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Scary Monsters (Ashes 2 Ashes Mix)

Evan Gruzis


Kafka's the tormenting demon



Once you give chase to one idea it inevitably leads to another...and another and another--they dance in little light shows over an infinite void of nothingness. A canyon of echoes--the oblivion of the abyss. Those who want a clearer view follow the ideas to the edge, unconcerned about the lack of safety rails. All they want is to be there, way out at the turning point where creation and discovery are locked in an elegant tango.

The best artworks are those depicting variations on the same pair of dancing robots: they wear masks behind which there is a pulsing inner light as they spin one another into eternity.

Meanwhile the human pioneers of the edge are called sick and crazy by those who remain deep within the homeland empire, creating schedules and clinging to imaginary, brand name parachutes.

Until recently I oscillated between being an artist and being a dependable citizen. I wanted the freedom of living for ideas but I also wanted to be a good person. I didn't care so much about normalcy but being good seemed important--even though, deep down, I knew I didn't know what it meant, and was most likely confusing goodness for politeness. When it comes to morality we are all in a grey area. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone contributes to the problems of the world. If you look back at the events of a person's life to try and figure out why they are the way they are it quickly becomes impossible to judge anyone--even the worst murderer was once a helpless child.

There's also the discoveries of neurology and genetics, which points to chemicals and wiring as the main components of our moods and mindsets--things that are described as being largely out of our control.

For me it was all a vicious circle. I went from being worried to feeling free and then back to being worried again. I seemed to be making progress, however, since the times of being worried or guilt stricken grew fewer and far between. Perhaps I could accept these dark clouds of uncertainty and deal with them within the bigger picture of all the happy, healthy things in my life.

That was easy to think when it had been a long time since I felt the other way. It always hits me unprepared and comes not as one definitive event but as a series of small things--aggravations piling on top of the feeling of being a zero, followed by a bout of self-loathing in which I berated myself for being weak. I condemned myself for pretending to care what other people felt, but the reality was that I only selfishly cared about myself--and the guilt I'd feel if I didn't carry through on what I felt were my obligations.

These feelings were bad enough--it could get much worse if something else happened--something that was beside the immediate point (about me being a loser) but completely indicative of it as well. Something seemingly arbitrary that revealed the barely hidden truth.

The other night that something came in the form of a folded color printout.






I found it when I was starting my latest project and going through old boxes for usable visual art supplies. The last time I'd done any serious visual art was during the RNC protest, when I made my SKULLFUCKBUSH t-shirts and assorted propaganda. Going through that stuff was a trip--but then I found a folder wedged between two others that was even older--pre-9/11 and even pre-Dubya. I looked through the various ephemera as if they were the contents of a time machine. Late 2000 was another era: before I stopped drinking and started blogging and before the world started this wild round of changes. The printout was from a project I worked on for a friend who went crazy shortly after. I helped him write the liner notes for his fake record label's 5th anniversary CD. He thought it was a good gimmick. We made up 15 different bands and pretended the tracks were culled from various nonexistent albums--when really they all came from my friend's network of Macs, synthesizers, drum machines, and electric guitars. He didn't know how to play the instruments, but that didn't stop him from sucking the sounds they made into his computer and back out again in the form of math rock rhythms and hip-hop beats that were wacky yet (mostly) danceable.

The bands had names like Young and Hungry, Nein Nein, Drunk & White, Futurscope, and (my favorite) Girl On Girl.

He created a guitar based track by sampling individually strummed notes and chords and piecing them together using various software. At one point, a friend who actually knew how to play stopped by his tiny studio apartment and played for real. He recorded it and cut it into pieces and sprinkled it around the samples--turning what would ordinarily be the main course into a garnish.

I learned a lot from the way he used things without concern for the way in which they were supposed to be used--he treated everything like a found object. As he got crazier, this extended beyond playing with musical instruments and production software to navigating everyday situations like crossing the street.

In addition to the liner notes I persuaded him to let me create a piece of fake cover art. He was including a pic of each single's supposed cover alongside the notes about its creation. While he liked the visual of the design I showed him he wasn't hot on the lines of text I'd included in the bottom right corner--something that came to me late one night when I woke up from a drunk--something I'd jotted down then and kept returning to... I thought it might be a poem, but I wasn't sure. All I knew was that I couldn't get it out of my head. In the end my friend used the visual without the text, but the printout that I found was of the original version. As I unfolded it and gazed upon it for the first time in nearly a decade, I realized that I'd thought about this image recently. I'd been standing outside the Rem Koolhaas store in So-Ho and thinking about how I liked his big, coffee table books even better than his architecture (which I liked very much) and how my awareness of this preference was an example of what I like to call post post-modernism--a way of being based on being conscious of post-modernism. I stood there in my ripped jeans, sipping a coffee out of a cardboard cup and thinking back in time to a picture I'd scanned from one of his books of an architectural model--a cityscape with colored Styrofoam blocks for buildings, the most prominent of which were a pair of identical towers, standing side by side...

What I hadn't remembered were the words--when I read them again I felt simultaneously vindicated and sickened. It was a sensation that started in my legs and rose up into my gut.

It was terrible. Not from the perspective of it being overly painful, but because of the strange snuffing out of the world around me--as though some important sensory wires inside of me had been disconnected. Something told me that one day I'd discover it was the same feeling one had as one's body began to die all around them.

I folded up the printout and put it in a pile of other recovered art related supplies in a small pile on the floor to the right of my desk.



When I felt myself spinning down the drain a few days later I decided I wanted to look at it again. The sad, sick feeling was growing--radiating out like a tuning fork ache from the calcium bump on the back of my knee--it was feeding on itself--like a twisted cramp deep inside the bone.

It was the feeling of wanting to be heard--a near faithless prayer turned inside out and degraded into an absurdity, "Oh Lord! Please hear me doubt your existence! Please bless this doubt!"

I fought with my bf. I fought with myself. I went to the pile of folders expecting to see it near the top but it wasn't there. Not just the printout but the whole pre-Dubya folder. I felt certain that I'd placed it there. I started looking through the other folders, to see if it had somehow slipped in between one of them.

Just as my irritation was about to boil over into a temper tantrum, a large insect leaped out at me from the papers. It was a giant roach. It stood for a moment, flexing its shiny wings before it started to scurry forward in my direction. I screamed and jumped up, back peddling into the middle of the room. I am horrified by bugs especially a mutant monster like this. Thankfully I've been roach and animal free for years. Before that I'd had my unhappy encounters with unrelenting armies of invaders--but they were tiny and ran for cover when the lights went on--nothing like this queen sized invader who seemed to be on the offensive. I threw a stray sneaker at it and it darted back and ran under my bead. I was horrified and trying to think of what to do next when it ran out the other side of my bed, near the wall lined with books. It crawled up and over the lowest pile--I could hear its spindly legs tick-ticking disgustingly across the laminated cover of Deleuze and Guattari's What is Philosophy? I backed into the kitchen and started looking under the sink for the can of Raid I keep for just such emergencies. I try not to kill things if I can help it, but I was filled with a bad feeling about this bug. Of course I couldn't find it. I could have sworn I'd put it with the other bottles of chemicals but it wasn't there. Of course this would happen when I needed it most. I know that the tough thing to do would be to smash it with the sneaker i threw at it but I couldn't bring myself to feel the crunching sensation of its cookie sized hard shell cracking into pieces leaking yellow goo all over the place.

Suddenly it seemed to realize it wasn't getting anywhere and it hopped off the book and started racing across the floor--heading straight at me. I thought that there was no way it would enter the brightly lit kitchen but it did, zig-zagging across the floor and heading right me.

I screamed and cursed and threw things at it, including a garbage bag filled with recycling. The bottles and cans made a tremendous clattering crash when it hit the floor--I figured I must have crushed the bug but after a minute or two it appeared again from out from underneath the black plastic. Undaunted, it continued to head in my direction.

I ran into the other room and into the bathroom where I grabbed the Lysol that I'd made fun of in a tweet as being "Deathcloud" scent. I ran back into the kitchen and sprayed the it right at the bug. For a moment it stopped--stunned by the chemical blizzard, but then it kept coming, despite the extra light I'd put on..despite the stench of virus killing Lysol.

It sounds wild but I could feel its murderous intention--it was after me. It wanted to give me a heart attack or fly into my mouth and clog up my throat or crawl into my ear and make me crazy. I could feel it. I stepped back and looked at a nearby pair of boots...then I sprayed again-- a fierce chemical jet directly at the monster. It stopped and bolted to the right, where it crawled into an umbrella that had been knocked on to the floor after I pulled down the bag of recycling. I sprayed the umbrella some more, figuring it was dying in there and I'd finish it off. Then I waited for a long time before giving it yet another dose. By now the apartment reeked of Lysol Deathcloud.

I told myself it had to be dead after all of that, but I couldn't bring myself to shake out the umbrella to find out for sure. The idea of it flying into my face was too much for me to handle. I was trembling all over and holding the Lysol like a pistol. It occurred to me that along with the crash of the recycling my screams must have made it sound like something truly awful was happening--however no one came by to see if I was OK.

It could have killed me and no one would know, I thought, as an overwhelming surge of loneliness, defeat and pain threatened to wash me away.

Isn't it a pity? I thought, To be stopped by something so small and silly?

At that moment I heard my phone buzzing on the glass table. I summoned the courage to leap past the umbrella and run back into the bedroom, where I snatched up the phone and breathlessly told my bf about the gigantic roach.

"Please hurry!" I said, feeling out the unfamiliarity of the damsel in distress role.

He was there a few minutes later. I cringed on the far end of the bed while he stood in the kitchen and gave the umbrella a shake. The roach jumped out, and sure enough--it was alive and well. It immediately started racing towards me, as I screamed, frozen stiff.

My BF took a few quick strides and was there--above it on the floor, his shiny black shoe high in the air as he brought it down like a hammer.

once--twice...I had to turn away.

"Thank-you," I said, my head in my hands as he went to gather some paper towels.

"Thank-you," I said again, before repeating it several more times.

"Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you."

The words felt and sounded so different. Perhaps it was because I still had to catch my breath.

Or maybe it's because suddenly the room was so quiet.

Invisible Landscape Library Science

From the novel:

I had the songs down, and the stage set-up, and i knew how I wanted to utilize the screens. If only I could find the missing piece that fulfilled my set the way this latest plot turn fulfilled Lost. Perhaps fulfillment was the wrong word—it was the stage just before that, when you’re eating and already part way through the meal—past the point of actual hunger, when the experience transforms to one of celebrating taste—the abundance and extravagance of flavors—the sweet or savory sensation, the smells and act of chewing. I wanted to present pleasure unencumbered by ethics or thought—I wanted to make people want to let go and feel good about it. I needed something that could be consumed—a one-off detail specific to that moment on stage—one that could never be duplicated—even the highest def video couldn’t capture the experience.

The experience of the experience.

The library scene from "Wings of Desire"

Everyone! Everywhere! (i'd love to turn u on mix)

It might not always seem like it but there's a method to the madness. I'm on an art mission. I've got a story to tell. There are many times I want to write about it in a way that just shouts it out--like punk lyrics or an old time blog post, the kind where u let it all hang out--but something stops me. It says, gather these stories and weave them together--work as hard as you can on a unicorn tapestry made out of words. Years spent pulling the strings together to tell the story of something that never happened, but is still TRUE.




What I will tell you right now is that a few months ago I saw Jesus. Ferreals. I was on Lexington Ave heading home after walking my bf to the station. It was a blustery day--oddly enough I can't remember if it was late summer or fall--but I know it was before November, when everything changed. At the corner of 85th street there was a woman sitting on a plastic milk crate under the scaffolding, holding out a cardboard coffee cup and asking for help. I had caught her in the corner of my eye earlier when we passed, shuffling along in a river of human bodies that empited out the double doors of the extra-long city bus. She had bright bottle blond hair and a stout frame. Not young but not too old either, although it is difficult to tell with people on the streets. A large metal cane leaned against her. I didn't see her face, but her voice sounded pleasant and kind. It stayed with me as we walked on--like a song or a memory:

"Have a wonderful day, everyone--please spare some change if you can. God bless...god bless you all."

Strange as it seemed a part of me desperately wanted her blessing. I could feel it deep in my gut like a hunger.

When I came back the wind was blowing sideways, sweeping up pieces of newspaper, leaves and coffee lids and swirling them around in the air in front of where she sat.

I crossed the river of rushing people and quickly shoved some money in her cup.

"God Bless you," she said, and her voice--directed at me!-- rang through my entire body--the molecules in my chest chimed like a billion bells. I was suddenly super high, like i'd been given a concentrated spoonful of next level THC

I looked at her face and into her eyes. They were deep set but bright and clear like a new born baby's but without being new--as I looked I could see the shadow of something ancient and huge fall across them, a dark form that buzzed not with evil or insanity but with fertility and strength.

It was the darkness of forest trees that form a towering wall against the sky--the darkness of soil, stuffed with life born out of death. Holes of darker darkness are dug for seeds to be buried and consumed like currency.

And suddenly I knew who the woman was. It was a knowing that came faster than words or thoughts--it was an instinctual reaction--a constriction of blood vessels--a firing of neurons and dopamine.

A second or so later the word unfolded like a banner in my brain:

Jesus!

It was HIS face that I was looking at. I knew this with complete and utter certainty. It was he who said, "God Bless you." Jesus was in front of me on the corner--sick yet strong, poor yet smiling.

"Thank-you," I said, still staring. His/her gaze held steady on to mine as the wind blew and the rain splashed the side of my face and neck. The scaffolding shook around us menacingly. Hoods and umbrellas went up as crowds of people turned away

(But i just had to look-- having read The Book)


I don't remember walking back home but I remember that there were tears running down my face. Tears of joy.

I was blessed.




I was lost in glimmering shadows.


I was free!

It's all about Klaatu

Twitter telepathy from 2-2-09:

@TRUE: The Superbowl was fun--I like exciting football games. It blows my mind that someone could run full tilt into another person & still get up
Feb 2, 2009 03:16 PM GMT

@TRUE: Did anyone notice that almost every movie preview they showed last night had alien contact as theme?
Feb 2, 2009 03:20 PM GMT

@dblogged: @TRUE i totally noticed that. might mean an alien attack is imminent.
Feb 2, 2009 03:27 PM GMT in reply to @true

@TRUE: "2010: The Year We Make Contact": http://www.crystalinks.com/2010film.jpg
Feb 2, 2009 03:31 PM GMT

@TRUE: @dblogged i personally believe that they will come/are here already in total peace. Big Media peddles fear.
Feb 2, 2009 03:33 PM GMT in reply to @dblogged

@evrideva: @TRUE it's all about kla tu.

Evrideva was right--it IS all about Klaatu: the B-movie alien savior sent to Earth in 1951 to deliver the ULTIMATE ultimatum. Evolve or perish. The *funny* thing was that the night before this exchange I held the cover of the (original) The Day the Earth Stood Still DVD in my hands with a feeling that I should watch it. My bf and I ended up getting Blazing Saddles instead (which is hilarious, BTW). Upon seeing my favorite skull artist's tweet it seemed that NOW was prolly a good time to bop on down to the DVD spot--a comfortably cluttered, non-corporate, pre-NetFlix anachronism on a street with several similar mom & pop holdouts. I used the creaky, dimly lit store as the setting for a recent short story of mine in which DVDs magically come off the shelves and into the main character's hands. It's a story about finding clues that lead you to other clues in a series of endless revelations. It mimics the fractal crack of the infinite that zig-zags across my own life. (and yrs)

As I watched the movie I was immediately taken by how strongly the symbolic resonances were conveyed by the deceptively simple storyline. The black and white film, shadowy lighting and vaguely trippy orchestral soundtrack (the scene in which Gort carries Helen onto the ship sounds like pre-heavy metal) allowed the intertextual references to hover just above the subliminal. I experienced the same eerie dream vibe that I felt while watching another black and white classic, The Night of the Living Dead. Mythical data swirled like static and radiated a pixel buzz just beneath the shtick and special effects. While the film's creators were undoubtedly aware that they were making a parable about Communism and the fear and uncertainty caused when a large chunk of the planet becomes inaccessible behind an iron curtain--it is less clear that they also meant to create a parable about the nature of our relationship to our own unconscious: the hostility that mankind displays to an alien visitor is based on our irrational dread of our own repressed desires. We fear (but secretly crave) a master who is in control of his instincts--we look for him to come from above and once and for all put an end to our violent "childish" ways. Klaatu resonates with Jesus Christ and Superman--he represents a more evolved specimen of humanity that has come to Earth with the selfless aim of redeeming mankind, for its own sake. After escaping from the military hospital, Klaatu hides among ordinary people under the name "Carpenter"--which was Jesus's occupation before he began his ministry. Klaatu goes as far as sacrificing his own life after his fantastic (but harmless) display of power causes the army to step up their hunt for him--dead or alive.

Gort, his giant robot companion, is able to use technology to temporarily bring Klaatu back to life so that he could deliver his message to a group of scientists and savants who have eagerly gathered to hear it.



(the album cover for "3:47 EST" by a band named "Klaatu". The title is a reference to the time the spaceship lands on Earth in the movie)


A few days after watching the movie I went back to work on an article I'm writing about the (Jungian based) possibility that UFOs are merely a symptom of the new reality unfolding all around us. Their appearance calls to attention to the fact that there is no such thing as a reality that exists in and off itself. Our "world" is a kind of open system in which everything exists in a conceptually structured mix of "external fact" (or thingness, to use Heideggerian terminology) and the psychic state of the person or persons who experience the appearance of objects within its framework.

I used to think that my goal with such investigations was to gain insight into the old question of whether or not the craft was "real". After watching this movie it occurred to me that such a question was beside the point. Of course the craft that one or many people saw and was perhaps captured on camera was real--the question was, what do we mean by "real"?




(Despite its anti-fear mongering message, the film's own marketing sells it as a tale of terror. I find it interesting how much the wrapping around an object flavors our perception of it.)


On Valentines Day morning--12 days after the Twitter exchange-- I woke and immediately told my bf about the following dream. I was in Central Park walking past row after row of people lying on the Great Lawn. They were wearing white astronaut helmets with a gauzy veil over their faces--similar to the way Klaatu looked when he first came out of his space ship. The rows were very neat and filled the entire lawn--everyone seemed to be in a deep sleep except for a few of us who were walking around and inspecting the helmeted people. I couldn't really see who the other awake people were--they moved around me like shadows, perhaps not knowing that I was there. In my dream I saw what I understood to be a flashback that showed the helmeted people being given pills to swallow. They were already lying down and the gauze was wrapped around their heads. I strained to see but couldn't make out who was giving them the drugs--all that was visible was the hand reaching around to put something inside their already slack-jawed mouths.

After the flashback there was the sense that something was going to happen, and I tried in vain to wake up the people on the lawn. I didn't know what was happening but it seemed important that we all be awake when it occurred. At this point the dream shifted and I was on an island with my mother. It's a location I'm familiar with from a dream i have every so often--i'm on a beach watching a gigantic black tidal wave slowly approach, and i have to break free from my paralysis and run up the beach and onto the shore and up to higher ground either by running up a set of stairs, the side of the mountain or a slippery sand dune--the details of the terrain differ slightly in the various instances of the dream. In this case my mother and I were well above the beach--we stood together on the side of a mountain overlooking the ocean--the damp, dark feel of the place was the same as in the usual dream, but instead of there being a giant wave, there was another island in front of us. It was floating in the air above the waves just like the gigantic rock from the Magritte painting,"La Chateau des Pyrenees". It is a painting that is familiar to me since I had a large poster size copy of it hanging in my room when I was growing up. This island had the exact same shape as the rock in the painting--the difference was that instead of being a barren boulder the floating island was lush and green with vegetation of all kinds. As I watched I could see butterflies and birds and waterfalls.

"Look at that", my mother said to me, her voice filled with happiness.

"I see," I said.






Magritte is a recurring theme. Check out the comments from my last post...

44

Don't get me wrong-- or should I say, "let's be clear": I'm psyched that Obama is President! I called attention to what looked like the Eye of Horus floating near his head because I take it as an auspicious sign. As described in the post below, the Eye of Horus represents a certain otherworldly princeliness--a nobility based on a connection to God. In this case the Eye was formed out of a curl of fancy script on the copy of the Constitution that was blown up across the back wall.

By pointing this out I'm calling attention to how I see Obama as well as how I see. In other words I'm telling you something about my consciousness. By declaring Obama to be AWAKE I'm telling you that I'm awake too.


(Obama by Alex Grey)

I was sweating it out but enjoying myself in front of the crowd at the Towards 2012 reading this past Friday. I was trying to explain how I feel an increased sense of excitement and liberation as the old ways fall apart. Gettin free from money and sickness and free from the Us vs Them past...free to dig things out that have been long buried.

Free to enjoy DJing and other fun stuff without a constant workaholic urge blasting through and making it impossible for me to really let go. (The funny thing is, I get even MORE work done now that I've stopped thinking of it soley in terms of the time spent doing it.)

Someone asked us what each one of us thought was going to happen in 2012. I said I didn't know if it was specific to a date, but I know that a change is underway. I think that this upcoming time is one in which things that were hidden will be revealed. The act of this revelation will tell us more about who we are as human beings.

Once again I used the example of the Alex Grey painting, Gaia, in which the world is represented by a large tree who is split in half. On the one side is peace and prosperity, with waterfalls and animals--the other side is fiery death and destruction, complete with a prophecy of 9/11 and a Dubya like figure in the foreground.

As I was talking it somehow slipped my mind that there was a large painting of Obama by Alex Grey hanging to my left. The painting shows Obama and an Eye--this time a Third Eye depicted as the earth in the middle of his forehead.

I looked up and was surprised to see it there--even though I'd admired it up close before the reading started.

"There you go," I said into the tiny microphone, "There's an Alex Grey painting of our new President." I paused as people turned in their seats to take a look.

At that point one of the women from East West Living asked to say something--I gave her the mic and she announced that not only was this painting of Obama here, but several other large Alex Grey paintings were going to be displayed in the gallery space above the bookstore starting the following week (Feb 10th--The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors at East West).

"There you go," I said again, as I passed the mic on to the next sammicher. I realized that in all likelihood Gaia was probably right above me, either already up or waiting to be mounted. (Later on this seemed to be confirmed when I stood outside the shop, waiting for others, and saw a video of Alex Grey playing on a screen in the storefront window. As I watched it showed a close-up of Gaia--specifically the two planes flying near the Twin Towers, a detail that becomes mind blowing when you realize the work was painted in 1989.)

I keep running into this painting. Or should I say it keeps running into me? It captivated me as a kid when I discovered it on the inside cover of a Beastie Boys cassette. I found it again last year when someone mentioned it in the comments section of an RS post--my need to view it in detail led me to COSM a few days later, where, as luck would have it, I happened to sneak into Alex Grey's studio by posing as a member of a film crew--but that's a story for another time.








When I look at this painting I see Obama's presidency. I see the next few years--I see the present moment as the revelation of a doubling. The face in the mirror is a lie.

I see profound peace and joy alongside horror and despair. The reckoning has begun. It's not about some imaginary afterlife--it's about heaven and hell existing together on earth--right here, right now:

Matthew 13:24-30 (King James Version)

24Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

25But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

26But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

27So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

28He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

29But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

30Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

A Watchful Eye On Obama?

To be aware is to be conscious on a level beyond the simple dichotomy of being asleep and being awake. Awareness is a deliberate focusing of one’s attention on the endless input streaming through the senses—it requires a subtle stepping back from the outcome oriented activity of the everyday life and anchoring oneself instead in the ever-fleeting fullness of the present moment.

Being aware helps you notice things in the synch-wink of an eye...like a symbolic icon floating nearby the head of Barack Obama in the first and third Presidential debates last year:




The Eye of Horus (Wedjat) (previously Wadjet and the Eye of the Moon; and afterwards as The Eye of Ra) or ("Udjat") is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus or Ra. The symbol is seen on images of Horus' mother, Hathor, and on other deities associated with her.
--Wikipedia





Horus was an ancient Egyptian sky god in the form of a falcon. The right eye represents a Peregrine Falcon's eye and the markings around it, that includes the "teardrop" marking sometimes found below the eye. As the wadjet (also udjat or utchat), it also represented the sun, and was associated with Horus' mother, Isis, and with Wadjet another goddess, as well as the sun deity Ra (Re). The mirror image, or left eye, sometimes represented the moon and the god Tehuti (Thoth).
--Wikipedia



(please click for larger image)

Having a greater awareness lets u increase the number of things you can take in--which has the added benefit of turning you back into a little kid! Free and open and ready to PLAY in a world that is brand new!

(we're just babies man, we're just babies!)

In related news here's a post on Reality Sandwich about a guy who had a very similar dream to one that I had.

Both our dreams starred the letter "A", among other similarities...

"Into the mountain ( i will fall)"

Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons



‘We sometimes feel, in following the words and behavior of some of the characters of Dostoevsky, that they are living at once on the plane we know and on some other place of reality from which we are shut out.’--T.S. Eliot


There was an amazing moment yesterday morning: having said goodbye to my blf I poured another cup of coffee and got ready to get to work. The short story was nearly finished--it just needed one final push. I sat at my desk. It was time to do this like Brutus. That's when I heard a faint yet rapid high-pitched beeping coming from outside my apartment. I recognized it as the alarm on the carbon monoxide detector the landlord had installed in each unit. It kept repeating --four beeps at a time followed by a short pause. I knew from changing the batteries (twice a year on daylight savings) that three beeps in a row was the test amount--four was the real deal. I walked around my apartment attempting to hone into the direction of the sound. It seemed to be coming from upstairs, although it was possible that it was coming from the building behind mine, which was owned by the same company and identical in every way--in fact, the key to my front door opened its front door as well--something I discovered when I wandered up the wrong stoop one afternoon, deep in thought.

I figured I should head out and find the Jose the super, who was busy most mornings organizing the trash out front. Maybe the boiler was pumping the poisonous gas throughout the building, and my alarm hadn't gone off yet. Either that or someone might be passed out in their apartment...if that was the case, time was of the essence. I hustled about putting on my Northface and famous Spikez hightops--all along wondering if I was experiencing normal pre-breakfast weakness or the beginning symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. My alarm was still blinking it's peaceful "all clear" blink, but in order to be on the safe side, I decided to open my bedroom window as far as it would go and stick my head out onto the fire escape for a few deep breaths of fresh air. I almost never open my window all the way--especially not in the winter, and although I've lived in this apartment for several years, the fact that I could see so much of it made the view seem somehow different--brand new, in fact. I took deep breaths of the cool city air and looked around at the matrix of brown and black fire escapes hightlighted against the building's brick facades and stone columns.

My eyes happened to look up at the tree swaying in front of my fire escape, and it was then that I noticed a gigantic bird perched on one of its branches. It was so big it looked fake at first--like a cardboard cut out that someone had stuck on the tree. It was real though--as I watched, it gave it's back tail feathers a tight shake. This was no pigeon--even with its back to me it was obvious it was a hawk of some kind. It blended in against the bark of the tree--its feathers were white and tan with various swirls and shades of color that resembled the appearance of the bark. Its body was stout with a broad shoulders like a football player and a hunched, rounded head like an old-fashioned football helmet.

It must have felt my awestruck gaze because suddenly it turned around--head first, like in the Exorcist--followed by its body. I stood absolutely still as we faced each other, but only for a few seconds, as I allowed a fear to spring up inside of me that the mighty predator was going to fly straight into my apartment through the open window and pluck out my eyeballs with its talons.

I let out a high pitched screech, yanked my head back into the apartment and shoved the window shut--the shades falling down after them. I heard the far off beeping again and decided to open the window just a little bit.

My body surged with adrenaline. Holy Shit! I'd heard about the hawks who live on the UES, but I'd never seen them. To have been this close to one was a beautiful gift. I felt disappointed for giving in to such a silly fear. It was a very conscious choice--i felt the bird's gaze and instead of realizing the golden opportunity I freaked out and scurried away.

I gathered my things and went outside. The super didn't seem to think that the alarms were any big deal, but I have the feeling he moves in slow motion no matter what. The building could be in straight up FLAMES and I'm sure he'd just say, "ok, mami, ugotit," and shrug his shoulders the way he always does. I walked around the block a few times--incapable, it seemed, of going into the Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts or Hot and Crusty that I passed and sitting down and blending in with the normals--even for a little while.

Eventually I came back and went inside without bothering to find Jose to confirm that everything was OK. I stood in the stairwell but I couldn't hear any beeping. Fuck it, I thought--I'd be dead by now if the place had been filling up with gas.

I felt down--something had happened before all of this and despite the miracle of the hawk I let myself be more and more deflated by it. I sat back down at my desk and went online to discover that based on his appearance, my visitor had in all likelihood been none other than the illustrious Palemale--long time NYC resident who was famous for having built a nest with his wife Lola on the ledge of a swanky 5th Avenue apartment building. A part of the nest was taken down by the building management and then put back up after nature groups and some of the wealthy building residents (including Mary Tyler Moore) staged public protests. Palemale and Lola haven't reproduced successfully since the original nest as disturbed.

Instead of letting this moment shine through I placed veil after veil of darkness upon it over the course of the rest of the day. Doubts, insecurities...sadness. On the one hand there was this event and on the other were all of these emotions, and i was reminded what a preacher friend had once told me that evil was: it wasn't just the boogie monster face of a terrorizing murderer--it was the illusion of being separate from things in the world--evil was the feeling of being disconnected--it was the fear and the sadness that filled up the space around our heads and bodies--the physical "places" that we believed we existed.

The reality is that we exist everywhere/every time: but I don't want to know that when I'm wallowing in an illusion.

Evil is not that which is seen but the way in which it is seen. Evil is about blinders and strict adherence to illogical propositions and black and white morals based on unchangeable ideas reinforced via discipline and punish.

Evil is not the distractions from the task at hand--it's the guilt we feel over being distracted.

We pay too much attention to the overwhelming, collective evils, but it's the tiny defeats--the cold glances and forgotten courtesies that are in constant war with our humanity.

Only later did the meaning of the gift become more transparent--when it occurred to me that had I never opened the shade I would never have seen the hawk--who knows--it was possible that he'd been outside every morning, and I just had never bothered to look.

I realized that what's truly tragic isn't to die searching in vain for wisdom, but to die with a window-shade thin membrane in your own body having been the only thing separating you from that for which you struggled.

The devil is doubt.



palemale




the hollow men

Half-random Notes on the Word-defying Phenomena of Synchronicity

(1st there was Twitter telepathy)




More and more people like me are experiencing the phenomena of synchronicity thru which seemingly unrelated events, persons, places and things are revealed as being interconnected. The realization of the interconnectedness is a freaky, "oh shit" kinda moment, but as strange as it is, it seems to make those who experience them happy rather than fearful, something I can confirm.

I think the reason for the surge of syncs is manifold--but it has something to do with this time of transformation that we've entered, in which the old ways of doing things according to our old reality are breaking away and disintegrating all around us. Synchronicity is outlining the building blocks for a new reality based on new groupings of meaning.

Wikipedia gives a classic example of synchronicity, as described by the French author, Émile Deschamps:

The French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs that in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fortgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fortgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Émile Deschamps was at a diner and was once again offered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Fortgibu was missing to make the setting complete—and in the same instant, the now senile de Fortgibu entered the room. ("Synchronicity", Wikipedia)

This example shows how synchronicity goes beyond mere one-off coincidences such as showing up at a party wearing the same dress as someone else or hearing an obscure song in a bar the second you finish telling someone that they need to give that tune a listen. Real synchronicity is at once deeper and more expansive: for instance, a synchronicity would have been if after hearing the obscure song you went home and had a strong compulsion to check out a music blog and read on the homepage that the musician behind the obscure song died earlier that evening--about the time you were at the bar. Synchronicities are connected coincidences that exponentially raise the weirdness factor of each single coincidence contained within the thread. Together, these threads create a web of connections that stretch in several directions at once and depend upon an exquisitely exact sense of timing. If Deschamps had come into the restaurant in Paris an hour earlier, he would have most likely beaten Monsieur de Fortgibu to the last dish of plum pudding and likely would have never found out that the old man dined at the restaurant on that day at all. When Deschamps is offered plum pudding again many years later and recalls the previous sync to his companions, the completion of the web depends upon Monsieur de Fortgibu walking into the diner "in the same instant" that Deschamps tells his friends that the only thing missing from his tale is the senile old man. It still would have been quite a coincidence had Monsieur de Fortgibu appeared before the tale was told, but it's so much more uncanny that he appears at the same instant that the lack of his presence is being commented upon.






Synchronicity reminds us that everything happens exactly when and how it is meant to happen. It teaches us that the rules of cause and effect upon which we base our current reality are illusions--although very persistent ones, to paraphrase Einstein. In order to benefit from what synchronicity can teach us, one has to be willing to let go of old ways of thinking--in particular, the notion that things happen because of related things that happened before which create the conditions for that which happens after. As one starts accepting the reality of synchronicities they start happening more frequently--this is because openness and awareness of synchronicities are the necessary tools for recognizing them.

The synchronicities have led to the plot of my book--all fiction is based on synchronicity. They are the signs of a big story. They are the building blocks of myth and the scenes in a dream.

Synchronicity is what happens when I stay tuned--even while flipping thru the channels: I catch a flash of a face--an abrupt syllable--a drum beat or cymbal crash.

The faster I click the more meaningless it all becomes, until it's as though I'm flicking through raw thereness itself.



Size is an illusion--everything is everything:

Augustine described God as a circle whose center was everywhere and its circumference nowhere:

I feel that because the event horizon of your Konsciousness sphere can be infinitely expanded it means we are all equal. If there is an infinite up and down to Konsciousness you are always in the middle, no? Meaning a God, Archetype, E.T or Buddha is no more integral then a human, amoeba insect or atom. All are the same in the I of God. In the same fashion syncs - in actuality all space time phenomena - have no hierarchy of importance, one connection is as profound as the other, yet context and point of view highlight some for total 'awesomeness'.

--Jake Kotze, The Blob

FYI--There are zillions of universes inside yr head

(neuron galaxy)

DJ HONEYPOT RIDEZ DA LIGHTNIN !!

This is a pic of me DJing on Halloween. I was channeling the spirit of my dj name--DJ HoNeyPoT. The white afro exuded a synthetic toxicity. My real hair smelled like magic markers by the end of the night. I had a blast, tho. Place was packed by the end--you couldn't walk from one end to the other. Beer sweat was drippin off the walls.

I got to check out the whole Serato digital dj thing some more that night. One of the other DJs was using it--he ran his whole set from a laptop with a cool Tom Selleck sticker on the lid. It sounded great, but he kept lamenting to me that he was "cheating". Who cares, I responded, what difference does it make how you do it, as long as you rip a kick ass set? He shrugged his shoulders and said he wasn't sure. I guess he assumed I'm some kind of purist since i DJ with vinyl, but I'm not. I actually think that digital djing is an improvement in many ways. Gone is all the lugging around and schlepping of records and needing room to store them all. Everything is right there on yr fingertips, along with extras like samplers and equalizers...all sorts of stuff that makes for an amazing mix.

My thing is totally selfish. I love the way vinyl feels. I love the big ass album covers and the art on them. I love stacking records in piles around my turntables. I love record stores and their musty, lost in time feeling or else their underground club vibe with djs wearing backpacks and digging through crates.

I love scratching--I love the pop sizzle of a needle on a record.

I equate looking at a laptop with doing work and for me, DJing is all about having FUN. I don't expect to ever make a dime off it.



Don't believe the hype about progress--the future is authored by freaks, losers and nerds.

Frivolity is a valuable resource.

Tap it!

eleven eleven (fly like me)

slow learner/stubborn optimist

I'm hearby turning this into a ferreal blog with *frequent* updates and links and stuff. Short posts. Longer pieces shall go somewhere else.

Like here, maybe. Perhaps I'll be bringing my art 2 open aching walls and city buses again--we'll see.

Some of u can say u knew me when...back during phase 1, when i faked it fiction stylez like this blog was being written 3 people when it was really only 1. Then there was the long, sad middle stage 2, when I rode the lonely highway as a partner to myself, spilling my guts out cuz back then during the neo-earnest electro power ballad sentimentality that opened the millenium. Is it possible that something can be so unapologetic ally emo that it becomes punk again? If so that was BRANDTRUEBOY in 04, 05 and 06.

Then something major happened that made me conceptualize the story on a whole new level. Through signs, wonders and dreams I realized the plot of a story around the story, one that is intimately connected to the story we find ourselves in at this dawn of enlightenment.

Toxic jet fuel flames and falling bodies and writers block--that's what gave birth to this blog.

Its 3rd and Final Phase=Fallen Statues, Outstretched Wings & Turning of the Tide

Purple Streetlights

I want to convey JOY in my writing. I listen to sampled noise and remixed violins on my walks while I look up at the sunlight shimmering in the trees and remind myself not to forget. Joy is not a metaphor or a memory or any other brand of clever word combo meal served up easy in bright, audience tested packaging. Joy is a simultaneous letting go and opening up to the electric gold of the unified field--the formlessness that exists beyond all forms...

Joy is at once the easiest and hardest thing.

My purpose here is to stretch the canvas and paint the broad strokes:

How the world is a stage--unveiling itself endlessly between curtains.

And how the world is a sponge--holding in all that is given.



The world is a pink lemonade everlasting gobstopper that makes my eyes water under purple streetlights.

Hit on my head by the Twister

Everything is transformed by my increased awareness--even the act of forgetting. The other day I came across a brand of striped milk chocolate biscuits that I used to buy in England and realized I've forgotten things from that time. I have an above average memory and can clearly recall details from the years before and since. The days from other times in my life stretch like pearls on necklaces across my mind. I can finger through them, assess them--judge the weight of their orbs.

For my years abroad the chain is broken--the days are scattered, the line frayed and cut.

What's interesting is that I'd forgotten this time period when I lived abroad once before because of a trauma that formed the hard seed-nut kernel at its center. In order not to think of it I'd blocked out whole timelines that added up to YEARS of lost time. This was full-fledged amnesia: my mind's way of saving itself from itself. When the memories did come back it was like a giant wave--uprooting and eradicating anything weak and flimsy that I'd put up in its path and leaving only the hunks of self like uncovered boulders in the sand. What was left was garbage mixed with the dredges from the salty depths of my unconscious. The end was inside the beginning and the past was inside the present.

I remembered everything for a little while. The pathetic details were splayed out--grotesquely--giving me nightmares of butchery, and psychopathic unraveling in which my body parts fell off, piece by piece.

(edgar allen poe--u dont stop. clive barker--u dont stop)

Now the forgetting is a choice--

It must be the times or the season as it seems so many others are doing the same thing--choosing to forget and let go, allowing themselves to relax into the way of being that pleases them most.

In fact, choosing to forget is a part of the new change in America. We're forgetting that we are supposed to be sick--and fat and stupid and silent. We're forgetting to be locked up by narrow ways of thinking.

It's not the kind of forgetting of previous generations--the ones that tried to bury the terrible truth of slavery and rape--a history of lies that helped spawn a new level of war and hate--in vietnam and in other countries where american didnt belong

It was the beatniks and feminists and the civil rights protesters and hippies of the 50s and 60s who made everyone remember--let it be the wide eyed innocents of today who chose to forget


(put the book back on the shelf)


There's something intriguing about amnesia. The world feels filled with forbidding shadows, looming like dark, nameless ghosts. For me, having it was an experience of the Lacanian Real (the foreboding presence of the limits of expression and sense--like 9/11 or a zombie or the Wizard of Oz). The amnesia was an annihilation of the self--and thereby a chance to rebuild it. I have several characters whose lives are changed because of a sudden remembrance. Sterling forgot the entire existence of her twin brother who drowned in a leaf covered pool in front of her when she was very young. After his death she had taken to calling herself by his name--Sterling--and her grief-stricken parents stopped correcting her as they erased all traces of her brother ever having existed.

I had her remember him again at the ocean--and it's to the ocean she returns when she needs to think something out.

ARK also forgets a tragedy: he doesn't remember a thing from 9/11, although he was covered in white dust when he finally came home that day on his bike. They asked him what happened but he would only stare back at them blankly and say the same thing, over and over:

"Run--do not walk."

Kief

Realized that everything that exists dances together at night on a stony seashore speckled with black holes. It’s cold and damp—there’s the fishy smell of emerging life. That which I call myself is the reflected streetlight on the windshield of the car I borrowed to drive here—the large plastic monstrosity parked alongside the boardwalk’s rotting husks.





pingting

"i have the biggest party ever."

banksy does new orleans

digitalism

A light in the darkness


The dj drops the track: you hear the sampled bit and scream out, holy shit, I know that! I know that! And tho you try you can’t hold on to it as the track thunders past—incorporating the sample’s world into its own beat and its own melody, the way the Borg incorporated Picard—all the way except for a sliver. The beat makes you lose grasp of what you thought you remembered. It slips through your hands except for a little wisp, like a silken thread that comes off a feather that you’ve tried to grab…a piece of near nothingness—that's all it is. 2.2 seconds of a remix of a remix, and yet, strangely enough, it keeps sucking on your thought stream and you find yourself mentally thumbing through riffs in your head before it finally comes to you —it’s the breakbeat on a cool-era blue note jazz track—something you’re high school jazz pianist boyfriend used to play in his Nissan’s tape deck as you sped down the highway…you can picture it now, his fingers having to press the Fast Forward button when the song was over because most of his tapes were copies and there was empty space at the end.

Or maybe you don’t figure it out, and instead give up and file the sample away in the auxiliary storage part of your brain until one day, maybe years later, you hear the song in its original form and scream holy shit! again—this time in the middle of a department store or a fast food restaurant. Or maybe you hear it being played behind the announcer's computer enhanced baritone in a car commercial that Tivo forgot to zap. The joy over hearing it again is quickly crumpled up by the realization that the magical moment you had long ago in the swirling lights of an undiscovered nueva york has itself been incorporated—by lawyers at meetings with breath mints and bottled water and voodoo white smiles...

Eclipse

From the novel I'm working on...



What if the mystery that I was trying to solve about 9/11 wasn’t what I thought it was? What if by trying to crack open a worldwide conspiracy, that may or may not have been perpetrated by Bush/Cheney, The Masons, The Illuminati, Big Brother or The Matrix, I had instead discovered the arc of another story altogether—one buried in the piles of dust and debris and sadness of that day—a story which only existed in its telling...like the Decameron or the Canterbury tales...a story which was one and the same with the path I was traveling right now... Could it be? Did I dare believe I’d discovered something of the scale that would make the whodunit details of 9/11 irrelevant? Could I hold on to it—the crazy feeling I sometimes had--of having hit upon something...of having finally "found the vein" as my old writing professor used to say? If it was real at all it was more than just a great book idea...the vein I'd tapped was an artery that criss-crossed the world...Those strange flashes of insight—of random realizations when I was zoning out with the TV on…the wild weather that brings rainbows and bright patches of sunlight to dance across the Manhattan streets.

Whatever it was--whatever I was trying to be told or shown--I felt compelled to go and meet it. All I can do is walk forward, like I did on that Tuesday morning, putting one foot in front of the other until I came to the immense pile of smoldering steel that was larger and more horrific than anything I could have imagined--the sum of all our fears and Hollywood wish fulfillment--only this time there will be no one who will be able to tell me to go back because there's nothing I can do.

Vibe with me (far away, so close)

There's a starman waiting in the sky--he'd like to come and meet us but he's afraid he'd blow our minds...

Vibe with me. Fly with me. Release the emergency brake. Let yrself believe, tune into the frequency coming from the stars--at once here and THERE. Dasein. Like angels watching each one of us from above--their gaze is the scene as we see it in our mind's eye.

There's no interference--no need for abductions or Hollywood movie plots. The signal fits in between the ones we send--the swirling mass of cell phone calls and blackberry emails and text messages--it rides the waves of TV signals and radio-chit chat fuzz, peering down at us just like the fabled "Satellite of Love" sung by our grandfathers. Only this transmitter is invisible--flung far beyond the standard five senses, and yet in orbit with our very thoughts--it locks its razor sharp signal into the emotion flavored (happy cherry red? or feelin flat black?) docking station in the heart of the heart of our brains.

It's the message in the movies and the music--the one we hid from ourselves, it's in random acts of kindness and long stifled feelings of hope--

It's that which is everlasting in the shimmer of evening sun upon a river

The power of a sacrifice gladly made

A teenage rock anthem

A friendship overcoming betrayal

Love conquering all

"From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight..." (call me morbid call me pale 2008 kythe club mix)

Life from death...art from the destruction of art: If I can write it, it can happen.



It hit me the other day as I was walking around in pajama shorts and a bootleg Smiths rock T--I have a lot in common with yr typical zombie. After all my previous poetic waxing upon the possible reasons for the trend's popularity--including societal fears of the alien other and the viral, uncontrollable nature of innernet interconnectivity, as well as our collective fantasy/fears of the "return" of 9/11 victims and Iraqi war dead--the bodies of which either were never found or never shown to us--it's only now that I can truly appreciate the full impact of the Zombie Apocalypse. This is cuz I myself have become one! By quitting my job I joined the ranks of the undead--having suddenly dropped out of normal society, I still stubbornly hang around, refusing to hide and stay still--making art and drinking coffee...representing summer and freedom and the ancient art of optimism.




This time of inexplicable grace was for years both meticulously planned and worked towards--yet completely accidental in its fruition.





She said, 'In the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more...'





when it's on i can close my eyes and see shapes floating there--the silhouettes of those who came down this path before. i know it's a trick of the mind...the same way i sometimes envision them standing upon a bright green hill...watching me, egging me on. i can see their faces--the artists and philosophers who keep me company. We commune through words and dreams and the musical vibrations of this planet of sound. It's a special kind of friendship--there's nothing sentimental about it, the same way there wasn't anything sentimental about their best work--the experience was one of human reality. A shared contract--like theater goers in the dark, we agreed in silence to become the invisible pillars, fortifying the dream world conjured above our heads, grounding it, making it our own.





starman

orbs

the gaze


Walt Whitman and i ran across city streets like children. Storms and sunlight passed over head. The new rain on the concrete smelled like sex. Ecstatic: the sensation was of being inside though i was clearly outside, in the middle of new york city, chillin like villians with the O.G. american beatnik, the tuff ass uber-hipster who doesnt take it too personal that technically speaking, he's deader than a doornail. Morbid and pale, we unceremoniously bore holes into each others heads (fixing our brains to let the rain come thru) and gave each other sporty skullfucks...

(like I said, we're way past sentimentality in the Kythe Club, where the first rule is that you don't talk in Kythe Club: instead, you commune without words as together u surf along the evaporating edge of effervescence...the no-place and no-thing of eternal becoming...jumping in and out of streaky "mental" polaroids like jumping in and out of the ocean)

The only thing that matters to him is the only thing that ever mattered to me--

The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss...it is inevitable as life...it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond perfections not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest but in the rest themselves just the same. These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods...that its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself...that it is profuse and impartial...that there is not a minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth or sea without it--nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance...one part does not need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ...the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and similes and sound."

--Walt Whitman, Introduction to Leaves of Grass