blank blank fullness

The whole world could be choked with thorns:
A lover's heart will stay a rose garden.
The wheel of heaven could wind to a halt:
The world of lovers will go on turning.
Even if every being grew sad, a lover's soul
will still stay fresh, vibrant, light.

Rumi

If you're going to call me an artist, you should know what it means as defined by someone who's sitting on their bathroom floor in a towel, ready to take a shower but overrun by inspiration so they put the normalties of life on hold to go with the flow.

If you're going to call us artists, you should know that the shittiest day can -- nay, will, be turned around by a stroke of genius, creation.
We will travel high and low for the thrills and we will always come back home to the responsibility we have to the race (if we don't die of the wrong chase).

If you're going to call me an artist, you should know my sources are untraceable because they belong to no one, they belong to everyone and yet, if you're going to call me an artist, you should know you might not be seeing the same picture as me and the invisible army in my head.
Armed by their brushes and cameras and instruments of all shapes and sizes, timbres and tones, colors and clarities -- the diamond mine of an artist can be rent at noon and full by sunrise, overflowing with the beauty of a border-free sky.

If you're going to call us artists, never underestimate our ability to fill your senses with forgettable short-term memories that leave their permanent traces upon your actual lives, the choices you make, the friends you pursue, the new pictures your mind might want to paint to come true.
You can thank us by following your heart and joining in the game.

Our mediums are skin and stone and soil and silk, spices, sound and soul and words, easy words, but their course runs red, the spectrum, tipping the scales from end to end.

Adventurers. Explorers. Curious like George. 'Nuff said.

If you're going to call me an artist, I wish you'd reserve the tone of irony and take away your mental finger quotation marks. I'll go on doing what I do but you'll be stuck in a narrow world ||.

If you're going to call us artists, believe in our dependability, in our dedication. Until that afternoon where I say fuck it and go on a whiskey and weed whim because our art needs to get a little high too.
You can thank us at the other end.
Because as an artist, my finest trick is escape, and I've made it my art to come back from the brink and bring it better, as my own worst enemy nothing the world will throw at me can keep me down longer than it took to realize I'm my own best friend. That is to say, not long at all.

If you're going to call me an artist you should know I roll the dice because he who takes the risk gets the return, but only idiots risk the vessel of their own lives. i.e. you've got to treat your mind and body right.

As an artist you must understand I insist on my own rules, because I'm just crazy like that.

And you can call me an artist because another artist's music just told me not to blister my heels running in the dark as I finished justifying my destructive potentials -- and I heard it because artists are the best of listeners.

If you're going to call me an artist you should know I secretly want to be a beacon of hope and light for everyone I come in contact with because it makes me feel stronger, needed, fulfilled in purpose. But sometimes my sensitivity shuts me down when I get the sense someone doesn't like me.

You should know that as a creator, I tend on the side of quiet observer and recorder, judgment taste-maker. 

If you're going to call me an artist and make me bigger than myself, you better be ready to give me space as the quiet side will become oh so loud because my voice when heard travels at the speed of light-sound and your attention is my heroin, it helps smooth the wheels of this world we're artists in.

And an artist will be the first one up at dawn when the craft comes to call with a fresh pair on, turning it out to fill the day's plate at the life buffet.

If you're going to call me an artist, you should know nothing you can try to sell me will touch what I can make with my own two.

If you want what I emanate you're going to have to pay. An energetic exchange. Fall in line with the magic and your concern with a rate of return will vanish while the frequency gets magnetic.

It's the 21st century and yeah, we give it away for $free$ but artists have to be about our business, man.
We don't know when or how the lines got blurred between art and commerce but we know people like Rubens and Koons are playing the same game. Yes, 'are', because if you're going to call me an artist you should know that I will live forever in the present moment whether or not you hear me, my art brings it to square one and that's the shit I'm on.

If you're going to call me an artist you should know that your labels are what we hate the most because in our worlds, only we want to get to say what's what. You should realize at times we have trouble reconciling the should, and is, and how it was intended, fa real.
If you're going to call me an artist you should know that's part of my plan, to smooth out the work and let it go, all at once and when I get there you will understand a few years later while I'm on to the next one.

If you're going to call me an artist you should know I live in 3D times three, get your glasses made by one of us so you can really see............................................

I usually don't admit these kinds of things on the internets but...

Her name is

You've been lying to yourself
and then you find the tiny trap door that lets you out
and nothing's changed
and everything seems the same
but inside, you found it again
that sword was unsheathed
and it cut away at all the bullshit
and you could breathe again
and that's all that really mattered
not him or him or her or him or him or her
not this or that or what they think or oh, god what's next
no
none of it.
and things could be what they were without your approval
or attention or
control.
and yeah, you still have to wake up in a place that's maybe not 100% your dream situation
and yeah, those bills still call at you from wherever they are
and yeah, you better never relax too much because your grind might just slip under someone else's saddle
but -- you're cool with it
and then you take off your cool
and we're back where we started...
ever feel like..............

^You are to become my waking dream,
Arriving at your merciful white gates
As movement overtakes standard reason,
Down with conventional distinctions!
Prove you are what you say, appease, indulge the impulse towards
Euphoric omni
Potent, Present, Science
Until trans-disciplinary becomes accepted
As a non-hyphenated word,
As the natural fact of real existence-
Realized!
May we step out of one anothers' way
Perhaps that'd be too easy,
Carry on, as you were
Revived are the senses!
Beware of their vacuum state
Tasty tools, circus master, tame me!
Renaissance of the seventh
Alerted with the sublimated desperation of
Arrival
Perpetual departure towards
Ever elusive conclusion
Should we ever dare to arrive there
While still alive, here
Then death awaits
Everything disappears -
What a truth-filled lie!
Ghostly realm,
You are to become my waking dream
And we'll slip past those crumbling walls
Already dissolved
All ready for the awakened ones

 ____________
Edit (July 29, 2010 11:45am)

I saw Inception last night, post poem composition.
Love the parallelogram 

The pause. So often it's in the pause between things where the 'answers' will emerge.

We give advice, we get advice, but always seemingly after the fact or at a time when that advice isn't needed, per say; when objectivity is a facile gift grace à a detached stance.

Reading an article (this might be a bit much for some people, try to reserve your judgment) which dispensed with pretty rational, if not other-worldly perspectives and guidance is, for one point, inspirational. Great. I've got inspirational sources I can seemingly always count on and I count my blessings (an interesting idiom now that I stop to really consider it) for that bed of richness.

But while I'm reading, internally nodding and mmhmm-ing, I've come to question (in general, and myself) application, and considering what of in-the-moment fidelity to the nutritious material I am reading, as situated in a situation not exactly asking, needing. To be more clear: when we're in the 'heat of the moment', or going through actual, materialized life-situations, wouldn't it be nice if a little birdy were to pop up and dispense of that wisdom taken in as on-the-shelf?

Inspiration in action. Applied recollection. That's the tricky part. Bridging the gap between these two worlds.

Real-time. Reeling it in.



PS interestingly, my Getty Image search result for 'bridge' rendered a considerable amount of guitar, violin images. Music.

Buongiorno tutti! Today's word is: Prana

I will provide a few takes, this first one comes from Ayurveda The Science of Self-Healing...

"It is vital energy (life-energy) which activates the body and mind. Prana is responsible for the higher cerebral functions, and the motor and sensory activities. The prana located in the head is the vital prana, while prana which is present in the cosmic air is nutrient prana. There is a constant exchange of energy between vital prana and nutrient prana through respiration. During inspiration, the nutrient prana enters the system and nourishes the vital prana. During expiration, subtle waste products are expelled."

Though this term has been familiar to me for some time, a few weeks ago a conversation I had with a friend briefly taught me about the different ways different people may obtain prana. It can come from taking a very cold shower, engaging with other people and receiving prana from relationships; it is in the foods we eat, and the consciousness with which we approach our food (and other facets of our interactive lives), taking a moment to pause before putting fork-to-mouth to express gratitude for the sacrifice (if animal products are consumed) and purity of energy we are about to consume. A friend of mine once gave some lovely advice: to consider the trip taken by the various elements on your plate while you mindfully chew your food (an essential part of the digestive process). From the seed planted in the ground and where the ground is. Then, the care with which that seed was nourished by the sun, the farmer, the rains and temperatures of the air. Imagining the plant growing and finally being harvested, how it was packaged and through what hands it passed (human or machine) to get to the crates and containers, then loaded onto trucks or planes... How much energy was given to deliver the food-energy to your grocer or dining establishment? If you cooked the food yourself, how much thought did you put into the process? Were you conscious of the feel of the knife in your hand and the pressure and sensation of passing this knife through the skin of that plant or animal? Then combining it with other elements, taking care of the heat and flavors as it cooked... The more aware we become of the inter-connectedness and the path of these infinite energies making up our daily lives, the better we are equipped to make the best choices for our selves, for our loved ones and for the communities we live in... all a part of the bigger picture, containing the bigger picture, while being contained by the global... our holographic reality.

Here is another excerpt, from Light on Life (p. 102):

"Consciousness (citta) and vital energy (prana) are in constant association. Where consciousness is focused, there must be the energy of prana too, and where you direct the energy of prana, consciousness follows. Consciousness is propelled by two powerful forces, energy (prana) and desires (vasana). It moves in the direction of whichever force is most powerful. If breath (prana) prevails, then desires are controlled, the senses are held in check and the mind is pacified. If the force of desire gets the upper hand, the breathing becomes uneven, and the mind becomes agitated. These are things you can actually observe, just as you observe right measure and balance in asana (the yoga postures), and this is why and where the practice of yoga brings self-knowledge. You will not reach Knowledge of the Divine Self without passing through self-knowledge. Your practice is your laboratory, and your methods must become ever more penetrating and sophisticated. Whether you are in asana or doing pranayama (conscious breathing), the awareness of the body extends outward, but the senses of perception, mind, and intelligence should be drawn inward"...

And from good 'ol Wiki:

Prana (प्राण, prāṇa) is the Sanskrit for "vital life" (from the root prā "to fill", cognate to Latin plenus "full"). It is one of the five organs of vitality or sensation:
viz. prana "breath"
vac "speech"
caksus "sight"
shrotra "hearing"
and manas "thought" (nose, mouth, eyes, ears and mind).

In Vedantic philosophy, prana is the notion of a vital, life-sustaining force of living beings and vital energy, comparable to the Chinese notion of Qi. Prana is a central concept in Ayurveda and Yoga where it is believed to flow through a network of fine subtle channels called nadis. Its most subtle material form is the breath, but it is also to be found in the blood, and its most concentrated form is semen in men and vaginal fluid in women.
In Ayurveda, the Prana is further classified into subcategories, referred to as prana vayus. According to Hindu philosophy these are the vital principles of basic energy and subtle faculties of an individual that sustain physiological processes. There are five pranas or vital currents in the Hindu system:

1. Prana : Responsible for the beating of the heart and breathing. Prana enters the body through the breath and is sent to every cell through the circulatory system.
2. Apana : Responsible for the elimination of waste products from the body through the lungs and excretory systems.
3. Udana : Responsible for producing sounds through the vocal apparatus, as in speaking, singing, laughing, and crying. Also it represents the conscious energy required to produce the vocal sounds corresponding to the intent of the being. Hence Samyama on udana gives the higher centers total control over the body.
4. Samana : Responsible for the digestion of food and cell metabolism (i.e. the repair and manufacture of new cells and growth). Samana also includes the heat regulating processes of the body. Auras are projections of this current. By meditational practices one can see auras of light around every being. Yogis who do special practise on samana can produce a blazing aura at will.
5. Vyana : Responsible for the expansion and contraction processes of the body, e.g. the voluntary muscular system.

May the prana be with you ;)

Perhaps it's the electronic screen, or the degree of impersonality (iPad is changing this in a way, I guess), but when browsing the web, reading off an austere screen, so much removed from me, the intake takes a frenetic shape, my mind tends to be 3 windows ahead, skimming, skipping, scanning; next, next, 'what was I going to do? ah, yea', tabbing.
Rarely, heck, now that I've paused to give cause-- almost never-- do I feel at ease (on a subtle level) when interacting with these internets. What a scary, serious shame. How much time spent... nervous. Jittery, jumping. "The medium is the message." This medium isn't organic, it's electronic. It might deliver something human, but it itself, is... and don't get me wrong I can't / won't do with out you, but pixels -- ya'll are cold. Part of my cognitive functioning becoming bionic? Electricity naturally occurring as synapses signal to spark, shoot messages across the dark hallways of the byways of my brain. and then some + static from flat screens composed of man-made brilliance = overload?. balance is the key, time away to be nature-ally free. Balance coming in bursts of 2-weeks a year for the standards......... hmmm. C'est tout?

The Daily Standard .............................................. ! ______ ?

Fill my blank in with:
awareness
feeling
in my fingers and flesh
interaction
with the bigger-than-me
created by me, I who was created to create it once over
to in turn see it, truly, believe it
without the need to defend it
open source code
to indiscriminately share it
without thinking twice 
built-in being remembered 
IT is BUILT-IN
clean mirrors
real food
a sense of humor
stretching
sweating
stressing
to de-stress necessarily, unforgetably
the non-corny, non-'new-age'-labeled, L-O-V-freaking-E
Real-ity
as it is, as it will be

....... this evoked it for me: "When you live this close to nature, you are listening to a different language ... and you become more sensitive and develop an understanding for the surrounding environment.  I think we all know that feeling of having been outside all day, doing good physical exercise, your muscles feel tired and useful and your senses sharpened. That feeling you used to have when you were a child."

Paperback is so snuggly, now that I think about it. It even comes with its own distinct scent. Like a person.
What does Google smell like? (no hard feelings, goog, you're clearly incomparable. And clearly I'll challenge thee with a comparison)

Well, all this reflection washed over me in a second when I actually took interest in something past those kind of cool-check-this-20-bit-snapshot-link-stumbled-upon-thumbs-up-'like'-ness seen through them web goggles (data miners should really do some research on the average length a window stays open. they probably have. who wants to check it? correlate it to our ever bending, flexing, reflexive rubber-band attention spans). That something touched me enough to make me realize I was being touched in a way (all Kosher here, thanks) closer to the spine of a touchable page-turner. That make sense?

I am, intending a step into depths, depths intended to elevate -- a footprint in some half-dry cement, web's a sidewalk perpetually paved, sure this window might stay open on your screen for not longer than a Twitter
// but content.
Man, Woman -- content. What does the content do to you when it contacts that thing behind the eyes made to break it down to take it in? How long does it take to take a swim around the chambers of your cells and fill the gaps where filed away are millions of megabytes of "I'll never remember that, what impact?"

I guess it only matters when you know it does.

Too much impact? Impact not the necessary matter at hand. A symptom instead. Doing more to undo what's been long done-and-done. Our global 'footprint'. How to push back / while moving forward. always, always forward \
something bigger intervenes
intravenously it sleeps


Thanks, web goggles, wouldn't be here with, by, without you.

And goodnight

This post's title... part of lyrics delivered with melodic levity from a song
                                                                                                             begging beautifully for fidelity*

vocals lamenting on the ancient language:
its scripture,
                           I made it my business
to learn the code,
to hold me, rise momentarily stroking a key with
                                                                          no lock to un . Do you know how to translate the silence of years gone by
like                         clouds in a  b r e a t h l e s s  sky, whereby artless definitions
                                                                                                                            reside
no question . mark
my word, where there is
                                                                         _ _ _ _,
                                                           there is none,
                                                                                 no need for one:
'sorry', mama told me ... ever-forgiving, she passed on the most
                                                                                                                                                      beautiful 
genes to me, luckily
 
what kind of tight-rope fantasy are we living in
                                                                                   through the wire
this ain't no act, witnessing this mother earth-like action embodied a patient practice at the detriment of her intention,
                    filtered through mis-perceptions,
like some mad-men's
                               un-pure hearts' projections spilling effects in
                                                             slick suffocation painted in
                                                                                                          plastic black-gold
makeovers taking advantage of                       natural beauty,                                                        
                                                                                                                                shades of vanity
rising to the surface
entangled humanity
stacked needs killing the                sea

                                                                                 see
while late last last night among
                                               brand new trustees of 6-degree bound-to-happen kind of math while walking the path, crossed
                                   this coming-together where centered, staged my first time
speaking them spur-of-the-moment lines
                           dimly lighted chandelier above under which legs stood me up              
                                               slightly shaking like a newly formed foal,

hands on hips to hold steady
                                            a heart deafening my nerves to the point of exhilarating,
                                                                                                                               gorgeously absurd!
                         mouth poised to deliver the drops of some truth I'd never
                                                       dare to claim as my own,
spontaneously revealed to all
                                                   but one                                                     (the source)
at once
unscripted, well-versed access to a
                                                                         rest-stop
where that block called m-
                                        e could go,
  get out of some marvel's way making for a
                                                                                        peace-full moment
of hopeful flowing grace by a
                                                                   body granted me,                        chords vocalizing
                               a mind we can, must now more than ever,
                                                                                                        possess (if ever we dared to own.
this is it, while sur la terre)
(hold tight to carefully command. understand you can, must
                                                                                         command,
                                              freedom of the upper hand on your own lower-head),

some vessel are we
for use like ::
                                                                   blood thicker than water making wine for fellow man
                                                                                                                                                  kind

.Translation...

Amazon just did me a solid and dropped off the tasty little story (non-fictional, auto-biography) of Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Spiritual Journey of, to be exact.
Saving it for a two-hour train ride but cracked it open to a random page (88):

"Ejo paused, sighed deeply, and murmured: "Permanent impermanence." Drying the tears on his cheeks with the ample sleeves of his robe, he lit a candle. Then, after a loud burst of laughter, he recited:

Mizu e kite,
Hikuu naritaru
Hotaru kana! **

In a raucous voice, he recited it again, this time separating and counting the syllables of each verse:

Mi-zu e ki-te ... five
Hi-ku-u na-ri-ta-ru ... seven
Ho-ta-ru ka-na ... five

He smiled with satisfaction. "Five, seven, five: a haiku. The first five, like the fingers of a hand, signify ordinary human reality. The seven, like the seven chakras, signify awakened mind, cosmic unity. The third five return to ordinary reality, but this time with something new, the light of consciousness."

**translation
Arriving at the water
the firefly dips in a gesture
of reverence!

...

"For an instant my personal limits faded, my body merged with the cosmos, the roots of my thoughts were the stars, and Ejo's past was my own. I ventured to comment upon the haiku.

'The water is that of an ancient pond, calm and undisturbed--no birth or death, always there, like eternity. Halting its labyrinthine flight--in other words, freeing ourselves from identification with our thoughts--the firefly, like the awakened human being, arrives at the border where concepts dissolve in the infinite void before it drinks and communes with the world, accepting the unending change of everything that was thought to be fixed and permanent, making a gesture of reverence in gratitude for its ephemeral life.'

As Ejo listened to my interpretation, an invisible bridge joined his mind to mine."

...

Maybe it's just me, but I feel a tinge of anxiety when considering the slew of Medias related to any and every industry, the tinge gets a voice to state: leave me alone! Can I live?!

You choose a career, a focus for your life, and something rises, silently, certainly not invisibly, to overtake you with the infinite fixins, add-ons, applications that have attached themselves, like barnacles, to the body of the whale of a profession. Maybe my anxiety is tied to the feeling of determinism these Medias embody, while the higher part of me insists on causeless love... a well-spring of all-that-is. Identity is a mask so anxious to make you make it yours. It makes me anxious to allow it such free and fancy, fatalistic reign... whoa buddy, no, I can't be contained! Ok, let's reconcile, I'll hold you for a while...

You've got a core tool, but now, seemingly, you can't use it unless you've got the service. Ok, fair enough, we all need to connect this tool to a larger network. But oh, here comes the army. And they tell you, in that definitive marketing speech which too-easily overrides the independent-thinking minds of many that, don't think twice- you won't be complete without 'em, those tiny soldiers profiting off slices of slices. Trickling down, out, are we destined to function as nature intends it... Independence a figment of modern man's new mental survival mechanism... potentially destructive as mass quanities of 'me'...

Find a reflection in the passageways of our breathing bags, divided into infinitesimal hair-thin branches reaching to the limits of their tissue’d walls.


Or roots of hulking trees, beneath the singular trunk, split off to find their own means, of moisture trapping for the massive all.


Dedication to discrimination an asset rising in value, dropping in availability as waves of distractions fight
to feed on the most natural of half-way fictional resources; one standing apart from it all, though its holdings are forever unfolding, tick tock, it's so golden.

Speaking of time, try blowing the roof off your view of the life you're living... Imagine it a small chapter in a huge book of never-ending War and Peace. You may have noticed the brilliance of a little kid, or a 22-year old who radiates wisdom, has an adept talent beyond their years. How are these beings seemingly 'born with it', while some 60-year-olds are just breaking past a mold to understand lessons better late than never? Perhaps the previous chapters of those more-like-Fall-chickens left them ripe for the aging as a newborn baby, embeded already with eons of experience. While younger souls, so to speak, are gaining the lessons to pay off in future dividends of lifetimes at another other end...

This 30,000-mile-high view is deliriously en-light-ening. Literally, I feel way light (too little oxygen, perhaps?) let me come back down... The dharma (धर्म) of your time on earth can be clicked into place with a bit more grace. There's a bigger reason here, a knot in a string that's got a major gift to wrap up...
And there's no way of knowing what it is,
unless we go inside.............. stay riding

Everyday is Christmas.