When the engine won't start

(Continued from last post)

But sometimes you don't get ideal sleep. Sometimes there's construction next door. Sometimes you snore like a demon with asthma. Sometimes there's a draft. Sometimes your mind won't release you until your body collapses. Sometimes you just had gas. These things happen. How to get back to a decent baseline? Well you can try this. It worked for me today.

5-5-5: We'll cycle through the triangle above, counter clockwise first to banish the haze. 

5 minutes to Lubricate:

I like to hydrate as I caffeinate since the latter can steal from the former, so I started today off by sipping coffee and water for balance. If you like, raise the mug to the Sun and thank the anonymous lovely people who make it possible in what you hope the package says is true about decent working conditions). This just works better than chugging and it builds in a little period of phasing into day life. When my coffee and water took today, my little brain cloud lifted and I knew I would write something.

5 minutes to Activate:

I'm just barely learning yoga but my wife is kind enough to teach me in baby steps. I resisted, and you may too, but know that even without spiritual decoration it's stretching your body needs and appreciates. I did Sun salutations because we're in California where it doesn't feel like you're being microwaved and I appreciate that., with a little Warrior pose at the end for focus. When I finished yoga, I saw a bee on its back and got it back to higher ground. (This seems to happen here pretty regularly.) I saw the triangle and today's post was almost formed.

5 minutes to Motivate:

Zazen is a 2 dollar word for sitting quietly. Lotus is fun but definitely not necessary. Criss-cross applesauce will do as long as your back is pretty straight and your tailbone isn't squashed. I recommend just counting breath. Pick a number then use it to time this sequence by counts:

1. Inhale fully

2. Hold it

3. Exhale fully

4. Pause empty

A couple of minutes in, this post was clear in my mind. I was more or lessinished meditating when my daughter ran outside and hugged me on my lap. That was lovely. 

Now, after this is done you've spent 15 minutes making the next 15 hours more doable. That's a pretty good return on the investment, wouldn't you say?  If you have time later, try running the sequence clockwise to invoke balance if you start to slip. And like the last post said, repeat as necessary. The power is in getting back to the practice instead of kicking yourself for stopping. 

There's a Zen quote making the rounds you may have heard by master Zen master Lin Chi: "Eat when hungry. Sleep when tired." This is pretty good advice on its own, reminding us that animals have no shame meeting their needs as they arise. When you add the first part, usually left out by squeaky clean instructors with candles and mats for sale, it's a better reflection of our condition. We owe it to ourselves to honor and meet our needs without shame, or as Master Chi said, to "shit, piss, and just be human." 

So if you wake up feeling like handmade turd, have a sense of humor about it, give yourself a break, and play the Triangle of Kindling to warm your engine up so you can do well and be well. I can't promise what will happen to you, but I can say with some confidence that something positive will happen. This is you tuning the part of the day you can control to your pitch instead of trying to keep up with the music that blasts you from passing cars. 

Happy tuning! 

Repeat as necessary

Here's a little secret: Your good day starts the night before. Respect your body and its needs and it will thank you with more optimal function that allows better living.

Intoxication is only slightly younger than our species, so you will find no judgment here if you're getting lit to let some steam out. Have a wonderful time, but respect your body and meet your needs. Eat a real dinner, drink water, and go to bed before you're too tired to think. One day you will start feeling the difference this makes, believe me. Youth is not eternal, but the availability of increased vitality sticks around quite a while if you have the will to invoke it again and again.

Wake up earlier, drink more water, and give yourself 5-15 solid minutes before any duty. Serve yourself first so you may be of use. A lot of you probably have a morning ritual, but this is pre-coffee. Meditation and some kind of exercise are the lattice on which you can grow a better experience. Making the time will pay for itself. It gets better.

Do yoga even if it's one pose you suck at and even if you think it's Starbucks Mall Girl Stuff. That's just the version for sale. The thing itself is older than cities.  I'm still mastering not falling over during Sun Salutaions but thankfully my wife gets me doing it anyway. Actually kinda sucking at it is great because you have to focus to avoid mild injury and "monkey mind" shuts off. Meditate in whatever form you can hang on to long enough for stillness to arrive. It can be as easy as counting breaths. Totally portable and no props.

It's very easy to dismiss these things as privileged fluff, but remember this: we are all warriors in the struggle to break character, individuate, and live. Intelligence and health are swords of the spirit. They must be honed, folded, and sharpened constantly. Ask any athlete or engineer if they went straight to the top of their field and they're likely to tell you that they got to great heights by climbing the hill of bones rising from the mass grave of their failures.

The Verbal Hologram/Mesmermachine won't stop telling you that it can sell you success. It's not there to help you with anything but spending money. You just have to stop listening to its desperate howls and climb at your own pace toward the foothold you desire. Then on to the next, and the next, and so on.

We are either growing or wilting from moment to moment, and the determination to transcend the haze of the Hive is the purest fuel we can burn. To do that, we must forgive ourselves for the neglect and self-abuse that is labeled normal and get back at the controls of the game. The point of finding practices for body and mind is to maintain the means by which you shape reality through choice and action. To be frank, if you treat yourself like shit, your world will swiftly become a latrine.

Self-care is heavily marketed by people who aim to sell you their version, but you can and must define what works for you. Being functional is not a luxury and you don't need special gear or magic phrases or a steady flow of disposable income to ratchet your life up in doable increments. You owe it to yourself to make the time to reboot one of the best computers nature ever developed and to take care of the most adaptable vehicle for this kind of consciousness we are aware of.

I suggest we imagine a world where everyone is doing and giving their best. Will everyone show up at that roll call? I don't expect it. But you can make the shift with minimal effort, so why settle for the standard script when that movie sucks and everybody dies frustrated and sad, soul-first before the body burns up?

I'll pass, and so can you. 

Public Service Announcement #235

San Diego is a different world. Beautiful and more open. Just different enough atmospherically that my respiratory system works for once, intuition/synchronicity is almost too strong, and we can find something great to eat anywhere we go without awkward questions. It has everything from tiny secondhand shops to gargantuan theme parks, the ocean is two long songs from anywhere, and the weather is the way the whole planet should be. It has been interesting and remains so.

From the piano bar next to the hotel, I present the following:

Being human is terrifying and wonderful. We're driven to enforce order but the order that exists is so far beyond our comprehension that it looks like chaos, and it makes us crazy. We strive to protect ourselves and our beloved but all we can do is bend in the wind and try to add to the light.

Existence is an incredible piece of luck but beyond billions of strong opinions over thousands of years has no objectively apparent inherent meaning. The Blank is yours to fill in. Believe it or not, this is good news. It just hurts like hell to accept until it starts to take.

This said, it never hurts to choose to help, choose to love, and choose to enjoy as often as possible while we while away the seconds, hours, days, and years.

And now, back to what you were doing.  

Coming soon: Put On the Glasses

In "1984" we were introduced to a future of endless war, doublespeak and hidden history. In "Brave New World" the model was one of information overload and convincing the population to love and participate in their confinement. First year Philosophy majors have argued about which way we're going for decades, but the answer is obvious. 

Americans have largely given up on proper meals, so it's logical that the future-come-present has assumed the shape of a combo platter. "Brave New World" at home, "1984" abroad (or if we stand up to the octopus when it does things like digging up graveyards for oil pipelines, killing children with the impunity of a badge, or hijack votes).

Force is largely unnecessary to control Gen Pop in the ZooSA because the mass media has the national attention so firmly in hand. Now, many of us don't believe the news anymore, but we're still letting it drive the national conversation. People who belittle sports talk politics as fervently as any superfan. It's all the same routine dressed up in different outfits. While sports fans enjoy a mostly healthy competition, however, people who take politics seriously are being backed into smaller and smaller corners of paranoia. It's a wonderful time to be selling concrete bunkers, MREs and precious metals. Just swap Y2K for 2012 for Jade Helm for.. Whatever.

Just like with sports, we're encouraged to identify with a team that has little if anything to do with us. As George Carlin noted, the real power is a Big Club we aren't in. On a local level some shifts are possible, but in the District of Columbia it's all shadowplay.

The red versus blue/right versus left farce is there to hide the real issue: the grand pyramid scheme where the arbitrary "top" siphon all the power and resources from the mesmerized "bottom" while we bicker over surface level hate-bait. The media may once have served as a check of corporate and state power, but now it is there to parrot the party line, polarize and divide. With some exceptions, it keeps people in either fight or flight mode or longing for some fiction to be made flesh, and all of it encourages spending by providing the illusion of relief via product in the all too few frequent commercial breaks. The machine is doing a damn fine job. 

To me, the whole setup reeks of a kind of black magic meant to keep the majority as a kind of psychological cattle for the parasitic stress farmers, but ultimately it isn't that important whether our behavior is manipulated by malevolent magicians or marketing experts with an acute understanding of psychology. Our situation is the same: we are surrounded and caught by nets woven of company logos and archetypal symbols, sound bites and trigger words, all dressed up as our fondest desires, which are themselves engineered by the same well-worn means.

Orwell missed the mark a bit. The unaccountable powers that work behind the facade of scapegoat-able "leaders" have full spectrum dominance, with no shots fired, at least in suburbia. This works as long as we cooperate as willing puppets. That may sound like a strong word, but if you don't think we're hypnotized, try to walk a mile without seeing 100 people living in three dimensions but habitually staring into a flat plane of pixelated light patterns. It's not an accident that television has been made utterly portable.

What to do? Make the switch from passive to active, consumer to producer, using the same dazzling technology you're reading this on and taking advantage of the same portability. As Jello Biafra suggests, don't just hate the media, become the media. As Neil Gaiman and Terence McKenna suggest, make good art! There's no better way to change culture for the better by adding your genuine voice to the mix, and we are in a Golden Age of opportunity in that regard. Best take the chance while it is there. 

In that spirit, in the near future I will be doing articles and then videos with an eye to catching and decoding the messages buried all around us for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. I'd say stay tuned, but I'd rather you did your own tuning. 

Come When Life Calls

I've said before and will again that life is a game you can play as you will and that it can play with you right back. In fact, I'll go as far as to say this:

It wants to. It may even be The Point of being here.

Now whether you believe that it's all neurology and that a brain in good shape can work so fast at filtering and steering that its efficiency feels like magic, or that it's kindly souls one step beyond who play the guiding hand, or if you've come through practice and peace into union with the Tao and have the wind of the universe at your back, you're welcome to it.

I don't know which of these or which of the infinite alternatives it may be and I wouldn't spoil the fun and tell you if I did. There's room enough in 8 billion minds to carry the balance of possibilities. The point is to show up for the game.

Storytime. About 20 years ago, I was in college and taking woefully full advantage of the steady internet connection. I was disproportionately shy. I found it much easier to stare into the all-seeing eye of America Online and converse with people scattered across the country but sorted into a pool of more or less like minds. I met some lovely people and many of those bonds survive to this day, but the dark side was that I was missing out on the joy inherent in discovering new friends out in the wild.

I already knew quite well the value of digging through the shelves and racks of secondhand shops and the used bins of record stores to keep myself supplied with new things to explore and enjoy, but I was too shy to apply the logic to meeting people. I was lucky and managed to find a great little crew anyway, because you always find the people you need, but that's getting off the point. One of these digital pals was named Greg. Being local, he decided it was worth it to him to break into my physical reality, and he did me a great many favors.

One day when I was distracting myself from the combination of prerequisite courses and social anxiety, overloading my senses with television, AOL chat and my first real forays into electronic music, Greg messaged me out of the blue one day and told me he was coming by to pick me up. I was pleasantly surprised, having no idea what to expect when I hopped into his car. He got right to business. "Have you heard of The Legendary Pink Dots?" Not yet knowing this was a band, my mind scanned for a reference and found nothing. He didn't wait for me to answer. "We're going to see them now."

We did, and I was blown away. The opening act was the Silver Man, a soloist making dense and beautiful structures with electronics. I was mesmerized and inspired. I was overjoyed when I found he was just part of the main band, joined by Edward Ka-Spel, a golden-throated front man straight from Alpha Centauri who played loops and synths while weaving worlds with his voice, live drums/bass/guitar, and a horn section. It was an absolute banquet. I had seen a fair amount of live shows but nothing came close. Some bands get labeled as "psychedelic" and all you get is swirly guitars and too many colored lights. Like whoa, man. The Legendary Pink dots never bother to use the word, but they create the state without requiring the drugs.

It was a real touchstone moment for me. The bar had just been set very high, not only for the kind of music I'd grow to enjoy seeing live, but the kind of music I'd wind up making. We enjoyed the show so much that on a whim we decided to follow them to the next stop, a few states over. We slept in a Denny's parking lot and made it in time to meet the band. We were too spent to stay up the extra 6 hours to see the show, but it was worth it. I had just met these musical gods and it was now clear that they were just people excelling in their element. That lesson stuck.

Greg did this sort of thing with me several times, subjecting me to music I wasn't ready for on road trips that became my favorite bands, making sure I didn't miss good shows (There was the time his car died and we missed Negativland, but I got to open for them this year so that one's all better), introducing me to all manner of fascinating people, playing music with me and just being a great all around friend. Then as soon as he came, he vanished completely, after boosting the novelty in my life by tenfold. I spent a few years trying to find him and nobody seems to know what happened. Based on Greg alone, part of me leans toward that angel theory. If they're only human, that's good enough for me.

So years pass, and I catch this band when I can. After a long hiatus I heard that the Pink Dots were touring again this year, and that they were crossing through Arizona. Twenty seconds after I knew, I took a page from Greg's book and informed my darling Christine that we were going. She was familiar with the recordings but we hadn't had the pleasure to catch the performance together. The nature of her job is random scheduling, so even though we got up at dawn the day of the show and she got there the minute she could start, it was still pegged to be a long day for her. Stormclouds gathered.

I decided to go stoic about it and accept the worst: the Dots had played a significant role in our courtship, so missing our first chance to see them together with no idea when the next chance might be was a hard pill to swallow. I made peace with it and sank a bit.

Then I meditated for a minute and asked myself, okay, but by contrast what's the best case scenario? I called ahead to see when they went on. It was doable but pushing it. I saw it clearly: We would get to the venue and walk in just before the Dots went on.  I was amused by how perfect that would be, and laughed it off as too much to ask. I decided to just play it as it came.

Well not long after, I heard that her day was going better than expected. It worked out that everything in my Dad/Daughter routine happened early and I dropped her off with the Grandfolks. I got back home just after she arrived. Standard progression of outfits, dinner in the car, and we were on our way. The drunken afterthought layout of Tucson means crossing the diameter of the city to get to the highway from where we live, so it was white knuckles for a while until we got to open road.

We were 5 minutes ahead of schedule when the gas light went on. We got the gas and got back on the road, which took exactly 5 minutes. At this point I knew that there was a sense of humor about the whole situation and that it would be fine. We navigated into a part of town we hadn't seen before, and found the music venue nestled into the corner of a strip mall between a nail salon and a Chinese restaurant. Surely this was not the place, but the venue name matched and I heard a guitar tuning.

I felt a pang of sadness, thinking these might be hard times for the Dots as they are for any touring band. Then I remembered how lucky we are to have these international acts coming through at all anymore. We approached the "Will Call" area (a card table with a laptop), got our wristbands, and the game was on. The venue was sized just right for a very intimate show, but with good sound and lights. The crowd was small but thickening. I looked around just in case Greg was still following the Dots. I felt relieved that this band would get the space and audience they needed. We walked in, turned to face the stage, and they played the first note. Believe it or don't, it was exactly as imagined, and worth all the stress on the way up.

It was everything I hoped. Phil Knight (Silver Man), Edward Ka-Spel, and some bloke I don't know calling down angels on guitar. They only needed 3 this time to do what all great bands do regardless of lineup. Time vanished, space expanded, and every spirit in attendance received the meal it needed. Seeing this band is always a Master Class in how electronically driven music can be performed with the heart of an orchestra, the balls of proto-punk, and the tenderness of a crooner in equal measure. As I said, there are loads of trippy bands playing trippy music, but tripping is stumbling. The Legendary Pink Dots are shamans on stage and gentle geniuses off. Christine and I had the pleasure of meeting and thanking them for our favorite record, (and catching them giddy over cheap pizza. The angels are human after all.) and I geeked a bit with Silver Man about gear. All in all, perfection.

So, lesson learned? Play, and play well. Take the chance all the way to its best outcome. As the Dots themselves have in the liner of every CD, "Sing While You May." And if you're able to, see this band while you can. If you're reading this in 2016, there are still chances on this tour.

Here are tour dates:

Now, I am clearly in post-show glow, and this is where I could link to live footage of the LPD on YouTube, and there is a lot. For me though, there is no comparison to Being There. No phone camera and pinhole microphone is going to relay the quality of the music, and only being in sight of performers gets you That Feel anyway. So instead, here's one of the pieces they performed, at the perfect time in American history to hear it.

A List of Campaign Promises in an Election Year Where There Are a Lot of Bees Around the Pool

Neoconservatives and Neoliberals (in unison with slightly different accents and each with checks from the bee lobby):

We've always had bees in this pool. We will skim off the ones who fall in and drown but you'll have to embrace certain bee-related realities to have a pool.

Far Right: We will drench the yard in DDT until nothing flies within 1000 miles.

Far Left: We will ask the bees nicely to leave.

Green: Do we really need a pool?

Libertarian: Not my yard, not my problem. But by the way,  I happen to own a line of bee-less pools so I can fix this with your support.

Anarchists: We drained the fucking pool and now there are no bees here. You're welcome.

Reality: Colony collapse disorder. Bee presence highly exaggerated.

A Prayer for The Invisibles

23 people had been arrested for resisting the construction of the Bakken Pipeline in North Dakota when I started writing this piece a few weeks ago. At the moment, there seems to be a 20 mile "buffer zone" being held in which protestors are successfully preventing further digging. 

The project is intended to cut through sites sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux, including their graveyards, which would be enough of a blow in itself. The more sinister threat is to the groundwater. It's no wonder the protestors are being called water protectors.

Quite understandably, the project has met resistance, with people locking themselves to construction equipment among other direct, nonviolent actions. The reaction to the Native resistance and their various allies? Pipeline security complete with pepper spray and attack dogs, followed by The National Guard and another emanation of what is to me of the spookiest trends of all: militarized police. The picture below is of a truck mounted sonic weapon called an LRAD. It's Army surplus, clumsily painted in black and white. Developed to knock birds out of the sky and assault pirates, it has been adopted for crowd control. It blasts a focused beam of sound wherever it is aimed that can torture or deafen. Cops do not need this thing. This is a toy for bullies.

More of a Deaf Ray than a Death Ray. Close enough.

So why are you having to find out about this on blogs? The media silence is hardly surprising. News is a business, not a utility. There's no money in ugly truth, especially for those who cut their teeth on exaggerated celebrity scandal and glassy-eyed corporate shilling.

Not everyone thought it should go unreported, but it's an election year and the media does what it's paid to/told so it was down to the fringe until the story got traction on Twitter. I am a little amused that my main source of on-scene info comes from a censored source called Unicorn Riot, whose reporters were arrested along with protesters. Facebook, it should be noted, was tagging Unicorn Ninja's live feeds of the arrests as "malicious," and they were blocked. Thanks, Zuckhead.

I'm always in support of the side that's receiving the pepper spray and sound canons and attack dogs. I should be fair. what do the cops say? Here's the Sheriff:

“Carlo Voli and Corey Maxa were arrested Tuesday, September 13th and will face an additional charge of reckless endangerment for attaching themselves to equipment…
The Morton County States Attorney’s office will pursue felony charges against the protesters who attached themselves to equipment due to the seriousness of the crime. Law enforcement officers are put in a dangerous situation when freeing these individuals, there is also a danger posed to DAPL, their workers and equipment along with the protester putting themselves also in a dangerous circumstance. We continue to encourage people to protest in peaceful and lawful manners.”

In other words, wave signs and tweet all you want because that won't slow down production, but don't get serious or it's riot gear and "less-lethal" weapons. This is reminiscent of the "free speech zones" at party conventions where one is "allowed" to protest in "designated" areas, the WTO protests in Seattle, the Occupy crackdowns all over, the Black Lives Matter marches against police brutality that were met with more violence. More often than not, especially these days, we find ourselves with an ugly realization:

The cops work for the crooks, whether they know it or not, and many up top certainly do know. Some of them really go for it with gusto.

So what do the crooks say? Dakota Access says their pipeline is safe as it will monitor pressures and shut off to halt leaks, but declaring your own project safe does not solve any of these problems. Is there independent proof of this? We can't trust the pipeline company to tell us if the pipeline is safe for the forseeable future just like we can't trust the USDA to police its own slaughterhouses. Do you know what else was declared safe from the inside? Let's have a little walk through industrial disaster history. Just the hits, to keep it brief.

Chernobyl, USSR. In fact, the meltdown of the core reactor occurred during a safety drill.

Bhopal, India. Ask the people who woke up that day suffocating on insecticide how safe they felt, if you can find one.

More recently, Fukushima, Japan. Don't click that link if you want to sleep.

Don't forget the BP oil spills (with an s) or the now classic Exxon Valdez. Red tides of dead fish. Blackened ducks being scrubbed by desperate people with toothbrushes. How about the PG&E case of carcinogenic groundwater pollution (you know, Erin Brocovich) from a natural gas pipeline? How about Roman lead levels in the water of Flint, Michigan? How about the petro-sludge coming out of the tap and occasionally exploding in every single town near fracking operations? How long do we need to boil in this pot?

The history of oil actually began with snake oil, moving on to lamp light, and by a bit of a fluke, replacing early vehicles that ran on electricity and ethanol with those that ran on gasoline. Lands have been destroyed, cultures uprooted, and aquifers poisoned in the pursuit of black gold. These people care about making money, and that's it. They know damn well that there is not any part at all of the fossil fuel system that does not ruin what it touches, from procurement to production. It wasn't long ago the CEO of Nestle said clean water is not a human right, and as he happens to sell water, you have to wonder if he's secret-handshake pals with everyone who's destroying the national supply so casually.

My father was a computer programmer and I was raised knowing Murphy's Law. If it can screw up, it will, and in this case, screwing up means the utter ruin of the little land these people have been allowed to hang on to. The men ordering the digging of trenches and laying of pipe are calling "safe" but I'm not convinced, and neither are the Standing Rock Sioux. It's a hell of a gamble for them, but not so for the human oil slicks that bleed the Earth dry at the expensive of little things like life itself. There's always some other population to ignore in the pursuit of black gold if North Dakota doesn't pan out, which is why we're sending so many people into the thresher on the other side of the world.

But that's enough venom from me. This is Apocalypse Fatigue, not Angry Doom Boner. The point of my story is that yes, this is awful, but there's a glint of hope. I want you to look at some pictures from around the world.

Look first at these two sets of human eyes, and the beauty of the tension between resistance and control.

This is taken from Chile, where protestors honored the "disappeared" victims of the Pinochet regime. Her eyes say "We know what you did and what you'd do again". And bless her for making it plain. So should we all, in good time. The man hiding in that armor is really having a moment, too. I don't believe he thought this would happen when he signed up.

Did he jump at the chance to be a hero only to learn the hard way that it was only a dream inspired  by a nightmare? He might have a girl her age at home. He might be wondering what he's going to tell her about all this.

It reminds me of this picture from a few months ago in Baton Rouge:

Another young woman who's had enough. More scared men in ridiculous costumes, knowing in their quivering guts that they're on the wrong side of history.

From my little bubble of white-male privilege, I see hope in the defiance these pictures illustrate. If this is the overdue return of the Do-No-Harm-But-Take-No-Shit Divine Feminine of days past to her rightful place of power, let us all breathe a sigh of relief as the ten thousand year Dick vs Dick show of the Rabid Male Domination Con at last fades to black.

The defense of the people against the corporate death grip is overdue. It's happening at a pace so slow as to be agonizing, but it is happening. Nothing else can, really. We know how it ends, otherwise.

Never put your shovel down

I came to a realization today. I am not a truth seeker.

Let me clarify that. I'm seeking truth, just not The Truth, because frankly, I do not believe there is just one. I believe that settling on a static definition of reality prevents you from seeing new information. What I think I'll call myself now is a context collector.

I've always been interested in looking for deeper meanings in that cloudy water beneath the surface tension we call normal reality. The pursuit is high on my list of my favorite activities. I love the roller coaster ride of discovery and occasional astonishment, but I also enjoy the feeling of being wrong and choosing to consider a new approach. What I find over and over again is that the camps I can't join in good conscience have one thing in common:

They're sure they found it, and therefore they can be kind of gross to be around and hard to talk to. So I split.

It feels great to think you figured it all out. I've had those moments of smug certainty and they do make you feel pretty bulletproof at first. From that island of illusory security can spring arbitrary authority, pride, and the potential for conflict with those who do not agree.

Here's the danger: People who are sure will do things that will give pause to people who maintain a healthy hesitation.

I've declared myself an optimist before, which may seem not to play well with the tone of my website and the Apocalypse Fatigue "brand." Optimism is misunderstood. It is not the opposite of pessimism, which tends to be more absolute. To me, it means that in the long view, things are tending to get better even as they seem downright awful in the short term.

To put it another way: we're screwed if we just ride it out and trust leaders to fix it at the last minute, but there's hope for the big picture if we reclaim the reigns of personal responsibility and shape life around us with our choices. When I remind myself to do this, the effects are immediate and positive. My advice is not to take my word for it. Start with tiny things and be scientific.

I look to a better horizon, but I'm not staring into the sun with rose colored glasses on. I naturally get pulled into hoping for some part of the world to be some way, but rather than close the book there I allow myself room for doubt, investigation, and reevaluation. This, in my view, is a sane path, if not always a comfortable one. Cynicism and skepticism have been made into bad words, but all one has to do to take The Curse off them is research their original meaning.

The original Cynics were advocates of living simply and in greater harmony with nature than with society. They were critical of greed and other social norms they felt were causing pain, but that was only part of their message. Some were quite vocal and people are people, so feelings were hurt. Diogenes was infamous for telling Alexander the Great of all people to get out of his light. Our ancestors hung on to the part of cynicism that gave them the butt-hurt, and so now the word is taken to mean a certain jaded mistrust of human motives.

In much the same way, skepticism is regarded as doubt when the root word actually means inquiry. As Dr. Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine puts it, skepticism is a process, not a position. Skeptics do not appear to have a philosophy in common like the original Cynics. They simply seek to pause and get what facts can be had before picking a side, and may never land on a belief or denial at all.

That brings me back to my original point. Thirst for and pursuit of truth is a healthy part of any free life, especially given the clear fact that the propaganda mills have never worked harder to blast us all with the Verbal Hologram of consensus reality. Choice informed by inquiry and evidence is a far better means of navigating and shaping life than signing on to a belief system and letting it drive. I admire the chase, and salute all who run after gnosis, but I'm always a little annoyed when people declare their utter certainty.

Keep digging, my friends! May you find the gold you're after, but also the silver you never expected to find.

The cancer of the spirit

"The Earth is full of ghosts now," as Marc Almond sings in Coil's unreleased track "The Dark Age of Love," But how did this happen?

A little at a time, like every other iteration of The Fall. We will get into how, and what to do about it, at a later time. For now, a reminder of What Is All Around. Truth is often painful before it liberates, and it is worthwhile to be reminded of the silent suffering of our species.

Stage One: Amnesia

We start to lose our memory and the context it provides. We begin to lose identity and purpose. Neglect creates chaos and seeds vicious cycles that take root later. Amnesia robs us of perspective and we creep toward the next phase. First, we forget to act.

Stage TWO: Abulia

Then, we start to lose the will to act. Overwhelmed by the fruit of amnesia, we relinquish ever more of our power to shape reality through deeds. We take off our crown and put on a dunce cap. In this state we can be led by the sort of sociopaths that think themselves worthy of leading in the first place. Abulia is the ally of authoritarianism.

Stage Three: Apathy

Disheartened through abandon of self-control and cynicism toward the outer world, we lose enthusiasm, the juice of experience. We lose interest in participating in the web of life at all. We lose empathy for our fellow travelers, closing off from them. Apathy dries out the heart, and it opens the door for hate.

Stage Four: Anhedonia

We lose the capacity for pleasure. We rail against this for a while but the buttons aren't connected any more and there's no sense in pushing them. We go grey inside, and see the world bled dry of color. We try to drown it in the socially acceptable poisons. We fail.

These phases undulate and weave around each other, like all the cycles of life. Trauma accelerates, humor mitigates. But at a certain level, humor does not come when called. This is the moment when the lucky ones experience an intervention. Perhaps you need one at this moment. If so, let me remind you that you are not alone.

The world is indeed a stage, and we the players on it. The word "person" refers to masks worn on stage in ancient times, and each of us has a collection of disguises. I can remember reading the following poem in grade school. It struck me so deeply that I stole the page from the Language Arts textbook. I am not sorry.

We Wear the Mask

By Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
       We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
       We wear the mask!

Stranger-yet-friend, may your masks fall away some day, that your light may be added in the effort against the shadows that bind and blind our minds.

Famine by Rick Munish