad" and deal with the consequences. It is the ultimate statement of libertarianism, in large part because it is a philosophy that is completely devoid of inherent good and evil, and the lies of other men, it is a simple statement about the practitioner and nothing more. I imagine asking Crowley if I 'should' do something. the questions would, I imagine, go a bit like this:

AC - Do you wanna?
Lizard- well, yeah
AC - will you sleep well after you do this?
Lizard - Sure
AC - Go for it.

But AC would have had the same conversation with somebody talking about involuntarily sodomizing (raping) a student of theirs during a magical ritual. He was only talking to me about trying to get laid doing Tarot readings.

The idea that a philosophy could embrace such darkness with equal ease as my more mundane moral question disgusts some. But AC wasnt talking about wether something was right or wrong, he was making a statement: "The Choice Is Yours", and stands behind the philosophy whatever that choice is.

I am not a fan of interpersonal violence, I am much better with words than I am with my jump-spinning round kick. But it is my choice, and will always be, and I am comfortable with Crowley's statement as a statement of how the world works. It says nothing about morals, nor does it try, and the spin put on those words by the pagan community in general and wiccans in particular is offensive and ill-considered.

When I say these things, I get expelled, or asked ot be less aggressive in discussions, or told that discussions like this are really outside the yadda-yadda-yadda. And some tell me I am evil, dark, sick or insane. Which I kinda like.

Fuck 'em.

Animism

For me, animism is largely a deeply emotional response to the natural.

It is the feeling of a cool breeze, and feeling in it's touch on the skin the caress of a caring, loving, powerful goodness.

It is the feeling of the sun touching me gently with the warmth that gives the world life, and feeling touched with meaning, unfathomable and delicately beautiful

It is the warm feeling of my cat snuggled against me, taking my pain away, and a wonder that surpasses expression that the world would be made, at random, to allow such a thing.

It is the feeling of these things, and of that more that i can never quite say. As feelings. Not science, not belief, just input. It is how the world feels to me.

I don't, and never have, interpreted the world through these feelings, and so they have never really translated as a formal religion that would be easily recognizable as such. But I feel these things as certainly as I feel gravity.

It is the dichotomy that keeps me as sane as I am, which might not be saying much, but I cultivate this dichotomy, and NEVER try to resolve it. There should be a word for a dichotomy that is a coveted thing, but I havent seen one.

How do YOU think?

I think in words, and with a few exceptions, I always have. Thoughts come to me in complete sentences, usually grammatically correct. Interestingly, I don't think in letters, or in the sound of the words subvocalized. I think in meanings, but those meanings are always in a grammatical or descriptive structure.

I think that because of this, I find it extremely difficult to visualize static images. All of my thoughts move. The view is always different at the end of the thought than it was at the first.

Bastet thinks in pictures. Haven't asked if they move or not. Honey? Keeping up with my blog? DO the pictures you think in always move?

I learn best by listening to the spoken word explaining something. I learned to be a DM by listening to Forstchen or CrimeBoss run games.

I can remember most important conversations I have had verbatim. I am sure Bastet and Yhazmina would both fervently disagree (and both have, loudly and mock-violently. ) I can also remember the repetitions of "I didn't SAY that!". I think most people remember what they MEANT, not what they said. And because most people don't think in words, they often do not realize that the two are not identical. I am not saying, by the way, that my recollection is always right.

So, I know people who think in words and in pictures. I am quite sure my dog thinks in odors. Anybody think in sounds? Is that even possible?

Do people born blind think in terms of a spatial perception that I can't imagine because I can see? Or is it sort of like my thinking in words but not in sounds, they think in shape and structure but not in pictures?

Thinking about thinking, preparing for my yearly solstice trip.

Under the effect of psychedelics, I experience the effects as a conversation with dark, foggy pictures accompanying. I hear the sounds, and feel the emotions, all expressed to my mind in words, paragraphs and connecting plot-lines or developments. Wierd, huh?

What the hell am I?

My friend Grindelwald asks a question in the prior post that I will answer (or attempt to) here. To repeat the question:

Okay, Lizard, I don't get you. Clearly you are not anti religious, because more than half of your posts are about religion, in a sense. Obviously Christianity has annoyed you, so it is a good guess that you aren't one.

So, what are you?

I know you wargame, I know you do drugs, I know you can play Russian WW2 combat strategy better than anybody I have ever met(digitally), and I know you know a lot about the bible and the occult. What does all that add up to?

There is no formal name for what i believe. I have tried several times over the past few years, and have come up with: Rational Animism, Animism, Anarchist Animism, Gnostic Animism, Gnostic Shamanism, Tribal Mysticism, Mystic Animism, Chaos Animism, Chaotic Gnosticism, Rational Mysticism.

(The reason for the chaos theme is that I have a working theory that attributes much of what I consider my mysticism is to a chaos-theory interpretation of the sufficient complexity that gives rise to intelligence. I am fairly convinced that sentient identity some sort of emergent phenominon of the neural net, and by wierd permutations in chaos mathematics, we share things in common that can be changed, with the results also in common. It is kinda complicated)

I like Rational Mysticism most, but most people who groove on rationality consider it an oxymoron (I obviously disagree), and most people who are into mysticism misunderstand it's usage.

I think there is enough evidence of mind-to-mind communication that it cannot be ruled out, and must be considered and studied.

I believe that science does not understand intelligence at all well. I think that there is considerably more going on in the universe than science can yet see. I believe that if we survive long enough as a species, science will see most of what is, but never all.

I read Tarot cards. I started it to try to get laid, and I kept it up because it worked, (for doing readings, not getting laid, altho it is how I met my wife) much to my shock and surprise. I do not use the cards to tell the future, I use them to explore different vantage points on the question, using the symbolism of the cards, and project several possible ways of handling said question.

Because it worked, and because I am a rationalist, I refuse to believe that it has anything to do with the 78 pieced of cardboard, and had to have something to do with my perception of the question when exposed to the symbols. I am sure some would argue that it didn't work, that it simply seemed that way. That depends on what you think "worked" means. Since I was not 'reading the future', I told nobody what would happen. But suddenly, because I had these cards in front of me, I could see their question clearly, and suggest things they, almost ALL of them, found useful.

I also felt something happen, as soon as I started to really examine what I was doing (It is very hard to overstate how shaken I was at the results I was getting) and I started noticing differences. My breath came slower and deeper, my eyes never quite focused sharply, my heartbeat slowed and I lost track of time.

The act of performing a tarot reading was putting me into an altered state of consciousness.

I have digressed, in a desire for clarity, but to answer the question: I am a mystic, because I use altered states of consciousness to investigate both the world within me and outside me. I am rational because I acknowledge that i can't prove any of it, and therefor, it may not be true or real in any objective sense. I am sure that I am exploring myself. When I think I am exploring or effecting the space outside my head, I might be completely and totally wrong, and deluding myself at every point.

Why explore if it might all be delusion?
Because it is truly an unknown, and I want to find out.
And it can be fun.

I will go into why Animist is appropriate in another post.

Good enough, Grin?

I FUCKING hate christmas

Let me be very clear: I hate Christmas. I hate everything about it. I hate Santa, I DESPISE the Little Baby Jesus, I can't stand either giving or receiving gifts, I hate the music, I hate the sentiment and I hate the day.

Santa is nothing more than a shill for the moneysucking merchant pinheads pushing bullshit toys and a spirit of unmitigated greed.

Santa is a lie, generally the first significant lie we tell our children. "Oh, it is such an innocent lie" they say. "Oh, it does no harm! The kids LOVE it" Yeah, bullshit on both counts. Let's teach the kids that in order to instill the happy-happy-joy-joy ethos of peace-on-earth-goodwill-to-men, we have to invent an obese asshole with terrible taste in clothes. Yeah! Let's teach our kids that in order to teach them generosity, we have to first lie to them, then we have to accompany it with greed.

"Oh, but Christmas is about the message of Jesus" they tell me. Yeah, lets teach our kids that ending your career executed by the powers that be and failing in your mission is a good thing. Lets tell them that a quisling, a cringing, whining, other-cheek-turning passive dipshit is actually GOD. Lets tell them that if you get invaded, oppressed and nearly genocided out of existence, you should pay your fucking taxes to your fucking oppressor, because Rendering Unto Ceaser is a good thing, even if Ceaser is offing your people like they were ants at a picnic.

Lets keep telling our kids that if Grandma gives them a pair of mittens 9 sizes too small, they have to smile, and LIE, and thank her with sentiments they almost certainly do not feel. Let's perpetuate the culture of lies that communal crap-giving furthers. Lets insist we buy gifts for people we can't stand, because it's Christmas.

I do not give gifts for christmas, nor do I want to receive any.

Fuck Christmas.

Finally, some GOOD news

My back, which has been causing massive amounts of pain for 15 years now STARTS the day almost painless. As I stress it, it gets achey, and I still can't do much, but this weekend I did housework at a consistent (tho slow) pace. That might not sound like much, but it is better than I have done for ages. It has been feeling so painless lately that I have finally canceled my one remaining narcotic scrip. I havent been taking them anyway, but the scrip was always there is a way of getting through the pain, thinking if it gets too bad, I can always fill that scrip.

Thinking about going back to karate soon, and fully participating. That might be a bit soon and a bit overambitious, but I am still just thinking about it.

Bitch Bitch Bitch (political post)

It isn't a word I use a lot, except when my hand is firmly intertwined in Bastet's.... well, never mind that. I don't use it as a descriptive term, nor do I use it as an insult unles it is appropriate, and then, almost universally to describe a male behaving in a petulant, jeuvanile manner. (ex. "Stop being a little bitch about it"!)

When used as an insulting comment about a woman, it usually means one thing: Agressive Woman Who Won't Change Her Mind When She's Told. In that I absolutely love intelligent aggressive women who are not intimidated by me, I hardly consider that a slur.

I know women who bear the title proudly, who court the word and use it as a badge of pride.

If Hillary Clinton wants to get elected president of the united states, she CANNOT run from that word, or that concept, she has to OWN it. She has to smile to herself, and to everybody else, be proud every time an insecure male idiot refers to it, or a jealous woman spits it at her.

Because she is a bitch, by the definition I am using, and I think it is a pretty accurate one, close to what people really mean when they use it.

Hillary DOESN'T know her place, and she shouldnt. She is, at the moment, engaged in the process of MAKING her place. And she had better own the word that best describes her.

Where, oh where, has my week gone?

Sooooooo, it turns out that I am missing 7 days from my life, five in one chunk, and two in another. Here is what happened:

I went to the E/R and got medication that lowered my blood pressure. And I don't remember the next 5 days. I only understood this last night, when I took my family out to dinner and we talked. Turns out I was a complete (tho nonviolent) asshole. "Grumpy" is the word my very pleasant and nonjudgemental wife used, which, coming from her, is a very severe statement.

I realized this was happening almost immediately (from my perspective, anyway) and wanted to go off the med the next day, but since I was scared to death of ... well... death, I kept taking it. From my perspective, I kept taking it for two days, but from the perspective of everybody else, it took me 7 days. I then called the Doc and asked if it was dangerous to stop taking the med suddenly, and they said I needed to keep taking it and the "side effects" would eventually subside. Now, judging from the number of pills that are left, I stopped taking the med about two days before I 'woke up'. After talking with the doctor, I took another dose, and lost the next two days.

While I was out, I drove, talked with people (including my oldest and dearest friend, on the phone, for a few HOURS) and nobody but my wife noticed that anything was wrong.

I have stopped taking that med. This condition is terrifying and very hard to deal with.

Under normal circumstances I am a VERY controlled person. It does not always seem that way because I am vehement and loud, but it is true. Even in the height of anger or depression, I always know what I am doing. To spend LARGE chunks of life out of control is horrifying, like living in a nightmare.

Headlines I'd like to see

Dick Cheney sodomized with a rusty wire whisk by angry waterboarded ex-detainees

Micheal Mukasey reveals garden-gnome ancestry 'no, I didn't do it on purpose!' mother retorts, 'I was just plantin' potatos and 'ee snuck up on me. And he didn't have a condom'

Secret Origin of Humanity revealed! Aliens return to earth to harvest republican conservative brains. Xenospokesman Louboo Smarmeling tells us that "It is a culinary miracle! When we first terraformed your puny little planet, we were thinking 'apetizer', but when we came back to see if you were ready yet, we were surprised! You humans, especially you conservative republicans, have the best tasting brains of any known world, and we have sampled many"

I promise, this is the last time I will moan whine and complain

and if you believe that, I have a really cool commercial property for sale, runs from new jersey to new york.....

Since a few weeks ago, I have gone from elated to miserable, from very very sick, to amazingly healthy, from very encouraged about my future, to checking out prices at crematoriums. Life is giving me some choices (which is rare in and of itself) and some of those choices aren't all that bad, given certain assumptions.

The Numbers:
Best case: I can live a normal life, die of old age. 2% probability, and 'old age' is defined as 70.
Worst case: My brain explodes before I am finished writing this. .003% probability. (Okay, I made that one up. :-)

If I do Nothing: in three years, I have an 89% chance of still being alive
In 5 years I have a 70% chance of being alive, but with a 30% chance of suffering a debilitating stroke.
in 11 years, when my son turns 18, there is only a 22% chance that I will be a normal, functioning 55-year-old man. There is a foggy probability melange that mixes death, severe disability and systemic organ failure that is so dismal it doesn't bear repeating here, not if I actually want to function for the rest of this day. Let me put it another way: 20 years of uncontrolled stage 3 hypertension is pretty much a death sentence. Melodramatic? yes, it is. but the numbers don't lie, and they lay out a neat probability line for how my health future looks.

I realize I am obsessed with this, probably obsessed with it beyond all proportion. It is almost impossible to work out proportionality when, on one side of the ledger is EVERYTHING and on the other side is.... well..... everything.

This is mortality, closing in. I have expected it for years, but I am now FEELING the crush of it. My nemesis has a new name (hypertension) which replaces my former nemesis (asthma), which was far more annoying, but a tad less deadly. Of course, the asthma isn't gone, it's just getting it's clock ceaned by the sheer brutality of death from uncontrolled hypertension. Blindness, diabetes, heart and kidney failure. Slowly.

The doctors I have spoken to are split evenly (2 against 2) that my hypertension is a lifestyle problem, or an endocrine problem.

I hope the two on the lifestyle side of the argument are wrong, but I suspect they are not. I am beginning to believe I need to fundamentally change who I am to beat this.

And fundamental personal change is a mystical thing.

Historically, I adapt quickly and well, but this bump in the road is rather large. We will see. Less optimism than in my last posts, but the despair I felt after my last e/r visit (which I have not yet written about, the despair was THAT bad) is receeding.

My Wierd Eye Appointment

Since I am now well into my 40's and am starting to hold books a bit further away from my head to read, I went to have an eye appointment.

The Doc's assistant thought I looked unwell, and insisted on taking my blood pressure. It was 255 over 150. Then she LITERALLY left the room at a dead run. Less than six seconds later, the eye doctor came in and told me to go to the E/R, where I spent the rest of the morning getting stuck with 9 needles (6 to get the IV, 3 for shots before they could get the IV in. It took 2 hours. I went through three electronic blood pressure machines in the E/R. None of them were calibrated to read a BP that high. They went through two nurses to get one with the hand strength to pump up the manual cuff)

Oddly enough, one of the drugs they pumped me with ACTUALLY WORKED. When I left my BP was 110 / 63. It is the 43rd different blood pressure med I have tried.

I was told in the E/R about a year ago that if I could not control my blood pressure, I would have a stroke within 5 years. I looked up the stats and he was right, the chances are in the high 70% range of a stroke, with a 50 % chance of that stroke being fatal or debilitating.

I have not been comfortable for a single moment since getting this sentence. I have confronted major familial demons and stirred shit up that I thought long over, simply because I might not have time to do it later. I have given up Karate because I am not fit enough, even moderate exercise can cause a major blood pressure spike, and that may mean stroke. I made one exception to this, going to the first saturday class taught be one of my former students (former only in that he now outranks me, and I have been learning from him rather than the other way around for years now)

Since that day, literally everything I do is weighed against the possiblity of a stroke. "Is this worth my life?" has been a frequent thought.

Today was a bright glimmer of hope. The stuff they used WORKED. And it seemed to work very quickly. I have a script for it, and on thursday I pick up a home monitor and see if it will keep working.

I might be around for a bit longer than I have been thinking.

It feels pretty good.

with dreams like this, would YOU sleep?

I was watching Condi testify after not getting enough sleep, when I slipped into a dream.

In my dream, Sheldon Whitehouse (who, in my dream, was wearing some sort of weird dolphin costume) asked Condi Rice (who was, rather predictably, covered with blood. Naked. There are times when a good imagination is a curse) the following question:

"Madam Secretary, I am going to ask you to define torture for the record. I am going to ask you this for one reason: Within the next ten years, I expect there to be war crimes trials, and I expect to be called as a witness. At those trials, I expect to be asked what I knew about the torturing of prisoners, and when I knew it. And I am going to tell them the truth, that I tried everything I could think of to make sure that if we were torturing, we stopped, and the people who engatged in it were brought to justice. I am, in foresight, building the record that will be evidence in those trials. With that in mind, Madam Secretary, I would like you to tell me what the administration's definition of "torture" is."

Of course, the Whitehouse-Dolphin wasn't there, Condi wasn't naked and nobody asked that, but it was a nice dream.

YES I will write about ANYTHING to beat writer's block.

Block Blown!

Damn, that almost resembled a poem! I'm baaaaaaaaaack (maybe)

untitled

there is a moment when pain becomes something else.

Take my word for it,
you never want to go there,
and it certainly isn't worth the trip

But it is sweet.
Sweet pain.

it is after the anger,
after the bargaining has been rebuffed,
after the begging stops,
and the pleading goes unheard,

there is a moment, fleeting,
just a gesture away from the place
where pain and death become a united force

------------------------------------------------------

I approach the point of ice-white sharpness
where pain and ecstasy merge
into a convulsion of sensory overload

and I am in another place.

Pain is a door, and the Mystic Half of me pushes me through.

This isn't shamanspace, this is something else
like being too stoned to follow the lyrics
or too drowsy to catch the meaning in a phrase
or too drunk to walk the line
all at once

There's shitloads of noise
and almost no signal
but when the PainGod talks
I listen up.

I can't put the message in the poem
if words could say it,
there would be no need for all that damned pain.

But it is there, and it is dark,
cold and deep.

pain is pure.

oneline poem #7

If you wait long enough, the doomsayers will, eventually just by chance, be right.

The Alien Abduction Center

There is an area in the brain that knows about alien abductions.

That is just.... deeply bizarre. Not as bizarre as quantum mechanics, but freakin' close.

The reason I think there is an 'alien abduction' spot in the brain is because i don't believe in alien abductions.

If you read the vast amount of alien abduction literature, one thing becomes very clear, that a lot of people are hallucinating the same things. It is also fairly clear that many of these similar hallucinations happened without the knowledge of previous experiences. In other words, in a lot (but still a small minority) of cases, the people experiencing these hallucinations could'nt just be copying what others say.

Like the near death experiences, and conversion experiences, and the alcoholic's 'moment of clarity', the alien abduction experience is a shared experience, and I suspect that there is a spot in the brain which, when stimulated, gives us this experience.

DMT and Salvinorin A both tweak this area (or maybe a receptor system, I don't know) as they both generate the alien-being visions (Salvia's are a bit more horrifyingly strange while DMT's are more godlike and emotive, at least for me).

Why would there be an 'alien being' centre in the brain? Of what possible use is it, evolutionarily speaking? Or is it's presence a by-product of intelligence itself?

These are the things that keep me awake nights.

I probably have pnumonia again, sorry for the infrequent posts.

Maintenance Robot

I stayed awake for more than 150 hours straight.

My wife was having a hysterectomy, I was on prednisone and having severe asthma attacks every few hours. My wife's care at the hospital was atrocious, and I had to stay awake and monitor what was going on. I am not a doctor, but I know a lot about medicine from research. She was panicking, and she needed me there.

When she got back from the hospital, I must have decided at some unconscious level that she was going to be fine, and I collapsed, having almost 4 hours of the most vivid hallucinations of my life, in the complete absence of any exogenous psychedelics.

After that, I must have simply lost the conscious part of my mind, because I was out for three days. During those three days, I was apparently fully functional, if a bit cranky and whiney. I drove my family a hundred miles, I cleaned the entire apartment, had phone conversations, cooked, bathed, walked the dog, everything. Apparently if you take away the part of me that has the ego, the rest can still function pretty well.

I call him my Maintenance Robot.

Over the next year or so, both the asthma and the cluster headaches got worse, and the two drugs that I was taking as treatment (prednisone and fentanyl) caused Maintenance Robot to come out a lot. He displayed interesting behaviors (putting pizza in the silverware drawer, repotting plants). As soon as I could drop the prednisone, he went away.

I sleep better knowing he is inside me, and will keep me going if I am gone, for whatever reason.

The Block

it's like a fingernails on a chalkboard
or maybe constipation
Writer's Block
constantly reaching, grasping, clenching.....
nothing.

There it is! An idea!
and I reach out to it
and it recedes,
and I GRAB it, and it becomes the ghost of an idea
and slips away through my grasping fingers
as it races away back into the dark space that birthed it.

It is in my peripheral vision
an idea, a character, a plot
but when I turn to see it head-on
it turns sideways and disappears,
having no depth,
just a lovely misty outline
and again, I grasp nothing
and in a few seconds, even the memory is gone

AAAARRRRGGGHHHHHHH!

Writer's Block Sucks.

Hopefully this is just a short burst of writer's block, but who knows.

On the theory that it is better to write pointless drivel than nothing, will now write about writer's block.

Hmm.

Writer's Block Sucks.

SCREW DESPAIR!

Dear Cruel World,

Enough of this depression shit.

this is WAR!

Nature wants me dead,
but I will fight it
and love it unconditionally
because it keeps alive all that I love
even while trying to kill me.

Bring it on, I say!
I have been fighting and winning for 43 years
and I will go on for another 43.
DAMN YOU, LIFE!
YOU WILL NOT BREAK ME!

I have a mind that works wonderfully
and enough high-quality pharmaceuticals
to keep me going indefinitely,
and I can still breathe, albeit badly.

My wife and son love me
and need me in spite of my cost
and I can still make a difference.
I have words, and I use them well.
As a sword, my words can cut with the best
and they can heal, console, and teach
and if my body fails, my mind can still find purpose.

and even momentary weakness and self-pity
WILL NOT END ME!

I will fight, and on my own terms, I will win.
When my ending time comes,
I will not die of hemmorage
or of asphyxia
I will die by my own hand
on my own terms
proudly and happily.

Unless, of course, I get hit by a bus,
or some other unstoppable unavoidable calamity
but that will still be a win
for I will have escaped the slow agony that nature holds in store for me
and should there be a part of me that lives after death
I will hunt down that spirit that has tormented me throughout my life
and kick it in the nuts, laughing.

If there is a supernatural entity responsible for my life
be warned:
I am NOT amused by the trials you have presented me
and I am going to kick your ass for it.

I will awake in the morning.
I will see my son off to school
and my wife off to work
and in the alone time that follows
I will stay alive
just to spite life
just to spit in it's eye
just because I am too stubborn
too willful
too nasty
too evil
too ME
to let this shit kill me.

Adversity, go fuck yourself.

I AM LIZARD, I LIVE!

[insert annoyed primal scream here]

lizard

Despair

Can I stop now?
Every day it is a struggle to breathe
a struggle to move
a pain to stand,
it even hurts to lie down
and it is becoming harder and harder to simply be.

I am half a man, or perhaps less
in a world of athletes I can barely crawl.
I am less than everybody I know
less even than I permit myself to acknowledge
and I don't want to be

If I were not the person I am
I would have given up long ago
and realised that there is nothing here for me.
nothing.

I am a weight on everybody I love
a constant drain on resources
a neverending vacuum
that eats money, love, patience and sympathy
and spits out nothing but pain, obligation and loss.

Can I stop now?

Can I just cease to be?
slide away into the darkness
that has been eating me alive
since the spark of life came into me?

Can I not wake up tomorrow?
Can life just be finished with me?
They will cry, yes,
but their tears will soon dry
and in my place there will be an empty bed
but the bills will be paid
and another will soon fill the miniscule gap I leave behind.

If I keep on, my fate is pretty much certain
I will die gasping for breath
turning blue slowly
Or I will die when my blood vessels explodes from the pressure
and blood leaks into my brain, leaving me paralysed
or retarded and drooling.

I am damaged beyond repair
and I am so fucking tired.

But I can't do it. I can't stop. I don't know how.
I fight, always, every minute.
But today, I don't know why.




Today was a very very very bad day.

Lizard

Harvest Night

Harvest Night

Black silk-clad, barefoot
Steel knife, sharpened carefully
blessed by the water from the stream
that flows through and under the sacred patch

In the center, the canvas spread
will hold the bodies I sacrifice
in the name of medicine
green medicine, good medicine
Gifts of life, freedom from pain,
communion with the green.

No moon, utter darkness but for the low, dancing yellow
of the lantern flame
making the shadows of the tall plants dance wildly
as the gentle night breeze blows the flame
For this sacrifice is forbidden
and darkness is the domain of this green teacher.
For now.

Bless, cut, give thanks.
Bless the blade, wipe it clean on the black silk of my garment
place the green lady on the canvas, bless and thank, move on
kneeling, from tough stem to tough stem
Bless, cut, give thanks.
Bless the blade, stack, move forward.

I bind the bodies in bailing rope and canvas
For they are made of her, too.
Her perfume is overwhelming
The green goddess' musk
covers me
and I lay a moment beside her,
under the stars
in her place of birth, life and death.
and I feel her spirit commingle with the pines
and the goldenrod, and the coyote heard faintly and far off

Winter is coming,
and through it, the tendrils of her smoke
will carry my prayers and thanks
to those stars, the coyote and the pines
and each breath will be dedicated to the prospect
that in all things, The Green holds an answer
and I hope that I may continue to have a hand
in speaking her truth..
My poem is but a poor repayment of her sacrifice.

The Gun

The gun chafed.

It chafed my armpit when I wore it
it chafed my soul when it lived in the glove compartment
it chafed me raw with every alarm call
It was there for a reason.

I did not tell anybody about it
not the guards I supervised
not my wife
not my friends.
My boss mentioned it just once, after handing it to me.
"Can you use one of these?"
I gulped. "Yeah".
"Take it on the alarm calls. Here's the permit"
and I looked down at what had to be a forged permit.
We were both clear on what was not said
and that it would never BE said.

I knew he was telling me that the new job wasn't as safe as the old one
and to get certified to carry was long and cumbersome
and knowing him, probably expensive
so screw the state and it's requirements
but he wasn't going to leave his employees naked.

He knew I had the I.Q. to know it without being told
and that was the only reason he gave the top job to a dirty fucking hippie

It lay on the office table next to the keybox
as I wondered.
For six hours.
Then, the first alarm call.
A bank.

It went into the keybox
and into the patrol vehicle
and it began to chafe.

I did not hand it off to the next shift,
The boss said "keep it. Graveyard shift only"
and never mentioned it again until I left his employ.
I hid it in the safe to which only my boss and I had keys.

God, how it chafed.
an insectoid irritant in the back of my mind
constantly buzzing about my conciousness
it's inherent danger omnipresent.

Two years later, my successor on the graveyard shift
got a call, midshift.
One of his sons, 7 years old
had shot and killed another of his sons
with one of his guns.
Accidentally.

I do not know where MY gun went, after I left,
and I hope I never find out.
It could have been, but probably was not
the gun that chafed me so badly
that killed his boy
The gun that I never used
nor even contemplated using.

Science and....

Yeah, okay, I call myself a mystic and a shaman (depending on the audience and subject), so a staunch defense of science might not be what you are expecting, but here it is nonetheless: Science, as a philosophy, is always almost right. The set of rules ("scientific method") and the application of reason to obsevation to produce theories, continual refinement of theory to observed phenominon, will always give you an answer that is as close to 'right' as it is possible to get. Generalizations based on an ignorance of the philosophy of science are almost always wrong.

Since the quantum mechanical discoveries in physics, (I hear the scientific absolutists groan) science has been unable to make fundamental claims about how the universe works without caveats. "It works one way if you are talking about really big things, and it works another way with regard to really small things."

I understand what the fundamental contradictions in quantum mechanics are as well as a mathematically illiterate writer can (which is not, very), and I find sufficient non-understanding to allow for many philosophies. Every time I look to science to relieve me of the burden of mysticism, it fails. It cannot succeed, because in order to say what is not, science must be able to say all of what is, and that, science has never been able to do, even in theory, much less in practise.

There is a state of being that was first explained to me by a marionet/pupetteer at a carnival at which I was making a living as a tarot reader. He called it Bilocation when he was sober, and he called it Possessing the Puppet when he was in an altered state (he was very fond of hard cider). He said that in his late teens he had had one episode with a marionette in which he had felt his conciousness shift, and his perception of the room (that he could not actually see from his position above the stage) was from the point of view of the marionette, and he had the sensation of his movements while controlling the puppet as if the puppet had muscles instead of strings. He said the experience only occupied perhaps 30 seconds of time, but he had spent the next 30 years chasing that one state again, acheiving it many times. He clearly viewed this as a mystical/religious experience, but was acutely embarassed by the fact he knew it was all his own psyche, no magic involved. He had, in the best tradition of scientists everywhere, conducted an experiment when 'in' the state. He had looked at the audience from the perspective of the puppet, and fixed it in his mind, and coming out of the state, looked at the audience. They were not the same. He was not "actually" seeing, getting information, through the eyes of the puppet. He really felt he was going crazy then, because the experience was too vivid, to real-seeming to be anything other than real. He doubted himself, and the value of the gift he had discovered, because it wasn't "real".

THere is a state of being in the practise of most traditional animist shaman, the 'journey'. (christians will recognize the state as the state in which John the Evangelist enacts the book of Revelations). Astral Projection may be the same state, and it may be different, I don't know. It sounds similar.

These states are psychological, sure. They are not "real" in the sense science requires, because there can be no external verification of a completely internal process.

Are they useful? Obviously I think so, or I wouldnt be paying this kind of attention to them. It is the question of HOW they are useful, and there, I must say that I am still working on an answer.

I am a mystic because I have experiences that require me to ask questions that science has not meaningfully addressed, and probably cannot meaningfully address, because of the nature of the experiences (occurring entirely within my own mind, but possessing a claim to reality as strong as does the consensus reality. That is, in the words of science, I experience voluntary hallucinations which I claim have significance to rival or exceed 'reality' yet are obviously different and subjective.

Nature Sucks

Sometimes I feel like I am not human.

Planet Earth is the home of humans, the place where they evolved, the place in the universe most able to support life.

Not mine.

I fight constantly against nature. Nature tried to kill me just after I was born, and has been trying ever since to finish the job. I require massive medical intervention just to keep my system from rejecting the very things that keep most of you alive. I can't breath the air, drink the water or eat the bountiful offerings nature provides without requiring some sort of medicine to stave off anaphylaxis (death by allergic reaction). I am allergic to pollen, animal dander, car exhaust, wood smoke, more than 50 industrial and agricultural chemicals, sulfides, sulfates. The only major allergen that I am not effected by is peanuts.

Planet Earth hates my guts and has been trying to kill me for 43 years.

Suck it, Earth. I am still here.

Sorry folks, bad day all around.

Poetry collection

I am putting together a collection of poems, consisting mainly of the poems that have appeared in this blog. The collection (still under developement) will live at

http://mysticblindfold.blogspot.com/

ANY critique, criticism or even nasty comments are very welcome.

A Proud Moment

Sometimes it is very good to be me. Today, I went to a karate class taught by one of my students. I call him MY student, but in actuality he is a student in my dojo, but I have always felt that I was one of the factors that motivated him, and he is now an excellent martial artist, teaching his own class, and I am absurdly proud of him.

These emotions tend to sneak up on me. I have no real right to be proud of him, my contribution to his life has been mostly very small, yet still, going to his first class and seeing him teach it with confidence, mingling my own teaching techniques with those probably of his own creation, made me quite happy.

Denial

It's a beautiful day out,
and I am in.

Cat and Crow are out
at a town fair, and he is meeting animals
petting things
experiencing a world of
odors and sights, emotions.

I am in. Surfing a sea of knowledge,
packing my brain with information I will never use
because it is fun, and because I can.
and bacause I like to breath.
Out is death, in is life.

Cat will guide him, watch him,
and Crow will see things, learn things,
absorb the world, a piece at a time
He will jump up and down with the thrill of the new
his face will light with joy as the world introduces itself to him

And I will write poems,
and refuse to look out the window
and refuse to ask myself why.

Sometimes denial can be a useful tool.

doubt

whine, moan, bitch, complain......

I should probably admit it to myself. It is dreadful, tho. It is like admitting defeat in a lifelong quest, it is like persuing the Holy Grail, seeing it lying a few feet away, and saying to yourself "Nah, I'd rather sell magazine subscriptions".

I have seen myself, since my first and only story sale, as a writer. That is, writing is what I do to pretend I am useful (?) while I am being a mystic animist nutball. I might as well admit to myself that instead of a seldom published writer, I am, in fact, a never-published poet. Since it all seems so unimportant next to the other things I do, I suppose it should be relatively painless. I will continue to try to finish the three novels and several shorts I am working on, and I will still write poetry, but I am slowly starting to realize that my hope of ever attaining any measure of commercial success is rapidly fading. Since that is among the least of the reasons I write, I guess I am okay with this, but it is a difficult awakening. Ugh.

The Sylph

Shalerock Falls, 1977


I could barely see it in the mist and spray
as it sailed in a leisurely circle around the whirlpool
on soft grey batlike wings
barely roiling the mist.

I rubbed my eyes, and looked around.
nobody else saw it.

I tried to get closer, but the rocks were slippery
and my sister had a worried look
so, frustrated, I found a dry spot, and watched the whirlpool,
while being bathed in the mist of the waterfall above.

It took a while, maybe an hour, but I saw it again
delicately circling
and I heard it's voice, soft and deep
and it sang in continuous notes, only gradually rising and falling
in sympathy with the sound of the waterfall

The gray, frail bat wings that bore it
dripped mist as it circled, like fine sprays of morning rain
and it's song seemed to vibrate in my chest, so low and soft it was
and I felt it's joy in simply being, it's pleasure carried by it's deep soft voice
and I felt my heart slow, my breathing ease, and my anger at life,
just for a moment,
recede.

I began to cry softly with the beauty of it,
and as the first tear dripped from my cheek,
it looked at me, and hovered in place briefly.
It changed it's song to one of fear and shock,
like a startled yelp
and I felt it look at me as tho I was a strange creature,
the likes of which it had never seen
and I felt it want to flee,
and I knew it could not, for it was as tied to that mist
as a cornstalk is tied to the earth

There were many other people present,
but it saw only me, and only I saw it.
But I terrified it, and i had no desire to cause it distress
so I moved away
and whatever it was that connected us was broken
and I knew my life had changed forever
and wondered if it's had, too.

a milestone

I had my 100th unique hit last night! Yay! I am SO easily pleased.

Bathrooms

Among many other faults (such as always being right, being too left, and sometimes just being too much) I have a fairly severe phobia: I can't take large (or medium or small) groups of people. It is especially acute in other people's private homes. I get cold sweat (and NOBODY can sweat like a phobic fat guy) extreme tension, pallor, trembling limbs, tachycardia (rapid, uneven heartbeat). There are exceptions to this: When I TEACH a karate class, it is much less pronounced, probably because I am in control. However, with the exact same group of people, in the exact same place, if I am not teaching, instant phobia. The yearly gathering of our Dojo is a complete horror show for me, I sweat all the way through it, and flee as soon as humanly possible.

This condition kept me from going back to high school after I was expelled, it keeps me from going to college today, it keeps me from doing almost anything that requires contact with strangers. I gave up my computer repair business largely for this reason.
There is one thing that saves me: Bathrooms. Bathrooms are my safe-haven, my escape, my sanctuary, the one place the people won't follow me, and nobody gets too openly curious about just what it is I am doing, hiding in there. They are instant privacy and complete anonymity. They are a bolt-hole that is required by law in anyplace where large numbers of people gather, and I love them. I am sure they have saved my life ocasionally, and I am damned sure they have saved countless other's physical well-being by letting me get out of their faces before I remove them from mine by force.

When I was younger, I thought this was fear. I was convinced that I was a complete coward, incapable of facing up to people. I was cluttered with self-loathing and contempt, and I hated my life and everything about it. Then I discovered the Martial Arts. In my late teens and early twenties I trained myself until I was fairly sure I could kill most anybody with whom I shared a space, no matter the numbers. When it didn't help, I was paradoxically relieved. That meant that I was not a coward, and I gave myself permission to hide in bathrooms whenever it got too bad. Since then, I have been a happy guy. Still can't do a lot of social stuff (can't go to bars or movies, for instance), but if there is a bathroom where I am going, I am now fairly confidant I can make it through.

Bathrooms. Love 'em.

Oneline Poem #6

If sex is a physical thing for you, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!

The Cut

As the blade touched my face,
and I felt the cut
we climaxed together,
both trying to control our movements
vainly
and she writhed as she pulled the razor downward
and I was transfixed as I watched her orgasm continue
and the cut finished, she surrendered control
and lost herself in it, moaning
and she bent to the cut, and licked away the blood,
and she went limp against me

My eyes opened into the other space
and I saw it, the energy of our working
flowing about us,
and I wove it around us in a braid,
her strand, and mine, and the red flowing strand,
a continuous trickle of astral blood
binding us together loosely
and we touched,
at every point
body,
mind.
all.

Gorm Marrowsucker's lesson

Put that down, Snurl, that mutton's too new,
it's been there almost three evenings to few.

It's human cuisine till it's gone good and green
and it's been there so long you don't know where it's been

You'r an orc, Young Snurl, with some self-respect,
a proud reputation is yours to protect

If you eat just anything, they'll think you are weak,
they'll never fear you, with no orcish reek.

You should also know this, humans get hungry too,
when their cows and sheep become far too few.

A human might think of a sweet smelling orc,
as a tangy bipedal armored roast pork.

Sacrement #4 - Student

She's still afraid of me
after ten years.
I think I have taken her places she has not wanted to go
but I did not coerce, I hope
(subtle coercion is invisible and maybe even involuntary)
Still, fear.

It is the first sight, I think.
seeing me was always somehow jarring to her.
It was she who taught me (tho she might not know it)
the habit of sitting down as low as possible
as soon as possible
when discussing anything more significant than the weather
because she interpreted my mildest passionate raving as an attack.
For her, and just for her, I tried to master my intensity
move slowly
speak ...... less stridently.

She knows me very well.
I haven't the slightest idea how well I know her.
Which figures.

Still, the fear.
It has been there since I was 16
and Kip's parents told him I was evil,
and to stop hanging around with me.
I have never understood this.
It seems to have followed me everywhere

Now, I am fat and sick, a physical threat to nobody,
but the fear is still there.
and I still don't understand it.
There is nothing scary here.

By their standards, yeah, I am evil.
I think for myself, and I don't accept a dogma, any dogma.
but I have always been honest and open
about what I want, who I am, and what I'm doing.

I might not be a very good teacher, but I don't understand why I am scary.

If she is scared of me, maybe I should be too?

Self-doubt sucks. Can I go back to being a relentlessly arrogant prick now?

Untitled

10 bucks to anybody who can come up with a convincing reason that I get MORE dreamily idealistic as I age? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

political post, avoid if sensative

I have really tried to keep politics out of this blog, but it aint possible, not when so much shit is happening.

If you arent pissed off, you arent paying attention.

Think about this: In ten years, maybe a little longer, people will look back at the 2nd Iraq War as the war that trained and equipped the army that defeated Isreal. Won't we all be fucking proud of Bush then.

We are surrounded in Iraq on 3.5 sides by people who want to kill us with the weapons we gave them for the purpose of killing each-other. Next time we fight a war like this, we better either do it with spitballs or invent weapons that will only function in the hands of young american men. Or, rather, young immigrant men who want to become americans.

This war is a lie on so mant levels it defies historical comparison. Hell, even Vietnam had a THEORY (the Domino theory) justifying it. Now, that theory was an error, and a lie on the part of some who knew better, but it was a reasonable error. The "they will follow us home" excuse is true with or without the war, so it can hardly be used as an intelligent reason FOR the war.

Oneline Poem #5

Adulthood is the sate in which you can get the gas chamber for shooting some asshole in Philadelphia and a medal for shooting him in Baghdad.

Drugs

When I was 6, I was prescribed Gyrocaps for asthma. I discovered if I took them, I could stay up all night reading and not fall asleep until school the next day, which I thought was SO cool.

When I was 10, my mother took me to my first concert - Three Dog Night (and now my age shows) and at that concert she (undoubtedly fucked up beyond all reason and sense) passed me my first joint. It was love at first inhale. It sent me to a nice world filled with soft sounds, pleasant fragrances and comfortable surroundings.

When I was 11, I took up smoking. Marlboros. the first day I smoked, I smoked four packs. I loved it. It smelled good, it tasted good, it felt good, I always had something to do. At 11, my hormones were already boiling out my ears, cigarettes gave me something to do to calm me and work off the nervous energy.

When I was twelve, I discovered the Zombie. The Zombie is about three shots from whatever bottles happen to be open, mixed together and rapid-fire guzzled at lunch at school. My mother was a heavy drinker, she always had about five bottles open, it took her two years to notice they were emptying too fast.

See, the thing is, I like drugs. I have been shovelling heavy-duty pharmaceuticals into my blood stream since I discovered Nodoz in high school.

Drugs keep me alive, and I mean that literally. The asthma meds keep me breathing, the hypertension meds keep my brain from exploding (I was told at the e/r that if my bp is not controlled soon, I will have a stroke within 5 years).

When I had cluster headaches, I took opiates to survive the pain, and on several occasions was suicidal even with the painkillers, so they very literally saved my life. I got dependant on them, went to detox, but since they never managed to fix the headches, as soon as I was out of detox, I was back on pain meds, and starting to ramp up dosage again. Every doctor was convinced I was just a junkie lying about headaches to get high. But then, the headaches stopped, and surprise, surprise! I was off pain meds in less than two weeks. Now I am on them when I need them without a problem of escalating dosages or tolerance. Was I addicted? Yes. Was it terrible? Less terrible than the pain would have been without the meds. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. If the cluster headaches ever recur, you can bet your ass I'll do the same thing over again, and just hope that either they go away again, or I die, before I have to do the detox shit again with cluster headaches.

A bit on detox: Shut the fuck up, you sanctimonious bastards. I am NOT going to go sit with a bunch of neuvo-born-again morons gripping coffee mugs the size of small tanker-trucks, chain-smoking camel unfiltered extra-tar, extra-nicotine cigarettes and telling me how I am powerless in the face of my addiction. I was powerless in the face of my pain. My addiction actually EMPOWERED me to take some small bit of control from a circumstance that was rapidly spinning out of control. In so doing, I escaped the tortures of the damned with my family intact and my extended support structure still taking my calls. Because of Oxycodone and Phentanyl (the lollipops rock), I never succumbed to the desperation I felt.

Anyway, back to drugs. As you can probably tell, I like them. Especially the two classes of drugs that have been used for thousands of years in shamanic contexts, the hallucinogens and the dissociatives. I use these to do what is sometimes called astral projection, sometimes called Shamanic Journeying (one of my teachers called it "goin' and lookin' " and another called it spiritwalking). I don't use drugs to ENHANCE this experience, (altho that is, admittedly, why I started experimenting with them) but rather to, as many relaxants and intoxicants do, put some distance between the seer and the seen.

I call these drugs Sacrements, because as I understand the concept, a sacrement is something that sanctifies one, or makes one pure or holy. In short, it is a thing you use to become closer to the divine, or the truth, or the spark, or whatever you believe in. Also among my Sacrements are non-drug items. Sex, kinky sex (it is a different deal entirely), long, difficult conversations with loved ones, teaching, learning, fighting, dehydration-fasting-sweating (sweat lodge, PJ, circlespinning) and composing poetry.

I like drugs. Marijuana should be legal for all of you folks (because of my medical condition, it is already legal for me (sorta)), pain medicatin should be easy to get and easy to increase. Withdrawal hurts like hell for three or four days, but it is no worse than a really bad flu. Hallucinogens should be legal to create possess and cultivate (and I am tempted to say that everybody should try mushrooms once, but I have met people that couldnt deal)

Questions about this stuff are welcome.
Lizard

Insight!

religion is the emergent behavior of groups of humans!

This insight is a LOT cooler if you know what Emergent Behavior is. If you don't, trust me, it is a cool insight.

Lizard's Rules For (mostly) Safe And (relatively) Sane Mysticism, part one

#1 anticipate insanity
The line between Mystic and Total Fucking Nutball is very very thin. Instead of fearing and avoiding insanity, accept it, prepare for it, and plan ways to mitigate or compensate for it. Cultivate non mystic friends and partners who are willing and able to tell you that you are getting too wierd. Listen to them.
#2 Don't drink the cool-aid
ALWAYS maintain, in the front of your mind, the idea that you could be COMPLETELY wrong about all this mysticism shit. It might well be self-deception, wish-fulfillment, insanity or fraud.
#3 Don't prepare Cool-Aid for the consumption of others
When you talk about mysticism, to believers and skeptics alike, understate everything. Cultivate doubt in both yourself and in others, and do it openly and in stark terms. Whenever possible, avoid passionate implorement. Don't try to convert people, don't try to convince them, don't try to make them admire you, don't try to impress them.

Bletherous Redultatude.

Blitherous redultatude.


I defrobulized her,
but it was too late, the damage had been done,
and nothing I could do whould make the priloprop stop klelunkling.
We wept as she frobbed, gilwhackily.

the elpler-splogue bespracheted the morgravinder
but to no avail, because her melenphytoc brusbander odburrulled,
and none of the frabjons were trained in the ways of norplicks.

The defrobulizing was eccemidic, but softly so,
and her brouebabs rose and fell and rose and fell,
and became hicklinjipy with the strain
but the bribs of her impinder did not return,
and we mourned and freeflined,
while the sprival light sank slowly from our sight.

The defrobulizing continued, much to her extreme norbutrer.
She bagan to thrash violently, then she smarmled on the cruiplod
and begged forgiveness for her brimundling.

we glivened her, as she had asked us to,
but she then refused to plorn,
so we glivened her again.
On the third, she wraksplinted, and knew no more.

The frobinjay and the norplicks formed a line about us,
gleegily replerting the entire, vast ungulanimy.

"It Falls To US!" he shouted,
and the pleeving of the groschnacks
became even more groobed.

I defrobulized her, tho she wanted it not,
but the brusbanders,
the small brusbanders,
must spilf all the rells.

So we sat, forlorn and blugaggled.
I splonted her, and she splonted me.
but the megleg was too palfruous
and our passion, mingled and thrensed together
bleered us both through the glupless night.

Sklergs quefrelled through the dark trull
leaving bits of it smooming on the carpets
so that all who schinted there felt the creplerous waufgham.

Now, in this place, glivening us together under blufrand,
the creplerousness is bethriven. And had bethrived.
in the end, her plabulousness churminked.
Finally, and we all agreed.

our salten tears befriddled the path,
and we norblered it no more.
Norblered no more.

It was the bleen, it was always just the bleen

Cathartic Whine?

Probably aught to change the name of the blog from "half a bag of mojo" to "Cathartic Whine"

Ramble

an 8 on the pain scale tonight, so pardon partial incoherence.


Pain is almost impossible to write around.
I can absorb anger, I can redirect misery, I can channel love and passion.
Physical pain is just something I am not good at. It grabs my attention away from everything else and what makes it to the keyboard is usually a simple rant, pointless, meandering and unfocused. Opoid analgesics take a bunch of the pain away, but the result is no writing at all, and for me that is tantamount to clinical depression, I tailspin quickly. So, half and half, I suck it up, write, feel good about myself until the next day when the pain is worse, I medicate, and get nothing done, feel like crap about it and endure the next day, and on and on and on.
Whine bitch moan complain.

Untitled. (grief?)

I stood aside and watched her cry
a deep, wracking cry
a lament that seemed to include
the whole of creation in mourning

"I wasn't nothing before him
and now I'm nothing again"
she moaned, swaying softly
over and over
until all the black-suited mourners had gone
and it was just she and I
and a coffin-sized patch of dirt
in the stone-pocked irregular meadow

"wasn't nothing, nothing, nothing"
she said, gaining ferocity
the moan changing to a grunt
then to a yell
and finally to a scream

and I watched her hands clench to fists
and her knees buckle, as she sank
and hit the ground in time with her shouted fury
on her knees
she genuflected anger and hate
her arms, and her tears, hitting the fresh grave
until she had nothing left.

She melted down
and stretched herself across the grave
and tried, vainly, to die with him.

And I had to turn away and hate myself
because I could do nothing.
nothing.

Taikyoku Shodan

Turn left to face the dragon
my left arm becomes a fiery broadsword
that barely staves off the sulfur-reeking claw that would have rended my left leg
and forward quickly, as the dragon staggers
and my right fist, now made of granite, sends him reeling

the dragon has a friend
a centaur with a halbard, whistling through the air
to cut me in half at the waist
I hear it and look, then turn
and my right arm, now a katana, meets it's arc
and I push through the sparks of metal meeting metal
and my left arm is a lance, and she whinnies and retreats, golden hair flying

The golem is coming for me,
rising up from the clay of the earth
burning with anger and hate, it rushes
howling obscenities in a slow low earth voice
I counter it's thrust as I half-turn to meet it's attack,
and rush it, meeting earth with anger
three strikes, three steps, and the primal scream
and it disolves into dirt


the centaur bitch is back and angry,
and again the halbard swings to bisect me
I turn, and half again
I take it on my wrist, encased in steel
and forward again, thudding heavily between the centaur's breasts
and again she staggers, and cries for help

and the dragon obliges, whipping it's reptilian tail low
not fast enough, thank god, as I whip around, and my right arm descends to meet it
and a simple forward thrust buys time by pushing him back

because the dirtmonster has risen again
I kick myself for being too gentle last time
I circle in a halfturn and drive my naked left fist downward
into it's slime-clay interior
Forward, three strikes penetrating into it's unliving depths
and this time my scream is of satisfaction as it falls into dust
and I allow myself a smile. One down.

The dragon has recovered and charges in, far too fast
and I know the blow will be heavy, so I spin to gain momentum
turn and a half, and my left arm is a lightsaber
it's teeth splay out, severed,
and I step into it's body hitting hard and forcing it back,
where it can bleed in peace, because I need the room.

She is alone now, the centaur, and scared,
but my back is turned, so she calculates
and takes a chance, rolls the dice
but I hear the movement of the halbard and spin
almost casually flicking it away with my right fist downward
and I step up to her, leaving her alive, but gasping
with my left fist in her guts

I look down and see the used-to-be-a-golem dust,
and I stand erect again, melee over.
I bow, my task complete

Oneline Poem #4

It is the job of the optimists to convince the pragmatists to ignore the pessimists

oneline poem #3

I gotta give up either drugs or metaphors, they don't mix well.

Scream

I bummed a cigarette from a guy when I was in the ninth grade.
He gave me the wrong one
or he dosed me with PCP on purpose
either way.

I felt my heart stop
then start again, as tho kicked by a mule
and then stop, as if clenched in a huge cosmic fist
then start again in an adrenalized lightening thump
and over and over again

I felt my body two feet away
I looked at it as it rotted
in a gangrenous pestilent mass of flesh
I smelled the stink of the decay
and I was left with no physical part

I screamed,
and I kept screaming
and in large part, have been screaming that same scream
for 23 years,
waking in the night seeing myself rot

I saw him again, years later and years ago.
I smiled, and shook his hand
and broke his arm on the sidewalk.
It didn't help.

Lizard

That kid from high school. the one standing behind Draco Malfoy

Remember that kid? Not the bully, but the one that was standing next to, and slightly behind, the bully? large, maybe tough, but sort of dopey and tag-along. I wonder if, twenty years from now, we will look at George Bush as that guy, playing Cheyney's Crabbe, and Gonzales is Cheney's Goyle. (apologies to non-harry-potter fans). This is a frightening analogy in that i am now seeing Dick Cheney instead of Draco Malfoy when I read the books. Damn, I can't seem to keep my reality from intruding on my fantasy.

Albanian?

So I wake up this morning and groggily report to my "office" (the shithole room in which I pretend to write poetry (see "schism in me" below) (it's a shithole because when I clean it I get writer's block)) and I open my blog to see if anybody had passed through while I was away (nobody did), and I notice that in the archive menu (over there to the right) all the month names had been replaced with gibberish. That's odd, I think to myself. Too many DRUGS, I think to myself. So I rub my eyes and drink a huge mug of lukewarm tapwater (my favorite drink) and look again. Again, gibberish. Phonetically pronouncable gibberish. AHA! my completely decaffienated brain says to me, It's in a different language! (I gave up caffiene last week, it is a long, stupid and mildly amusing story that will never appear here) and immediately goes back to bed.

If the universe and I are going to get along at all, there have to be rules.

Lizard's Proposed Rules The Universe Must Follow If It Wants Lizard's Cooperation #1-
Nobody Is Allowed To Fuck With Lizard's Brain Until He Has Been Awake For More Than Twenty Minutes.

Is that too much to ask?

Immortality (kinda) at last!

Who-HOOOOOOOOOO! I am on Wikipedia! The poem Green Gnosis, below (Sacraments 1) is linked to by Wikipedia in the article on Salvia Divinorum.

My writing credits now total 2. One story sold to Dragon magazine, and one blue footnote in a Wikipedia article.

Okay, so I am easily pleased, but when you have been writing for almost 30 years, ANY recognition is nice.

The Sacraments 3: Ololuiqui

Vernal Equinox - 2003


I have been preparing for days
everything is so clean, so bright
the brew is in the silver goblet from which I first sipped freedom
Astaroth is the name I had engraved on it then.
I read it now, and wonder "Keeper of secrets, where have you gone?"

Ololiuqui and I are old friends
dancing together once a year for twenty-four years
He is the bludgeon of my sacrements,
without the guile of Ayahuasca,
or the spirograph visions of Salvia
Or the drunken revelling sociability of Wine and it's ilk.

Ololiuqui is the blackjack, the stone-headed mace,
the twelve-pound hammer with the word "clue" printed daintily on it's face
He is the oncoming train, the blunt-force trauma,
and the 800-pound gorilla knocking at the door.

Half this cup, and I am a happy, giggling idiot
All of it, and I get to confront Truth, and party with him. Wether I want to, or not.

The Thinking Half of my mind advises, wimp that he is, caution.
Mystic Half laughs, and compels me.
I have not danced the full dance for six years, and so much has happened.
A son, an injury, a disease, a slow death, all unresolved, unsettled.

Thinking Half thinks it is too much, the set and setting are aweful.
Trip when your mind is clean, he says, and be SAFE!
But the unsettled things are not settling, and Thinking Half can't settle them,
and, after all, he is a sacrement of exploration, divination and journeying.

I drink the full cup empty, and Thinking Half retreats, watching, concerned.

I am inside, in my temple, clothed in white, kneeling on a rich red satin pillow
surrounded by reds and golds
warm cinnamon aromas
immaculate, soft to the eye, the skin, and the spirit.

Ololuiqui walks a long road to get to me,
so I meditate for perhaps an hour, in repose
with Thinking Half murmering anxiety
Mystic Half waiting calmly

Sometimes he comes as vision, sending me pictures
And sometimes as an aural banquet
and sometimes as nightmare heart-palpitations
but he always comes with a point or a purpose or a message,
and he is always clear, which is why he is frequently unwelcome
for he dispells self deception with no lubricant, no foreplay, no banter.
He just rips the eyelids off and holds up the mirror.

I tried to welcome him without expectation
The respect due to any teacher, an open mind.
I must have failed, I must have expected something
Because I certainly didn't expect this.

No one expects the spanish inquisition! Thinking Half says, to distract me.

And he is there.

He has come as a knight, in chainmail,
with a broadsword the size of a fence post
and arms like tree trunks
and he shows up swinging.

I feel the blade bite deep into my neck, and through
and I see his mailed hand grab my head by the hair
and I watch my body drop away as the sword cleaves through
and I feel the pain of it.

I watch as he cleans the bloody sword on my pristine ritual garment
and I watch the red stain spread
as I, or what is left of me, drips.
As I look down on the newly headless me, I am consumed with anger

"HEY!" I shout at my illusory tormentor
"What the hell is this? I bring you here to -"
and as soon as I say it, I know.
Arrogance. Ololiqui is teaching me about arrogance.

He sheaths his sword and angles my bodiless head to look on his face,
and since arrogance is never far from me, I KNOW what I must see.
It has to be either Luke Skywalker, or myself,
and I am betting I will see my own face.

He laughs, and I look at his helmeted face, shaken,
for his voice is high and and light, unlike mine or Darth Vaders.
and i try to see his eyes through the visor with no luck,
and I am worried, now, because I have no idea.

The high, light voice cackles as it reads my mind and laughs.
The unknown, I think. It is showing me my fear of the unknown!
And again with the mind-reading and the cackling,
encouraging me to look past bad movies or sophomoric philosophy for answers.

I feel myself dying, and everything going white
and he throws open his visor
and I see the face of my 5 year old son
and I watch him watch me
and I feel a fear deeper than I have ever felt
as I wonder what he sees.

And the vision dissolves, having made it's point.

Ololiqui. Gotta love it.

modest change of direction

Okay, folks, it appears people are in fact reading these posts and so far 2 have even commented here, tho I have a bunch more comments in private email. And a few more people who know me in real life know the location of this blog. So, I have added an instruction on the top, Pseudonyms only! I talk about things that can be considered crimes in some areas (see the sacrament series) so lets all be safe.

Lady Dusk

For my muse, Valkyrie

The day is done and the night is coming

the lady of the dusk

whispering to me

and the silver-clad elfin wraith hovers

to summon the waiting wings of the raven

to smother the last of the light

and take me from here

forever.

She loves me with the wind on my bare skin

and the waves that wash the pain away

she shines the dark of night like a torch

and it’s pervading blackness washes my soul clean

of its need for the light

and free from the want of warmth.

Her skin against me is the cold touch

that wrings the last blush of that addicting sun

and it will never need the day again

and the rays of light will never reach this flesh.

Her touch is painfully cold

and her fingers trace

brings such exquisite frost

no warm breath can again bring thaw.

It would be my last wish to die in the arms of the night

and never again feel the warm rain

but it is not to be

and the dream soon draws to a finish

and the raven’s wings depart

and forever ends.

The dark figure clothed in moonlight

walking down the road of midnight

receding and taking my heart

and consuming my soul

and leaving me to face the coming dawn

with stolen heart

and eaten soul

and smiling face.

Reanimate

Do I really look that scary?
It is just the way my face is made, son.
And it is just the stone I have carved my expressions out of for many years, to stay safe.
Now I find that the smile I show you has signs of granite hardness,
not the love that I wish to put there
not the respect and pride that I feel.
Your eyes remind me too much of what it was once like to feel joy
and let it creep into my features
to feel grief and sadness, and let my face cry
and looking on you now, in joy and in sadness
reminds my why I carved this granite face, these tearless stone eyes
because those who saw my tears wished, not to dry them as I wish to,
but to use them, to cause them,
to make joy into rage, to make happiness into tears for their own ends
and I could no longer stand it.
And with every glance I wish that never to happen to you
yet to prevent it, would I carve you a granite face, tearless stone eyes?
Or reanimate my own?

Home

First was the house on the hill
with it's two giant elms on the top
and the rooms upstairs that gave some solace
because she was too lazy to climb the stairs

Everything was argument and fight
everything was on the edge of collapse
all the time
unending crisis after crisis
as she drank her way insane

I was trained to fight about everything
all the time
by a ruthless wordslinger
who backed it up with a wooden shoe
or a slap
or by kicking me in gut as I lay on the floor
trying to curl around her leg so she could not draw it back.

She tolerated being a mother until the day her daughter went away to college
and then she got rid of me.
First, she loaded me like a gun and shot me at my father
telling me that she might take me back if he said I had to go
but never just because I asked to come home.
And nothing in the world prepared him for what she had made me
and he was begging her to take me back in less than three months.
and I got what she told me I wanted: Her.

But if not a good mother, she was an excellent teacher
and she found that she was not winning the arguments,
not crushing me with her words,
then revelling in the impotence with which a child returns taunts.
She had sharpened me, and now I was starting to cut
and as her words could no longer beat me
it was hands, or sticks, or belts
and she knew I had to go before my patience for it ended

So off I went from the house on the hill
and she threw me out of the car at the private school
with a garbage bag full of clothes that had not fit in a year
a hundred dollars with which to buy textbooks
and an admonition to find somewhere else to stay for summer.

and it is, from this distance, my most shameful moment,
that as she drove off, I was weeping and begging to be allowed back.
I was 13

From the house on the hill to the castle on the hill
where nobody wanted to hurt me, fight me, beat me.
Everything changed, and I became insignificant
and I could not but hate insignificance
so I did the only thing I had ever been taught competently to do.
I fought.

I am 42. I have been married for half that time.
I do not hit, nor do I brutalize, and I do not drink.
But I have not managed to stop fighting for a single second.
I have managed to make rules that I follow:
I do not let myself win fights that I know I should lose
but it is not always easy to tell when I am right from when I am wrong.
And I can't manage to stop fighting, even while deciding.

There is a voice in my head that tells me that if I ever stop fighting
I can never again go home again.
But that is true no matter what I do.
that home is gone
the elm trees are long since cut for fuel
SO why fight?

Why fight, when the only person I really want to beat
has been insane, stupid and dying for years?
I seem to know nothing else.