is watching the girls drink Jones Root beer o'er a new haul of Chapters books

ran 20 km barefoot jes' now in 2 hrs 1 minute. Props to Duma Key and Bill Moyers for aural anaesthetic.

listens to coworker engage in atonal 'humming'. Considers self-puncturing eardrums in a desperate cry for help. Dear God.

quite likes the fact that the BBC can use "Royal Banks of Scotland" and "kilt-lifting losses" in the same sentence.

had meetings, watched presentation, ran 12 km, completed functional testing, found free Coles Notes on line.

is reading Berkeley's Three Dialogues again.

is watching a vendor demo not go so well. General gnashing of teeth.

is definitely NOT pretending to watch Zach and Cody while he reads Indian philosophy

is about to do one of those dash to the printer to get your stuff before somebody else sees it thingies.

has come to understand that 'demo' is just one consonant away from 'demon' for a reason.

has discovered the main buyer of Dr. Phil books. Used book stores.
http://ping.fm/WfnhD

Left, face Right

Left, face Right

Escalator was on the wrong side of the entrance way this morning.

To be clear, I make the trip 5 days a week, so it's not a casual mix up.

Off the train, through the doors, by the shoe repair stop, into temptation alley where 500 calorie fat and sweat soaked monstrosities try and often succeed in seducing me with their cellulite rippling wares - and there it is. Left side, easy on, one lane wide, take me to street level where i cross 7.2 crosswalks, wait for 9.3 streetlights, say good morning to Otis, sit down to the laptop and bango, into the day.

Important part being, of course, that it's on the left side.

Things like this don't change.

Herded like heffers from the train. Going to be on the left side.

Through the lobby past the bearded wonder with unreadable eyes sitting outside the adjoining hotel lobby. Can just about see it now; left side.

Through the smells of the food judicial system ~ wtf?

It's on the right side.

I keep walking, nothing else has seemed to change, and this man's memory seems to hit more dry troughs than sweet springs these days, but this is something that has been repeated and coarsed into the pathways of the grey area like an alphabet - left side escalator.

And yet it's right.

People in general and this one in particular are adept at rationalizing the unexpected, the startling, the mis-belonged. So just like when I have carefully figured out a math problem and then checked the answer to find out how gloriously wrong I am, I gloss over the anomaly. It's a pre-verbal play, a slick silicon half cup I put over the problem and slide down to the other side. I KNOW that the tickler is back there, but it's behind the cup, mostly occluded. I'll stick with the right answer, even if it feel wrong. Too slippery to try and get back up and over the half cup.

So I take the escalator, and for the 12 seconds before I get to the top, it's all good.

Then all hell breaks loose.

The pulling I felt from the halfway point up the moving staircase has turned into a torrent; wind with claws that reach over my face, clamp in and pull. I feel like the cross between an errant top and a waxing operation gone horribly wrong.

Flesh is pulled off my face as I spin counterclockwise. Crimson opacity as blood sheets upwards in the torrent. And then I slow to a stop, and am guna-ed to the security desk. His face, too, is fine on the left side, but missing strips of skin, muscle and fat from the right side. Looks exactly what it FELT like happened to me.

Out and about me, the heffer herd of commuters moves without comment or consternation towards the doors that will take them to THEIR 7.2 crosswalks and into work. Thing that's most disturbing here is not that they're mauled but that they don't even seem to notice.

Which is probably my fate as well, given the sign up ahead.

Shrieking in neon green, over and over again "Sublation".

Thing is, I'm not sure if I want to be on this train, brother. Face hurts like a mother fucker, but at least I can FEEL it hurting.

Looking down though, I don't think there will be much choice in the matter. Moving sidewalk, and I'm clipped in.

The last thought I have before passing through the door under the sign is that the sidewalk and the escalator must have a common mother, that

...I'm outside, a little contracted and a tiny bit tired, but ready for another day in the trenches. A hint of something that happened behind me, but it's mostly forgotten by the time I hit the 3rd sidewalk.

Into the lobby and a cheery good morning to the concierge.

Onto the elevator - good old Otis, always there like a loyal lapdog - and the day unfolds as it should.

Three floors before mine though, the right side of my face starts itching. Turning to check out something reported from the peripheral, always-on vision sentry, I'm a little shocked - though not entirely surprised for some reason - at the layout of this elevator. Never remembered there being a door BEHIND me.

moopa.

just bought a six pack of socks from Costco. This is the game changer I've been waiting for. THIS changes eveything.

just ran a barefoot 16 km

just bought shoes for a 10 year old. Hope they're more comfortable than the name would imply. The shoes, that is.

just heard a singer rhyme with plebian. (with me in)

Infinity Player's Face

Northern Criss Cross

Cool out tonite. Glass window in front of the treadmill provides a good vantage point from the interior to the exterior of the building, and from the exterior to the interior of me.

Harness yourself in behind me, come along for the ride.

Start of with a survey of the reflection. Window is pretty clean, I look stronger than I feel inside, stare at my face and then slowly a non-Newtonian gravitas brings the eyes down and I'm looking at the endless cycle of the feet and legs, running forever to nowhere.

Soften it up a little bit more now, droop the lids half way down, and split the vision screen - above, it's inside me, below it's outside of me.

And now, softening the gaze more, and hearkening back to days of dustled music stands and first chairs where peripheral vision was cultivated, my vision spreads out and the games begin

Legs elongate and striate into chicken silly putty absurdities; feet are probably still there, it's not that they've disappeared, it's that they're just not part of the picture.

Soften more, and I am now out of the picture; the games go on to my left and right but I'M not there. Visually anyways.

Gravitas reverses and I'm looking at the window again; I'm back in the picture. My exterior is not alone though; a layer away through the glass and closing fast are soccer players coming in off the field, heading to warm cars and homes and away from the things that went bump in the night and I'm watching my legs again

Vertical continuum

Then the soccer players - Horizontal continuum

Then the join.

On this side of the glass, my exterior dancing up and down.

On that side of the glass, their exteriors walking forward.

Up down, across. Up and down, across.

My exterior from the building's interior reaches out and touches their exteriors reaching out from the exterior of the building.

Exterior -> interior
or if we cancel it out, we have two exteriors converging on an interior, which might explain what happens next

Synapses swirl and shift and try to compensate for this circle of activity that feels to be pulling clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time and

a ribbon of blue extends into the sky and below the feet, opening a column deep into the earth; through the earth; now umbrella-ing out above and below and touching; circle completing and ...

... and I am in the middle of the earth, gravitas in four directions now, then 8, then 16, then 32 and within second infinity

...the explosion joins my infinity and the circle infinity

Global EMDR

Patterns quilt and spiral and collapse and rebuild and my face is in all of them it's mirrors into mirrors into mirrors and my face is moving from front to back in the mirrors, becoming subject

Explosion and I rub my eyes

Soccer players are half way to the parking lot

I savor the after image, and keep on.

namaste

has found that making eye contact in board meetings while blowing nasal milk bubbles makes people really uncomfortable.

Mind Food

Me on the beast again, putting in time tonite.

See, intervals sharpen the straw, but continuity of motion strengthens it. De-crapify it: Run long without stopping, become a better runner.

A big part of running distance - a disproportionately big part - is mindset. While I wouldn't advid someone 400 pounds over weight with bad joints trying a 10 km for their first run, I CAN say that once you have a base, it all turns into mind food.

It's really a moving meditation. If you have some of THAT practice under your belt, you can escape to a bit of the timeless place. Regardless, it's a pull of tension - after the white burn of warm up has drained and the blood vessels are happy in their transport work, you can either:

-stop
-run below a comfortable speed
-run at a comfortable speed
-run above a comforable speed
-push yourself
-hurt

And staying with the yin yang of it all, they all have pros and cons.

-Stopping - good if your injured, bad if it's a half-hearted surrender.

-Running below comfortable speed - good after a lot of miles or if you need to recover; bad if it's just because you haven't found the run's cajones and squeezed them a bit. Expect ennuie and half hearted surrender if you continue.

-Running at a comfortable speed - good, and a challenge if you're going for strengthening the saw; bad if it's the cajones thing. See previous point.

-Running above a comfortable speed - good for sharpening the saw; bad if you are on the edge of physical ill.

-Pushing it - see above.

-Hurting - see above and above.

I can stick with one or a couple of the above, or cycle through the whole thing, which is where the mind food comes in.

Started off comfortable tonite and ran for strength; first 5 or 7 minutes was fine. The mind had lots to chew on - things that happened today, philosophy, meditation, checking out what's going on around me, thinking about tonite. Then that food gets a little thin. Usually around the time that some level of exertion sets in.

At that point, I have the choice to either feed the mind more, starve it, or try and go to the timeless place.

Again, I usually transit through the three. There's correlation between the three and the plusses / minuses of the levels of exertion:

-run slow - easier to go on less mind food; counter-intuitively, this 'easier' space can be harder to maintain. The timeless place is maybe POTENTIALLY easier to get to from here, but staying there can be difficult - pulled back by a mind that is getting bored by the repetition of foot after foot after foot.

-run fast - it's not necessarily that it is easier to go on less mind food, there's just less choice about it period. When you're hurting and running the ragged edge to your capacity, it's hard to think about much but the seconds ticking off on the clock.

T'would be interesting to put together a mind-food diet for runners.

namaste

has committed to unequivocally accept his physical framework, as is, from this day forward. I'll exercise tommorrow.

is NOT obsessing that he has made it through day 4 without coffee.

Four. Freaking. Days.

is suggesting a Hazmat team and counsellors would be an appropriate response to my gym olfactory fallout.

rolls the dice...treadmill or track?

just watched someone in impossibly high heels wobble gracelessly to her Benz.

transits willfully through day three WITHOUT a cup of coffee. Whimpering is subsiding. Histrionics and anger flashes still a possibility.

Need One Light (Sausage Grinder)

Sausage Grinder

Walking down the hallway, have an itch on; I need to explain myself.

Stop off in HR to begin with, and they give me a pleasant sit down, explaining how they have the answer to my professional success. We'll start with Meyer's Briggs, use that as a driver to figure out WHERE I should be working, then they'll set me up with all of the toys that I need to make me happy.

They also offer to set me up with a fashionista to help bolster my self esteem, but I tell them I've got an appointment down the hall shortly, no need for that.

Good then, you should be happy

And I am, but not for the reason they think. I giv'er the old Jack Black rock'n'roll voodo moves and FLASH, it's all stopped. Frozen, baby, except for me and the ole sausage machine.

I walk over to the HR rep - my timing was impeccable, the words are floating like an impossibly edged balloon, just launched from the throat center, backed up by an almost infinite cause and effect chain - and wrest them loose.

Haven't used the grinder before but it looks fairly straight forward; I put the words in and start up. It's a little on the stiff side as I get by the intent at the start of the words, and then slides more easily as the intent bleeds to ignorance. Avidya, nothing pejorative here.

Pretty oily substance that comes out at the bottom of the grinder, nothing too meaty here. I take the cup, back up a few steps, and throw it at the frozen scene in front of me. Interesting.

Depending on the person, it sticks, rolls off, or shines the light back from the crew behind me. (OK, it's a crew of ONE, but let's not get too complicated at this point).

I dab a bit on myself, and it mostly shines then rolls off, I'm getting closer to light here.

That's enough in that room, so I proceed down to Management Office, where there is a different bent on things.

That's all good and well, I'm told, but if I am really interested in happiness I need to silo in, saddle-up, put the hours in and reap the rewards. THAT's the only security I'm likely to find. Dollars in the bank, secure your freedom then you can secure other's freedom and

BANGO

Jack Black time.

These word's are a bit more tethered into the throat - a dotted line to the heart chakra as well, but secondary. Clearly it's about control. I pull them out and start grinding. Pretty consistent here, but again, it definitely gets easier as the grinding goes on. Intent to Advidya.

I half turn my head as I retrieve the solution below. Bit thicker oil here, with some Idbits mixed in for good measure. The Crew behind me neither nods nor shakes, just IS, so I decide to try it again and surprise...no surprises.

There are a couple in the room who's fierce intellect or hidden yearning help clear the occlusion somewhat, but the light is limited.

Finally, to the fashionistas. Instead of waiting this time, I try upfront to engage:

yes, you can help us all as you dress us up to make us feel better about ourselves. you can even do it in what appears to be a selfless way; but I KNOW that I'm just going to get more oil that will stick a little too much. I need to clear, not to occlude.

What's that? yes, yes, I tried the humanistic and the logical as well, the thing is, both of those are books of knowledge in a shelf that ultimately has to be pulled down, to see what's behind it. And when I think I get what's behind it, I simply need to still, and feel the light that was always me, reclaim me as it's own. Become the crew with the light.

Become the one.

Remember the one.

Dissolve.

One

Trinity

1

wonders out loud if Johann Strauss ever dabbled in the 19th century version of amphetamines.

dances between honesty and pragmatic realism whilst filling out career management objectives.

Yes, there are some bald faced lies.

is having a staring contest with himself and giggling.

is not experiencing record breaking stomach acid.

Solid Lines of Broken Glass

Solid Lines of Broken Glass

The oval has its advantages and disadvantages

As long as it is runnable outside (and my broad definition of runnable is a ground without blatant snow or ice), it provides a labyrinth of sorting that removes much of the chafe and challenge of the road or sidewalk.

The first few laps are the blood vessels reacquainting themselves with what it feels like to truly open to the demands in front of them. A steady white ache in the legs that burns quickly, then transfers up into the airways; heart picking up speed, lungs quickening.

This is the gross of the gross, the top of the colander as the shakedown and sorting unfolds. It stays up top, fading a little, as the next levels drop

down

And we're into the world of breath and heart and muscles and time and mind. Not as in your face difficult as the first level for sure, but there are subtle demons that more or less pull out their deck chairs and settle in for the run. There is a stridency here, in spite of the laizzez fare attitude. Time is clearly the ring leader. Even when all else is settling into rhythmic trance, Time has but to raise the baton and everybody else is backseated to the push, pull or discomfort he decides to manifest.

This too, can be shaken down staying up top as the even finer level of the run settles down.

Will and Itent.

Two brothers, these: Will the stable and predictable; Intent, the well meaning but sometimes fragile of the two.

And below these

Is.

Follow the non-linear linear tangent, the laser line from the finest level of oval the the intuitive level outside of Oval.

This would be fine weather sidewalk barefooting; salted face and saline sheet pulled from the stars to skin surface level; portable shade slipping down the olfactory awning, sear and pull, sear and pull as steady as a commuter train as I roll on slightly downhill to the turaround point until

diamond in front of me; image sharpened by the dull of the shades, a shift out of harms way, followed by a decision tree.

To the left, intuition, IS, run without fear but without direction.

To the right, hierarchy and structure, linear thought, the steps that might deliver me safely from shredded feet.

Inevitably, the left wins. It HAS to win, if I have any hope of navigating these lines of broken glass. And the lines collect and disperse like water through a creekbed; swaths scattered by an invisible reclusive gem gardener. Each sparkle a part of the mandala that will be pushed and pulled by traffic and weather and feet and wheels and paws and dust and time. Each sparkle a little cutting machine.

So it's a chosen path to NOT think. To be, a little thanks with each step that no damage has been done, a little hope with each following step that no damage WILL be done. Each lift and pull of the nekkid foot a whirlpool of belief, faith, hope, and a little fear...

Mantra beyond mantra, just trying to be in the arms of the divine, knowing that karma and fate and will and luck and disregard are all playing a part, drifting like billowing silk over the melting tar and embedded ego-checkers, until I'm through.

IS as intuitive grappling

IS a place of No-Thought and being.

Still in the world of the dual, but inexorably bound to the non-dual.

Because 'Is' is the non-dual, another form appearing and dissolving in and off the oval.

namaste

is scraping the financial marrow out, and transplanting it to less than worth worthy but highly needy recipients.

just ran 15 km barefoot, and is now going to thaw out with my good friend, Mr. E.P. Somsalts.

is riding the dragon Sudafed into the perilous wee hours.

Lila's Well

Lila's Well

Once I had the directions, the first one wasn't hard to find.

Started on West Broadway, walked to the car, sat reading for a few minutes, then got a glimpse of it JUST around the corner before I had to turn the other direction.

The second one, which was bigger, was actually a little trickier to find - heard some splashing and looked down from the reading nook to street level and caught a glimpse of it, but it was hauling serious ass up the street, stopping at most houses, sometimes briefly, sometimes a little longer. I didn't pursue it, just closed my eyes and tried to capture its look and feeling

And when I opened my eyes, graced!

A ladder had conveniently attached itself horizontally at window height. There was no fear or apprehension about the next steps - just action. Hell, it was going to happen anyway, might as well try it with my eyes open this time.

Popped out the screen and tested the ladder (pointless, in retrospect, clearly I was trying to show I had some control in the game) and walked out. An astonishing array below; a fluid mandala repainting and destroying itself; Brahma and Vishnu swimming in an epic embrace, Shiva sitting legs dangling over the side into the pool with a giant Talking stick that changed length and width at will, mixing the cacophony of light color smell and spice below.

I was above the well now, didn't need to look behind me to know that it would be the same as what was before me - a circle intimated and barely boundaried; all this could spill out through the fragile and bliss soaked membrane holding it all in; but not now, this wasn't the time. Hundreds and thousands of ladders coming in to meet me from all directions; the Well was coming to the houses now, not the other way around. Maybe it had always been this way? Or maybe it vacillated between coming and going. Or maybe, probably, all of the above.

Streams of humanity, most of them unaware of my watching, traipsed down the ladders. Many waited with a willful passivity before a spectered hand caught them around the ankles and pulled them in. Lovers came together to the alleged abyss and jumped in with abandon, hearts and roots on fire; I could see their light circling round the well - flying while they swam. Some came looking for the edge and got a whack of Vishnu's stick; Brahma and Vishnu embraced them on the way down, then they dissolved in fireflied light, sparkling above the pool and eventually becoming a part of it.

And a couple, like me. Two of us ended up making eye contact; thrilled with the spectacle below us as well as with the tension that standing here watching created. Vishnu was indifferent to us; he looked up and out at us, seeing us at the place between unity and diversity, the penultimate place, the place where paradoxes ALMOST but not quite resolved, where opposites closed in on each other but remained slightly tethered and reaching.

The last thing I saw before falling in was a plaque, dedicating the impersonal well from Lila TO Lila, OF Lila.

I had a sense of what it meant, before I was consumed by the neon grays and blues Vishnu and Brahma had waiting for me; draped in a custom coat of many colors, I went my way, knowing at some level that the sublation would come again, when ready, and I could again view the pool as an guide instead of consumer.

Nika!

Gods ATM

Under the nite's blood red moon, I make a promise that is as well meaning as it is destined to fail: I will not think.

I've made the promise in different words at different times, but the premise, the value statement, the underlying theme of the promise to self, is that I will live in the place that I visit - sometimes several times a day, sometimes just a couple times a week - sometimes lost behind maya's veil for protracted periods of time - for good.

That place has many descriptions; for me it's a place of clear taking in (awareness me thinks), all pieces, without filter or judgement. Even observing is too strong - it's more diluted and yet clear than that - it's just seeing it all come in.

The motivation behind the promise is real; but at my present level of development, the whole thing is bathed in a pale naivete.

In the times that I am graced and dunked into the timeless space, there's nothing to be done. And when I'm lost outside of that space, there's nothing that CAN be done. I can follow the pointers, expand the awareness, but I can't force reality. It's always there unfolding, I'm a part of it (not the other way around), and while I can't jump from a to b (distance is meaningless there), I can keep stripping away the things that I am not, which will, I like to think, increase the probability of being graced again.

From the dualistic perspective, from which now I speak, the currents that push and pull me closer to and farther away from timeless can be likened to God's ATM.

Deconstruct with me.

The word is made up of people, objects, ideas / abstractions and forces.

Everything that takes place can be reduced to these four, and interactions they have with each other.

Love relationship? Person <-> Force <-> Person
Economics? People <-> ideas / abstractions <-> financial institutions / countries (objects)
Religion? People <-> ideas / abstractions <-> forces

More succinctly, we can say that the manifest world is involved in expanding and contracting.

Each expansion (growth /evolution / movement/ forward-ness / big 'S' - motivated-ness) can be viewed as currency into God's ATM; each contraction (entropy/breakdown / conflict/ small 's' self-motivated-ness) can be viewed as a debit.

That's at a macro level, but as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, so our macro translates to the
micro.

When I expand in the big S Self, I am banking spiritual currency
When I contract in the small s self, I am taking out that spiritual currency.

First in the journey it seems important to take out and demand a lot from god.
Second in the journey it seems important to bank up god's currency
Third step is realizing that having a neutral bank book puts me in a pretty good position to see what god actually wants
Fourth step is realizing that the whole metaphor dissolves in god-given grace whenever the timeless spot opens up for a full immersion baptism, or just a lite lunch.

namaste

has, under witness of a blood red moon, chastened the cellulite. Quixotic effort.

is about to introduce 1000 demon-spawned calories to the pain and redemption of intervals and weights.

today assumes his alter ego super hero identity. Yes, I am Rogue Convective Cloud.

Exercising Naked

...is a lot more difficult than it sounds, particularly when the metaphor is understood.

Let's take the mechanical beast, which we've discussed before - the treaded moving sidewalk that can be controlled with the push of a view buttons. Hills, intervals, walking, running, jogging, trotting, it's all there, conveniently housed in steel, plastic and bundled electronic goodness for the exercising public.

Instructions are there, fed either electronically or through simple print into the system, and they touch on any number of details, but they're all EXTERNAL; exercising naked in this context is about the internal.

People layer up to go out into the cold, and it's good practice, primarily because its conscious. Exercise, on the other hand - walking running lifting jogging cycling that fine line between pain and bliss, lends itself to unconsicous reacting - a sort of primeval planning that is more B from A then first a, then B.

Take the shadechaser challenge. Hit a treadmill, and park your electronics. That's layer one. turn off the tv that is brought in piping hot for consumption; turn off the stereo. That's the obvious layers. But to get totally naked and exercise, you have to go deeper.

Neti neti.

Tune into the inner voice, and listen to the chatter. Not too long, just enough to get some perspective, that you are not the thoughts, you are what is watching the thoughts. Or something farther back.

Neti neti

Distance is a metaphor, but ulitmately it has to be discarded as well. Distance suggests that you are separate from what is being experienced, and as there is only one, this could never be.

Now quiet the thoughts and listen to the breath.

Ignore the hottie to the left or right, ignore your urges and heat, the pain and redemption of exercise.

Work with mantra, then breath mantra, then breath as mantra

Become absorbed, and naked.

And when you think you have it under control, exercising completely naked, when you're convinced you are balanced in the SPACE, open your eyes from half-mooned trance highway between the manifest and the semi manifest, and look at your urges.

Then, push your pulse up to 180 and see what it feels like to be raw - beyond nakedness, and yet, somehow clothed again.

neti neti.

wants to start a national holiday Feb 9 to commemorate the day I searched - and actually found relevant results - in Web Outlook.

is drawing with child. Child is much better drawer.

Family nite out

Rush High Colonics

The mountains visit me every morning; salty pine from the inlet teases and disappears up city canyons as I walk to work. Different routine this morning, as I let FM shoo the constant stream of consciousness out into the ether for fresh air and playtime.

Limbaugh is first in, and I – the sober minded listener who can separate rhetoric from reasoning – am sure to come away edified from listening to different opinions.

How naive.

The self inflated polemics reach through the earbuds, bloody fingernails looking for fuel that is both its sustenance as well as its raison d’etre– conflict. I fill the need, and in minutes am reduced to incoherence as I rail quixotic against everything Rushter stands for.

As his verbal emetic flushes my system and fades to a shadow twinge in my GI tract, I ponder how I can fully discharge the effluent he has released. Letters? Grassroots organizing?

The choice is as simple as it is effective, and as I leave the washroom I think of the money that could be made offering Rush high colonics to the millions of Dittoheads out there – shameless capitalism that would ironically make papa Rush prouder than ever.

is out to lunch with mike "the tiger" jamieson

Gnomes

Who's Hook, Who's Catch?

Hint of something in the air, crisp, fragrant, dash of salt edge off the ocean.

Gnomes.

Keep seeing them pass by in the columns of people passing by as well as the sparser clouds of humanity drifting through the canyons on their way to work. They're not all short gnomish-gnomes, let's not stereotype. Admittedly sometime an unrelated gnarled face or a twinkle or furrowed brow tweaks the pattern recognition and I THINK of gnomes, but it's not the physical that I'm talking about here, more the Platonic form...circle, square, trapezoid, truth, beauty, goodness, and gnomes.

Clear to me on reflection that they are there for a reason, probably watching the going ons for amusement or edification. Some of them have probably been away from the guild long enough that the memory of gnomehood is misted out. But I can see them, and they can see me.

I wonder about their belief systems, never studied much on gnomes - maybe I should. Pagan or druidish I would guess, that seems to feel right. One thing I find fetching though, is that they don't have any rods and reels out.

It's another thing I see, or hear, or see through hearing, strange psychic synesthesia. All these believers, all these fishers of men, and ALL their equipment.

Float a tag cloud in and over this cityblock, hit generate, and randomize it a few times until you see the patterns, then center in on the religious ones.

Buddhism Christianity Islam Judaism Mormanism Jehovahs Witnesses.

Not clear at first why Christianity Mormanism and Jehovahs Witnesses are grouped together; at least not obviously clear. They all have routes in Abrahamic tradition, and ostensibly follow the same book if not exactly the details or surrounding canon and then BOOM it's clear as crystal, it's about the hook.

Religion is many things - spirituality is another altogether - but religion - this goulash, is a mix unto itself. Sociology, anthropology, culture, psychology, a hint of god.

And one of its main appendages is the hook. Pastors, missionaries evangelists, all out with their rod and reel, casting and pulling, casting and pulling, casting and pulling in a connected web that looks from space like the planets biggest organic mousetrap.

Their bait is based on their belief - Mormons, clear eyed and warm chested, offer feeling and peace, JW's their own peculiar reasoning, evangelists a mix of guilt and promise.

Yes, their bait is their belief and the biters are those hungriest for their offerings.

But I consider as I watch them; strip away the lost - those that will never be caught; pair it down to the core group, and you have to wonder how many are truly present enough to be making a truly free-will choice to bite down.

It's clear to me that number is very small indeed, which means that the movement that is trying to bring them in will in a majority of cases be devoted to the care and watering of this demographic; and in doing so will lose some of their proffered shine, replaced instead with the various grime and grit and violence and terrible beauty and laughter and pride and paradox that IS a person. In this metaphysics, see, you might be 100% full of your belief. But you can't give out any of that 100% without filling up on something else; sometimes it is more of the belief, sometimes it is what's been brought in from the street.

Which all begs the question ... who is catching who...

the harvest holy ghost on fire streetworker after the prostitute
or the dark fire of the prostitute seducing the streetworker with desire and belonging, two vines wrapping around the worker like vines, looking for food to fill the void

the JW after the shut in
or the shut in with a cold open door of memories waiting to haunt a new generation

Indeed.

And through it all, the gnomes, watching, taking notes, or just BEING

as the reels are brought in, rods put away and shops locked up

for another day.


.

is out to lunch with mike "the tiger" jamieson

Context

Context

A dream of flying.

Silver body crescented in the moonlight, dimpling the night sky like water. Concentric circles ensconcing planets and stars; I smile and tremble and

Look for direction, and there is relation of here, of me to dimples, dimples to planets, planets to stars; but there is no relation between, and that's what is perplexing.

So I slow and sit, back lit up by comets and dowsed in the infinity of space. Hands around knees, skin blue and white and silver in an exquisite pastel that could never be recreated because it only exists second to second and time

..time needs 'between' too, doesn't it. So there is a feeling of relation, of a slight pull that would suggest time, but I can't have time without space, can't have space without distance, can't have distance if I don't have between.

Which is their problem too. Zoom down or in or just din, into that corner downtown. Keep it upper right. Now that room upstairs, second story, end of the hall. Keep it lower left. Got it?
You can feel the pull yah? Which suggests a between but we don't know what it is yet, just a hint, a wisp, a suggestion that there is a connection, a between.

Corner downtown, you can see her gathering her stuff together for the night. Tarp over the shopping cart, two empty coffee cups with some spare change and some candle wax, cart rattling with empty cans; slightly muffled by the one piece of security she has in the world - her sleeping bag. She's down-alley now, off the corner and a little out of the wind, but the rain is starting and it's time to pull out the plastic tarp and settle in for the night and that's exactly what she does when an available space-beside-a-bin comes up.

Upstairs room, hot words under hot tears being written so hard on the journal paper that she breaks through the top page and bleeds into the pages below. Pain so pure, pulled by the writers spindle across the pages, hundreds and hundreds of words which, in retrospect are really only two ... fuck you fuck you fuck you. Feelings don't need to be validated, but let's be clear ... even the vitriol here is reasonable.

So what is the between ? Upper right, lower left. Their ages repel rather than pull together betweens; their lifestations and paths are not comparable, until we mine the undercurrent that put HER on the corner and HER in her own corner, rocking herself, nails digging so hard into her hand that she's drawing tiny beads of blood.

The between is the unspeakable that was foisted on both of them when they were too young and innocent to prevent it.

The between is IT; and now it's clear that IT is both the act as well as the label for what he is. His cannot be actions of a person; too amoral and destructive and without conscience for that.

Unless I look for IT's context; which I don't have the appetite to do.

Much better to stretch out from my dimple in the stars and continue my skipping along the surface of the Kosmos, and leave

context

for another day.

Neiman

Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make me a Map

Ephemeral distance here. Now I'm aware of it, now I'm not.

Black on white. Letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters book. Or abstracting and deconstructing top down, we have ideas, language, black and white.

Strange serendipity and juxtaposition last nite as I moved from black on white to stereo in color. Just about giving up on the book's concepts of realism vs idealism - concepts that only partly gel for me, then turning on the tube and seeing the reality of the ideas played out in a PBS piece about the US civil rights movement. Realism vs. Idealism. Idealism played out in Realism.

Strange pull back to the book and now I am dancing in the linguistic architecture of a fierce intellect. This is rich food, and I am not sure how much I can imbibe. And yet I'm pulled in.

It's a spider web map here; ideas branching off in relational branches that capillary the map being presented.

Straight ahead here, now a right, visibility down! Left turn, straight, double back to check the road-sign, pull over, close the eyes and ponder, thought semi! - driving along the the main thoroughfare now, I could and should draft it, or even better yet, hitch up, follow the intellect through the maze and I do but

only for so long

and the hitch breaks and I'm back to my pedantic pace but now

the space is back

I've pulled back from the black on white and tracered into my cortex is a bright and fading big picture of the map she is drawing, pulsing in patterns and connected passages and roads joining roads joining roads and there's a ladder extending from my frontal lobes out and down to the page again

and I'm back on the street level view and I'm not sure how much of the pull is healthy and how much is rubber-banded attention that keeps coming back to the idea landscapes here, ideas that I will never complete absorb, but of which I can till the top layers and use them for harvests later

and it's bright, AND fading, AND pulsing

and I layer her positions in my head over greater abstractions that underscore reality more than her vision can, because they are more at the root of it all

but I realize that the base supports the floors above it; the soil produces the flora and fauna which ultimately point bidirectionally, out and in, and ALL of this is a part of the glorious Kosmos, it's all Shiva and I'm glad,

Glad I just

can.

only understands about half of Susan Neiman's latest book...but is still enjoying it.

Lilac Cathedral

Lilac Cathedral

So hot here, wet heat.

Part's internal - the controlled yo-yo of interval training, part of it is external - steam enveloping, relaxing, bringing up the core temp up bit by bit.

Close the eyes and mantra-up; thought recognition that established yogis are beyond hot and cold, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering. By that definition I am nowhere near established, but the mantra brings some fleeting relief.

Relief from what? I am the one who brought the exercise to the pulse; pulse in the body; body to the room where I now sit. I am the one who feels the desire of heated, steamed relief and relaxation even in the midst of a workout; I am the one who is sitting here, of my own volition. I WANT to be here. Human beings move towards pleasure and away from pain. There's a still-borne syllogism there. Even if fully articulated, it would fail the experience somehow because I am sitting in discomfort (pain and heat) for pleasure. Apparently, I want both.

Mantra is not strong enough here to take me to the place of no-pain; there are some rat-bastard demonoids that had happy-fun-time ravaging different levels of the gross-body the last two weeks, and they are having their last kick at the can before they can be expelled for good out of the system. They've fucked the equilibrium up, as has sleep and psychotropics and emotion and energy and the whole web, shimmering and sliding me in an only partly controlled free fall (more a free tumble) down the web to the end where I held on in rock climber's finger gripping grace and just managed to pull myself up and over.

So eyes are closed now, legs are dangling over the edge of silver web, and the mind's eye is open and I'm surrounded by a distanced white black screen

and now

floating down, tiny lilacs; one, two, then ...

walls of lilacs, and pillars in front of and holding up the walls. And great gothic arches sprouting windows and turrets and crosses and all of it Lilac.

i'm at the center now, standing and surrounded, the sitting me on the web in the steam room is somewhere connected but distant, it's just me and this Lilac cathedral

And the flowers extend and hold me now, and I am part of the castle, breathing in centuries and out eons, eyes exploding inward and outward; refuting physics in this tiny complete point that is everything because it is nothing

and that thought is whisked away because this is not a place for thought, just experience, or better yet just awareness playing.

A step up from awareness.

Manifestation between the causal and the subtle and the gross.

And it's flight that is delivered now, just above the walls and floors and spires and basements of the cathedral; everything Lilac, I am lilac, and I am being delivered it seems to the spire of spires where on toes and arms extended backwards I sing in ecstasy as

the steam rolls in

and I'm bounced to the web, off the web to the benched room where causal, subtle and gross gel into Me again.

puka.