Category Archives: Links

Meaning and Purpose

Meat Suit

Meat Suit

The meaning: I am a biological entity that’s a natural bi-product of the world and universe in which I exist. We humans literally are “a way for the cosmos to know itself.” The meaning of my life is to experience the ability to perceive and the interaction with that perception’s ramifications, also known as experience. My meaning is the experience of this limited life that I get to live. I get to think and live, the meaning is the experience.

The purpose: “The purpose of life is a life with a purpose.” A fundamental question must be asked by those seeking purpose, “What is important?” Your family, your community, your planet? Pursue purpose purposefully, enjoy happiness when it is found in the oddest of places but pursue purpose fully. Open you eyes and see, open your mind and see further.

There are no gods, no kings, no masters in choosing what you do, just influences by other humans and interaction with human systems or human interaction with natural systems. We are cogs of change, for good and for evil, we are pieces of bigger systems likes individuals in a family or a group in a polity or a nation in a geopolitical system (or an individual in a world system). We are each others destinies but we are distracted and blinded by control and influence mechanisms, like entertainment or archaic ideas of control. We live in a world built on thousands of years of grinding and constant societal change and evolution, most of us blindly moving through life without much context of our civilization’s experience and the way in which it’s past affects us.

We stand on the precipice of the future unfolding. Those that live are at the crest of a continually crashing wave of time. Our time is unfolding before our eyes and it’s us that wield this thing, this destiny of us together. The future of human life use to be controlled by others, thought by many that some better version of humanity was steering and guiding us and leading the rest of us like some controlling architect of an unknowable universe guiding our species into the future. But those days are dead, exposed to reality, the ideas of a day far gone.

We, alone in our environment (local, planetary, cosmologically) guide the sway of destiny with billions of others together, we are living in a revelation, the fruit of knowledge that whispers to us that we are the captains of our life the masters of our ships of destiny. The fruit of the tree of knowledge has been bitten long ago and our eyes slowly throughout time opened to a reality that has been unfolding. We are small, incomprehensibly so but we are free within our biological and technological limitations, we are free much like the cap of the pyramid is free of its base. Our foundations, our yesterdays guide us (sorry I started typing, but this feels like a different argument and different tangent).

If we are free to create our futures, what do you wish to create? What world would you help to build?

If we are constrained by our history what should we be seeking to subvert? If we are products of our birth what should we see in ourselves that our patriarchs are unable to tell us? If we are born of nation-states then what portions of our own history are being obfuscated? Where do I exist within the current system? Can I move out of the current paradigm? These have been (are) a few of my questions, good luck in finding yours. Always remember answers are speed bumps to more honed questions.

 

Bad Dancing

I realized that I learned how to dance (or was influenced) from watching the rhythmic flowing moves of the Spartan Cheerleaders on Saturday Night Live.

My wife and I were hanging out on the couch channel surfing and enjoying the day off together. After a while we came across a channel playing old Saturday Night Live episodes. This minor moment, sitting in front of the TV, finger mindlessly and repetitiously smashing a button on a remote, changed my perspective on understanding the small influences that play into people’s lives.

Cheerleading for a chess tournament is a great set up for a joke but nothing more not something that influences people’s entire lives. We were watching these two characters on our little TV screen and I noticed a look creep across her face, at first I thought she was confused by the SNL skit, but as I watched her watch the Spartan Cheerleaders dance for a little while she started to say things like “hey you do that!” and “Oh God! Did you learn to dance by watching this!?” I then understood the look wasn’t confusion but recognition.

I chuckled and thought she was making a bad joke, I focused on our TV set and the longer I watched Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri dance their moves I recognized more moves from my own bad-ass repertoire. I realized in that moment I was not in fact a good dancer, just a confident dancer and I confidently moved like Saturday Night Live’s Spartan Cheerleaders.

I can now, looking back, only think about how Luke Skywalker felt, dangling, hand chopped off telling his evil and its maligned realization, “NO… No, it can’t be true!”

It was a moment of stark and immediate transition from judging the actors on the screen for being goofy dancers to ‘my god I am a goofier dancer and I learned from them’. After considering this life altering event I have reassessed and I’ve now determined not I nor the Spartan Cheerleaders are bad dancers, we just do like we do.

I’ve never been a great dancer. There are many times in my life I can look back to with fond reminiscences of moments I spent dancing. Skanking the night away at ska shows or dancing and slamming into others in the pit at punk shows. At prom, where I had more than one fine lady dancing around me, causing my teenage raddled brain to think that there was not a person that graced this green earth that pimped harder than I pimped at that moment.

I’ve done the robot everywhere my boots have led me, from the top of Rocky Mountain peaks to the ancient land of Afghanistan, from my mom’s Baptist church to that Taco Cabana I went to that one time. My twenty-first birthday celebration was a celebration for everyone in that upstate New York dance club when I fused Merengue, Booty Shake, the robot, and the sprinkler all into a terrible concoction that never should’ve been released onto this plane of existence. Ladies were throwing themselves at me and it was very nice of them to do so.

I do the tootsie roll without remorse, I shake my ass without course. I dance when I wanna, when the heart yearns for it, when acting the fool is my destiny. I don’t know if it was Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri, curse or blessing, or just a nudge in the right direction. A nudge that told a younger me that if I was dancing to not give one single fuck, not even if I’m a distraction my own team because… damnit I am dancing and you can excuse yourself from my awesome if you can’t handle it. To all the goofy or bad dancers, grab yourself some courage whether in giving it all away in the spontaneous awakening of your consciousness when you step on the floor or a beer or some shots, and get on the dance floor and join me in shakin’ that ass.

Like the lady said in some variation, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.”

So get out there and dance motherfucker, dance.

Black Sites and GITMO

Picture from Wikipedia

Picture from Wikipedia

I’ve been going through articles on the UC Davis Guantanamo Testimonials Project and reading about what GITMO detainees went through. It is a project dedicated to collecting the testimonies of those who have been involved with dentition at Guantanamo Bay in their own words. I’m trying to learn about something that terrifies me, I want to stop reading the articles but I feel drawn into the testimonies of prisoners and jailers alike and I want to bear witness to the history they have to tell.

One of the testimonies was about an innocent man – there are a lot about innocent people, just look at the list of names of the detained and see how many have been released – but this guy was snatched up and tortured for eight fucking years. Eight years of his life were taken away, by a government of separate sovereignty than his own and sent to a faraway land (if this happened to US citizens on the regular we’d be at war or we’d at least send in Bill Clinton). This guy is a Kuwaiti and elements of the US government hears about him and somehow suspects him of terrorism, snatches him off the street, throws him in jail, and then sends him to Guantanamo Bay Cuba to be tortured for 8 years of his life.

Shit’s brutal.

A court heard his case in the US and the judge said that there wasn’t enough evidence to have him locked up in the first place, much less put him into the most notorious High Value Target (HVT) detention facilities ran by the most powerful empire (or Super Power what ever language you prefer) in the world to be tortured and detained for almost a decade. It’s scary to think about how much power over the lives of others some people have. And there are tons of article similar to this one about lots of different people on the site, not just detainees but soldiers and civilian alike all confirming what went on, what goes on there.

This terrifies me and it’s not just the idea of being locked up and tortured for being nothing more than, in a lot of cases of the detainees, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s the understanding that there’s an entity in the world that claims to represent my interests that’s powerful enough to put people from all over the world anywhere they want and treat them with torture to gain information. GITMO isn’t a just a jail it’s a processing center. It’s a place where you go if the US really suspects you of terrorism. It is a processing center that controls your life until it determines whether or not it’s through with you. The places you go if the US really really thinks your guilty – guilt determined by means that don’t work (aka torture) – are called black sites, black because they’ll be redacted with black ink as soon as the printer ink dries. These are dark holes officials in the US government throw people to be tortured away from the peering eyes of its own citizenry and the world. All without a hearing, all based on the principle of guilty until proven innocent veiled in obscure readings of the law, it freaks me out.

I’m so thankful I am not any of these people, the guards, the interrogators, but especially the ‘detainees’. We should call them what they really are, victims of a powerful faceless system that represents a small segment of the human population and it has the power to determine who is an enemy by a secret and ever changing set of criteria with ‘no meaningful insight’.

These are the stories I’m really afraid of. When I got home from Afghanistan I remember telling my mom, “When I was younger, I remember being scared of ghosts and demons, now that I’m home I know there are scarier things that go bump in the night, like a human being with an RPG.” Yeah and big-damn governments that could chose to call you an enemy because you aren’t the way it thinks you should be.

Just a side note, here is a video of Christopher Hitchens agreeing to be water boarded. Very informative for those who have never seen what water boarding is really like.

I Ain’t Cryin, I Got Allergies is All

So I just got home from school, the drive took me a lot longer than usual. About half-way home I got hit with a blast from the past, a good fucking dose of mental images popped into my head while I was driving, of some of my past experiences. The images were so intense and they were in concert with a really bad migraine that was making itself known. The pain was telling me, “You better look at these images and feel this pain. You look and feel until you cry.” My eyes started to well up. I had to pull in a parking lot and get my shit together before getting back on the road.

Now I am welling up again. I feel the pain creeping back into my skull, the only thing holding its full force back is the sound of my fingers tapping the keys in front of me. It has been fucking years, I can tell I’m not done with the specters of the past, maybe I’ll never be done. I want to close my eyes and take a nap, but I know what waits for me on the other side of those fucking eye lids.

 

I listen to chill music when my mind overflows and work through the thoughts that barrage my mentality.

This time its: Tycho – A Walk

What do you do when you get flushed in emotions and have to get your head right?

Ixchel and Cruise Ships

Fading Hand Prints

My wife and I got back from our first cruise awhile back. We were on the boat for four days, it was a neat experience but the best part of the trip was when we went and saw the ruins of a Mayan holy site on the island of Cozumel. We could see the ancient fading paint still adorning the wall in the building behind the high priests sarcophagus. My wife said, “Do you see the hand prints?” I did, the color was a reddish brown and around it were blotches of reds, browns, yellows, and blues. The guide said it was the remnants of a mural of the goddess of fertility Ixchel, he then pulled from his pocket a handkerchief sized weaving of her representation and told us that’s what was on that wall.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

We continued the tour and we were shown the ancient, now nearly rubble, road that lead from the coast miles away to this temple complex. People would use that road while making pilgrimage to the site . We could see the stone road into the distance, people had cleared the surrounding jungle from around the site and the road. The road was torn up, as you can imagine it would be after centuries of non-use, except where the entrance to the complex over the road still stands, there the road was in nearly perfect condition.

Seeing the paint and the hand print on the wall, the road where untold numbers treaded, to pay homage to a god, and to seek her blessing; these thoughts entranced me, entrance me still. The tour guide said that they who came to seek the blessing of Ixchel must be put to the test “as the people in the military are put to the test to prove themselves.” I wish I had noted what the tests were but thinking about it I remember think they sounded grueling and simulating death. The whole experience was amazing.

The cruise ship reminded me of the Tropicana Casino in Vegas. Not the nicest of joints and getting a little older, but there to get the party done. Just don’t look to closely at the grime and you will have a fine time. That should be Carnival Cruise Line’s advertisement.

Here’s something I wrote on the boat:

 

Cruise Prose – from ‘Malakoff Notebook #3’

I’ve feared the sea,

I still do but now I call

the fear respect.

The massive majesty

 

of expansive viscous

motion beacons me to

consider the souls

that’ve crashed its currents.

 

Looking into the depths

is remembering the insignificance

of one life as an itty-bitty drop

in the wider sea of humanity.

 

The fluidity of the currents

tosses my mind to places

of the sea’s desire, I am a slave

to the pull of its graces.

 

For the first time in my life I can’t see land.

Historic Time and the Process of Change

American

Meditation: from the Online Etymology Dictionary –

c.1200, “contemplation; devout preoccupation; devotions, prayer,” from Old French meditacion “thought, reflection, study,” and directly from Latin meditationem (nominative meditatio) “a thinking over, meditation,”

 

I feel caught up in ever shifting tides, like I’m caught in currents of history long processes of transforming  thoughts and the shifting of cultural beliefs. I close my eyes and I can see the changing of the guard, the old world and its philosophies digested or discarded or incorporated and always influenced and influencing as the new-bloods shove their way to the forefront of the current. Countries, kingdoms, and old nation-states clamoring to be king of an imaginary hill, to gain a bigger piece of a nonexistent pie as old empires and their old colonies fracture and themselves transform into the next phase of their existence.

Sometimes it feels like I can do my part by dragging myself along for the ride and do my best to be a good example. If you want justice from the world be just, if you want wisdom seek wisdom, if peace is what you want then be peaceful. Learn patience and strive to be.

My dreams scream to me to leave my shattered banners behind, the symbols of old regimes belong in the museum not on the march to my grave, it’s the ideas of revolution that matter to me. Equality, Liberty, Solidarity. Discard whatever rules you and rule yourself, break the power of the belief in symbols and seek meaning. My soul whispers, ‘set the terms of your own sovereignty, no one knows better than you how to be you.’ So I try to rise up and be the best that I can be in any given moment at any given task. Every day I wage a revolt against myself, some days I win some days I loose, but it feels I’m in a constant state of transformation.

You can’t expect someone else to change your world for you. Like the cat said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

 

Listing to Tupac – So Many Tears  (read the lyrics if you haven’t already)

Choke Points and Chessboards

So I asked, “Why has the US occupied Afghanistan for so long?”, other than the emotional reasons that are spewed at us on a regular basis. What is really at stake for the US and allies in occupying Afghanistan and what is there to gain for those that push the chess pieces of civilizations? A sketch of the geo-political situation began to draw out in my mind after reading a lot on the subject (histories of the region, discussions on US grand strategy, learning about political alliances, and foreign investment) studying maps (historical and modern political maps of the world and region, resource maps, and topographical maps), taking classes, and having a vested interest, that the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq was way bigger than a “war against terrorism” or a “war for oil.” It looks like it is a war for ‘regional stability’ (a term that seems to mean ‘within the United States or NATOs sphere of influence’). Regional stability = weapons contracts, land-grants, constitutional or dictatorial influence, and priority of business contracts to those companies that have been chosen by the ruling class to manage and exploit the resources within their grasp.

The US is conducting ‘secret wars’ all across the globe. In Africa SOCOM (Special Operations Command) is operating at high capacity to maintain or strengthen region stability (governments and militaries under the sphere of the US). In Yemen (i.e. global choke point “Bab-el-Mandeb”) the US is launching drone strikes from Djibouti to combat ‘terrorists.’

These terrorists are people fighting against the current government of Yemen which is influenced by “western” capital and investment. In Afghanistan and Iraq the sitting governments were toppled and new ones were put into their place. Now its further collapsing and ‘Balkanizing’. Look at a map and you can see that it is not only the resources of those countries that are important but their strategic location. Iraq at the head of the Persian Gulf and sharing the southern border of Iran. A major buffer state to Israel, the Saud regime, major deployment bases in Turkey, and the entire Persian Gulf has been a traditional mercantile ‘choke point’ since the incursion of the Portuguese monopolistic merchants in the 15th century. Afghanistan shares the Eastern boarder of Iran, shares a boarder with the former countries of the former USSR (and haven’t chosen a side in the unspoken undeclared Cold War simmering), It also shares a small boarder with China (potential future contender and current whispered rival) and Pakistan, which sits on the northern border of one of closest allies in the region, India.

All of these wars have been ascribed the same name “Global War on Terror” and assigned the same enemy “Al-Qaeda” (and a laundry list of affiliates) but these are only a few of the conflicts that are taking place now where the US is playing a major role (in personnel, equipment, economy) and has chosen to back some people against other people. This is always a dangerous game because many of the issues of the old wars, the wars of global dominance, have not been resolved, and many other strong powers have their fingers in some of the same pies as the US does but with similar intentions as the US.

What do you think?

 

Link to Tom O’brien’s Pirate and Smugglers History class lectures

 

 

Like the Solar System Burning Through

Sol's travels

 

This is a picture that represents what some think it’s like for our solar system as it moves through the galaxy beyond. It immediately reminds me of the visual representations of the magnetosphere that protects Earth.

 

I am inspired by this image. It reminds me of individual human beings moving through time. The central sphere that cocoons Sol and its satellites is the present, the moment, the everyday, the now. The tail of space that flows behind is our individual perspectives of our own history and the knowledge that interacts with our day to day, it is yesterday and every day before, never to be traveled through again, it represents to me, the only real understanding that any of us has at any given time. It wraps forward just a little bit, nudging us into the directions we think we should travel. The pink bit, scientists have coined the heliosheath, reminds me of the soon to be the interaction of this moment with the next, it’s bubbly and chaotic for it’s in that space that we finalize our decisions, or other peoples decisions interact with us. It is the unseen, the unknowable, the moment of indecision put to decision and letting the cards fall as they will. The orange is the future, it hasn’t yet touched us, but we are aware of it barreling toward us.

 

The pink bit is my favorite part, it is the interaction of past, present, and future forming the people we are and will become. The unknown future and our relationship to it seems to be chaos.

 

If the future is unknowable all we can do is plan for what we think is coming.

 

So it seems we are all individuals making decisions based on factors, not of control more of recommendation. Law, experience, fancy ideals such as Honor or Integrity and our interaction with one another (and tons of other factors) help to guide us to the next moment of our lives. I fucking love it.

 

Big conspiracies, like the New World Order or the Illuminati, use to freak me out and I would spend hours, days, researching connections and reading articles and comments on the internet. But I have found that nobody really knows what is going on, nobody can assuredly tell anyone what is going to happen in the future. Because we are all flung through time and space and god only knows what’s next. Sure you can plan for a world or a species unchanged, but it is those changes that stump everyone. That’s the thing about this space-time continuum, the mother fucker is always changing, everything. is . changing. Who, a hundred years ago, could have called the world in which we currently reside, with all of the new technology, philosophy, understandings of the universe, and understandings of how we as a species operate? Good luck planning for a world-wide dictatorship when the most technologically advanced people in human history still can’t get their collective heads around such simple concepts such as equality, justice, and reason.

 

In my mind, the future of our species doesn’t belong to groups of people or governments or conspiracies, it belongs to me and you and how we determine how to live in the next five fucking minutes. We are not alive for anyone else; we are alive to experience the universe through our own eyes. So open them every once in awhile, there’s a lot of shit going on.

Soar, Soul

Thinking about the rises and falls on the line graph that is an individual life.

Like Big Krit says, “Life ain’t nothing but an eq of highs and lows.”

Soar, Soul

We have to allow our spirits to fly as they will.

They might reach great heights, maybe even

that of Icarus’ reckon, perhaps further still.

Maybe even our egos can’t contain it

as there’s so much space for our spirits to soar.

Sometimes though, we do contain’em in

manageable cells, just put ‘em in little

menageries to show all of our guests,

“My what a pretty spirit you have there.”

Toss it in a cage and watch it die.

Sometimes we just forget, or break, and no longer

Remember how to allow a spirit to fly outside the cage

of our perception. Sometimes when we do let it out

it soars for a while and comes crashing back down,

not looking up anymore, just down

into the depths of things.

Hope stays my soul

that we learn to soar again,

sometime before we die.

Big Krit’s art is his music and he dishes it for free.

Also: Listening to Aphex Twin – Avril 14th