rolling into it.

i’m @ arabica in seattle, and i was almost going to go to shinka, except shinka apparently closed down. now i am at arabica (over top pot) simply because the chalkboard sign outside of it says:

an elevator to the truth
… come ride with space eagle and moon fox.

reminded me a lot of the joy harjo book i’ve been talking about, so i came in, ordered my drink, and asked about that. turns out the quote was from the mind of the artistic director guy here, who books all of their multi-disciplinary events, and i lent him that book (to pick it up next week). i think / hope he’ll dig it, particularly because this line was so… appropriate… to the book, for me.

rolling into the intuition thing. feels good so far.

i actually wrote john [g] a long letter yesterday along these lines, and his response, though i won’t post it in its entirety, has been comforting.

the letter:

Dear John –

This letter will probably come as a surprise to you, but I was previously in the airport, walking to my next gate, in-between flight transfers, drafting this fucking letter to you! I have since written another letter and forgotten the previously-head-drafted letter verbatim, buttttttttt this is the general gist of it, and I don’t have any particular goal of sending this to you, other than the fact that there are very few humans one can talk to about such subject matters, and you are one of the few I know who may “get it”.
Lately – I mean almost quite literally beginning at the start of 2011 – I have felt this extremely, extremely intense sense of spirituality and general universal / cosmic connection. To the point where it’s almost kind of debilitating, where I wander around places – like the airport – after reading portions of Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors Of Perception” and just feeling completely wind-blown by reality because it resonates so very fucking much. Do you know this feeling?

Since about two weeks into January 2011, this sense of abundance and resonance has been present in my life in ever-exponentially-growing ways. I mean, I’ve always been kind of apt to believe in things in a vague, super vague way… as in, I’ll take a tarot card reading somewhat seriously but also with a grain of salt; I’ll read about astrology and say, “Hrm! That is strangely accurate! What a fun coincidence!” but with this year has come this unique sense that all of these things have truth – to a level where it no longer feels like mere coincidences to me, but absolutely *fact*. And I’m not sure what started these feelings, but I do know that the idea of patterns and chaos and well, the inexplicable everything rendering this reality we know that is perfect, perfect, perfect, yet imperfect in our manifestations and understanding of it – is now my reality… in a very solid, very real way. As solid as can be, anyway.

I could go on forever but I want not to or feel the need not to, at this point. I guess my question, if I were to have one, is… how the fuck do you cope with this feeling? The weight of this knowledge feels crippling. And this is a concept that people talk about time and time again in mystical readings, but seriously… the human need to want to quantify and qualify this shit in some kind of creative way is yearned for sooooo intensely… I mean, especially as a writer… not being able to find the words to explain this feeling simply because there aren’t really words to explain this feeling… (there are only ways to beat around the bush and hopefully get to a place where the feeling can be vaguely understood, and even then it leaves you feeling, like I said, all cosmically wind-blown and shit) is maddening! It’s all completely maddening! How does one cope! Is there such a thing as coping? Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiet.

And the other question is. Did you find your own spiritual growth – for lack of a better word — exponential? Because it started off so very miniscule but now I feel like it is touching ever little fucking aspect of everything I do, and growing by leaps and bounds – partly because of my seeking it out, to a degree, but the amount of synchronicities and similar things beyond my control seem to be ramping up, as well. And I just keep thinking – and I am not the only one echoing this sentiment lately because I feel like more and more people (or at least my peers) are feeling the power of things beyond their control – “Hot fucking damn, if this shit keeps continuing on like it has been, I’m going to fucking lose it!” cause it’s already hard enough to deal with it! How can it possibly feel more intense or get more intense?!!!

I feel crazy! Anyways. Ever curious about your insights into this matter. THX!
Vivian

portion of his response to me:

Some mantras that have helped me:

The world is more like an art project than a science experiment.

Consciousness does not arise matter, matter is comprised from thought.

The soul does not live inside the body, the body resides inside the soul.

This is why basically anything is possible. When you look at it, as horrifying as life seems sometimes, it is fucking interesting, and that’s the point. It’s good art. If it was all peace, love, and happiness, it would suck. When insanely bizarre coincidences manifest their way into your reality, tell yourself that they’re exactly what you should expect, as the universe is not made out of matter, it’s made out of consciousness. It’s is not inanimate and devoid of meaning as science would like you to believe.

also: i am exercising massive patience, day one.

also: just saw lars earlier while eating lunch, funnily enough. haven’t seen him in quite a while. turns out he literally lives in the building next door to mihae. funny shit. hopefully i’ll be able to make it up on the 7th (first thursday) for his show. seems like a solid thing, in conjunction with 4culture.

also: i had been reading “the doors of perception” by aldous huxley, and yesterday, i was in the bathroom reading this particular portion, and kind of started freaking out (in the best of ways). let me just end this post by saying that this section pretty much sums up what i have been feeling about life lately. i read it to lenny and he could understand conceptually but not in actuality, which i suppose is probably most people’s reactions to a thing like this.

“From the French window I walked out under a kind of pergola covered in part by a climbing rose tree, in part by laths, one inch wide with half an inch of space between them. The sun was shining and the shadows of the laths made a zebra-like pattern on the ground and across the seat and back of a garden chair, which was standing at the end of the pergola. That chair–shall I ever forget it? Where the shadows fell on the canvas upholstery, stripes of a deep but glowing indigo alternated with stripes of an incandescence so intensely bright that it was hard to believe that they could be made of anything but blue fire. For what seemed like an immensely long time I gazed without knowing, even without wishing to know, what it was that confronted me. At any other time I would have seen a chair barred with alternate light and shade. Today the percept had swallowed up the concept. I was so completely absorbed in looking, so thunderstruck by what I actually saw, that I could not be aware of anything else. Garden furniture, laths, sunlight, shadow–these were no more than names and notions, mere verbalizations, for utilitarian or scientific purposes, after the event. The event was this succession of azure furnace doors separated by gulfs of unfathomable gentian. It was inexpressibly wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying. And suddenly I had an inkling of what it must feel like to be mad…

… Confronted by a chair which looked like the Last Judgment–or, to be more accurate, by a Last Judgment which, after a long time and with considerable difficulty, I recognized as a chair–I found myself all at once on the brink of panic. This, I suddenly felt, was going too far. Too far, even though the going was into intenser beauty, deeper significance. The fear, as I analyze it in retrospect, was of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear.”

s p a c e

on the up and up.
on the let things go.
on the let things flow.

i will control only as much that is in my control.
all is well.

“Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.”
- Anthony de Mello

i’m probably just sensitive.

but man, i don’t know how people in the limelight really hack it. like……………………………………… musicians for instance, who must take criticisms all the time… that’s just rough. i pour my heart and soul into a magazine and when people are rude, it really bums me out. why are people only quick to comment on the negative? it’s fascinating. but yeah. sometimes it’s like whatevers. but other times, those kind of criticisms kinda pick away at you!! and i can’t tell if it’s better or worse if the criticisms are accurate. but yeah, obviously bands — especially younger ones who read press, i think — get bothered, too. hmm. anyway, i have a million things i want to do in life. starting with this.

i was talking to aaron the other day, and he basically said that his life was so intertwined with music-making that all other things sort of revolve around that. i feel like that is the case for redefine, for me. not an uncommon notion, certainly, but the notion he said that i had not really heard verbalized was that — because on this particular day he seemed disconnected from music-making and not particularly stoked on it — he imagined what he was feeling like was how someone who didn’t have religion or didn’t have passion felt like.

and that made me think that if i didn’t have goals — namely, with the magazine — to strive for… i’m not really sure how i would be feeling or what i would be doing. it’s been my life for most of the past five years — with one year of working full-time at trendi and half-making redefine my life — and five years is a long time. five years is like… wow. i’m not sure who i would be without it is what five years is.

on a similar note, i find it fascinating when bands can go from album to album over the course and span of years and years and not change musical styles. don’t you mature? don’t your interests change? are you simply afraid to lose your existing fanbase? these are the questions i have.

in any case, like i mentioned, five year anniversary is coming up. i have schemes in store. namely… three shows over the course of a weekend at three diy venues in seattle at the end of may, ideally. hope i/we (lots of help, hoorah!) can pull it off.

“I guess that’s what I had to go through, though, to wind up where I am today. Now I love my job. You know, sometimes my bars feel like imaginary places I created in my mind. Castles in the air. I plant some flowers here, construct a fountain there, crafting everything with great care. People stop by, have drinks, listen to music, talk, and go home. People are willing to spend a lot of money to come all this way to have some drinks-and do you know why? Because everybody’s seeking the same thing: an imaginary place, their own castle in the air, and their very own special corner of it.”
Haruki Murakami, South Of The Border, West Of The Sun

(i read this book almost in its entirety one day at powell’s books, and it was… well, not that good. disappointing, really.)

just some quote offa reddit.

Mihae shared it with me. It’s quite profound.

“Some seem to live only to imitate others. Having no desirable characteristics of their own, they notice others’ and duplicate them. This is becoming more and more prevalent. And the rest of us just have to accept that these people are actually allowed to live, because upon closer inspection we find that we’re not much different. We come into the world learning by imitation. Those of us who aren’t rip-offs are just better at abstracting, and keep our sources hidden. And it really does make you wonder if these people are purposefully duplicating others or simply oblivious.Most people would be happy if they could spend the rest of their lives circlejerking. A monogamous relationship ain’t nothing but a two-way circlejerk. Everything in the universe must self-perpetuate, and we’re at our happiest when people want us, so this is unavoidable.Basically, the greatest tragedy is that the more things you wrap your head around, the more people you see sucking ass. We come into the world full of hopes and dreams of the greatness of humanity, only to find that most people are incompetent pussies interested only in hearing how great they are.But it’s not all bad. There are cute girls, and there are decent people, you just have to look for someone not so hopelessly dependent on the system.”

franz kafka’s “the next village.”

An amazing short story. I mean, really short. If one can even call it a story… more like a short paragraph.

“My grandfather used to say: ‘Life is astonishingly short. When I look back now it is all so condensed in my memory that I can hardly understand, for example, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village, without his being afraid — quite apart from unfortunate accidents — that the whole span of a normal happy life is far from being adequate for such a ride.’”

funny quotes from wikipedia about waterboarding ~__~

As funny as they probably get, anyway.

The administration later denied that Cheney had confirmed the use of waterboarding, saying that U.S. officials do not talk publicly about interrogation techniques because they are classified. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that Cheney was not referring to waterboarding, but only to a “dunk in the water”, prompting one reporter to ask, “So dunk in the water means, what, we have a pool now at Guantanamo and they go swimming?” Tony Snow replied, “You doing stand-up?”[102]

And an interesting video of a Playboy journalist trying out waterboarding for himself can be seen here:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1579920046?bctid=20047560001
(Because I personally didn’t know what waterboarding was EXACTLY, prior to watching this…)