In the Desert of the Soul: Early Symbols in Jung's Red Book

I finally started reading the text of Jung's Red Book last night, and it is as revelatory, revolutionary, and vitally important as I suspected it would be, not just in terms of Jung's psychological theories but in taking a stance for a broader spiritual approach to reality that is even more lacking now than when Jung was writing. Reading this is like reading Blake, I want to quote every passage (as they are almost all brilliant), but if my cat will get off the tome I'll constrain myself to just one before looking at some of the important symbols and themes that Jung was attempting to articulate.

"The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical. He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.

But the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning.

The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.

The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment [a reference to the way of becoming the superman from Nietzsche's Zarathustra].

The other gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and the blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.

The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow?

The shadow is nonsense. It lacks force and has no continued existence through itself. But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning...

The image of God throws a shadow that is as great as itself.

The supreme meaning is great and small, it is as wide as the starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body.

The spirit of this time in me wanted to recognize the greatness and extent of the supreme meaning, but not its littleness. The spirit of the depths, however, conquered this arrogance, and I had to swallow the small as a means of healing the immortal in me. It completely burnt up my innards since it was inglorious and unheroic. It was even ridiculous and revolting."

Potent symbols and themes in the first seven sections:

The spirit of the times vs. the spirit of the depths - Jung makes a distinction between the spirit or stance of the time in which he lives vs. the spirit of a greater, ancient, and universal reality that is entirely overlooked by the present, and is striving to come forth through Jung. This is historical consciousness vs. the mythic subconsciousness, and Jung frames the Red Book as a way of getting past all the small-minded, violent, materialistic impulses of his age (including a harsh criticism of Christianity), while recognizing that this present world may entirely ignore his warning and call for an understanding of the subconscious.

The supreme meaning - Jung claims that God and gods are only images of an eternal supreme meaning oscillating between meaning and absurdity, and it is this supreme meaning that men must come to recognize as a solution to the spirit of the times. This is entirely consistent with my concept of ultimate significance, in that the supreme meaning is more truly real than the images we conceive of it through.

Dreams and epiphanic visions - Jung recounts a number of visions prophesying the world wars as well as his own future work. He claims an uncontrollable compulsion to record these dreams, though he never did before. Similarly, a number of the passages Jung claims are actually the spirit of the depths or his soul speaking through him as a medium.

The soul - Much of the early part of this book is Jung's attempt to reconnect with his soul. This is the formation of his archetype of the anima/animus, but it is not made explicit in his academic writings that the archetype is not just an image but one's actual, living soul, which encourages us to live and do everything we dream of living and doing. The soul is one's God and opposite, which perfects us in the supreme meaning. The soul is not part of us, we are only the expression and symbol of our soul in the world.

The desert - Though Jung's academic writings discuss the archetypes they do not discuss (as far as I've read) the importance of subconscious locations. In particular Jung discusses here the image of the desert, which is the conception of oneself and soul that one must journey into and rejuvenate in order to overcome the spirit of the times. Jung believes he saw a desert because his soul had been withered (and perhaps those in touch with their souls experience a garden). From my own explorations of the subconscious I also found this "desert of the soul" as the location for the deeper, mythic realities I had to contend with outside of the city (the symbol for the everyday world and times). As my own process continued, this desert was first flooded and became a garden before the entire inner world was set to flames so that a new internal reality could form. I am curious how these locations change through Jung's process in the remainder of the Red Book, as I find such psychogeographies an essential compliment to the character archetypes.

The descent into hell - Jung has a vision in which he realizes that he must descend to hell in order to individuate himself and find the supreme meaning. Such descensus avernum are common in mythic and revelatory literature and serve as another example of the importance of place as symbol for Jung's theories. Jung equates this descent with the possibility of going mad, and sees himself as a sacrificed hero who must overcome that potential madness for a more divine madness lacking in the spirit of the times. This section (and the titles of the other sections) suggest that Jung is on a hero's journey comparable to that described by Joseph Campbell. This hell is all the absurd meaninglessness of our times that we must go through in order to construct our own meaning of events, which is the supreme meaning.

Alright, I'll close with another short passage: "You thought you knew the abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to experience it. Everything will happen to you."

Faith Ills...

... if your faith happens to be as bigoted and close minded as a parishioner denying a marriage license to an interracial couple or an NC church burning non-canonical religious texts as "satan's books."

Sadly, neither of these religious groups seemed to have been paying much attention to their own myths.

Possession and Schizophrenia

There is an interesting article from boingboing on exorcism and schizophrenia, which explains how patients in cultures with a strong belief in spirit possession, who have been possessed, have often been more successfully treated through schizophrenic medications than through exorcism. While this suggests that possession may be some cultures' ways of articulating the kinds of bizarre behaviors exhibited by schizophrenics, the article also cites a case where one of these medically treated possessees was actually seen to be possessed by other people.

So this might be an otherwise unremarkable psychiatric case if it were not for the fact that the prison chaplain, and several of the patient's cellmates, saw the spirit possess the patient as a ghostly mist. The chaplain was convinced this was a genuine case of possession, as had priests from several other faiths who had previously carried out exorcisms on the patient.

This begs the question, if the patient was treated for his belief in spirit possession and his apparent hallucinations as to the reality of the ghost, why were the chaplain and the others not considered to be ill ?

One could argue for mass hallucination, or conversely for some kind of cultural imagination at work, but perhaps it could mean that actual ghosts/spirits may be affected by chemical procedures? Not knowing off hand how medicines like trifluoperazine and clopenthixol work, I'd hazard a guess that whatever neural site/receptor these chemicals effect is also the neural site/receptor ghosts take possession of.

Mass Link Updates

It's been a while since I've posted a number of links to interesting articles that have caught my eye in my daily journeys through the internets. I often just don't have the time to say something insightful about everything that catches my eye, so the world will just have to speak for itself.

Muthos:
-Interactive Fiction Competition 09
-Submissions wanted for an anthology on The Immanence of Myth
-Fair Use copyright:1 the Estate of James Joyce:0
-Best Fiction of the Millennium so far (and critics vs. readers)
-Most challenged books of 2008 for banned book week
-Exquisite Corpse Adventure
-School of Witchcraft opens in Taiwan
-Nabokov Edits Kafka's Metamorphosis
-Horacio Castellanos Moya's Disgust with the Bolaño Myth
-Dan Brown gets D.C. all Wrong
-More youths write today than ever before
-Post-medium publishing
-Tolkien trained as British Spy

Logos:
-The Psychology of anxiety
-Religious experience linked to the social regions of the brain
-The connection between Schizophrenia and smoking
-Quantum Entanglement now visible to the naked eye
-The Decline of Polymathy and General Knowledge
-Indians find Water on the Moon
-Brain Scans closer to Revealing what we have seen
-the Sun gets its Spots back
-Cities Organized like Human Brains, and as battlesuits for surviving the future
-Earth's oldest living organism cloned

Mild-Mannered Physicist or Interplanetary Hero?

"This is the incredible true story of a physicist who believed he could project himself to another solar system and live as a swashbuckling interplanetary adventurer. When he was a teenager and living on a Polynesian island, he had read a series of "strange and adventurous" science fiction / fantasy books by an American writer. The protagonist shared his name, and eventually the physicist started thinking he really was the character. But he was still able to maintain a dual identity -- he sort of "astral projected" into that fantasy world while keeping the appearance of a skinny-tie wearing physicist." [via boingboing]

What strikes me as incredible is that this man brought to his court-ordered psychiatrist over 12,000 pages of painstakingly detailed stories, histories, architectural and sociological facts, all gathered from what, if not madness, was the product of an immensely hyper-active imagination. The physicist actually lived in that sci-fi world, to the extent that his psychiatrist feared curing the delusion might kill him. As someone who has intentionally created a complex and interwoven internal reality/story from dreams (which leads me to say that I have lived twice as much as those who don't dream, and the second life much wilder), I am fascinated and a little horrified, knowing very well the danger that lies in taking your fantasies to be more real than the normative reality, just as real, yes, but when our ability to take care of ourselves or others is threatened by just not paying enough attention, or acting out from the wrong attention: that way does lie madness. But not because you see things, that's still a real experience, communicated as best it can be.

I am reminded of the outsider artist Henry Darger (best depicted In the Realms of the Unreal), creating an elaborate mythology of armies of little girls till he died unknown in his attic and his neighbors found the bizarre 15,000 page illustrated manuscript. Talk about tomes. To some degree great works seem to take actually existing in these fantastic other places for extended periods of time, whole lives, yet we still have to do what we have to to be here, because living is a great work as well.

The Surreal Improves Learning and Pattern Recognition

According to boingboing, "new research suggest that exposure to bizarre, surreal storylines such as Kafka's "The Country Doctor" can improve learning. Apparently, when your brain is presented with total absurdity or nonsense, it will work extra hard to find structure elsewhere. In the study by the University of British Columbia psychologists, subjects read The Country Doctor and then took a test where they had to identify patterns in strings of letters. They performed much better than the control group.



"In a second study, the same results were evident among people who were led to feel alienated about themselves as they considered how their past actions were often contradictory. "You get the same pattern of effects whether you're reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity," Proulx explained. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns."


This study intrigues me and ties in with my thoughts about the use of surreal, magically-real, or dreamstate experiences both in art and reality. The way I tried to express it before is that non-real events create a category error in the way we perceive reality, thus requiring us to recheck our assumptions and patterns about what reality is. That being the case, the non- or supra-real can sometimes better get at what reality is like, because they sidestep the pitfalls and limitations of language and our basic assumption that the thing said is really the thing itself.

This also relates to all the current research on the link between creative genius and mental illness, in that people genetically predisposed towards perceiving the world as a fragmented and bizarre thing have to do that much more work to learn to put it together again, which, having schizophrenic and bipolar tendencies run in my family I can attest to seeing first hand.

Like a Holy Hand Grenade

And this is just crass:

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent President George Bush top secret wartime memos with cover sheets that mixed Scripture and battle photos to cast the Iraq invasion as a holy Christian crusade. Rumsfeld, not a man who wore religion on his sleeve, appeared to be trying to manipulate - or curry favor with - the Bible-quoting Bush, according to an explosive story in GQ.Some Pentagon analysts worried that if the memo covers leaked, they would inflame the Islamic world, undercut Washington's Arab allies and bolster those who claimed America was out to Christianize the Muslim world.One official was so disturbed he kept the report covers and recently gave them to GQ writer Robert Draper, a leading chronicler of the Bush administration."Commit to the LORD, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed - Proverbs 16:3," appeared on a April 1, 2003 report over a photo of a U.S. soldier near a highway sign pointing to Baghdad. The next day, U.S. forces reached the Iraqi capital."Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps the faith - Isaiah 26:2," appeared on a April 3, 2003 memo...

The Creative and the Insane

[from The Independent]

"At first glance, Einstein, Salvador Dali, Tony Hancock, and Beach Boy Brian Wilson would seem to have little in common. Their areas of physics, modern art, comedy, and rock music, are light years apart. So what, if anything, could possibly link minds that gave the world the theory of relativity, great surreal art, iconic comedy, and songs about surfing?

According to new research, psychosis could be the answer. Creative minds in all kinds of areas, from science to poetry, and mathematics to humour, may have traits associated with psychosis. Such traits may allow the unusual and sometimes bizarre thought processes associated with mental illness to fuel creativity. The theory is based on the idea that there is no clear dividing line between the healthy and the mentally ill. Rather, there is a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits without having the debilitating symptoms.

Mental illnesses have been around for thousands of years. Evolutionary theory suggests that in order for them to be still here, there must be some kind of survival advantage to them. If they were wholly bad, it's argued, natural selection would have seen them off long ago. In some cases the advantage is clear. Anxiety, for example, can be a mental illness with severe symptoms and consequences, but it is also a trait that at a non-clinical level has survival advantages. In healthy proportions, it keeps us alert and on our toes when threats are sensed."

End Times, by Lydia Lunch

End Times
By Lydia Lunch. [via, posted in full]

“In times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
– George Orwell

It took balls for Elton John to suggest banning all organized religion because it turned people into hateful lemmings devoid of compassion. And I may be putting my cock on the line here, but I think we need to go directly to the source and simply get rid of God. After all God was the first cop. The original tyrant. An egotistical dictator whose sadism was so immense that he insisted on the murder of his only begotten son just to prove what he was capable of after he condemned us all to rot in eternal damnation like flesh puppets in his own private dungeon. An amusement arcade full of fire and brimstone.

Religion used to be the opium of the masses. Now it’s the crack cocaine of assassins. Millions of addicts tripping on a celestial high. Throwing psychotic temper tantrums like little brats who forgot to take their Ritalin. Backyard bullies screaming MY GOD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR GOD. God junkies — dangerous and delirious. Drunk on blood and bombs and the smell of burning flesh. Painting the desert red in an attempt to appease BIG POPPA, that vengeful War Lord whose favorite blood sport has always been one of violence, torture and retribution.

And excuse me if I feel that John McCain is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. If after five years of being held in captivity and forced to endure relentless tortures, he is simply too twisted to realize what the real price of war is, then we’re all doomed. After all if he could survive such mind numbing cruelty and still want to play war whore, what the hell are the rest of us all whining about?

War is as old as God himself. And the War is never over. The War is never ending. The War is just an orgy of blood and guts masterminded by testosterone-fueled dirty old men that get off on fucking the entire fucking planet. This is the REAL PORNOGRAPHY. An outrageous cockfight fought by gung-ho cowboys who have drawn a line in the sand and will challenge anyone to a duel foolish enough to threaten resistance against the advent of the rodeo mind.

And hold on to your hats because now entering the bullring is a petite pit-bull in lipstick with a hotline to God’s pipeline whose idiotic credo of “Intelligent Design” insults not only science and evolution but the individual’s ability to reason when presented with hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence to the contrary.

Man was not created in the image of God. God was created in the image of man so that man had someone to blame his infantile rage on. The need to believe in God is a pathological viral infection that has spread like an incurable disease infecting man’s ability to reason clearly. Belief acts as a psychic buffer against anxiety over the unavoidable reality of impending mortality. Scared shitless and still greedy for more than merely earthly delights, man, that all consuming piranha has wreaked havoc by gobbling up and devouring every other creature forcing predictions that unless a miracle happens even the fish will be wiped out before the midterm of this century. And with rifle-toting zealots like Sarah Palin and her Assembly of God clan smiling smugly and smirking about killing caribou, hunting moose, exterminating wolves and hounding polar bears into near extinction the death count will surely mount.

Only end times apocalypticians are demented enough to dream of a magnificent bounty to be served up in heaven by angels and virgins alike assuming it’s the just deserve of a hard fought battle for the glory of God and Cuntry. In the meantime, the rest of us better prepare to go hungry because soon enough we won’t even be able to afford food anyway.

Am I imagining it or were we a lot safer when the so-called leader of the free world was getting blowjobs in the White House? Isn’t it better to blow off a little steam in the face of a willing victim than to take out your sexual frustrations and pent-up aggression on endangered species or countries half way around the world, blatantly lying about democracy and freedom in a thinly-veiled disguise to suck the juice out of a hole in the ground, while the rest of us are stuck at the Exxon stations holding gas pumps in our fists like big limp dicks that we pay out the ass to get perpetually screwed by?

No one wins in War except the Military Industrial Complex. A Corporate Cabal run from inside the Pentagon’s walls set up to both build weapons of mass destructions and then repair the damage done by them. The astronomical expense of war, at last count $100,000 dollars a minute in maintenance fees seems paltry when you consider the estimated 37,000 corporations who have their hands in the till and are growing fat on the blood and bones of widows, orphans and soldiers piling up in mass graves strewn throughout the desert. An oasis of death and destruction.

A war which has utterly demolished the separation of church and state, is operating secret prisons across the globe, grants immunity to mercenaries and has turned America into a Police State whose own citizens are now under siege. A war in continuum, orchestrated by an arrogant pig-headed son of a military father whose status as head cop at the CIA lead him to believe that America has a divine duty to police the planet as his Soldiers of Christ commit whole sale slaughter in effort to push forth judgment day. Oh closer my God to thee! Holy War! Holy War!

I pity the fool who prays for life everlasting. I want my taste of Heaven and I want it now. I realize that at any moment I could become the next victim of this war without end. And Heaven to me would mean dying with a smile on my face, screwing a half a dozen returning amputee Iraqi war veterans. Hell, somebody’s gotta take care of the vets. Their own government sure as shit won’t. America has over 200,000 homeless veterans of war. Men tossed to the streets and forced to fend for themselves when they were no longer useful as mercenary cogs on the wheel of the world’s greatest killing machine; suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, tricked into a war and conned by doublespeak into believing that fighting will bring peace, domination will bring freedom, and that your Uncle Sam will take care of you after you’ve risked life and limb to safe guard his superiority complex.

We inhabit this vast potential Utopia, which is being destroyed by its abusers. Man has created a hell on earth, turning the world into a ghetto, a slaughterhouse, a refugee camp, an orphanage, a sweatshop, a bomb factory, a land mine, a shooting gallery, an insane asylum, a toxic dump. And the way I see it Mother Nature is getting pretty pissed off. Earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, mudslides, hurricanes, droughts, monsoons, famine. She is becoming more violent against the men who cause her violence.

And maybe after all, violence is only natural. All Creation bears the molecular memory of a terrible explosion of electricity, energy, matter and motion. A violent eruption of white light and white heat. Violence was the first act of creation. THE BIG BANG. Chaos is the law of Nature; it is the score upon which reality is written. Or to quote Mussolini “Blood alone moves the wheels of history.” Same as it ever was.

War is an incurable virus, forever mutating, that travels the globe feeding on man’s fears, spreading panic and terror, violence and death, which until we find a vaccine that finally inoculates the entire population against stupidity, arrogance, aggression and blind faith, we will be forced to forever repeat like stunted victims of Orwell’s Memory Hole.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lydia Lunch is an art terrorist who has been confronting apathy and kicking its fucking teeth in for the past three decades.

Banned Books and the Election

Maybe the only thing I'll say about politics... [via technoccult]



There’s a bogus list of books that Palin wanted banned making the rounds on the internet these past few days. In reality the books listed were taken from a site listing books that were once banned in the United States. And while the list is clearly disinformation at its finest, it at least brings attention to the fact that Palin attempted to fire a librarian after inquiring into banning some books from the library. According to Anne Kilkenny who has known Palin since ’92:

“While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.”

This poses a threat to the liberty of writers, book lovers, publishers, and libraries everywhere in the country. This means that it’s extremely important to put additional emphasis on this year’s “Banned Books Week-Celebrating the Freedom to Read” (Sept. 27-Oct. 4). Spread the word…

That is Not Dead which can Eternal Lie

"But Carter preferred to look at them than at his captors, which were indeed shocking and uncouth black beings with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns that curved inward toward each other, bat-wings whose beating made no sound, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with, but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of night-gaunts."
-H. P. Lovecraft, from "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"

When I was a kid I always found myself drawn to exploring the many drawers and cabinets that seemed to multiply through the floors of our home, in particular I was always attracted to one low drawer filled with paperback novels , many of them pulp romances and mysteries but including a boxed set of the tales of H. P. Lovecraft, the master of the so-called "cosmic horror" genre. While considered by many to be racist, pulp trash, so that some libraries are only now including him in their collections, Lovecraft also spawned legions of cultural references from his invented Cthulhu mythos, from metal songs to tentacle porn to even lolthulhus.



While Lovecraft's horror often featured incomprehensible monstrosities from outside time and space, which though he claimed to have invented may bear a rather striking semblance to the demons of Assyrian mythology, I was always most struck by Lovecraft's brand of psychological horror. What made his writing frightening was not the visions of cosmic horrors but the impending madness these suggestions of extra-planar reality created in his characters. Most exemplary of this is his tale "At the Mountains of Madness," which is currently in production for a movie version by Guillermo del Toro. Reading Lovecraft's work as a child was one of the few times in my life where I could clearly see the boundaries of what I was capable of reading (or comprehending without going mad), and it was almost like a badge of honor when I finally tackled my favorite Lovecraft tale, (and his only novel) "The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath," in which his most stable hero Randolph Carter journeys through the most fantastic renditions of the sleeping mind accompanied by an army of cats and zombies.

The Myth of the Green Fairy

"An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe — the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity — may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur's supposed mind-altering effects.



The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof." [via Disinfo]

For some reason this doesn't strike me as being that surprising at all, considering that plain old alcohol has been one of the most common and harshest muses to artists of all times. Wormwood on the other hand has been used medicinally since the time of the Greeks, and it seems that the desire to believe in the mind altering effects of the plant may have been due to the temperance movement, which, in a move similar to the modern American War on Drugs' demonization of marijuana, attempted to paint what was an otherwise cheap and ubiquitous drink as a dangerous and maddening substance. Which all signs point to alcohol being anyway, regardless of if it's green or not. I wonder on the other hand what absinthe's connection might be to the mention of wormwood in the Book of Revelations as a poisonous falling star.

[Edit: Since getting clean I've become quite fascinated by the mystique of drugs, not necessarily their psycho-physical effects but the bizarre subcultures and paraphernalia that accrue to perpetuate the use of certain chemicals. For instance on one of my sojourns on the West Coast I stumbled across a small enclave of "absinthe fiends," who were not emulating Baudelaire et al., but were emulating the media copies of Baudelaire- that is, they all dressed like the Disney version of the Mad Hatter, wore skull rings, smoked clove cigarettes, and drank lots of absinthe. It was really quite humorous, in a sad confused kind of way.]

Dream and Dementia

"From that moment on I devoted myself to trying to find the meaning of my dreams, and this anxiety influenced my waking thoughts. I seemed to understand that there was a bond between the external and internal worlds: that only inattention of spiritual confusion distorted the outward affinities between them, - and this explained the strangeness of certain pictures, which are like grimacing reflections of real objects on a surface of troubled water." -Nerval, from "Aurélia"

In 1854 Gérard de Nerval, the French Romantic poet most famous for walking a lobster on a leash through the streets of Paris, was ordered by his doctor to record the series of fantastic visions and hallucinations he was having during a bout of mental insanity caused by his obsession with an actress he called Aurélia.



This document of dreams, dementia, and spiritual longing, subtitled "Life and the Dream," was considered foundational by such artists and writers as the Surrealists, Marcel Proust, and Joseph Cornell, and was hailed as a masterpiece of fantastic imagery. In his critique of the fantastic as a literary genre, Tzvetan Todorov continually turns to Nerval's "Aurelia" as exemplary of both syntactic and semantic techniques for articulating the essential ambiguity (near magic) of our perceptions of reality. Throughout this mostly autobiographical story, Nerval or the narrator finds himself and other people doubled, causality is called into a synchronistic question when putting on a ring begins a mass and throwing that same ring away stops a ferocious storm, and hosts of angels and gods recreate all of reality before the narrator's eyes. In order to stress the utter subjectivity and ambiguity of these scenes, Nerval uses a literary device that anyone who writes down their dreams may be familiar with: sentences are modified by phrases like "it seemed that," "I imagined myself," "I felt," "for some reason," each time putting into question the reality of what seems to be occurring for the narrator. This ambiguity is further intensified by the narrator's use of dream sequences, which he not only claims help explain the visions he just had, but further become seemingly real experiences in their own right. In particular the narrator dreams of an angel, first sculpted out of the actress he desires, who in turn gets projected onto every other woman he meets in the story, each of whom he thinks is that now dead actress.

While these scenes and devices certainly make for a magical read, and if they were actually dreamt by Nerval then a rather fantastic experience, but I'm not quite convinced that they add up to a full narrative, or that they produce the fantastic effect of a hesitation on the reader's part as to whether the events may actually be happening. Though the narrator seems slightly unsure that what he dreamt may be true, and despite the lucidity of the narration, he is much more likely to tell the reader that he is dreaming, that he is indeed going crazy. Several times throughout "Aurélia" the narrator is locked up in mental institutions, which frames the fantastic events in such a way that we are never led to believe that they are anything but the workings of a demented (although spiritually romantic) mind. These visions may spill out into the narrator's life and interactions with other characters, but never in such a way that these other characters are also led to believe the visions are true, which would make them much more believably ambiguous. Similarly, the narrative chooses to focus so much of its attention around the bizarre content of the visions that we loose what may have been the more important story behind them. We are told briefly about the narrator's obsession with Aurélia, but the rest of the manuscript is solely dreams and madness, through which the reader might look at their watch from time to time saying "well you're dreaming and mad, so what?" What might have been more interesting, and possibly more gripping, would have been to document that decline between sanity and insanity, how these visions played off against the normal content of a man's life. This draws on another important aspect of fantastic or magical literature, which is that they have to establish a stronger reality first before stepping out of that reality. Nerval however assumes that his readers know the world he lives in and the everyday content of his thoughts.

There is however a rather touching and realistic moment at the end of the story, which more then, or almost, makes up for the dérive of the narrator's visions. While locked in a hospital the narrator befriends a man in a torpor or coma who slowly awakens seemingly because of the narrator's attention. When asked why he won't eat, the man says that he is in hell, which causes the narrator to reflect on his own thought processes and outlandish beliefs throughout the rest of the story. Though the narrator ultimately refuses to give up his own convictions, this scene raises that subtle point that each of us can contain such bizarrely subjective worlds of dream and dementia, which we must articulate in whatever manner we can.

scene and veneration

[Published by Encyclopedia Destructica]

David's dead. her voice has taken on an edge of older and I know it's never going back. he's been fading for awhile and just sort of faded away all together. We all thought he'd die years ago, that all the drugs would finally kill him. Maybe they still did. At least he didn't overdose. I'm so sorry mom, how are you handling this? I'm... I'm okay. I miss my brother. It's okay that he's dead, you know? What hurts is not having him around anymore. The funeral's saturday if you can come down for that, but if not, I understand. I hope you're doing okay, I know you always are.

Yeah, I'm okay. history just slipped a little bit, but it does that. I remember watching David play guitar, his arm was broken then, or his spirit, and he was just coming out of one rehab program before the binge that would really knock him down. I don't even know what his fix was anymore. Coke, booze, weed, life? It doesn't matter. I was young and mesmerized by his fingers plucking away at the nylon strings and thought to myself, I can do that. I got my first guitar that next birthday, but I never got to play it for him. Though I guess, every time I play, it's for him. Because I'm still young and full of life and not crushed by drugs and society. refuse to die under the thumb. God it must have been hard being one of the true hippies and seeing the world set up to fulfill all your dreams of love and peace and happy endings and then to have it crash down into modern capitalism and war machines, punk rock the funeral dirge to the age of light, the clarion call to the apocalypse.

The house is filling up slowly, and Matty's getting anxious that we should play before it gets too late and the neighbors consider calling the cops. Stacking up amps inside the small garage and a rudimentary sound check nervous shifting. I played some pinball earlier to work up my endorphins and was ready as I'd ever be. Always ready. You can't second guess just getting up there. I didn't cut off a finger at work, and the cops drove by without stopping, so nothing can stop it now. So they pack in and we tear into it offkilter and hesitant, by the third song have built up enough momentum to really rock out. slow building blues. reality ends in the feedback and I'm floating through it, burning the high notes and banging my head off the carpet. Ecstasy. Nothing else matters. all the politics and evasions. love, dreams, highs, heartbreaks, anyone. I succumb and music rides me.

Afterwards Spat says, well, your band's official, but I can't answer. playing out hits harder than any hallucinogen and language makes no more sense. I'm riding off the coffee and alcohol and smoke, standing by the keg with no clue how anyone can just stand there and talk. Dana curls up that was incredible. all I can do is smile and nod and give myself to the evening. The more people there are at a party the less I can talk to any of them. Not antisocial, but overwhelmed, sensory integration dysfunction acting up again, all the talk just builds around me, every conversation happening at once, blurs into the chirping of birds and a general howling. who needs drugs when sensation is already so immediate? I drink anyway and run back into the garage to dance to Fangs of the Panda, my whole body following Mike's fingers on the strings, making sure they play their Eno cover for the few who actually care to listen at this point.

get swept inside between sets, all the punks and posturing. Too much stimulation. This has all happened countless times before in different variations of frivolity. Lay on Lorraine's bed with Dana and Joy in my arms. Continue the obliteration. Brad has set up his lights up in Lacy's room and is documenting the evening in portrait shot shoutouts. I drag Dana up there for a shot, but she's nervous until Nikki says I hate it when beautiful people won't get their picture taken. we pose, she asks me to kiss her on the cheek. Then Nikki and I grab Carry and Joe and we do some band photos, laughing and thuggish and that was the shot. the memory of the times. no matter what happens, where this band goes where we go, we can look back at this photo and say we were there. Two shows under the belt and ready to take on the world. always ready to take it on.

Pony Pants takes it on, rearing up in the backlights and shaking the floorboards. Lorraine grabs me, there you are, now get over here and do your thing. get over here and dance. I dance. It's the next best thing to playing. Riding the soundwaves shaking out the soul. I think of that Dead Milkmen lyric "you dance to anything." I do, if there's a shred of passion and a solid rhythm. It's either that or be bored and critical of everything, and where does that get you? I wander out, ruing the needs of the bladder and belly, and end up upstairs heckling the snotty young punks to front for the camera. Stop to consider, I've accomplished everything and can barely stand up. Looks like it's time to go home.

But not yet. Alexis calls, she was there earlier but I was so swept in the music and madness to pay much attention. she wants to come pick me up. let me do this? I feel bad about how I treated you the other day and I think if I come get you we can go lay down together and be quiet and you'll understand. I say no. but why? because I want to go home and puke and pass out. by myself. but why? she whines and keeps repeating that line, like banging your head off a wall will change your opinions. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. aren't you supposed to get over that when you're young? what is wrong with society? I remain adamant. Why? because that's what I want. But I don't think you know what you want. That does it. Where do these people come from? My imagination. Listen, don't tell me I don't know what I want, this is what I want. I know you want me to bow to your will, but I won't. Just days ago you told me you wanted to destroy me, and maybe that was just the solar eclipse or your fears talking, but you tried and I came out of it stronger then ever and knowing just what makes me happy and keeps me going, and if I go with you now that will really destroy all that. So no. I don't particularly like being set on fire ...but why? back to square one. I don't think you're listening here. I'm sorry but that's it. why why why?

click.

the word still echoes after the connection's severed. it's written on everyone's faces buzzing in the drunk haze. that's it, that's the horror, the sucking, the eternal need to find satisfaction. that hollow spot in the gut that nothing quite fills, no drug love toy, money memory or civilization. all the need to not feel empty and alone. what's your fix? does it fall flat? look around and all the needs pulling everyone from their bellies into the howling, stuck in the grooves of the record the scratched habits of our parents. we are here partying against the night, decadence dancing on the edge, the end of all meaning all future. this is all there is left. A crumbled masque binging itself into oblivion. I laugh and step out the door.

The alley is unbearably quiet after all the noise. I adjust and there are birds in it, the call of the jungle, the faint rushing of traffic like a distant river, peace. I sway in it, stumble up against someone's steps and breathe for a bit, wondering if I could bottle up that feeling and drink it whenever I forget the simple beauties of just being here. yesterday's rainbow made the front page like it was the most important news to report. for a moment it seemed like everything was right and made sense. bear up and throw on some mental armor for the main drag, but it's empty too. all the dealers caught wind of the major bust about to go down up here. all the cops and cameras around and it's scary to walk on the street anymore. if you have something to hide or hold onto. i have nothing but my drunken feet and a big grin. so what if they stopped me nights ago and told me if I didn't want any trouble I'd get off the street? so what if I'm white in the wrong part of town? This is my home too. my streets, my city, my life. You can't be guilty for existing. You can't let them make you live in fear. It's a power struggle, and if you accept the game, you've already lost and have to fill your needs in all the prescribed options and opinions. That's what ultimately defeated my uncle. the fear just builds up and builds up and if you don't get it out of your guts however possible it will reach up through them and strangle you. he sold his guitar to buy a bag some year past, and the rest was just inevitable fading. it's always the end of the world for someone.

I know I can't pass out until I get it out of my system. I know I'm not satisfied with my day unless I look all my fears in the face and laugh. that's why I continually put myself in these impossible situations. There are rituals for this sort of thing. writing, playing guitar, howling at the moon, running forever in the streetlights. tonight I pray to the porcelain and with a quick finger flick let out all the poisons until the world stops spinning and settles with heads up. What did I accomplish? I lived. and will live again tomorrow and the next till there are no more tomorrows left. the specific events just garnish that feeling. I lived.

end of record. the faint center scritching soothes me to sleep.

sounds like schizophrenia to me

"I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"
-George Bush, june '03

prepared for the worst

I posted this on Key23 the other day, but for some reason, the site has fallen off the far edge of the hinternet, so I'm's repostin it here (and there may be a bit o' that for a bit)

Pre-Apocalypse Preparedness Manual
or The World’s Ending and All I’ve got left is this Stupid Towel

(All right’s reversed, please copy and redistribute)

Throughout history many cultures have claimed that the world is going to end, but look at the headlines today: The world is already ending! Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, wars in the Holy Land, rioting in the streets, devastation of the environment and the end of unrenewable resources, power outages, etc… You may not be in the middle of these disasters, you may not even believe they’re really happening, but here we are, the 21st century and the beginning of the end of the world.

Our purpose in writing this manual is not to be scaremongers, the last thing we want you to do in the face of imminent social environmental economic collapse is hide cowering in your basement or pretend that nothing is actually going on. As shit gets worse, and it very likely will, and our own illusions of security and stability are stripped away, the best thing we can do is be ready for the worst. Possibly nothing will happen, but even more likely it will be like nothing we could ever expect. So on that note, we give you the PAPM.

Before you do anything else, remember the catchwords of the infamous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic! If you want to keep your head above the water (quite literally) then don’t forget it. The end of the world will be quite frightening and there are a few simple things you can do to keep from freezing up or going insane.

Breathe. Regular deep breathes supply oxygen to the brain and prevent shock and panic and allow for clear thinking, especially if you feel the tightness of the Horror welling up in your chest.
Be informed, but not too informed. It’s good to know what’s going on, you don’t want to get caught unawares in a surprise military lockdown, but you also don’t want to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the disasters. Read useful newsclips pertaining to your local area/ escape routes, but stop gawking over those pictures of dead bodies and burning buildings.

Face your fears. This is hard, really hard. Fear is the mind killer, but fear does not in itself exist. Not to say that these disasters and things you are afraid of don’t exist, they certainly do, but the more they happen or the closer you get to them, the easier it becomes to see there are just concrete actions that can be taken in each moment to get through the situation instead of panicking. Focus on these and not the bigger picture and you will survive.

Be prepared. That old boy scout motto never was so apt as when you might have to flee a hurricane or gang of rioters at a moment’s notice. Start planning now so you have the skills and tools you’ll need to survive no matter what happens. And remember, be ready to go, don’t worry so much about school, your career, car payments, etc… these won’t mean too much when you’re on the road or in the woods.

Basic first-aid/ wilderness and urban survival skills. You should know how to dress wounds, give CPR, etc… in case you or anyone you encounter gets hurt and there is no other medical attention available. Also know the basics of what plants are edible or medicinal in your locality, how to build a fire and shelter, how to skin an animal for food (even if you’re a vegetarian or can’t hunt, there’s always road kill when you’re starving), the best routes to leave the city, and stores that could be “looted” for supplies along the way.

Yoga/ martial arts. Yoga is important for relaxation and staying healthy. It keeps your body limber and mind clear. Martial arts should speak for themselves. It’s necessary to be able to defend yourself from panicking civilians no matter if you’re armed or not. You could (and should) carry a knife, but keep in mind that when a knife is drawn in combat both parties are likely going to get cut. And then you’ll have more wounds to deal with.

Escape plan/ network. Know how you’re going to get out of the disaster area. Determine somewhere safe to go, or several possible locations around the country or world. Talk to your friends and neighbors to work out details of how to help each other escape. Stay in contact and rehearse evacuation drills. That way you know someone’s got your back and will make sure you don’t get lost or killed.

Escape kit. If you have to flee suddenly, make sure you have all you might need already ready and in an accessible place. Think about essentials, pack light, and make sure in advance you can carry your pack comfortably and securely. Make sure to wrap any items you don’t want to get wet in plastic and put in the middle of your sleep sack. Also, forget all those useless valuables, either liquidate them now or move them to your safe zone in advance, including pets. If you have important information/ work documents, move it, memorize it, and back it up on hard copy and multiple web servers (though there’s no guarantee the net won’t fail either). Some things to consider packing:

good frame pack, sleeping bag and ground mat, matches/ flint and tender, non-perishable food, knife (tool and protection), leatherman, maglite, towel, rainproof/ warm sturdy clothing, good walking boots, small spiritual or inspirational text, maps (local and national) with marked routes, compass, notebook with pens, cell phone (if still in service), contact information, ID passport and other important documents, edible plant guide, first aid kit, seeds, money (no guarantee will still be worth anything, but have cash just in case).

other things to consider: gas mask, ear plugs, side arms, flares, small tent, deck of cards, inflatable raft, etc…

Survive! This is your objective. Not looting plasma tvs, not shooting cops and rescue vehicles, not being a hero (though these circumstances may arise), but staying alive. As cold as it sounds, selfie comes first, though survival is much more likely if you have other people to rely on. Make sure you’re prepared, not just to leave town but to start a completely new life somewhere else. Make sure you have or can get food and shelter, even if the grid or economic supply chains collapse. Get off the system as much as possible now so you’re used to having to live in desperate situations. Ride a bike, exercise, talk to your neighbors for information, establish communities that can take care of themselves. Learn to farm, sew, etc… If you end up in a small rural community after the collapse, make sure the members can supply their own food, healthcare, entertainment, skill shares, etc… DIY and sustainability are key. Don’t be afraid to be alone however, or to make new and unexpected friends.

We’re all in this together. Don’t forget it. When people get afraid they close off and take care of just themselves, at the expense of everyone around them. Look at Nola, looters shooting each other and downing rescue helicopters. But the reality is we’re all dealing with that same problem of survival. If disaster occurs on a global level this is crucially important for us to recognize. The Earth is a small planet in the middle of space, and we don’t have off world colonies. If things really turn to shit we have nowhere else to go, and so human survival depends on us not killing each other off for basic needs or to take control of whatever’s left, since we’ve already given up on taking care of our environment. When encountering other victims, especially if they appear to be dangerous (madmen and the military) but not immediately hostile, don’t pick fights but remind them of being in the same sinking ship. Ask how you can help them and if they can help you. In the event of a national crises, please ignore all ineffective collective and governmental institutions, they’re just individual people trying to survive too.

Perhaps most immediately important: Have fun. If you’re already prepared and not in any immediate danger, then keep living your life as passionately as possible. Don’t ignore the potential situation but don’t let it consume you either. Go to shows, get drunk, make art and love, continue doing those things that are necessary and important for you to feel you’re leading a solid and satisfying existence. If these are truly the last days, work and school are completely unimportant, but do what you have to do to get by. Use this as an opportunity to get out there and talk to people, find out what’s going on and make new connections in your community. Travel to find new safe spots and to get used to being on the road. If there’s anything you’ve ever wanted to do but were putting off till later, do it! Now is the time to live your wildest dreams.

Proactive measures, are also immediately important towards building a better future after the collapse (and potentially staving it off!). Inform yourself and others about what’s going on and how you can take control of your own lives. Campaign for alternate fuel sources, establish networks of compassionate and dedicated individuals working towards sustainable models of living. Be aware of how your actions (especially what you consume) might be adding to the world’s burdens and not be afraid to suggest to others how they are behaving. Copy and distribute this zine so others can be prepared.

And remember, keep loving, keep laughing, keep fighting. I don’t know about you, but I like being alive.

the end of the real

So instead of working or sweating, I spent all day (literally the last nine hours!) compiling my diverse writings from the past half a year, creating what is now over a hundred pages of articles, rants, ramblings, and poems detailing my experiences and experiments with living in a magical world view, as Alberto keeps on asking me to print out my writings. Yet again it is surreal going back through my life and seeing how I've changed, what I've forgotten, what I finally learned. What is important enough to be included. Like I am downloading all the good bits of my life and burning the rest. I've drunk too much coffee and stared at this screen for so long that it has created an invisible and unbreachable wall between me and the rest of the world. I am sitting at the quiet storm but I could be on mars there's so much distance between me and those who walk a foot from the table. And I've got the shakes again, this slight tremor in my muscles as if they ae picking out all the subtle vibrations and amplifying them. No I don't think it's the caffeine, it's been like this all week, along with the head rushes where the world disintegrates around me. Eh, I hope I haven't broken myself with all the psychic breakthroughs. I can turn streetlamps and computers and other electronic devices on and off psychicly but I feel like I am a nervous wreck.

while reading through this file I found myself in one of the most intense cases of deja vu I've had in a long time. I was reading these words and then I saw Alberto reading them and sharing them with Sarah, and knew that I had had that vision shortly after I met her, here in this very spot. And that the people who are at the next table are there, from the vision, and then that person comes in and that one... It is passing now, but I feel like if I could stand it I could have followed that train of visions inward, moment after moment unfolding dreamlike, the future and past and present of this writing and its effects on the world, and those effects' effects and onward. Like a stone causing ripples and I am looking down and seeing all of them colliding in the waters of time. I could let myself go into that right now, but I would probably faint in the process and scare the shit out of everyone here, but it would be so easy. And I think I see where that place is to get back to it. Brrr, I'm giving myself chills. It's like when I located the sciptorum (the record of all things) and realized I could conceivably know all of it if that revelation didn't kill me first. Or when I first realized the connection to all at the back of our heads but wasn't ready to let myself go into it as my ego was still too strong and it would drive me insane. But I learned to do it, and can now and still come back without fear. But here I know I am still not yet ready, or the world isn't ready. Standing on the brink of all this power, looking over the edge at infinity, wondering if I should jump...

It feels like the Universe is holding a knife to my chest and threatening to throw me in if I don't do it myself.

So long...

illusions of madness

I haven't been posting much here this week. Along with the spring I have been in an extended state of euphoria that makes reflection difficult and analyzation near impossible. It also doesn't help that I've been working on my hypersigil regularly. When ever I'm writing a story it is my life, it's world is my world, even if that isn't exactly the world my body is in. And worse, I can't look at any other text without reading them as the lines in my head, or as fodder and inspiration for that plot. But most of all I've just been feeling wholly ecstatic, in a way that far surpasses my usual manic states.

It was probably with some fortuition that Metachor posted the Hedonistic Imperative, which is a clarion call to genetically engineer suffering out of our systems and bring out a golden eon of total bliss. Within the first section it mentions that the bi-polar disorder manic state is one of the few instances today where people experience such prolonged euphoria, and goes on to characterise it is as "accompanied by hyperactivity, sleeplessness, chaotically racing ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose thought. Hyper-sexuality, financial excesses and religious delusions are common. So is rampant egomania. Sometimes dysphoria may occur. In dysphoric mania the manic "high" is actually unpleasant. The excited subject may be angry, agitated, panicky, paranoid, and destructive. When in the grip of classic euphoric mania, however, it's hard to recognise that anyone might think anything is wrong. This is because everything feels utterly right. To suppose otherwise is like going to Heaven and then being invited to believe there has been a mistake. It's not credible. "

That about sums up my recent high exactly, but without the finances to use to excess. Everything feels utterly right, not perfect by far, but really damn good. And it was a long time coming. As bi-polar disorder runs in our family it would be easy to say that I'm just reaching an all-time peak in my manic cycle, but I would like to think that I am just learning how to raise the threshold of enjoyment all together. Maybe that's a delusion and it will all come crashing back down when the wave collapses back into depression, I know it would already be so easy for it to do so. I suppose that's where the magic comes in, to hold the whole charade up and make it work against all odds.

Personally I am still not convinced that these extreme states are just in my head, that they are not reflections of the cycles in the world and my life, even down to the daily cycles of eating and sleep, which perhaps have the most direct effect on my mood. My last major depression occured shortly after 9-11, and lasted through two years of being broke, directionless, and in a terrible relationship. And there's too much feedback to tell whether the situation or my mood were the cause of the other. But it was a low to come out of, and I certainly thought I was going mad through a lot of it. Luckily my caring psychologist friends turned me on to R. D. Laing who claims madness is just a response to our insane society, and Casatenda who asks why anyone would want to be sane in the first place and what can we do to get out. I could say that I just feel these cycles more intensely than other people, that my genetic pre-disposition makes me somehow more receptive to them for better or worse. If life is a record mine has deep grooves (or a precision needle). Except I want> to feel the extremes at this point, and after years of trying to dull my senses and dampen the overload of experience, including the highs which had always been few and far between, I am beginning to suspect that there is something really powerful in being able to bear all of it.

Well, it's far past a suspicion at this point. I know I'm pushing my limits here, but I'm curious to see if I can sustain this euphoric "mania" further, if I can manage a controlable level to function without crashing. Riding society's flatline consciousness is hard from the edges of the spectrum.

In the Realms of the Real

Last night I saw In the Realms of the Unreal, and it was incredibly inspiring. The story of outsider artist, Henry Darger, who lived as a recluse for most of his life and after his death his landlords found he had produced a 15,000 page novel fully illustrated about the world that he lived in in his head, filled with whimsical creatures and an eternal world war over child slavery, constructed from newspaper images collected through his lifetime. What a fascinating look at how the sometimes small experiences in a person's life can build up into an epic internal story. And at how the need to express that becomes all-consuming.

Fucking intense. Makes me feel like the work I've been doing is nothing. Of course I don't live in complete isolation from the rest of humanity, but still, it makes me want to throw out all the ideas I have for my next five novels and just start from scratch, clean and honest and fully intimate about the life I live where no one else sees. Already I hint at it, but that is nothing compared to what it could be. And even that is just hints. 15,000 pages, damn. As inspiring as this is, I am still more concerned with uniting my waking life with the world of my dreams than opting out of living all together to pursue some all-consuming internal vision. I still maintain that my life is my art, even if I am still coming into a full realization of just what that means. It takes a lifetime of practice, and I'm still young, but I fully belive that anything is possible.

Perhaps my favorite quote from the movie was when one of his neighbors was saying that they called poor artists like this crazy, and rich ones eccentric, and since Henry was poor they called him crazy. At least I have some close friends to support me in my own aesthetic madness.

the pre-apocalypse blues

The sun is shining, and even though there’s still an underlying chill in the air it finally feels like one of the first days of spring. Yet in my heart I feel the icy fingers of another case of the pre-apocalypse blues. Maybe it’s all the recent killings, the lack of restful sleep, all the talk of danger on Key23, or the flocks of crows (who will ever be an omen for me of secret and fearsome worlds to come). But I again feel the pull of that hyperliminal headspace where every event seems portentous, and the world seems fraught with a sense of immediacy and peril that needs to be addressed before everything goes up in flames. I suppose the biggest factor right now might actually be all the work I’ve been doing recently to gain access to the deeps of the subconscious, a technique best framed in light of Castaneda’s idea of the assemblage point. In "The Art of Dreaming" the fictional shaman Don Juan tells Castaneda that our perception of reality is a fixed position of the assemblage point, that part of our etheric body where the chaos of experiences gets interpreted into a functional reality. The magical use is in recognizing that our "normalized" view of reality is only one position among infinite interpretations, and that one can learn to shift the assemblage point to interpret a host of other realities where the magician can access powers and insights unavailable or unknown in the normal position.

I haven’t been so interested (yet) in accessing other realities as in the first step of breaking the fixed position of the assemblage point to experience the flow of world itself unfiltered by any analytical interpretation (a technique Castaneda calls Stopping the World, and claims is necessary before creating any new magical world-view). The result of this is a pandemonium of impressions and influences, a flux of potentially meaningful connections unhampered by any previous subjective placement, the metafilter of consciousness stripped bare to reveal the inchoate host of movements that underlie everything. The lines of the world, as they say. The subconscious is not a personal phenomenon but the collective medium for experience, accessing it dips the veil of individuality into the sea of the total, so it comes up dripping with meanings, images, and insights that the individual could not have assembled alone. Little bits of other people’s lives, hints of other realities of time and space clinging like shipwrecked children to the only sturdy piece of flotsam for miles around.

In doing this I have found much of beauty; ideas and dreams full of wonder and mystery and hope that I am still trying to express (through poetry, art, music, spells, and long chaotic ramblings) in order to inspire others and turn them in to the magic and power of this erisian dream-realm. But I have also encountered ontological horrors, fears both personal and collective, glimpses of possible dystopic futures that I for one would not like to see become "real", if they are not already becoming so. Most predominately the threat of global annihilation that seems eminent even in the most lucid of waking states. If you have eyes to see and a heart to feel it is near impossible to not be aware of the coming breakdown of the western mono-civilization and its potential to bring down the rest of the world with it. All it would take is one nuke… or just a continued neglect of the environment that sustains us and makes life on Earth possible.

Over the fall and early winter I was feeling the pre-apocalypse blues something fierce, to the point of nearly falling into abject apophenic madness. I had not yet since my ontological shipwreck and existential reawakening of the summer found solid ground, or the right strokes to swim through the awesome chaos I had opened myself into. Who would have thought total connection to all beings could be such a terrifying thing? One could drown in the waves of implication without the cybernetic steering wheel of a clear-cut metaphysical assemblage (world-view), and I had none. And in the flungness of that confusion where everything is prophetic, my age-old nemesis, the Prophecy of Armageddon, reared its ugly head, forcing me to take some stand. I’ve been studying cultural tales of "the end of the world" since I learned to read, and as long as that future remains a possibility I have to stay sane enough to work towards a brighter future, regardless if the task is mine or if I have the power to change anything. Where there is fear, there is an opportunity for hope.

Recently I read Starhawk’s "The Fifth Sacred Thing," which is itself a prophetic vision of a future of total state control and a small but hopeful group of people who use magic and the joy of interconnectivity to overcome it (incidentally, though this book was recently published it fails to recognize the impact modern technology is already having on the direction of the future, something I feel any realistic prophecy or future-fiction needs to take into account; but that’s another story all-together). Although this story steers away from that of a nuclear apocalypse, it does raise several good points about the nature of prophecy, which while self-fulfilling is still an extension of our hopes and fears. And is thus intentionally directable. Starhawk’s characters talk often about keeping themselves in the "Good Reality," that head space of positive thinking where no matter what terrors you’re facing if you expect the Universe to respond with goodwill it will, and the smallest of positive events feeds back on itself and brings more positive events into being. Hope as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The inverse is obviously the "Bad Reality" where, like Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and will continue to do so in a spiral of disaster until death begins to look like a better option than waiting for whatever tragedy will happen next.

Of course in "real life" the karmic implications of this are much subtler and intertwined, and one person’s hopes and fears get expressed all mixed up with everyone else’s so it’s hard to tell just where one prophecy leaves off and the next begins. But every little bit helps, a single moment of joy shifts the whole tide of the subconscious just a bit in that direction. So now whenever I feel my imagination seduced by the fears of the dystopic nightmare and I start prophesying the apocalypse, I remind myself to stay in the "Good Reality" and go out and spread positive actions and ideas of hope in whatever small way I can.