Archive for April, 2008

To Peaceably Assemble

Posted in Essay on April 26, 2008 by skyscraped

When we gather to express our inalienble right to peaceably assemble, we do so because we want no more than a free and sustainable planet where peace and compassion are truly the highest standards in which to hold all human endeavors. We are here to make a statement to the whole of our society: that these standards are noble and worthy of great devotion. A growing number of humans on this planet desires to live in a highly evolved, conscious, and peaceful world. By being here today, we cast off the doubt that such a world is possible. These doubts have remained in all cultures for millennia–yet today, we stand in open defiance of them. This is a remarkable thing. Do not let anyone persuade you otherwise. The idea that we embrace the philosophies and actions of peace is nothing short of the greatest hopes and dreams of all our ancestors.

So I ask that in your actions, choose to embrace each moment as an opportunity to become a fully conscious member of the world of peace we are creating. I ask that you remember: Peace happens when you think beyond yourself and your ego and extend your heart to those around you–your sisters and brothers in the Peace Movement as well as those in opposition. Only through putting ourselves in the position of another do we learn the greatest truths: That NO ONE deserves our hatred or violence.

All hostility, all sense of otherness, and all belief that we are separate entities at all is a direct result of ignoring the innate, adaptive, and very natural human tendency towards love & compassion. Adapting these tendencies in our daily lives teaches us not to be afraid of ourselves and others, because we can control the outcome of any situation by putting ouselves in the place of another with a mindset of peace.

All we are are saying is what’s been said for thousands of years by people our history books and religions generally regarded as blindly optimistic, insane, or Divine: Love those who you see as different from yourself.

Our numbers are now at critical mass, and this message is accepted by too man to be dismissed. By challenging and focusing all our actions, and especially, reactions, to reflect such blindly optimistic, insane, and Divine advice as, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we liberate not only our minds, but give permission by example for others to liberate their minds in our presence.

Freedom is a tender fruit whose seeds are spread and sweetness multiplied when we invite another to bite from our side of the apple. This is the standard to which we should hold all our actions.

Peace.

Leave A Comment »

A Quantum Love Story

Posted in delphi, lyrics, music with tags , , , , on April 25, 2008 by skyscraped

(a song)

Transmission from the sky tonight:
says it’s time to pay attention to
the signs
you think that’s coincidence
you created?
Forget the trance, it’s just a fancy
card you drew as you were waking up
from the Crowley deck
the Lovers we once knew
as ourselves

But I
am made
of light;
the kind that’s both particles
and waves
of time
And I am bending spoons in the alleyways
behind
your mind
where the Universe Next Door is leaking
all the unsaid
lines we never spoke
again but we will
touch forever
I am all my love
underneath
this skin.

Transmission from the tree outside:
says it’s time to pay attention to
your mind
it’s time to see what’s going on
with the clouds.
Time to smell that sweet red air
and it’s time for you
to fly–
that painful walk from sky to ground
dripping from
your eyes.
And all the awful feelings you get
Swallowed down like
Psalms on Sunday
When you can’t see the Reality–

We
are made
of Light
the kind that’s both particles
and waves
of Time
We are bending spoons in the alleyways
behind
Their minds
where the Universe Next Door is leaking
All the unsaid
lines we never spoke
again but we will
touch forever
all the unsaid lines
we neverspoke again
but we will touch forever
I am all my love
underneath
this skin.

And when you touched me
I felt you love me
like a movement of the Beam
from one corner of the sky

Transmission from my other mind
who lives a parallel kind of life:
says there’s a side to her that I
may never see
The Fool he takes his bird in hand
and then promptly jumps with no
hope of landing;
the Wisest ones are the ones we lock
away.

But We
are made
of Light;
The kind that’s both particles
and Waves
of Time
We are bending spoons
in the alleyways
behind
their minds
and the Universe Next Door is leaking
all the unsaid
lines we never spoke
again but we will
touch forever all the unsaid lines
we neverspoke
again but we will touch forever
all the unsaid lines we
never spoke again; but we will touch
forever
I am only love
underneath this
skin.

Leave A Comment »

Crematorium

Posted in delphi, lyrics, music, poetry, song with tags , , , , on April 25, 2008 by skyscraped

(a song)

On my own I stand today
and whisper the music
of the sage
alone and trembling I am not afraid
as the horses
run out
the gate.

I placed a Tarot card in your hand
the Empress smiled
as she turned to sand
and all my bones disappeared
but here I stand
no body
no mind
no face

But I could swear
I dreamed this before
Everything looks so clear;
Every note, every pore
of my fingers lifting the latch on the door
and the smell of my fear
as it burns on the floor
and the words of my mother
echoing once more:
“Child, you don’t have to be afraid,
Child you don’t have to be afraid.”

Cause everything in this world
gets eaten alive
every cell of every tree
every bee in the hive
dies alone in the warm mouth of Time;
and everything’s gonna be just fine.

Cause I feel something moving my pen
when I write
like I feel something tugging at the dark Veil
of night
Ten thousand stars and all I’m asking for
is a sign.
Familiar music
of a word
in flight.

Or the taste of your mouth as it turns into wine
or the histories of the moon and the poems of the sky
or the red horse sweating between my thighs
as across the Dreaming we ride and we ride.
The dreams of our fathers and the screams
of little girls, all gathered like cinders
at the end of the world
the Fire burns faster if you give into the swirl
of the madness of this age
of the madness of this age….

And I’ve never felt so old
and I’ve never felt so young
as when a story writes its life on my
lips and my tongue,
Burning like the Monks who know they are one
with the beautiful ashes in the cold winter sun
Kissing life like a bullet
screaming from the gun
at the mouth of the Rose where
glass webs are spun–
and shattered by a finger
that don’t know what it’s done,

But it’s a part of the Mystery
wrapped into one.
Like the painful coincidence
that burns my lungs.
With every breath, I seek Death
but am born to the sun–
A tree growin’ green
in a crematorium.

And I could swear
I dreamed this before
Everything looks so clear;
Every note, every pore
of my fingers lifting the latch on the door
and the smell of my fear
as it burns on the floor
and the words of my mother
echoing once more:
“Child, you don’t have to be afraid,
Child you don’t have to be afraid.”

Cause everything in this world
gets eaten alive
every cell of every tree
every bee in the hive
dies alone in the warm mouth of Time;
and everything’s gonna be just fine.

Leave A Comment »

Beauty is the opiate of the masses.

Posted in Uncategorized on April 19, 2008 by skyscraped

And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music.”
-Leonard Cohen, “Chelsea Hotel”

Disclaimer: The following opinion has been shaped by the author’s subjectivity, body issues, experience with beauty, and distaste for the obsession with perfection. Please disregard what you do not assimilate.
-The Mgmt.

Let’s face it: we’re all programmed to respond to symmetry, aesthetics, order, and, well, beauty. As domesticated primates, our eyes have been our most important asset for millions of years, and the ability to identify whether or not a tree limb is going to break if we jump on it, or whether that alpha wants to mate (they usually do) based on the expression in his grin has been highly adaptive . Much of our judgment is centered around the beautiful and the orderly; it’s what makes us buy things, because if we see beauty, we see value and worth. Or so we think.

Patriarchal and fucked up as that is, it makes sense and we’re all given to it. Hell, most of the people I’ve dated have been very attractive. Shallow, maybe; we’re all given to our proclivities based on conditioning and preference. So who am I to judge if you want to get plastic surgery and write a children’s book called My Beautiful Mommy about what happens when Mommy gets a nose job and a tummy tuck. (Notice that she didn’t get breast implants. That would perhaps be too blatantly sexual a subject, and we don’t want our children thinking that Mommy or Daddy have a sexual interest in making themselves more beautiful by unrealistic standards). The book really is no surprise at all, and I dare say it fills a market.

But everyone I know who’s got any balls or who has done anything with their lives have done so because, at some point, they were rejected physically. Growing up awkward and shy, oddly shaped, and uncoordinated colors your perception just as much as it would if you were born Catholic, or Jewish, or black, or white, or from England or Thailand. Not to say that naturally beautiful people don’t do good things, just that there is a sense of satisfaction that comes from relying solely on the merit of your mind rather than your breast-waist-hip ratio. For those of us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, we take solace in the inner realm, the wildness of the psyche that can’t be seen if it’s plasticized, Botox-ed, and micro-dermabrasioned out. Our lines may be deep, our breasts may be given to gravity, our muscles may not be statuesque; but we’ve got the music.

And with that, I leave you with Century of the Self. Watch it. It’s the key to happiness, success, eternal life, beauty, truth, and endless hours of tantric sex. Or at least a smug self-satisfaction that while the beautiful people are out there reading cute books about their new plastic bodies to their beautiful children who will forever be marred by an insatiable quest for perfection, you’re well on your way to waking up from the Ambien-and-vodka stupor of the American Dream.
-skyscraped

Leave A Comment »

Go then, there are other worlds than these…

Posted in Essay on April 15, 2008 by skyscraped

As with most things, I try and keep a record of syncronicity and such, and being as that I co-created them, I think I’ve got a right to the intellectual property of the story of my life, weird and boring as it sometimes is. Here’s a recent example:

About 2 months ago, I started a simple song on guitar after I woke from a dream with this line in my head: “Look now, there’s a tower in the water…” The dream involved a large tower standing 60 feet or so in the air, which I climbed with three friends. We were eventually shooed off by black helicopters. It was oddly vivid, that dark tower standing stark against a gorgeous blue sky laced with clouds, not unlike the illustrations in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands (named, like this blog, for the T.S. Eliot poem) which admittedly was an obsession of mine in high school. Needless to say, I felt a little weird upon waking.
I’ll post the song soon. But the interesting intersection in this meandering road of an essay is this article that I found today, courtesy of the Daily Grail (thank you Twitch) on the mystery of the Irish towers with doorways that open 4 meters above ground:

No surprise therefore that there has been widespread speculation about the round towers, with several writers pushing their date back to pre-Christian times. For historian H. O’Brien, they were even built by the Tuatha de Danann, the People of the goddess Danu, an Irish race of gods, who originally lived on “the islands in the west”, from where they invaded and conquered Ireland.

Tuatha de Danann legends oft mirror the legends of the giants, the Nephilim, the Annunaki, and the Viracochas: all high magicians, godlike in their powers, with the ability to manipulate time and space, all who supposedly left behind great works of architecture. Whether there’s any validity to that is up to you to research and decide for yourself. I personally prefer to breathe and work deeply the mystery. Because it’s just more fun that way.

But if indeed part of a forgotten tradition, or a lost knowledge, nothing beats practical experimentation. Farmer John Quackenboss of Virginia decided to construct a round tower; in 1986, he erected five 6′ high terracotta pipes of 12” diameter filled with basalt gravel, covering an area of 1000 acres. He capped the pipes with a cone of concrete, made with basalt gravel and coated in crushed basalt, bringing the total height to two metres – nowhere near the height of the average round tower. After six weeks, his farm enjoyed increased crop yields, despite drought conditions. He reported that the area covered by the towers had higher rainfall, but less moisture evaporation.

And with that, I leave you with lyrics. Dream well, dream deeply, dream of the Tower which connects all things, may it lead you to other worlds than these.

Read more »

Leave A Comment »

In the Valley of Elah…

Posted in Essay, Iraq War, Torture with tags , , , on April 10, 2008 by skyscraped

I watched In the Valley of Elah last night, and at first I was skeptical that it was going to be good. It seemed like a typical murder mystery: soldier comes home from Iraq, goes AWOL, they find his body cut up and burned, and think it’s linked to drugs. You know, because they don’t drug test in Iraq and those Mexican gangs selling Meth just pray on returning soldiers. Which does happen. But what really happened was WAY more fucked up. WAY more. Can I stress how WAY MORE FUCKED UP what really happened was than a soldier who’s got a drug problem, tries to score on his first weekend back, and ends up getting fucked over and brutally murdered by a dealer? Yeah, that’s fucked up. But the plot reveals no stereotypical Hollywood ending. So if you haven’t seen the movie, watch it. Because when it’s all said and done, and you’re shivering in your blanket, eyes wide and tears brimming, there’s a moment when it all sinks in: it really happened.

Let me make this clear: I believe it’s important to defend yourself. Sometimes that means killing people. If anyone ever tried to hurt my dog, or my niece, or one of my friends, or my parents, and I was physically there and could physically stop it, even if it meant killing them with whatever tools available, if they weren’t going to stop, I’d kill them. I’ve killed a water moccasin with a hoe because he was nesting next to my horse and almost struck my mom. I felt bad, because he was just doing what any old snake would do, but it was necessary. Killing him made me feel sick to my stomach. It was just a snake, you say. Well, it was life. It was blood and flesh and fangs bared. Death is a part of life, though, and sometimes life needs death to continue. I’m a relatively strict vegetarian, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to lay my head on the tracks while my rights or the rights of those I love are railroaded over.

What I’m opposed to is violent, spiritual, tortured death. It happens when you’re raped. It happens when you’re tortured. It happens to factory-farmed animals in a slaughterhouse. It happens when “preemptive war” becomes synonymous with “Patriotism.” It happens when you come home from a cesspool of atrocity and can’t deal with the shallow materialistic hologram of reality that is American culture, and you blow your own brains out. It happens when you’re a 21 year old boy given a gun and told to shoot brown people, and then told it’s okay to laugh, it’s how you deal. And it happens so frequently and with such fervor in war that I have no doubt that there is some cyclical need, not by all people, but by the few who manipulate the many, to keep the heart of a blood thirsty god pumping by gorging itself on a feast of human suffering. It’s a cult of death, people. Plain and simple, dark and furious.

So that’s where I stand. It’s a lonely little place that’s got a few supporters, but our numbers are growing. When people talk about the casualties of this war, and how there are so few in comparison to every other war we’ve had (none of which, by the way, have been formally declared since World War II), I just want to scream. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person or thousands. I don’t think people realize the effects of torture, either. It doesn’t just affect the person being tortured. It’s the torturer who has to keep on living with her or himself, and it’s the taxpayers on the other side of the ocean who go to sleep every night with nary a thought that their money is funding systematic soul-killing.

That’s it. That’s where I stand. I don’t want a child to grow up in this world. I want to change it. And it’s cold over here, but it’s getting warmer.

-skyscraped

Leave A Comment »

Seventh Night

Posted in Annunaki on April 4, 2008 by skyscraped

Tonight the sky swirls
with vultures
cloud-seeding grids over Dallas
like slender silver-backed fish
diving through ebony
leaving long, white, wakes.

Last night the rain came hard
woke my dog, asleep at my feet.
Had to close the windows.

I’d been dreaming of this place,
all dark reds, Enochian on the walls,
like some gothic junkie Crowlean wanna-be,
but firmly a part of the Dreaming.
A man in a bowler hat read his poetry:

“The Mage commands that U.S. operatives
give no mind to the coming Apocalypse”

He is a lunatic
and ex-Intelligence
so I don’t disbelieve him.

Some bird-haired lady kept asking me
“Do you know who’s side you’re on?”
And I looked in my bag for some kind of initiation
but my hand sprouted this garden
and I blinked;
opium poppies in a hashishim harem
Hassan I Sabbah looked up at me
with one red eye.

The rain makes me remember.

Leave A Comment »