Linking the sane with the insane, and walking the delicate path. Forms and forces merge together, in a whirling orgy of delight; food for the derelict and divine alike. Whisping winds of fortune shape and tear our world. Matter delights and suffers in regeneration, breaking every form it contracted. Agreements agreed to even in the face of every previous contract broken. Placed at the centre, you. All your strengths and talents, all your fears and failures; gone in the blink of an eye, endure for infinite finitude. Be the change, and you cease to change. What are lives if not thought forms of another; ourselves thinkers, and yet thoughts ourselves. Controlled by the chaos, set free by restriction, removed from the moving present and presented transcendence.

Return to writing?

I haven’t journaled in a while. I haven’t written in a while. Words trickle from the ineffable creative aspect of my soul to these clumsy, physical fingertips. Words protruding back and forth, an ebbing and flowing tide of creative impulse and deconstructive analysis. Write drunk, edit sober, as Hemmingway put it. Steal the novel thoughts stolen by past writers and disguise their genius as your own. Is this new creativity, or is it plagiarism? Who knows. At what point does the same hero’s journey told and retold countless times sanction a copyright on content? What authority–aside from the Fool’s house of cards–permits the legacy of intermittent rules, of arbitrary order? Society, with its own self-preservation ahead of the lives which create and sustain it; a memetic virus of imposed limitations, yet seemingly the salvation of mankind. A tamer of wild barbarians, at the centre of which rests the enlightened, the civilized; the corrupt, the degenerate. What, then, is society without its internal conflict, a reflection of the conflicted nature of its living components, who, themselves, are reflections of the conflicted nature of the universe itself? And which forms which? Is there some form of holy trinity taking place between man, society, and the universe? Is there a divine connection at all, or is this triune relationship another intermittent rule? Language and thought influence each other so powerfully that one cannot be said to be free of the other; and in the merging centre rests Understanding waiting to be Crowned royalty with such Knowledge. To truly understand this reciprocal relationship is to be free to rewrite either one according to the dictates of one’s own conscience, and conscious. What will I rewrite? What would you write if you knew you were the author of your own story? How badly we want things when our choices are Severely limited, and yet to contemplate a million possible scenarios paralyzes us with indecision. Seems like another limited choice, between passionately following the wrong road, or complete impotency. What would we create if we fully realized our authentic selves? Would you write a utopia story for yourself? Once upon a time everybody was happy. The end. Compelling story.

Forgotten Passions in the Dread of Desolation

Forgotten Passions in the Dread of Desolation

Beelzebanian charm:
the Lord of Flies
gathers with mead
and gluts
on supplicating succubi.

The cloying palaver
of gilded tyrants
caballing their gilded thrones
crowns the obeisant mawks.

Unctuous divestment
of the gilded –
deposed by thorny,
deadheaded roses
who bathe in retching remorse.

Poached psychopomps
limn the barren pudenda
of capricious nymphets
who kick against
the penetrating pricks
of rapacious power.

Acrid tear glands
dried from hellish heat
belong to fleeing augurs;
a resin of rue
for the reprobate.

Promethean anguish:
his bitter gift–
sealed with stigmatic wounds–
reverses its fortune,
and burns instead of lights:
a prize absent of victory
against the Gods.

Gurgled cries
and sibilant wheezes
are the only voices
of the caged,
whilst impish pliers
pluck their teeth,
and bleeding gums
anoint fellatio.

Ravenous purloiners
muse their fortune;
lowered gibbets
offer suborn manna
of androphagy.

Cursed are they who feed:
they soon find themselves
caged in the offering plate
that gave them their meal;
the rat laments his cheese
as he is mounted.

Oh they that predicted the end
share their fate
with the damned.

There is no end.
There is no respite.
Though flesh is stripped,
and consumed...
There.
Is.
No.
End!

Roasted
on the bonfire of sin-
Burn!
Burn!
Burn!

Longevity endowed,
else suffering
cannot truly be known.

At least the wolf of Gubbio
knew mercy.
None of the abandoned here
will speak mercy’s name.
None of the forsaken,
though they behold
the mutual hideousness of each other,
will die; they only shriek.

There is no chance to rule here;
all who arrive
are victims
and perpetrators alike.

Shrieks that beg
to be blind
to be deaf
to be dumb...

To be dead.

Why Thanksgiving Is Really Turkey Day

First of all, let me preface whatever I’m about to say with a deep-felt respect for those who truly get into the Spirit of Thanksgiving. Having the spirit of gratitude is rarely a bad thing.

For many of us, Thanksgiving means time with family and friends, and much food. Perhaps less of us take time to reflect on why we get together and share a meal. Some write gratitude lists, while others simply sit in the pervasive feeling of peace and thanks. Yet others of us participate in what seems like a spirit of mockery, calling Thanksgiving “Turkey Day”. Some of us appreciate the humour, some of us shrug, and some of us don’t care for the term.

Those of us who “mock” have our various reasons. Perhaps some feel that holidays – all of them – have become so commercialized that there is no real meaning in them. Perhaps some are jaded about having no place to go. Perhaps some, however, do it for other reasons.

Like Christmas, Thanksgiving comes once a year. There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, its rarity often leads to truly appreciating it. What is problematic, though, is that it’s too easy to limit the spirit of these holidays to their calendar correspondences.

Oh I’m sure many of us are tired of hearing “why can’t the spirit of Christmas/Thanksgiving last all year round?” – and certainly I would be included in that group, which is what makes writing this somewhat hypocritical. However, that really is the gist of this paper. Why do I need one day out of the year to be thankful?

Originally Thanksgiving was intended to celebrate a particular event in history – and I’d be damned surprised if any Canadian knows the history of Thanksgiving in their own country. So, if we’ve lost the original context of this holiday, what is left? Taking one day out of the year to appreciate what we have? Seems like a rather vacuous activity.

So, what of those who make it a daily thing to be grateful? What of those who actively develop the over-used cliché “attitude of gratitude”? What does Thanksgiving mean to they who already give thanks every day? Oh, it probably means a day to eat turkey.

Life isn’t a test, life is life

One of the biggest mistakes that people often make in life is believing that the burdens they carry or the obstacles they face are somehow a test – that somehow the grand events of the universe have coalesced into a unique set of circumstances for only them. Let me just say that you are not that special.

Life is what it is. After your remarks of gratitude towards this captain who sails the ship Obvious, that statement is still true and relevant. Life goes on with or without us, and though life’s events are often shaped by us, they are rarely shaped for us.

When we accept life for what it is, that life happens on its own, we shift our conscious awareness of life into an resigning acceptance. Life on life’s terms, as the cliché is known by some. Once we understand and accept this acceptance, life simply becomes about how to work our way through or around the barriers in our lives. If I have to get to school from home, I simply plan my mode of transportation. What I don’t do is believe that I’m somehow being tested because school is so far away from home. I simply accept this and make accommodations.

If believing that “life is a series of tests” was simply a benign paradigm, there would be no need for this current rant. But it isn’t, and there is. Let me repeat myself: you are not that special. Believing that you are being tested when life gets difficult develops a mentality of victimization, that somehow life is out to get you, and that these things make you somehow more unique than everyone else. The inevitable result is the belief that you are “worthy” of a special set of burdens set aside for either the lowlife or saint.

Hubris shows itself when we believe we are above our station in life. What often goes unrecognized is that believing we are burdened more than the average person is just another form of hubris. You are not that special. It is impossible to develop an attitude of humility when the desire for such humility is born from a foundation of arrogance. There is nothing humble or burdensome about deciding the method and route to take to a destination; likewise, there is nothing humble or burdensome about trying to figure out a way past life’s difficulties.

Granted, there are some things in life that are unique obstacles. This is either because there aren’t too many other people who share them, or because something really is difficult. However rare or difficult something is does not remove it from the necessary paradigm of overcoming it. This is the fundamental difference between victims and survivors. Victims are burdened and stay burdened; survivors are burdened and overcome.

Whatever the case, the burdens and obstacles in life just are. They were not designed for you, nor do they make you special. While participation in life may not have been your choice, how you participate is. Believing that life is a series of tests impairs one’s ability to cope with problems, and is an intoxicating viewpoint that prevents solution-oriented thinking.

Now pardon me while I hop on the bus so I can get to school.

Saw a counsellor at UVic the other day. The tranfer from Camosun to UVic is starting to become areality, thought I don't think it will fully hit until the first or second week of classes.

I really liked the counsellor I was seeing at Camosun. He was a great guy. But, I felt too much like he was more of a colleague rather than a counsellor. He was great to talk to, but I didn't really get any special insight or work the way that counsellors are supposed to do.

It was incredibly refreshing that the counsellor at UVic was able to make a small breakthrough on only our second visit. She gave me a bit of insight that I can use as a tool for future self-analysis, to examine my habit of projecting conflict into the future thus creating anxiety. I feel much better knowing that this counsellor has the capacity to challenge me and get me working on the things I need to work on.

I recognize in her a lot of technique that Maslow developed, but she is able to interject and offer an analysis when needed, which is something that Maslow's technique sorely lacked. She also inadvertantly reminded me that being a counsellor at a university setting makes it so that she is used to having incredibly intelligent persons come in for help. This loses the aspect of uniqueness that I am used to dealing with, and I probably won't get any special recognition for me intellect and personal insights into myself because of it. That's not really a bad thing, just something to help me to remember my place. We'll see how things go from here, but I'm hopeful, but a bit wary knowing that it's unlikely that I can continue to be complacent in my personal growth.

So, I'm no longer an atheist. If my descent out of Mormonism and into atheism was a giant blur, this recent ascent from atheism into theism (for lack of better terms) is a condensed version, condensed to a week or two.

Mostly it's Hermetic thought that I find appealing. It has the ability to explain the existence of God in a rational manner, something that doesn't require such a leap of faith as most religions do. I suppose some coherent system would be necessary for me to buy into it. Yes, God exists. That's about as far as I've gotten. No possessed qualities or intrinsic characteristics other than it has/is a mind, and existence is a product of that consciousness. At this point that's about all my belief is. Who knows where this will take me, but it's enough for me to abandon the atheism paradigm as an encompassing one. I'm still critical of religion and dogma, but only when they present themselves as an objective, absolute truth, and not a relative manifestation of individuality.

By and large my desire to study and learn about debating theists is mostly gone now. I'm going to have to rethink a lot of things, but I guess I'm getting used to abandoning old paradigms and trying on new ones. One of the side effects of this is an inability/unwillingness to form identities that are attached with these paradigms. In fact, it might be fair to say that I'm abandoning the identity thing altogether, and that I'm just accepting me for who or what I am, and that I don't have to attach myself to anything to find meaning. I am me. Now, if only the ego were so easy to shed.