The Road to Awe

When was the last time you felt awe?

When was the last time you felt the power of your illusions washing over you?
Had you noticed the splendor of the snow on the elm boughs this afternoon?
The gleam of the steeple as the sun kisses the last of its rays upon the decade?

Awe is all around us, all the time, everywhere:
it is only our inability to let it in that causes such confusion,
pain, emptiness, and even assurances that our consciousness
is the true path,
whereas the true path exists somewhere between
awake and dreaming:
or dreaming while awake
or being awake while dreaming,
Is it really there?
Or have I tricked myself into believing my own illusion?

All we have are our illusions--
any attempts to demonize
or moralize
or realize our way out of them
is just another illusion.

We live in a stately-pleasure dome
amidst our own illusions
We cannot leave the dome
Outside?
Can we express the meaninglessness of a vacuum with our limited rationalization?

The tree boughs wind their ways through my world
and into my soul:
I am the trees,
and my soul, the last sun rays

Why are we damned to think otherwise?

Gaia's Tears

I

Lachrymology

Lachrymology.(noun). The study of crying as therapy.

She stands barefoot on the cold shore of an empty lake. The stars are out, but they do not shine. Here they merely glimmer, as if buried under many thousands of leagues of water, like pearls in the murk. Her hair is made of olive branches and her garments are of the appearance of gossamer windswept clouds. Stolid is her posture, yet it is obvious she is in mourning. Her face is a waterfall for the unnumbered tears that flow freely forth from her crystalline eyes. Here they collect and fill this lake for which there is no end. The sky is a hue that is hard to put a finger on; some might say it was pre-dawn; others might simply think it was overcast with cloud. The unnatural stillness of the water is beyond serene. The air has no scent, but it is stuffy to breathe. Despite the never-ending stretch of water before her, the acoustics here seem as those of a small, enclosed space. No echoes follow her sobs. The emptiness in the atmosphere precipitates abysmal melancholy. The silence here is final, absolute, infinite.

She stands here at this point in time not by choice, but by charge. She cries because she must; the lake is almost full.

As an omen, her father approaches from behind her, through the mist that is not within her foresight. His presence for her is at once comforting, but also one that fills her with a sickening sense of doom. He places a loving hand upon her naked shoulder, but she flinches at first because he is electric to the touch. He smiles warmly.

“Do not be afraid, daughter.”

And somehow, at the sound of his words, she is completely reassured, through and through. His hand comforts her again and this time it is tender and warm, and she reaches up and places her hand over his.

“I was just reflecting, a while,” she speaks, a quiet voice that does not give evidence of her deep wisdom. Her eyes remain trained on a point somewhere over the horizon. To look upon her face, one would find it difficult to place an age on such a thing. To come closer to her and meet her azure eyes, one would gaze into a pale eternity of misery that is without redemption. Her tears do not cease.

“I know.”

“I don’t know why, but it makes me sad, still, the coming of the sun.”

An expression of amusement and love crosses his face. He draws breath and speaks to her, as if explaining a simple triviality to a child. Perhaps he was.

“Daughter, we cannot change the passage of time any more than we can change the essence of the water. The sun will come and the sun will go, and so shall you with it. It is alright to be apprehensive: your day in the sun will be overwhelming, terrifying, exhilarating, difficult and joy-filled all at once. Embrace it, as those have before you. It is all you can hope to do.”

At this, she giggles for the first time in her existence. It is a sound that ripples the water and, in turn, breaks the dawn. The horizon catches fire and suddenly there is noise! Horrendous and beautiful and chaotic and harmonious all at once! She smiles a smile that blows a sharp wind over the water and rolls the waves away from the shoreline. Father and daughter, they smile together on the edge of the day. She turns to face him, and remembers how wonderful he is. He bends at the waist and holds her hair back to plant a kiss on her forehead. She closes her eyes and feels it is time.

“Go…”

She grins at him and can barely hold back her excitement: she can taste it. She laughs again, louder, fuller, richer, and hugs her father deeply. At this, even he is surprised, and he laughs with her. Without another word, she turns and dives into the water. Her garments leave her body as she cuts her first few zealous strokes through the building waves. Within moments, the sun has crept past the edge of the water and she is silhouetted in heat.

He watches her for as long as he can, shading his eyes with his hand from the dawn. He last sees her, fading off, swimming toward the sun.

Gaia's Tears

II

Raindrop Nirvana

“I’m at the bottom of the top of the bottom.”

It happens as I am out one morning for a jog through the park. It is raining intermittently upon leaving the house, but I am soon caught in a relative downpour. Truly a May shower if I've ever seen one: the air is no longer cool, even just past dawn with the sky a deep and greyish blue. Spring is ubiquitous in sight, sound, and smell. The freshly cut grass takes on the scent of freshly brewed tea leaves when moistened by the rainwater. The dull, accidental tranquility of the scene reminds me of Scotland, where the grass is bright green and the air is beyond humid and the land seems ancient and ethereal.

Two parks, containing two man-made lakes surround my suburban neighbourhood; during the mornings these are usually crawling with strangely overweight women walking strangely underfed dogs. But today this grey, somber atmosphere contains no such creatures, save myself. Here, I jog: toward a flock of Canadian geese bobbing serenely along the water; there, thousands of tiny ringlets of water droplets creating an infinitely complex and yet somehow organized pattern of randomness across the surface of the lake. I gasp for breath; the condition of my body is an absurdity. Now my pace slows and I find myself walking briskly along the asphalt path that has been carefully measured and paved out for my well-being. A robin scampers across this path, my path, some ten yards in front of me, twitching and poking with such natural fluidity. The calls of the birds, ducks, geese: these too share a bond with the raindrops in their unique organization.

Here, a bench, wooden and damp, nestled within a grove of willows at the end of the path. Carved upon it are numerous autographs from previous midnight intimacies-- "Garret & Stacey," "M.T. + A.L.," "BAER," etc, etc. Such a locale had provided adequate privacy from the basement windows of the lakeside showhomes that line the opposite bank. Here, gasping and pawing young boys and girls shared first kisses, or first make-outs, or even first joints on this hidden park bench, overlooking the stillness of a man-made lake. Here I rest, briefly, on this wet park bench on an early May morning.

And here is peace.

The roads and traffic and supermarkets and gas stations and construction sites and dilapidated homes take their place at my back, faded, artificial, unimportant. Two mallards notice my hurried breaths, my acrid sweat, my fast-beating heart, and swim out toward deeper, safer waters. A tangled call of a sparrow, behind me, to my right. In my reflective state I realize it is inharmonious and carries a different tone than the usual hum-drum of chirps: danger. For here I am a predator, and so shall I be marked; a warning cry to the neighbourhood; an alien on fertile soil; a hunter; imbalance. I do not deny that it is only natural for these smaller creatures to react as they do, but now I have realized two things: I am a virus and I cannot do anything to change that. Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life, ad infinitum. The ducks fear me because I am vicious and I have killed before.

The rain continues to fall, however lightly. From the droplets upon the lake, I try to discern the pattern that I know is there, but my feeble brain cannot process such a task. To be one with the Earth is to be One and also to be Everything, and by definition: not human. To be human is to be lost, puzzled, cold, sad and lonely. And yet here, at this park bench, I feel I am none of these things. There can be peace here at this spot, if only for a short time. All the garbled, chaotic, apocalyptic greed and masterfully orchestrated anarchy of politicians, businessmen, lawyers, yuppies, militants, freedom fighters, jihadists are simply second tier. Like the city at my back, they have lost presence in my mind.

Here there is energy, boundless and beautiful. The mind is calmed and in turn the soul is cleansed. Without realizing I am a part of this ecosystem, I have participated in the enrichment of it. Here I gain energy and peace of mind, after which my energies are released back into the cycle. I could stay. It would be one step closer to joining with the Earth, and one step further away from my humanity. There is power here; the power to create and power to destroy, here in this dreary pond full of scum and birdshit.

A half-ton truck lumbers by burning diesel fuel, drowning out the birds, the sound of the rain. Suddenly I realize I'm getting wet and I quickly stand back up and pull the hood over my hair, so it doesn't get wet. Back to the asphalt path, the one that will lead me back into my plastic existence. I try jogging back home, and I feel I've made a little improvement since I began. I can maintain a little longer, I can push a little harder, and I can concentrate a little clearer, since my moment at the lake. I take my reflections and I do two things: first, I swallow them up into a part of my soul that needed brightening, like nourishment for a hungry part the soul. Second, I tromp back home, into my basement, sit down at my computer, its fan humming, screen blinding, processor compiling. I plug myself in and make a sad attempt to put what I have experienced into words.

I fail.

Gaia's Tears

III

Grid-Iron Sanity

“I tug at the strings of my being with teeth made of engines.”

Downtown now: more rain and more traffic. Here are dirty alleyways and gutters and garbage and construction. More like destruction. The city is in a prolonged state of slow decay, rotting from the inside out like so many of its cancer-stricken residents. Here, muddy rainwater collects into pools of stagnant fermentation, laced with all of the usual plastic disposables. In the night, rain takes on a more active tone, one that teases activity when there is none.

Perfect spiral. Water beads are ejected through something called centrifugal force; here slicing through the raindrops like a bullet through so much tender flesh. Even the steady downpour is no match for the ferocious din of the power generator, the air conditioner, the internal combustion engine. Here trees have been replaced by skyscrapers, the birds with two-door compacts, the mallards with jawing miscreants, scuttling now this way, now that.

Near the hospital now: here is better lighting. No longer will night blindness be any excuse for a fumble. Now strolling: embracing the shower, pondering the architecture, stumbling along the broken pavement and water-laden pits of gravel.

Stop.

This small alleyway provides momentary shelter from the wind. An old apartment complex contains this makeshift courtyard, completed with metal walkways and empty laundry lines hanging out of the third floor windows. A single halogen lamp dictates the aesthetic here: long shadows and pools of water reflect some unidentifiable nobility hidden inside this narrow, forgettable place.

Perhaps theft has occurred, or something has been murdered-- a light, a feeling, a place in time. With the presence of so many unfiltered eyes, true beauty is an empty cause, a romanticist's wet dream. It goes back to the rules of observation: when something is observed it is consequently altered, hence, no objective reality can exist. That is to say, because of us, because of you, because of me, our dreams will never come true. We can hold a candle up at the height of a thunderstorm, but it will always be extinguished. The follies of materialism.

The courtyard is left behind in its secret appeal. Back on the street now, under a canopy of hundred year old elms, cemented and without honor, here in the bowels of the city. Here are coaches, parked for the night; silent giants garnering mysterious intrigue lay as dormant shells for their many passengers from the rain. Running along the hard, white plastic side panel is a splatter of stark red. It drips the malignant menace of horror down into the rain-washed gutter. Tonight, the rain aids murder.

A multi-layered parking garage: open-roofed, inviting, lascivious to the observer. Up another slippery metal stairway. Small, artificial rivulets of water draining at odd angles along the sloped surface. The view is much better up here, if only for a short time. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak.

Rest.

A subtle flight of concrete steps leads back to the Asphalt Earth. It is the entrance to a parking garage, here at the back of the Employment Office, 1911 Broad Street South. The scene is tense, filled with electricity in a literal sense: painted white cables snake at right angles like metallic vines carrying the energy that feeds this wasteland of cement and steel. “PUSH BUTTON TO CROSS ALLEY,” instructs a well-placed sign. The hum of artificial energy is everywhere, strobing across the body, vibrating the brain, tickling the nose.

These old shoes are starting to go.

The vantage point of a street curb is one seldom fully appreciated. Down here, things don’t seem so cut and dry: plants feverishly glisten in the breeze and collect raindrops on their tiny leaves. Up through pavement sprouts nature, persevering, even here in the belly of the beast. This nettle plant maintains an ardent and altogether defiant disposition, and with good cause. For Earth, man is but a moment, only a whisper amongst the deafening cacophony of time. Very soon now, these nettles will line the intersections, these metal cables will be replaced with organic vines, these fabricated dwellings swallowed up in a wave of the infinite.

How long?

The rain portends disaster, but also renewal. A weak acid, the droplets beat into the asphalt and concrete, constantly wearing away what little man has done to ensure his comfort in decadence. In the moment, subjectively, man seems to be permanent; inevitable; ultimate. It is easy to believe in such whimsical notions as Progress, Virtue, or The Will to Power. These are the illusions man suffers in the lustful, petroleum-driven chaos of urbanity. Man will continue to believe he is God as long as the Earth will tolerate his malfeasance. Truly, these are but trivialities to the boundless power contained in this single nettle plant. To be happy with this rape is to be human.

But stone crumbles and iron rots. Glass will shatter and fall.

A Word From The Wise

"The knowledge of politics and and ass rape have a positive relationship."

How This Blog Got Its Name

"Wow, Henry, you're clearly hard as fuck. Please don't obliterate me with your devastating wisdom."

What a fucking cockstain.

May be a lover, but she ain't no dancer

The surge of propulsion of energy swirling past me; i can feel it grazing my skin, peeling it off one small dead cell at a time. this kill your idols bullshit simply wont cut it: only epic music please. hmmm... led zeppelin.... it will work for what i need.

with all of this energy, this life, this brazen and supposed omnipotence, there's a cold and dying embrace that's gripping my eyeballs right through to the back of my skull. what the fuck is that? because it's gripping my eyeballs, my eyelids are peeled back, far, far away from each other; red blood vessels on white globes. a scene from a clockwork orange comes to mind.

there's the gut to consider, too. he's just pissed. pretty much, he and i have stopped talking. there was a bit there when we stilled lived together and were constantly at each other's throats, but now that we've distanced ourselves... suffice it to say we're both "comfortable." but tonight... in this state... he's back in town for the weekend and he is one angry motherfucker and he isn't the least bit shy about showing it.

sometimes i worry about what effects this mania might be having on my body, but that passes... because then i remember that i am pure energy and i quite simply do not care.

scratch that. i am incapable of caring. there's just no time to be wasted pissing away, worrying about the physical condition, which, as i've learned, is just an illusion. didn't you catch that? it was in today's classifieds:

HEY! DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT THE PHYSICAL CONDITION IS JUST AN ILLUSION? IT'S TRUE! ENJOY YOUR LIFE NOW! :-)

apparently the truly enlightened don't have much of an ad budget.

so, with that in mind, all of the above is fluff. *poof!* gone, like so much waste and dirt up into the vacuum bag. it is a good analogy because the physical condition and its attributes are not [i]gone[/i], they are only removed to a place that does not count. if you wanted to move waste and dirt to a place that they do not count, you would put them in a bag, yes? that way, you're not stepping all over them when you're barefoot, in the kitchen, grabbing that last cruddy and staled muffin you've been passing off but have to eat now because it's 2 am and you're starving and exhausted.

sorry, bit of a tangent, but i think the point still stands. there is weariness attached to this power, but to ignore the fatigue, the sheer immensity and consciousness of this power is divine. that is to say, to be insane and to know one is insane but to also ignore that fact is to be supreme.

so, this is how god feels on a good day.

of course there is a price i must pay. nothing is free. there are no free lunches. fuck the golf club membership. newton had it quantified with his laws of motion, but he was only doing just that: quantifying. for every action there is an opposing and opposite reaction is an affirmation of the tao, the way, the order of things. it explains manic-depression itself: unbelievably brilliant highs coupled with shatteringly mindnumbing lows. every happiness has its tear, ever laugh has its scorn, every passionate kiss has its passionate punch.

every orgasm ends in death.

balance. equilibrim. so when newton said that everything has to balance out, he was demonstrating ancient chinese wisdom. very useful.

so has it come to this? is there a mortality to the infinite? i think there must be. for if i am truly pure energy, and if i must feel this weariness, then surely the infinite must feel the weight of it all. that brings me another thought: all. pure energy is all. it is everything... it encompasses and consumes and simply exists to be all and contain all, all at the same time. so this weight i'm feeling, if i am to be pure energy and energy is all, where is this weight i'm feeling coming from, this weariness? if i am all, what is pressing me down?

it is time. that crushing, horrifying, blinding and excellently crafted executioner of the infinite: time. if the universe were a dove, whisping amongst the clouds and fluttering in expectation of the future its wings, soft and perfect in its own flawed, beautiful way, then time would be the wolf with superb jaws of iron that rips the head from the dove. when its time has come. this analogy is near-perfect because the wolf does not kill out of hate, or fear or anger or lust, it kills for life. it kills because killing is what it does. the blood flows because it must... inside or out, blood does what blood does: it flows. red.

my dove soars today, higher than you could even dream, higher than what you know to be high. it has silver feathers and a beak of perfect silver. it knows no bounds, be they terrestrial or mortal. but far, far below, this dove still casts a deep shadow, toward the earth upon which the hungry fangs of a desperate wolf trods, eternally, in misery.

The "Sick" Nietzsche, c. 1899

Well, I think Ill go turn myself off....

my urine is orange. i'm so dehydrated i'm pissing pulp. the enlarged taste buds on my tongue and cloying at me like a disease. sometimes my chest starts hurting so intensely i prepare myself for a heart attack. maybe that's what they are. my mouth tastes of ash. my hands smell of ash. my eyes look of ash. i feel like a chimney sweep. the bruise on my quad is blooming. my face is greasy with sweat and canola oil. my stomach churns... always, always.

i haven't eaten since this morning... i just worked another day without a break...i didn't sleep last night... i was still drunk when i got up... the lunch rush was my break. i didn't even have to help the guys stock the wood pile. my everything hurts.

i have every reason to engage bitterness. but what i feel is not anger or spite or coldness but an overwhelming and all-encompassing sense of cynicism. cycnical to the point of complete disregard for everything; the be all and end all trump card for any bullshit i encounter. for every cheap son of a bitch who throws up roadblocks, i smile as i counter with pure wit. there is nothing that can stop me.

there are pains, there are wears, there are tears (and tears), but always, always there is energy.

this manic energy will one day swallow me whole as it has my mother. but to bask in it and to embrace it not as an object of shame, but as a weapon. to channel it and hone it and cherish it and to master this weapon-- to become one with the energy is to become one with the ultimate. it is the honest perception of invincibility. of utter awesomeness.

so yes, i am jaded, but i accept this state as the product of my consciousness; the price of self-awareness is the inability to purport, submit, condone and or regard any amount of bullshit whatsoever simply for want of a better world.

is it philanthropy i speak of? if so, it is some of the most egotistical kind. make no mistakes now, if you understand me thus far, you're probably willing to accept just a little more.

i live for me. and me only. purists will scream about karma and hypocrisy, but one need only consider the definition of me. i am a monster of energy, and i consume all.

i AM all.

the stink was unbelievable

thus far, this fucker seems to revolve around food, or the prospect of food. so be it. ever eat some fast food in your car, then it stinks up the car for about a week and a half later? fuck me, that is some awful shit. it's a way of punishing you afterward.


i spilled a container full of toothpicks in my vehicle the other day. hundreds of these pointy little wooden fuckers are beneath the seat, clogging the instruments, depreciating the value of this fine motor vehicle. they're still sitting there... i haven't decided if im going to contract the work out or just vacuum it.


one time, garret and i were getting 2 for 1 pizza at about 1 am, and some annoying dick pulled up right next to us in a celica or something like that and left his headlights on, glaring directly into the cab of my truck, and into my face. i think they were listening to ntz, ntz, ntz. after waiting for garret to come back with the cheap slices, my alcohol saturated blood told me it would be a good idea to back up quickly and peel out in the snow, causing the chauches in the toyota to be amazed at my vehicular piloting dexterity. instead of that happening, i viciously backed into a gaurd rail and broke my driver's side tail light.

that'll show 'em.

dinner time for minor memes

do you know how hard it is to peel the sticker off a ripe nectarine when you've just cut your fingernails? it's tough.

i suppose i'm starting this because i need a forum to express the neverending miamsa that keeps building up inside my head when i don't have any new posts to respond to.

i've been thinking about this for a while now, just haven't really gotten around to doing it. we'll see how long this lasts. right now, i just scarfed two of the most luscious (sp?) nectarines ever created in the history of the world. they were made with spliced fish genes.

i'm finding this an incredibly dull exercise, thus far, but it's nice just to write something for once. i can't even remember the last time i just churned something out. my fingers have forgotten all the right muscle memories they need to pound out a couple thousand words in one sitting. it's important to get into a flow. of course, one needs to know what it is they're writing about in order to get into that flow--- you need to know where the river is before you can swim in it. and you need to know a lot more about that river-- things like depth, currents, piaranahs, rapids, slowpids, and the like.

i didn't want to ruminate like this. this is humbling, but i am not surprised. what i want this to be is a wankfest, not a taoist take on modern life. all in all, i feel pretty good about this project. in that it may or may not suck.

in closing, this was me, once. (about a month ago, i guess)