Back in late 2000, there were only a few hundred of us here.  Things were different then.  Quite amazing, really.  Like a small town, you could get a grip on everything happening.  And your voice rang vital because, like a pebble tossed into a small pond, the ripple reached, raced everywhere.

Things, of course, will never be as such again.  Long before Xanga dwindles back to the comfiness of "just thousands", the huge sums of money currently expended on a monthly basis to purchase bandwidth and maintain infrastucture will dictate a shutdown.  With an operation now as big as Xanga is, certain costs are fixed and can't be scaled back even if participation drops.  So at some some threshold of falling participation, it becomes time to flip the switch.

Makes you wonder...

Of course.  Kids, kid-bloggers, returning to school will "save" Xanga again.  Won't they?

haha, right now at 9 in the morning, Xanga's a bit quiet: only 600 peeps updating per minute.

The clouds intervene.

Sun is obscured.

Desire takes hold, but she’s not here.

I have another beer.

Imagine being a house painter of a distant age, several hundreds of years ago. And having someone with a psychic bent now run around your graveyard.  That someone sniffing the very few residual molecules of your trailing paint, getting dizzy-high, realizing  that you were once a house painter.

 

How many extant chips of the fine paint you once lavished both interior and exterior decors with yet adhere to surfaces?

 

The running psychic imagines a few chips here and there.  Peeling.  Scattered.  Gone.

 

Might it have been better to be a pyramid builder?  So that at least some appreciable remnant would yet remain?

 

Or an artist?  So that your work would have a better chance to fare longer in a museum or some appreciating collector’s home?

 

Most of your brushes never survived you.  You never survived some of your work.  All is no match for time.

 

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…

 

+++

 

“The early bird catches the worm.”

 

Yes, but the earlier worm avoids the bird.

 

+++

 

yesterday (5 miles), and the day before (5 miles), and the day before that (5 miles)…

 

(the runner runs, the psychic punks along.)

 

Ask you what you may.  Where to?  Whence from? 

 

Enjoy the exchange on the multi-direction, omni-dimensional cosmic shuttle.

 

+++

 

But I thought I heard the painter remark just now:  “What a fox!   I’d fuck her.”

 

Really?  Is that possible?  Do you see what I see?  (shall see, just saw?)

 

 

Dreamland...

                                                                  ...dreamer.

I’m seem to have misplaced my data cable for wireless at-large in-the-field access to the Internet.  So though in Dreamland (aka LakeView Cemetery), I’ll post later rather than immediately after writing as I usually do.

 

It’s been a long, hard-driving week.  I was supposed to be in California for work-related training all week, but my third scheduled training class this year just fell through.  Seems like “Java Security” is not popular enough anywhere to warrant teaching.  Here’s the typical scenario: The classes are offered.  I sign up.  I end up being the only one who signs up.  So the class gets cancelled. 

 

Oh look!  The dragonflies (unchanged since the Cenozoic) are being promiscuous upon the hillside in the early evening sunlight once again.  Along with the bird-dinosaurs naughtily flitting to and fro, it’s quite the Jurassic Park mood-scene I’m here experiencing now.   Oh, where’s the cavewoman that I will to appear and club me over the head and then drag me of by the hair to her lair for an irresistibly primal affair? 

 

Wait.  I forget.  I’ve no grabbable hair. 

 

Okay, she can drag me off by something else then.  And see if I care.

 

*looks up at the previous three paragraphs*

 

What kind of libidinal outburst was that? 

 

I”ll tell you what kind.  One that’s thoroughly confounded by the present and so breaches time.  Backwards.  But forwards, too.  Ah, forwards….

 

Death by impetuous kisses overflowing the buffer of my time-probing impulsive masculinity.

 

update: Back home under cover of night.  I just ate some Ramen chicken (dinosaur) noodle soup and feel much more enlightened now.

After having run through a barrage of days of 90-degree tropical humidity-type weather, it was finally just a pleasure today to run in 85-degrees and 20% humidity.  So much so that I tacked on a couple of extra miles and stretched it out to 7.  heh, on my last lap I caught up with a couple of young girls who were running ahead of me.  When I run, I can be such a simple guy that I found it a genuine thrill just to say “hi” to them and then go on paving my own solitary way.

 

Now (right now) I rest after the run.  It’s just a perfect summer day as I watch three dragonflies skirmish-play above the hills of Dreamland.

 

In the distance, there’s what I assume is an ice cream truck playing the theme from “The Sting”.  The music is just about as loud as the birds in the trees nearby and wafts in and out with the breeze.

 

Oh, now the ice cream truck has been drowned-out by the bellowing rumble of a train passing about a mile away.  Oh well, I didn’t want any ice cream anyway.

 

*sips on beer*

 

You know, as I just closed my eyes here in Dreamland and “looked” towards the Sun, I lost track of both locality and temporality.  Yaqui sorcerers  used to call such “a shift in the assemblage point of perception.”  I call it sailing through the heliosphere by letting the solar wind inflate one's sail.  Or getting lost in the vast incandescing Ocean of Incalescence. 

 

That's my story:  Always lost.  And on the run.

I realize that about 97% of you end up here “accidentally.”

 

(That's absolutely true.  And I've written and maintain my own "tracker" to compile such statistics.)

 

Yet it really is no accident.  Doom is a loose motherfucker who has your number.

 

But lest that sound harsh, I’d like to take a moment to apologize for the imposition that is this blog.

 

Of course, if you didn’t land here after executing some inane script, you’d probably end up on top of a fly who’s atop a pile of shit.

 

So, really, you should thank me for the oasis that I maintain for your transient benefit.

 

There. Thanks for bearing with me.  Now back to my regularly scheduled outbursts of genius.

 

Since Earth decided over the past several days to let it rain significantly where I reside for the first time in what I’d guess to be a month…

 

I’ve run in a thunderstorm.

I’ve played in a puddle.

I’ve taken again to watching plant life (wild flower-weeds) crazy abloom with their mysterious irrepressible strangeness.

 

I’ve no use for lawns.  I don’t play golf.  Unlike Forrest Gump, I don’t have a tractor to drive around.  And orderlieness does not become me.

 

If you’re a “lawn person,” we have one less thing in common.

 

My advice: Join the lawnless universe, relinquish control, and let the wild things grow.

 

Environmental Headlines

 

There’s a heatwave in the Arctic…

 

And a plague of locusts invading France…

 

It hasn’t rained in Portugal since October and fires rage across the land…

  

The seas around the world have risen dramatically recently from melting glaciers…

 

Meanwhile, Bush administration ideologues continue to harass climate scientists who’ve provided proof of global warming. 

I've been blogging virtually all this week.  Webless.  In my my mind.



It's not necessarily better that way.  Just sometimes necessary.  And better than nothing at all.



So I post without a word.  Comment without a visit.  Imagine without a keyboard.



Blogs are written, read, forgotten.



It's only the Golden Eternity.

It comes down to this:

 

Either you submit to fulfilling your dark, lower, base desires.

Or you get high -(er).

When
I was a child, my Aunt Jean used to admonish me to stay out of the
grilling summer sun by saying: “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out
into the noon day sun.”

It was either “go out” or “sit out” or “stay out”.  Pick one.

 

Here I am just after a 5-mile 90 degree run today:

 

 

 

I’ve finally come to realize, after all, that I’m not an Englishman.

(Yes, I'm blogging from Dreamland again.)

Don't forget when you look at the stars to envision the Sun there among.

5-year Xanga Caveat:

If your life is going nowhere, is fucked-up, is stagnating and searching for an answer here or hereabouts, or just ends-up here because you've overly sucked upon the linked (hyper) Matrix, don't blame me. 

Fornever: I'm untorn.

I've gone fishing.  Or maybe I'm just rebirthing in the Land of the Jolly Green Dead.

You can, of course (to me, or whomever you go off to primp and self-proselytize),  be (or not be) cool. 

But, regardless,  please to thy own (for thine own) self be true.

I’ve lived a rugged life. 

But to lay my head upon warm stone and lay back in the sun.

But to run and thirst and satisfy that thirst only for one more run.

But to take delusion by the horns and wrestle it to the ground.

But to watch the storms roll in, lay siege, and with full fury pound.

But to gaze upward into the clear night sky in wonder of all the restless sights.

But to impose my will upon myself and defeat the enemy without a fight.

 

Without a fight, you ask?

Have you never heard that she who conquers herself has slain the equivalent of ten thousand enemy upon the battlefield?

And, of course, the sky is restless.  O inconstant moon, Juliet?  O fusion stellar dynamos ever pulsing bright, dear Montague?

Never seen an F5, half a hell-mile wide?  Or run in the forest with lightning striking all around, branches falling ahead and behind?

What happens when you realize the intimacy is fatuous after all?   Back to the forest?

Or just lean against an old tombstone and let Sol play you solitaire?

Now the NASA JPL Deep Impact crashing rendevous last night with Tempel 1 comet was cool, wasn't it?!

They say they did it for pure science, research into the origins of the planetary system.

But my guess is that they also needed to know if they could simulate a nuclear take-out of a comet, asteroid, or other Near Earth Oblject (NEO) otherwise destined for your backyard (that's correct: not mine, yours).

And that's exactly how I now like my fireworks: far, far away.

Though when younger, I used to truly enjoy things that boomed and spanged with a smash: 

aka...

...and i, too, a maniac!
a real fucking yankee doodle maniac!
up now with sufficient wine
and out to the backyard
with assorted red, white, and blue cherry bombs,
mosaicing Old Glory in potent resplendence
my prize Ohioan humus rose garden.
then   ignite!      and:
earth and flower petals
in a grand simultaneous-exploding     jack—a—room!    delight.
o, joyous good American smoke and dust!
and i, then, dancing the earth with the drunken tears
of a flag-loving, fist-waving patriot, screaming:
jack—a—room!         jack—a—room!
may you ever boom!, America
long may you boom!

But anymore, I've developed an emotional distance from booms, bangs, and blasts.  They remind me too sentimentally of sex, or more properly, the distant memory called 'sex'. Yep, just about as far away as Tempel 1 now, I'd say.

i’m no longer concerned with ‘what was going to be’.

it either is,

or is

of no matter to me.

i.

the tree fell for no reason at all
it did it just said “goodbye”
and dropped over dead
with a thump as I looked on
and shuddered with dread.

ii.

a group of three lightning bugs
convened last night.
how do I know?
they lightning-ed (no thunder)
though.

iii.

(?) ever notice how tombstones’
birds sit (thereupon) perched,
tails extending over polished edge
—so innocuous, until down the sides slides the bird
shit, i’ve noticed (this repeatedly) that tombstones are
manure magnets for the foul
of fowl and I do think they do
do it intentionally.

The Tigered Cage

The circus done, the circus train
pulled out of town in the wind and rain,
across the plain, then into hills,
and higher yet, into mountains with thrills.

But when the tempest broke out along a mighty front,
the train in the mountains was but a runt
of a toy on trick tracks with which the storm played,
and strained wheels screeched as cars were swayed.

Yet with the circus opening the very next day
in another town still far away,
the train pressed on with reckless speed,
not heeding the danger, obsessed by need.

Thus it entered into the trestled pass—
whipped with gusts and going much too fast,
and at the turn that screamed for ultimate *slow!*
it lurched and leaped in lost control.

Though metal strained insanely as it sideways flailed,
the circus train did not derail.
Yet the chains on the flatcar clangored, snapped and zinged:
the tigered cage had broken free and taken to wing.

Toppling and twisting down trellis and slope,
this tripping cage did now bring new hope
to the tiger tired of old iron bars
and riding endlessly on flatbed railroad cars.

End over end and bump upon bump,
the bars bent a little more with every thump.
The tiger roared as downward it hurled,
awaiting its moment to rejoin a free world.

Two endings, choose one:

1)

They found the cage, sans tiger, of course.
and for the loss of the tiger they felt great remorse.

Now that tiger roams free in the forest at night
reinvigorating its world with burning bright fright.

2)

They found the cage, sans tiger, of course.
And for the loss of the tiger they felt great remorse.

But for Tony the Tiger is was a great break
as he's now spending his life eating Frosted Flakes!

According to many global warming climatologists and a CIA-sponsored scientific study, at the current rate of global warming, the Artic will no longer even be represented by a solitary ice cube floating in the vast swishing-swashing landless Artic Ocean soon.  How soon?  Very soon.  Earliest estimate is 2075.  The ‘best’ case scenario is that Santa, the Eskimos, and polar bears can hold onto at least a chunk of ice in the winter (they'll have to bob all summer) until 2125.

 

Many of us won’t be around to witness this final ecological demise.  Unless, of course, it gets accelerated.  But I feel, nonetheless that we should start planning now for the relocation of the Inuit tribes, Artic animal populations, and unique Artic-climate dependent flora to a location where they can continue to flourish in niches as close as possible to their native habitat.

 

But where?  Where else?  Antarctica.

 

Now there will certainly be many unknowns and dangers in this undertaking.  For one, the introduction of exotic (non-native) populations to the Antarctic risks exposing the Antarctic ecology to disruption and partial destruction.  What if the Artic polar bears kill all the southern penguins?  What if the Inuit piss all over the pristine polar ice because they’re pissed off about having to move away from their native lands?

 

On the other hand, there are new risks for the populations getting introduced, too.  It’s historically been much colder in Antarctica than in the polar north.  So unless Antarctica is warming appreciably, too, as the northern pole is melting, there’s a risk that the pissing Inuit may get frozen, pants-down, in the act.  And maybe the penguins down south, pissed about getting predated by prowling polar bears, will take it out by stamping on the heads of baby northern seals who never seem to catch a break anyway.

 

There are, of course, many species that we will not be able to relocate.  The 100 million migratory birds that reside in the Artic north during our current summers will probably never find their own migratory way to down below the equator.  Same goes for a lot of marine life that depend on the cool thermodynamics of the current Artic outlay for survival.

 

But, at least, we should try to do what we can do: plan feasible relocations; test with pilot samples of gatherable or volunteering populations; provision the Antarctic by international treaty for new use and Inuit ownership; get prepared to fall-back the populations to alternative non-polar locations (reserves) should Antarctica prove too much or not enough.

 

Ice: the 21^st century’s most endangered species.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Solstice comes from the Latin (sol, sun; sistit, stands). For several days before and after each solstice, the sun appears to stand still in the sky—that is, its noontime elevation does not seem to change.

(summer began today at 2:46 A.M. EDT)

How am I spending it?

Preparing for the next pandemic.

As the rest of culture becomes more aware of the scope and prowess of blogging, a lot of good things are happening. But more and more bloggers are also finding themselves in legal trouble as a result of their activity.

The goal of Electronic Frontier Foundation’s just-released (June 13th) Legal Guide for Bloggers is to provide a basic roadmap to the legal issues confronting bloggers, to inform of basic blogging rights, and to encourage all to blog freely with the knowledge that legitimate speech is protected.

Especially useful to bloggers who report news gathered from confidential sources is the EFF's Bloggers’ FAQ on the Reporter’s Privilege.   The Bloggers’ FAQ on Media Access can also help bloggers who need to get access to public records and government meetings, as well as secure press passes to help with newsgathering.

the beauty that I know (o how the sun does glow!)

-of relationships, upon even a dream once of midsummer-

i’ve never found (fully) in a relationship

(boat, boat, boat your row.)

it is more my reflection (narcissus so gazing) upon a reflection,

my soulful (echo deep listening) insight into souls

that intensifies (to begin to begin)

again my heart and casts me out

(outcast that i am)

to compose by poetic arts.

 

“Always the beautiful answer, who asks a more beautiful question.”

 

loner, loper, loser, lover. 

a progression of mid-consonants

(like Pangaea the mid-continent)

all consorting together,

all orgied into one.

so gathers massively the beauty that I know

(to erupt, pour forth, playfully flow)

of relationships I speak (softly dancing in the sun)

‘tis (no wonder) i am a conundrum.

I can see beyond the limitations which I pose for myself
     the light, your shadow,
         and your delicacy interceding there between.

But this vision is soundless and shameful
    since I watch but cannot touch,
        I lurk but can't take heed.

You notice my desperation and hasten to barrage me
     with unrelenting mouthed insistencies,
          while motioning intrepidly
              salvationary glyphs of meaning.

And almost can I read your lips,
     as almost surely I would taste those lips,
         if I only I could loose my grip and slip
             into the light with your shadow.

Further contributing to an image of posing as robber barons who conduct their business in backrooms while smoking fat cigars, the Bush administration now seems to have exercised some heretofore unpublicized influence in having Justice Dept. lawyers slash by $120 billion their demands from the tobacco industry as part of a major civil racketeering trial.

In response to congressionally-expressed concerns over professional impropriety and wrongdoing in this case by government lawyers, the Office of Professional Responsibility will now begin an investigation.

Gladys Kessler, the federal judge in Washington who is hearing the case remarked of the government’s abrupt and unexpected change in demands, “Perhaps it suggests that additional influences have been brought to bear on what the government’s case is.”

Additional influences? Hey, who do you think is providing those fat cigars for the good ole’ backroom boys?

I pegged my fate to Michael Jackson’s trial outcome today.  If he had been found guilty of anything, I was going to forego running (in Dreamland) and submit to additional evening manual labor.  If he was found innocent of all charges, I would run free instead, enjoy a beer, and blog.

 

I’m singing in the rain (my sweat).

Corona.

 

The sunbeams benumb me.

The bumblebees buzz the budding blossoms.

The birds (being the little dirty dinosaurs they are)

bellow species-conquering ballads.

A north korean stalinist sparrow screeches steely in a gum tree afar.

While a neo-hitlerite hen wails (yet) of thousand-year henhouses to come.

The osama bin lark lurks hidden in scrub brush,

emitting taunting tones of future bird shit attacks.

While the bird in the Bush chirps like a cuckoo that the sky is falling,

 and all risks (except environmental ones) are code-red imminent.

It’s okay.  I’ve got plenty of birdshot.  And I pray to Minerva.

She’s a t-rex descended predator-owl, you know. 

And she sucks bird blood.  Real good.  And without a sound.

These are rough times. 
Stay true to yourself.

Tuesday afternoon, running 5+ miles around Dreamland,
sun-beaten, in 90+ F. heat, I envisioned being on a 1930’s Alabama chain gang and having to pound big
rocks into little ones the day forever long. 
Natural enough an association, no? 
Given the oppressive heat and the sense of hard labor that was invading
my en-scorched psyche.  Though it was something I never self-imaged before.

Well, Wednesday morning I got a request for assistance.  Dr. Margie (psychiatrist-type) begged me to
come over later in the day to help her recover some half-foot thick sidewalk
sandstone slabs that her city had replaced with concrete and which the city
would haul away if she didn’t quickly claim them.  So guess what I ended up doing?  At the very same time the day before that I
had imagined myself chain-ganging rocks for the boss man, I ended up sledge-hammering
4 x 6 ft. sandstone slabs into four 2 x 3 ft. manageable blocks and hauling
them to the site of Dr. Margie’s future patio. 
Let me tell you, with each of the smaller blocks weighing about 200 lbs., it really did constitute a chain-gang type ordeal.  2 tons? 
3 tons?  I’ve no good grasp of how
much stone I dragged, wiggled, lifted, rolled, wheel-barrowed, and wagoned in
the same unrelenting 90+ F. heat.  I was
literally raining sweat off of my skull with every step I took.  I was shedding, showering so much (precious
bodily) fluid that I felt like my own mini-thunderstorm leaving trails of
wetness wherever I turned.

The Human Shower!  Is
there such a Super-Hero?

It’s called the solar anesthetic.  A powerful narcotic, not for the weak of heart.  It tends, in extreme doses, to drive its subjects to ultra-hysteria.  It
consists of an energetically imposed state of total bodily possession
wherein the Sun beats down so hard that mindlessness alone would
constitute a heroic act of genius. 

Unlike other anesthesia that numb all sensations, the solar anesthesic allows one to continue to feel.  But only one sensation: absolute inner desolation. 

Solar anesthesia quickly numbs the capacity to think, the ability to relate.   Common
comments by those not yet fully under its influence and still able to
muster a last thought and articulate words are: “It’s as hot as hell.”  And, “It’s so damn hot that I could easily die.”  But most often, onset is so rapid that only disconsolate, disconnected thoughts and words are forthcoming. 

An unspoken yearning for a fantastic element named "water” invariably occurs.  At this point, some subjects have been reported to mouth a word or two that sounds something like “mother” or “wawa”.  In
either case, this is clinically viewed as an obvious ontological lapse
back into a pre-birth safety suit of long-departed micro-oceanic
friendliness.  In any case, this hope for the miracle
of “water” is soon abandoned with the final, awakening realization that
anything as delightful as “wawa”, under the circumstances, must purely
be self-delusionary.  A classic instance of, one seems forced to concede, "that if it sounds to good to be true, it just can’t be."

Yet
if one remains aligned to the solar anesthetic (that is, not
counteracting its effects by tripping-out in some mundane WaterWorld or
similar surrogate), fulfills the rite of passage, and
survives its stripping rigors (like a satellite barreling toward the
Sun in order to be slungshot out to the remotest reaches of space), it
ultimately transforms its own effacing effects within body and
self into a heightened realization of post-solar energetic
synesthesia. 

Experience or just imagine: Beyond the commanding baptismal dessication of the blinding Sun, the
whole world opens up as never before.  A newly-revealed tidal
cosmos influx, commendations soaring true, returns one to a
watery darkness.  One begins to
re-constellate fluidly in deep post-birth to new
meaning-place and purpose.  Rebirthed by fire, with but
a single drop of that remaining magic water within, one yields to
all that is greater with the unifying concession of "Tat twam asi"  - That is thyself.

Every summer, running deliriously in the Sun, I seek this solar anesthesic.  To the destructive element I submit.  I choose this death.  Because the reincarnation awaiting is pure merge with a reclaiming ocean, a sacred abyss beyond dimension.

 Earth weather is weirding again.  It is the change before the change before the
change.

Already summer and finally tornadoes appear in America.  Hey, that’s not a complaint!   But
parts of Australia
have been seeing tornadoes aplenty while we have had our dearth of them.  And some of those Aussies have never ever
even seen them before until now.  And they’re
blaming us!  Hey, don’t fuck with us Australia.  Don’t fuck with us.

And wasn’t it just a couple of months ago that the first Pacific hurricane ever known to landfall in Costa Rico occurred?

Shake it up, baby.

Question is: what’s next?

A hot, droughty summer that lasts until October?

A hot, rain-drenched, tropical forest-like summer that last
until November?!

Two hurricanes hitting the east coast in overlapping,
synergistic simultaneity?

A gyrating storm system that delivers golf-ball sized hail
to NYC ten days in a row?

A day when the whole continental US is 100+ degrees without
exception coast to coast?

A tornado system that takes out the parts of the Pentagon,
the Capitol, and the White House forcing George Bush to declare tornadoes a
terrorist co-conspirator?

Just remember: The life of a Repo Man is always intense.

Me?
I set a goal last Monday to run 40 miles this week.  I just, sweating under an unrelenting
90-degree-type Sun,  accomplished that
goal.

May the blessings of beneficient weather forever fall upon all of you.

What a kick-ass beautiful weekend it has been so far.

 

So nice, in fact, that fair artists have returned to Dreamland (aka Lake View Cemetery, aka Cleveland’s Outdoor Musuem)…

 

In the shade.

 

 

Or in the sun.  It’s all good.

 

 

Strangely enough, the artist above suddenly above got up, disappeared, and simply left her work in the field.

 

 

Proof that artists are truly impulsive,

I’ve run four ¼ marathons this week.  A combined course embracing 36 times up (and
down) a ridge that rises above the tops of the trees below. 

Every day this week during a point in the course I have felt
lost.  Strange feeling.  Immediately after
feeling lost, I have felt free.  Even
stranger-feeling consequence given the antecedent feeling.

Ritualistically afterwards, every day I have leaned against
the Villas obelisk (atop the ridge, facing northwards with a view of Lake Erie) and done what I’m doing now.  (Left to your
imagination.)

Normally when I run, I keep perceptually apprised of the
most significant things in my immediate surroundings.  Today, however, I found myself peering into
the deepest furthermost recesses of the views availed me—searching, awaiting
the appearance of…?

Something fun.  I’m
looking for something fun to do.

This community, this xanga-thing is like a mini-spiral
galaxy hologram to me.
Run around it, I can, like indians once
did in circling stagecoaches.
Or like I do my Dreamland. 
Or turn my head at an angle and change its axis of rotation.
(I can.)
Or ignore it, bump into it, and not even know its there.
(Sorry.)

From a distance its just a dizzy, spinning thing.
If I gaze in, I can see details of some of you unhappily trapped.
Some of you undismally untrapped.  Some unaware of the difference.
You’re all little miniatures of
yourselves—“yini you’s” to me.
Or is that “yana you’s” of the
Hina or Maha variety?
Lingums and yonis are
centrifugally entrained in this vivid projection:
Guys and gals floating their
affairs, I take it, floating their affairs.
Some are protected, others
projected, most just neglected.

So sad the rotational mismatch of
so, so many.
The searching, beseeching many.
So joyful the gyrating enlightenment
of the fleeting few.
The far-flung, exceptional fools.

But more than just a visual
modality, sense now the synesthetic:
The swirling of it all cascades into
a creaking.
The creaking from within emits bright,
slashing lasers.
The lasers melt in my (your) mouth,
not in our hands.

My muse is yearning for arousal, conjuring, carousal.
Bursting to surrender
to merriment, bathe in creativity, immerse in  edifying sensuousness.
Seeking the death
Of delusion, confusion, and all stifling trivialities.
Coveting the return
Of artistic succumbing, flamboyant brandishings, and ecstatic un-benumbings.
Pursuing most intrepidly
The genius epiphany, the guffawing hoot, the intangible booty.

Questing to tangiblize the intangible booty!

Oh, yes, the drunken Sun is shining.
The drunken Sun is shining and I’m awash in its indulgence.

Flare up, blaze away, deluge me endlessly with your eidetic photonic-simplicity,

O brilliant Illuminance, the hence and whence of life.

How small was xanga when I joined (year 2000)?

                       

                       
Tens
to hundreds of bloggers just figuring things out.

                       
Many
of whom were “seeded” by xanga itself.

                       
You
could visit and comment on  practically
everyone everyday.

                       
There
were less than 200,000 bloggers worldwide.

                       

How big is xanga now? 

 

Estimate:           8.2
million current xanga blogs.

                       
16,000
new xanga blogs (and growing) daily.
                        
               
        1,140 posts per minute (at noon today).

                       
12.3
million xanga blogs by year’s end.

                       
Represents
about 23% of entire 35.7 million blogs worldwide.

 

Interested in the history of the growth of blogging?  Look here.

Memorial Day brings more freedom to one of my cherished activities—running in Dreamland.  For upon this day Dreamland (Lake View Cemetery) postpones closing from 5:30 PM until “dusk” every evening until the end of summer.

I suppose the intent is to allow ghosts to roam out onto the streets later, somewhat less inhibited.  Or perhaps to allow lovers to wander in from the streets, find a warm, cozy pre-dusky secluded niche aside an old tombstone and also get less inhibited.

But I’ll mostly just run (10 miles today) and blog afterwards—as I’m doing now. 

Sitting mystic in the splendid sun-towards-set-light.

Memorial Day.  I’m a vet and alive probably because “my war” didn’t happen.  Other vets who, if alive, would be younger than me, are  buried here in Dreamland because their war did happen.  Or is happening at the moment.

It’s always been the case and, I believe that as long as America is great, it will always be the case that Americans will flock to join to serve our country in time of war—if it is a good war: a war worth dying for.

The malaise that is Iraq has dwindled new recruits in all the services severely of late.  Americans are voting by withholding their enlistments.  So by my logic, either America isn't great anymore or increasing numbers are coming to the realization that this isn’t a good war.  And I’m not giving up on America.  So there.

Where’s Osama bin Waldo?  Time again to revamp and redefine the battle. 

“You bled with Wallace.  Now bleed with me.”

Here, apparently, is the last Xanga entry just minutes before the blogger, ToTo247 (Simon Ng), was murdered.


Victim's E-journal Led To Slay Suspect reads the Front Page story.

Blogging couldn't save his life.  But it did solve the crime.

After having learned that birds are actually dinosaurs, I
cannot now eat chicken without marveling how good dinosaur meat tastes.

You can touch a keyboard, but you can’t really embrace
it.  And that, perhaps, sums up all
internet-blog romances:  You can touch
someone and be touched by someone by words online.  But embraces are reserved for bodies with
arms and faces.

Would you not agree that the greater tragedy is not to have
loved and lost but to become so hardened to loss so never to love again?

The mystic Merton once observed that “you become in the
image of the gods you worship.”  Hrmm…
Who is the god of running?  Mercury, the
fleet-footed messenger, no?   Tiny
planet.  One of my gods has a hot,
seemingly useless tiny planet named after him. 
That’s disrespectful!

If there was no such thing as a pharmaceutically produced
pill in this world, but all medicine instead was harbored in the inviolate
bodies of exotic insects which had to be ingested whole and alive o be
medicinally effective, would we be a society of insect-poppers?

I’m more than me.  I’m
the essence of the true American: though bound with responsibilities, I’m still
unpredictable and free.

It’s a shame.  But I guess if you drag a fan with a long enough electrical cord behind the ass of shitting dogs, sooner or later the blades will strike the shit.

 

Some scumpiece broke into my vehicle today while I was at work.  Broke the front passenger seat window entirely out and stole about $7 is spare change from the change cup between the two front seats.  My alarm must have been blaring as he reached in and grabbed that single or double handful of loose change.  Had I come upon him in that moment…ha!  You’d be reading about it in the news.

 

Instead, I returned to my vehicle after work,  resolute to run (in Dreamland Cemetery),  hopeful (to enjoy the evening fully), and intending (to pick up some side-cash handymanning for a pair of psychiatrists).

 

All dashed by the circumstances.  My awareness and response thereto.

 

Immediately I began detesting all victimizing imagined and unimaginable sorts of (in)humanity.

 

Then I settled into a if-I’m-going-to-be-stung-I’m going-to-sting-back mindset of retaliation.

 

And, finally, I was forced by someone to laugh about it, about everything, anything at all.

 

Imagine that: me forced to laugh.

 

After having moped and frowned over my perceived loss for hours and hours, that first smile hurt big-time.   But it was really, releasingly good.

 

Blessed are the smile-makers.  Proving once again that teeth are more than merely the precision insturments of predators.

On the basis of the pic above, would you categorize me as:

 

A predator

Or

Prey?

 

Dangerous

Or

Docile?

 

Forthright

Or

Deceptive?

 

If you know what’s best for you, you might not want to categorize me at all.

 

Here’s why.

 

Like Lt. Dan
in the movie Forrest Gump, I felt cheated out of duty and glory in not being
allowed to fight and, perhaps, die in a war I joined specifically to fight
in.  Except in my case, the “war” had yet
to happen—I joined months ahead in confident anticipation that the “new
President” would stand up to the tyrant and liberate our captive citizens
.  But upon Inauguration Day, the hostage
crisis in Iran
was resolved as the Iran-Contra connection secretly kicked-in. 

Suddenly, I was a warrior without a war, a samurai without a
sword.  So I did the next best thing: I
started running two to three times a day through the forests and around a
cemetery in the Isthmus of Panama—where I was
stationed.   I committed myself to staying fiercely
ready.  Psychically-attuned to the
warrior’s code to dive into action, with
ever-launchable personal energy, I prepared for any and every eventuality.    

Still, no war.  Like
Lt. Dan, I, too, had a ‘forest’ that delivered me.  The jungle and its mysteries became my
battleground.  Avoiding tree-dangling and
path-hugging poisonous snakes, influxes of killer bees, victimizing vampire
bats, and swarms of biting insects carrying deadly diseases constituted my
daily engagements with the enemy.

I didn’t have to run through the jungle.  None of my fellow-soldiers ever did.  They’d all be playing pool or comfortably
watching TV in the barracks as I did my laps around a jungle cemetery.  Or they’d be chowing down in the mess hall
for lunch as, forsaking food,  I instead ran
a half hour up and 15 minutes down a forested mountain in 90+ F. heat and 100%
humidity aback the compound. (Yes, I was always
entirely soaked emerging from the forest at hill-bottom.) 

My own frenzy of energy should have been enough to take any
country to battle.  But no-o-o way, Jose.

It’s always been that way. 
Whenever I want something really bad, all heaven and earth finds a way
to frustrate me. 

I’m now learning how to “seek no-want” and “engage nothing
in the pursuit of emptiness.”

Let’s see what heaven and earth does to frustrate that.

"The reason birds are so important to us is really a fact we weren't so aware of 10, 20 years ago is that birds are living dinosaurs. They're not just related to dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs.   They're a branch of dinosaurs, so conveniently enough dinosaurs didn't go completely extinct. One group, the birds, survived."

 

 -Curator of Paleontology,  American Museum of Natural History

 

The real reason birds are so important to us is because Avian Flu is about to go human pandemic.

 

Dinosaur Flu coming soon to a theater near you.

 

If the goal of blogging is to create as much controversy as possible, I’ve failed.

 

If the goal of living is to accumulate as much money as possible, I’ve failed.

 

If the goal of loving is to maximize one’s representation in the ongoing gene pool, I’ve failed.

 

But if the point of being is to be in the moment… hrmm, let me take a moment to think about that one.

I can still hear my sister reassuring me, like a prophecy deep-woven for eternity,
“O dear brother,  sweet brother, worry not.  If ever it is meant-to-be, you shall know her love again.”

 

And now it is the meant-to-be. 

 

Time has annealed, healed, re-revealed,

You to me.

 

And love has re-invented

Us … for us .

Fuck sex.  An hour of brilliant conversation with a beautiful woman is so, so much better than an hour of unrelenting passion, endless kisses, and pleasure juices sucked up as fast as they’re emitted (with the same woman).  Ah…but both….?  Can one have both?

 

Here’s a just and fitting punishment for Newsweek magazine’s indiscretion in publishing a incredible, sourceless story (since retracted) about American troops desecrating the Koran by flushing it down the toilet:  Force them to change their name to Weaknews.   Oh.  And maybe force them to print their publication on toilet paper for a year.   So that we can subject it to the same purported Koran treatment that they appear to have invented.

 

If you had to suffer and live through it, what would be your preferred cataclysm?

 

A maga-tsunami (such as that launchable by the eventual catastrophic collapse into the Atlantic Ocean of the mountain called Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands) ?  Would take out the whole East Coast up to 20 miles inland.

 

A super-volcano (such as that underlying Yellowstone National Park—which already is 40,000 years overdue)?  Would take out the Western US and could lead to a worldwide nuclear winter.

 

An asteroid impact (such as the near earth object called 2004 MN4 which is now almost surely likely not to impact on its next closest pass on April 13, 2029—although it will actually fly under the orbit of geosynchronous satellites. But can not now be reliably predicted not to impact upon a great many Aprils in immediate years thereafter since its intimate first pass by the Earth will deflect its future orbit—due to gravity—in a not now entirely predictable manner.  Some suggest, the Earth could capture it for collision in 2030, 2031, 2032…who knows?).  Would take out a sizable region on Earth wherever it would strike.  Could cause a mega-tsunami if impacting in the ocean. Or could lead to nuclear winter by kicking up the earth.

 

My preferred cataclysm would be having sex but not brilliant conversation with the aforementioned beautiful woman.  It would be hell.  But I guess I’d live through it.

I just realized
that the Presidential theme song of “Hail To The Chief” degrades nicely into
Vader’s theme song of The Imperial March. 
Whistling both down downtown back alleys on the way to work this
morning, I found I could fluently transpose one into the other.

I had intended to
go to Dreamland (cemetery) yesterday to meditate after closing.  Instead, I landed in a bar and from there
visualized myself meditating in the cemetery. 
And I finally ‘saw’ all the bones.

Why do we bury
people lying down hands folded or with hands along their thighs?  Why not bury everyone facing and with their
right index finger pointing to the place on the horizon where the sun rises
upon the vernal equinox?  Bonehenge, I
say!   I know, I know, I know: repose.  Not pose. 
Repose.  But hey, the ancient Chinese
actually invented the compass and the art of fengshui in order to "(hinder
the) wind (and hoard the) water" and thus optimize “chi” (breath) around
the burial tomb.

As the Chinese Book of Burial  (where fengshui is first historically mentioned) reads:

The Dark Turtle hangs its head,

The Red Bird hovers in dance,

The Green Dragon coils sinuously,

The White Tiger crouches down.

What could be
simpler?!

When I was a child, my Aunt Jean used to often tell me that
the first thing “to go” on a man is his knees. 

Once, I asked as a rejoinder, “What’s the first thing ‘to go’ on a woman?”  And she shot me back a look of angry drilling
eye daggers.  “Women don’t discuss such
things with men…or boys,” was her response. 

I learned then that the world wasn’t a level playing field.  Some matters of knowing and intelligence
would become available only at a high premium, if at all.  So I had better keep my knees strong and
healthy.

I’ve completed my running for this week and have exceeded my
goal of 27 miles by a mile.  A couple of
weeks ago, I had a goal of 26 miles that I exceeded by a mile.  An “exceed by a mile” pattern appears to have
crept into my routines. 

But I’m suspicious of patterns that creep. 
Could they not suggest some sort of alien subliminal influence at
work?  Or at least a touch of remote
programming?  Beware.  Take care.  Ignore alien orders!

Examine your life.  Know your aspirations.  Strive to meet or exceed your goals.  But keep the aliens out.  And above all, keep your knees strong.  (This advice may not apply to women since I
never did learn what on them is the first “to go”.)

In our youth we planted a seed,
A seed of sinless love.
Before we grew conflicted and were driven apart
By a world that brutalized our innocence.

Ha. Thirty years now later.
And we’ve chanced upon our tree.
In a field of utter oblivion, unattended, yet it grew.
And now it bears this luscious fruit of rediscovered intimacy.

The goal of dreaming is to intend the energy body.

 

Let your energy body do it. To intend is to wish without wishing, to do without doing.

 

Accept the challenge of intending
. Put your silent determination, without a single thought, into
convincing yourself that you have reached your energy body and that you
are a dreamer .

 

When
you hear that—you have to convince yourself, you automatically become
more rational. How can you convince yourself you are a dreamer when you know you are not? Intending is both: the act of convincing yourself you are indeed a dreamer , although you have never dreamt before, and the act of being convinced.

 

I don't mean you have to tell yourself you are a dreamer and try your best to believe it. It isn't that.

Intending
is much simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than
that. It requires imagination, discipline, and purpose. In this case,
to intend means that you get an unquestionable bodily knowledge that you are a dreamer . You feel you are a dreamer with all the cells of your body.

 

  -Don Juan, The Art of Dreaming

Attached to a tree in Dreamland (cemetery). 

 

 

Presumably by a child.  Unless one of you wants to 'fess up.

Poor babies.  Best friends.

she is so sensuously pre-embattled
yet sumptuously well-woven
*down there*. 

as hard as an Amazon  well-warned of  a pretense to be imposed,
yet as soft as a caring look into a familiar’s revealing eyes. 

(of course, what have I ever really witnessed?
it is all clearly merely my own rich imaginative hearsay, after she sat but once,
maybe more? – imaginatively – yet lovingly, upon my lap). 

entirely bloomingly and beyond-daisy gorgeous and tensile is she.

how her coitals ripple above me, upon me,
arousing beyond repair, my flagrantly-expended quixotic hard flesh.

obvious now, in the aftermath, her such outbursts serve phantom purpose as…
both the accost of my insuppressible bestirring
and as her own self-limiting worn chastity belt.

she, not some suckling lord of the  beseeching lot,
decides, in the moment of the , whom to quench and
what lover to indulge. 

i, an improbable dreamland throw-thing, simply chastise myself in the gleam of our Sun, imagining (imagining!) myself someday just so worthy...
and her most intimate forever encounter.