tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19573443290608611232024-02-20T08:14:23.477-05:00[Mindlab]iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-601620361657880392009-03-19T17:33:00.004-04:002009-03-19T17:38:19.135-04:00[How tiring to be weaving wings from the feathers of freedom while grinding the ground out from under my feet with the shovel of shame]The dream was an overwhelming consensus (thriving, even, within the head) of Seba stood and stared at the uppermost top hat as the windmills spun with some volition beyond his eye's comprehension. The patterns of colors flashing above the smokestack black of each hat's flat top whirled with the wisdom only color can lend to some thing in formation. He sunk so low into the poem of colors that he missed the first part of whatever the third top hat's mouth was ending with "and damn divinity for creating in us the imaginings of perfection while being bound by our faults from calling it forth."<br /><br />So here we have our intrepid adventurer admiring him's elf in the mirror of the mind. Abstracting the void into shapes or devouring the frantic becomings that arch out of the fathomless deep beginnings disguised as antipathy to our fragile fleshy kind. He's not devious, even if the faces he is practicing blend into danger where his eyes' receivers mesh with the emotional mechanism - down there be a squeltering admission of faith in the process. All the emotive clusters of twinges and tickles bellow the same deep breath - 'Tantilize us!" No matter the defeats his ego has clamored away as memories to rot into food for angels assigned to clean up after our haphazard paths plowed thru this glorious creation. They are barred from all but watching and singing some. <br /><br />Seba's more aware of his emotions than most bipeds, but he's still attached to naming them, like pets or any type of color, forgetting even the dismal shreds of boundaries all such labels apply upon things that then are rooted in time, say, or space. The space of his heart doesn't often remind him of his head, though the reverse is often the case; until his heart finds space among all the straws grasped and piled to breathe between. Hollering in thumps it can easily drive awareness to the outer body, by raising temperatures and squeezing the lungs with a tightness least often found lying around after sex or, more likely, in the cracked open vein of a secret. That is what is rising in Seba's mystery - the intuition of what time has seen fit to obscure until what will soon be now. The dreams are all jumping towards the sky in the hopes that the sun's warmth will take them up to leave him cooler. <br /><br />This world holds a thousand fascinations such as one extreme making a calm way for its spectrum's specter, its opposition in force or freedom, the unmaking is never undone. Seba's cloak of wishes sewn from a thousand mid-day desperate decisions only warms him with enough hope that the world will drift apart with nary a squeal, only serve to weigh him down long enough to walk, but such disparate desires never really carry one in a particular direction so much as draw out the deepest farces of emotion. The emotions tinged with fright are often found rising to the top because of these antiquated flesh sacs' need to keep in functioning order and the flavor of fear being so bitter as to drive action up from the marrow. Looking about him he's seeing how the whole of the world shatters whenever he blinks but there's no clue as to how existence is re-crafted with as much speed as it takes his mind to sharpen the colors of his eye back into shapes its grown comfortable operating among. Such dilemmas have brought Seba to the brink of laying down for a breather but even his practiced breath holds only onto the relative shallows of the deepest pocket inside his core - which is barely keeping afloat as an outlying orbital around the truer, centerer, center. <br /><br />"Love fits in here" the airs whisper as if pointing, but look where he may the flatness of gravity still seems to keep even the roundest surfaces without love-shaped holes that it seems all of everything burrows towards the sun in search of filling. Seba plugs his ears to better taste the air's waste and let some fashion of electricity pass between his ears. Not knowing how his hands become encharged with the very pulse of the universe has yet to stop beings from harnessing the divinest forms of form or is it energies of energy? <br /><br />None can be unsure of anything enough to really divest the soul from its previous struggles. Yet we try to remember our past as if it were a part of our future though where, in the dankest slices of self, can the last thing you were hold forth without its meaning being churned by the ever-nowing spin of one's perspective moving into the eternal horizon? Here on the cusp of everything the distances fall away creating space for an entire being to unfold all its corners of self-assumed functions, everything from draining the life from nutrimentations to the vanities every glance implants in a mirror. There's nothing different within us from anywhere else, so long as you can step back from your own head long enough to circumnavigate the currents fed from the well-spring into anything that you have yet to be in this world among each of us. The divinity we so desperately wish to touch us is beyond our grasp because it arises from within each of us. And for some damned reason inversion of the emotions may be played, but inversion of the self takes so much of a lifetime as to render the practice of anything else moot with the decay time wafts behind like an odor but even sharper in the skin than the nostrils. <br /><br />Seba's lungs were never up to the task of breathing in life, which makes it handy his body can run on oxygen clustered among nitrogen. It never has been death that woke fear but often the fear of time itself and its deliberate wiggling in between each and every portion of the world he has come to move his head around or his heart towards. But the rules of this world bear little resemblance to the ideals (for calling them ideas carries not enough emphasis upon their innate desire to occur which fills Seba's head as he thoughtfully welcomes them) he would have arranged a life such as this around.<br /><br />Having awoken with such distances between all the happinesses he had known and where he finds his noggin often spinning our explorer into the cyclone of the past spent in futilities, intuition is tried and he charges his guts with treason. Intuition doesn't exist in the past so much as gets blamed or congratulated as the present. So to attach his head back on right this morning, after it rolled through the valley of dreams, requires aiming it in a different direction - a direction of unexpectationalism where the past has no bearing on this next future but serves as iconic portraits his brain has painted in its best attempts to digest the times he's made it through and to better able him to share him's elf with all the others' elves wandering among what are called sunbeams, but desire to be known as God. <br /><br />Looking with this new headirection with nothing but him's elf to see in the world he explodes in the realization that God felt the same way in order to begin the universe: to have company! The worlds forms and functions viewed under this light reveal entire dimensions that are unsealable without the soul's recognition of purpose beyond it's elf. "There's nothing here but mes" he's yelling off the balcony at a street waddling to and from. Heads turn, undoubtedly, to scoop up some particle of perspective on this occurrence so as to better report it to whomever will listen over the next coffee; but Seba is not able to see such actions partitioned among fleshes because it is the very colors re- flected and -fracted from beyond everything as color as touched and fed by the sun's proximate light.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-79548143789577375912009-03-13T23:28:00.009-04:002009-03-14T00:27:20.900-04:00Semio[tic]s, for those in the knowHere's the finished assignment. I found that the instructions were slightly incorrect in that a few of the pieces did indeed touch somewhat.<br /><br />Obviously I am no videographer...shoulda put more light on things. But since the puzzle pieces are all locked up in the time capsule for the next decade, what can i do?<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzhiXd3lreYICDkNE1YaURh7iJAk3EeV-_PwS1knpkifBvuLnBfGD-6VRQy7XQ4YkHfj6q2yRLTQid-USZ1ww' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br />(the written puzzle piece states "You'll see. There's nothing to hold onto...Then maybe, you'll stop trying to hold on...")<br /><br />Awesomest birthday present I've gotten in a long time. Thanks mollsmoonstar and freeflow.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-90327230368988268522009-02-26T18:20:00.005-05:002009-03-04T18:12:35.688-05:00Re:BirthOne of the absolute greatest people I have been honored to know for most of my life's wife just had a darling baby girl. Not wanting to infringe with but the tiniest of curiosities I asked him to sum up the experience of the new fatherhoodness in seven words or less:<br /><br /><br />"I can't remember life without her"iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-30017157700151492162009-02-21T12:12:00.001-05:002009-02-21T12:14:54.478-05:00Mindlab properSomewhere in here there's secrets waiting to be born, mysteries unravelled by song for the pleasures of loving exchange between consciousing molecules. Gone forever is the past where our masks' deep roots held together our identities as names for the few who took care to investigate the manner of matter.<br /><br /> Such sympathies used to be draped upon trees of misery where the glimpses beneath yielded divine madness from the cup fashioned in the restless tail end of infinity. Now the paradox is no longer embodied within those who have glimpsed the recent echoes trailing God's countenance (its nothing to be tied up in visions this day and age), it has sprouted wings of imagination to fly swiftly over the spaces between mortal pains that integrate a life into the last human mystery.<br /><br /> But there is no imminent death waiting on its wings of time to take from us everything we've leaned our flesh towards. Its only us who have brought the depths of death into some higher place. The growth of imagination requires fanciful playing of generation to fold upon generation that the desires of the helix threaded through our genes may spiral out tighter complexities. <br /><br /> Are stars creating more stars? Not around here! Our star is creating something very different from it's elf. So too is our common experience cresting into a diversity from even things strictly human.<br /><br /> The Mindlab is a realm of ideas fashioned from the hollow backside of a waterfall. Over this wet cliff fall all the churning bubbles caught between the waters of this river's life. From this secret hollow I can hold out a net and gather a slew of foams and deitrus accumulated by the waters' journey upstream. When I enter the lab I'm sifting through these flotsams and foams for some deeper essences. Sometimes it may be the murky yellow of a foamy froth that sets a memory free. Maybe I'm extracting rusty nails and the way the driftwood groans the metal out of its grains trips my focus into the last time a groan expanded into me. Whatever it might be, the Mindlab is where the mind can experiment with the synthesis of the myriad layers of sense.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-69362331006758300332009-02-21T12:02:00.002-05:002009-02-21T12:06:52.542-05:00Masks of MineToday I woke depressed. My meditation was shot full of holes of thought demanding my attention louder and with strength such that the silence in my core was adulterated by worries and wonders. Each morning of four months now, I've sat with my's elf in the company of my breath, and maybe a friend or two - ipod & Mindfold. We go looking for the deepest recesses, or at least they seem deep as are covered by the thickest wafts of thought taking often a hundred words, images or feelings (its so hard to distinguish things nowadays) to run their course so that I can glimpse the more lasting self who always is pleased at my return and does very little to 'help' me plan or try to entertain me during my stay. There is very little I can say about myself at this point as my's elves are so often chattering about their's elves as to make heads or tails out of silence.<br /><br /> Layer after layer. Peel enough away and you will either find truth or nothing - can't be ever too suspectful as to know what lies behind the junctions next face - or fear. We all are defined somehows. And here I am, more real than the storyful descriptions I cast about as my shadows falling through the worlds of these pages as if my inverting into my's elf could create some personalized black hole with which to recondense all these intrusions into the fabric of matter we all share and wrap my's elf tight ever tighter into a singularized coccoon to demand of existence the expansive birth that the cosmos at large purveyed into every one of our souls all at the same before time and with each of us in mind such that the whole of me could be the same as the parts of the surroundings that each of me might mistake as some thing or some other.<br /><br /> And here I am still feeling insaner in this life where I have no real desire other than what comes floating past me as the deitrus of surprise or the mangled dreams that I have seen fit to carry with me thus far but without the continuing, or true, desire to unfurl for all the world. Often I can be in honesty by saying that I care not for this life or world and my dreams are to not have been born in the first place or to have the sweetness of death give my soul release from this damnable body I must look after and feel at all angles and all hours. The surges in my chest are wonders: does God not wish, at any time(lessness), to have thought twice about this infinite eternity of being around one's self posing as others?iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-2096375689123302422009-02-10T12:16:00.003-05:002009-02-10T15:35:36.153-05:002008 extended taglinePhilosopher emerging from accounting pulls a quick one on demons who were counting on a free lunch - washing them away, clawing and thrashing, in a river of booze. Our intrepid adventurer takes to the road following the strands of friends he has spun over the web of years. Each friend has created a different life towards their dreams. Experiencing slices of others' passions and doldrums serves to melt and chip away whatever parts of his post-divorce heart are left in his chest. He's dying to the past and growing a heart towards the future. This ripples into his days slowly because liquor is thicker than the blood of a fresh heart. But, as he allows it, understandings expand self and the relationships thereof. Upon settling back onto the world he finds that the techniques of structureless days rounded by inebriation's thick bubble have been used to their maximum advantage but must be let go of now so that he can move back into the society of humans. Journeying gets lonesome tiring.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-10158899688535393752009-02-08T14:29:00.004-05:002009-02-08T14:53:08.185-05:00In response to a friend's quiestion of what not drinking was like...As far as not drinking it came upon me suddenly. I had been down in Naples FL visiting an old friend a few blocks from the Gulf coast. The sun doesn't set in Naples until a hundred people are drinking on the beach. So I, being my mother's son, bought a box of wine; though not her preferred brand. A box of Pinot Noir is 4 bottles worth of wine and only costs about $12. Drinking from the space bag for a few days led me to the discovery that it was horrid wine. I even had to buy beer a few times to alleviate the destruction of my stomach lining; but I persevered and even kept it in the vestibule of the tent I was sleeping in in the backyard so that I would have to face my nemesis first thing in the morning.<br /> The flight back I spent in my journal. In my deepest sense of self there dwells a story maker and teller. As I wrote I sipped whiskys which brightened the noonday sun, but dimmed my head. The sentences weren't coming out smooth like a sunbeam's moment through a moving cloudhole, they were coughing out like a coal train's smokestack. The bender had crested the 14 month wave and was beginning the curl that will lead to a collapsing in on itself. The spree was no longer a story to tell but a rut chunnelling me through each day. <br />This, box of wine and all, has recently revealed itself to be a genius plot in the disguise of an alky's soulrot. I didn't crystallize any of this into wordable emotional categories until I woke up back in the hills the next day. I was in a low state of revulsion towards the effects of the beach alcohol (beach alcohol, in the winter, is much saltier and even more dehydrating than even altitude alcohol) inside my body. The sluggish character it was festering into as I continued to feed the monster; 4, 5, 8, 12 drinks a day, more, more, was seeping out of the heels of my feet and I walked through the day with a squish and wet squeaks.<br />So as I squished over to the fridge of bestowing that first evening of February, I found this giant sentry carved from the stone of my deep will. My desirous, sluggish, cravenly thirst - so diffuse in its methods, so scattered in its doings - has no chance of direct confrontation with such a condensed form of my's elves. <br />"It seems," I said "that there has been a vote within me and most of the energies of feeling have sided with this formidable intent to uncrave the numb of alcohol." <br />It mostly turned off, like a switch. I am treating myself to things like candlelit piano music warming the air around a mustard bath (its a bath salts mix of mustard and other herbs that open up the pores of the skin so that nastiness like alcohol residues can be released) and then a dark room and complete relaxation in the Mindfold.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-18819219919757260102009-02-06T11:54:00.000-05:002009-02-06T11:55:33.444-05:00Its happening again.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-38018359046476809352008-11-16T13:22:00.011-05:002008-11-17T12:37:36.096-05:00Truckstop Living, vol 1I finally got around to getting photos from Sleg and we'll see how they inform my stories...<br /><br />Let's jump right in<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPGOyRl158NG-FSFdnysy1pUTQ2k5CXwIEbzIHXgKgBTnOo38NGjEsza1z-Joq21oNuZ03zujvyPl2-vkZGo0hTVC6nkGCHujNT4qBBQxAEEcvu1n-hFHZgW84xmm7f8O9NC8_EQMNCTo/s1600-h/IMG_1041.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPGOyRl158NG-FSFdnysy1pUTQ2k5CXwIEbzIHXgKgBTnOo38NGjEsza1z-Joq21oNuZ03zujvyPl2-vkZGo0hTVC6nkGCHujNT4qBBQxAEEcvu1n-hFHZgW84xmm7f8O9NC8_EQMNCTo/s400/IMG_1041.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269324267506902866" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Here is the front door: <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoKeWAcjV34H_bOdfMrJ_S9YDX8A2boIxTbwqomTSxMO3mSxRGDO9-D2r_MiW8gSlrIQQXk1UinKkdOhIoPOi_DwerrJqvEOGs0tFwdUhHEwjWbozE8sbOorI7jmjH_MUS21jbNS-nbDk/s1600-h/IMG_0849.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoKeWAcjV34H_bOdfMrJ_S9YDX8A2boIxTbwqomTSxMO3mSxRGDO9-D2r_MiW8gSlrIQQXk1UinKkdOhIoPOi_DwerrJqvEOGs0tFwdUhHEwjWbozE8sbOorI7jmjH_MUS21jbNS-nbDk/s400/IMG_0849.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269324896988866114" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />We did have a couple cats coming around for a little while so the No Pets sign did come down. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />And the lovely cafe in the second building where we would have breakfast every morning.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1aPQlGdYYZMIvSfEjB5fH0mRiiKXafQx3qcxpD20_NyjIkAMNZfUOa1XZiq8OnlC_QVV6HZGpDbU972w5JMSGKEkGGzhC3IHgEG-1KdJUJZnL5x9VGnAb1ywianJfE9z9UZA49GUEDI/s1600-h/IMG_1029.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi1aPQlGdYYZMIvSfEjB5fH0mRiiKXafQx3qcxpD20_NyjIkAMNZfUOa1XZiq8OnlC_QVV6HZGpDbU972w5JMSGKEkGGzhC3IHgEG-1KdJUJZnL5x9VGnAb1ywianJfE9z9UZA49GUEDI/s400/IMG_1029.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269325933397703026" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />My favorite drink at said cafe,<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin0QNTKCyFrKJc3oYl_3DLYjH0yOUOzYQku2C2lgvHhTbmSCUyXtY61JmzbgiSv4nAhtTB_cDKsozDvu7ZSp2Es6xvnNP0JD0IYtLGtZGN8bV5BWzg7oNNgIz3wz5EH1dNM3xHrYPAfAk/s1600-h/IMG_1035.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin0QNTKCyFrKJc3oYl_3DLYjH0yOUOzYQku2C2lgvHhTbmSCUyXtY61JmzbgiSv4nAhtTB_cDKsozDvu7ZSp2Es6xvnNP0JD0IYtLGtZGN8bV5BWzg7oNNgIz3wz5EH1dNM3xHrYPAfAk/s400/IMG_1035.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269326360828767746" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />And the recipe...<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQQ39112gy0SDNx7LrPtCn9sRT5f9l04O5lnK2waimX3AhQ2ndg2Fj3D6n6wV-vaoGpA8-WKJXQf9LkjorP945aXVjw8pMNN0iXuyE4q0eQY3U-RhaVefHF_MPQz9WE81mZlYVVm669k/s1600-h/IMG_1032.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQQ39112gy0SDNx7LrPtCn9sRT5f9l04O5lnK2waimX3AhQ2ndg2Fj3D6n6wV-vaoGpA8-WKJXQf9LkjorP945aXVjw8pMNN0iXuyE4q0eQY3U-RhaVefHF_MPQz9WE81mZlYVVm669k/s400/IMG_1032.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269327086190829826" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiASOHO8gek2gWk29iL_xLhYlD2JQ2NyqsWhWvV30x1zZtTQyYJGgsYR-mytTJT9XBJjUzvR3lEO7yDR5AVhMNT4oMLF6WLLsNduSC9XxBbonF6NdsAN1a4TuHEYhbkm8_6b62yh9d5RP8/s1600-h/IMG_1034.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiASOHO8gek2gWk29iL_xLhYlD2JQ2NyqsWhWvV30x1zZtTQyYJGgsYR-mytTJT9XBJjUzvR3lEO7yDR5AVhMNT4oMLF6WLLsNduSC9XxBbonF6NdsAN1a4TuHEYhbkm8_6b62yh9d5RP8/s400/IMG_1034.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5269327094416018146" /></a>iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-63095876743278225762008-11-11T23:07:00.002-05:002008-11-16T13:10:04.556-05:00Please read<a href="http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF111-Reset.jpg">Newest Favorite</a>iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-55882335200622333632008-11-09T11:04:00.003-05:002008-11-09T11:22:13.398-05:00in response to Phreelosophy's comment on Practice*<a href="http://foldedmind.blogspot.com/2008/10/practice.html#comments">bows deep</a>*<br />only a truly enlightened being could see how awesome i am (without wearing a Mindfold)<br /><br />But for the real practice, it fell into me more than I into it. This recent trend certainly grew deep roots in the bloody mess of my broken heart - my ex-wife suggested taking a class again when I called her crying one morning during our Separating. As it turns out heartblood spilt is a verdant compost for growing Qi. The moment I tasted it I was <a href="http://www.lyricsdepot.com/talking-heads/this-must-be-the-place-naive-melody.html">home</a>. <br /><br />So when I was on the road without a space of my own and needed a way to center that did not involve possessions, a routine (such as shower or shave because those were not always available) or a bedroom, etc. this found its place in my mo(u)rning. <br /><br />Of course, I have been fostering an image of non-conformity for years so doing weird spirit-summoning gestations or whatever it might look like to the uninformed only really helps to paint a picture of my's elf that keeps me malleable within others' eyeballs. So there's no hesitation on how i am perceived that might get in the way of a practice. <br />And verily, I say unto you, when you are doing crazy headstands because you have put a year of Chi into your centre, well, the practice suddenly becomes real.<br /><br />But even that is not the payoff. The real thing that keeps me motivated to do this every day is the more in my body I am. Now as I connect that subtle movement to a sitting, breathing meditation...the mind and the body are aligning that the soul may more fully incarnate.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-77784121744647121712008-11-06T11:14:00.000-05:002008-11-06T13:44:39.148-05:00PracticeSo I have been doing my Qi Kung practice for over a year now. Every morning for 15 minutes. This is the longest and best devotion i have given to a practice yet; and the rewards are overwhelming and obvious and completely worth the effort of the routine. And the kicker, is that I don't even know the whole cycle yet. <br />The particular set of exercises I am working with is called the 18 Lohan Hands. I learned 8 of them before leaving Gainesville, from the best sifu I've yet worked with, <a href="http://www.flowingzen.com/sifuanthony.htm">Anthony</a>. I was sorry to have to leave in the middle of the set, but it hasn't stopped me from gaining a benefit; although I am now feeling somewhat lopsided or not well-rounded so I am thinking it is time to find a way to learn the rest of the set. <br /><br />A couple of weeks ago I added a simple meditation to my routine in the mornings, shooting for 15 minutes of motionless. I experimented with different postures - doing the Qi Kung Tree posture, relaxed standing, chair sitting, etc. - but ended up back at the sitting zazen pose on two pillows. After feeling ease in the posture for 15 I started experimenting with the most suspension of motionlessness I could find, even to the point of not blinking, but that proved to be too much twitching motion. So I settled into closed eyes or half-open resting lids with relaxed blinking. The ease of settling into no-moving comes quickly for me as I relax into a Chi-breathing state of mind so that my breath is the bellows for all movement in my fleshbag.<br /><br />From that I have proceeded to grow the sitting meditation into a full half hour. Thus far my favorite way of monitoring the time (since I have decided to not have a clock in my bedroom) is to listen to Fahrenheit Fair Enough, by Telephone Tel Aviv. I listen to it 4 times plus one verse to get to 30. Its a beautiful, melodic instrumental that also sounds as if it is reorganizing something mechanical, or squarish, in the background; perfect cleaning routine for the Mindlab.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-42542194633802680572008-11-03T19:24:00.009-05:002008-11-03T20:23:07.643-05:00Day of the DeadThe Day of the Dead started off in a horribly appropriate way: See-double-u's magnificent cat, Zoey, was hit by a car sometime in the night. It looks like she left instantly. <br />Goodbye Zoey, you had it good and now its even better.<br /><br />See-double-you drove me to the airport and I flew to Hotlanta for the Carnival of the Dead. For the airport I dressed as The Financier because I get kicks out of the way people treat me when I look good. Putty in my hands. Probably why religions require such elaborate costumementation. Arriving at the (literally) busiest airport in the world I begin to wonder if Sleg is going to continue the tradition of airport Mindnappings that we began upon El Capitan (but that's quite another story and will need to be written and then written off on by El Capitan him's elf and maybe even the Spatial Galactician before it can be posted here) by whisking me off the baggage claim curb into oblivion. But no Mindnapping today. On the ride to the dump, uh, no not the dump...to the A-hole I explain to him how my costume of the businessish attire, plus wearing the Mindfold, will dress me as Wall Street. We toss around the idea of him being The Bailout by dressing in upscale all-black attire, but in reality that only happened in our heads because it was too much to explain (and he put this awesome veil-type mask on). We had to leave N at home because she was sick. I gave her some medicine. <br />Sleg and I fell right back into tradition and laptopped the Glenwood for their awesome selection of beer; our favorite of the night being named <a href="http://www.ccbeer.com/files/ccbeerfiles/SmallCraft-Warning-299.jpg">Heavy Seas: Small Craft Warning</a>. Its like a Stellas Artois for your pyrate ship. That, we later realized (for one never knows when one is in the midst of Shark Summoning) was our Shark Summoning. Once you see the fins you've gotta either swim for your life (ha, best of luck) or grab onto the fin. We rode shark toward the Carnival of the Dead in some thick style that had been dredged from our pasts and tattooed across the thick breathing leather of these monsters. <br />At the door we were stamped with skulls and then woah. I will not divulge the inner occurrences of this particular party because there are no words to express it to ones who were not present and there's a reason it was done inside a building and not in public. Just know that <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/sara.totonchi/CarnivalOfTheDeadNovember12008">if Sara Ashes throws a party, for chrissake, GO!</a><br />The next morning we found a Shark Rider's sigil on the side of the truck. It was dashed across the door and became clear when I wiped the top layer away that, indeed, the inhabitants of this truck had Rode Shark last night. <br />But that was long after this. I woke up on the triplicate of yoga mats that have become my Sleghome. The overcoat I had wrapped my's elf in was spotted with candlewax. But I had lit no candles. The pain started before I even woke, it actually woke me as it were. There is only one way, I have learned, to deal with such pain. Head on. So I did headstands. And jumping jacks. And dry heaves. And tried to meditate. And dry heaves. And had them hit me repeatedly in the skull with a tube of paper. And running in place. And ginger tea. And headstands and more headstands. And then when the landlord's brother came over I did a headstand to confuse him. It worked. I can do mad headstands when I am needing to summon the deepest of energies to combat the tricksy toxins that I have penchants for.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-68872240184572226452008-11-03T18:43:00.005-05:002008-11-03T19:24:37.350-05:00shakin' fakin and baconSo I just settled into my Asheville room after driving from Marietta to Athens to Asheville on the motorcycle; about 275 miles. I've done one other day of riding that much, from Gainesville to Atlanta(I-75) in a 7 hour thunderstorm; when I got to Fuzzy's wife's graduation party it took me 10 minutes in the bathroom to wring my's elf out. Freaking Ridiculous. <br />Today's ride was a bit more relaxed, but still all interstate as well - yuck and boring, no fun turns. But Western North Carolina is full of fun turns i'll get to explore now. <br />My body is still shaking, especially my hands, from that sick Savage one-cylinder thumper that I turned 26,000 miles on today. That's just short of 4 round trip rides from Miami to Seattle. I got that bike used with 75 miles on it. The story I have in my head is some poor sap bringing home this shiny new bike and his wife hits him over the head with a rolling pin and so he takes the bike back so I could buy it cheaper. <br />I bought the bike because its Savage and I could tell it would handle my learning curve. It's yellow and not many bikes are that in touch with their inner flame. I've knocked the thing around and gone down twice (for real, not counting drops on gravel parkinglots or the kickstand not locking all the way, etc.) The first time was being hit from behind in an intersection - took my back tire out from under me...I was turning left, and she right...into the same square foot of road. Neither she nor I was going any faster than 10mph but still the bike and I slid 40 feet (I measured the streak of paint the next day). I had the right gear on and got some scraped skin and a sore hip. Without my full face helmet I would have left half my face across the pavement (yeah mom, I never told you about this one, sorry). I soon bought even better gear. And the Savage was still rocking it with a slight bend on the handlebar. <br />The second time was me being dumb and riding too late in the rain and not stopping properly on a slick downhill stoplight. I got my's elf into a situation where I could either hit the stopped car in front of me, or dump my's elf instead. It seemed better to hit the ground instead of hitting the car then the ground. All my camping equipment lashed onto the back of the bike on the badass shelf AF made me snapped out of the bungee net and scattered around the street. The shelf popped its zip ties and flew into the woods. I was helped up in a slight daze by a beautiful girl which immediately embarrassed me into action of scooping my tent, sleeping bag, hiking boots and the rest of the scattered gear and lashing it onto the bike as quick as I could on the side of the road. Did I mention it was raining? I then rode half an hour home. The even better gear only left me with a chunk of skin gone from my kneecap, but without the cycling pants with kneepads, i likely would not have said kneecap. <br />The next day I wake up at 0600 with the all-consuming thought that I must find the badass shelf AF took all the previous day to fashion to my specs. So I drove (my car) back down to downtown and wouldn't you know it, but at this 6am there's a roadrace around L5P down the exact street I needed to get to. So I am in my moccasin slippers and bandanna and colored glasses walking between the crowd and the runners because behind the crowd is a steep hill and my slippers won't grip the wet grass. I have to walk like this for over 5 minutes then I slip thru the crowd and into the patch of pines where I immediately head right to the shelf and grab it and then walk the opposite direction (on the other side of the road, for balance) this time facing the runners. Their faces gripped with anguish from the hill they just climbed and me swinging the lacquered wooden shelf in a circle by one of the cinch straps that stayed cinched. <br />So I got some more zip ties and put the shelf on for today's ride. Then I rode. Now I'm tired.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-32553455737245409482008-10-28T15:59:00.021-04:002008-10-28T17:00:48.394-04:00Shining Rock<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGpDaQ4KuwiA91dxte6HVd0e2SchDr7SAIRuJ59JX2aa-1rmYTVfEIbnb6g7uHzHwGdncYTJ6Pisgvh8x7oER2_MOnXxyOrg6g4iu0WuJ82PU-pZ36Cu_xNUdq-oVRSKA-Fxs_bji1_Wg/s1600-h/DSCN1447.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGpDaQ4KuwiA91dxte6HVd0e2SchDr7SAIRuJ59JX2aa-1rmYTVfEIbnb6g7uHzHwGdncYTJ6Pisgvh8x7oER2_MOnXxyOrg6g4iu0WuJ82PU-pZ36Cu_xNUdq-oVRSKA-Fxs_bji1_Wg/s400/DSCN1447.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5262297754678782738" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />C-double-you and I took a hike along the Art Loeb trail into the Shining rock wilderness. This trail runs across an entire spine of a mountain ridge, which is not unlike many ridges in the area, but for one thing, most of it burned 50 years ago and the re-growth in the area is not nearly as thick as all the surrounding hills so you have spectacular views; that and its really high up. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWNIyK41FJmhSVZIabQyP8NotsOBLwrqJw5zhieC-27Tbto7v53ojib4fyOnyHXFIl8GwZbORJFPbiMYsSafHKWqnptG6Ix7quNJVQQDvA3sOvvsuDqWKHKT0fPiPEPsA2rIAQVSTOASQ/s1600-h/DSCN1454.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWNIyK41FJmhSVZIabQyP8NotsOBLwrqJw5zhieC-27Tbto7v53ojib4fyOnyHXFIl8GwZbORJFPbiMYsSafHKWqnptG6Ix7quNJVQQDvA3sOvvsuDqWKHKT0fPiPEPsA2rIAQVSTOASQ/s400/DSCN1454.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5262298896184805986" /></a><br /><br />We hiked in Sunday afternoon as most folks were leaving. He and I talked and talked about outdoorsness. He is from the perspective that can be summarized by Ray Jardine's <a href="http://www.rayjardine.com/">The Ray Way</a>, which is a method of making and packing gear that is all about multi-use and efficiency so you can get to the middle of nowhere. I on the other hand, have subscribed to the idea that REI is <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtPjgQUxrdk0yKBnvvZCsfnPYRIqYt_qWHMEeYEqt9UCw3_rVD0jgWPuoVZdwYwtWynGaD4Wxh9IQv5YR3L3vgCin9O0y0Nru5VGfRDeaiXWUldAQUDmfMrqPKs7AquX1GKP2aW9kcztQ/s1600-h/DSCN1468.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtPjgQUxrdk0yKBnvvZCsfnPYRIqYt_qWHMEeYEqt9UCw3_rVD0jgWPuoVZdwYwtWynGaD4Wxh9IQv5YR3L3vgCin9O0y0Nru5VGfRDeaiXWUldAQUDmfMrqPKs7AquX1GKP2aW9kcztQ/s400/DSCN1468.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5262299169448525010" /></a>a store of the gods and have been happy to pay for their expertise so I can get to more important things like accounting. Anyhow we picked a great place to camp in a grove of hemlocks on the Southeast side of the hills to avoid prevailing winds; it was also only a hundred feet from a spring where we filled our water bottles. He pitched his tarp, and I my tent, and then we went back up to the ridgetop to cook dinner under the sunset.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3R45BZ6Aj5X8T05qXjwVaYHZrgLnq2klT9ujT2neXvhMuAbCSstjbb-LVCWpzWLnPapCEI86HsXCT58Iq0wfIFnS3LSPHKnp6qblsCD9MLPi8Mz8uRsLHQDU8pdW0S56vXD72AjVJMbY/s1600-h/DSCN1472.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3R45BZ6Aj5X8T05qXjwVaYHZrgLnq2klT9ujT2neXvhMuAbCSstjbb-LVCWpzWLnPapCEI86HsXCT58Iq0wfIFnS3LSPHKnp6qblsCD9MLPi8Mz8uRsLHQDU8pdW0S56vXD72AjVJMbY/s400/DSCN1472.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5262299728101992146" /></a><br /><br />The night was spent around the fire with us sharing stories of everything, as campfires in the middle of nowhere have a way to draw out the depths. I told the story of how I had proposed to my ex-wife before even holding her hand; and he spoke of things that are held in secrecy under the Code of the Campfire. <br />He taught me to tie a couple of knots and I have found that once I have the motions down, its easier to do without looking and to not bother my mind with seeing, but to trust my fingers. The training is paying off. After sipping the fine fine aged scotch C-double-you brought along (even his liquor bottle is wrapped with duct tape, so he doesn't have to carry a whole roll of the stuff) we put the fire out and were both relieved to find that neither of us stood by the tradition of peeing a fire out because, well, it stinks, but more importantly, isn't how you show respect to something that can disintegrate you down to molars. <br />I sleep fitfully because my sleepmat, the inflatable kind, has blown a seam and doesn't inflate. This has not bothered me for months as i've slept on hardwood floors on it from Florida to NYC, but when the ground underneath you is, literally, frozen, that missing layer of insulation is found to be crucial. But its hard to complain about the ice on the bottom of your tent when you wake into the sun rising off the eastern ridge.<br /><br />We decided to shoot for Shining Rock, a HUGE quartz deposit a few mountaintops from where we slept. In the spirit of our adventure we decided to forgo the trail and bushwhack our way through the network of blueberry bushes. After half an hour of this we found a bunch of bushes the birds had not picked clean, which revived us to continue off in the wrong direction. This took us into the most magnificent hemlock clearing I have ever crawled through briars into. It was clearing like this after clearing like this interspersed with rhododendron thickets. We were amazed by the space so much that we were devising a way to mark off boundaries for a paintball or capture the flag game on the mountain top. But then we realized we were off track and doubled back by walking through thousands of blueberry bushes to camp and took the trail. <br />There C-double-you split off from me to climb the quartz boulders up to the Shining Rock. Even though these boulders that started off the size of me and grew to the size of cars and beyond up the hill were strewn about with time's degradation of the rock, I had enough bushwhacking so I took the trail all the way up. It was immense and amazing and it filled my soul with the magnificence of this evolving creation of a world. Here's a photo from the top of Shining Rock <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQKpLEakVq9aMRI2Pqk3iiQBChiXtfEwumSx4ujA-u9xmqBqagbTj-Dd5f-QGT2AKuF26Hwd20kCNYJrMyYzfqE-JyYH6R_4ysB_3h1AvmiKzhMoJgux0iXisA4xXxokYb8vEDJdGGDTE/s1600-h/DSCN1493.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQKpLEakVq9aMRI2Pqk3iiQBChiXtfEwumSx4ujA-u9xmqBqagbTj-Dd5f-QGT2AKuF26Hwd20kCNYJrMyYzfqE-JyYH6R_4ysB_3h1AvmiKzhMoJgux0iXisA4xXxokYb8vEDJdGGDTE/s400/DSCN1493.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5262304061908912514" /></a><br /><br />As we packed up camp and moved towards a different spot for the second night we noticed it had not gotten any warmer even with the sun overhead, big clouds were rolling in, and the water in our water bottles was freezing, all this plus the wind was so hard it moved me around on the top of the ridges (even with my heavy backpack on) led us to decide that it would be better to just make a fire and hang out until we felt like driving home. This proved to be a wise decision as it started snowing by the time we got to the car. So we put on another layer and started gathering firewood before it got completely dark. Around this fire we shared the majority of our foodstuffs remaining, made hot cocoa -put cinnamon cereal in it because things you would not normally eat at home can taste amazing in the woods, and talked more about the intricacies of fire-shaping. Then it got really cold. So we jumped in the car and I stuck on Tom Wait's Heart of Saturday Night, which fused the mood into the night as we wound around the Blue Ridge parkway for what might be the last time of the season as icicles were already formed on the rock outcroppings which, C-double-you explained, would continue growing until they reached the ground then they would cross the road, forcing the authorities in charge of such things to swing the gate closed on this road for the season. But, he continued, rock climbing clubs, would hike the miles in with all their gear and climb the ice for the two or three weeks it was frozen enough. And people look at me like I'm crazy. <br />When Wait's crooning ended I offered C-double-you to pick from my collection and without my prompting he picked the best album ever, Ambient. <br /><br />Arriving home we unpacked the car and let the cat in. Then I made a foot bath in lieu of a shower, because the hiking boots I bought in Colorado are still not broken in enough. I set it up in the kitchen next to the stove so I could reach the beer in the fridge as well as the kettle boiling water. I proceeded to put on the ipod and sit in that chair for over an hour munching Kettle Chips and reading about Hermes Trismegistus.<br />(PS I don't know how to keep the pics from loading HUGE when you click on them, if anyone does, please let me know)iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-84491803799754878362008-10-23T14:55:00.003-04:002008-10-23T15:00:48.784-04:00Toned down for mortal consumptionI just can't do it. The thoughts come so fast that I have been guzzling beer in an attempt to slow things down, but the practiced tolerance of drinking for 2008 (for honest, I have averaged, AVERAGED, 7 alcoholic drinks per day - I can drink two bottles of wine and then wake up and do it again the next day, hangovers are non-existant and somehow I can still eat one full meal throughout the day, keeping my weight at the sultry 125lbs.) has left my attempts flat on the brain lag and too expensive to continue without more income. <br /><br />So the last couple of days, playing The Financier have left me face to face with the fear that i have wasted the last 8 years of my life trying to learn the game that rules the world; and now that I have no upward option but to get back into finance and accounting and making money from numbers; I can see the future: it involves me drooling in a straight jacket. Have you seen the movie Quill? All I want is ink and a pen. All I have is a calculator and a new haircut. <br /><br />The desire of my soul is to dive into psychology. The bent of my mind is to think of philosophy. But the skill of my training is the opposite of these. <br /><br />I thought I could reconcile all opposites in myself by playing along with them but have found I am only human, though I don't seem to have a human mind, for it dreams of things that are not in this world. How can I have ideas that are not compatible with the present situation of the world? Do the dreams that drive me mad tumble into the psychic compost for more determined minds to grow from? Is my role that of the pioneer and then to be forgotten? What do I care if it is? I won't be making it out of here alive, be it in a coffin or legends, its death all the way down. <br /><br />I don't want to reproduce because I could never give possibility to these sorts of pains in the heart and head. I have seen that most people admire my ability to think, but can I tell you what a curse it is? This seeing the extremes of all these worlds that make up our variance; this obsession to explain the feelings that posess this damned body of mine. And the knowledge that there are things worth this pain and rewards worth the troubles, but from this troubled mindstate, I can easily discard them to make room for more of the sharpest feelings that I know, those of the extremest of extremes. Sometimes a loving hug draws me, but in truth its no more interesting to me (although to my biology is another story entirely) than a funny tv show...so says the downside. <br /><br />How i've tried to speak with professional mind-explainers and verify that I am human, but to my chagrin i know more about the mind than those who have received papers saying they know more about the mind. Its not like I am a genius because I don't know how to apply all these marvelous thoughts I live for, but there is undoubtedly some intelligence that is beyond the normal, or at least, habitual, human comprehension - leaving me to rot under the glory of my imaginings.<br /><br />(I will likely regret posting this later, but its not stopping me...)iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-79649953179217119192008-10-20T12:06:00.005-04:002008-10-20T12:13:24.258-04:00If I am anywhere near Atlanta on The Day of the Dead<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNmnV6vXo9e07w4uX4G20ISuWhbUNs9BCN3z21-nGbiTFDtDeJq7F6X7iq82mpMGjP7OnuL9rLs79w9yJsv0WbXz1dSrVC6O7OjRnkW6P5Qkst4MfAoGrVRjfc04qZDLbMDitI3Bc57Zg/s1600-h/Carnival_of_the_Dead_front1.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNmnV6vXo9e07w4uX4G20ISuWhbUNs9BCN3z21-nGbiTFDtDeJq7F6X7iq82mpMGjP7OnuL9rLs79w9yJsv0WbXz1dSrVC6O7OjRnkW6P5Qkst4MfAoGrVRjfc04qZDLbMDitI3Bc57Zg/s200/Carnival_of_the_Dead_front1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259269584309253362" /></a><br /><a href="http://ashesandglass.blogspot.com/2008/10/carnival-of-dead.html">This is where I will go</a>...<br /><br />One of the Ringmistresses, and my dear friend, Sara Ashes, best I can tell, came (back?) from the dead some years ago to tell the rest of us humans why not to fear the Deep Sleep. And by day she works to abolish the death penalty. Go figure.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-27761888548369265382008-10-19T20:22:00.017-04:002008-10-19T21:22:50.549-04:00The FinancierI have been working on my metamorphosis into The Financier, and in doing so I have been getting to see my contrarian nature shining through. In the land of the freaky side of freedom, my bandannas and slipshod have been sinking - as if being beckoned back underconscious after wandering past their necessary bounds. My mind is bubbling like a wet mogwai and out of the muck is arising the keen and dapper logician. The change in outward attitude of people towards me is affirming of my intents; dressed as this <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6S5DE36G07sC_hz5OBaQl2HECFEoBlyTt2OY9TuKi34gW9uCePgOhHjNdNzOLREXJCEeDYjCpGZ3TMo-2xj7jEkXnoAX4EDo1nYyKAGwssVozpYKKylgcqZhCCGfahdM9inIWDIm7h-0/s1600-h/DSCN1220.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6S5DE36G07sC_hz5OBaQl2HECFEoBlyTt2OY9TuKi34gW9uCePgOhHjNdNzOLREXJCEeDYjCpGZ3TMo-2xj7jEkXnoAX4EDo1nYyKAGwssVozpYKKylgcqZhCCGfahdM9inIWDIm7h-0/s200/DSCN1220.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259029686492583218" /></a> <br /><br />receives a<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjZ6kU8Yc-EfK0EAQlmSZ9NUvnWijEjfzC2rLXFKY_smyUBu3Us5CBfuMvv4MKkfgpNCzpIucDQoaPNsv0Q1UI1FARfYEHEUE2qOe_5jaEbHFyqtzveAir9edZ7cnuKi0oC-YRjppXj4/s1600-h/DSCN1443.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjZ6kU8Yc-EfK0EAQlmSZ9NUvnWijEjfzC2rLXFKY_smyUBu3Us5CBfuMvv4MKkfgpNCzpIucDQoaPNsv0Q1UI1FARfYEHEUE2qOe_5jaEbHFyqtzveAir9edZ7cnuKi0oC-YRjppXj4/s200/DSCN1443.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259029661782888274" /></a><br /> very different<br /> reaction than this<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />where people (keep in mind this is societally and culturally dependent) are more apt to engage on a particular level of manners to you, depending on their perceived class relation to yours. For instance, in the bandanna, etc. the Nascar fan at the mall doesn't look at me twice and expects me to step out of his way, which I must as he is larger and will probably hurt me with impact. But in the professional get-up he doesn't look me in the eye once and is nudging against his girlfriend to leave me the slight room I need to pass.<br /><br /><br />But I have known this, and tried to use it to my advantage in all circumstances (that I care a whit about). Its been an age old dilemma of mine having to gauge whether going covert and using disguises to accomplish a mission (like getting into a Masters in Finance program with an undergrad degree in Invironment) is the more likely to succeed, <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrvsD99CccetP9xtyxUxD-QULmuhT6OGKgqkVnz0Q4iz8zrc-sCbSxenqAjFkhdVybEInyZ6wdn9HJr_n0YQ6Z35lsmWotnkFNk8D2oIIUG9Ha8YDlur8deDpUsimXbn0V777XUv_Dyk/s1600-h/spiffy.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrvsD99CccetP9xtyxUxD-QULmuhT6OGKgqkVnz0Q4iz8zrc-sCbSxenqAjFkhdVybEInyZ6wdn9HJr_n0YQ6Z35lsmWotnkFNk8D2oIIUG9Ha8YDlur8deDpUsimXbn0V777XUv_Dyk/s200/spiffy.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259029675263169954" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Or if the situation calls for the full-frontal assault. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK-yd1tUcW0MbLlUoCw-9eQLrgFgA09VDWc94sT3PCpVUOK9JB95nfqic0yibaKsxe28hqopu75_w2xsymk6GDaZpLzz3RMul5gVCOfbNEHjP6ZxN31pXAK0JtMK63C9vu3MWNoNaE51Q/s1600-h/DSCN1234.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK-yd1tUcW0MbLlUoCw-9eQLrgFgA09VDWc94sT3PCpVUOK9JB95nfqic0yibaKsxe28hqopu75_w2xsymk6GDaZpLzz3RMul5gVCOfbNEHjP6ZxN31pXAK0JtMK63C9vu3MWNoNaE51Q/s200/DSCN1234.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259029690644733266" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Either way I can oblige.<br /><br />As for the recent past, I had no interest in keeping score. I had had enough of the numbers business and the way they often try to define value. But now I am feeling a bit more competitive, ready to jump back into the fray. And what a fray the economy is! I wonder if it isn't that giving me the most interest, to see something from the inside when it is not working, as opposed to bandwagoning to the top of the Dow with the rest of the would be capitoligarchs.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-91227813904361152752008-10-17T11:34:00.006-04:002008-10-17T12:30:39.875-04:00DragonAfter my roommate got back from a primitive skills gathering in the N. GA mountains, he was trying to start a bow and spindle fire in the living room to show us how to do such a thing. We became convinced after the spindle started smoking and moved onto headstands. Each of the four of us had a particular style of head and hand stand that we showed off to the group. I have not been in a group that body-aware before and it led to The Dragon:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9mn4TNnBXyD_5l6dbFF6hyphenhyphenpqwrDHhwMlgyvb1svutD70JQzwip7rKkIcEDTNsw4n852dirqfrBPzXMb7KE1xvnjxQQzOoxE4qHhZOupqEI2SH-8aiuAC2OldTwrJq-fpUszlKN1ZNvdY/s1600-h/DSCN1424.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9mn4TNnBXyD_5l6dbFF6hyphenhyphenpqwrDHhwMlgyvb1svutD70JQzwip7rKkIcEDTNsw4n852dirqfrBPzXMb7KE1xvnjxQQzOoxE4qHhZOupqEI2SH-8aiuAC2OldTwrJq-fpUszlKN1ZNvdY/s200/DSCN1424.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5258147821931262642" /></a><br /><br /><br />I've never heard of AcroYoga, but thoroughly enjoyed it.<br />(i conjecture that the top and the front person could wear Mindfolds, but the foundational person needs too much balance)iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-27402813214071845182008-10-14T23:23:00.002-04:002008-10-14T23:26:03.658-04:00These are Financial TimesYes, a single <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2ab3e78c-9a2f-11dd-bfe2-000077b07658.html">link</a> post. But you just can't get this kind of perspective inside the US. The last line drove me to post this.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-78552640665548808342008-10-13T22:23:00.010-04:002008-10-29T14:17:25.958-04:00Let us pay homage to Rene MagritteRene Magritte is my favorite painter. He is the analogist of the canvas.<br />(if you open the first link in a new tab or page it may be easier to just use the sideways arrows above the paintings than these links, I can't decide so here's both)<br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/iurodivii/Magritte#5256835636182404434">Clairvoyance</a>--egg is to bird as i am to self portrait<br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/iurodivii/Magritte#5256835642551018258">Not To Be Reproduced</a>--mirror is to face as perspective is to vision <br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/iurodivii/Magritte#5256835637759784690">The Listening Room</a>--size is to memory as apple is to room<br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/iurodivii/Magritte#5256835889694903186">Mysteries of the Horizon</a>--moon is to individual as soul is to man<br /><br />My personal favorite, <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/iurodivii/Magritte#5256835644827105954">Homesickness</a> where views are to nature as black is to wings<br /><br />and of course, <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/iurodivii/Magritte#5256835646839131826">The Treachery of Images</a> where painting is to understanding as word is to mind.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-10293164497843377182008-10-12T18:14:00.011-04:002008-10-12T19:40:07.485-04:00ForestryWe reached the ridgeline after hiking up the side of the Linville Gorge east of Asheville. We had been hiking a few hundred yards to the next border of burned forest for our guide, a Forest Reseracher, to take some measurements and program the coordinates into his GPS system for later data crunching. The fires here are special because one section burned one year. Then part of it and part of a second section were burned the next year. So you have three different sections: 1) burned the first time 2) burned the second time 3) burned the first and second time...setting up a great control group for a data-based inferential research to be done on forest regeneration timelines. <br /><br />I was in charge of the 6-inch ruler and photographing duff, which is the layer of needles and bark scraps that stack up around trees. Here is a good illustration of how the duff burns away in a fire:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqa0EELMQhW5tkiZRtf4YmM1gXLEB2zYSoMcuhBV4ar54qXVzjZxPBivKG-3c0wMRX8CcyEmIak6rDuV_ihp6Xtcnt01PFf03WMYMf75yv3nFq5SbfYG9EGUFnXLvYqlba7rNvwybuf50/s1600-h/DSCN1359.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqa0EELMQhW5tkiZRtf4YmM1gXLEB2zYSoMcuhBV4ar54qXVzjZxPBivKG-3c0wMRX8CcyEmIak6rDuV_ihp6Xtcnt01PFf03WMYMf75yv3nFq5SbfYG9EGUFnXLvYqlba7rNvwybuf50/s200/DSCN1359.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256401257512527490" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />My own research consisted of gaining purchase on the unleveled logs full of branches broken off into spear points.<br /><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHguA-yc9UYdpeorKHqkEN3tnPKj2se9hd1eM6FWW0w8DxMv0ULRE3a_-SaP75WsLY92TYZwy7rVWhyphenhyphengv6nvjQOTie1ju1ZHTHetvszACbSPLR9AiBHsjSbT5gzAOMB3K_8G4rEOeTn-8/s1600-h/DSCN1370.JPG'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHguA-yc9UYdpeorKHqkEN3tnPKj2se9hd1eM6FWW0w8DxMv0ULRE3a_-SaP75WsLY92TYZwy7rVWhyphenhyphengv6nvjQOTie1ju1ZHTHetvszACbSPLR9AiBHsjSbT5gzAOMB3K_8G4rEOeTn-8/s160/DSCN1370.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> <br /><br /><br />As well as the time lag of balance determination among carbonized tree-remains.<br /><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1OC3IIzzIepoJBEGuR8F9x2r3P7Kshk4PARs-q9-7E_3BEAI2yVMcxqZ0BgpcgTbnMf3xL-RbG-NwlsX_vf1Odm7Twq_7V2qKkui4SKvSPY82_BVUtV5LWr6HtvTApp_AIYiPl0FO-tU/s1600-h/DSCN1371.JPG'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1OC3IIzzIepoJBEGuR8F9x2r3P7Kshk4PARs-q9-7E_3BEAI2yVMcxqZ0BgpcgTbnMf3xL-RbG-NwlsX_vf1Odm7Twq_7V2qKkui4SKvSPY82_BVUtV5LWr6HtvTApp_AIYiPl0FO-tU/s160/DSCN1371.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> <br /><br /><br />And of course trying to line my's elf between both a pair of foreground burned tree-remains as well as centering among the backdrop's pair of charred remains flanked by a pair of living trees. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLzdEx2SYKTVUXp03kF82VNGsNNVbgntkNhP62G3qdMdObTYT_BnSuFQFKDV0Dho_vk6eSrJKIvephSmZq1tI9lVJEH1CHcbmR-lEAjngkbWg3pWODZ-tsyWKkKbfpCHvJ_W6pkkHXppI/s1600-h/DSCN1376.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLzdEx2SYKTVUXp03kF82VNGsNNVbgntkNhP62G3qdMdObTYT_BnSuFQFKDV0Dho_vk6eSrJKIvephSmZq1tI9lVJEH1CHcbmR-lEAjngkbWg3pWODZ-tsyWKkKbfpCHvJ_W6pkkHXppI/s200/DSCN1376.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256398263944074274" /></a><br /><br />All in all a fascinating journey that we ended with setting up camp on the top of the ridge. We built a heck of a campfire which ended with Freeflow making fire faeries. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAZfPu68PDlIEcKQ5EfVnzwL5PgnPkkgsVMJ0MxmNL5CL73mhEmDaIF9e1P07dAkeNoCkduSqW5sbaxQ6TEgbch_kHAofTDm4BP5RKuS96LHqdj2PJYTGRF73j3FpMt5-oBnBnyKdra9o/s1600-h/DSCN1384.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAZfPu68PDlIEcKQ5EfVnzwL5PgnPkkgsVMJ0MxmNL5CL73mhEmDaIF9e1P07dAkeNoCkduSqW5sbaxQ6TEgbch_kHAofTDm4BP5RKuS96LHqdj2PJYTGRF73j3FpMt5-oBnBnyKdra9o/s200/DSCN1384.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256407896662521330" /></a>While I urged him on.<br /><br />The next day we closed up camp after being rained on overnight. This had us hankering for more than fruit and cold tea. So we went to <a href="http://www.averymuseum.com/famous_louise.htm">Famous Louise's</a> and ate in Avery County.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-28040826293817926082008-10-12T18:12:00.002-04:002008-10-23T12:20:47.585-04:00The view from the top<a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsf2zIX5ONCy6siT-fKj5vyRBCj3JRcToH3BKCfW7FFsEDpupE30Twyie8Pn6n2U0a4phargOCzkaGTXy_cv2ed4rVPT1atUiWZXB2EYpY2HfcyozHskapjU4kcXSr5J5fxsiGeg-r6aM/s1600-h/DSCN1414.JPG'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsf2zIX5ONCy6siT-fKj5vyRBCj3JRcToH3BKCfW7FFsEDpupE30Twyie8Pn6n2U0a4phargOCzkaGTXy_cv2ed4rVPT1atUiWZXB2EYpY2HfcyozHskapjU4kcXSr5J5fxsiGeg-r6aM/s160/DSCN1414.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> <br /><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqoeTzkDFpvFUiv05qGv-8w2CM0R9vyxXsMP_I7yw5P0aNyaYaiidtk4oTdFutfRw-4fGuYYxvGaeItowhw_txd3T8D4PinDyKDTVnMoxLj7UNcx7qIui-E18Es9MBhMaw60Xlye29NpY/s1600-h/DSCN1417.JPG'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqoeTzkDFpvFUiv05qGv-8w2CM0R9vyxXsMP_I7yw5P0aNyaYaiidtk4oTdFutfRw-4fGuYYxvGaeItowhw_txd3T8D4PinDyKDTVnMoxLj7UNcx7qIui-E18Es9MBhMaw60Xlye29NpY/s160/DSCN1417.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> <div style='clear:both; text-align:NONE'></div>iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-24522164741687449622008-10-09T23:08:00.003-04:002008-10-09T23:09:50.756-04:00New World OrderThis article will likely not be <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ed4a750-961e-11dd-9dce-000077b07658.html">here</a> long, so take a look because it is a great example of the astuteness of this publication's perspective on finance and economics.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1957344329060861123.post-85706774199832637112008-10-09T22:44:00.004-04:002008-10-09T22:53:17.818-04:00Transforming the Bailout.And here is an interesting <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/business/10norris.html?ref=business">article</a> that, behind the narrative, gives a good summary of the process of injecting capital into banks.<br /><br />There's a lot of doubt and questions raised in the article, as I presume is being done by most medias. But there is no precedent for this unraveling of the global economy and so there is no plan of reaction. Everything that would be done at a time like this will be full of questions. I think, at the very least, its good the US is willing to reconsider its plan of action and probably mimic the European tactic. Its about time we considered more than just our own opinion.iurodiviihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16871269823745653823noreply@blogger.com0