A deep pain crept into my shoulder for over a week. I refused healing from others: I doubt it comes from a place that I'm ready for others to touch. Slowly, I stretch and squirm, working through the pinching, spastic twinge on my own.
It began Sunday morning. That night, I found a bag full of ramen and turkey sausage on my front steps, food that I cannot eat. I placed it in the trash, as it was late and I hadn't the desire to walk it to the church up the street. That morning, I awoke to the sound of two men loudly grousing about finding the food in the trash. One was the broken vagrant who made the decision that he owns the front steps of the apartment I'm renting, by the very value that his ass warmed the concrete and one of the neighbors enables his deteriorated state by feeding him and paying for his detritus-filled car, instead of paying for possible rehabilitation for the fellow. The broken one described me to his enabler with venom. During this, I was keeping my ex company. She's of a fragile, defensive state, and she remains quite susceptible to the rage and venom within my heart. Reflexively, I swallowed down the rage that welled up in me over this situation, and the base of my neck thus suffers.
Many times, a person considers repression to affect just sexuality. While yes, I have stuffed this aspect of the libido down, I do believe that I have tossed away a greater portion of it. I have little room to unfold myself from my home. I have no control over my surroundings. I have denied self-development. I key in to the needs of others on reflex, allowing them to supercede my own desires. I take on too much from others, and I take nothing for myself. My dream is to have a space in which I might live as I choose: silent, my books at my fingertips, with furniture that supports my body. I wish to express myself across my environment without restriction, which thus far I cannot. I once again have packed myself into a box and placed it out of reach.
In place of ambition, I have subversion and spite. I have no dream for myself, and I spit acid at any who would stand in my territory and attempt to dictate it, even when I have permitted them so far within those borders. I ask for my martyrdom and then mourn my victimhood. The martyr gives not blood, but intoxicating wine. It directs through envy, lechery and blind retribution.
I see so much of myself that I have cast to the wind, to carry far away from me. My heart lies bound in vines and tar. It beats for a moment, only to feed the overgrowth and warm the sticky, ungrowing remains of living material. I wield a simple knife of cold steel, to sever and to scrape that which suffocates the pulse. I must empty my vessel of detritus. I must collect the refuse and the compost. I must sort these to find what might create the prime matter, and I must make it burn to create the elixir, the medium through which the Divine operates. I can see this path. I must take this path, or I will surely die.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Tenebraic Pulse
I have many moments when I feel like the Wheel of Fortune smashes and churns me in its wake. We make the decisions that we make in life, but once again I feel myself plunged into that lightless depth that lies beyond my comprehension. It goes beyond my reasoning, beyond my control. If I could choose to act in a useful manner and finish the mundane tasks that surround me, I most assuredly would. Often, I feel like I carry with me a coal from the Black Furnace, and those who stand close will receive the fires of that transformative equipment, while I plunge down once again to replenish the stores of the shadowy substance.
I used to call it Hell, as if it were a location separate from my own soul. Thanks to the changes I've gone through since then, I'm coming to understand it as a very, very uncomfortable phase of transition. I feel as if I miss the opportunity to take advantage of the plunging energy, due to one oversight or another. It's like Charlie Brown and the Football, over and over again, in Tartarus. Once more I find myself denied what I desire most, due to my own devices, and their origin escapes me each time. I withdraw too far, and I flog myself for not seeing the truth in time.
The tide draws out and pummels me into the beach as if the Full Moon had risen once more to pulverize the leavings of the snails and clams from the gorgeous, individual shells to indiscriminate granules with its liquid fists. I fight it, each time, thinking that this darkness is something I can escape. From outside of my field of vision it comes, each time taking me down when I can't even muster the chance to defend myself. It's slippery, ruthless and unyielding. I can no more grasp it than escape it. I can hope only to learn from each repetition of the cycle, giving into it more and more, absorb more and more about its movements so that, by the next time, I'll end up that much closer to facing the beast and placing a bridle upon it.
I can't help but feel sorrow that the source of this conflict and suffering comes from within myself, and that others, too many others, have suffered for it. I can only pray that something constructive has come from each of their experiences with it, and that the same gift will, some day, bestow itself upon me. I merely want to know. I fear discussing when I will seek help, for the more solid the idea, the more easily it shatters when this arises. Merely, I open myself to seeking it without expectation, without malice, and know that I can find it in abundance. I will see this through.
I used to call it Hell, as if it were a location separate from my own soul. Thanks to the changes I've gone through since then, I'm coming to understand it as a very, very uncomfortable phase of transition. I feel as if I miss the opportunity to take advantage of the plunging energy, due to one oversight or another. It's like Charlie Brown and the Football, over and over again, in Tartarus. Once more I find myself denied what I desire most, due to my own devices, and their origin escapes me each time. I withdraw too far, and I flog myself for not seeing the truth in time.
The tide draws out and pummels me into the beach as if the Full Moon had risen once more to pulverize the leavings of the snails and clams from the gorgeous, individual shells to indiscriminate granules with its liquid fists. I fight it, each time, thinking that this darkness is something I can escape. From outside of my field of vision it comes, each time taking me down when I can't even muster the chance to defend myself. It's slippery, ruthless and unyielding. I can no more grasp it than escape it. I can hope only to learn from each repetition of the cycle, giving into it more and more, absorb more and more about its movements so that, by the next time, I'll end up that much closer to facing the beast and placing a bridle upon it.
I can't help but feel sorrow that the source of this conflict and suffering comes from within myself, and that others, too many others, have suffered for it. I can only pray that something constructive has come from each of their experiences with it, and that the same gift will, some day, bestow itself upon me. I merely want to know. I fear discussing when I will seek help, for the more solid the idea, the more easily it shatters when this arises. Merely, I open myself to seeking it without expectation, without malice, and know that I can find it in abundance. I will see this through.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Gordian Synapses
When attempting to write creatively, I like to have dry, academic research materials concerning mythology handy. I grew up more in tune with the myths of Herakles, Rama and Thor than I did with Snake Eyes, Lion-O and Leonardo. That said, I, once again, have frustrations on this matter.
While I do identify with a pagan religious system myself, I find the pagan community rather lacking in understanding, in many circumstances. Many works seem to view the deities themselves as deserving admiration, rather than the processes the deities represent. I feel like this view perpetuates the very anthropic bias that has put our species, and our ecosystem, in its current bind. Our most successful adaptation has been the utilization of our environment, and yet this adaptation does need curtailing. Along with this utilization, or perhaps the very reason this utilization is so successful, we have a crippling sense of separation from the environment. This sense of separation has led us to travel all over the Earth, to trade foods, genes and philosophies, and to discover more and more facets of a strange and exciting universe.
A cat can only interact with its environment by its senses, by immersion in its territory and routing this information through its instincts. We, however, can bypass these instincts by accessing other mindsets and conditions we have experienced prior as a conscious act. This adaptation, I feel, encompasses what we call memories, sentiment, and emotion in different circumstances (This seems very reductionist and Darwinist, but I'm at a lack of better explanation.) Of course, these prior conditions must make themselves known to us through un-conscious means in order for us to gain awareness of them as simple facets of an uncharacterized psyche. (I could talk for days on how we ignore this in order to maintain a given state, regardless of its detriment to ourselves, to maintain a sense of continuity, but I digress) Once accepted, we can change our view of the environment, and then react with new combinations of prior experiences, in effect making new worlds in our mindset.
In our efforts to understand, the limits of what we could comprehend became subject to our self-awareness, and thus we made these forces friendly by giving them our face, our virtues and vices, our communicative skills, and our sense of time in order that we make the incomprehensible at least something with which we could empathize. In our weakest moments, our minds will reinforce this sensation as well, permitting what could best be described as a numinous experience. (For instance, when in the throes of near-suicidal depression feeling bolstered by a universal sense of Motherhood, of womb-like succor and unconditional love when one's actual experience with the biological mother was absent or destructive) I'd go as far as to call it archetypal, but without formal training in depth psychology I feel a little goofy doing so.
While I see the value in merging our incomprehensible notions of the universe with our archetypal human experience, I also see this as a transitional state, wherein we see our own place as a mere cog in a universal schematic that changes as we work along with it, and that our very human senses and sense of humanity need not find itself as axiomatically possessing divinity greater than that of our surroundings from which we find ourselves separate, but that our sense of separation acts as a simple function in spite of the axiomatic divinity inherent in the universe itself.
Long story short: I want more dry, academic articles about myths and gods on the internet, and fewer fluffy bunny and beardy Thelemic paeans crossing my path.
Yeah. I can feel the bullshit just peeling off of me as I type.
While I do identify with a pagan religious system myself, I find the pagan community rather lacking in understanding, in many circumstances. Many works seem to view the deities themselves as deserving admiration, rather than the processes the deities represent. I feel like this view perpetuates the very anthropic bias that has put our species, and our ecosystem, in its current bind. Our most successful adaptation has been the utilization of our environment, and yet this adaptation does need curtailing. Along with this utilization, or perhaps the very reason this utilization is so successful, we have a crippling sense of separation from the environment. This sense of separation has led us to travel all over the Earth, to trade foods, genes and philosophies, and to discover more and more facets of a strange and exciting universe.
A cat can only interact with its environment by its senses, by immersion in its territory and routing this information through its instincts. We, however, can bypass these instincts by accessing other mindsets and conditions we have experienced prior as a conscious act. This adaptation, I feel, encompasses what we call memories, sentiment, and emotion in different circumstances (This seems very reductionist and Darwinist, but I'm at a lack of better explanation.) Of course, these prior conditions must make themselves known to us through un-conscious means in order for us to gain awareness of them as simple facets of an uncharacterized psyche. (I could talk for days on how we ignore this in order to maintain a given state, regardless of its detriment to ourselves, to maintain a sense of continuity, but I digress) Once accepted, we can change our view of the environment, and then react with new combinations of prior experiences, in effect making new worlds in our mindset.
In our efforts to understand, the limits of what we could comprehend became subject to our self-awareness, and thus we made these forces friendly by giving them our face, our virtues and vices, our communicative skills, and our sense of time in order that we make the incomprehensible at least something with which we could empathize. In our weakest moments, our minds will reinforce this sensation as well, permitting what could best be described as a numinous experience. (For instance, when in the throes of near-suicidal depression feeling bolstered by a universal sense of Motherhood, of womb-like succor and unconditional love when one's actual experience with the biological mother was absent or destructive) I'd go as far as to call it archetypal, but without formal training in depth psychology I feel a little goofy doing so.
While I see the value in merging our incomprehensible notions of the universe with our archetypal human experience, I also see this as a transitional state, wherein we see our own place as a mere cog in a universal schematic that changes as we work along with it, and that our very human senses and sense of humanity need not find itself as axiomatically possessing divinity greater than that of our surroundings from which we find ourselves separate, but that our sense of separation acts as a simple function in spite of the axiomatic divinity inherent in the universe itself.
Long story short: I want more dry, academic articles about myths and gods on the internet, and fewer fluffy bunny and beardy Thelemic paeans crossing my path.
Yeah. I can feel the bullshit just peeling off of me as I type.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Initialization- The gathering inhale
The world has given me the gift of jettisoning the past. My old blog is now lost unto me thanks to a hacked e-mail. Ah well, such is life. This said, I'm going to head onward, into the new life's journey that unfolds.
In short, I utilize this blog to list my varied philosophical observations, often peppered with bits of personal moments and insights into the realms of comics, movies, music and metaphysical studies.
It's a shame to lose almost all of the old posts, but it seems fitting enough to try to continue in spite of this. It feels like that stage after Ragnarok, when humanity crawls out from the Tree and the young New Gods stumble through the new, cleared lands to find their way.
Oh no, I don't tend to hyperbolize much, now do I?
In short, I utilize this blog to list my varied philosophical observations, often peppered with bits of personal moments and insights into the realms of comics, movies, music and metaphysical studies.
It's a shame to lose almost all of the old posts, but it seems fitting enough to try to continue in spite of this. It feels like that stage after Ragnarok, when humanity crawls out from the Tree and the young New Gods stumble through the new, cleared lands to find their way.
Oh no, I don't tend to hyperbolize much, now do I?
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