Sorry I've been so out of it, folks. I'm not gonna promise that I'll be more attentive though. There's an odd point of inertia where I realize it's been so long since I checked LJ, and I have nothing to report...or rather, nothing I really want to report, and I look at the F list and see way too many entries going so far back, I just don't feel like reading on my computer for that long. No offense to anyone. Still love you all.

In other news...well, there really just hasn't been any.

I'm looking for another job, as I feel burnt out on the Paramount. I hadn't really realized how much I was abusing my credit card until about a month ago, when I hit the ceiling and they did NOT raise my credit limit like they have in the past (which is good actually). Budget is tight enough that I'm not eating out anymore, even though constant kitchen cooking is driving me crazy (my kitchen is just too small). Even taken to buying small bags of coffee and brewing it at home, instead of going out to my favorite java hangout for a cup.

Whoever said you can't be depressed when you're exercising was full of shit.

I've been extremely depressed. Yet somehow, I've managed to be productive. Other than the sheer poverty factor, I'm not sure how I'm making this happen. Done lots of painting and still working out at the gym. Yet still feeling like things are hopeless. I wrote to my mother about it and she wrote back to tell me this was natural for an artist. Artists are sensitive. It's part of their gift. Fuck, I'm so tired of hearing that crap. It doesn't make me feel any better. I wish I'd had a father who was a mechanic or something, who'd show me how to fix cars and take me to baseball games and taught me to be just a little less of a whining pussy. I'm just so NOT into this "sensitive artist" identity anymore. And yes, I note the irony that, at this time when I'd rather not "be an artist", I'm actually doing more drawing and painting than I had when I proudly wore that label and did nothing but get stoned and pass out all the time. I suppose it's kind of funny, although I don't find it funny right now.

But at least I am working out and swimming laps so I can claim some level of athletic activity in my life. And speaking of which...

The other day, while getting dressed in the locker room after swimming laps, I watched a tall, lean guy stripping down in the mirror. He caught me watching and made a very subtle kiss motion with his lips. I smiled and kept watching and he sort of made a point to take his time and kept looking at me and smiling. He had a great body, very slim, enough muscle contour to catch the eye but not so much as to intimidate me. So I enjoyed getting dressed while watching him change out of his workout gear and into his boarder shorts, presumably to sit in the hot tub or steam room.

I just got back from Portland, visiting the old lady.

Her house is decorated in a combination of rancher/cowboy and little girl style. Elk horns and skins hanging on the walls. Little figurines of kitty cats and other cutesy things festooned about the place.

We didn't have "that talk" that I wondered about. I got to thinking that maybe this isn't about having "a talk". Something about the timing. To just suddenly bring it up out of the blue...it has this element of hostility to it that I really didn't want to infect the tone and mood of things. Maybe I just need to flow a bit and when an incident happens, bring it up then, and keep "the talk" relevant to the incident, rather than use it as a leveraging point to dump all this stuff.

And I also realized she is respecting me more in her own way. She's kind of afraid of me getting angry and it makes me realize what a fragile, little thing she's become.

I love my mother, but I still get that little voice in my head that says, "Why did she have to turn out like THIS?" It's something I have no control over but it bothers me nonetheless.

Anyway, she talked my ear off, showed me her paintings and her scrapbooks...Geezus F. Khryste does that woman looooooooooove scrapbooking. Volumes and volumes! She's getting into Qabala and so she was picking my brain on that subject, which was a bit embarrassing for me because I haven't really done much studying of Qabala in a few years and so my knowledge base is rusty and what I do know, I can't explain as eloquently as I used to.

We went and saw I am Legend.



I happen to like Will Smith. I'm biased in that I think he's totally fucking hunkalicious and doesn't have the "Ima nigga in yo face, muthafucka!" attitude like Chris Rock or Samuel Jackson.

I liked this movie. Not an especially convoluted plotline, but it seemed like they wanted to work more with establishing that whole sense of scary aloneness, depicting the character's desperation in finding the cure.

Mom liked it okay...more than she thought she would. I was wondering in a few places. My mother is the only person I've met who didn't like Pan's Labyrinth because she thought it was too violent. And she didn't like Brokeback Mountain because the sex was too rough (she didn't even finish watching it).

She gave me the autoharp that used to belong to my grandmother. I'm really happy about this. I've been wanting to learn a musical instrument for some time now. I had spent upwards of $200 on a Native American flute, very beautiful and with a unique design, different from others I've seen. But I tried playing it a few times and quickly came to realize that I just can't deal with any instrument that involves breath. So no woodwinds or brasses. I had a strong feeling I'd be moving towards a stringed instrument. A violin has been on my mind. Also...a zither. I liked how the zither was played in the movie Kafka.

The autoharp is not too far away from a zither. So I'm gonna see what I can do with this instrument. I kind of feel some fate involved. Plus it's nice to have something that belonged to my grandmother. I had a cool grandmother. Kooky old woman. Her poor Baptist mind was forever fixated upon Geezus, but she was a big, warm, plump, gooshy grandmother who doted on me and let me sit on her lap and...you know, did what grandmothers are supposed to do.

On Saturday evening, I got to break away from Mom and met soclosesofar for the first time. I've been reading Brendon's journal for some three years or more now and his is one of my favorites to read so I was pretty excited to meet him. He's more of a brat than I expected but hey, I like brats. And he's far better looking in person than the pics I'd seen of him...also looks GREAT with a beard.

We went to his place and chatted a bit about Radiohead and Buddhism and ragged on vegans. In regards to Buddhism, he asked me: "So what does Buddhism do for you?" and this was a question that took me off guard. I'd never really thought of it in those terms. It's been more like, out of all the religions I've studied, none of them seems as sensible...overall...as Buddhism. However, I'm also realizing that different Buddhists have different takes on it and, as he pointed out, some seem to really dwell on suffering a lot and it made me wonder if I'm doing that too.

So his question was a hard one, and I'm not certain I had sufficient answers, but I walked away with something to think about, and I always like that.

And what does Buddhism do for me? Well, first, I must emphasize that I don't consider myself a Buddhist. It's just one of the stronger influences on my spiritual path. For much of my life, I have felt like I'm just this angry, depressed, fucked up person, and I would like to not feel that way anymore. Buddhism has been a voice of reason and compassion to help me work through issues, forgive myself and be kinder to myself, also to help me open up to the world around me and be a little more forgiving of others.

The strongest philosophical practice that has helped me has been utilizing a Buddhist/Existentialist method of viewing things in terms of concrete cause-and-effect, rather than abstract good vs. evil, of realizing how emotions can cloud judgments and decision making in nearly everyone. Any one of us can behave with perfect rationality in one situation, then go ballistic and dishonor ourselves with obscene, perhaps even violent reaction in another. It's just a matter of what the inside issues are and how severely the situation has stirred them up.

I remember a conversation I had a few years ago with my friends Sharon, Joel, Theresa and Michelle about the East Coast "edge"...actually, it was more like I just sat and observed their conversation. That attitude...that "cut the shit, get to the point, make up your mind, don't wast my time" attitude that often seems abrasive and impatient and even bitchy to many other people. Brendon has that in his personality and he's aware of it. In thinking of all the people I know who have that edge, I realize that part of what makes it go is a thicker skin. Many of these people sling it out harsh but they can also take it harsh. My only problem with anyone has been if they sling it out harsh but then expect to be treated gently. That's a double standard and I won't put up with it. That's the reason a certain woman is no longer a friend of mine.

But I will not likely ever have that edge. I've always been a sensitive person and so I think I will always take a lighter tone with people because that's how I wish to be treated, even if some of my friends are harsher. I'm getting better at hearing what they mean rather than letting myself get slammed by the words. But, for the record, I did come from a childhood environment where people yelled at each other all the time and slammed words around deliberately to wound and degrade.

Anyway, Brendon, I really did enjoy meeting you and hope to have at least a somewhat closer friendship.

And I'm back in Seattle and it seems the first order is to spend some time with sculptruth very soon.

Love to all of you little birdies in my life.

I've been in a funk lately. A little over a week ago, I had another "window watcher" experience, like the one some of my readers may remember from a few years ago. This one was slightly different in that the guy on the street didn't just look up and see me and stop and check me out. He had apparently seen me once in my window when he walked by. Then the following night, he walked by again and saw me and decided to circle the block a few times to check me out, and then finally decided to just squat down and smoke a cigarette and watch me.

I notice him and our eyes meet and he approaches and so I invite him up. This fellow was GORGEOUS!! Very lean body. I'd say skinny but there was some hard muscle there. He had short black, curly hair...so perfect. I love curly hair and I love brunettes. Neither fem nor particularly masculine, but that sort of middle ground "metrosexual" look (both in dress and mannerism). He had a beautiful dick!

The sex only lasted for maybe 20 minutes because he said he was late for a dinner but it was super hot. One odd, awkward thing about it was that he fucked me without a condom and I thought "Um...okay, this is where I'm supposed to tell my status...but then he's topping and he's not telling his status either...oh dear."

Since he had to get going, he did mention getting together again, when next he passes my window. And when I asked him if he was going to tell his dinner pal why he was late...like "Oh you know, I saw this naked guy in the window of an apartment building and so went up and fucked his ass," he said he'd tell if they asked, added that he believed in honesty and that people shouldn't ask questions they didn't want to know the answers to. So I thought about all this and told him I was HIV+ and he shrugged and said he was too, and that he figured I must have been if I'd just let him fuck me bare without asking anything...either that or I didn't care. So that was one hurdle out of the way. Yes, I realize this could have turned out much worse so I'm counting my blessings.

I gave him my phone number. I didn't ask for his. I kind of hoped he'd offer but he didn't.

He walked by my window again a couple days later, looked up and waved to me, but kept walking. I'm not sure what to think about that.

I don't regret this incident, but the whole thing did really throw me off center because...aside from the sex being hot, I just had a vibe from him that I liked. It feels sort of humiliating to admit but I'd like to see him again and get to know him more. But he hasn't come around, or at least if he has, then it wasn't when I was around. Basically, this whole thing has agitated feelings of loneliness, because I really do want a companion in my life, someone who will be a lover and a buddy. I am lonely. I don't like writing about it because I've read some other journals where it seems like every other entry is about how lonely they are and it gets to sounding really pathetic, like the person is just a black hole of emotion.

I talked to Roscoe about this and mentioned that it's hard not to feel ashamed or something about having developed an emotional attachment after only 20 minutes of sex. He gave me some good perspective. He pointed out that this is a common thing, happens to a lot of people. Two people lay down together and if there's intimacy, at least one will walk away with feelings, and if it's unrequited, then it becomes a cause of sorrow.

There was one thing about this guy that really stood out in my mind. I could see myself dating him. And more specifically, he had a vibe that made me feel like he'd get along with at least most of my friends and they'd like him. This is a criteria that I have for dating potentials and I don't meet many guys who meet that criteria...hence the reason I don't date much. After one or two dates, I get to thinking, "Hmm, how would things go if he and I went and hung out with Orry, or Roscoe, or Purple Mark, or Joel or Sharon or Amy or Mike." Too many times, I get an unpleasant feeling in my stomach, like there would be awkwardness. But this was one guy I felt good about and I even got a feeling he had good friends.

I don't know...a lot of feelings. I'm sad. I want someone. And I don't know how that is supposed to happen. Most of the happiest couples I've seen weren't on the hunt looking for someone, posting dozens of profile ads on dating websites. They were just going on with their lives and happened to meet a really cool person and it worked out. That's the other reason I just don't do much dating...it feels like swimming upstream.

One good thing about all this is that after talking to Roscoe and hearing his perspective, I realized I've been sabotaging myself by thinking of excuses to keep myself lonely...like adjusting to the possibility that I might be alone for the rest of my life, or thinking perhaps I don't deserve one YET because I'm not "emotionally developed" enough (and when will I be ready?) or that maybe it's "just not meant to be". For several years, I've subconsciously imagined that a good relationship is some kind of reward for having faced your demons and healed your wounds and developed your character, -even though, when I look at various different types of couples I've seen, that isn't necessarily the case. And that old saying, "No one will ever love you until you learn to love yourself"?...that's bullshit. I've seen many people who didn't love themselves very much who found love in another anyway. I've found virtually all of those little proverbs to be a bunch of crap.

Anyway, this has been haunting me for a few days and I've been feeling like it's some dirty secret, partially because of the way I met him, and partially because loneliness just plain sucks and it's humiliating to admit to feeling it. But the truth is, that's what happened. This hot guy walked by my building, spied me in my window, came up, fucked me good and now I want to see him again and know more about him. And that doesn't seem to be happening, but time will tell. It has brought me sorrow. I know it will pass eventually but I'm feeling it now and that gacks turd. I do want someone, even though it may not turn out to be him.

I only just now remembered that today, January 2nd, 2008, is the anniversary of my HIV diagnosis. Been poz...and healthy...for seven years now. It doesn't mean as much to me as it once did. It's weird how this Before and After mentality plays with my mind. When I was still HIV-, I met HIV+ men and...well, they were HIV+ and it never really occurred to me that they too were once negative. I started to think about all those people after I was diagnosed, thinking how they all went through the same psychological change. In particular, I remember this beautiful boy named Daniel in San Francisco, who had a large, homoerotic tattoo on his back. He and I had eyes for each other. I certainly would have gotten naked with him. I could have dated him. Then I found out he was HIV+...only 20 years old and poz, and this at a time when the disease was still killing by the dozens every week. That, in and of itself, didn't phase me. Sure, I'd still have sex with him. Just use a condom and be careful of those fluids. I had an understanding of HIV that, even now, many people don't seem to: that, after you've assessed how it works and what needs to happen for transmission and how long it survives outside of the body...

It's actually a very difficult disease to get.

Thousands of gay men got it because they happen to enjoy that one, particular activity that is high risk: buttfucking and taking sperm in the ass. Often very rough buttfucking too, so tissue is ripped up.

In those days, I had my friends telling me the risks were high because the virus can be absorbed through mucous membranes. But then I had...not one...not two...but THREE different professional AIDS educators telling me "No. There has to be a blood factor. It has to be exposed to blood."

What put me off though, was that Daniel figured his days were numbered and so he HATED HIV- guys. Hated them. He didn't know my status. When I found out, I distanced myself, because I didn't want to be a target. I still think about him from time to time. I wonder if he survived long enough to get on the new meds that came out in the mid-90's, if he's still alive now. I remember smoking pot with him and us just quietly giving each other that "I sure do likes ya!" look and cuddling a bit.

Now.

I've become so adapted to having this disease, that I am sometimes surprised to remember that I was once HIV-. I imagine that in a few years time, I will forget this anniversary altogether.

---

Resolutions:

My two New Year's Resolutions are ones I've been thinking about for some time now before now, but I see no reason not to make them official as of now.

1. To re-identify myself according to what I do...writing, drawing and painting, rather than clinging to that dreadful abstract term "artist" and to identify all my works in like manner. I've already written extensively about this in another post a few weeks ago.

2. To be mindful of how disagreements can become power struggles. This is the root of what people commonly call "drama". This often happens when people use sarcasm (I think sarcasm is best avoided during disagreements) or, of course, when someone presents his feelings or opinions as an accusation or attacks the other person. This is all part of a larger project in my emotional development: managing anger so that I don't bottle it up inside me but don't just blast at people either...to state my truth without disrespecting the other person. Refraining from turning a disagreement into a power struggle will, I think, be somewhat easy. The hard part is knowing how to respond when someone does it to me, because there certainly are still plenty of very immature people out there who think that whatever they're feeling or thinking is THE TRUTH and absolutely MUST be said and don't give a rat's ass about respecting and honoring other people.

I'm tired of looking down on other people. I've lost interest in being the jaded, hip asswipe who sits in the coffee house and goes, "People are stupid, man. People suck." and goes on to site examples and posture himself as a superior (as if I've never made any dumb choices! HA!) and to glorify being a hater. And it's not that I want to become some hippie reaching out to love everyone. I just keep getting tastes of genuine acceptance of the world as it is throughout my life...and those tastes are nice. It's nice to be at peace with things. Being bitter and spiteful and judgmental just sucks. It's baggage. It gets heavy. I wanna stow it.

My best friend has a saying: "Most people are doing the best they can with what they've got, but it usually doesn't look like it."

Fortunately, I look back on 2007 and I see that I'm not having nearly so much trouble with anger and hate as I have with depression and insecurity. That, unfortunately, I do not know how to deal with, other than acknowledging that they are there. I have found that it helps to remember that I'm not alone in this, that there are millions of people all over who fall into deep depressions, that it's a serious problem. I keep wondering whether there is any real difference between loneliness and depression. They seem so similar to me these days, that it's hard to tell them apart.

Well, all in due time I suppose. This month I will be going to Portland to visit my mother. She really wants this. It's been so hard dealing with her. We got into an email discussion about boundaries. How, for many years, I've never really thought about setting my boundaries and enforcing them and how by not doing this, I allowed people to just walk all over my face so many times. And we talked about boundaries in her life too. But my mother is still locked in the victim mentality. Drama unfolds around her and she's always this innocent person being attacked from out of nowhere and discussions like these are largely intellectual to her. She thinks about it. She thinks and thinks. The gears turn. But she never faces herself. She wants to continue this conversation in person, and it's going to detail her husbund's family. To be honest, they are pretty nutty. She married into the Jerry Springer show. OMG so dysfunctional. But even then, when she tells me the latest horror story of someone misbehaving, I'm always aware that I'm only hearing HER side of it and that makes things difficult when she asks for my opinion. They hate her guts so I can see why she's upset, but then she goes and does little passive-aggressive, snotty things to make matters worse. You know, just some little nasty comment that gouges the wrong person and all Hell breaks loose. Another power struggle.

The Serenity prayer goes:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I know that I cannot change my mother. But what I don't know is if she's capable of changing. She seems, often, like a crotchety old lady who becomes ever more set in her ways and I just want to leave her be, but then these delicate subjects get brought up and she wants to engage me and I feel untruthful if I just kiss her ass and don't tell her what I really think.

So...I guess I got a lot on my plate this year.

This post is inspired by a recent conversation with yami, with whom I discovered I agree with more than I thought.

Here is Wikipedia's definition of "mysticism"

Of importance to my arguments:

"Mysticism (from the Greek μυστικός (mystikos) "an initiate" (of the Eleusinian Mysteries, μυστήρια (mysteria) meaning "initiation"[1])) is the pursuit of achieving communion identity with, or conscious awareness of, ultimate reality, the divine, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight. Traditions may include a belief in the literal existence of dimensional realities beyond empirical perception, or a belief that a true human perception of the world transcends logical reasoning or intellectual comprehension."


"Mysticism is usually understood in a religious context, but as William James and Ken Wilber point out, transcendent experiences may happen to anyone, regardless of religious training or inclinations[2]. Such experiences can occur unbidden and without preparation at any time, and might not be understood as religious experiences at all. A momentary unity may be experienced by the artist or athlete as a perceived interconnection with existence or a loss of self accompanied by feelings of euphoria, by the scientist as a spontaneous ecstatic inspiration, by an ordinary individual as a shift in physical reality after experiencing a temporary unconflicted state of mind, by a prophet as an open channel of knowledge or even dismissed as psychological disturbances in modern times."

These passages underscore my personal contention that the difference between religion and spirituality is that religion is based on a doctrine that outlines specifications of the nonmaterial world, as well as behavior. Spirituality is based upon personal experiences with the non-material world. The difference then, between spirituality and mysticism is that spirituality may remain in a vague, intuitive state, whereas mysticism, particularly in the modern sense, attempts to use logic, experimentation, and research to organize and clarify one's spiritual development.


"...the word mysticism, is best used to point to conscious and systematic attempts to gain transcendent insights/experiences through studies and practice. Possible techniques include meditation, contemplation (of causality), prayer, asceticism (fasting from the world), devotions, Dhikr, Sama, the chanting of mantras or holy names, communion with entheogens, and intellectual investigation. Mystics typically go beyond specific religious perspectives or dogmas in their teachings, espousing an inclusive and universal perspective that rises above traditional sectarian differences because they comprehend the shared basis of other religious traditions beneath the superficial ."


"The mystic interprets the world through a different lens than is present in ordinary experience, which can prove to be a significant obstacle to those who research mystical teachings and paths...

...One key to enigmatic expressions lies in the perspective that "the world" of appearances reflects only learned beliefs - based on the limitations of time, culture and relationships - and that unquestioned faith in those misperceptions limits one's return to the divine state."

This emphasizes the existentialist side: that everyone on this planet is actively interpreting reality and, while we find certain commonalities with each other's interpretations, each of us also experiences an exception or variation of that commonality. This is something the so-called "skeptic rationalists" fail to understand: that it's easy enough to sit there and diagnose what REALLY happened from your comfortable armchair...but YOU WEREN'T HAVING THE EXPERIENCE, so your diagnosis is limited.

Say two people go into trance states, have visions and experience euphoria. The "skeptic rationalist" can babble all he wants about the chemical changes occurring in the brain and nervous system, and how this triggers audio and visual hallucinations. But this does not explain how one or both of these people may communicate information for which they had NO prior knowledge, information that is, in some cases, extremely detailed and complex and for which the accuracy can be externally verified.

I once stated to a friend that the consequence of mankind's faculty for reason was the necessity for meaning and purpose in life. That we have the capacity to ask "how" and "why" creates an imperative to do so. I stand by that statement. And thus, I pose this question: What is the difference between a vision and an hallucination? I suggest the difference is that "vision" implies that the experience was meaningful to the individual. "Hallucination" is, ironically enough, used as a dismissal by "rationalists" to indicate that the experience had no real meaning or purpose.

I find it paradoxical that rationalists, who rely on their ability to use reason and logic to reveal truth and reality, dismiss any subjective experiences that contradict their empirical data as false or meaningless...while mystics, who rely precisely on subjective experiences to reveal truth and reality, perceive no contradictions.


"koans, riddles, and metaphysical contradictions
irresolvable tasks or lines of thought designed to direct one away from intellectualism and effort towards direct experience.

* The classic "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (Zen) or "How many angels can stand on the head of a pin?" (Christian). Sometimes these are dismissed as mere incomprehensible silliness (see humor, below); sometimes they are taken (erroneously) as serious questions whose answers would have mystical significance. In either case, the intention is lost; the point being that excessive effort in contemplating the impossible leads the initiate to give up the ego pursuit of doing/getting as opposed to the unity experience of being/having.
* The evocative Taoist phrase - To yield is to be preserved whole, to be bent is to become straight, to be empty is to be full, to have little is to possess - is another example of a metaphysical contradiction describing the path of emptying of the learned self."

Israel Regardie once stated very plainly that the human mind is not, by itself, an adequate tool for determining truth, because it contained an element of self-contradiction. Numerous other mystics, including Aliester Crowley, have also declared this (although not as succinctly as Regardie), as have Buddhists and Taoists. I myself have long suspected that the element of self-contradiction lies in the use of "identifying logic"...equating one thing to another by use of the word "is". Dr. Robert Anton Wilson explains this at length in his book Quantum Psychology (a book that I have recommended to nearly everyone I've ever had conversations like this with...and for which nobody listens to me. Your loss, bitches). Thus, the Zen riddles and Taoist statements deliberately short circuit the method of identifying logic, by throwing the contradictions into its face.

Qabala replaces identifying logic with relational logic. Thus, instead of A=B, it suggests that A resembles B in some ways or that A has a connection to B (the connections or resemblences may be understood that they both possess qualities of X, Y, or Z).

"To an extent, mysticism and the modern sciences appear antithetical. Mysticism is generally considered experiential and holistic, and mystical experiences held to be beyond expression; modern philosophy, psychology, biology and physics being overtly analytical, verbal, and reductionist...The rift between mysticism and the modern sciences derives mainly from elements of scientism in the latter: certain branches of the natural sciences, broadly disavow subjective experience as meaningless, misunderstanding the limitations of the ancient languages."

BUT...

"Continental philosophy tends to be concerned with issues closely related to mysticism, such as the subjective experience of existence in Existentialism. It should be noted that while existentialism suggests a nothingness rather than a oneness, the mystic's pursuit of emptiness - despite its fear producing angst - for the sake of union with the Divine, points directly toward a potential unity between physics and psychology that does not at present exist. The mystic's attempt to describe cause and effect between one's internal state and the miraculous, hints at a close connection between psychological stability (ego transcendence) and the mysterious realm of causality quantum physicists are now deciphering - dimensional reality shifts that synchronize with states of consciousness and unconflicted choices."

Again, I indicate Dr. Robert Anton Wilson as one of the people who began pointing out the similarities between mysticism, philosophy and modern advancements in physics (most intensely in Quantum Psychology and The New Inquisition). Certainly, he is not the only one. However, I recommend him to people because his very tongue-in-cheek writing style enables the reader to experience an immense amount of fun and excitement when learning the material.

I am coming to understand how much mysticism is misunderstood. The reason for this seems to be that most people are stuck in a paradigm of thinking that logic and reason stand directly against either individual spirituality or religious doctrine. There is only science and superstition. Science uses research and logic to determine meaningful reality. Spirituality uses intuition and personal experience to determine meaningful reality. Mysticism combines the two.

( Sometimes enlightenment is very painful. )

When thinking about how I describe my spiritual views and leanings, I tend to call myself a gnostic existentialist. Once in a while I use the phrase in the company of others, but only if their ideas and mindsets are similar enough to mine and if they have enough education, that they can, more or less, understand the meaning, without my having to explain it. Most people have no idea what to think of that term.

Gnostic comes from the word gnosis, which means "knowledge with certainty", and that refers very specifically to personal experiences, like "seeing God", or experiences of such bizarre and improbable coincidence (synchronicity?), that the individual becomes inescapably convinced that there is some sort of force or conscience permeating the material world. The key point here is that the source of belief is not a written doctrine, such as the Bible or Quran or Torah, but a personal experience.

Many people would argue over the meaning of the word existentialism. I tend to use the word in a very broad base, meaning basically that each individual on this planet is having a unique experience of life, partly because of the experiences themselves, but also because of how other factors such as race, sex, age, values, and previous experiences, mold the person's interpretation of those experiences. Moreover, that we are responsible for our interpretations, and the decisions we make, and therefore, the consequences of our decisions and interpretations.

So this means I believe (and I have a really hard time using that word believe) that there is more involved in reality than the material world as detected by the five physical senses, and my thoughts and feelings stem directly from my own personal experiences. Lots and lots of synchronistic events, such that I just find it incredibly difficult to believe that everything around me is a product of random forces, save mankind's own inventions.

At the same time, however, I understand that these are MY experiences and they have molded MY views. I cannot expect anyone else to see reality the way I do, because those people haven't had my experiences. Nor is it even my rightful place to attempt to convince them. Also, my experiences are limited. While I do feel connected to a greater, more extensive and complex consciousness, my experiences have not put me in the position to define precise characteristics of such. I generally tend to feel that there is a kind of "God-Mind" or universal consciousness, that is so complex, it is beyond my comprehension to communicate with it directly. That would be like a single cell in my body trying to send a message to my body itself. But between this God-Mind and my own individual consciousness, is a mediator...something larger than my own, but not all encompassing, and something for which I am only a part of, but for which my existence is also very significant. Many Occultists refer to this as the Holy Guardian Angel. I've used that term myself a few times, although I am often uncomfortable with the term angel. It's a little too Hebrew for me, and it's also too easy to invoke images of clean shaven blonde people in robes with big, white feathery wings and golden halos hovering over their heads. Sometimes I use the term Guiding Spirit. But I remain aware that these terms only specify my interpretations. I use them because they seem to work for me. But I understand that these classifications may not be accurate. As I grope around in the dark, I feel sharp edges that I call "knives" and soft things that I call "fur" or "plush velvet", but those words may not define the entire reality of the objects themselves. I use those words simply to organize my experiences into a comprehensive matrix of information that I can refer to and use later on. This is my doing. My choice.

One of the most important features of my own viewpoint is that I don't see "God" or "Holy Guardian Angel" or any of that as just...energy. Nor do I see it as the Tao. My belief refers very specifically to consciousness and that is what tends to lead me towards mysticism.

Traditional science tends toward an idea that all existence is divided up into one of two things: matter and energy. Of course quantum mechanics acknowledges the wave/particle duality of light. I think it's interesting that this thing we call light is both energy AND matter, and it happens to be the source of life.

So if there is a substance in the world that is both energy and matter at the same time, would it not be possible for there to be a substance that is neither? Therein lies my universal ideas: that existence consists of matter, energy...and consciousness.

How then to define consciousness? That's the tricky bit. I suppose, from a scientific standpoint, one defines it according to it's properties. And in this case, the defining property is the concept of ostensibly unprovoked movement. We know that when one thing bumps into another, the second thing may lurch forward until it is stopped, and in the vaccuum of space, it will move continually. But what of the object that suddenly moves of it's own accord, without having been pushed by either another object, nor a wave of energy?

An amoeba, for example, moves around by itself. We could say this movement is caused by mere internal chemical reactions. But how does that explain some of the more complicated movements of human beings? We can scientifically explain how we search for food when our bodies become hungry, but what compels us to decide upon Thai food over Mexican? Why do we prefer certain brands or styles of shoes or other clothing? In most of the animal world, females are much plainer than males, so why, in human cultures, are females supposed to paint their faces and wear clothes that may be uncomfortable, but which are appealing to males? If food is nothing but fuel, why do we put spices and seasonings in it? Why do we cook it? Why do some of us become devoted to art? Art has no practical, utilitarian use.

I might even go so far as to suggest that the very existence of culture and religion proves consciousness. That we are all nothing but masses of chemicals, having chemical reactions to an environment of even greater chemical reactions, does not adequately explain to me why people eat with chopsticks in some cultures, but forks, knives and spoons in others.

The acknowledgement of consciousness as a third element in all existence, interacting with matter and energy, is, from what I've seen, at the heart of all mysticism. So from that point, mysticism could be defined as the science devoted specifically to consciousness itself and it's interaction with matter and energy. Many people describe themselves as "spiritual" but that doesn't necessarily translate as mystical. The difference is the scientific aspect of the phenomenon, the intellectual focus on examining, comparing and exploring the various human interpretations of consciousness throughout our histories and cultures.

@~~---- .

So I got my Darth Vader tattoo finished yesterday. I will post pics when it's fully healed.

Was odd because I had expected it would be around two hours...no longer than three. Instead, he worked on me for nearly six hours. This was a VERY intense experience for both of us. Me because I've never sat under the needle for longer than three and half hours. Him because he'd already been tattooing all day...after working 40 hours within a three day period at the Seattle Tattoo Convention, so he was mega tired.

But he wanted to finish it. So we went there. And I had quite the learning experience of holding out for so long...particularly when the pain increases exponentially. The initial "cat claw" sensation is very tolerable for me the first time round. But then it's raw and a bit sore...and he has to go over parts again with a different color to get the proper blending...and then AGAIN with a third color...and then a fourth color. By the time he was done, my whole shoulder felt like a slab of hamburger sizzling on a hot grill.

So the beginning of the session was really friendly and chatty and casual. But that last hour...OMG! I'm whimpering and trying not to scream and cry, and holding back efforts to say, "Are you almost done?" or " How much longer?" because I look at him and he's really grim and haggard looking, no longer chatting, and I sense that he's getting grumpy.

Not to mention the shop was really hot and even his little fan wasn't helping much.

Having explored the SM scene in my past, I've had 100 clothespins on my body, hot beeswax from a candle dripped all over it, electrocuted, flogged, and even whipped. Out of all of that, the whipping was perhaps the most intense experience. This tattooing was comparable, mainly because, when you're NOT tied down and, for the sake of helping him stay focused and get his work done, the amount of restraint you have to exert makes the pain that much more difficult to take.

I told him in future, I'd like to not do any sessions longer than four hours, and even then, ONLY when he knows he can finish it in that time.

But the real bummer was that I had told him that since I didn't think it would last longer than three hours, I'd only budgeted around $300. He said he'd go with that. Then, when it was time to pay up, the receptionist cheerfully commented that it was only $275 because of the $50 deposit deducted.

Well, that's good for me but lousy for him. Only $275 for nearly six hours of work?...when he was dead dog tired? He normally charges $120 an hour. And I know the shop takes a chunk out of that. So I took out $300 from my credit card and I'm going down there tomorrow to give him a BIG tip. He's a great guy and deserves it. And I want him to have enthusiasm about doing the rest of my arm.

I also realized something else: for all of the interesting variety of friends I have, I think liquordrums is the only other person with any sort of passion for tattoos, like I have. It just strikes me as odd because I guess I figure most tattooed people hang out in clusters, have their own scenes. I have friends with a few tattoos, but I can't think of anyone other than Raven who has an active interest in this art, and plans on getting more.

Mark hangs out with a lot of other tattooists, of course. And that's partially a business decision because, aside from actual tattooing, he also builds tattoo machines. He also knows a lot of queer punks because he tattoos them. He's straight and married, but very gay friendly. He's actually said he'd like to have his own shop, with one female tattooist and one gay tattooist working for him. Some of this is because he's from Ohio and there's apparently a lot of homophobia in the tattoo scene in Ohio, so gay people were often turned away. He had gay friends, and saw no reason not to tattoo a gay person...so ended up with a large gay clientele. I'd like to hang out with him and get to know some of these queer punks.

So I'm in QFC today and I hear a crash and look to see that a couple of adults are standing in an aisle, with a small child and it looks like the child smashed a jar of food. The adults are standing there smiling and laughing, and their child is laughing too, and one of them says, in a joking voice, "Oops. Clean up on Aisle 4" and they laugh some more and then leave.

Five minutes later, the mess is still there, which tells me this fucktard couple couldn't be bothered to alert anyone actually working there that there was a mess. Nevermind an offer to actually PAY for the damaged item.

Therein lies my irritation: Seems like people used to have the understanding that when you go into the store, all that stuff on the shelves is MERCHANDISE and has a value, and if you break it, you buy it. My dear old mother raised me to have that much ethics. What the fuck is wrong with people these days? Break something and then just have a laugh over it and walk away? Teach your children to go shopping and smash shit up and not care?

Permit me to boast a little: a couple months ago, I accidentally knocked down a container of guacamole, whilst retrieving a container of ranch dip. I took the guacamole to the counter, informed them that I had broken it and that there was a mess, and offered to pay for it. The clerk told me I didn't have to and thanked me for letting him know.

I know this gripe sounds petty but...sometimes these little things count. It's just one of those things that shows you have some conscience about your surroundings, and that you show some respect and make an effort. This wasn't a bunch of angry, tattooed, grubby punks smashing things in QFC. This was a tidy, suburban-ish looking family.

For some reason it reminds me of a time when I was working at Slaveco Insurance Corporation, and, on the 12th floor, there appeared one day, a bunch of dishes on the floor next to the elevators, with a written sign that said, "This isn't a hotel. The conference room is not a restaurant. Clean up your messes."

That was the receptionist of the department on that floor. Apparently there had been a meeting, during which they all had lunch, and they just left their shit in the conference room. She picked it all up and dumped it right out there in the open, half-eaten sandwiches and bowls of soup and whatnot on trays, -where everyone would have to pass by and look at it.

The note disappeared. The mess STAYED there for three days, after which SHE was asked to clean it up and take it down to the cafeteria. She refused and told the manager where it had come from. The manager ended up taking it down. Then came the nasty blanket email. Asses got kicked. It never happened again.

Good for her! But I have to ask myself what the fuck is wrong with these people? These aren't ex-cons or street punks. These are suit-clad middle class yuppies. They had to be told to clean up their fucking lunches? These are supposed to be adults. This is their workplace. How fucking self-involved is that?

So for the last two or three weeks, depression has been sitting on my face. Assuming it isn't just a seratonin or dopamine disorder, some of this is a bit of loneliness, but a lot of it is closer to what some folk call "cosmic loneliness" or "mid-life crisis".

I just keep thinking about the fact that I'm 36 years old and I work as a janitor and all the jobs I've ever had have been on this sort of level. Today, one of my coworkers asked me if I had any goals. Christ, talk about bad timing. The answer was "not really".

I did explain that the only real goal I have is to finish my story "Quimby House" and hopefully sell it to a producer and have it made into a TV show...longshot, I know. I didn't actually tell him the name, or what it was about, or that it's designed to be a TV show. That's the part that I tend to not want to tell people, because I'm always told it's so much more "reasonable" or "practical" to just have it published as a novel or possibly a graphic novel.

I've made a lot of compromises for the sake of being "reasonable" and they haven't turned out in my favor. This is a story that I first envisioned as a television show and I've never ever thought of it in any other media context. I just don't have any desire to revise it for a published format. I just don't think it would have the same impact. There are certain elements that just have to be seen in live action for the beauty and the surrealism to take full effect.

Anyway, the bad news is, as much as I'm in love with this project, and have been working on it for nearly eight years, I have hit a block so hard and immovable. Not a writer's block. That's when you want to write but have no ideas you feel are worth writing. This is the opposite. Lots of good ideas rolling in, but I have written and rewritten so many times, I am just SICK...TO...DEATH...of this fucking story. I've got a skeleton plot that's about halfway fleshed out. Great ideas come in but they only seem to complicate matters. There are certain "void" areas where I don't know how the characters are going to get from this point in the plot to that point. I have a couple characters that are almost completely undeveloped. I have certain plot twists that are really cool aesthetically, but I am in question over whether the characters would realistically respond to the situations they way I've written them to do.

I just want it done. Finished. I don't want to write anymore. And it really has become a big source of anxiety and sadness because I've never put so much continuing effort in any creative project as I have this one.

I'm unhappy with my airbrushing pictures. I like what I'm doing when I'm doing it. And...call me narcisstic if you want, but with some of these pictures, I've spent several minutes at a time just absorbing all the blending and patterns I see it them. I've had a couple friends over and showed the pictures to them and I notice that they really don't look at them for more than a couple seconds and that's a disappointment. I don't say anything. I'm not going to fish for compliments. But to me, even if you don't say anything either way, how long you look at the picture tells me a lot. I mean, let's face it...we've all seen pictures that immediately engage our attention and hold it for several minutes, perhaps we even resist looking away. We really WANT to keep looking at it and just letting ourselves fall into it. And then we see pictures that we barely glance at. And I can't force people to see what I see and I don't want people to pretend that they're engaged in the work. But if my work isn't capturing their attention, I can't help but feel like I've just wasted my time on something frivolous. I realize that I am, perhaps, setting myself up for the frustration I feel. I don't know how to break out of it.

My discipline in reading has gone downhill; I can't seem to focus. And that makes me feel intellectually deteriorated. So has my discipline in going to the gym. Yesterday, I went to the gym, and after looking around, just got so depressed and so unmotivated, I walked right out again. And that's maybe the second time I've done that in the past month.

It isn't the really big dudes who deflate my hopes. I'm aware of genetics...that whole ectomorph, endomorph, mesomorph phenomenon. I don't have the beefy body, or the genetically "perfect" body, so I'll never gain a whole lot of muscle mass. I got the thin, lanky type body. What bothers me is seeing other thin, lanky guys who, nevertheless, have got some well sculpted shoulders, pecs, biceps, abs, ass and legs. Swimmer's build. That's what I want. I try to remind myself that I could be in a lot worse shape, and my body type is such that I'll probably never get really fat. If I become totally inactive and stuff my face with junk food, I'll likely get a bit of a pot belly, but that's about it. I try to stay appreciative of my strengths and blessings.

But...for the last few weeks...it's just not working. I'm just feeling so shitty. So alone and so failing. So directionless. I know that I am where I am because of choices I've made. And only I can pull myself out of the dismal situation I perceive myself to be in. But that requires some vision and it's just not there. I have no solid ideas to commit to. And it's really hanging heavy on my psyche.

Today was a scary day. We've been doing deep cleaning projects at the Paramount and Moore theaters and today, I was instructed to change all the burnt out light bulbs in the four chandeliers in the Paramount's lobby.

These things are really BIG. Really HIGH UP. Really DUSTY. Really FRAGILE. Lots of little crystal pieces dangling around that could easily snag on one's sleeve whilst one unscrews a burnt bulb. And since I'm dealing with large clusters of bulbs, even the burnt out bulbs are hot to touch.

There are no ladders tall enough to get at these chandeliers so we use the scissor-lift...this machine on wheels with a platform that raises up to possibly as much as 60 feet above the ground. Being way up there, the platform swayed around and terrified me with visions of toppling over onto its side, throwing me off, dashing my helpless body against the walls and giving me death. People kept assuring me that despite the swaying, the scissor-lift was, in fact, quite stable, and that my scrawny little 145 lb. body did NOT have enough mass to overturn it. Then they made a point to shake the damn thing around while I was up there to "prove" how stable it was and to enjoy my freak out. Lots of speculation as to exactly HOW my body would fall, if it DID overturn, how my skull would be crushed, or neck snapped, or possibly my head snagged on the chandelier itself and torn right off...followed by more assurances that I am perfectly safe up there. They stopped harrassing me, however, when I threatoned to throw the burnt bulbs down upon them.

Well, I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. So I faced my fear and let it pass through me, and changed all the bulbs on three of the four chandeliers (the fourth chandelier is in a tricky place that cannot be accessed by the scissor-lift, so we'll have to lower it down and work on it tomorrow). I actually did get used to it. However, because of the way I positioned the scissor-lift for the second chandelier, it got caught on the railing when I started to lower the platform, and could have possibly ripped it down from the ceiling. These things are worth around 10 million dollars, so the thought of causing a 75 year old chandelier, worth enough money for several people to retire on, to crash onto the floor, -was almost as frightening as the fear of falling.

I did get used to the job however. And just as I was getting used to it, I attempted to unscrew a lightbulb and got shocked. Let me tell you, taking an electrical shock when you're 40 feet in the air on a swaying platform is...well, I've already used the word "terrifying" so I don't know how else to describe it. I had to lower it back down to the ground and just sit for a while and assess whether light bulbs were worth dying for.

I guess I must have decided that they were because I went back up there and finished the job. Might be more accurate to say I just didn't want to leave the job unfinished and look like a total wuss (male ego comes in handy once in a while)...especially since I only had maybe six or seven bulbs left to change.

What was really weird was walking home from work. I had gotten used to the swaying, and even adjusted to vertigo from looking down. But I have to walk across and overpass to get home and...I'm not kidding. It felt like that enormous, concrete overpass that routinely endures several tons of automobile steel driving back and forth over it all day...was swaying! I didn't look down.

Last night was a bit of a disappointment for me.

I went to the Lagoona Club for the SissyBoy event. SissyBoy is a drag show in Portland, and they're finally touring other cities. Yes, drag shows do tour. San Francisco's Trannyshack has toured before, and will be in Seattle again on the 15th of this month. And I think Seattle's Phobang! has toured at least once.

I wasn't quite as interested in seeing SissyBoy as I was in meeting soclosesofar in person. As a matter of fact, I was really looking forward to that. Brendan's journal is one of my very favorites to read. I enjoy discovering what is going on in his life and what he has to say about it. His perspective on things provokes a lot of thought for me. So I was really excited about the prospect of meeting him in person.

Sadly, I didn't get to meet him. Actually, once I got there, I realized that I wasn't entirely sure what he looked like. I mean, I've seen two icons on his journal that I assumed was him, so I thought I knew what to look for. But then there are all these drag queens walking around and I'm wondering whether he too will show up in drag, and what will it look like and will I recognize him? What if he's grown some facial hair since the days of those icon pictures? What if he's gained some weight? I became increasingly disconcerted at not having very much of a clue what to look for and my spirits slowly started sinking.

I left early. I didn't even see SissyBoy come out onstage. The show opened with some locals doing lip sync. A few thoughts on that. The one thing I really dislike about the drag scene is lip sync. Very rarely do I see a lip sync that I can appreciate. It's gotta be an unusual song and the drag queen has to have an unusual spin on it.

Last night had a good example of the kind of drag lip sync that bores the shit out of me. A black drag queen did "I'm Every Woman" by Whitney Houston. No. I'm sorry. This is just too tired and dull. The most interesting thing about Whitney Houston is her cocaine habit. And the drag queen was doing a more traditional drag, actually trying to look sort of like Whitney, and her routine showed nothing of interest.

So boredom set in pretty strong once the show got started. And I looked around and noticed that I was pretty much the only person there alone. I had tried to invite a couple friends to come to the show with me, but one is in a production of Cabaret and so had rehearsal, and the other has become sick with crud and has to stay home and be miserable. So there I am alone and everyone else is either paired up or in groups. And I get into that irritable mood, where I'm thinking "I told myself I would NEVER do this again...this shit with going to bars ALONE! Cuz I just end up sitting here like a lump in the background and probably look like a creepy black hole of loneliness...or maybe a snob who's too uppity to socialize...whatever. This is just not my strength."

So I left.

I tend to interpret drag as a very specialized form of clowning. I think it works best when the drag queens go totally over the top, five plus colors of eyeshadow, enormous hair, and seriously gouche apparel...or if they're doing genderfuck drag (sometimes called trash drag), where they don't bother to shave their legs, or keep the goatee and sideburns, just completely mix it up all campy and wild.

I like drag humor. Comedy sketch is somewhat common with drag shows and I like those a lot, especially if they get really raunchy. And, aside from the comdey sketches that Jackie Hell and Ursula Android did for Phobang!, what I liked was that they often actually sang songs. They sang covers and they also wrote their own songs and performed them. I can still remember a few of the lyrics from one of Jackie Hell's songs:

You come on my face! You're a punk!
You come in my ass! You're a punk!
You come on my tits! You're a punk!
You come in my hair! You're a punk!
You come in my shoes! You're a punk!

Phobang! is happening tonight btw. I'll probably go. I can't remember the location but I love watching Jackie and Ursula do their thing. Comment if you're interested in attending with me.

Brendan, if you were there last night, I'm sorry I missed you. Hopefully, we can meet when you come up for the screening of your movie.

Very recently, I offhandedly tossed off the term homolonelyphobia on soclosesofar's journal...and now I've found myself thinking about it more deeply.

First, just so everyone knows, it's not just general loneliness. I used the term to refer specifically to the dread of growing old alone, and being forgotten, invisible, and unimportant. It's not unique to gay men, but I think it's more prevalent among gay men because of families infected with homophobia rejecting their gay members. Many young queers come out of the closet and eagerly explore the bar scene, only to be overwhelmingly disappointed. Among the horrors they discover are the old barfly geezers, fat, hunched over, haggard, bitter, lonely, and boring the bartender with their tragic amateur psychology. Nobody wants them. Nobody cares about them. Who would? They have little, if anything, to offer.

Now, to be fair, some of these folk really have had some very hard lives. Today's gay youth seem to be oblivious to the fact that, only a few decades ago, there was a time when a gay man didn't "come out of the closet"...ever. If you were gay, then you lived a double life. Period. You covered it up to family, work environment, casual acquaintences, and then you went out into the night and lived openly in gay bars and bathhouses. In some cases, gay men had been discovered by their families and promptly disowned. Either way, a disconnect was there and the REAL family was in the underground queer networks. The drag scenes and leather scenes were extreme lifestyles that had the serendipitous effect of forging a strong support system through bonding.

Drag queens in New York got sick and tired of being harrassed by the pigs and having their bars raided by them, and then came the infamous riot at the Stonewall, wherein the drag queens fought back and the open, out and proud, gay rights movement began.

Progress was made. Then came AIDS. And gay men started dying off like flies and hysterical Christians exploited the epidemic for all it was worth. And we were dirty perverts again in the eyes of the public.

Come the 90's and the event of the Internet, wherein people can experience an underground lifestyle from the safety of their own homes. And terms like "straight acting" and "not into the gay scene" come into fashion. The new generation discovers that they can use the Internet to eat their cake and have it too...at least to a degree. All these fellows who insist that their sexuality is "just a small part of who I am"...who don't want to be thought of as "gay"...just a dude who likes other dudes, or something low profile like that. Gay is now associated with rainbow rings and short shorts with boots and pink triangles and trance music.

A lot has been going on these past decades and there are those men who have been there all the way through it. They remember being young and rebellious and everyone adoring their hard bodies and partying very hard deep into the night. They remember all those friends who are now dead....long since dead. Faded memories.

Several years ago, I remember reading an article in Spin magazine that started with the line "Who turned on the lights in the rock and roll scene?"...and it went on about how the early rock scene was cloaked in a lot of mystery...Ozzy Osbourne refered to his days with Black Sabbath as "black magic" days. There was this new music, violent, sexual, passionate, seductive yet disturbing, and it brought with it a culture. The article went on to talk about how MTV was the first culprit to destroy all of that, with music videos and interviews with musicians and musicians themselves opting for a lower key look...think about Kiss and then think about Nirvana...big difference in style. Pre-MTV...then post-MTV.

I tend to think of that "who turned on the lights" metaphor in many things. Sci fi, for example, is another. Notice that every fucking sci fi movie coming out on DVD has all these "behind the scenes" features? Star Wars!!...oh, don't get me started on Idiot Lucas and his "this is how we CGI'd the rocks in space" attitude. Penn & Teller forged their mark on the world of stage magic by actually explaining how the illusions worked. We now live in a world where any finished product is presented, then is gutted before our very eyes and it's composition explained to us.

Okay, so that was an unnecessary aside. I tend to feel that the world of sexuality has been the same way as what Spin described about the rock n roll (the term "rock n roll" refers to sex anyway). I've dabbled in the leather SM scene and met many folk who actually resent the gay rights movement. It made everyone spoiled and demanding and callous and dismissive. Gay people don't NEED each other like they did when our preferences were regarded as a psychological disorder. It's an ugly fact of life that oppression wakes people up, makes them think about what is important, gives them the purpose and resolve to forge loyalties and commitments. Generation 1 fights savagely and gives sacrifice for freedom, overthrows tyranny. Generation 2 enjoys the freedom, squanders it, becomes complacent and allows the back door to be open for tyranny to sneak in. Generation 3 actively courts tyranny for the sake of beloved security and stability and some insane pride of nation. Generation 4 takes all the pain and misery until backs are broken and the cycle repeats itself.

The younger generations of gay men have values almost in diametrical opposition to their predecessors. They don't care so much about being "out". What the old farts called "being in the closet" is what the young pups call "being discreet" or sometimes "on the down low". As Gay Pride Parades get more and more PC, more and more gay men lose interest and avoid them. Those parades were supposed to be FOR US. Massive celebrational gatherings to boost confidence and esteem, to form strengthen solidarity, to show the world how many of us there really are, and the right we have to be who and what we are. As far as I've seen, that concept is lost. I certainly don't go to Gay Pride anymore. For the last six or seven years, I only went for the sake of checking out hot looking shirtless dudes. In Seattle, the parade has been moved from the heart of the gay neighborhood, Capital Hill, to somewhere downtown, and it's so disgustingly incorporated. It represents NOTHING of what I value and increasing numbers of gay men feel the same way. It's a big, dumb show for suburban families to gawk at, to make them feel like they're so open-minded...they're attending a "diversity" event.

Perhaps the strongest progress that's been made has been on the front that more families are understanding and accepting of their gay members and keep them close and don't disown them. But there are still many that don't. My mother and my aunt, and another aunt of mine know what I am and accept me, but the rest of my family...on both sides, is steeped in Baptist bigotry and even if I wasn't gay, they're still a great lot of poisonous serpents to be around. Back-biting and passive-aggressive. The women are particularly awful.

My friendships are generally pretty skewed too. I have three or four friends who care about me and call me and actively make effort to spend time with me. I have many more friends who don't because they're always too busy. And I have friends out of state whom I wish I could be spending time with. I don't know who's going to be around when I'm 50, or 60 or older.

And so it comes as no surprise that homolonelyphobia isn't just a passing observation for me. I feel it. I dread growing old in solitude and being dismissed and forgotten. I know that part of my love of Doctor Who is that the Doctor is a loner and show depicts him as being generally okay with that, preferring it even. The Doctor gives a good image to being a loner.

But the Doctor is a fictional character and I don't have a miraculous TARDIS machine (oh, how I wish I did though!) so one can only rely on that role model so much. I tend to get a little emotional when I see Jackass because I adore watching the comraderie between those happy-go-lucky fools and I feel envious of it. I'd like to have a pack of dudes to hang out with, who totally accept me for who and what I am and who stand by me and support me in the things I want to do. That kind of male bonding seems to come a LOT easier for straight men than for gay men. I'm guessing it's because there is no sexual tension there. I do see stronger bonds within the drag communities and I think there was with the leather communities, though not so much now because someone turned the lights on with the SM scene and so now any old asshole can buy some chaps and a flogger and some restraints and call himself a Master and look for gullible people to tie up and abuse. I could write a whole other post on what I've discovered the leather scene used to be before my time, judging from testimonies of various leathermen I've spoken to.

And now that I'm writing all of this out, I realize that this is one of the reasons I need a strong spiritual foundation.

So here's how it goes:

My boss is a dude named Shawn and he's a very easy-going, 30-something, mohawked rocker who also co-owns a private janitorial service in addition to managing the j crew for the Paramount/Moore theaters. I like him a lot. He has a good heart, but he's also at a point in his life where he is really frustrated. Hates his family. Hates his job. Fights with his wife a lot. I understand she's a rigid, ballbusting bitch. He has to deal with the ugly comments coming from above about the lazy behaviors about the j crew, and the resentful remarks from the j crew about the snooty crowd above.

First there's Rick...I like Rick. He's a homey, I guess. Black or Mulatto or something. Hair always braided. Always talking or texting on his phone. Always juggling at least three women. Drives a really beautiful red cadillac. He's the kind of guy who sort of realized he could get away with more shit, and score more women, if he worked an image of "poor, misunderstood, happy-go-lucky teddybear" than a mean, bitter gangsta.

Then Justin. Now this one is a real piece of work. Justin is one of the people I've been studying regularly, in regards to 24 hour sarcasm. I mean, he's just really all about cutting people down. He's fully admitted it's his favorite style of humor. He likes it really dry, British style, when you don't make your point straight up, but use a colorful, subtle metaphor that really stings. Having trekked around Europe, and proud of his Belgian heritage, he basically hates the US and wants to identify with European culture and sensibilities...yet he dresses like a sloppy jock, and looks down on people who enjoy dressing with a bit of style. I think that's odd because I've always been told that Europeans are generally more tidy and stylish in their usual presentation and look down on Americans for wearing sweatpants in public, or other equally slovenly costumes.

Then there's Dembo. He's African and Muslim. He spends every break praying. He takes off his shoes, lays out a black trash bag to kneel on, and prays. Justin and I just had a senseless, semi-frustrating argument with Dembo today about how evolution has been scientifically proven by evidence of fossils and Dembo saying there is NO evidence and that there is plenty of evidence in the Quran of his creation stories. While I can understand that the Quran tells him that staring at naked women is BAD, he refuses to admit that a man could get any stimulation from it and even refuses to admit that women have different bodies. We get into these conversations and sort of wonder...why are we going there? He won't change his mind. But we go there anyway...cuz we're bored I guess.

And then Chan. Now Chan is fucking disgusting. He's this old Vietnamese dude probably in his 50's, with a face like a grinning gargoyle, the laziest of the bunch, and I've been warned to watch wandering around the Paramount, lest I accidentally discover Chan jacking off or picking at sores on his face. He also likes to go up on the roof and throw rocks at pigeons with the intention of killing them. He once tried to persaude Shawn to go cruising for underage hookers with him. He's admitted to Shawn to smoking crack occasionally. Eww! Eww! Eww! There's just so much there to not like. We all try to avoid Chan. Chan speaks very broken English and frequently plays selective understanding when he doesn't want to do what he's told...so we play selective understanding when he's saying anything else to us. And sometimes we really DON'T have a fucking clue what he's saying. Sometimes it just sounds like, "ABADOKANABBAKIKODANOBBA..." or some such shit.

Dembo also speaks broken English but he tries harder to communicate. He often repeats what we're saying, to make sure he understands.

Above Shawn is this disheveled potato of a man whom they refer to by his last name, D'Vic...I'm not sure if that's how you spell it. D'Vic has a scraggly blonde beard and unruly blonde hair...always looks like he went to bed in his clothes and just woke up and is hungover. Very unhappy, scowling man. Refers to his wife as "the Badger" and not as a joke. I guess he hates his life too and takes it out on everyone he works with, including Shawn, and that's what contributes to Shawn hating his life.

We got a new janitor named Mike and he's a little, round Mexican guy with a missing tooth and long black hair in a ponytail and has apparently been to prison a few times, since he tells stories about it. He seems to show up whenever he wants, which irritates Shawn, since lates and no-shows are his pet peeve...and right now, he can't afford to fire Mike, because Dembo and Justin are going on vacation next month and Rick is leaving the company for good in May. But when he is here, he does good work, and he's friendly and sincere enough and I like him.

So this is my crew. Gotta love em. Well...except for Chan. Eww. And Justin's constant sneering and vitriol gets on my nerves sometimes.

Things have been particularly ugly because D'Vic has been making remarks about firing Justin, Rick and Chan because they're so lazy, and then they get pissy, so Shawn held a meeting with D'Vic and his bosses and tried to lay out the situation for D'Vic to lay off...and it all backfired. Turns out that nearly everyone at the Paramount AND the Moore theaters thinks the j crew are a bunch of lollygagging bums. So Shawn recently had this meeting with us, wherein he told us we need to shape it up and stay busy and get more done. And naturally, everyone got all pissed off. So I got this grumbling, moody crew to work with.

What makes it hard is...these people are RIGHT. I don't dare say it but...Chan really DOES spend too much time smoking and Rick really DOES spend too much time talking and texting to his babes and Justin really DOES spend too much time watching The Daily Show on his laptop. They argue that D'Vic is always finding something wrong with everything so there's no point in trying to impress him. I sit and think, "Oh so keep being lazy so he'll surely get pissed off and fire you then. Niiiiiiice!" but I don't say it.

I have a weird relationship with these guys because I personally DO stay pretty busy. In fact, I'm probably the best person on Shawn's crew. I sort of play it both ways a bit. When Shawn's not around, they try to persuade me to fuck off when they're fucking off, and sometimes I do but not always. I can tell Shawn is really grateful for having me. I'm a steady, reliable employee. But I'm also aware that if I'm too good, then it makes them look bad and they will resent me and I could get a knife in my back when I least expect it.

Fortunately, this is just a part time job and I don't really plan on having it for very long. I wanna get some bills paid off and then start looking into something else, whether it's another job or maybe some schooling...not sure.

I'm not sure if what I'm going to write here is a confession or a declaration. A confession would seem to imply that I'm doing something wrong. A declaration implies that I'm really proud of it and want everyone to see. The truth is neither.

Basically, this is what I actually DO with my life, on a spiritual level. Some two to three times a week, I pray. And when I pray, I close the shades, turn off the TV or whatever music I'm playing, light the candle on my altar, sit quietly and focus on the flame, and then I begin with "Dear God..." and I talk. I talk about what I'm feeling and doing, or not doing. I ask for wisdom. Sometimes I fall into moments of silence before I talk again.

Anyone who comes to visit me will see a Catholic cross on my altar...right next to my wand and above the weekly three-card tarot reading. I found that cross on the sidewalk years ago. It's a real beauty. I like Catholic crosses more than Protestant ones because they're so much more ornate; they actually have the figure of Christ hanging on them.

It doesn't represent the same thing to me as it would most people. To me, it simply represents personal sacrifice, which is an important part of any real spirituality. Among Ghandi's Seven Deadly Sins is "Worship without sacrifice" and many people have the saying, "Faith without works is dead."

What I call "God" is probably most like what Thelemites typically refer to as the "Holy Guardian Angel". I call it God because it's the only word that really seems to put me in the proper space for prayer. I grew up in a Baptist environment and I never swallowed any of it. Eternal questions. Answers that simply circumvented. While my heart was never really in it, I officially gave up on Christianity when I was about 11. Unfortunately, while that took some pressure off, it never did solve a problem with depression...a very deep depression...I guess I might call it a "cosmic depression". That is to say, the notion of a purely random universe, that apparently began from a cipher and just unfolds and moves nowhere, depressed me to no end. And I couldn't possibly see how atheism could honestly and genuinely save itself from nihilism. But more than that...it just didn't seem true.

What I'm getting at is that I've always "felt" there was some sort of consciousness involved in the universe, a consciousness that exists beyond electro-chemical impulses in the brain and nervous systems of various organisms, and much of my Occult studies and experiments were an exploration of that conviction.

I don't believe the universe was created by "God". I don't believe in Intelligent Design. What I do believe in is what I can only describe as Conscious Evolution, and this meaning that just as physical organisms range from single celled amoeba that do nothing but consume and reproduce, to complex human life forms that build planes and perform open heart surgery and put satellites on Mars and paint vast murals on buildings, -so too does consciousness have layers of complexity and that consciousness molds the physical evolution of this planet, and perhaps others, and, likewise, as new "vessels" evolve, they provide a material foundation for consciousness itself to evolve to a more complex level. Most importantly, I don't really believe that our consciousness is locked inside our bodies, but moves somewhat freely and is anchored TO our bodies. I have no set belief on what happens after death.

The real miracle, for me, came forth from the prayer. I've mentioned before that I struggled with depression, rage and drug abuse for most of my adult life. I've tried to counteract that with Eastern methods of meditation. In particular, I've done a lot of mantra meditation and I've done some prana breathing sessions.

It is so profoundly ironic to me that, after all I've heard about prana breathing quieting emotions, and meditation stilling thoughts and bringing forth serenity, -NEITHER of those ever really did it for me. Prana breathing, particularly irritates me. I have consistently found that if I regulate my breathing that way, I either zone out, or, if I stay focused on the rhythm of the breathing itself, I become very impatient and irritated. I finally ruled prana breathing out. I do still perform mantra meditation.

But again, neither of these really accomplished what I wanted and needed. It wasn't until I started praying that depression and rage began to dissolve and I started experiencing clearer vision. I've been thinking a lot about why this is so...because OBVIOUSLY it runs counter to all that mighty wisdom of the Eastern mystics. The only thing I can come up with is that many smoldering emotions like rage are basically the energy rush produced by unresolved issues in the mind. Meditation doesn't resolve those issues. If anything, it was simply a mindtrick to suppress the energy releases for very brief periods of time.

Praying, on the other hand, was more like therapy. I put it out in front of me and in front of this thing I call "God", and I know that God is my friend, wants the best for me, and can see through all my bullshit, so there's no hope in justifying things or attempting to re-interpret scenarios make myself seem like a victim. God's presence sobers me up and makes me confess the dumb or selfish choices that got me into a certain situation in the first place. God also prevents me from going the other route and just beating the fuck out of myself over whatever I did.

Then I ask for answers. And I get them.

I've had to make a few very painful sacrifices and I'm glad I did because they actually contributed to the improvement of my life.

I do realize that perhaps this is a construct I've put into my own mindscape, to clear my thoughts, quiet my feelings and help me to make more sensible decisions about my life. Then again, perhaps I really am connecting to something greater than myself and that this entity is helping me along. This, I've come to understand, is the critical aspect of magick and mysticism: that whichever of these possibilities is the truth, the point is that it seems to work. Whether the human soul has interfaced with something supernatural and persuaded help from it, or whether the human mind has created an elaborate illusion to trick itself...if the results are favorable, then it has worked.

This is all VERY personal, and putting it on a public post on my blog is a challenge. But I'm doing it for a reason. For a few months now, I've been reluctant to admit that I actually pray to "God" to other people, and I've asked myself...why? One part of me says it's a matter of privacy. Some atheist or pagan doesn't need to know...particularly if that person is just going to sneer or argue with me. This is my life experience and it's not his or her little intellectual toy to pick apart and badger around.

But another part of me wonders if this is actually some kind of shame...after all, I only have ONE friend who is a Christian (that's my best friend, whom I trust more than anyone else on the planet) and he understands me completely and he also has a sense of spirituality being a personal and private thing. But all my other friends are either atheists or Wiccan or some sort of Thelemite mystic or just "generally spiritual"...and most of them despise Christianity and I have to wonder if they would look down on me because this is how my faith has manifested. I don't read the Bible. I don't believe in the Resurrection or Second Coming. I tend to think that wandering Jew did exist historically but he was just a human mystic, not some supernatural "Son of God". While I do feel that what I pray to is a larger thing of which I am just a smaller part, I am not certain whether it has any sort of concern for other people, other than my own concerns.

I also understand that it's not my place to try and persuade other people towards any kind of faith. My best friend doesn't talk about his spirituality at all unless someone specifically asks him, and even then, he gives very careful answers and gauges to see if someone is asking in earnest curiosity, or just wants to pick an argument. I like that attitude, although it's a little harder for me because...well basically, my life has changed so dramatically in the last six months that it's a strong temptation to want to talk about it with everyone, and I have to remember that some people don't want to talk about it, and some may even have a scornful or condescending reaction.

It's not likely that I will bring this aspect of my life up again here. I'm posting mainly to make sure, for myself, that this isn't a matter of me being ashamed or afraid of what my own friends will think. I want to tell myself that I'm confident that my true friends will respect that this is what I am, and that anyone who can't is not a true friend...but that's just so unsubstantial as long as it's floating only in my mind and people don't actually know. The written testament gives it grounding.

So I have been thinking a lot about the post I left on sarcasm, and paying attention to the kinds of things people say and how they say them.

And so I ask YOU, my dear readers, to give me your definition of sarcasm. Because I've seen people say different things and consider it to be sarcasm.

Take this for example:

Let's say you're online, talking in a chatroom with a bunch of people, some you know and some you don't, and you're feeling hungry and ready to get lunch, so you sign off by saying:

"Well folks, time for me to go smoke some crack and worship Satan"

Now, to ME, that isn't sarcasm. That's facetiousness...tongue-in-cheek. But I guess a lot of people would consider that sarcastic. To me, facetiousness is lighthearted and playful, whereas sarcasm is dry and sometimes insulting, like when I was working at the insurance company, under that nasty toad of a boss, and, after a particularly ugly day of being bitched out in front of other coworkers, I clocked out and said goodbye with "Hopefully I'll get to have some more fun with the boss tomorrow," to which a coworker said, "Yeah, he's a real barrel of laughs."

Also, I was under the impression that sarcasm and sardonicism were similar but different, with the emphasis that a sardonic remark was more self-deprecating, perhaps like Marvin the robot's comment in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Would you like me to go stand in the corner and rust, or should I just fall apart here?"

But now I got the American Heritage Dictionary in front of me and it defines "sarcasm" as:

A sharply mocking or contemptuously ironic remark intended to wound another.

"Sardonic" is defined as:

Scornfully mocking and derisive

So maybe I was wrong about those two words, but then, dictionaries don't always give the most complete or accurate definitions either. Here's how this same dictionary defines "existentialism":

A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.

I personally don't agree with all of that...particularly the part about a hostile or indifferent universe, and I'm not so sure I would use the word "isolation"...and for the part about responsibility for the consequences of one's acts, I would add "...and interpretations."

Anyway, judging by these definitions of sarcasm and sardonicism, is it any wonder that I'm not so fond of that method of humor? I'm more and more of the opinion that cutting other people down is just a dishonest way of praising oneself, and sarcasm, according to dictionary definition, just makes it even more dishonest.

So...thoughts? What does sarcasm actually mean to you and how do you use it?

So far, my painting and airbrushing have all been on paper, leather, velvet or some other fabric...usually scraps of stuff I have in my closet (although I bought the leather from a hide shop).

Now, like with that last piece that I posted...that was done on paper, and the background pink and magenta was in watercolor, while the airbrushing was done with acrylic and the "worms" were done with watercolor pencil. I don't like how watercolor causes the paper to warp, and sometimes I get little balls of paper pulp rolling around on the surface. and it's just been so annoying. So I've decided to take the next step and use what most serious artists use: canvas.

I bought three canvases today, of smaller, "manageable" sizes, and they're all triple primed. I'm glad of that. This is very exciting to me. I learned a bit about canvases today as I was shopping...about different qualities of canvas. The fellow in the shop said the more expensive canvases were a better grade for oil painting. I don't plan on getting into oils. Stinky and messy. And thicker canvas frames...I couldn't figure out why that was important. I was told it's only important if you want to hang a picture without an outside frame...just hang on it's own merit.

That's fine I suppose, but I'm of the school of thought that framing a picture finishes it and gives it presentation. I suppose that might depend a bit on what kind of picture it is, but for the most part, I think a picture without a frame is sort of like a window without a frame...or a woman going to a ball wearing a beautiful gown, but without accessories.

Likewise, I am wondering if, perhaps, there is also an attitude that a painting not done on canvas is also lacking something. Not presentation...but maybe substance and fortitude. I never really thought about that until today, when I went shopping for canvases but I have always assumed artists painted on canvases because canvas endures time and wear far longer than paper.

Anyway, whether there's any truth to my observations or not, I've got canvas now and I can't wait to use it!! YAY!

"People I know use sarcasm to hide around me. They've figured out that if they don't act completely sincere, I won't understand and will get upset."

"I used to think that not questioning what I thought before saying it made me honest.

-from My Loose Thread by Dennis Cooper

Sarcasm seems to be cherished by people who think they're so very, very intelligent, and who judge others by how intelligent they think other people are (note: we all have some very personalized standard in our heads of intelligence. How often do we stop to examine that standard and compare it to the standards of other people?)

What I'm trying to figure out is whether people with this high value on intelligence, and who think they, themselves are so particularly intelligent, are totally unaware that sarcasm is, more often than not, insincere and passive-aggressive, -or if they imagine, on some level, that when you're as intelligent as they are, you are part of an elite for which sincerity is already assumed and no longer necessary to actually express.

There is a reason I am thinking about this. I have been observing that, while everyone uses sarcasm from time to time, to express a point, it seems to be used with greater frequency and intensity by people who think they're really smart.

Notice, I'm not saying it's used with greater frequency by people who are really smart...just people who they think they are. So the degree and intensity of sarcasm used by an individual seems to reflect, in some manner, how big that person's ego is. It's like sarcasm is showing off how clever he thinks he is.

Of course, there's an interesting danger to this. Nobody knows everything about everything, so guess how stupid you look when you are corrected on a subject for which you reckon you know a lot about, respond with a sarcastic remark, and then discover later on that the person who corrected you was RIGHT!

There's also the greater danger of disrespecting someone and that's an important danger when the person you're making all those little snide remarks to is someone you call a friend. That's when overuse of sarcasm becomes passive-aggressive and introduces an unnecessary power struggle into the conversation.

But people who use sarcasm a lot don't seem to notice this much. So that's why I wonder whether these kinds of people have any awareness at all of their insincerity, or if they are aware, but have decided on some level that they're above it all.

Today was a difficult day.

I was confronted in full force with one of my most passionate prejudices: upper middle class white women between the ages of 25-55. I tend to call them Nordstrom Bitches and I hate their fucking prissy little guts.

This little piece of resentment first started germinating in my soul back around 1999, when I had a job at Value Village, and I got to witness a great deal of shitty behavior (sometimes quite literally...the crack addict who took a shit in the dressing room, used merchandise to wipe herself with, and then left, for instance).

Seems like people of all genders, races and ages go shopping at thrift stores, but only white people look down on the practice. So it should come as no surprise that the folk I came to hate most often when working there, were those uppity blonde bitches who came sailing in wearing the usual black and beige costumes with some huge cashmere coat and little black leather gloves and a big Nordstrom bag in tow. They just happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to slum it up a bit for amusement, I guess. And they would shop around and toss their hair at everyone and say things like, "Oh, isn't that just darling?" or "OMG! How tacky!"

They would take a cart and go into the Ladies section and pile up all these dresses and tops and blouses and whatnot (they didn't buy much in the way of shoes there), and then go to the dressing room and just camp out for an hour or two, buy maybe one thing...or nothing at all...and leave a great big mess in the dressing room, this big heap of clothes and hangers all tangled together. Nevermind the signs on the doors that say "6 items or less"...just drape a bunch of dresses over it and pretend you didn't see it.

So I've hated these horrible women ever since. And it is, almost precisely that range between 25 and 55, since, any younger, they seem to understand that they look like sorority girls just biding time between keg party gangbangs, -and any older they realize that they're not sexually desireable anymore and so people aren't willing to put up with their bullshit anymore. And menopause has set in. So they mellow out. But it's that age range between...that Ann Coulter range...that debutante range. I just cannot tell you HOW MUCH I completely DESPISE this particular demograph of people.

I don't mind men in this class so much. I don't mind black or latino or asian women of this class so much. I don't mind white women in this age range but in the lower classes so much. But it's those three things together that spell out the recipe of true evil in the universe in such a consistent form.

So...I get Sundays and Mondays off, and this is Tuesday, so it's my first day of work for the week and I am faced with a Nordstrom fashion show scheduled to commence at 10am. It's only 8am and I haven't had my coffee yet, and already these creatures are running around, infesting the theater. Normally, in situations like this, the janitorial crew goes off to hang out at the Moore Theater, stay out of the way, leaving one person behind to work showcall. My boss decided that person would be ME.

So I spent nearly all day surrounded by these...these...women things. Giving each other their A frame hugs, smiling phoney smiles, saying "Oh you look gorrrrrrgeous!" to each others' faces and then whispering ugly remarks about each other behind their backs, "Well I guess those shoes would be more comfortable but really, this is a fashion show and they DON'T go with that outfit!"..."She is way too old to be wearing a skirt that high. It just doesn't work for her. My God, I can't believe she's not embarrassed!"

And there I was. I thought about that old law of attraction, that the things that freak us out come back to haunt us until we deal with them. I begin to think many things...

-I think about Joel's post a year or two ago, about "identity foreclosure".

-I think about how judgmental they are and how judgmental I am. Ouch.

-I think about Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" and now being spanked by fellow conservatives for it. I think about how she is burning the candle at both ends, that she must be very frigid and terrified of sex and even real love. After all, she's a very attractive woman, now pushing 50, single, popular enough to NOT be single, and making a a lucrative career off of maliciously slandering people. Woman's got some problems!! It'll hit her in the ass when she's no longer attractive enough to make conservative men woof.

-I think about how nasty Coulter is and how nasty I am thinking about these women. Ah mirrors. How we look at others is how we look at ourselves.

-I realize I too am a snob in certain ways. And who am I to think they are all so shallow? How easy it is to look at a crowd of similar looking people and start going "Mooooo!" Am I so much more deep and interesting because I can stand in their midst and dismiss every last one of them as a bunch of dizzy bitches? There just MIGHT be a few who worked very hard and went through many struggles and earned their places in life and have something of substance to offer.

-My inner brat suddenly clears out the moral evaluating and demands I entertain myself with images of hunting these useless bimbos through a forest with a shotgun, watching them try to run in their heels and then blasting them to bits, hanging their heads on my wall.

-I try to imagine what Ann Coulter will look like when she's 80.

-I hear certain comments and remarks and I site the offending "lady" and decide that, whatever mass stereotyping I'm doing in my head, it certainly is okay to look down on THAT bitch. Cuz she's stupid. Just look at her. Listen to what's coming out of her mouth! God, woman shut up! I'm trying not to judge you and you're just inflaming the itch.

-I think about how nice it would be to be able to afford shopping at Nordstrom...going through Nordstrom and loudly saying, "My God this is the ugliest crap I've ever seen on a hanger! People pay money for this? People pay...THAT MUCH for this?"

-I realize I am NOT that rich. Ouch.

-I realize that the reality is, whatever excuses I come up with...the fact of the matter is that these women have a lot of money and look good and are having fun, and I'm not anywhere near that wealthy, I will be cleaning the toilets they shit into, and I'd like to be having fun like they are. OUCH!!

-I finally just go outside and watch the construction work going on outside the theater and appreciate the fact that the dainty little things have to cross over all this crunched up sidewalk and asphalt and be stared at by a bunch of dirty, raggedy looking men in dayglo orange and yellow outfits with hardhats.

-I don't like hating masses of people based on superficial judgments, but is it possible that my prejudice is right on the mark? Am I being too hard on myself? After all, it's not like I'm spitting in their faces or kicking them in the shins. I'm just standing here quietly simmering in spite. Keeping it to myself, like a good boy. Should I let myself go on this one?

-I give up. It's no use. I'm just this judgmental asshole and I think these women are revolting. Period. At least I'm owning up to it. I tell myself I'll write a confession on LJ for all to see. That could be a bit theraputic. If the forces of the universe want to force me to deal with this ugly part of my personality...fine. This will not be a moral tour de force. I will not emerge as a hero. Yeah, my shit stinks too. Yeah, maybe I have some ugly things in common with the Nordstrom Bitches. Fine. I accept it.

-I take some small, twisted comfort in knowing that I do select certain demographs for my loathing...that I'm NOT "an equal opportunity hater"...cuz that's such a cliche cop out thing for white people to do.

So there you have it. My difficult day. From a physical standpoint, it was an easy day. I just stood around all day. But I stood around with a storm in my head. I'm not sure if I resolved anything.

0=2

This is the equation posed by the late Aliester Crowley, as a way of explaining the origin of the universe. It is essentially, a mathematical riddle of sorts.

It's been years since I've thought about this equation, so I'm posting this partially to dig it's meaning out of the dusty archives of my brain and see if I still understand it well enough to teach it (WITHOUT simply quoting Crowley).

Two observations help the understanding of this riddle:

-the mathematical principle that a double negative equals a positive

-the understanding that nothing, as conceived in the mind, is still a thing, so there is no such thing as nothing.

It might also be better to simply use the word "existence" rather than "the universe", since "universe" is just a word we use to account for the sum total of all existence. And the question is, from where did all this come?

The answer, as I understand from the 0=2 equation, is that all things simply come from other things. Matter, energy...doesn't make any difference. Scientists want to babble about the Big Bang, but in order for there to be an explosion of matter, there had to be matter there to begin with. The Big Bang theory only explains how the universe as we know it came into being. And if the universe is simply the sum total of all existence...including the processes themselves...then the Big Bang only describes a transformation of existence, a transformation that arbitrarily marks a "beginning", just as arbitrary as starting a calendar from an A.D. point, which I think stands for "Annuo Domina" (year of the Lord), and not "after death".

...which brings us to the Christian explanation...that a God created existence. Well, God is also a thing so that doesn't really answer the question at all. If we ask who or what created God, and are told that God has always existed, well then, we haven't solved the problem of how existence came into being.

On a side note, Crowley made an amusing remark that the God Christians speak of possesses three remarkable qualities: omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence...yet such a being has no purpose.

The Hindus had a similar method of transferring the question of eternal existence by suggesting the world sits on the back of a turtle, which then sits on an elephant, which then sits on some other animal, and so on and so forth.

Qabala shows that the first sephirah, called Keter, represents existence itself...pure existence. We do not get into comparisons of matter vs. energy vs. consciousness until later on down the Tree. But beyond Keter are the "three veils of negative existence"...which basically means the traditional concept of nothing, as the mind conceives it, then the infinite thought digression that occurs as the mind attempts to understand that nothing is still something, and that there is no such thing as nothing, and finally, well, the third veil itself is just a symbol for what lies beyond all the symbols...something the mind cannot fathom...which, technically, is nothing at all.

Get it?

Okay, so how does the 2 come in? Well, 0=2 basically means nihilism = dualism. Hindu animals standing on each others' backs and a triple omni God with no purpose and Big Bangs of hydrogen are merely examples of how we divide all of existence into different catagories, and it's purely abstract. You have the beef, and that which is not beef. The hydrogen and that which is not hydrogen. Attempting to divide the sum total of all existence in this manner leaves us with nothing.

So it's a clever way of describing how all of existence has never sprouted out of anything at all. Existence simply is. Always has been. Always will be. It came from nothing. But nothing is still something so there is no such nothing.

0=2

Now the REAL question for me is whether I understand the equation as well as I think I do, and whether I explained it well enough for the rest o y'all to get it.