I do not want her surrender,
I need her eager, ambitious.
Yet, effortlessly, mistakenly,
I invoke her resignation;
our defeat.

some-some on Erich Fromm

“Old Testament character Abraham, who represents the man who dares to risk individuation. Abraham becomes a hero because he heeds God’s words to him: “Leave thy country and leave thy Father’s house and go to a country which I shall show to you.” [Gen. 2.1] This is the symbol of the hero who dares to stake his existence on independence by leaving certainty and risking uncertainty. This is one of his alternatives. The other possibility is to refuse to risk individuation and become enmeshed in the confines of Mother, home, blood, soil--- never really gaining independence from these forces, never becoming an independent person.” -Erich Fromm

This one really stings me --- on a daily basis even. It’s probably pretty natural to worry about taking the safe route in life too often. I realize that the dichotomy isn’t so ‘black and white’ but I also feel that the basic truth which Fromm presents here is authentic.
---

“Freud saw history as a tragic alternative between having no culture and no neuroses or having civilization with the repression and neuroses it entailed.” -Erich Fromm

After reading Steven Pinker, part of me would like to dismiss this interpretation as an overly Romantic take on the damning effects of civilization which is often stressed by those who purport the validity of the ‘noble savage’ theory. But I think that it’s talking more about the societal strains put upon a person whose evolutionary history simply can’t keep pace with their cultural ones--- which obviously creates more friction, at least psychologically, than I would imagine our ancient ancestors ever felt. Pinker and Fromm’s psychological insights needn’t be contrary to one another.
---

“It is often the case that psychologists searching for validity and rigorous proof prefer to deal with problems which are insignificant but can be proved, rather than with problems which are significant but which cannot be proved so rigorously” -Erich Fromm

I think this was probably Fromm reacting to some of the hard science being celebrated as the ultimate tool for psychic insight. There always seems to be some sort of ‘either or’ scenario recurring throughout Fromm’s work but I think that these distinctions, while perhaps overarching, are most likely the natural way one comes to conclusions, which on the more gradual path of reality, seem to be too difficult to decipher without the help of such illuminating exaggeration.
---

Anyway, I love the insights from this guy whether they’re polarizing or not.

mayonnaise / minds

Aly took her turn on the computer. I walked out of the room, through the hallway and into the kitchen. Entering the kitchen I saw the bright, white ‘Kitchen Aid’ squarely in front of me, I had never used it before but I became suddenly excited. I ran back into the computer room shouting boastfully along the way, “I’m going to make homemade mayonnaise!” Aly, half-laughed and looked at me with widening, inquisitive eyes. She was hunched forward her chin on her palm, her nose a foot from the monitor, the screen was covered with Google search results from her most recent query, “homemade mayonnaise”.

Prophesy

In the early morning hours a wild-eyed man travelled toward me, he came from the North. Unprovoked, he told me about my future lives and his voice was hard and sure. “In the next life, you’ll be down here,” he said, raising his flat hand up and down near his ankle. He thought harder, “you’ll be my waitress--- only you won’t serve me anything; you’ll just stand there, waiting---waiting.” His eyes were like liquid. “You’ll, you’ll…” he debated, breathing heavily --- “you’ll not be wearing any coat, and you’ll know what the cold is!”

I tried to laugh and then I believed him.

the drugs had different expressions/ Burning Man 2008

In 2008 the drugs had different expressions. MDMA was new to me but I had known ecstasy before as it made me cry… Previous experiences on ‘e’ anyway led to blathering sorrows as I walked down Whyte avenue bawling, longing for an ex-lover, then, more newly made ruthless in a strange and daring role-reversal. Previously yes, incoherent on ‘e’, 2002 maybe, four in the morning after the bad rave and worn music, full of sweaty, suburban boys in white, sleeveless undershirts and dark, baggy, blue jeans, having dance-offs with the blue light strobes and the grinding polyrhythms manifesting in their jaws; me too, all but the white shirt, yes our jaw-gnawing required hard walking, as we headed outside the sunlight shone on an abandoned parking lot, we strolled up the bleak, cubic spiral to the top floor and amongst the debris a ray directed me to a cement conglomerate---picking up the chunk, God asked me to throw it. Far away there was a target / lady, three stories down and impossible to hit, a different block, impossible! ---She was probably on her way to Church since it was Sunday. The ray dared me to get as close to her as I could with the rock. Asshole, unforgivable asshole threw the rock and really hit her at an absurd distance. Not a huge rock or a hard hit but the age and the purity and the atrocity still demanded insatiable amounts of guilt to be digested at a later hour and still now, at this, a much later year. After the turmoil, frenetic remorse and truly satanic jazz which my brother mercilessly tried to sooth me with, I headed south. Yes, embarking on the trendy avenue without sleep, no longer high, but concerned, especially about the nostalgic and the tragic. I walked past frightened girls, red-faced, with tears streaming hot and joining under my chin. Unhappy, I’d say. My brother of the acid-jazz eventually came to my rescue, this time around unable to accost me with Charles Mingus’ "z-zeete- beee-boooop-wip ah-doo-ip-bop-weeeg-beee" period.

But more recently, in this newest experience, I had sworn off even attempting psychedelics and its friends such as ‘e’ and ‘MDMA’ from the 24^th of August onward, until recanting only moments before ingestion on the 30^th, due in part to a week of high winds, a day of lunging up on airborne alkaline and progressively swilling an “all you got, it’s in here” drink, treacherously poured from a sticky, Culligan water jug, my mind was irreparably made up. For the MDMA I dipped my grimy finger in the bag which resembled a miniaturized pack of big-league chew, that sort of foil-thing going on, and like another certain candy analogy that momentarily eludes me, I dipped my wet finger into the powder and licked the first attempt ---later, sans-candy analogy, I snorted the second---just in case the first method of ingestion was wrong, I mean, I know one was incorrect but I still couldn’t tell you which. The white MDMA powder felt like dried vinegar and trickled down my nasal cavities into my throat tasting both sour and bitter. We kept drinking. Later after a genuine human pyramid and cat-calls to the Burning Man himself, my dearest human-cannon ball and current lover, asked a well-timed and well-armed stranger for some ecstasy. The request was surprisingly yet expectantly fulfilled amid the floral bursts of fiery pulses. We arrived at Nexus, following the crooked and much loved path set by my brother. I waited in line cleaning the dust and syrup out of my cup in want of a maintaining drink. Aly asked, “How are you feeling?” and at that precise moment I turned to her and felt the tip of my nose buzzing. Instantly, I felt fear and walked a few steps slo-motion in direction of the barer desert, Aly cut-in front of me and with cat’s eye glasses she handled me, persuading me to handle my anxious glow. Luckily, I conceded but understood that such heavy feelings could only be properly dealt with with my back firmly on the ground. As the place filled up and my oasis became ‘entry-way’ many innocent soles pounded my body, first stepping hard then almost tumbling with polite correction. I loved it, each impact sent waves of giddiness and delight down my spine and into my hips. I danced, planted on the ground as Bassnectar’s bass filtered through the bodies and rolled over my swaying, horizontally pleased body. Concerned road-warriors held me up from time to time, nourishing me with ripe fruit and camel-packs; reassuring me that the polyethylene-teet rehydrates. The music was perpetually and rhythmically stunning. Eventually the tired, familiar crew came to rest on my high-stepping hips and gut; multiplicitously warming me up.

---

video at NEXUS on the night of the Burn --so you might hear me getting stepped on, anyway,I don't know who filmed this---I'm glad they posted it though, I esp. like(d) the music in the last third of the vid, if anyone cares (Echo?)

Rocks

Beg my eyes to look away from
all the energy that beckons me,
By day, the skin bright,
sparkles, resiliency
and later by night,
swollen lips, the eroticism,
sick and fancy.
I am perpendicular to all temptation.

The fear of stolen glances
must be met with strict,
learned aversion,
purposive tactics, shame.
And through the streets, in the crowds,
or as a solitary member
of unbeknownst potential partnerships,
muted duologues,
hot games,
the withdrawal steadies, it heaves,
and multiplies.

A blue sky,
cloudless, cool and swallowing,
born without edges,
worn without creasing,
shines too brightly for these my eyes,
so I avert my attention to stare at the familiar
ground, its dirt, its stones, innocuous,
admired close-up
and instantly inspected,
known without fear.

These rocks, unique and alternative
to each and every other rock;
their blindness that binds me.
Never expressive but only experiencing my affection
silent still, forever receptive.

Indecisiveness cont. / One year to the day, but more than that

The day you decide on anything you are hit by a random passage that literally reads “mistaken identity” and while the Emersonian concept of ‘Universal conspiracy’ still sway’s your heart, your mind which now leads, starts blinking--- you seize up. Too many false-positives initiate your hysterics. You don’t even attempt to do what you want because you’re afraid that after a while you might find out that what you want,---well, really isn’t---

Symtop

a body expectant

possible thoughts fill my chest with unease,

high in the guts below my understanding

this warms and then sinks,

tickle and a closing off, it is, it is ‘palpable anticipation’

in joy the smile, grief the wail, mind

my always true imagination.

only the expectancy of despair has this central corporeal shift. Feel it.

recognized.

skull and conjecture

I had a bone from a skull my brother snapped up from the Parisian catacombs. He stole it in good faith. I had it in a little silver container from India, that and a bit of cotton on which the fragment of skull sat. I’m not sure what part of the head the bone came from, but it was shaped a little bit like Bulgaria or somewhere like that. The skull was sort of a light brown meets clay meets tinge of orange and purple, depending on what mood I was in, oh, and depending on what angle and light source I viewed it with/under/in. I should have taken a picture of it. It was about 1 and a half inches long, which is American, and 3.81 cm using the current metric unit of measurement--- most Canadians my age brag about metric measurements yet rarely use it, or even know how to. The skull piece was pretty thin, relative to what I conceive of contrasting ‘not-thinednesses’, so to speak.

I began to think about the human attached to the skull and about his brains, in particular the ideas in his brains, created by the time and lives that surrounded him. I thought it was probably not in his then best interests to have a missing chunk of his skull way over in the New Country, held as a memento of a trip never travelled by the bearer. I figured even in his death, his living wishes could probably be surmised in some degree to a more fitting end, that is to say, closer to what he would have wanted done with his skull. From that I concluded his head must return to the Earth as soon as I could. I leashed up Newton and went to Millcreek on a particularly calm, summer day and walked to a bed of rocks exposed on the ever-changing creek bed. I found a rock I liked, which is very easy for me to do, and placed the skull fragment into the emptiness of which the now uprooted rock created. The rock, it went into the silver tin atop the cotton. I closed the tin, and bent over the skull on the creek bed.

Momentarily, I felt pleased at the notion of doing a man from a different time and place a favour. Then my mind wandered and I imagined I did him a greater disservice because he probably believed in the Rapture and a big chunk of his head would be lost somewhere in Alberta come that glorious, sickening day in a place that never existed in his time and he wouldn’t get it back. “Whose got my Golden Arm,” ghost-stories would be replaced by sad Christian French men on a holy mission to be once again anatomically whole. Again another thought entered my mind, what if some kid finds a chunk of this skull and somehow, no matter how preposterous the notion is, he takes it to his dad who is an anthropologist-type and he instantly recognizes it as being human, well surely this scholar would bring it to the police and the police would start a full-blown investigation into what they would believe to be a murder, and they would keep the skull locked up in the stations evidence room even further removed from the cadaver’s once living wishes. Finally I decided to stop all further conjecture and continue my walk. Hopefully I did right in the scheme of burial rights and personal requests, even if the time separating the completion is massive and the fulfillment details only shoddily assumed. R.I.P. bone, yep, R.I.P., man.

Spring Walk 07

Newton, shot with my new camera, yeeee

Alberta man infected with rabies

A guy who lives fairly close to Edmonton was recently infected with the Rabies virus, and it's past the point of no return. So, he'll die a fairly nasty death. It would certainly be a frightening way to go. The picture on the right is of an unknown man with a bad case of full blown rabies, which is always lethal when the initial symptoms shown up. For more on the disease check this wikipedia link


Here's the sad story from the CAN west news wire:

EDMONTON - A man from east central Alberta is gravely ill with rabies after failing to seek treatment after a bat bit him last summer.

The man was sleeping in his rural home last August when a bat entered the house and bit him on the shoulder. The man, whom health officials have not identified, apparently realized he had been bitten but did not immediately seek medical help.

In January, he experienced pain in his shoulder where the bite occurred. He has since developed symptoms of rabies, including paralysis, difficulty swallowing and convulsions. He is in serious condition in hospital, but there is little doctors can do for him now.

"There's no specific treatment once the neurological symptoms occur," said Dr. Karen Grimsrud, deputy provincial health officer.

"We want to emphasize that if someone is exposed to a wild animal, they should seek medical treatment," she said. "That's the important message from this unfortunate case."

The treatment for people bitten by a potentially rabid animal consists of a series of shots given over a month. The injections, called post-exposure prophylaxis, are "close to 100percent effective if they are given close to the time of the bite," Grimsrud said.

The last time an Albertan died of rabies was in 1985 when a bat bit a 25-year-old Calgary man while he was working near Smith, 220 kilometres north of Edmonton. He died in Vancouver about five months after being infected.

In 2005, almost 130 people across Alberta received the post-exposure treatment. Most of those people had been bitten by dogs or cats that could not be located and observed for rabies symptoms, said Grimsrud.

While there is no known case of rabies being transmitted between humans, health officials are investigating whether anyone had direct contact with the bodily fluids or saliva of the man after he was infected with the disease. The general public is not at risk, Grimsrud said.

multi-exposure of lusty things

Gamesmanship

(all photographic information is unknown)

All games are governed by rules. I think of games in relationships and cringe. But I guess that games must exist like anything that's generally known to exist. Like any law of nature, gravity or instinct, or reflex; like snow piles in parking lots resembling mountains for the same forces that shape mountains shape them; or the blood-cell shape of new, moving, river-ice, pouring past the banks and bridges, pushed and pulled. Big horn sheep butting heads-- Whyte Avenue yob culture. The forces on everything are the same, and somewhere we're all shaped by these forces, and are, well, forced to act accordingly.

Patience is finite. Love is often interrupted and dissuaded by the lack of practical, relational progress. The same punched-in-the-gut feeling is known by all jilted lovers, across lovers.

Prophesy is real, but it''s by no means supernatural, nor is it a proclamation of genuine inevitability, it's merely a case of perceiving the slight, met with innate anticipation of outcome. You can feel the end, and by each acknowledgment, and each contemplation thereof, the end slides closer. Feeling the end is natural for most; if you focus on it too much though it cheats you and becomes a self-mutilating/self-fulfilling prophesy. You can see too much, you're perception becomes skewed and your motives jealous. Select insecurities further provide a basis for more gamesmanship, which in turn creates the reaction of increasing suspicions, and decreasing acceptance. Unconditional love is at last very conditional. If romantic, the truth stings you, and yet again you ponder the inconsequential, the fantastical, the very fountain of youth: a world without responsibility, a world without end.

In moments like these you falsely praise the possibility of such loss and like a fool you prematurely congratulate yourself for future conquests not yet attempted. But the pain you've known twice before will actually floor you, even killing you a little bit. And then, as before, you will stand up and walk away--- hopefully more prepared for your next endeavour, but hopefully not too acclimatized by the trauma of relationships, for that is pure bitterness.

Jung on Instinct and Consciousness

If psychic life consisted only of self-evident matters of fact – which on a primitive level is still the case – we could content ourselves with a sturdy empiricism. The psychic life of civilized man, however, is full of problems; we cannot even think of it except in terms of problems. Our psychic processes are made up to a large extent of reflections, doubts, experiments, all of which are almost completely foreign to the unconscious, instinctive mind of primitive man. It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the Danaan gift of civilization. It is just man’s turning away from instinct – his opposing himself to instinct – that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. Even when we turn back to nature, inspired by a Rousseauesque longing, we “cultivate” nature. As long as we are still submerged in nature we are unconscious, and we live in the security of instinct which knows no problems. Everything in us that still belongs to nature shrinks away from a problem, for its name is doubt, and wherever doubt holds sway there is uncertainty and the possibility of divergent ways. And where several ways seem possible, there we have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear. For consciousness is now called upon to do that which nature has always done for her children – namely, to give a certain, unquestionable, and unequivocal decision. And here we are beset by an all-too-human fear that consciousness – our Promethean conquest – may in the end not be able to serve us as well as nature.

Problems thus draw us into an orphaned and isolated state where we are abandoned by nature and are driven to consciousness. There is no other way to open us; we are forced to resort to conscious decisions and solutions where formerly we trusted ourselves to natural happenings. Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness, but also the necessity of saying goodbye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature. This necessity is a psychic fact of such importance that it constitutes one of the most essential symbolic teachings of the Christian religion. It is the sacrifice of the merely natural man, of the unconscious, ingenious being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in Paradise. The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse. And as a matter if fact it is in this light that we first look upon every problem that forces us to greater consciousness and separates us even further from the paradise of unconscious childhood. Every one of us gladly turns away from his problems; if possible, they must not be mentioned, or, better still, their existence is denied. We wish to make our lives simple, certain, and smooth, and for that reason problems are taboo. We want to have certainties and no doubts—results and no experiments—without even seeing that certainties can arise only through experiment. The artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction; on the contrary, a wider and higher consciousness is required to give us the certainty and clarity we need.

-Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, The Stages of Life

A Robber band was formed...

This is a story my Dad used to tell us often when we were young and he was alive. I don't really know much about it or where he heard it. It's not overly-clever or overly important to me, but it's a partial memory of mine about my Dad, one of maybe 1000, so--- I used to think he said rubber-band, and that image of self-materialization would confuse me. I'm not 100% sure I have the story right, perhaps the captain arose and said,

It was a dark and stormy night and the rain was coming down. High upon a mountaintop a robber-band was formed. One of the men arose and said "oh captain, tell us a story," "It was a dark and stormy night and the rain was coming down. High upon a mountaintop a robber-band was formed. One of the men arose and said "oh captain, tell us a story," "It was a dark and stormy night and the rain was coming down. High upon a mountaintop a robber-band was formed. One of the men arose and said "oh captain, tell us a story," "It was a dark and stormy night and the rain was coming down. High upon a mountaintop a robber-band was formed. One of the men arose and said "oh captain, tell us a story," "It was a dark and stormy night and the rain was coming down. High upon a mountaintop a robber-band was formed. One of the men arose and said "oh captain, tell us a story," etc...

He'd say it all very theatrically with proper pauses and dynamics, and not because he was theatrical, I assume he just recited it as closely as he could to the original. Whose to say.
He'd go on for about a minute or so, or until we whined, "shut-up", "okay", "enough"

Birth of a Mystic

(photograph by Roger Ballen, from his book "Shadow Chamber")

Birth of a Mystic:
Yes, so slow and eventual,
by the grace of humility,
our rationalist
came to the flip-sided conclusion
that any knowing of truth is impossible,
and seeing as such,
he instead promised to
deferentially fix his gaze upon the all,
both the stillness and the action,
whether state or statue,
only asking in return that
by some accident, by some purposive means,
he might be doubly blessed with functional senses
and bombarded by sensations:
surrounded by mountains,
high high the back of his neck;
spinning,
water and sun upon him;
scraping deeply;
making him dizzy,
cracking his brainstem,
tasting pennies,
smelling balsamic;
flying his cock;
face holding hard to her skin,
enthused nudity,
firmly pressed,
at once connected,
unable to focus in her nearness,
deepening his voice;
with every omission,
indulgence, intricacy, falling hot inside his guts;
stepping on his toes;
the provocation of laughter,
all of it masquerading as information.
"Perceived like love-- likewise, conceived as love and possibly love",
he might come to explain it,
rendering him an honest participant,
as fast symbol, momentarily,
a recognizable trace of humanity
uniquely poured
as particular flesh

alyssa's invite to this year's halloween party 

"unacceptable"

I might be mistaken but I believe my own governmnet, the current shameful Canadian one, is also against a cease-fire. No surprise really considering Harper's such a twat. Ditto with Austrailia's american puppet...

At what point can we say "the world, its current events, the total damnation, is getting out of hand" and really mean it, I mean, really have it be known that we mean it?

The terrible acts of governments and their obvious disregard to public opinion seems to be becoming more of the norm. Perhaps I'm very naive and I'm just noticing these things a little bit more as I mature and becoming more interested in ethical ideals, perhaps it's always been this way; perhaps the fog has never lifted.

What more can a person say beyond, "unacceptable"? Obviously more is needed, perhaps violence is the answer, as uncomfortable as I am to admit it, I'm really starting to lean that way. Though, I might be too scared to get involved with brutality. I'm pretty afraid of confronting my own cowardice, the cowardice that becomes so apparent when I see what little contribution I can make when not directly involved--a word like "unacceptable" is pointless when those who are causing all the damage conceitedly decide to disregard your dissatisfaction. The same goes with petitions and demonstrations. The only thing demonstrations do is tell all of us on our side of the issue that we're not alone in our outrage, beyond that, that pat on the back of all participants, the benefit seems pretty elusive. Of course there is power in numbers, but the fact is, the numbers needed to change the rules are impossible to achieve. The most effective way any single person can affect the problems is to strike out at those that cause them, namely their enemies.

Hi Mr.

Hi Mr.

My given name is Heavy Treason and I work at the Mitch Stills Library Parkade for the City of Whyte. My brain is plastic wrapped, and not with plastic but fog.

Recently, while talking to one of my senior co-workers we began talking about homeless men, homeless women, pissing con-artists.

Paradoxically, we recalled a future event, a parkade certainty, whereby, wild me, I find a whole shit deposit left behind by a vagrant, a varmint, a real bastard, that man that had his way, his body demanded satisfaction hours and hours after the meal. It might have been the sorriest day of disbelief. Remembering: Here whence came forward thrence patrince at the booth. They called --- I heeded. Wailing, I saw shit under the ledge dropped there, sat down the guy, left it for me. I hated the idea of cleaning it up. But in my head I shoveled it into a bag and never seen it again--- can I say this? My breath wasn't working, the whole time it stopped. I continued walking and haven't been able to forget this demonstrative prophesy since.

Friend, what you think about this? I'm sure I have no way of knowing. Is the future probable---is it mere probability?