Friday, May 29, 2009
Living with 100 year old parents.
Sitting once again on this foreign bed at my parents place, may as well be foreign exchange. Moisture is building in all my crevices, it's gonna be a hot one today. Obsessing about the future, so afraid to make a mistake I can't seem to take a step, like climbing down a cliff side, one faulty move might send me toppling downward. Here I am, under the impression that I've been very good and very right, taking in the separate but equal versions regarding the course of life from everyone I've met, and trying to find the sweet spot where they all collide with my own cliff side trail. Being a creative person in an archaic world tends to create massive clouds of confusion and demoralization, but, historically, this is nothing new, and the beautiful minds that burst through the barriers so that I have the opportunity to complain so openly have surely faced greater obsticles. Thank you, my angels, for bearing the burden. I try desperately, in my moderate way, to walk in your footsteps and continue to blaze. From here, looking out to sea, it's a long way up and a long way down.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Mission
It's cold
As cold as it gets on these wet streets
feces decaying in front of murals rain washing
the refuse of the unforgiven into sewers marked by stecils of dolphins
Heels click click hurried past spanish swearing
stopping only to admire a feathered cap
in the translucent mirror of a cell phone store.
The bar is a safe house
We drink and laugh and tell dirty jokes
the bartender yells the price with a wink
a good deal tonight
We chit chat and booty shake and talk shit
about the people we're texting,
easier this way,
they might hear it in our voice if we called,
the contact may vibrate through our subconcious,
though each syllable uttered positively,
the usual to and fro of polite conversation,
as we hang up we feel something, quick to ignore, like shame,
and we are afraid to speak again.
Perhaps I spend too much time trying to figure out that which has no equation; not a straight line of logic, but a collage of actions that spin and collapse upon themselves,
a social kalidasope, trapped in a pyramid that never changes structure.
All you can change is the light thru which you view it.
As cold as it gets on these wet streets
feces decaying in front of murals rain washing
the refuse of the unforgiven into sewers marked by stecils of dolphins
Heels click click hurried past spanish swearing
stopping only to admire a feathered cap
in the translucent mirror of a cell phone store.
The bar is a safe house
We drink and laugh and tell dirty jokes
the bartender yells the price with a wink
a good deal tonight
We chit chat and booty shake and talk shit
about the people we're texting,
easier this way,
they might hear it in our voice if we called,
the contact may vibrate through our subconcious,
though each syllable uttered positively,
the usual to and fro of polite conversation,
as we hang up we feel something, quick to ignore, like shame,
and we are afraid to speak again.
Perhaps I spend too much time trying to figure out that which has no equation; not a straight line of logic, but a collage of actions that spin and collapse upon themselves,
a social kalidasope, trapped in a pyramid that never changes structure.
All you can change is the light thru which you view it.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Safan
"It means Heaven in Indonesean," says the owner, Steve, as he dusts pot after pot preparing for sale. The pots are Indonesean, also, but not traditional. The traditional Indonesean pottery has a rounded bottom that you can sit in the ground to keep from falling over. He told the local makers they had to make flat bottom vases for Westerners, so he could sell them at local winery's--with his cut, of course, being far more than what he paid. He enjoys telling this story, since, to him, he is the savior of indigenous people AND makes a chunk of change!
Safan is the name of his ranch in the Sierra foothills, with goats and chickens and guineas and a few sheep. Everything has a purpose, even if the purpose is required by agricultural tax law, it still serves the ranch. Steve and Allison started the place together, and wanted to turn it into a graffiti art organic farm. He placed trailers throughout the ranch and tagged them, and the barn, and the house, and every surface on the property that could be tagged. After he ran out of surfaces he started to invite other artists to participate in the residency, along with some woofers to work in the garden. And truly, as a concept it's amazing. Really heaven on earth. But, after looking at all the dirty tagged trailers in the middle of beautiful outskirts of Yosemite, for some reason they looked ugly, and comically misplaced, like a bad joke. It's an urban art, and the city is it's frame. The trees do no justice.
This isn't Steve's concern, of course, graf art is the newest thing and he wants the newest thing. To be cutting edge with his organic farming and such. I mean, the one thing you can definitely say about the guy is if he thinks it'll sell, he will sell it. He loves sell-able art. Especially if you can mass produce it. One artist on the residence has 44 collage pieces, each looking almost exactly like the last one. He is Steve's pride and joy, and his work hangs at rustic themed winery, of which Steve gets a cut.
The rest serve a different purpose. 7:30 breakfast of oatmeal that could be as many as 7 days old. Steve doesn't like to waste, even to feed to the chickens who do not get feed at all. Rather, every day he takes the oatmeal from the morning before, stirs in fresh oatmeal, and cooks it again. Lunch is leftovers from the night before, or 7 nights before, same with dinner. The food, unfortunately, is old to begin with, because he doesn't grow anything in the garden. Instead he collects the rotten produce from the grocery store in town they put in boxes next to the dumpster. Of course, the woofers still have to work everyday for six hours, even if that means weeding empty beds and other forms of fruitless labor. One would be surprised how much work there is to be done in Safan.
Steve is a miser with his money, his property, and his love. Nature proved the detachment he felt to the people laboring for free for him. By this time I had grown used to mom goats and the baby calling frantically and desperately for each other in the pasture. Like the sheep, they always kept taps on each other. When I hear all these noises of the animals together, speaking, I can tell what they're level of commitment to each other they are. And a love for those you love. An unbreakable attachment to another living creature. It all feels the same. The artists and woofers sat around camp fires together telling jokes and smoking spliffs by their trailers. Steve remained in the house, where no one was allowed after 9pm.
He became like the animals in terms of eating the crappy food he served, like it was compost, and wanting to fuck during rutting season, but he was really stingy about dolling out affection easy as you please, as if being open was earned after you've proven a certain financial equity. Perhaps that's part of why he keeps artists around him, and insist he keep a piece or a few pieces of work. Perhaps love and imagination are things he can't evoke on his own. To create without purpose, or plan, or financial intentions, is mysterious and foolish. Like the indigenous peoples, he tries to save the artists with coprorate values, which, to him, are the only values that make sense, and will gladly take your work as his reward.
I suppose it would be unfair to blame Steve for not sharing his Heaven with anyone around him. He is, after all, a short man in a man's man world and does what he knows to do. Like nature, we accept the way things are. The mallard duck will violently attack a mom and ducklings for food. To see it is enraging, but to interfere? Morality doesn't play into the mallards behavior. He is of a type of beast that acts in his best interest without empathy or reason. We must accept that, even in nature, some animals are just dickheads.
Safan is the name of his ranch in the Sierra foothills, with goats and chickens and guineas and a few sheep. Everything has a purpose, even if the purpose is required by agricultural tax law, it still serves the ranch. Steve and Allison started the place together, and wanted to turn it into a graffiti art organic farm. He placed trailers throughout the ranch and tagged them, and the barn, and the house, and every surface on the property that could be tagged. After he ran out of surfaces he started to invite other artists to participate in the residency, along with some woofers to work in the garden. And truly, as a concept it's amazing. Really heaven on earth. But, after looking at all the dirty tagged trailers in the middle of beautiful outskirts of Yosemite, for some reason they looked ugly, and comically misplaced, like a bad joke. It's an urban art, and the city is it's frame. The trees do no justice.
This isn't Steve's concern, of course, graf art is the newest thing and he wants the newest thing. To be cutting edge with his organic farming and such. I mean, the one thing you can definitely say about the guy is if he thinks it'll sell, he will sell it. He loves sell-able art. Especially if you can mass produce it. One artist on the residence has 44 collage pieces, each looking almost exactly like the last one. He is Steve's pride and joy, and his work hangs at rustic themed winery, of which Steve gets a cut.
The rest serve a different purpose. 7:30 breakfast of oatmeal that could be as many as 7 days old. Steve doesn't like to waste, even to feed to the chickens who do not get feed at all. Rather, every day he takes the oatmeal from the morning before, stirs in fresh oatmeal, and cooks it again. Lunch is leftovers from the night before, or 7 nights before, same with dinner. The food, unfortunately, is old to begin with, because he doesn't grow anything in the garden. Instead he collects the rotten produce from the grocery store in town they put in boxes next to the dumpster. Of course, the woofers still have to work everyday for six hours, even if that means weeding empty beds and other forms of fruitless labor. One would be surprised how much work there is to be done in Safan.
Steve is a miser with his money, his property, and his love. Nature proved the detachment he felt to the people laboring for free for him. By this time I had grown used to mom goats and the baby calling frantically and desperately for each other in the pasture. Like the sheep, they always kept taps on each other. When I hear all these noises of the animals together, speaking, I can tell what they're level of commitment to each other they are. And a love for those you love. An unbreakable attachment to another living creature. It all feels the same. The artists and woofers sat around camp fires together telling jokes and smoking spliffs by their trailers. Steve remained in the house, where no one was allowed after 9pm.
He became like the animals in terms of eating the crappy food he served, like it was compost, and wanting to fuck during rutting season, but he was really stingy about dolling out affection easy as you please, as if being open was earned after you've proven a certain financial equity. Perhaps that's part of why he keeps artists around him, and insist he keep a piece or a few pieces of work. Perhaps love and imagination are things he can't evoke on his own. To create without purpose, or plan, or financial intentions, is mysterious and foolish. Like the indigenous peoples, he tries to save the artists with coprorate values, which, to him, are the only values that make sense, and will gladly take your work as his reward.
I suppose it would be unfair to blame Steve for not sharing his Heaven with anyone around him. He is, after all, a short man in a man's man world and does what he knows to do. Like nature, we accept the way things are. The mallard duck will violently attack a mom and ducklings for food. To see it is enraging, but to interfere? Morality doesn't play into the mallards behavior. He is of a type of beast that acts in his best interest without empathy or reason. We must accept that, even in nature, some animals are just dickheads.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
2012
Here we are, 2009, talking about Hope and Change and the Future as a futuristic thing, while lurking in the wings of this performance are zombies and horsemen and police on every block---the four flying cars of the apocalypse, the fear that our race will never advance past fear based psychological cannibalism. that, for whatever reason, our breakneck speed of intellectual development will end before it has even begun----a blip on the screen---I minor irritation on the earths surface, shrugged off into the rapture of extinction.
And here is the question it begs, the part that has me worried, Who makes the future? Dreamers? Politicians? Bibles? Stars? No doubt shots are being called and intentions are plucking the strings on the web of our collective unconscious, but who is making the call? What future will win? Rocker-fellers? Nostradamus'? Huxley's? Mine?
If we pause for a moment and pretend that the present is actually the present and our history is relatively true, I think we can agree that not much has changed. Sure, there's faster communication and different styles of clothing, but there's always been some powerful, untouchable, leader that the rest of us are forced to work for and obey. there has always been patriarchy, always war, always always enslavement for as long as our basic education has provided us knowing. The repetition bores me in the same fashion television does, and I, for one, hesitate to call this progress. if our technology, in all it's glory, only manages to allow us to do the same unimaginative work we've been doing faster and with less leisure time, then it's hardly advancement. I suppose a zombie attack would be a nice change of pace, for the history books.
So, how much future do we have left, exactly? the Mayans, and Nostradamus, and the Hopi, and ancient Egypt, give us another 3 years. Funny we'd be so close to the end (providing this is the actual present and not a mere loop of quantum energy occurring simultaneously with other moments of "Past" and "future"), and we've only just discovered the technology to provide everyone with a house, and food, and everything we need to take a break from all this working. We could burn down the federal reserve today and have all the technology we need to have an abundance of gifts and goodies and great parties.
There's also Peter Joseph and other astronomers that take us back into the stars (the beginning of the beginning---the first day of creation) and tells us that rotations around the sun, combined with the chaotic weeble-wobble of our axis, eventually rights itself into astrological ages, and a new age is being born 2150, the Age of Aquarius, of which we are on the cusp with pisces. I don't know many pisces, but if they are anything like this age we are living in, I can see why I'm not attracted to the type. But then, Aquaria's, from what I've been told, are ultra feminine, very structured, and have the largest collection of underwear of any other sign. Im not sure if this is an improvement.
And then, of course, Armageddon, which I find the least plausible, yet has the backing of millions of believers and even skeptical christian raised non-believers imbuing the prophecy with life, like the Golem, it becomes something out of faith alone. Our dormant subconscious bubbling and brewing signals fueled by fear--a very powerful form of mind control---even stronger than television. And what's worse! its a destiny centuries in the making; the dying vision of all fundamentalists to be proven right, and all the faithful given that elusive sign, the proof, that generations of repression actually mean something.
But I, too, have a vision of the future, and I know I didn't come up with it on my own. Its a vision that keeps underground, afraid of being trampled by the clumsy clogs of cynicism, or poisoned by political pesticides. Its a vision as old as Jesus. As old as stories, and magic, and wisdom, and intention. A vision that we might, someday, realize that we are all one. that when one suffers, we all suffer. And also that of evolution. That intention physically opens doors. That closing your eyes and pointing has more perception than eyes wide open. We've been burning witches for so long now that this vision has to remain quiet until we are ready for it.
So, who writes the future? Which side will win? Who has the most legos? Or is destiny an even bigger concept we aren't smart enough to grasp? Perhaps we should make room for a gander species, like the dinosaurs did for us. The Gods shall vacation here and amuse themselves by animating our bones and inventing stories about history. Or will it be more and more of the same?
2012, it's the End Times based on stars and planets alone, telling stories of wars and famine and antichrists and the end of calendars and predictions. Is this destiny? 3 years is not a lot of time for a bucket list at 28, tho I can't say I'll miss the capitalism, or suburbs, or E! entertainment, or cubicles, or blood diamonds, or hollywood, or marketing, or concrete, or stock yards....
But I will miss not having my vision. Truly, I was looking forward to that.
And here is the question it begs, the part that has me worried, Who makes the future? Dreamers? Politicians? Bibles? Stars? No doubt shots are being called and intentions are plucking the strings on the web of our collective unconscious, but who is making the call? What future will win? Rocker-fellers? Nostradamus'? Huxley's? Mine?
If we pause for a moment and pretend that the present is actually the present and our history is relatively true, I think we can agree that not much has changed. Sure, there's faster communication and different styles of clothing, but there's always been some powerful, untouchable, leader that the rest of us are forced to work for and obey. there has always been patriarchy, always war, always always enslavement for as long as our basic education has provided us knowing. The repetition bores me in the same fashion television does, and I, for one, hesitate to call this progress. if our technology, in all it's glory, only manages to allow us to do the same unimaginative work we've been doing faster and with less leisure time, then it's hardly advancement. I suppose a zombie attack would be a nice change of pace, for the history books.
So, how much future do we have left, exactly? the Mayans, and Nostradamus, and the Hopi, and ancient Egypt, give us another 3 years. Funny we'd be so close to the end (providing this is the actual present and not a mere loop of quantum energy occurring simultaneously with other moments of "Past" and "future"), and we've only just discovered the technology to provide everyone with a house, and food, and everything we need to take a break from all this working. We could burn down the federal reserve today and have all the technology we need to have an abundance of gifts and goodies and great parties.
There's also Peter Joseph and other astronomers that take us back into the stars (the beginning of the beginning---the first day of creation) and tells us that rotations around the sun, combined with the chaotic weeble-wobble of our axis, eventually rights itself into astrological ages, and a new age is being born 2150, the Age of Aquarius, of which we are on the cusp with pisces. I don't know many pisces, but if they are anything like this age we are living in, I can see why I'm not attracted to the type. But then, Aquaria's, from what I've been told, are ultra feminine, very structured, and have the largest collection of underwear of any other sign. Im not sure if this is an improvement.
And then, of course, Armageddon, which I find the least plausible, yet has the backing of millions of believers and even skeptical christian raised non-believers imbuing the prophecy with life, like the Golem, it becomes something out of faith alone. Our dormant subconscious bubbling and brewing signals fueled by fear--a very powerful form of mind control---even stronger than television. And what's worse! its a destiny centuries in the making; the dying vision of all fundamentalists to be proven right, and all the faithful given that elusive sign, the proof, that generations of repression actually mean something.
But I, too, have a vision of the future, and I know I didn't come up with it on my own. Its a vision that keeps underground, afraid of being trampled by the clumsy clogs of cynicism, or poisoned by political pesticides. Its a vision as old as Jesus. As old as stories, and magic, and wisdom, and intention. A vision that we might, someday, realize that we are all one. that when one suffers, we all suffer. And also that of evolution. That intention physically opens doors. That closing your eyes and pointing has more perception than eyes wide open. We've been burning witches for so long now that this vision has to remain quiet until we are ready for it.
So, who writes the future? Which side will win? Who has the most legos? Or is destiny an even bigger concept we aren't smart enough to grasp? Perhaps we should make room for a gander species, like the dinosaurs did for us. The Gods shall vacation here and amuse themselves by animating our bones and inventing stories about history. Or will it be more and more of the same?
2012, it's the End Times based on stars and planets alone, telling stories of wars and famine and antichrists and the end of calendars and predictions. Is this destiny? 3 years is not a lot of time for a bucket list at 28, tho I can't say I'll miss the capitalism, or suburbs, or E! entertainment, or cubicles, or blood diamonds, or hollywood, or marketing, or concrete, or stock yards....
But I will miss not having my vision. Truly, I was looking forward to that.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Watercolor thoughts
The blue penetrates all colors. Just a light drop takes any puddle two shades darker. You have to be careful, because after the pthalo blue you'll never get that brilliance back.
I default on Yellow mostly, it's easy enough to change and light enough to forget. It's best if you are not sure about what color's to use but already have the shape, otherwise you can't see it, can't see the brushstrokes. Sometimes I let my hand move till I see a shape. Red is good for that. Like blood making a life form. Catch yourself early to not make a blood wash, but that first ribbon of watery red is like a cut into the canvas opening possibilities.
I don't use green so much, it doesn't strike me as a particularly dynamic color, unless it was a green girl, perhaps, those are pretty. She's prettiest when she's opposite the color she's supposed to be. Green fairy girls with perfect breasts and playful poses--but then, that's not art. It's art if she looks sad, kinda, or serious, even though she's green. But not too green, no, you would definitely need to add some blue. Some shadows. Or at least some absurdity, like a bird with human arms, or gears floating haphazardly around her. Something to emulate the absurdness of her strange, darkened, beauty.
I really like orange, I gotta say, that color never lets me down. When you don't want reds drama or yellows plainness. It builds and brightens all colors around it, giving life to even the most neutral settings without drawing attention to itself. You can make it brilliant as the sun, or dull as filth, or gentle as meadows, or aggressive as neon lights. When I think of one solid color that I could stare at for days, like a Bing cherry stain, I would never pick orange, but I've never made a painting I liked that didn't have orange as a main ingredient. Like garlic. Actually, garlic, onions, and butter, orange is all three makin my mouth water.
Purple I use the least. She's a very powerful color and she gets away from me. Too dark yet too bright. Too feminine. Too loud. Too playful. Like the green, she needs to be subdued, wrapped in cold blue and taken to the depths of the ocean or the infinite universe. Only small doses. Or let her be the center of attention, have everything in the piece be about that one purple something, but that opportunity doesn't seem to arrive very often. When it does I get excited. Maybe it's a girl thing, but it makes me happy when purple becomes a good idea. I use it less often than gold, of all colors. I use gold all the time, and it never really works, but I can't help myself, I love that shiny metallic possibility. I keep throwing it in hoping one day I'll hit the stylized mine that requires gold every time. I'm still looking. Maybe more blue. That's the best thing about blue, it drowns everything. Lost in that cold primary tone, the yin, the mystery, washing everything away. You have to be careful.
I default on Yellow mostly, it's easy enough to change and light enough to forget. It's best if you are not sure about what color's to use but already have the shape, otherwise you can't see it, can't see the brushstrokes. Sometimes I let my hand move till I see a shape. Red is good for that. Like blood making a life form. Catch yourself early to not make a blood wash, but that first ribbon of watery red is like a cut into the canvas opening possibilities.
I don't use green so much, it doesn't strike me as a particularly dynamic color, unless it was a green girl, perhaps, those are pretty. She's prettiest when she's opposite the color she's supposed to be. Green fairy girls with perfect breasts and playful poses--but then, that's not art. It's art if she looks sad, kinda, or serious, even though she's green. But not too green, no, you would definitely need to add some blue. Some shadows. Or at least some absurdity, like a bird with human arms, or gears floating haphazardly around her. Something to emulate the absurdness of her strange, darkened, beauty.
I really like orange, I gotta say, that color never lets me down. When you don't want reds drama or yellows plainness. It builds and brightens all colors around it, giving life to even the most neutral settings without drawing attention to itself. You can make it brilliant as the sun, or dull as filth, or gentle as meadows, or aggressive as neon lights. When I think of one solid color that I could stare at for days, like a Bing cherry stain, I would never pick orange, but I've never made a painting I liked that didn't have orange as a main ingredient. Like garlic. Actually, garlic, onions, and butter, orange is all three makin my mouth water.
Purple I use the least. She's a very powerful color and she gets away from me. Too dark yet too bright. Too feminine. Too loud. Too playful. Like the green, she needs to be subdued, wrapped in cold blue and taken to the depths of the ocean or the infinite universe. Only small doses. Or let her be the center of attention, have everything in the piece be about that one purple something, but that opportunity doesn't seem to arrive very often. When it does I get excited. Maybe it's a girl thing, but it makes me happy when purple becomes a good idea. I use it less often than gold, of all colors. I use gold all the time, and it never really works, but I can't help myself, I love that shiny metallic possibility. I keep throwing it in hoping one day I'll hit the stylized mine that requires gold every time. I'm still looking. Maybe more blue. That's the best thing about blue, it drowns everything. Lost in that cold primary tone, the yin, the mystery, washing everything away. You have to be careful.
Monday, March 16, 2009
There are wild things lurking
I saw a large pit bull, puffed up and tough, ears clipped, a fierce and frightening creature, being held on a leash on the downtown Ashland plaza. The pit stared, and I looked back, and, though my friends dared not threaten the beast's space with eye contact, I smiled at him. He was a dog. I couldn't help myself. Then the pit got a little excited and started to wag his tail like a pup for just a moment. The ferocity of the show shattered, and I could not help myself again with a little coo, "Hey baby!" in puppy speak. That's when the leash bearer, whom a moment before was so dim I hardly bothered to register his existence, but after this gentle moment, turned his head and peaked the tiniest bit of elvish youth. He was homeless, there are many in this town, and my heart melted for his little rooz, for his impish grin as I cooed to his pup, revealing everything he tried to keep hidden, and will continue to hide, as wild things do. Clearly, if my little runaway's life made sense where he was before, he would not be hiding behind a dog so easily won over by a smile. So young, "Houseless, not homeless" he says to his companion as he puts the things he thinks he needs into a backpack and sticks out his thumb. I could have given him the cash in my wallet that I was about to spend at the bar, had I not been so selfishly wrapped up in keeping time with my friends. All I could do was smile and delight in that 3 seconds of trust glittering in his wild eyes. For all the following followers following followers I've done in my time, trying to find my place and my self, I realize that the truest story is the surprise when a wild thing spy's a wild thing.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
A toast to Ganesh
who broke off his own tusk to write the Mahabharata (according to some). Lord of success, and he who resides over my makeshift shrine of the week. I'm sure if I were Hindi I might be imbued with the power of the symbolism of your face outside of what I have researched on wikipedia, but you have come to me, as a gift given n thankful adoration for some earrings I made. I'm very much attached to you, sir, even though you don't belong to me. I have never worshipped, never learned, the Ramayana does not live inside my actions and haunt my ego the way good old Christianity does for us white people. But I do enjoy the look of you. You truly have that god look--how I expect a God to be portrayed, that fantastic brilliance. How I would want to be if I were a God, having God battles, writing God words, tossing blessings like seeds onto my people, possessing infinite love.
Should we not aspire to Godliness? Do we really have to indulge in this joke of a lifestyle till we blow our fool selves up? the men in power are like those trailer trash kids with drunk dads that tie rockets to kittens. So bereft of emotion they've become sociopaths. Is this as far as we aspire to as Beings? Really? I'm revolted.
The patriarchal system of enslaving nations for greed is over. Hollywood's pathetic talentless stock of producers is over. Replacing quality craftsmanship with Pavlovian marketing is over. Attempting to detach ourselves from the very earth that bore us and teaches us about our nature IS OVER. I cannot participate in this disgusting farce any longer. Enjoy your descent into oblivion, suckers, I hope you have enough stuff. The rest of us with a sense of morality are on our way to being Gods, and the rest of you can follow whatever your fear dictates.
Should we not aspire to Godliness? Do we really have to indulge in this joke of a lifestyle till we blow our fool selves up? the men in power are like those trailer trash kids with drunk dads that tie rockets to kittens. So bereft of emotion they've become sociopaths. Is this as far as we aspire to as Beings? Really? I'm revolted.
The patriarchal system of enslaving nations for greed is over. Hollywood's pathetic talentless stock of producers is over. Replacing quality craftsmanship with Pavlovian marketing is over. Attempting to detach ourselves from the very earth that bore us and teaches us about our nature IS OVER. I cannot participate in this disgusting farce any longer. Enjoy your descent into oblivion, suckers, I hope you have enough stuff. The rest of us with a sense of morality are on our way to being Gods, and the rest of you can follow whatever your fear dictates.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Can Craigslist do this?
I watched a film presentation called "Zietgiest: Addendum", which is about the monatary system from a progressive perspective. I highly recommend this movie. It has validated my anger and suspicions about participating in a ridiculous and failing economic system. To celebrate the coming break out of a financial prison I am reposting an idea I had for using the internet to set the wheels in motion toward making money obsolete.
Here's a thought:We're in a recession, right? Why don't we use these social networking services for something practical. I figure there could be a link where you belong to a trade/barter network a bit more advanced and user friendly than craigslist. There should be a couple of catagories; one for skills to trade (ie sewing, painting, automotive skills), another for stuff (ie doors, furniture, trailers), and a third catagory for what you need (plumbing, plane tickets, new windshield).
So, you type in what you need into a little box, "Fence Repair", and then a list of people that repair fences or have access to wood or a wood shop pop up along with their list of needs. If you have a skill or thing you can trade then you get your annonymous email to contact each other and make the trade.
Make sense?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Conscious Revival: Unity Through Design
You're sitting in your house. You have everything you want and need. Decorations and adornments; couches, cars, clothing, creature comforts. You feel safe with your things. They become the definition of your personality, your achievements, how you've made your parents proud. Why do so few people know who you are, you know, that place inside you, the unique snowflake, the hero, the rock star, the one receiving all the love and adoration for achievement in being? The Self they talk about in psychology class. The Soul.
When people travel they tend to drop all the so called amenities that define our outside, acceptable, comically uniting personalities. The longer one stays on the road the more one feels themselves disconnected, fragmenting, as if you were just starting to realize that you did something very very wrong and felt ashamed, but could do nothing about it. But really it's just a shedding of the skin, the one you thought you needed to belong without question, the dried out wilted outermost layer. What you are left with is an understanding that the less things you travel with and depend on, the easier it is to see your surroundings for the beauty it has to offer, the simpler communication is in spite of language differences, and every material thing you carry with you just adds weight. When we are in one place we have to bring the beauty to us, and have it sit near us as we sit and delight us everyday to remind us of the happiness we feel when we are in comfort of home. To remind us of who we are when we aren't at work. However, these decorations and adornments, as much as we long for them, are taking over our world and block our view.
More and more our interpersonal relationships are being replaced by products; cell phones, ipods, treadmills, and affordable tv's for every room. Even though each American is encouraged to amount to something, to grow and learn and dream, at the end of a very long career you're left with a handful of muddled memories mile marked by things. Possessions. Stuff that you can't take with you. Sometimes, I step through the mirror and see our world with a whole new story, and I want to tell people about the possibilities, but the idea becomes too big and it gets away from me, or my bills get too big and I'm back in "reality". Of course, I don't mean to suggest anarchy. Though it might be interesting to throw all the rules away, all the laws, borders, couches, cars, candy, and pills, it would never last. We are made up of cells, the same cells that make up everything, the awesome miracle of God, and it is our nature to cluster to a group and serve a function that seems to call to us. Everyone, every single human, is a cell in the body of our species, functioning together, trying to roll over, discovering our tongues. If we look telescopically at our human race baby we can see there is major problems in the middle east, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, the very center. The space between our hearts and our stomachs. The solar plexus. This bright yellow sun and sand chakra point represents the ego of the mysterious psychological Self. This yellow glow is self esteem, the energy center, personal power, vitality, and yet everything around it is diseased. Look at the Holy Land, prophet-ville, the beginning, Palestine. There is suffering, and fear, and trauma, and irreparable psychological damage each and everyday in the land where Jesus and Buddha and Ibrahim travelled, shed their skin, and spoke. And though we sit quietly amongst our things and do nothing to remedy the problem, as it is not apart of our function, it is apart of our body, and information is programmed there, and one day, it will be the shame you feel when you are finally naked in your new skin.
You can sit amongst your things and ignore it, believing that having possessions is worth all this suffering. Injustice and slavery, of course, is nothing new. Perhaps a few generations ago we were indentured servants, loathsome emigrants,poor and pathetic and spit on and ignored. It all seems apart of the cycle of things, hurt or be hurt. We're trapped in a psychological prison of fear and need, and the powers that be would have us eat each other alive if it brought more finance and luxury for they, too, suffer the same illusions that the whims of greed bring the things that make us complete, like joy and love. Those of us who know what it means to seek love and joy and beauty know that it is not the material satisfaction that provides, but the process of the mind, and the drive of the spirit that awaken these emotions within us.
However, this psychological prison, this fear, creates a barrier for developing our Emotional Intelligence, a study that psychology is only just starting to explore. Salovey and Mayer (1990) are the leading psychologists studying this idea, and defined EI as “the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions.” Basically, they are saying that the more we understand how we react to things emotionally, the better the decisions we can make. Forty hours a week we greet customers, push paper, crunch numbers, or develop software to serve our society, and the less emotion we use to make decisions each day the smoother things run. Corporations have rules set up to be followed so we do not have to suffer the burden of using our emotions to make business decisions, which are, by nature, as inconsistent as we are unique. At the end of the day, it's only natural that we still have this nagging, incessant, need to feel, just as our eyes need to see and the ear never stops hearing, and we need the delights that entertainment, decorations, candy, and pills provide, simply to quiet our emotions enough to do it again the next day. Creature comfort society is not enough emotional understanding to the know the Self, but rather makes us anonymous, as we hide deeper under our pile of accomplishment souvenirs. If we cannot understand the emotions of our Self, our spouse, or even our child, how could we possibly have empathy for the woman in China working for a dollar a day, participating in the function of the body decreed by her state, to create the decoration or adornment that satisfies the otherwise unsettling compromise you made to act as a function decreed by your state. Both you and she are no one, and nothing changes.
Creating, celebrating, and exploring art is the key to opening the doorway to the Self. The experience of art is something that exists outside of function, rationality, and protocol. It is something more. Viewing art registers inside our Self and makes connections that cannot be controlled, predicted, or ignored. As much as consuming goods is a social practice, art is anti-social, and therefore sharpens our perceptions and make us aware. Its purpose remains outside of the traditional method of achievement, ie production for the masses, so the artist has no choice but to be the other side of the mirror, to see the world outside of conformity, and report the results. As much as the artist longs to release the ceaseless creative voice inside them, so it is apart of everyone to experience it. Research of psychobiologist Roger W Sperry has told us that the visual, artistic side, and emotional side are both located on the right side of the brain. Art and emotion understand each other, and work together, processing the whole picture and sending it over to the left side to be broken down for processing. What good is the process without the big picture, and what good is the big picture, if it doesn't feel right? Our preferences for art, the way different art makes us feel, are as unique as that snowflake we were raised to believe we are, and the result is a connection with emotion that we are not ashamed of. Even the act of changing from comfy pajamas to a ball gown electrifies emotional stimulus and creates, essentially, a whole other side of your personality. You can get to know yourself a little better simply by changing your clothes. This is far from a miraculous psychological breakthrough, in fact, one can get quite addicted to the Self a particular outfit provokes, till it is no longer a window to the soul, but a mask, and again we are caught in the cycle of losing sight of ourselves in lieu of gaining acceptance via the materials we hide behind. However, if you can make clothing more of a unique artistic experience, an experience that promoted a genuine emotional response, then there is no mask to wear. The potential for our decorations to mean something more, to expose our Self, is just on the precipice of fearfully being accepted and the weightlessness of Being.
It is now up to the designer to set a bridge of working with mass media and the artistic experience. Designers are essentially artists that have compromised their gifts to serve a function in society in the traditional sense. Mass producing goods is the best and most profitable method for society at large, but the result of mass production is to use cheap materials and cheap labor, which calls for quick, easy, and unimaginative designs. Thus, when the world at large only has access to cheap and boring creative expressions, so our standard of taste is lowered, our style is lowered, and the emotions these creative expressions provoke are weak. There is, however, a new method of creativity on the horizon, that of using recycled materials to produce goods. For a designer, the process is the most exciting aspect, not the materials, per se. A designer does not need the best tools, freshest materials, or cheapest labor to produce something amazing, thought provoking, emotionally stirring, and supremely awesome. The talent lives inside the artist, pounding on the door of the Self demanding release, and the more challenging the medium, the more creativity is evoked, like a muse. The more creative and unique the goods become, the more emotional response it will draw out of the consumer. It raises the bar of taste, and the definition of style is reborn.
We all want to belong, to be accepted and participate in the growing of our human race baby. We want to earn love and respect, to be understood and praised, to have our voice heard without judgement, to be apart of it all. We default to having all the decorations and adornments as those we admire, trying to fit as closely to the rules of style that grant us the acceptance we need to belong. Once our decorations and adornments become one-of-a-kind, societal acceptance is redefined. Your current choice is to follow the rules of finance, practicality, and conformity, with just enough emotional satisfaction to justify everything you sacrificed for your state. The new choice, the one-of-a-kind choice, is to follow your emotional stimuli in the direction of the design that resonates the most with your Self. People will see you clearer. They will have the artistic experience that is simply felt and understood, without explanation or judgement, for the most confident and realistic part of yourself will be revealed. Once the mask has dropped, our fears imprisoning our minds will start to vanish, and we will have room in our hearts to see injustice, and the voice to no longer tolerate imprisoning nations for the consumption of trash. We will all see clearly that the Emperor wears no clothes, and he will be ashamed, and we will see change.
When people travel they tend to drop all the so called amenities that define our outside, acceptable, comically uniting personalities. The longer one stays on the road the more one feels themselves disconnected, fragmenting, as if you were just starting to realize that you did something very very wrong and felt ashamed, but could do nothing about it. But really it's just a shedding of the skin, the one you thought you needed to belong without question, the dried out wilted outermost layer. What you are left with is an understanding that the less things you travel with and depend on, the easier it is to see your surroundings for the beauty it has to offer, the simpler communication is in spite of language differences, and every material thing you carry with you just adds weight. When we are in one place we have to bring the beauty to us, and have it sit near us as we sit and delight us everyday to remind us of the happiness we feel when we are in comfort of home. To remind us of who we are when we aren't at work. However, these decorations and adornments, as much as we long for them, are taking over our world and block our view.
More and more our interpersonal relationships are being replaced by products; cell phones, ipods, treadmills, and affordable tv's for every room. Even though each American is encouraged to amount to something, to grow and learn and dream, at the end of a very long career you're left with a handful of muddled memories mile marked by things. Possessions. Stuff that you can't take with you. Sometimes, I step through the mirror and see our world with a whole new story, and I want to tell people about the possibilities, but the idea becomes too big and it gets away from me, or my bills get too big and I'm back in "reality". Of course, I don't mean to suggest anarchy. Though it might be interesting to throw all the rules away, all the laws, borders, couches, cars, candy, and pills, it would never last. We are made up of cells, the same cells that make up everything, the awesome miracle of God, and it is our nature to cluster to a group and serve a function that seems to call to us. Everyone, every single human, is a cell in the body of our species, functioning together, trying to roll over, discovering our tongues. If we look telescopically at our human race baby we can see there is major problems in the middle east, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, the very center. The space between our hearts and our stomachs. The solar plexus. This bright yellow sun and sand chakra point represents the ego of the mysterious psychological Self. This yellow glow is self esteem, the energy center, personal power, vitality, and yet everything around it is diseased. Look at the Holy Land, prophet-ville, the beginning, Palestine. There is suffering, and fear, and trauma, and irreparable psychological damage each and everyday in the land where Jesus and Buddha and Ibrahim travelled, shed their skin, and spoke. And though we sit quietly amongst our things and do nothing to remedy the problem, as it is not apart of our function, it is apart of our body, and information is programmed there, and one day, it will be the shame you feel when you are finally naked in your new skin.
You can sit amongst your things and ignore it, believing that having possessions is worth all this suffering. Injustice and slavery, of course, is nothing new. Perhaps a few generations ago we were indentured servants, loathsome emigrants,poor and pathetic and spit on and ignored. It all seems apart of the cycle of things, hurt or be hurt. We're trapped in a psychological prison of fear and need, and the powers that be would have us eat each other alive if it brought more finance and luxury for they, too, suffer the same illusions that the whims of greed bring the things that make us complete, like joy and love. Those of us who know what it means to seek love and joy and beauty know that it is not the material satisfaction that provides, but the process of the mind, and the drive of the spirit that awaken these emotions within us.
However, this psychological prison, this fear, creates a barrier for developing our Emotional Intelligence, a study that psychology is only just starting to explore. Salovey and Mayer (1990) are the leading psychologists studying this idea, and defined EI as “the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions.” Basically, they are saying that the more we understand how we react to things emotionally, the better the decisions we can make. Forty hours a week we greet customers, push paper, crunch numbers, or develop software to serve our society, and the less emotion we use to make decisions each day the smoother things run. Corporations have rules set up to be followed so we do not have to suffer the burden of using our emotions to make business decisions, which are, by nature, as inconsistent as we are unique. At the end of the day, it's only natural that we still have this nagging, incessant, need to feel, just as our eyes need to see and the ear never stops hearing, and we need the delights that entertainment, decorations, candy, and pills provide, simply to quiet our emotions enough to do it again the next day. Creature comfort society is not enough emotional understanding to the know the Self, but rather makes us anonymous, as we hide deeper under our pile of accomplishment souvenirs. If we cannot understand the emotions of our Self, our spouse, or even our child, how could we possibly have empathy for the woman in China working for a dollar a day, participating in the function of the body decreed by her state, to create the decoration or adornment that satisfies the otherwise unsettling compromise you made to act as a function decreed by your state. Both you and she are no one, and nothing changes.
Creating, celebrating, and exploring art is the key to opening the doorway to the Self. The experience of art is something that exists outside of function, rationality, and protocol. It is something more. Viewing art registers inside our Self and makes connections that cannot be controlled, predicted, or ignored. As much as consuming goods is a social practice, art is anti-social, and therefore sharpens our perceptions and make us aware. Its purpose remains outside of the traditional method of achievement, ie production for the masses, so the artist has no choice but to be the other side of the mirror, to see the world outside of conformity, and report the results. As much as the artist longs to release the ceaseless creative voice inside them, so it is apart of everyone to experience it. Research of psychobiologist Roger W Sperry has told us that the visual, artistic side, and emotional side are both located on the right side of the brain. Art and emotion understand each other, and work together, processing the whole picture and sending it over to the left side to be broken down for processing. What good is the process without the big picture, and what good is the big picture, if it doesn't feel right? Our preferences for art, the way different art makes us feel, are as unique as that snowflake we were raised to believe we are, and the result is a connection with emotion that we are not ashamed of. Even the act of changing from comfy pajamas to a ball gown electrifies emotional stimulus and creates, essentially, a whole other side of your personality. You can get to know yourself a little better simply by changing your clothes. This is far from a miraculous psychological breakthrough, in fact, one can get quite addicted to the Self a particular outfit provokes, till it is no longer a window to the soul, but a mask, and again we are caught in the cycle of losing sight of ourselves in lieu of gaining acceptance via the materials we hide behind. However, if you can make clothing more of a unique artistic experience, an experience that promoted a genuine emotional response, then there is no mask to wear. The potential for our decorations to mean something more, to expose our Self, is just on the precipice of fearfully being accepted and the weightlessness of Being.
It is now up to the designer to set a bridge of working with mass media and the artistic experience. Designers are essentially artists that have compromised their gifts to serve a function in society in the traditional sense. Mass producing goods is the best and most profitable method for society at large, but the result of mass production is to use cheap materials and cheap labor, which calls for quick, easy, and unimaginative designs. Thus, when the world at large only has access to cheap and boring creative expressions, so our standard of taste is lowered, our style is lowered, and the emotions these creative expressions provoke are weak. There is, however, a new method of creativity on the horizon, that of using recycled materials to produce goods. For a designer, the process is the most exciting aspect, not the materials, per se. A designer does not need the best tools, freshest materials, or cheapest labor to produce something amazing, thought provoking, emotionally stirring, and supremely awesome. The talent lives inside the artist, pounding on the door of the Self demanding release, and the more challenging the medium, the more creativity is evoked, like a muse. The more creative and unique the goods become, the more emotional response it will draw out of the consumer. It raises the bar of taste, and the definition of style is reborn.
We all want to belong, to be accepted and participate in the growing of our human race baby. We want to earn love and respect, to be understood and praised, to have our voice heard without judgement, to be apart of it all. We default to having all the decorations and adornments as those we admire, trying to fit as closely to the rules of style that grant us the acceptance we need to belong. Once our decorations and adornments become one-of-a-kind, societal acceptance is redefined. Your current choice is to follow the rules of finance, practicality, and conformity, with just enough emotional satisfaction to justify everything you sacrificed for your state. The new choice, the one-of-a-kind choice, is to follow your emotional stimuli in the direction of the design that resonates the most with your Self. People will see you clearer. They will have the artistic experience that is simply felt and understood, without explanation or judgement, for the most confident and realistic part of yourself will be revealed. Once the mask has dropped, our fears imprisoning our minds will start to vanish, and we will have room in our hearts to see injustice, and the voice to no longer tolerate imprisoning nations for the consumption of trash. We will all see clearly that the Emperor wears no clothes, and he will be ashamed, and we will see change.
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