Well damn

"Online misinformation about election fraud dropped plunged 73% after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week..." ---/The Washington Post/ Ironic that my last post calls out Dump’s misuse of Twitter, and here we are in 2021 and the Orange bastard has been banned from nearly every internet/social platform there is. Of course this action came after a frothing mad throng of his cult followers quite literally broke down windows and doors to storm inside the United States Capitol building.

A shift in perspective

"If you're afraid of dying, and you're holdin' on, you'll see devils tearin' your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freein' you from the world. It all depends on how you look at it. #151;_from the film,_ Jacob's Ladder What a time to be alive right now. This virus forced us all to shift our perspective of the goings-on of daily life; well, at least those of us with any tact or compassion.

The "I" delusion

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.” ---Aleister Crowley

Infect ignorance

Phenomenal comparison: "So, the way we’re dealing with the new coronavirus is the way computer newbies deal with computer viruses. I know because I have supported a virus neophyte, my mom. The current US govt is behaving pretty much the way she would. She didn’t want to learn the rules, and she wanted to pretend it was okay, get back to business as usual (checking her email, writing a blog post).

No virgin, no pigeon

"We place no reliance on virgin or pigeon; Our method is Science, Our aim is Religion. ---Aleister Crowley In anything and all things, question everything. Even, if not especially, those of the spiritual or metaphysical sense. ∴

Guided consciousness

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." ---Carl Jung The only goal of aimlessness is entropy. Opting out of directing our lives does not in turn opt us out of the overall game of Life. Life continues around us with our active participation or without. No one gets to be an NPC in life. You’re either directing your thoughts, energy and actions or someone//thing/ else is.

Rick Rubin: the zen master

I’ve binged the Showtime docu-series “Shangra-La” and it’s been great. I’ve always loved the music Rick Rubin has brought to us, what he’s done to the music industry in general…but man. I had no idea how zen Rick Rubin is. His studio/compound is my dream. Such a creative and judgment-free space for artists to explore themselves. Great docu-series. Beautifully synchronistic.

The best show

No words… The Midnight Gospel

On writing

Of all the things that I do or that I am, at my core I am a storyteller; a writer. That’s not to say I’m any good at it. I’m certainly not employed as such. In fact, I have never earned a dime from the craft. However, I am a writer. All writers have their own methods to their madness. I am no exception. I have zero advice for aspiring or would-be writers beyond this: write.

On Magick

"You're already doing magick---you just don't know it." --- Damien Echols Rabbits out of hats. Busty ladies sawed asunder. A card you secretly selected appears in a friend’s purse. These are all examples of parlor magic. Sleight of hand. Simple tricks played on the eye. Or, as Arrested Development’s Gob puts it: "Illusions, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money...or candy." We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about Magick.

New tooling

I’ve been that old dog for years now. And my old trick has been vim. Countless friends and colleagues have tried their best to show me the “way” of IDE’s and fanciful text editors. But I’ll turn around and find a vim plugin that can just about do the same thing. Thus thwarted their conversion. I dabbled in Sublime Text (even bought a license) and Atom. Had a previous employer pay for a Jetbrains Pycharm license.

Starting a garden

Built a couple garden beds over the weekend and planted some vegetables. Growing our own food is a target goal for us. While we’re nowhere near achieving that goal, this is a great first step. There’s so much to learn, and I expect a lot of failure along the way. But, if we get one meal—even a single salad—out of this harvest, I’ll consider it a success.

Reading more

There are many productive activities to engage yourself with during this shelter-in-place state of things. One of my favorites has always been reading. I decided a week or so ago to tackle a much larger reading project than normal. I decided to read the entire The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. This is an impressive eight book series; around 4250 pages. So far book one is completed and I’m well into book two.

What does normal mean?

"Once again there was the desert, and that only." --- Stephen King; "/The Gunslinger/" As the world continues to reel from the impact of this virus, life for the rest of us grows a bit more settled. Settled into some new, strange normal. But, is this a normal we want to embrace? Even the most introverted among us—of which I may personally ascribe myself to—the lack of social contact is pure and simple inhuman.

The Five of Cups

Five of Cups So, for the New Moon in Taurus we did a little Tarot reading. The first card of focus was to be “what do I need to nurture during this season?” I pulled the Five of Cups. A card typically associated with regret, failure, disappointment, and other negative emotional fixations. At first, this confused me. But after some mindful soul-searching, the purpose came to me. It’s time to stop beating myself up over “lost time” and “missed opportunities.

The land of the stupid

“But this wealth of information produced little or no insight.” --- Stephen King I don’t Facebook or any of that. But I do browse Reddit. So, while I’ve mostly saved myself the temptation of enganging utter fucking morons in an online forum—or at the very least, abstracted my name from said engagements—it seems impossible to escape the sheer stupidity of the Facebook populace. Have you ever browsed r/insanepeoplefacebook? Christ on a cross!

Sanity check

Perhaps the following quote is an odd source of inspiration for this post, but so be it: "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." --- Warren Buffett The above advice is in regard to investing, particularly with regard to managing one’s emotions in their investment endeavors. Certainly this quote is applicable at this time—a time of abject uncertainty in finances, for sure—but I think we can draw from it with regard to our lives, society, and well-being.

On being free

Thinking about what it means to be free. Truly free. Unshackled from the mechanism of normal. “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” --- Henry David Thoreau Note to self: I should read Civil Disobedience. “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” --- John F. Kennedy Freedom is a dangerous pursuit; a noble pursuit.

What's so good about this Friday?

“The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--- Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.” ---T.S. Eliot I guess I both do and don’t understand the whole notion of “Good Friday.” For the believer, it is the day upon which reconciliation with the creator is made. But at what cost?