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Duende

Tonight I attended the kirtan (Sanskrit chanting) session at my home shala. Second of those that I've experienced. The first time I went, 6 months ago, it totally blew me away, just like a good drug (back in the day!).

When I used to hang with the gypsies in Andalusia, we often had music parties with guitar and singing and so on, and lots of booze, and they had a concept they called duende. It kind of means your spirit catches fire in ecstatic union with the music. The word actually has lots of meanings, but for this discussion we can just translate it as mystical music spirit.

At the first kirtan I attended the duende was palpable. This time not so. The event per se was fun, cause I attended with my shala pal, Y. But the music was pretty much flat. Could be that I'm the one who has changed though, as I dropped out of Ashtanga after learning the 1st Series. Shame really, in that just when I was finally able to more or less perform many of the cooler hi-octane asana's such as Supta Kurmasana and Garbha Pindasana, I suddenly dropped the whole thing. So maybe my soul is no longer properly tenderized for kirtan music.

I do love the recorded chants of Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, Donna Delory, and Deva Premal. Among them, Jai Uttal's Nataraj is the greatest of all. That one feels so good the Feds should make it illegal.

Tabby Cat's Illustrated Guide to '1984'

"The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep people frightened'".

"April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films."

"At this moment, for example, Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible."

"Vast strategic manoeuvre -- perfect co-ordination -- utter rout -- half a million prisoners -- complete demoralization -- control of the whole of Africa -- bring the war within measurable distance of its end victory -- greatest victory in human history -- victory, victory, victory!"

"The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain!"

"Then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. Then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air. A helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the Party seats."

"Without any warning except a slight movement of O'Brien's hand, a wave of pain flooded his body. It was a frightening pain, because he could not see what was happening, and he had the feeling that some mortal injury was being done to him. He did not know whether the thing was really happening, or whether the effect was electrically produced ; but his body was being wrenched out of shape, the joints were being slowly torn apart."

"The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

"As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters."

"In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming- period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult."

"Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed -- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull."

" But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is "Thou art".

" It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police."

" All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."

"You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party."

Uphill Battle

*

USA - Canada Border:

Canadian Inspector: Why are you coming to Canada?
Me: Attending the [City Name] International Film Festival.
CI: Have you ever been fingerprinted?
Me: No.
CI: Ever been arrested?
Me: No.
CI: How much money are you carrying?
Me: 200 US, 100 Canadian.
CI: How long will you be in Canada?
Me: This morning only.
CI: You'll park your car over there and report to the officer inside.

~

Me: I was told to report inside.
CI2: Why are you coming to Canada?
Me: Attending the [City Name] International Film Festival
CI2: Have you ever been fingerprinted?
Me: No.
CI2: Ever been arrested?
Me: No.
CI2: How much money are you carrying?
Me: 200 US, 100 Canadian.
CI2: How long will you be in Canada?
Me: This morning only.
CI2: What is your work?
Me: [state my profession]
CI2: How long have you been doing that?
Me: [state how long]
CI2: What USA states have you lived in?
Me: [name all the states]
CI2: Go sit down til I call you.

~ (20 minutes pass)

CI2: You can go.

*

Not too bad actually. I expected worse. I think I fit some profile they are looking for. But its intimidating, on purpose. They are just Customs Inspectors and Immigration people but they are outfitted like a SWAT team, with high-capacity side arms, black combat boots, Nazi-style leather chest strap, etc. Very much an SS fashion show, also commonly seen in the USA these days. I think Nazism was not really defeated so much as transplanted. Just took a while to find its sea legs, here in the New World.

While up there in the Frozen North, after lunch I stopped in at a Chapters bookstore downtown, just to browse. I riffled through a very interesting looking book in the "New & Hot" section, The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf. About how America is in the early, relatively subtle, less visible stages of becoming a police state. Wolf's thesis is that in this early stage it is easy to ridicule and say Oh don't be ridiculous! Looks like my kind of book! I was about to take it over to the register - but suddenly I recalled my warm and intimate Customs welcome (as above) ... and damn, that was the Canadian side! What if pulled out again on the way home, and this time the USA side guys search my car? I have heard Homeland Security is now keeping notes on any suspicious anti-authority books people carry. So I put End of America back on the shelf. First time I have ever consciously engaged in Orwellian crimestop, but I'm sure not the last. Wolf had made her point without me even having to read her book!

I had to pick up something in Chinatown, so I had arranged to also catch a flick at the [City Name] International Film Festival. It was Join Us, about a small Christian cult. Cults are my thing, I love them to pieces. Cults are just a baby-scale, open, and innocent version of the human process that we are all immersed in anyway. But with a good hardcore group that has been labeled by the other humans as a "cult" you can see everything conveniently displayed in microcosm.

This particular Christian-based cult was a bit limp, something of a disappointment. Maybe I'm jaded through too great knowledge and exposure. Sure this guy, the pastor Raimond Melz, has more than a few screws loose. But really all he did was beat the children with PVC pipe, hold their hands on a hot stove to teach them Hellfire, and so on. He said the first time a child misbehaves, you must beat it severely, as a loving lesson. The second time however, if it happens again, the child should be killed. Because that child has the spirit of the Devil and the only way to kill the rebellion in that child is to kill the child. So on, so forth. And naturally, the usual financial hijinks and thievery. Oh sure, it's bad enough, don't get me wrong. But is it ... art? So plebian. So utterly commonplace. Vulgar, really. I like my cults to be more outré. Where are the Jim  Jones figures of today?  Now there was a guy who really performed fully to spec as a crazed cult leader!

Anyway, it was all just another sad reminder if any were needed that humans are really dumb sheep who will surrender body, mind, and soul on demand, beLIEving virtually any crap that any trickster may care to foist on them for fun and profit. Everybody is just lookin' for love. Everybody seeks a True Parent.

Speaking of Dear Leader types in film, a far superior and much more engrossing documentary is State of Mind, about kids training for the patriot games in North Korea. The young teens prepare elaborate gymnastic displays and placard-flipping extravaganzas for Kim Jong Il's viewing pleasure. Now there's a guy we could all learn from, someone who merits a triple-gold star for consistent display of great game in his field.

I grind my face in the mud at his Lotus Feet.

Overkill

Death is interesting. We have, or else we are, a body. Dragging that around day after day. But how to dispose of it? It's going to have to be shed.

I feel it's better to die outside. That way there's a chance you can decompose before anybody finds you. Being found as a corpse is an embarrassing scenario to me. People always say "But you won't be there to be embarrassed." I know, but still. It's not fair that somebody should have to deal with such a gross thing, a corpse. But what can we do?

The best death I have ever read about is in the book "Red Snake" by George McMullen. McMullen records a channeled autobiography from the spirit of a Huron Indian warrior, Red Snake, who lived at the time when the French explorer Champlain visited their country. It may sound absolutely preposterous. Crazy. Indian warrior channeling, right.

But I don't think anything is really all that crazy, after I see what passes for sane around here.

So, Red Snake. The whole book is an fascinating account of his life. I don't know if the lifestyle facts McMullen presents would stand up to academic scrutiny. And maybe by even writing such a book he's tramping on the toes of authentic Indian spirituality or history (NB: I use the word 'Indian' for native tribal peoples of North America, following Russell Means' usage, as explained in his book Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means).

But I don't care. Let's leave all that quibbling aside and just have some fun with the death scene qua death scene, which can be judged by aesthetic criteria only. This is how I want to go too!

 

We were now quite far south, near the area of many swamps and lakes, close to the lake of much rice, when the trouble started. We were skirting a rather large swamp, with my grandson ahead of me, when I felt a blow to my back and I knew I had been hit with an arrow. I fell forward, pulling my grandson under me to protect him as I fell to the ground. I felt a hand grab my hair and pull back my head, and then I heard a shout.

I looked up to see a warrior with a raised tomahawk ready to crash into my skull. A hand reached out and held his and I heard a man say, "Do not hit him, it is Red Snake." They raised me from the ground and took my grandson from under me. "This boy is also his." They tore the thongs from our necks and looked at them for a while, then lowered me gently to the knees. My grandson put his arms around my shoulders and hugged me. The blood was coming into my throat now and I could feel the pain of more than one arrow in my back. I had only felt the one hit but knew there were more.

The one who led the party asked why I was there, and I could not answer for choking on blood. My grandson answered them, saying I was taking him to his family in the Mohawk country because all our family here were dead. They told him they were Mohawk and knew of me and had seen me years before in their country with Fawn's family. They now leaned over me and, wiping away the blood from my face, tried to get me to understand them. I nodded my head in answer. They were sorry to have done what they did but had not recognized me in time. They said they would now be duty-bound to see that my grandson was taken to his Mohawk family, and on this they gave their word.

They asked what they could do for me and I indicated that they should place me over a low handing branch, facing the swamp, and leave me to go in peace. They gathered my things together, and, picking me up very carefully so as not to disturb the arrow which they could not remove, they carried me to the edge of the swamp and put me in a sitting position, draped over a limb of a fallen tree. My grandsons came around to face me, and I explained the I must now go to my ancestors' home in the sky to be with his parents and his grandmother. He clung to me, sobbing until I pushed him away, and then they left. I watched them receded from the corner of my eye. I knew my grandson would be well taken care of.

I knew my time was near as the pain became more unbearable. Blood still came from my mouth, choking me and making it hard to breathe. I looked over the swamp and I thought back to Fawn and our happy life together and about our children. Toward the white man I felt no ill will, as they had only made things happen a little sooner than they normally would have.

I looked out over the swamp at the water, calm in the summer evening. The surface was rippled now by a beaver as he swam about his business, and there was the occasional flop of a frog jumping into the water from his lily pad. I could see the leafless dead trees stand out lined against the low hills behind. The evening sky was now turning red as the sun began to ebb behind the trees.

My breathing became more labored and the pain began to dull. The evening was now filled with the sound of a bullfrog chorus setting up a great din. Suddenly, all was quiet as a deer came to the shore to drink. I heard a porcupine chewing on a branch nearby, and the splash of some animal entering the water.

My hearing must have improved near the end, because these were sounds I had not heard from some time. The frogs started up their songs again and soon filled the air, drowning out any other sounds. I could barely see now, and the sounds became further away as I descended into the dusk. Now I could hear no sounds and I became more calm and peaceful as I slipped into darkness. As the sun finally went down below the horizon, signaling the end of the day, so did it mark the end of my life, and the Huron Nation.

The next morning some of the Mohawk returned and cut the arrows off even with my back to show respect for me. Otherwise they would have pulled the arrows out to use again. Taking me from the branch, they washed the blood from my face, arms and chest. They dug a shallow grave on a bank, above the swamp, and placed me in it, facing up and toward the swamp. They closed my eyes and on each placed a leaf from the poplar tree so I would see the sky through them. They also placed on my chest the thong of identification made by Fawn, and by my side they put my medicine bag, in case I needed it on my journey to the sky house. They placed nuts, dried meat and water beside me. They covered my head with a cloth of cedar bark before covering me with earth. They put stones over me, then more earth. So my life was complete, in accordance with our customs.

 

Silence of the Scams

Sorry I harp on 9-11 so much. But even though I know the mil.gov's Boxcutter Fantasy is bullshit, I'm not into this as a political thing. Actually, 9-11 is much more interesting philosophically than it is politically.

It's a deep metaphysical thing: how can it be that easy to scam 250 million people, imbeciles though they may well be?

Noam used to tell us in his lectures: "Plato's Problem is: how can people know so much, given so little evidence?" (e.g. child language acquisition). And "Orwell's Problem is: how can people know so little, given so much evidence?" (e.g. political scams and media Matrix).

Yeah that's it! Way to go Noam!

And then what happens ... Chomsky himself fell for the whole dumbass 9-11 ploy! Hook, line and fricking sinker!

I mean.... GEEEEEEEEEEZUS H CHRIST!

*Tabby dope slaps himself while silently raising the .44 magnum revolver to his temple*

(More recently, as evidence that 9-11 was an inside job piles to the moon, Chomsky has begun to hedge his bets by saying that even if it was an inside job, that wouldn't matter.)

If you've read my collection of non-duality book reviews, you are aware of the Neo-Advaitic game, which states that everything including personal identity, physical world, social constructs, time, space, all of it is mere shadows on the wall, or less than shadows, less than zero.

That's fine philosophically. But few people can really feel that way in their gut. We are gentically wired to make ourselves beLIEve that our dumbass little comings and goings matter somehow.

So one way to endrun and outfox your genes is to look into 9-11! Honestly you can take 9-11 as a spiritual exercise for Express-Lane Non-Dual Realization. Because you'll start looking into it thinking, "Man, those fucking asshole conspiracy crackpots, some dumbass wingnuts and fucktards will believe any crazy goddamn thing, pass the fricking tinfoil hat, haha".

And as you study it more, judiciously, as you will, suddenly an internal line will be crossed. You'll suddenly know that it was an inside job. And from that moment your reality will never be quite the same again. The facade of the world will leak from then on. In a very Non-Dualist kind of way, because beginning with 9-11 and radiating outward, you will see that everything is fake. And what will strike you most about 9-11, what will really bring your rational mind to its knees, is not that the USA mil.gov would evilly "kill its own people" (as though we belong to the mil.gov in the first place).

Nope that won't be what gut punches you. It'll be more that 250 million of your fellow citizens have totally bought into that fable like lobotomized lemmings. That is what will really knock your mental socks off.

You'll realize that you have engaged passage on a ship of fools.

Fire it Up

Today's sunset was beyond gorgeous.

When I was a small kid, one evening my mom and I had just stepped off the boat and we took a final sky scan before strapping things down for the night. It was beyond gorgeous that night too, a sudden flash rainbow's crest topped by laser-straight sun rays piercing the dark blue stripes of cloud with a horizon-wide sweep of silver and gold fan spines, ricocheting off the whitecaps erupting like a field under machine guns in the bay beneath.

So my mom takes all that in and says with a laugh:

Start a new religion!

Idle Mind = Devil's Workshop

To enliven the otherwise lackluster travel hours of idling in departure lounges and on airplanes, I've been doing some trash reading.

One such bit of offal was I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max. After I read the whole thing I found the entire book seems to be on his blogsite. The guy is an atrocious human but no point trying to tag him for it, he's heard every insult already. His thing is drinking and picking up women for 1-night-stands. The book invites comparison with Neil Strauss's unspeakably hilarious The Game. Now that is a funny book! I got into Beer hoping for the same jolt of hilarity but t'was not to be. Max is not a bad writer, and he does have some good lines. Probably his best work is done um ... orally, let me rephrase that, what I mean is, live in front of his intended pickup targets and wingmen and all the people of his world. Seems to be a genius at verbal improvisation. As I said, a reprehensible person, but as long as it's good humor writing I wouldn't care. Trouble is it's B Minus grade pickup humor writing, up against (in my mind) Strauss' Triple A Plus stuff. I figure Max' brain is pretty well hollowed-out by all the booze. But I will say for the record that though Max is a total asshole, he is not (a) anti-gay nor (b) racist. So I guess that's something. Clint Eastwood in an interview was once asked something about sex. He said something like: "It's nice but not that interesting because actually, 99% of the time you're doing something else." Tucker Max is the exception that proves the rule.

More interesting was horror/thriller novel The Ruins by Scott Smith. This will do for 3rd-world vacation travel what Coma did for elective surgery. Though for some reason a lot of people have pissed and spat on Ruins in its Amazon entry, I thought it was really compelling. Grabs and won't let go, you know all the stock phrases. Did its job! Young people on vacation stumble (literally) into serious badass trouble in Mayan Mexico. He's a really good writer. I don't want to spoil it, I'll just say you might want to throw out all your houseplants before reading. Of course the whole thing is a cliche in a way. It has a lot of elements of The Beach, and the rest mostly standard stranded/survivor stuff. Somewhat reminiscent of The Shining (oddly, despite the opposite climates). Yet I couldn't help myself, I found it fascinating. Really really bleak though. Leaves a depressing aftertaste. I suppose that, like everything, the basic set-piece which forms the meat of the book is just another metaphor for the overall human condition.

We're freaking doomed!

The Goldilocks Attack

I have a sweet spot theory about martial arts and self defense training. It's kind of depressing so you might want to quit reading right now.

Goes like this: No matter how much you train, your training won't help you much in 98% of "real" situations. I put "real" in quotes because I least of anyone know what reality, in any field, really is. But anyway.

On the low end, 49% of potential self-defense situations you could have handled fine without any special training, certainly without decades of obsessing over it. You could just run away, or bash the person with a chair, no biggie, and any "untrained" person could do as well as you.

On the high end, really serious shit going down, most of that would overwhelm any conceivable training you might get. Like if a bunch of pro's home invade you with Uzi's you are probably going down, modulo dumb luck outcomes of course, which again are independent of training.

So basically your training isn't needed for the low end, and isn't strong enough to help on the high end.

So there's only a 2% sweet spot, a certain perfect situation that is a Goldilocks Attack: not too weak (thus you can be a man and show your cool stuff) and not too strong (guy doesn't kick your ass or shoot you dead). A sweet spot attack, with just the perfect mythical bad guy that it seems everybody is fantasizing in their mind.

But yeah yeah, I know training is good for your health, and you make friends, and the journey is the reward, blabbitty blah. Yep!

Disclaimer: All numbers in this post are completely unscientific and totally bogus. In fact, this whole post is unscientific and totally bogus to begin with.

Why does the Sun go on Shining

"I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard."
- H. P. Lovecraft

I have been into the end of the world for a long time.

Mainly from the literary side. I think I have read every end-of-it-all novel and story ever written. Of course that genre overlaps heavily with other bordering things, like science fiction, zombie/horror/vampire genre, military genre, and even love stories. Actually, every real story is a love story. Read Tolstoy's "What Men Live By" if you don't understand that.

I like the End of the World so much as a theme that I founded a number of very popular discussion groups around that theme. I've only kept one of those going myself, passed the older ones off to others.

Anyway there are lots of internet lists out there the can scroll you through hundreds of end times books. No need to construct another list here.

Some of my favorites, books and stories, totally random scatter, have been:

• Alas Babylon
• Long Voyage Back
• Lucifer's Hammer
• 2050 Nen Ha Edo Jidai
• Into the Forest
• Nature's End
• The Machine Stops
• The Screwfly Solution
• Nightfall
• The Postman

You can see I like the older, plainer, and more classical stuff best, but there is great new stuff, such as "The Road" (Cormac McCarthy) and others. There's no end to it, especially when you shade  into the  newest zombie series type of pure boilerplate/genre fiction. That  stuff was mostly triggered by the success of King's "The Stand", which is just a bit too supernaturally goofy for me. I like my doom in at least quasi-realistic mode. That way you can learn something.

And there are interesting end movies too, like "Panic in the Year Zero" (crude but fascinating), and many others. Some great books did not survive the transition, best example being movie of "The Postman". And some movies  show disaster on a grand scale but have such a total vacuum of human interest and realism that I don't even consider them in the game, example being all the recent asteriod collision movies, and of course the stupid "War of the Worlds" with that department store mannequin lead man (Tom Cruise). Boring. Even the end of the world can be boring!

"Day After Tomorrow" was kind of interesting though equally stupid in the final analysis. At least they made good fun of Dick Cheney. "AI" was totally idiotic as an End of It All film.

But what about the reality? Can it happen? Who by fire, Who by water, Who by nuke ?

The mid-80's saw a good spate of nuclear Day After type movies and books. That could still happen. You might want to read this to prepare for that. Or maybe financial meltdown. Since we are literally "eating petroleum" now in our high tech agricultural system, maybe Peak Oil will take us down. Or climate change. Life is sad really. Everything you do, everyone you love, all will be taken down to dust. Sad. No wonder everybody drinks like a fish.

I used to be more of a serious preparedness/survivalist type. Lately not as much. Did I get tired or did I just get lazy? Anyway we're all eventually due to be toe-tagged, body-bagged, and dumped in a nearby landfill, or maybe burned in a ghat. Human life more than anything is a waste disposal problem. You have a body - in fact, you are a body... how to dispose of that in the cleanest, least troublesome way? That's the issue.

You could however take Rumi's approach. He famously wrote: "The one who brought me here will have to take me home". I guess that is the default setting for most of us. Somebody else handled all the goop and mess of me being born, somebody will be around to handle the mess at the other end. But, isn't it just so embarassing to die? It's humiliating, undignified, to leave a corpse lying around. So undignified.

More likely than total species death is gradual morphing into something else. Some other hive of unhappy creatures will replace us and on goes the game.

For the wild and craziest survival mentality, nobody has said it better than Poe in his story Masque of the Red Death:

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.  This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste.  A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron.  The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.  They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within.  The abbey was amply provisioned.  With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion.  The external world could take care of itself.  In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think.  The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure.  There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.  All these and security were within.  Without was the "Red Death".

Whenever I get depressed about it, I remember this mysterious quote from Andrei Codrescu:

"We watch the rising floodwaters, secretly hoping to drown"

I wonder if he still stands by that now... post-Katrina. He lives in New Orleans, or he did.

~ Have a Nice Dieoff! ~

Bilk me, Fleece me, Treat me Bad

I've now been drilling into Yiquan for 2 months of intensive daily practice. Half of that was in Beijing under Master Yao, head of the style. Of course, in the world of martial arts, where progress is counted in units of years and decades, 2 months equals two minutes. But I had a lot of background in other stuff, so now it is time for some taste-testing.

Tomorrow I'll head out of state for a gathering of skilled, senior Taichi players. There I'll take my shiny new YQ out for a road-test of push hands with some serious people. And then we'll see if all this YQ standing and drilling really makes any difference or not. Problem is that I was already real good at push hands. I don't say that as a point of pride. Push hands is only a drill. It's not combat in any way, shape or form. Not that I necessarily lack combat skills, hee hee... be careful. But we are talking about Push Hands here, as a kind of initial diagnostic or  quick sanity check. Unfortunately, among all the players I expect to see, only the barest handful of them can give me any interesting challenge to work with.

But anyway I'll do what I can to evaluate the (possible) effect (if any) of short-term intensive YQ training under expert guidance, and report that back here.

Possible numerical outcome scores:

1. Substantial change for the worse
2. Slight change for the worse
3. About the same as before
4. Slight change for the better
5. Substantial change for the better

So I can score the overall result with a single number. Meaningless of course. But that's partly because everything is already meaningless to begin with, now isn't that so?

But until I have a score to report, I'll just keep my usual insane chatter going about any number of randomly jumbled dumbass pointless topics.

When I have finished deriving a score, if it is below "4" then that is my signal: On to the next checklist item! And that will mean yet another new topical blog for me probably, ahahaha!

The reason Tai Chi interests me is simply that, within Tai Chi history, there have been a few, a very few truly great figures such as master teacher Yang Cheng Fu. He's interesting because he emphasized complete relaxation, absolute softness, yet he commanded massive personal combat power, by all reports.

I still labor under the fantasy of "yi rou ke gang" (the soft overcomes the hard), as prescribed by the Dao De Jing and other Chinese classical writings. I like that idea, I want to believe! But isn't that most likely just another scam and delusion, like everything else in this vale of tears? However, for now I still chase the dream. Therefore, YQ or any other training is only of value to me if I can bend it to that higher goal of becoming like water - the softest, lowest substance that sweeps all before it.

But probably the entire idea of "yi rou ke gang" is just another scam to begin with. Why does everything in the Earth system have to be such a sham? Because we all know how the Earth system works, it chugs along under one simple predatory principle, to wit:

~ Might Makes Right ~