Eros For Life

“Everywhere I go, in every experience, I see life constantly on the verge of death, the intensity of it almost overflowing, overwhelming me precisely because every thing is, from the moment of its creation, so  close to its own annihilation. Life exists to the extent that it stands in  stubborn and harsh contrast to its own non-existence. One who is alive, truly alive, experiences Eros for life, as the tension between what we see  as being through becoming is contrasted with the darkness, the hallow  absence—not the light!—at the end of the process.

Through this we may see the first will-to-meaning in the struggle between the secret gravity of our end  being ahead and behind us, and our constant attempt to create a beginning, an eternally present moment, right now.

It Is Learned By Walking

"Nothing on the face of this earth—and I do mean nothing—is half so dangerous as a children’s story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac."

— Master Li Kao (T’ang Dynasty)

My first waking impression this morning was a hazy glance through frostbitten glass at an overturned trash can. The sound of a dog rummaging through the garbage. The gentle pattering of sleet on the roof. Doppler shift as a car turns on slick asphalt. Sentence fragments, thoughts bisected in a 3 x 3 set of windowpanes on the far wall. If you’re really intent on a decent reproduction of the event, lie down and close your eyes. Imagine a chill sensation, a hazy image of a toe with overgrown toenails sticking out of the bed covers, and then a camera pan to the rusty trash can outside. Not a dramatic opening for a book, but it’s all this day has given me.

It's just a ride...

"Overwhelmed, as One would be,

Placed in my position.

Such a heavy burden now, to be The One,

Born to bear, and bring to all

The details of our ending.

To write it down for all the world to see."

-Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman)/Rosetta Stoned

for Astarte.

I was wandering around aimlessly through a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

No, really. That is not an exaggeration.

900 micrograms of the most visually mindblowing, showstopping LSD I have ever taken, a bit of ketamine and MDMA, wandering through a crowd of about a thousand people wearing woolen hippie hoodies, octopus hats and tie dyed t-shirts. Psychedelic Americana Kitsch, but somehow slyly self-aware of this. It was like something out of Andy Warhol's back catalog, or a complex self-referential viral marketing hoax perpetuated by the Church of the Subgenius.

Lately, I have taken to spreading memetic thought viruses to large groups of people. Outside of the internet, the festival environment seems most ideal for this. Congregating with those who are particularly susceptible to ideas that most of society considers to be deviant or dangerous is a way to plant your seeds, one by one, and not get caught. You don't tell them this, of course. Then they realize what you are really doing and the whole game is up. Shit, I just broke the fourth wall. Woops.

Just remember, I am emphatically *not* the Buddha. Please don't kill me.

the dangers of literal thinking

the box... you opened it. we came.

metaphors are lies. metaphors are not lies. metaphors are truths. the truths behind metaphors can only be comprehended by way of analogy, much like any other linguistic structure invented by a linear monkey mind. the statement "metaphors are lies" is itself a metaphor. "this statement is false."

why is it so difficult for human beings to grasp allegorical concepts? all language eats itself. the argument is circular. consciousness itself seems to be a chain reaction, wherein the last brick is the first and the first is the last. it goes nowhere, comes from nowhere, returns to nowhere. as george harrison once said, 'if you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there.' serpent eating tail. i am the one eye perceiving itself in infinite permutations of its own holiness... i am getting ahead of myself.

A Fleet of Shards.

Gabrael,

I’m in the hospital now, writing down the closing chapter of this story. While I do this, I look back upon the project you asked me to undertake, exploring what led me to you, but I feel that I’ve only provided a veneer.

You asked for a concise record of my probation and instead I give you a jigsaw puzzle of my parts which, if put in the proper order, like the permutations of the name of God in Sefer Yetzirah, will make me whole again.

I feel an overwhelming compulsion to schematize my experience. I have digested and regurgitated these events countless times. They are jumbled and rearranged, reinterpreted, and recontextualized by events running both directions in my timeline. In the process, these disparate events become me, my alpha and my omega.