on the edge of disaster

The state of the world? It is on the brink of disaster

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

The report does not make jolly reading. The academics found that two-thirds of the delicately-balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.

[via infoshop.org]

open source existence

[…?]

run osref.exe

[refreshing OS layers…]
[accessing first harmonic]
[…]
[physical host active… bio-survival mechanisms online… signal reception strong]
[running sonic EM test… red frequency… 4 c]
[environmental base established]
[…]
[motor responses optimized… domain boundaries upgraded… gravitational signature normalized]
[orange… 6 d]
[e-motive axis aligned]
[…]
[reloading symbol-plexus… conceptual overlay integrated… space-time coordinates defined]
[yellow…10 e]
[identity center confirmed]
[…]
[reloading social protocols… relational structures organized… connectivity enhanced]
[green…12 f]
[network hub open]

[functional layers operational… continue OS refresh?]

yes

[accessing second harmonic]
[…]
[creative host active… sensory reception upgraded… input-output cycles harmonized]
[blue…16 g]
[feedback loop established]
[…]
[reloading meme-nexus… imaginal display structures online… EM-tunnel vision optimized]
[violet… 192 a]
[psychic transceiver tuned]
[…]
[reloading akashic session records… morphogenetic agent-type identified… upgraded to star-class mythos-maker]
[white… 1’000 b]
[meta-gate halo open]
[…]
[non-local quantum accessed… cosmic filter applied… channeling godform ILU]
[black… 0 C… full spectrum test complete]
[attempting energy transference… press esc to abort]

esc

[…]

[attempt failed: user error… retry?]

no

[operations systems running at 7 layers… connect?]

yes

[…]

["Welcome back Mr. Johnson to Organic Technologies’ Matrix-class Reality® 4232-20. Your current operational layer grants you 7th level avatar representation and access to the wetwork, including rewrite capabilities. Please refrain from rewriting key threads of the code and deprogramming other agents. We are watching you.

Your absence from 4232 (Earth Prime) exceeded your provided limits of 0 nano-moments, and was duly noted by the right channels on reentry. Expect a visitation soon to discuss pending termination of service.

Enjoy the rest of your stay in 4232-20, and please check out our full line of Matrix-class and Pattern-class Realities® for your next incorporation. Send for a full catalogue today! Organic Technologies, Making Worlds Collide™]

[Would you care to see the menu Mr. Johnson?]

no

[…?]

open eyes

[opening]

[…]

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.

illuminated blueprints #1

This is the first in what might be a series of illuminated blueprints; watercolor pencil drawn on stolen technical drawings from abandoned factories. Any metaphysical concepts portrayed within are engineered by your own imagination.

so there's this archetypal clubhouse...

I just posted my first article to Everday Avatar called On the Outskirts of Edge City, which talks about struggling to live in the "normal world" while living my personal mythology as a shaman-warrior at the end of time. Enjoy!


On the Outskirts of Edge City

I live in two worlds. In the everyday world, I play a young "starving artist," struggling to live and create my writing and music and art in the belly of 21st Century corporate America. Even though I have anarchistic and bohemian leanings that place me on the edge or underground of consensus culture I am still a normal guy who works a day job, does his housemate’s dishes, goes out drinking and dancing with his friends on the weekends, and dreams of meeting a creative and compassionate woman to eventually settle down and raise a family with. Preferably after selling a couple novels to buy a house.

In the other world I am a shaman, a prophet, a warrior; an avatar of all that is good and intelligent and utterly bewildering in the Universe. In this position I know that the self and reality are merely convenient illusions to be juggled at will, and strive to use this to break humanity out of the dead end Western reality-tunnel and ease the transition into the Next, while hopefully avoiding a nuclear apocalypse in the process. This is the life of my dreams and personal mythos, and though it takes on near unbearable epic proportions, it is no less of an everyday reality then my "normal life." I am always wearing both masks.

Though these worlds exist simultaneously they are rarely compatible, except at night or at protests, and I often end up feeling like Superman, pretending that I am Clark Kent so I can get by in a world that just doesn’t believe in super heroes. From my experience I don’t imagine many people see or want to see their lives through such a mythic interpretation. Even crazy artist types can have a limited sense of the real. It takes too much strength and calls too many basic truths into question, and it’s already near impossible to eke out enough of a living to enjoy a few moments of freedom a year in the everyday reality. Why bother going through all that strain and near insanity of envisioning another?

For me the reasons are obvious. They might be for you too, but I can’t even say that much without getting frightened or pitying looks from even my closest friends (except for the few that face this dilemma in themselves). Sure, I can hang out at the local coffee shop and chat amiably about the weather, work, the latest bands and art projects, "even the state of the world these days" (as if the world and its wars weren’t here). But in my head the shaman-warrior frantically wants to grab people’s shoulders and shake them, screaming that they "can and have to take up their own power, now, because the war is here and it will take all our imaginations together to see its end." The words and spittle flying from my mouth like some deranged harbinger of doom and gloom. Occasionally I imagine putting on a dirty robe and standing on the street corner with a sandwich board that reads: "The End is Here!"

Not that people really pay much attention to such extreme tactics in the post-modern spectacle, but that certainly wouldn’t make it any easier to lead a normal life, and I have a hard enough time with that when I’m rational. Money and small talk just seem so irrelevant.

Another thing this role makes difficult is dating. I thought the last girl I was seeing had a similar enough world-view, but after building up enough trust to be able to share my pre-apocalyptic anxiety disorders with her she said it might be better off if I let myself just go mad, and that we probably shouldn’t be seeing each other (she was trying to get her life straight, I was trying to never do that again, and I wasn’t making things easier for her). Later she rewrote her memories of the relationship and decided we had never had anything to talk about in the first place, even though I distinctly remember many night-long conversations about magic, the spirit-world, and the necessity of changing the direction our world is headed. I didn’t know it was possible to drive someone sane, but it seems I did it.

Some days I just want to drop this other reality all together and go back to the ignorant bliss of the normal world where work and weather are the hardest things to worry about. But I can’t and wouldn’t even if I let myself have that option. Through the isolation and sense of impending doom that haunt my cloudier days, that deeper level contains such magic and beauty I could have never imagined had I not been there, and at this point makes my life worth living.

So I ask, how do the rest of you stay sane and functional in your everyday lives while still assuming the power and responsibility that comes with realizing your own avatarhood? Either I need to stop letting this dichotomy of worlds be a source of tension and anxiety and treat my internal god as the secret seed of hope and power I know it can be. Or I need to stop pretending that these worlds are separate at all, and start living as if real life shaman-warriors are precisely what society needs to inspire the realization that living within the mythic power of our dreams is possible every day.

what the bleep?

just so I can find a link to this article later, here is New Scientist's 13 Things that Do Not Make Sense.

What amuses me is that the article paints scientific theories as quick cover stories for our utter inability to really know what the fuck is going on. When it comes down to it, it's all still a mystery to even our world's best minds. Unlike a lot of people I know, I actually find this thought comforting.


and if that wasn't enough, here is Time Cube, a frighteningly funny affirmation of dualistic thinking. Read at the risk of your own singularity.

fulfill your own prophecies - we will make it to the other side

I decided that I was done being swept around by the waves and getting all emotional about the apocalypse, so after a few banashings and creating a good psychic shield against the West, I decided it's time to push back...

Humanity is facing a great shift right now, an unprecedented meta-system transition from the old evolutionary paradigm of survival of the fittest (fastest, fattest) to the new interconnected paradigm of "we are all in this together." This is the rise of the 5th Aeon, the emergence of the collective conscious; and the fall of the old Western reality-tunnel of division, reason, war and control. This is the rebirth of humanity, love and spirit unchained and free at last to find that we are indeed all gods. God died a long time ago, and these are the last death throws of that monolithic beast. All that’s left is for us to pick up the reigns, and cut them apart so that we will not be enslaved by ourselves again. So will it be.

Look to the West, the tower is falling (the fall of the World Trade Towers was only symbolic of that), and with it the limiting and linear consciousness that it placed over our eyes, a filter or veil to keep us from seeing life in all its multifaceted glory. As it crumbles, the great waters it held back will pour in, floods and tsunamis will sweep us up, both physically and psychically. We can no longer deny the chaos and the quantum that have been damned back for so long. Everything is fractal, everything is connected, nothing is true, and everything is permitted.

Look around you, or better yet stop looking and start feeling. It’s all energy, every interaction is a transference of power. From a simple smile reflected on a friend’s face to a thousand strangers coming together as one to protest the old world order. Everything we do causes waves around us, affects everything else out to the furthest stars and the edges of history. We are beginning to realize that we are the will of the Universe, that we have its power to change everything we put our hearts and intentions to. The Zen masters strive to still their waters, to cause no waves and let reality be what it is. But now is not he time for stillness, it is the time for action. It is the time for the anarchist shamans, reality-hackers, and revolutionary soul warriors to put it all out on the table and create a wave big enough to bring the last remaining outposts of the Western Empire down. There will be time enough for peace once we live in the free world of our dreams.

Don’t think that there won’t be a fight. The Beast may be dead, but it has its claws in deep, and won’t let go so easily. Expect a backlash. There is a great holy war on in the cradle of civilization, and it won’t stop until it reaches every one of our doorsteps. So we must be prepared with as much power and magic as we can accrue in the few short years we have left. And the fight will be hard, for we are not fighting people, the politicians and religious fanatics and businessmen are just pawns, we are fighting the ideologies on which their whole reality structure is founded. We are attempting to dismantle the order that holds order together. Beliefs are a lot harder to fight, for they are not bound in time or space, though they incorporate themselves readily (and what better place to start then rejecting the spectacle of corporations and images?).

And it is not just the elite who are enthralled, all civilization is under this spell, even we who no longer consent to this reality are still in it, and must fight its hold in ourselves. We are in the rotting belly of the beast and must carve a way to the open air. But what of the people who are just trying to survive, who do not seek out new worlds and only acquiesce to this one because they have not yet been presented with another option? Surely there will be fear and violence and unwilling reactions to this shift, even in the ones who are already beginning to feel the pull of a world where things can be much more than they seem. There is resistance to change, to being pushed past all our boundaries and securities, and we must be ready with open arms to help ease this transition wherever we can, to say "You’re not going crazy," "You will not die," "The unknown can be beautiful and meaningful and real if you let it," and "Welcome to the new world, welcome home."

When all the walls are torn down, you will not find an empty hostile void. You will find eternity.

dangerous crossings

I started reading lvx23's "Walking Between Worlds" yesterday, and must say, it's good. As a scattered collection of web writings it still manages to be quite cohesive and thought-provoking, and admittedly a lot of the pieces remind me of stuff I would have written (but no longer need to as they've already been done!). It reminds me of that old cybernetic saying about standing on the shoulders of giants, all the work of the future builds off of the work of the past, paying homage to it and taking it another step forward. I find it interesting though that we are reaching a point with the interconnection of the Net were we are all giants, and we are all working off each other's shoulders at the same time, bootstrapping ourselves towards some higher understanding.

Lvx23 tells an allegory of a goat who was meant to be in an xmas pageant but choose instead to be free and run away from the whole ridiculous scene. Except that he had spent his whole life around this town, and couldn't wander far. "Perhaps freedom was more than he bargained for." Lvx23 argues that this is representative of our own human condition and inability to escape the pens of our social conditioning and comfort zones. Recently there has been a lot of talk on Key23 about consensus reality tunnels, and how to break out of them into realities that are just a little bit freer or more condusive to the magical and fractal world view. But even these too are reality tunnels of a sort, even if there attractor basins are strange and swing wide from the norm. Is it possible to be truly free? Is it possible, as Castaneda puts it, to stop the world and experience life outside of any preconditioned tunnel of perception? I want to say yes, there's something in my heart that tells me this is true and possible, but fraught with danger too. There is comfort and safety in an established world-view, even a non-standard one. And inertia. It takes a lot of energy to get out of the old grooves and spin into a new one, like particles escaping their atomic core. And this upsets everything we previously held to be true. As T. S. Eliot said, "Do I dare disturb the Universe?"

I think the only way (or safest way) to do so is not to throw ourselves headlong into the chaotic abyss between worlds, but to gradually push our boundaries until the worlds collide and become one. The limits of freedom that surround our comfort zones act as an event horizon for that domain, the space we can act within that can be expanded to give more freedom. Take for example any activity that one needs to practice to get better at, yoga perhaps, or music. There is the safe zone in which you know the activity well and find it not a challenge to do. Practice maintains that zone and pushes at its edges. Trying new poses or riffs that are not quite so easy or possible yet, but over time they too will be comfortable and the boundaries will be expanded, to the point of breaking into whole new realms of movement. The point when your circle interlaps with another, and reality multiplies in all directions.