while digging through some old files for scraps of writing for the novel, I came upon this old list originally posted by metabloom on livejournal.
10 Rules for being Human
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "Life."
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you are alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here," you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7. Other people are merely mirror of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this. Isn't That Fascinating?!
Everything in Your Outer Life Happens Inside First.
Did you know that everything physical in your life is just a reflection of everything going on inside you? Your physical life is an "expression" or "pressing outward" of your inner landscape. Some people call this process "out-picturing."
It is the process of taking your inner thoughts and feelings and making them real. If you are avoiding someone and hoping with all your heart that you do not run into that person, guess what? Chances are that you will see that person. Why? Because it is an expression of the film that you have been playing over and over in your mind. So if you have a recurring problem on the physical plane, do not try to fix it with physical solution. You won't get anywhere fast and it is hard work! Work on your inner landscape instead. Take a look inside...
What are your thoughts? What are your feelings? What are you chewing on inside? What are you obsessing about?
When you catch yourself obsessing about something, just smile and say to yourself, "You"re doing that thing you do again!" Keep catching yourself at your own game. Once you get through the initial anger and frustration, you will find yourself amused at how often your mind will return to the same subject. Then the feeling goes from obsession to humor.
Once you can see the humor in the situation, your outer situation will change. When you can laugh at yourself, everything in your outer environment automatically fixes itself. You won't have to lift a finger. Fascinating, isn't it?
11.18.2005
11.02.2005
on the books
okay, I may be taking another short break from posting here, so I can work on my novel for National Novel Writing Month. so far I've got one chapter down and 48,000 words left to go.
10.28.2005
Orwell Issues New Passports
All US passports to be RFID chipped [via american samizdat]
"All US passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued on Tuesday say passports issued after that time will have tiny RFID chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitised photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitised data such as "fingerprints or iris scans"."
I've been following the potential use and privacy abuse of Radio Frequency Identification chips for years now, ever since I heard that companies like Wal-Mart weave them into the hems of their clothes in order to track inventory (and deter theft). Also in the governmental works at one point was the idea of weaving the microchips into the new twenty dollar bills, so that companies can keep tabs on if you're likely to make purchases when you come into their stores. I don't think that actually went down, but sometimes I hear stories of Hollywood movie stars implanting them in their pets and children.
And my passport was recently stolen, so it looks like I've gotta get another real quick before this law goes into affect.
"All US passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued on Tuesday say passports issued after that time will have tiny RFID chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitised photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitised data such as "fingerprints or iris scans"."
I've been following the potential use and privacy abuse of Radio Frequency Identification chips for years now, ever since I heard that companies like Wal-Mart weave them into the hems of their clothes in order to track inventory (and deter theft). Also in the governmental works at one point was the idea of weaving the microchips into the new twenty dollar bills, so that companies can keep tabs on if you're likely to make purchases when you come into their stores. I don't think that actually went down, but sometimes I hear stories of Hollywood movie stars implanting them in their pets and children.
And my passport was recently stolen, so it looks like I've gotta get another real quick before this law goes into affect.
10.25.2005
Shadow Culture Manifesto
Shadow Culture Manifesto.
(still) in progress:
[transcribed from Adbusters, #62, the Precarity Issue]
01 This time we’ll get straight to the point.
02 The act of asking for less, not more, is a radical act. It may be the most radical gesture of out times.
03 Even though, you know, it is usually overlooked.
04 Consumption is the foundation of civilization as we know it, far more powerful than, say, religious faith or political ideology. This society stands or falls on consumption. Consumption is our daily contribution and most intimate connection to a doomsday system.
05 Did we say a doomsday system? We did. Can anyone still fail to see that we live in times genuinely different, more fragile and uncertain than ever before? Human societies have faced terrible threats and instability in the past. But not every human society, at the same time, in every corner of the Earth.
06 In exchange for some of us living as the wealthiest and most privileged humans ever to exist, we have fettered ourselves to eye-poppingly complex systems that we depend on for our survival. Trouble being that these same systems are now failing or being actively withdrawn at almost every level. The degree of interconnectedness is incomprehensible. Imagine a castle somehow suspended in the air. It’s walls, floors, turrets and dome riddled with hairline cracks. Where will the first total failure occur?
07 This is the vertigo of collapse.
08 Anyway. Take away the endless growth of consumption and you need to come up with a radically different system. Do you see where each of us has a role in this?
09 On this point, nothing has changed. Certainly not since the day the President of the United States of America told his people to keep on shopping or the terrorists win.
10 (Don’t they seem to be winning? Or at least, not loosing?)
11 What is changing is the sense of urgency. We are in the process of imagining the next civilization while living within the existing one. Some came to this purpose because they felt disturbed or repelled by the culture that we live in. Many more, now, are just looking for a softer landing when we go spinning off the ragged-ass end of this falling star.
12 There’s a wild kind of energy to it, a tearing off in all directions. The proof is in, again, that the key component of advance in any sphere – innovation – has nothing to do with private interest or ownership or the exchange of paper money.
13 We are inventing a way of life with less. We are asking the following question: Take away consumerism. What does the next culture look like?
14 And? Are we finding any answers? Seeing any patterns?
15 Let’s be bold enough to say, yes.
16 We are finding a next culture that looks something like the barn-raising parties of our grandparents, the community canning kitchens of the Second World War, the quilting bee, the teach-in, the village shaman, the underground economy, the monastery, the potlatch, the agora, the cooperative, the commune, the squat.
17 Except different.
18 We have never had so many people with so much knowledge, so much power to share, so much longing to work toward a new and different purpose, and so much need to do exactly that. Those who ask less have more to give. The hunger to contribute and to learn doesn’t vanish as our own demands diminish. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.
19 If we went in for slogans, this might be the one:
20 Self-reliance and mutual aid.
21 Might we say this is what democracy looks like? We might. More than that, it is a kind of freedom.
22 But the pierogi-making party instead of the blockbuster Hollywood film? It sounds corny. It even feels corny. Then again, a lot of things are done in this world that seem strange when observed with the benefit of distance. Like spending 15 hours a day in front of different types of glowing screens. Like paying for food that would grow out of every crack in the pavement if someone would plant a seed. Like watching golf on TV.
23 Does this make us outsiders? Not at all.
24 We refuse to be outsiders because we refuse to cede the culture. Far more is at stake than following our bliss. Ours is not a lifestyle preference but a moral imperative.
25 Still.
26 We have the capacity, more than ever before, to decide our own terms. We can generate energy and treat our own waste. We can build homes, raise food, create new forms of community and family. If we choose, it is possible to design and produce any product we require. We may do so locally; we may do so globally. What we cannot do is do it all alone.
27 In every respect we are working to produce the impossible, prototypes of a parallel way of life. The working model looks something like this: a sphere composed of interconnected clusters. At any given moment, some nodes are forming, others are dissolving. Seen at the level of the individual, it is a galaxy of possibilities and a person might contribute to none, one, ten or an infinite number in series. At the system level, it is a network. More metaphorically, a net.
28 We are the people, sitting on the porch, sharing a meal at mid-day, asking more and more from each other but less and less from the earth and the state – less of its schools and shopping malls, its trade rules and tax regimes. We are the people who serve to remind that there are other ways to live, and that anyone can join in that imperfect search.
29 We are living from beneath, on the fringe, in the shadow.
30 A shadow culture.
...
Looks like the Ultraculture's got some competition, or more like some allies.
(still) in progress:
[transcribed from Adbusters, #62, the Precarity Issue]
01 This time we’ll get straight to the point.
02 The act of asking for less, not more, is a radical act. It may be the most radical gesture of out times.
03 Even though, you know, it is usually overlooked.
04 Consumption is the foundation of civilization as we know it, far more powerful than, say, religious faith or political ideology. This society stands or falls on consumption. Consumption is our daily contribution and most intimate connection to a doomsday system.
05 Did we say a doomsday system? We did. Can anyone still fail to see that we live in times genuinely different, more fragile and uncertain than ever before? Human societies have faced terrible threats and instability in the past. But not every human society, at the same time, in every corner of the Earth.
06 In exchange for some of us living as the wealthiest and most privileged humans ever to exist, we have fettered ourselves to eye-poppingly complex systems that we depend on for our survival. Trouble being that these same systems are now failing or being actively withdrawn at almost every level. The degree of interconnectedness is incomprehensible. Imagine a castle somehow suspended in the air. It’s walls, floors, turrets and dome riddled with hairline cracks. Where will the first total failure occur?
07 This is the vertigo of collapse.
08 Anyway. Take away the endless growth of consumption and you need to come up with a radically different system. Do you see where each of us has a role in this?
09 On this point, nothing has changed. Certainly not since the day the President of the United States of America told his people to keep on shopping or the terrorists win.
10 (Don’t they seem to be winning? Or at least, not loosing?)
11 What is changing is the sense of urgency. We are in the process of imagining the next civilization while living within the existing one. Some came to this purpose because they felt disturbed or repelled by the culture that we live in. Many more, now, are just looking for a softer landing when we go spinning off the ragged-ass end of this falling star.
12 There’s a wild kind of energy to it, a tearing off in all directions. The proof is in, again, that the key component of advance in any sphere – innovation – has nothing to do with private interest or ownership or the exchange of paper money.
13 We are inventing a way of life with less. We are asking the following question: Take away consumerism. What does the next culture look like?
14 And? Are we finding any answers? Seeing any patterns?
15 Let’s be bold enough to say, yes.
16 We are finding a next culture that looks something like the barn-raising parties of our grandparents, the community canning kitchens of the Second World War, the quilting bee, the teach-in, the village shaman, the underground economy, the monastery, the potlatch, the agora, the cooperative, the commune, the squat.
17 Except different.
18 We have never had so many people with so much knowledge, so much power to share, so much longing to work toward a new and different purpose, and so much need to do exactly that. Those who ask less have more to give. The hunger to contribute and to learn doesn’t vanish as our own demands diminish. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.
19 If we went in for slogans, this might be the one:
20 Self-reliance and mutual aid.
21 Might we say this is what democracy looks like? We might. More than that, it is a kind of freedom.
22 But the pierogi-making party instead of the blockbuster Hollywood film? It sounds corny. It even feels corny. Then again, a lot of things are done in this world that seem strange when observed with the benefit of distance. Like spending 15 hours a day in front of different types of glowing screens. Like paying for food that would grow out of every crack in the pavement if someone would plant a seed. Like watching golf on TV.
23 Does this make us outsiders? Not at all.
24 We refuse to be outsiders because we refuse to cede the culture. Far more is at stake than following our bliss. Ours is not a lifestyle preference but a moral imperative.
25 Still.
26 We have the capacity, more than ever before, to decide our own terms. We can generate energy and treat our own waste. We can build homes, raise food, create new forms of community and family. If we choose, it is possible to design and produce any product we require. We may do so locally; we may do so globally. What we cannot do is do it all alone.
27 In every respect we are working to produce the impossible, prototypes of a parallel way of life. The working model looks something like this: a sphere composed of interconnected clusters. At any given moment, some nodes are forming, others are dissolving. Seen at the level of the individual, it is a galaxy of possibilities and a person might contribute to none, one, ten or an infinite number in series. At the system level, it is a network. More metaphorically, a net.
28 We are the people, sitting on the porch, sharing a meal at mid-day, asking more and more from each other but less and less from the earth and the state – less of its schools and shopping malls, its trade rules and tax regimes. We are the people who serve to remind that there are other ways to live, and that anyone can join in that imperfect search.
29 We are living from beneath, on the fringe, in the shadow.
30 A shadow culture.
...
Looks like the Ultraculture's got some competition, or more like some allies.
10.24.2005
Center for Tactical Magic
As opposed to the university-fed Emma Goldman Institute for Anarchy, we give you...
The Center for Tactical Magic! [via exploding ardvark]
"The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research, development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic. A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal, and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction, and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation."
Blurring the border between art, shamanism, and activism, the CTM's actions include everything from agit-prop seminars to free occult clinics to passing out donuts at protests to both protesters and police officers alike!
The Center for Tactical Magic! [via exploding ardvark]
"The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research, development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic. A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal, and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction, and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation."
Blurring the border between art, shamanism, and activism, the CTM's actions include everything from agit-prop seminars to free occult clinics to passing out donuts at protests to both protesters and police officers alike!
Emma Goldman Insitute for Anarchist Studies
Emma Goldman Institute For Anarchist Studies or, the capitulation of a movement into history.
$368 Million
Federal Grant Funds, & Gift from Securitas Inc.
from the official site:
"While the EGIAS exists only as a plan at the time of this writing, the positive impact such a center of study could bring to the world could never be more needed. Anarchist ideas influence our everyday life from peer relationships to modern business management theories to open source software development. Anarchist organizing for social change has brought about a more peaceful and just world while slowing the movements towards hegemony, violence, and injustice. For one, the Anarchist Institute will help clear misconceptions about anarchism. First and foremost anarchism's incorrect equation with violence and riots - as Emma Goldman said herself ""It takes less mental effort to condemn than to think." The EGIAS will also function in further advocating, promoting, and developing anarchist thought."
Once built, the EGIAS will house:
* The Chomsky Anarchist History Museum - Spanning from pre-columbian native precursors to anarchism up through the modern day peace movement and into the future of anarchism in our world. A hall of Anarchist fame will honor famous anarchists like John Cage, Mother Jones, Henry Miller, Utah Phillips, Mark Rothko, Joe Strummer, Henry David Thoreau, Emiliano Zapata, and the modern day Zapatistas.
* Birth control distribution center
* Bakunin Center for Applied Anarchist Research - An anarchist think-tank.
* Kropotkin Café - serving coffee and light meals into late night hours. Live music every Tuesday - Saturday.
* Goldman Dance Studio - adjacent to both the Kropotkin Café and Bakunin center for easy access.
* The Sacco & Vanzetti Memorial Learning Center will serve as a classroom for the departments of Peace Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Labor History.
as mutato nomine sez: to kill something, build an ivory tower around it.
$368 Million
Federal Grant Funds, & Gift from Securitas Inc.
from the official site:
"While the EGIAS exists only as a plan at the time of this writing, the positive impact such a center of study could bring to the world could never be more needed. Anarchist ideas influence our everyday life from peer relationships to modern business management theories to open source software development. Anarchist organizing for social change has brought about a more peaceful and just world while slowing the movements towards hegemony, violence, and injustice. For one, the Anarchist Institute will help clear misconceptions about anarchism. First and foremost anarchism's incorrect equation with violence and riots - as Emma Goldman said herself ""It takes less mental effort to condemn than to think." The EGIAS will also function in further advocating, promoting, and developing anarchist thought."
Once built, the EGIAS will house:
* The Chomsky Anarchist History Museum - Spanning from pre-columbian native precursors to anarchism up through the modern day peace movement and into the future of anarchism in our world. A hall of Anarchist fame will honor famous anarchists like John Cage, Mother Jones, Henry Miller, Utah Phillips, Mark Rothko, Joe Strummer, Henry David Thoreau, Emiliano Zapata, and the modern day Zapatistas.
* Birth control distribution center
* Bakunin Center for Applied Anarchist Research - An anarchist think-tank.
* Kropotkin Café - serving coffee and light meals into late night hours. Live music every Tuesday - Saturday.
* Goldman Dance Studio - adjacent to both the Kropotkin Café and Bakunin center for easy access.
* The Sacco & Vanzetti Memorial Learning Center will serve as a classroom for the departments of Peace Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Labor History.
as mutato nomine sez: to kill something, build an ivory tower around it.
10.23.2005
puppets tell tall tales: social ambiguity and the role of the individual to address it
Went to one of those wild events last night, the kind where I get to see all my friends working on a project that is far beyond my chosen capabilities and leaves me in tears of joy and rage, the 7th annual Black Sheep Puppet Festival. For several hours we sat in the back of the dark Brewhouse auditorium as several acts told incredible and absurd stories of the state of the world through the use of handheld puppets and elaborate box sets.
First up was the Coalition of Humans Invested in the Future, who presented a series of panel experts addressing some of the big questions of our times: is the past important, what's wrong with today, where is the future going, and where does stuff belong? The experts included strange animals and plants, a unitarian anteater, dayglow flounders, and the possibility of missiles falling form the sky and being mistaken for obnoxious viruses. Extremely postmodern when they began dissecting social divisions through the dream analysis of a dog dreaming he was a human fetching sticks and living out the endless cycle of going to work and to home watching screen after screen... or was it eating from the bowl and pissing in the litter? As always, it strikes me right here how perceptive art can be when taken to extremes.
Next was Clare Dolan's "When Little Pieces of Very Big Things Break Off and Fall," a script ripped from testimonies related to coal mining disasters bearing on he destruction of the environment and crumbling of the arctic shelf. Brief surreality ensues when the performer finds herself in an artists' coop with several dead philosophers and eventually has to run from death, all while talking about the nature of art to lead us to more meaningful ways of addressing ourselves in the modern world.
After this, a short sweet play by Stranger Theatre called the "Counterfeit Marquise" adapted from an old Mother Goose fairytale about a man who grew up as a woman and suddenly finds herself confronted with falling in love and learning who "she" really is.
The fourth act, by Drama of Works out of NY, impressed me greatly, as it touched on one of the greatest artists of our time, who I've formed a bit of an obsession with recently, Andy Warhol. Telling the story of his life through a series of phone interviews, movie ads, and memorabilia of his days growing up with his mother in Pittsburgh, this show really captured the essence of Warhol's artistic vision, pop art as the easily reproducible and easily recognizable, the assembly line creative process where output and fame are greater than individual creativity. Perhaps most poignant was the portrayal of Warhol, his family, his schoolmates, and coworkers all as Campbell's soup cans. Which of course raises the question for me I think was posed by Warhol's work, are we really all alike?
After another brief intermission smoking down cigarettes in the cold rain, we went in for the act most of us were there to see, the Indicator Species. Comprised of the infamous Etta Cettera and members of the Hollow Sisters, a life size prison cell was erected made entirely of letters from prisoners sent to the local books to prisoners project, Book 'Em, and a heart rending tale was told addressing murder and the age old societal problem of what to do with offenders. Unlike the other pieces presented in the evening, this one was not told through the use of humor or absurdity but was a brutal attack on the hearts and consciences of the audience presenting four separate cases based off real life incidents portraying the moral ambiguity of how to deal with this issue.
Now this piece would have been immensely touching in its own right, if I hadn't known any of the people involved, but hit too close to home as I watched Etta have an actual conversation with a prisoner and then they presented the story of Frank's murder. They didn't mention Frank by name, but it was obviously about him, the kid with a mysterious smile who wandered around town everywhere and into the hearts of everyone he crossed paths with. Last summer Frank was brutally and randomly shot by several kids who had stolen a police woman's gun and car and he is still tragically missed by everyone in this community. As soon as I saw what they were doing I broke into tears, unable to attach emotional reality from the art and uncertain if they were abusing Frank's memory to get their point across. If anything though it only honored his memory and answered the question, no we are not replaceable, we are all individual beings with our own unique lives. And even when we do something that paints us at being at fault to ourselves and our neighbors and society, even when we murder, we are still worthwhile human beings who deserve a chance to exist and express ourselves in our own ways. And despite the stigmas and laws of society, that is something no one should be allowed to take away from us.
First up was the Coalition of Humans Invested in the Future, who presented a series of panel experts addressing some of the big questions of our times: is the past important, what's wrong with today, where is the future going, and where does stuff belong? The experts included strange animals and plants, a unitarian anteater, dayglow flounders, and the possibility of missiles falling form the sky and being mistaken for obnoxious viruses. Extremely postmodern when they began dissecting social divisions through the dream analysis of a dog dreaming he was a human fetching sticks and living out the endless cycle of going to work and to home watching screen after screen... or was it eating from the bowl and pissing in the litter? As always, it strikes me right here how perceptive art can be when taken to extremes.
Next was Clare Dolan's "When Little Pieces of Very Big Things Break Off and Fall," a script ripped from testimonies related to coal mining disasters bearing on he destruction of the environment and crumbling of the arctic shelf. Brief surreality ensues when the performer finds herself in an artists' coop with several dead philosophers and eventually has to run from death, all while talking about the nature of art to lead us to more meaningful ways of addressing ourselves in the modern world.
After this, a short sweet play by Stranger Theatre called the "Counterfeit Marquise" adapted from an old Mother Goose fairytale about a man who grew up as a woman and suddenly finds herself confronted with falling in love and learning who "she" really is.
The fourth act, by Drama of Works out of NY, impressed me greatly, as it touched on one of the greatest artists of our time, who I've formed a bit of an obsession with recently, Andy Warhol. Telling the story of his life through a series of phone interviews, movie ads, and memorabilia of his days growing up with his mother in Pittsburgh, this show really captured the essence of Warhol's artistic vision, pop art as the easily reproducible and easily recognizable, the assembly line creative process where output and fame are greater than individual creativity. Perhaps most poignant was the portrayal of Warhol, his family, his schoolmates, and coworkers all as Campbell's soup cans. Which of course raises the question for me I think was posed by Warhol's work, are we really all alike?
After another brief intermission smoking down cigarettes in the cold rain, we went in for the act most of us were there to see, the Indicator Species. Comprised of the infamous Etta Cettera and members of the Hollow Sisters, a life size prison cell was erected made entirely of letters from prisoners sent to the local books to prisoners project, Book 'Em, and a heart rending tale was told addressing murder and the age old societal problem of what to do with offenders. Unlike the other pieces presented in the evening, this one was not told through the use of humor or absurdity but was a brutal attack on the hearts and consciences of the audience presenting four separate cases based off real life incidents portraying the moral ambiguity of how to deal with this issue.
Now this piece would have been immensely touching in its own right, if I hadn't known any of the people involved, but hit too close to home as I watched Etta have an actual conversation with a prisoner and then they presented the story of Frank's murder. They didn't mention Frank by name, but it was obviously about him, the kid with a mysterious smile who wandered around town everywhere and into the hearts of everyone he crossed paths with. Last summer Frank was brutally and randomly shot by several kids who had stolen a police woman's gun and car and he is still tragically missed by everyone in this community. As soon as I saw what they were doing I broke into tears, unable to attach emotional reality from the art and uncertain if they were abusing Frank's memory to get their point across. If anything though it only honored his memory and answered the question, no we are not replaceable, we are all individual beings with our own unique lives. And even when we do something that paints us at being at fault to ourselves and our neighbors and society, even when we murder, we are still worthwhile human beings who deserve a chance to exist and express ourselves in our own ways. And despite the stigmas and laws of society, that is something no one should be allowed to take away from us.
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