#He lives in levels of delusion I could only aspire to reach

[rooolt]

Cracking myself by imagining the teens (including hermie) all hanging out and like going to the movies or something and norm forcing hero to come and drive them everywhere and Taylor convincing himself it is an elaborate triple date situation that just no one else is talking about

#He lives in levels of delusion I could only aspire to reach #Also in this scenario maybe oakworthy are dating and gothcleats definitely aren’t #Taylor’s just like “I guess they just haven’t mentioned it yet 🤷🏻‍♂️” #No one else knows he thinks this because it is arguably insane #Sorry Taylor’s crush on hero is so fucking funny to me I’m obsessed with it #She knows he thinks this and thus fully sits in a different row of a theatre #I want to eventually write a “beach episode” or something like that and this would be one of the jokes #dndads #dungeons and daddies

[hugotontheonbiquiffinarians]

Arthur & The Myth of Sisyphus

(Arthur/staircase juxtaposed to Sisyphus/rock)

As disclaimer, this may be a generalised statement/inductive analysis, not unique to his diegesis. Will probably be too verbose for some to read, but writing is organic as breathing for me and if I don’t discuss my beautiful clown husband at length, I might very well be caught with a bruised and desiccated lung lol (as you can probably tell, academia is hæmorrhaging into my casual diction)

I’m typing this, more or less, to illustrate my (possibly exhausted) perspective on how significant the staircase is to Arthur’s narrative. Specifically focusing on how it relates to Sisyphus and his eternal struggle to push a cumbersome stone uphill. (Says this all the while knowing I’ll lose said focus by the end of this, oops) That being said, this also just might be some cathartic release in the form of diluted research.

All things considered, with an economy that appears to teeter just so on the verge of instability, most, if not all, may resonate with the impending sense of futility that accompanies society’s defective concept and subsequent flawed execution of ‘adulthood’, including, but not limited to: excessive demands imposed by draconian academia, 9-5 corporate mandates exercised to excess; in addition to parenthood (if applicable). All for the sake of feeding continued survival in a universe where life is erroneously scrutinised under myopic scope of legality. Summarily, we can all embrace solidarity in our respective sharing of adversity, attended by a seemingly endless, merciless journey towards acceptance.

Arthur is my most current muse within the fictional realm (irreplaceable, to boot) so this character study might be more gratuitous than enlightening, but, in essence, I often like to conceive him as a resounding echo that’s effectively sound in giving voice to the voiceless; whispered and indistinct though it may be. However, it could be said that the power of his presence resides, not in the delicate, understated nuance of his vocal tone, but rather the elegant and passionate language of dance pronounced by his feet. Namely, the Sisyphean task of climbing that emblematic staircase.

Whether suffering a daily, if not arduous, ascent one derelict step at a time, or dancing a rhythmic descent to liberation, Arthur’s soles bespeak of a soul that’s been tormented relentlessly throughout the near 40 year span of his existence. Heels throbbing with Weltschmerz, the resulting ache of his travails would often appear as little more than a numbing nuisance to be rubbed away upon a less whimsical return as the prodigal son. In this way, the audience might compare Penny’s impact in Arthur’s life to that of the onerous stone that plagues Sisyphus. Despite being an absent force to her son’s oppressive intimacy with these formidable steps, there is something to be said for the manner in which concern is essentially a wisp in the void when her child’s health utters a silent plea, a murmured urgency, for attention.

Perhaps, we could all agree that a fraction of Artie’s extroverted anger towards Thomas was only partially misdirected. As a means to demonstrate the implied difficulty Arthur expresses for emotional release, especially so for repressed anger, it would have been interesting to witness a scenario in which he doesn’t heed Penny’s request whilst hiding behind a closed door. Given the egocentric brush that paints a broad stroke to her demeanour, would he be vindicated in raising his voice a few decibels ? If for no other reason than to dispel frustration by virtue of necessity. Of course, this isn’t to undermine the fact that Arthur displays potential signs of regressive behaviour (not exclusive to his circumstance but nevertheless germane). A hapless symptom of afflicted childhood incited by an inflamed basis of Nature v. Nurture.

With nearly all sense of identity drifting aimlessly as unanswered queries, there could be reason yet as to why Arthur adopts his Carnival and Joker personas. Beyond factors of aspiration and affinity alone. As someone (myself) who could be classified with mild alexithymia, all the while being fairly averse to labels, the concept of employing alter egos solely to assist in self-expression may not be uncommon, if not muted in translation. In a way that isn’t explicitly stated, we could infer that Arthur enforcing a purpose to evoke genuine smiles and laughter is a means to compensate for those of which he was deprived during his formative years. Speaking as an armchair psychologist, there could be evidenced an intimation of placebo effect for the presence of Pseudobulbar Affect. While this syndrome affects the nervous system and is hence more physiological than psychological, the nature of its infliction could be considered as a bridge between the two.

Certain conditions, of which remain unknown, from his childhood may have contributed to the development of this condition, emphasising a noted relation to thinking patterns. My theory is that any measure of neurosis is directly proportional to the degree of physical complications that may manifest. Arthur is a fairly sensitive man. A rough sketch of this attribute can be observed even whilst Arthur is gallivanting as Joker. In fact, one could even venture to say that his identity is actualised in this form. Cliché ? Yes. But, no less pertinent. Furthermore, a deduction might be made in which Carnival alludes to being a medium that balances the dichotomy between Arthur/Joker.

Yes, these may be points that have been proposed ad nauseam 😶 You also may be wondering: Exactly what role does Sisyphus play in this ?

Ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion (hagiography) that Arthur, while emotionally sensitive, hardly translates that sensitivity to his visceral being. Revisiting the first bathroom scene, maybe one could see the gloomy reflections of Atlas and Sisyphus reflected in one burdened man, lost in soulful dance. Summarily, he could never strike me as one to admit defeat. To succumb to the siren’s lure of quietus. As illustrated by every Joker rendition before him, Arthur Fleck is no different in how his philosophy materialises. Blending the colours of absurdism and nihilism. While the assertion seems contradictory, considering Arthur’s initial intent to commit suicide on live television, I do believe his animus was strictly encouraged by his comedic inspiration, opposed to an active desire.

Fundamentally, this leads me to my final point (although, admittedly, this isn’t the end, I could literally talk to death about this man, and I will). The contrast of comic styles between Arthur and Murray. This might be the understated controversy of discourse, and my perspective on the matter may be unpopular, if even acknowledged, but just to clear the air, the following assumption isn’t meant to excuse him or his actions. Rather, to offer perspective. If you observe carefully, you might notice that there’s no distinct disparity between Murray and Arthur’s sense of humour. Given the era and its dogged appeals to censorship, Murray’s delivery could be regarded as nothing short of condensed and disguised. As our dear Artie reiterates, comedy is indeed subjective, but, as a matter of course, the brand that either presents isn’t particularly risible given context.

As an audience, we only know Murray on a superficial level. We know he’s a comedian. By the end of the film’s duration, we might have dismissed him as the stock bully. His humour was cruel, callow and sadistic when dispensed towards a man who deemed him a pillar of admiration. However, similar could be said for Arthur’s execution. Consistently morbid and sardonic, these elements of comedy that provoke laughter for Arthur comprise a vague semblance to Murray’s comedic anatomy, despite how patently trite and puerile the latter’s jesting was, when delivered to our undeserving victim.

Arthur was thoroughly justified in his feelings of despondency and disenchantment. Yet, objectively speaking, depending on either side of contention, one’s perception may be determined by whether or not his sensitivity was merely exaggerated when juxtaposed to a comedian who was, more or less, just doing his job; albeit questionably. Unprofessionally. We couldn’t know exactly what Murray was thinking or precisely why he invited Arthur on his show. Surely, public humiliation wasn’t his prime agenda. Curiously enough, I seemed to detect an air of indifference expressed by him when Arthur confessed (*insert delusional gif*). As if it was to be expected.

Ipso facto, with how the sequence pans out, there may have been the possibility of Murray personally investigating the subway murders and considering Arthur a suspect, consequently aiming to extract his confession (a reach, I know ! ) but, maybe not...

Not when the theory of Arthur contriving delusions, having been situated in Arkham the entire time, chimes as possible reasoning.

That, in itself, is a paradox...

...Will we ever ?

#arthur fleck #joker #joker 2019

[quakerjoe]

A Cuppa Joe for 3 January 2019

 Regarding Patriotism

 Patriotism. What the fuck IS that exactly? I used to think it stemmed from the nation’s actual motto “E Pluribus Unum” meaning “From Many, One” where we all stand together, united, as one people, Americans, and look out for one another. That was a hard delusion to wake up from. While such a thing is possible if we so desire it, it isn’t going to happen evidently. Seriously, think about this for a moment. Who do you see the most out here going on about “patriotism” today? Angry white dudes. I don’t see African Americans out there blowing the “Look at me, asshole! I’m a PATRIOT!” horns loudly, nor anyone from the LGBTQ community or from any minority such as our Islamic/Arabic neighbors who came here to get away from all the radical, violent religious bullshit and just want to pray in peace. Angry. White. Dudes. All pining for a “Christian Nation” while acting exactly the opposite to the teachings of Christ. They clean their guns and play circle-jerk warrior in the woods with their limp-dick friends because they’re too much of a sad sack to actually JOIN the military and SERVE. THAT would be Patriotism.

Then again, is serving in the military really being patriotic anymore? I was proud when I served, but looking back on it, WHO was I really serving? Was I truly protecting the US from some threat? Not really. We’re on the other side of the planet, far away from any direct threat. Two massive oceans divide us from any other military that may want to harm us. Then again, WHY would any other military even WANT to harm us? Could it have something to do with the way this nation invades other nations to topple their elected governments and establish banana republics in order to get what “we” want from them? By “we”, I of course don’t mean that you or I give a shit what the price of bananas is. Oil, on the other hand… We all care about oil prices because we’re constantly being blocked from developing and using green power sources so that the rich twats in Big Fossil Fuels can get even richer. They spend thousands on buying elected officials here who band together and pass a tax break law that gives those rich twats savings in the millions and even billions.

But do Central and South American nations have a mobile force to invade us? Fuck no. What about Persian nations that we and other European nations carved up for oil field access, ignoring the territories if Sunni and Shiite, creating nations that have all sort of in-fighting between the two peoples? That’s on us, kids. Still, they don’t have a military worth a damn that can cross the oceans and get to us. So is being over THERE being “patriotic” and really defending our freedom? Fuck no. So WHO are we serving? Rich. White. Dudes. Period. Are THEY “patriotic”? They bribe the government to use military force in nations that they want something from, like oil, or poppy fields for Big Pharma, and they USE us as cheap mercenaries; cannon fodder to secure their FINANCIAL interests, and the thanks veterans get when they get home is shit wages, their families on some sort of financial assistance, and when they need medical or mental health, we practically ignore them and then wonder why the suicide rate for returning vets is so high. Fewer mouths for Uncle Sam to feed, right? Meanwhile, the rich, white dudes don’t ever have to look at them or deal with them and even though the blood is on their hands from war, they weren’t the ones sent in to do the killing. THEY don’t have to deal with the consequences; they just cash in and get rich. No guilt. No empathy. No PTSD. Nada. Just loads of cash. Meanwhile, we use up our munitions and equipment and keep the War Machine and major contractors super-financed in contracts that aren’t bid for anymore. That doesn’t sound at all patriotic to me, but there’s something you need to understand.

YOU are not a person, you’re a component. You’re something to exploit and rob. When people in government today see “We the People” they automatically see that as “We the Rich Fuckers” and the rest of us are the plebes; the livestock that generates money for them and we don’t matter to them. If we did, we’d have had free healthcare coverage and education decades ago, and it’d also be the best on the planet and there’d be a sense of pride in being an American from the richest down to the poorest because we’d be at our healthiest and our smartest. Instead, we revel in our arrogance, our ignorance, and our stupidity. We roll in a puddle of hubris and it seems that most “patriots” don’t even know what that word means. THAT, dear Joes, is the new definition of “patriotism” among the ‘plebe class’, and just like in days of Olde, when the Constitution was first drafted, “People” meant the wealthy class who owned land and property and were the only ones who voted. They got the good food, the good medicine, and the good education while you got little to none of any of it and you’d have been working since the day you could walk and talk at the same time until the day you dropped dead. That’s what MAGA is all about, only trumplefuckstick’s supporters are poor, stupid fucks who must believe that they’re really millionaires who are temporarily inconvenienced at the moment and that they’ll be rich soon with 45 at the helm.

Their idea of “patriotism” is to literally shit on everyone here that isn’t of their ilk- ignorant-as-fuck white, cist-gendered, white, “Christian” MEN or their brainwashed, sidekick women who dine on hate as well. They’re praying for the End of Days one moment, while hoping that just before that happens they get an opportunity to hunt down and murder Obama or HRC or just go on an all-out “nigger hunt” or a chance to do-in the “towelheads” living here. They’re praying for a chance to slaughter anyone LGBTQ because the bible calls them an abomination to be destroyed. They give me the impression that they watch “The Handmaiden’s Tale” and jerk off to it because using women as breeding stock and enslaving them and killing the “uppity ones” is a dirty, wet dream of theirs, and they call it “patriotic”.

So someone out there, please remind me what it truly means to be a Patriot of the United  States of America. As far as I can see, we went from aspirations towards “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” to “I got mine; fuck the rest of y’all! Bootstraps, fucker! Pull yourself up or just die ‘cause I’m not going to help you. I had to work hard to get what I’ve got. Get a job!” Instead of looking UP at the rich and powerful shitting on us, too many of us are looking down at those less fortunate than those wielding the “White Privilege” card and blaming the POOR for all their woes as they look down their noses at them and continue to let the shit roll downhill instead of reaching down to help someone up. It’s a disgrace. It’s the OPPOSITE of being patriotic. It’s the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what I was taught it meant to be an actual Christian and frankly, the level of hypocrisy from the religious people here is sickening, insulting, and fucking INSANE. 

I tire of so-called “Christians” showing up here telling me that they’re not ALL bad. Well, they ARE. If you’re watching evil transpire before you and you do NOTHING, you’re guilty of that evil too, and frankly I am still waiting for some sort of allied Christian movement to get together enough to call out the ‘false prophets’ getting rich in this country and getting behind, en masse, to see to it we get Universal Healthcare for ALL, a bolstered safety net program that includes “food stamps”, the promotion of medicines and science because if there is a god, we were blessed with senses that should be trying to study how He/She/It made the universe and how to make the world a healthier, safer place of PEACE, not a nation with a bloated military budget that can’t even pass muster when audited while people here in our own country are going hungry and homeless because “fuck you, you peasant, that’s why”. If your idea of being a “Christian” is ignoring the bible and praying at home, in private and you insist on going to a tax have to pray (yes, church) then you’d better be DOING something to fight against the evils sweeping the nation and against the tenants of Jesus. Evangelicals, or Talibangelists as I call them, are on the move. Where the fuck are YOU? Yeah, hanging around your community trying to do “good deeds” is sweet and all, but wouldn’t it fight hunger and poverty MORE, in line with Christ’s teachings, if you got off your ass and rallied AGAINST the Talibangelists and called them out on their bullshit? Where’s your presence in the REAL clear and present danger here? Where is YOUR voice when it comes to defeating the false prophets we’ve been warned repeatedly about?

>Matthew 7:15 clearly states “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are raving wolves.” Perhaps you “Christians” should STOP ELECTING THEM! Forwarding and backing known pedophiles and sex offenders doesn’t sound too Christian OR patriotic to me.

>Matthew 24:11 Jesus says “and many false prophets will appear and lead many astray.” Sounds like the brainless twats on FOX and trumplefuckstick lying to the masses who slop back the shit like it is gravy and not the feces that it is.

>Matthew 24:24 says “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

>Second Peter 2:1-3 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” 

>First John 4:1 “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” So forgive my skepticism of all you alleged “Christians”, but I’ll believe in you when you SHOW me that you’re not all talk and no ACTION. 

> Jeremiah 23:16 Tell me this one doesn’t apply to suckers who vote GOP and Corporate Democrat as well as those fuckwits who go to mega-churches to throw away their money and their souls: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.” 

> Ezekiel 13:9 “My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and who give lying divinations. They shall not be in the council of my people, nor be enrolled in the register of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord God.” We have truly FAILED as a nation at this one, kids. So quit with all the religious preaching on my page. If you haven’t sold all you own and have given it all to the poor, then I’m not going to take you seriously. (Matthew 19:21 and Luke 18:22). 

From what my parents and grandparents taught me, part of being a Patriot was to confront evil and help those in need, and honestly, I’m not seeing it from the “Christian” community, only their hubris and vanity and a defensive sense of pride compounded with an extremist element here that uses the Bible as license to commit all manner of atrocities against their fellow countrymen/women etc. even though we were WARNED about this sort of fuckery- “because they are turning whole families away from the truth by their false teaching. And they do it only for money” (Titus 1:11) AND “Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.” (1 Timothy 6:5).

If you haven’t noticed, we are HERE: 

> 2nd Tim 4:3-4 “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” So let’s just pull this sanctimonious bus off to the side of the pretentiousness highway and cut the shit with your religious ramblings and let’s focus on saving the world and figuring out what it truly means to be “patriotic”, shall we? We SHOULD be looking out for one another REGARDLESS of religious beliefs.

Having said all that, Dear Joes, tell me this- how do YOU define “Patriotism” today?

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 83

I wanted to be prepared for meeting Eugene. I had come to the conclusion that I had to meet  him, but I didn't want to have a meaningless exchange. I feared that I would be objectifying him, and I truly didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be some clawing Beatlemania girl, ravenous with selfish delusions. At the same time, the things I wanted to convey to him, the stuff that I really wanted him to grasp felt very one sided to me. He didn't want to know me. He did not know who I was.  While I am sure he appreciated his admirers and fans, I could not imagine he wanted to be heavily immersed with them. Though, technically, I didn't believe I was one of them. I felt so strongly that our paths were meant to cross. I talked it over with Sarah, and in the end of our analysis of my predicament, Sarah talked me into perhaps painting him something. Admittedly, I had already thought of doing so, and I had this idea in mind.

It would be in the style of some band posters I had seen from the 60's-90's. I didn't want it to be something super realistic or based on a picture I had seen directly. I wanted to go for something more powerful, surreal and based on what a catalyst for life Gogol Bordello was to me. So I began painting this picture of the band as sperm swimming to an egg. I thought it represented in a fun way, what I felt their music was, and what Eugene Hutz represented. I worked on it for a few weeks, combining my paints with the markers. It was never as perfect as I had wanted it to be, but in the end I accepted it for being decent enough to convey my appreciation. It was a labor of love, and when people saw the painting they were taken aback by it. I never was able to scan the painting as it was too large, but I took a blurry picture of it and did the best I could to clean it up and sharpen it. I will put it at the end of this story. Every time I looked at it, I was filled with this longing ache and euphoric nervous anticipation. My hands would be giving this to Eugene, in person. The living breathing entity that lived in the same timeline as me, who I was in love with. This was step one, and I was fully willing to accept that there were a million more steps. I had to maintain this momentum, climbing up the ladder whilst at the same time shutting down that part of me that wanted to recede into the dark.

Something I hadn't anticipated emotionally had started to take it's toll on me. It was a desperate longing that was beginning to hurt more than feel good. It was all mixed together, but occasionally I would feel completely anxious and wild, like something must be done, but what that something was I could never figure out. I would walk around the house, take a walk outside, and though I felt it all around me, almost like some low level vibration that makes animals go mad, I couldn't see any indication that anyone else felt it. And yet it was potent and all around me and visceral. If I tried to grasp it and understand it, it fell away from my fingers. It might have been the fact that I was starving. I went for three days without eating. It was hard sometimes to not think about food. Food now disgusted me, and losing weight was my one ambition. I felt great, but it was almost becoming an out of control feeling that terrified me and made me lose sleep.

Aside from the fact that my mind was running very low on sugar, I also had come to this point where I was starting to have this sense that maybe Eugene wasn't something I could really reach. Maybe what he represented was so beautiful that I wasn't fit for that, and maybe he wasn't perfect either. It didn't stop me, but there was a tragic sense of fatality in this realization. One of the aspects that attributed to me feeling this way, was there was a very unusual documentary made with Eugene in it. He was taken back to an area where Romani people were residing, and it was a documentary (from my recollections), about music and culture and Eugene's connection to it and all of that. Of course, Eugene glowed like a flaming vibrant being throughout the documentary as he traveled around and played music and shared life with these people whom he was related to.

The woman who made the documentary was named Pavla. And it became clear in the documentary and what was written outside of it that she loved Eugene and her love was unrequited, which at first aggravated me as I saw her as some kind of competition. But then I started to empathize. She truly was a wonderful person.  And eventually I was overtaken with complete empathy for her and her own feelings. I almost wished against my own self wishes that Eugene had returned her love. I could almost feel her love as well as my own, like I had two hearts beating in my chest. Unlike me, she had something essential and basic to relate with him upon, and had reached out and truly connected with him. I could see the connection between them in the documentary. There was something  and subversive and fundamental and lovely about them together. I had not part in that, and acknowledging that beauty, with also knowing that I was in no way shape or form a part of that life gave me a mixed feeling of fatalistic grief and this simultaneous connection with them as real people that was brutal and honest and created a cacophony of pain and feelings of intense achy mysterious desire that had the vague feeling of magical realism. And fighting in the backdrop of all that were reaching out to me like some sick monster reminding me of my own alienation and loss of selfhood, as well as this disturbing itch in the back of my thoughts demanding me to suspect that perhaps nobody really knows one another after all, and we don't fall in love with one another, we fall in love with versions of one another that we make up in our thoughts. The feeling had an odd familiarity to it, like I had suspected that every connection I made in life might have been meaningless my entire life but had been too afraid up till now to truly entertain the possibility for what it might mean.

It also bothered me that Eugene didn't love her back. This woman had really gone out and tried to make her dreams happen. She was beautiful and dynamic. I don't think you can force love obviously, but it was hard for me to fathom how Eugene so thoughtlessly took in that love without thinking of what it meant to her. He appreciated the love she showered on him, but in many cases he seemed aloof about it. I read in later interviews that he would often times in the making of the documentary shun her for a quick hook up with girls he didn't know that well. And that hurt somehow. It was strange to put myself in this woman's position and imagine what that felt like, and it hurt to do so. It also got me to thinking and realizing something that kind of hurt as well. Perhaps I wasn't the only person who thought Eugene was attractive. I mean, I had been to the place called the internet and I knew there were a lot of girls that felt that way. I felt like I saw more deeply into him than all of that, but maybe I was deceiving myself into believing that because I so rarely found myself attracted and had made some false step in assuming that this meant more than it actually did. I did some digging online, and realized that Eugene was kind of a player. He knew he had a certain affect about him that beautiful and intelligent women often times would swarm over him. Rewatching and rereading every interview that existed, I came upon the realization that he had most likely never felt an unrequited feeling of affection that he couldn't easily get back. I mean, I don't actually know that. Maybe he did. But he almost blatantly broadcast a lack of need for anyone. If he did ever feel an aching for someone beyond his reach, it was so in the abstract, maybe something that didn't exist. I had troubles believing someone with so much fire burning inside of their spirit couldn't feel something violently unrequited within himself.

So perhaps Eugene, despite his brilliance and the art and chaotic revelation surrounding him was a bit vain. Beyond that point, I couldn't tell what he thought or felt. Sarah was a bit lost when I tried to explain this to her. She had been very much for encouraging my obsession – maybe because it encouraged her to hope without self doubt that she could someday be near Mark Lanegan, and suddenly this all becoming dark was a mystifying disappointment. I felt slightly misunderstood in my attempts to explain all of this. Maybe I made love too complicated. Sarah didn't think about this stuff as much as me. I guess it all seems really crazy. A year ago my primary concerns had been so much different, and it's hard to really explain feeling/thinking you are in love with a famous person. It's disappointing to think that the real world of people isn't good enough and might not do it for you. Because if the world around you isn't good enough for you, if you can sense there is something better but can't seem to find the path you need to be on that will bring you to where you need to be – which is some ethereal up in the air concept to some extent, then what else is there? And I was going to be true to myself, I didn't want to feel ashamed of any of it. So to my unquestioning family, my objectivist factory working father, my religiously delusional nurse mom, my dreamy and distant best friend, and to my aspiring artistic brother and sister, could I really make them understand in a way that didn't make me look delusional and out of touch? Maybe I was out of touch.

Ultimately though, I settled my mind down by manually turning down the notches of my obsession. It was easy to do with so much beauty I could now see in the world. Eugene, despite his vanity and other human faults, was still a source for inspiration to me and a goal I would continue to believe was acquirable and my arrows were still pointed at him. Maybe being in love with Eugene was the beginning of another path that I would discover the purpose of down the road. In the mean time, I didn't need to die of heartache before I even got to see Gogol Bordello live. It would either sort itself out or it wouldn't.

Then there was Tom Waits. I started listening to Tom Waits extensively that summer. As soon as I got home from my morning walk, I would listen to all three discs of Orphans, Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. I really let myself get lost in the grinding gears and poetic ballads of Tom Wait's. I spent three hours a day everyday for three months cleaning and often times dancing to Tom Waits – something I had never felt like doing before. I wanted to decorate my life with this new insatiable appetite for whatever mysterious powerful energy that came from Tom Waits, but humbled myself with an understanding that Tom Waits was indefinable and untouchable. The beauty I think in Tom Waits is that he is almost a magical being with no explanation and without need. Even if he has influences and takes on different forms of music, it's new and comes from nowhere.

I wanted to make something that would be influenced by one element of Tom Wait's music, and that was that sense of honest filth and weird oddities. Having listened and taken in so much of that feeling, I wanted to attempt recreating it myself. I decided to make a sculpture mural based on the bits and pieces from the ground that I always found beautiful and fascinating in their ugliness, but was always too self conscious and ultimately too sane at times to pick up and carry around. I felt particularly inspired by a combination of some of the weirder songs on the third part of Orphans, and based on the song 'Bottom of the World'. I started by going down to the train tracks in Lewiston. I spent a lot of time there anyway walking around. It was an area of town that had a decrepit dysutopian bleakness to it, there was never anybody around generally. All the normal people walked on the bike path out closer to the Snake River. Occasionally I would cross paths with someone who seemed lost and drunk. All over the ground there were bits and pieces of  shattered glass and garbage and bits and pieces of things that looked strange and appealing. There were also bones and rusted pieces of metal. It all very much felt like something pulled out of a Tom Waits song, and I spent weeks out there on the tracks gathering up the most gorgeous pieces to be assembled onto a board I had so I could glue it altogether. It turned out well. Some of the stuff on there was almost gross, chewed on cigarettes, questionable bits of cloth and old feathers. If I had found a tooth out there I surely would have used it. It all had to go on there though, it was all meant to be a part of my art.

My mother was getting tired of renting Mike's apartment. Wes was living at the hospital at this point about 60% of the time. He lost his other leg, and didn't seem interested in losing weight. He was getting sick with more frequency, and due to David often and his moods, we often times would either leave him at our moms and go over there, or stay at our mom's and let David had Wes's. Mike meanwhile seemed to be spiraling into something very unstable. He wanted more and more money, and would often times come to the house unannounced and walk around. He wasn't doing well. We were also just done with that smelly house. It had never quite worked for us. And Wes had offered to remodel the basement for my mother and David to live in. Wes understandably didn't want to live in a nursing home if he could help it. My mother moving into the house was his way of avoiding having to do that. She could be there twenty-four seven and tend to everything he needed. He promised to give her the house when he died.

So, we all kind of moved and lived in both places. It was sort of interesting having two houses. I spent quite a bit of time walking back and forth between them. It felt somewhat like camping. David and I especially did a lot of walking around. In order to get the kind of exercise I needed, I walked ten miles one day up to Hastings and back – mostly just to check the cds. I always found it frustrating that they didn't carry a lot of the music that I liked. I sometimes brought pieces of paper with me and leave notes about what I thought they should stock – and I think it worked.

When Mike found out that we didn't want to rent from him anymore, he became very livid and upset. He said violent things towards all of us. He started demanding that we owed him more money. He began demanding money from Allison and David and I, even though we weren't responsible in any way for the rent. I suspect he was addicted to something, but I never knew what that was. Eventually, he found Wes and demanded money from Wes, who turned him away. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. As my mother cleaned out the house, I still found reasons to go there since there was still television and internet set up. It felt weirdly fascinating to sneak into your previous and now empty house. But then Mike started driving around the house and peering into the windows, and once he found me and began screaming. Technically we were still allowed to be there but he had it in his mind that we were not.

Eventually the fun ended when both Roxanne and Ralph – who both had warrants out for their arrest, started to break into Mike's at night as a place to stay. The prospects of seeing Ralph were horrifying and I would find his wrappers and sometimes personal affects sitting in areas of the house from the night before when Roxanne and Ralph broke in. Mike was too inept to get them out and blamed me for being there when I wasn't, and since Ralph was not the sort of person you want to come up against, I decided to leave the place for good. It was a relief to finally be done with it all. I had nothing if not a miserable time in that shack of a house. My mother took the dogs with her. Poor Smokey the cat though. He was dying in a very slow sick way. He wanted nothing more than to be cuddled and loved but touching him hurt his skin and he would howl in agony. I have never seen such a sickly animal. My mom was low on the money it would require to put him down, so she instead decided to call the humane society and tell them that we had found him that way and that he was actually a stray – relieving her of her obligation to pay for anything medical. I remember the fear in his eyes as he was put into a cage by strangers and taken away. I watched them walk away with him, as terror and sadness was in his small cat face. It hurt to know that he most surely was put down among strangers. But there too was a sense of relief that his miserable life was finally over.

On my birthday, I let myself go to Baskin Robbins with Sarah and order ice cream. It ended up being a mistake for me to do so. My PCOS really doesn't allow for this kind of thing. If I am to be completely honest, I should never eat sugar – not even a little bit. And this is a strange and difficult pill to explain to others, let alone swallow. For one, a single meal can cost me nearly a month's worth of dieting. I am not even entirely sure why. I have done all manner of studying how my body functions – and it's not clear to me entirely what is going on. Reading up on PCOS, this is a common occurrence, and it is considered truly impossible to lose weight. Being told 'no' gives me this aching horrible resentment against myself and my body – especially when I have committed to a goal. Nothing else matters but that goal, and it is an admit to severe defeat and self deprecating disappointment to face some inevitable truth that I simply cannot be thin. It was actually a true testament to just how hard I was dieting and exercising to begin with that I lost any weight at all. Thus far, I had lost forty pounds. Also, I am probably diabetic and don't know it entirely. The doctor's said I had sugar tolerance at seventeen so I know I was close even then. It had to have become worse over the years.

Secondly, I am addicted to sugar. Everything I think and know changes when I don't have something sugary to eat and I think to a lot of people's it's hard to fathom it. I can go for a few weeks tops. Then I started getting shaky, and suicidal racing thoughts start to happen. The pain passes for a week, and then it comes back. I feel like I am going crazy, and I need something more satisfying than sugar in order to function. My friends and family, who have no idea what level of dedicated I am tell me I should just let myself live a little – offering me a cookie, and eventually I give in. They even know that one cookie is never just one cookie. As soon as I get the taste, as soon as I get the satisfaction of giving in I sort of lose myself. Then when it is over, I curl up in a ball of shame. After awhile, I become addicted to the shame of eating sugar just as much as the sugar itself. I begin rebelling against myself because that's the kind of person I am.

To explain further, once I took control of my own life, I discovered a lot of truths about myself that I was not aware of before – having lived under the fear of other people. Some of these truths were really inspiring and amazing – I have the ability to look within myself and change things and evolve. But I am also indebted strangely to the same characters flaws that made my parents broken and complicated. My parents both have criminal tendencies – they aren't criminals technically (though if you know the details they kind of are) but had life circumstances been different for either one of them they could just as easily be locked up somewhere. Individually, they both have it in them. They see a rule and they want to break it. They see a perfect thing and they will find ways to destroy it, physically or psychologically. They don't even know they are doing it. They are both like impulsive children in that sense. They didn't make me who I am in the sense that I don't choose to focus on what they do – I don't have an appetite for their lowest common denominator form of chaos, but I still have this insatiable need to be chaotic and undermining – and I found in my dieting that some other very real person within me that I am scarcely aware of can and will take that power away from me and wreck me with it.

Eating some damned ice cream doesn't sound or seem like I was doing anything wrong – but it is because it sets in motion a need and desire to get lost in – and I can't resist that. I have actually by and large built a personality around the fact that I have the need to be chaotic – and my dieting routine has been just one of many difficult examples of this. If dieting is my focus and begins to define my self worth, then the other me will see it as the anti-focus for the sake of chaos itself. I will always want to do the opposite of what I want. I am not a balanced person. The only thing that works are short term solutions to an inevitable life of slavery to a goal. So when I eat ice cream, and gain eight pounds from this one excursion I fall apart emotionally. I hate myself, the world looks bleaker then it ever did before I decided to care about my weight or my health, and it becomes nearly impossible to reach out to anything past this feeling that I am completely consumed by. It isolates me from people who don't have the same kind of mind as my own. Perhaps if I had a friend who was guiding me through all this, I would be able to see myself through – but I have never met anyone that fascinated with my every move and I doubt I ever will. Plus, this kind of relationship would turn crazy codependent very quickly. I'd probably rebel against them too.  

So when I am dieting and exercising, I have a method of eating a small bit of sugary foods anyway on a daily basis and just eating less or working even harder to burn off, and it became more and more of an obsession with a routine of feeling horrible and worthless about myself and then back to feeling optimistic and in control. As long as I could manage to feel more in control then not I was better off. Perhaps had I not been born with PCOS, or if my father had at least finished my doctor stuff, or heck, maybe if I just didn't have all the things happen in life that made me who I am, maybe had I been aborted then it all wouldn't be a problem now, but that isn't what happened and I am here, and it's the brain that is me. I gained eight pounds on that birthday just for eating some ice cream and then I had to burn it off. I learned to try not to listen to thin people tell me it was only a bit of ice cream.

Sarah, David, Allison and I were having a youtube party, which mainly is just each one of us showing each other videos we wanted the other people around us to watch. It was mostly just sharing music. Sarah had seen this performance by Grinderman playing on the Jools Holland Show. A new world opened up for me then. I didn't really know who Nick Cave was yet. I had tried to listen to him several years previous and I just hadn't gotten it back then. It had been too extreme and difficult for me to handle when I was younger. Now I took in every element of Nick Cave's performance completely. It set a new standard. It zapped my psyche. I loved Grinderman after awhile more than food, and by extension, I loved Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds that way as well.

Though Tom Waits was still every bit my ultimate favorite, Nick Cave became a close second. I made sure to listen to both Grinderman albums everyday in the evenings for nearly a year after. I eventually moved onto Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. I became warped by the imagery and tales in the music that Nick Cave spun. There grew in me, an inner world of abstractions and villains and death. The poetic intimacy of murder. . It felt very close to me. I felt conflicted by infatuations for the antagonist main narrators in songs from Murderballads.  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds put me in a darker world that I had always felt I belonged in. It wasn't negative or depressing as one might assume. The darkness that sort of took over my imagination made the colors of my mind that much brighter. Thinking about disturbing subject matter has always been me in my element, since I was fourteen and became self aware. But there was a tenderness also and a literary exploration of concepts of love in Nick Cave's music that prevented it from being too Halloweeny. For the Gogol Bordello concert, I painted for myself a Grinderman t shirt with a lycanthrope on the front. It didn't last the first wash, but it was what I ended up wearing – though it ended up being too cold.

Sarah and I finally managed to get my Social Security card. She honestly made it happen. We went in, they had me sign some stuff, step behind a line as I was frisked lightly, and then come forth and grab it off a table. It was unbelievable, after all these years to finally have it. Now I could move on with my life. I think Sarah even paid for it. My parents never would have gotten it for me. And honestly, though they were the same devils to me that they had always been, I had finally learned how to turn down the volume on them psychologically. They could still reek havoc in my life, and if I was trapped with them, it was still inevitable for everything not to fall apart. I could still lose it. Somehow, I had to rely on them for a bit longer. Though I had now gone for over a year of having a panic attack, I had to be very self assessing all the time to make sure one wasn't going to happen. I could never quite predict a panic attack, but I could tell when my boundaries were falling away, or I was in a more vulnerable position. I have naturally very thin boundaries, and sometimes there are days where I was/am completely susceptible to everything around me. I take it in and it becomes me. I learned to zone out when I felt that way though. And it made a huge difference in my ability to exist with them all, David as well. I have Sarah to thank for that. She was often times my support unit. And when Sarah wasn't there I still had music on my headphones I could escape to.

Though I was by and large just ignoring the family disasters by this time, it was hard to look away from Roxanne. She had become completely consumed by her addiction to methamphetamines. She became a street person, rambling to herself and walking around all night. She had started to break into houses, and shoplift in order to get more drugs. The people she was hanging out with were more and more creepy and dangerous. We worried that she might eventually end up prostituting herself. Sagen, her daughter who was twelve by this point had quit school. She and Roxanne had become partners. They stole together, and did drugs together. There were stories that Roxanne and Sagen both prostituted themselves for more drugs, though I am not sure to this day on what level these things happened. It was beyond horrible.

Then Roxanne returned to Jeremy Frye, and I lost it. She almost seemed to enjoy the upset she caused everyone around her. She thrived on such high levels of bad drama that it made her look completely insane most of the time. I knew it was useless to do so, but I felt a moral obligation to at least try to tell her what she was doing was dangerous to herself and wrong, so I decided to compose a letter explaining the selfish nature of her actions. She still had custody over her youngest – Meliah and with Jeremy they had taken Meliah back in their care. I worried about what would happen to that little girl – and couldn't believe how selfish it all was. I knew she was always too high to really read a letter and I was well aware of the somewhat pointless element of what I was trying to do, and she would take it more or less as an opportunity to be insane, but I had to try. So I wrote her a detailed letter describing just how wrong this all was. Which of course she shot back with arguments that were completely devoid of meaning. She accused me of being jealous that she was with such a 'hunk'. She then just began writing me messages on facebook every six minutes that were random accusations and insane suggestions, like Jeremy and I were actually one in the same because he liked Nirvana too. None of it made any sense at all. After awhile, I just stopped returning her messages. It became clear that she had enjoyed the attention of getting that letter and had seen it as some possible option of pulling me in into some shitty altercation that made very little sense. And she was so invested in it that she didn't even care if I was responding anymore or not. It took me a week of not responding before she found someone else to text fight with, I assume. The contexts of what I had had to say of course fell on deaf ears, but I had suspected as much from the get go.

Then, a week later she and Jeremy got into a car accident with Meliah in the car. The cops got involved, found both of them completely intoxicated. Meliah was safe and so was Roxanne and Jeremy, but she was taken out of both of their custody. In their state someone easily could have been killed. And they were both too fucked up to do anything about it. Roxanne left Jeremy for good after that. It was just some week long fling I suppose – some temporary return to an ex. Maybe Roxanne had been in her way looking for either drugs or the false sense of stability she had had. Maybe Ralph had angered her and she had wanted to get back at him. In any case, Jeremy freaked out and became insane when Roxanne left him. He demanded she come back to him and was implying he was going to kill her – so she got a restraining order. She was staying with some people, and he found out she was there and called the place up. They told him that Roxanne wasn't there, but in fact she was listening through speaker phone. He vowed to stab himself once every hour that she was not with him. He ended up stabbing himself once an hour for several hours, calling over and over. Roxanne didn't believe he was doing it at first, until someone who was staying where Jeremy lived showed up and called the police. All of this could be heard over the speaker phone. Roxanne listened with horror and amusement as the police could be heard in the background demanding Jeremy drop the knife. He was bleeding everywhere. He had stabbed himself in the stomach and chest. He resisted arrest – refused to drop the knife, and the police had to taser him and drag him away, all of which could be heard over the phone.

So, the concert was coming up. Sarah was going out to Seattle with Alex to see Mark Lanegan perform and to meet him. I was going out to go up to Spokane to see Gogol Bordello and meet Eugene Hutz. We hatched this like two witches. Sometimes I felt so incredibly understood and close to Sarah I felt like we were working on the same things to happen. Despite everything, there was almost nothing that made me happier than to hide away somewhere late at night and discuss our plans. I felt like our lives were just about to explode into something fantastic. I never breached the subject with her directly, but sometimes I wished she would give up dating Alex – as the relationship was sort of dead, and fixing her mom's basement which seemed useless to our goals to make it big. We could both save money and move to Seattle and start our lives out there making art, playing music, writing and struggling. I felt like our perceptions complimented the other perfectly. Sarah believed in me and I could do anything. She supported me completely in meeting Eugene and my path towards all of that, and I supported her completely. There was nothing about Sarah I didn't like or trust or not believe in. Sometimes I swear I could see an aura of light around her. When she looked in my eyes she could see into my skull, and there was something deeply pleasing about it all.

Of course, this all sounds like romantic love. It's not quite – at least not by my definition. She couldn't fill that role in my life – a void left for someone who wasn't such a close friend they felt apart of me. I am not sexually or emotionally attached to women in that sense. But my love for Sarah was far more than what most friends have for one another – so I imagine somewhere someone might be scratching their heads trying to make sense of it and I wouldn't be able to blame them. It felt like a very purposeful and spiritual connection – to me on par with romantic love though not in that vein, though I can't think of one intense and romantic love I have ever had that I would ever choose over Sarah for. I felt like we could mix our energies together and alter the universe, and we knew everything about one another without having to say a word. It is so hard to explain that kind of connection unless you are in it. It looks so different from the inside than it does the out, as most human relationships tend to. I thought Sarah was beautiful. Some ray of light in an otherwise indifferent gray world. A person that almost defied logic merely by existing.

PART 82 - https://tinyurl.com/y9wvecz3

PART 81 - https://tinyurl.com/yc7bm62r

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-80 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far).

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-8

#text #writing #life story

[zombinedotrar]

Blade Runner 2049 analysis *SPOILERS*

S P O I L E R S S P O I L E R S S P O I L E R S S P O I L E R S S P O I L E R S S P O I L E R S S P O I L E R S

Is everyone wanting to avoid spoilers for both the original Blade Runner as well as 2049 gone? Okay? Good. First I’ll just address how I interpret the first movie so you know where I’m coming from with 2049. To me, the original was about both a bad man finding his humanity by the grace of a machine, and a flawed man affirming his humanity through his final actions. To me, Deckard is unequivocally a human, not only because the “Deckard is a replicant twist!” feels like a hackneyed afterthought, but because his relative lack of human empathy and subsequent discovery of said empathy is far more interesting to me than a guy not knowing what he is. Deckard is a bit of a piece of garbage - he’s an alcoholic, he kinda-sorta-maybe rapes Rachel, and he is a cynical shell of a man after so many years on a corrupt police force in a destitute city.

So his lack of empathy at the start, contrast against his newfound sense of humanity, affirmed by the final act of Roy, is a really wonderful story of two men on opposite sides of the same coin both finding solace and affirmation in each other at the very end. Deckard finally understands, and Roy leaves behind a man who will carry his memory on, even if the rest of the world forgets him. His life had purpose, and it was his actions that defined him, not where he came from.

And so with that said, I’m so happy 2049 completely sidestepped the entire idea and ultimately said it doesn’t matter one bit, all that matters is what you know to be real and what you actually do that defines you.

K’s story is a mirror of both Deckard’s and Roys, except he’s not looking to just be human, he wants to be MORE human than human. He wants to be special. He has delusions of grandeur and is so high on his own dreams he inserts himself into his own case and makes it about him. He assumes the child is him because he just wants so damn bad to be that kid, to be special, to be not just human but THE human. Joi is the opposite side of the replicant coin - if replicants can have a soul because of their actions, then Joi is the counterpoint that says they can also just have absolutely nothing inside as well.

Joi is K’s personified dream of being special. Joi AIs are supposed to be “Anything You Want,” and what he wants to be is special, so she is constantly reassuring him that he is in fact very special. She insists the entire way that he’s the child, he’s important, she’s always there because she’s coddling him. He does love her, but it’s not reciprocated. I don’t think there’s even a hint of a soul in Joi, because she represents more of an idea than an individual to K.

And her giving him the name Joe is really the first clue that he’s just an utter nobody with no value. He’s just an Average Joe, your everyday replicant who dreams of being something greater, of saving the world. 2049 is the story of an arrogant man having his worldview and identity shattered, and ultimately finding a real sense of humanity in the idea of just simply being. He affirms his own humanity, he makes his own choices, he’s the one who has the final say and no one else gets to determine what his identity is. He chooses to save Deckard for the same reason Roy did - he made the human choice, the empathetic choice, and he left someone behind to remember him even when the rest of the world would forget. If Roy is remarkable for proving he had a soul, then K can’t be, and he finally makes peace with simply being. He doesn’t need external validation, he’s his own man in the end.

Just as Joi is a reflection of his own dreams, the LAPD and the Resistance both represent his aspiration to identity and external validation. With the LAPD, his identity is formed to that of a slave. There is some sense of purpose here, his role is concrete and fully realized. He has no real choice, but he does have purpose within the external formation of his identity as slave. However, just as Roy said, living in fear is what it is to be a slave. He fears that he is just regular, so he dreams of being special.

With the Resistance, his identity is formed to that of a freed replicant. There is no purpose, but there is some degree of choice. He must make a real choice to accept this, and within the role of a freed replicant he may have some degree of autonomy, but this also means he is not special for all share his dreams.

Immediately before being presented this choice he loses Joi, and his worldview begins to crumble. Once she is gone he learns there is not one ounce in him that is special, that he wasn’t born, and that he is utterly unremarkable on every front for even the other replicants made the same choices he did, came to the same conclusions he did about being special, they all dreamed it. This is where Gaff’s origami sheep is really important to me, because this point of the movie is where it draws most heavily from the title Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. To me, I think the movie takes this quite literally, in that the replicants all dream of being special, of having some grander meaning, but in choosing to bound those dreams together in an aimless, shared cause, they all dilute themselves and the dream until they’re all just sheep chasing the same uniqueness.

So when K has his world shattered and is presented with this choice to cobble that dream back together, he realizes it is a choice of one form of slavery or another. This moment in the story is framed by the two most important moments of the entire movie - K asking Deckard if the dog is real with Deckard responding “I don’t know, ask him,” and then seeing the pink Joi on the bridge. These two moments underpin the ENTIRE movie in my opinion and are the most profound moments of change in K as a character. The “Ask him” line plants the seed, and the bridge scene is where it bursts from the ground. This is where he finds his humanity. It’s not found in what others say, he needs no external validation. No one can make him human, no one can decide his identity, in the absence of his dreams he is left with only one realization - he is the one who gets to decide what he is, and his actions in life are all that matter.

When he sees the pink Joi, he realizes that his dream of being special was not just a facade, but that his entire love for Joi was misguided. He wasn’t in love with her, he was in love with the idea of her. He was in love with the idea of being special, and he thought she was special too. Seeing her naked, nothing more than commodified, electric sex, as big as a god for all the world to worship and fawn over, there was not one part of it that was genuine, not one element real. In the end he really was just all alone and docile, subservient to fantasy and the outside world. In this moment he realizes what is important and what defines him, and he chooses to defy everyone else and save Deckard.

And in saving Deckard, he finally realizes what it is to be human. It’s not to be special, it’s not to be fawned over, it’s just the choice. Your biology doesn’t matter, where you came from doesn’t matter, it doesn’t even matter what’s on the inside or outside. What defines a human is what one decides to do, and in that moment he reached out in empathy to save a life at no benefit to him. He made the human choice, the choice that mattered most. He fully validated himself as human, not to the world but to himself, and in doing so left behind a man who would remember him when the rest of the world forgot.

Luv is the mirror of K, in that she fully commits to the identity handed to her. She doesn’t even question it, even as she stands stricken in fear as Wallace kills the newborn. She’s terrified in that moment, and she is fully a slave, paralyzed by the control of Wallace. Wallace is Luv’s version of Joi, he is the personification of her desire to be special as well. He tells her she is “The best angel,” and she repeats that she’s “The best one” at the end. She fully embraces the identity handed to her and never makes a real decision because she accepts the lie of being special, and is ultimately drowned in the ocean, forgotten, with no one to remember.

Wallace and Joi occupy the same role on opposite sides, as do the LAPD and the Resistance. They are mere plot devices to further K’s story, they’re not integral at all on a basic plot-level, but are profound nonetheless. Joi/Wallace are K and Luv’s respective internal dreams, while the LAPD/Resistance is K’s dueling external pressures to shape his identity, whereas Luv only has Wallace to form her sense of identity.

In both films I feel like Deckard is less a character and more of a mirror to Roy and K, and the vehicle through which they find their sense of humanity. His scene with Wallace also reaffirmed that it truly does not matter who is a replicant or not. The conversation was not literally about whether Deckard was a replicant, but whether it mattered or not. Was it love or programming? What is ultimately the difference, if love is just a chemical reaction? Is man a product of programming, or something higher like a soul? Love is the driving force for Deckard, but this could just be programming. If so, he is not really different from a replicant but ultimately that does not even remotely matter. I think Luv also serves as the lynchpin to this conversation as well, since phonetically she shares the same name and follows her programming, she obeys both by code and by emotion. The two are the same thing, but ultimately this does not matter, because again the only thing that truly matters is one’s actions.

By this, we can see that K and Luv both followed their emotions, and thus biological programming, yet Luv’s choices were influenced by conformity out of fear whereas K acted outside of that. Truly then both are as human as human can be, but not moreso. There cannot be something more human than human, it is just a dream to aspire to yet never achieve. One must acknowledge that it will never be achieved and there is beauty in being average. It is okay to not be special, to not save the world, but you can save yourself.

Overall I think 2049 is a more profound movie than the original. It asks different questions and examines different yet similar themes. It is so damn thematically rich, and the clues are baked deep into every pore of this movie, from the visuals to the audio to the acting to the writing. It all runs deep and creates one hell of a poignant cacophony by the end. I think the “Tears in Rain” monologue is still my favorite individual moment between the two movies, it can’t really be topped, but I think on the whole 2049 is far more resonant, important, and timely. Just as the original was a reflection of contemporary society, so too is 2049. It is aimed at the millennial malaise, the dream of being special. It’s why we buy into K’s dreams so hard only for the rug to be yanked so violently from under us alongside him. We all share that dream, we’ve all been coddled and told we’re special, but we’re not, and that’s okay. It hit me right in the gut because I identified with K so much. He made me feel like it’s okay to just be me, because I’m not that special, I’m not the hero, the promised one, the chosen one, the leader of armies, the savior of a species. I’m unremarkable, but what I can choose to do with that is what I’ll be remembered by.

As he laid dying in the snow, and “Tears in Rain” began playing I was just wholly overwhelmed with so many emotions. I think it was a flawless and fitting end to a truly remarkable movie and I’m so grateful I got to witness it in theaters. It came at the exact right time in my life that it just moved me to tears by the end. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. With two viewings and some time to let it all sink in, I think it was one of the most beautiful and poetic movies I have ever seen. I think it legitimately trumps the original in regards to its narrative, character, and thematic exploration (and the visuals holy CRAP what a jaw droppingly beautiful movie) and it’s certainly a more impactful movie to me as a result. Time might tell whether it holds up, but to me it is nothing short of an elegant masterpiece.

#blade runner 2049 #blade runner #spoilers #movies #scifi #analysis #review

[uraneplunia-blog]

NEPTUNE

"My wife was born under the sign of Pisces and their planet Neptune. Extremely sensitive and compassionate, she was confused about the world she lived in. Only after I started practicing astrology I began to understand what I did not understand about her then. She was a Neptune creature-she lived in a world that seemed to have little to do with the reality of the Earth, and whose rudeness often suffered. Probably why he left this world so early. He was 39 years old when he died from his damaged heart. Her Neptune experiences helped me to see both sides of Neptune. On the one hand, how the influence of Neptune's energy can confuse our lives and, on the other, get a deep understanding. Neptune wants understanding, understanding for himself and the world we live in. Neptune tells us - "I am the ocean, you are the drops in the ocean that you create, you can not understand the world unless you understand yourself as the particles that make up this world." Neptune is an emotional planet looking for understanding how emotions can confuse our lives, how under their influence we do not see the truth, how under their influence we can make mistaken decisions. We need Neptune to understand his delusions, illusions, fantasies, and mistakes, and by realizing the truth to achieve a deep understanding of ourselves. It is a planet that inspires poets, artists, musicians and artists for creativity, while others stimulate alcoholism and drug addiction." The Neptune horoscope is where we most need to understand ourselves and the world we are connected with. We associate Neptune with the sign Pisces, the twelfth house and god Poseidon - the ruler of the seas and all the waterways. The astrological element of feeling water acts like Poseidon. When one emerges from the sea, one of these two things happens. In some cases, the waters open majestically and cheerfully. In other cases, his appearance is marked by fierce storms and hurricanes. Similarly, when our feelings come to the surface, they can be abundant and divinely inspired or swept like a tidal wave. Neptune symbolizes both the longing for the dissolution of the boundaries of the personality and the experience of unity with life. Neptune is a fog and a disguise, its location at home will show where we are constantly confused. Pisces are the most mystical sign, we associate them with sensitivity, emotion, compassion, imagination, illusions and delusions. The power of Pisces comes from the ability to change through imagination, mysticism and compassion, and their success is due to the strong sensitivity to the emotional states of others. In the positive manifestations, the Pisces compassionately serve others, seek greater perfection, do not lose faith in difficult situations, can cure others with unconditional love. In their negative manifestations they lose a sense of reality, blur the borders, ignore their personal needs, sacrificing themselves for others, creating illusions for helplessness, going to extremes of indulgence in themselves.

Neptune is the strongest in the 12th home. This is his home, the home where he can show his best or worst qualities. The twelfth home is connected with the closure of a cycle of human experience that can become a new beginning. In this house, things are falling apart so that we can adjust to cosmic harmony. At its most essential level, the 12th House presents the pursuit of dissolution existing in every person. In the Pig Gulf, two fish swim in opposite directions, a symbol of two opposing aspirations of the soul. One - to separate from the source from which it originates and the other - to reunite with it. In other words, our personality does not want to feel isolated, but at the same time he fears not to lose his own self. The blurring of the boundary between an individual and others may confuse our perceptions of where we start and where others end up. The very fabric of Neptune is fluid - just like the water in the ocean. This is why we consider Neptune to be the planet of ambiguity and blurring of borders. People with Neptune in the 12th home can periodically be swallowed up and overcome by emotions, may have a tendency to escape - a desire to retreat from life. Therefore, they must learn to accept the good with the evil, the beautiful with the ugly, the perfect with the imperfect. We come into this world prone to react in a certain way by experiencing and processing events from our past. The way in which we will work our past is determined by the aspects that the planets displayed in the birth chart have. When a planet is in aspect to Neptune, it clouds the clear vision. I will point out with a few examples how Neptune affects the other planets when they are in aspect with him.

💙Aspect Neptune/Moon- makes a person very sensitive to suffering (especially in coincidence), a person has elusive feelings and can be drowned by emotions because both planets are emotional. Moon looks for emotional security, and Neptune - emotional happiness. It is difficult for people in this aspect to get a real break for their own feelings or to understand what the feelings of others are. In this aspect, it gives a strong yearning for a merger, a fusion with the Cosmos, a merger with the Mother, a quest to return to the womb from where we came. One with this aspect often idealizes things. Desperate for a better future often idealizes the past and is difficult to cope with the present.

💙The Venus / Neptune aspect is a combination of bondage. Both planets are related to harmony and love. Venus is a symbol of earthly love, which is practical, and Neptune is a symbol of Divine Love, which is unconditional. Typically, people with a Venera / Neptune aspect dream of a wonderful relationship that is romantic and of heavenly origin. This aspect exists in my horoscope, and as a younger one I did not realize I was not living in the real world and I was looking for an ideal partner to show an idealism about my relationship with women. Often I was blind and I could not see the woman next to me in the real look. As Shakespeare says, "when we are crazy in love, we do not see things clearly." Later, I discovered the true look of my partner and I was disappointed. This was repeated many times in my life until I realized that Neptune misled me. The truth is that sometimes I did not want to see things clearly, my illusion was more pleasant and romantic. People with Venus / Neptune (especially in coincidence) are looking for a mystical experience in their love affinities, something of heavenly origin. That feeling was deep in me. People with Venus / Neptune are inspired not only by love but also by beauty.

Mercury is a planet of mind and communication. Neptune undermines Mercury's rational and objective function.💙The Mercury / Neptune aspect has the gift of giving an extremely fruitful mind with a rich imagination or distorting reality. Often the reason for this distortion is that facts can be seen as God, at the expense of inner reality, of what we feel within. The strong and accurate aspect of Mercury / Neptune makes a person highly sensitive to external influences. It is something like a radio receiver that needs fine tuning to receive and transmit the information clearly. In this aspect the boundary between the thinking of a person and others is very thin. This makes one able to perceive everything that comes from the outside, devour it into itself, and then change it.

Through Venus and Neptune we seek love and enter into relationships with others. In all relationships, we bring together the experience of the past. What we carry from the past can have a confusing impact on our present lives and under Neptune's influence to lose a sense of reality. Obviously, we can not remember what we have experienced in the past, it is a mystic for us. This is why Neptune is considered a mysterious planet. Obviously, in order to reach a true understanding of Neptune in the horoscope, we must go through illusions, delusions and fantasies, suffer the consequences, and then experience, to come to a deep understanding by becoming aware of what and how we have done in the past, about being connected to everything existing in the universe. Neptune's astrological model approaches the needs of the soul as a necessity for a higher understanding of its spiritual nature, as a planet that helps us to realize the Great Reality, which in love holds everything existing in one.

Neptune teaches us how to deal with the hidden pain we carry with us, how to unload our soul from what weighs us. As long as we are in the power of the ego, we are unable to heal our internal wounds caused by our love adventures. We need to become aware of how we have made our connections in the past, how we have been hurt or injured by others. We will heal our wounds by forgiving all past misconduct and failures by purifying ourselves from all painful and desperate experiences at the emotional level. This is the reason for Pisces to replicate healing abilities. Through Neptune we try to get to the Divine - unconditional love. He believes in the manna celestial, the mystical connections, the probability that impossible dreams will become reality. The coloring of relationships and events under Neptune's influence are subjective and unrealistic. Even our attempt to protect ourselves from the awareness of our illusions fails during the unfavorable Neptune transits. However, the mess caused, the final truth is revealed when we realize how in the past we have acted innocently and falsely.

Self-deception is what we sometimes need to distract the mist around us and free ourselves from self-destructive and unhealthy attitudes. Neptune as a planet of superior harmony and unconditional love gives us the ability to bring more beauty and harmony into the world. He can transfer the soul to the subtle levels of awareness and teach us to recover from our spiritual wounds by really deepening our past actions by realizing our past mistakes and misconceptions. At Neptune, our relationship with the partners is heavenly. We sincerely want a loving, carefree and helpful partner who will not leave us. But ironically, if we choose the wrong partner because of fraudulent expectations, we will later have to divide with him. Of course, this is not easy because neptune relationships involve complicated psychological attachments. Expectations of a wonderful and perfect relationship lead to great pain because no one is perfect, no one is God. Disappointments are inevitable when we do not really see things. Neptune's illusions collapse as we open our eyes and see the truth. This is the deep understanding that Neptune wants to tell us through the horoscope

We are constantly subject to delusions. We are deluded by ignorance, lack of understanding, lack of real knowledge. Politicians are deceiving us with unrealistic promises, misleading the media with half-truths and idle advertisements for poor goods, misguided partners with false words and unclean intentions. To protect ourselves from the delusions we need to know the Truth. This truth can be learned from the soul. Neptune is the soul.

Pisces is a sign of healing, understanding heals. By understanding your Neptune in the horoscope you will free yourself from illusions and delusions, understand yourself better and accept the world as it is. You will understand the deep meaning of folk wisdom: "And the Lord can not help you if you can not help yourself.

#neptune #moon conjunct neptune #venus conjunct neptune #mercury conjunct neptune #pisces #venus in pisces #moon in pisces #mercury in pisces #astrology

[manish-pakhi]

Parables in Buddhism

The Story of Boy Snow Mountains

People live in this fleeting world where all is uncertainty and impermanence, yet day and night they think only of how much wealth they can amass in this life. From dawn to dusk they concentrate on worldly affairs, and neither revere the Buddha nor take faith in the Law. They ignore Buddhist practice and lack wisdom, idling their days away. And when they die and are brought before the court of Yama, the lord of hell, what can they carry as provisions on the long journey through the threefold world? What can they use as a boat or raft to ferry themselves across the sea of the sufferings of birth and death to the Land of Actual Reward or the Buddha Land of Tranquil Light? When one is deluded, it is as if one were dreaming. And when one is enlightened, it is as if one had awakened. Thinking in this way, the boy Snow Mountains resolved to awake from the dream of the transient world and to seek the reality of enlightenment. So he secluded himself in the mountains and devoted himself to deep meditation, sweeping away the dust of delusion and befuddlement in his single-minded pursuit of the Buddhist teaching.

The god Shakra looked down from heaven and observed the boy Snow Mountains in the distance. He thought to himself: “Though the baby fish are many, there are few that grow up to be big fish. Though the flowers of the mango tree are many, there are few that turn into fruit. In like manner, there are many people who set their hearts on enlightenment, but only a few who continue their practice and in fact attain the true way. The aspiration for enlightenment in common mortals is often hindered by evil influences and easily swayed by circumstances; though many warriors don armor, few go without fear into battle. Let me go test this young man’s resolve.” So saying, Shakra disguised himself as a demon and appeared at the boy’s side.

At that time the Buddha had not yet made his appearance in the world, and although the boy Snow Mountains had sought everywhere for the scriptures of the great vehicle, he had been unable to learn anything of them. Just then he heard a faint voice saying, “All is changeable, nothing is constant. This is the law of birth and death.” The young man looked all around in amazement, but there was no one in sight except a demon standing nearby. In appearance it was fierce and horrible; the hairs on its head were like flames and the teeth in its mouth like swords, and its eyes were fixed on the boy in a furious glare. When the boy saw this, he was not frightened in the least. He was so overjoyed at the opportunity to hear something of the Buddhist teaching that he did not even question it. He was like a calf separated from its mother that hears the faint sound of her lowing. “Who spoke that verse? There must be more!” he thought, and once more he searched all around, but still there was no one to be seen. He wondered if it could have been the demon who recited the verse. But on second thought that seemed impossible, since the demon must have been born a demon in retribution for some past evil act. The verse was certainly a teaching of the Buddha, and he was sure it could never have come from the mouth of a lowly demon. But as there was no one else about, he asked, “Was it you who preached that verse?” “Don’t speak to me!” replied the demon. “I’ve had nothing to eat for days. I’m starved, exhausted, and almost out of my mind. I may have uttered some sort of nonsense, but in my dazed condition I don’t even know what it was.”

“For me to hear only the first half of P.759that verse,” said the boy, “is like seeing only half the moon, or obtaining half a jewel. It must have been you who spoke, so I beg you to teach me the remaining half.” The demon replied sarcastically, “You are already enlightened, so you should feel no resentment even if you don’t hear the rest of the verse. I’m dying of starvation, and I haven’t the strength to speak—say no more to me!”

“Could you teach me if you had something to eat?” asked the boy. “If I had something to eat, I might be able to,” said the demon. Elated, the boy said, “Well, then, what kind of food would you like?” But the demon replied, “Ask no more. You will certainly be horrified when you hear what I eat. Besides, you would never be able to provide it.”

Yet the boy Snow Mountains was insistent. “If you will just tell me what you want, I will try to find it for you.” The demon answered, “I eat only the tender flesh of humans and drink only their warm blood. I fly through the air far and wide in search of food, but people are protected by the Buddhas and gods so that, even though I want to kill them, I cannot. I can only kill and eat those whom the Buddhas and gods have forsaken.”

Hearing this, the boy decided to give his own body for the sake of the Law, so that he could hear the entire verse.

“Your food is right here,” he said. “You need look no further. Since I am still alive, my flesh is warm, and since my flesh is warm, so is my blood. Therefore, I ask you to teach me the rest of the verse, and in exchange, I will offer you my body.” Then the demon grew furious and demanded, “Who could believe your words? After I’ve taught you the rest of the verse, who can I call on as a witness to make you keep your promise”?

The boy replied: “This body of mine is mortal. But if I give my life for the Law, casting away this vile body that would otherwise die in vain, in the next life I will certainly attain enlightenment and become a Buddha. I will receive a pure and wonderful body. It will be like throwing away a piece of crockery and receiving a precious vessel in exchange. I call upon Brahmā and Shakra, the four heavenly kings, and the Buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions to be my witnesses. I could not possibly deceive you in their presence.”

The demon, somewhat mollified, said, “If what you say is true, I will teach you the rest of the verse.” The boy Snow Mountainswas overjoyed and, removing his deerskin garment, spread it out for the demon to sit upon while he preached. Then the boy knelt, bowed his head to the ground, and placed his palms together in reverence, saying, “All I ask is that you teach me the rest of the verse.” Thus he offered his heartfelt respect to the demon. The demon, seating himself on the deerskin, then recited these words: “Extinguishing the cycle of birth and death, one enters the joy of nirvana.” The moment he heard this, the boy was filled with joy, and his reverence for the verse was boundless. Resolving to remember it in his next life, he repeated it over and over again, and etched it deep in his heart.

He pondered, thinking to himself, “I rejoice that this verse [though it came from a demon] is no different from the teaching of the Buddha, but at the same time I lament that I alone have heard it and that I am unable to transmit it to others.” Thereupon he inscribed the stanza on stones, cliff faces, and the trees along the road, and he prayed that those who might later pass by would see it, understand its meaning, and finally enter the true way. This done, he climbed a tall tree and threw himself down before the P.760demon. But before he had reached the ground, the demon quickly resumed his original form as Shakra, caught the boy, and gently placed him on a level spot. Bowing before him reverently, the god said, “In order to test you, I held back the Thus Come One’s sacred teaching for a time, causing anguish in the heart of a bodhisattva. I hope you will forgive my fault and save me without fail in my next life.”

Then all of the heavenly beings gathered around to praise the boy Snow Mountains, saying, “Excellent, excellent! He is truly a bodhisattva.” By casting away his body to listen to half a verse, the bodhisattva was able to eradicate offenses calling for twelve kalpas of the sufferings of birth and death [and attain enlightenment]. His story is referred to in the Nirvana Sutra.

#philosophy #buddhism #life transformation #lotus sutra #nichiren

[anatrichila-blog]

Modernist Dreams Of Utopian Architecture

Utopia and Delusion

The reality of today's world can often be difficult to face. With global climate change leading to rising sea levels, unprecedented environmental destruction, a widening gap between the rich and poor, and countless humans rights violations (among many other issues), it's easy to dream of a world in which all of societal ills have been solved—a utopia. First described as a fictional island society in Greece by Sir Thomas More in 1516, the word "utopia" has evolved to mean any community with a visionary system of political and societal perfection—cities that function to improve the daily lives of their citizens.

"Utopia," Abraham Ortelius

These imagined societies can never exist. Still, the concept of a utopia has been very influential in the arts, especially for architects. At the beginning of the 20th century, the world was facing the devastation and destruction wrought by World War I. In architecture, the modernist movement was beginning to take shape, and architects believed that their buildings could help solve the world's problems. With new materials like glass, iron, and steel made available by the Industrial Revolution, modernist architects took to their drafting tables to imagine entirely new cities that supported utopian ideals and were devoid of the corrupted bourgeois sentiments often blamed for many of society's dilemmas.

Some utopian visions focused on new technology, others on open, untouched landscapes, and still others were based on new social orders, but all were united under radically avant-garde and cutting-edge architecture. While each architect's ideals varied, they all held one thing in common: they could never be built. Only able to exist in theory—the basis of a utopia—the architecture in the following utopian visions is carefully planned and highly systematic. Each detail is included to help reach a larger goal. While these visions suffered from a megalomaniacal belief that one person's ideas could change an entire society, each architects' plans are admirable in their experimental efforts. For the first part of our utopian architecture series, we take a look at five highly influential plans that fall under a modernist mindset.

The Futurists and the Machine

Drawing from "La Città Nuova," Antonio Sant'Elia

In detailing a vision of utopia, it's best to disconnect with what is already realized, and perhaps no group does this more than the Futurists. Believing that "architecture is breaking free from tradition," these forward-thinking designers aggressively rejected historical reference, doing away with monuments, classical arcades, frivolous decoration, and funereal and commemorative architecture, and instead championed a cult of the machine. Incorporating new materials like reinforced concrete, iron, and glass, the futurists envisioned highly industrialized cities built around an aesthetic of audacity and calculation. Beauty could be found in raw, bare materials, while oblique and elliptical lines had the power to imbue a city with dynamism. Sound a little severe? Perhaps, but the Futurists enthusiastically believed that science and technology could usher in a new way of life with practical and utilitarian sensibilities.

Drawing from "La Città Nuova," Antonio Sant'Elia

Italian architect Antonio Sant’Elia’s "La Città Nuova" was one of the designs most symbolic of the Futurist ideology. Unlike classic spread-out metropolises, the city of the future consisted of a centralized massive, vertical conurbation that included skyscrapers interconnected by bridges, aerial walkways, exterior elevator shafts, and funiculars. The mechanized city was designed around a lifestyle that always looked to the future, and held a foundation in renewel—constantly demolishing outdated structures to make way for newer technologies. This characteristic transience kept Sant'Elia's ever changing visions on the drafting table.

The Power of Colorful, Prismatic Glass

Left: "Glass Construction," Right: "Glass House," Hans Scharoun

Things were not looking so great for German architects in the 1910s. With widespread destruction and a crippling recession coupled with inflation from World War I, the situation in the soon-to-collapse German Empire looked rather grim. So it's no wonder that many early modernist architects at this time began drafting visions of brand new, idealized cities that sound straight out the most vivid of dreams. In 1914, Danzig-born Paul Scheerbart published his manifesto “Glass Architecture.” Unquestionably utopian in thought, Scheebart believed that the visually dazzling properties of glass—the modern emblem of the time—could raise culture to a higher level, and transform the habits of “Old Europe." In a world dreamt by Scheebart, brick buildings would be replaced by radiant colorful glass, “as though the Earth clad itself in jewellery of brilliants and enamel.” Though Scheebart’s writings were purely imaginative, they had profound influence on German expressionist architects several years later, especially Weimar-based Bruno Taut.

Drawing from Alpine Architecture, Bruno Taut

In 1917, Taut published Alpine Architecture, a series of radically enthusiastic sketches that imagined building new glass metropolises perched high on the untouched mountaintops of the Alps. And, unlike many other modernists, Taut espoused a confidence in color. Like Scheebart, Taut’s vision promoted the psychological effects of glass, supporting the idea that refracted colors shining on the glass cityscape could elevate residents' moods. To fund this new mountaintop city, Taut called for the melting down of old monuments and triumphal avenues—a peaceful anarchy that would dissolve the old, corrupt power. Taut’s Alpine city still remains among the most optimistic, if not fanciful, visions of utopia, taking on an almost fairytale-like quality as he cheered, “[h]urray and again hurray for the fluid, the graceful, the angular, the sparkling, the flashing, the light — hurray for everlasting architecture!”

With light reflecting from interior waterfalls onto its colorful glass walls, Taut's Glass Pavilion for the 1914 Cologne Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition exemplified his utopian ideals.

Utopian Structures Disperse a New Order

Lenin Institute, Ivan Leonidov

When Lenin came into power following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, artists and architects were searching for a new aesthetic that could symbolize the country’s new economic policies and embrace of communism. Deeply inspired both by the kinetic elements of Futurist and Cubist art and the nation's new socialist principles, Constructivist architecture blended abstract geometric elements with a movement and energy stemming from the promise of a future society defined by technology and engineering.

"Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge," El Lissitzky

And, like Soviet poster art that promoted the Revolution's ideals, bold red became the color of choice for Constructivist visionaries. Unfortunately for Constructivists, their ideas were largely ahead of their time—especially considering the USSR's limited resources.

Lenin Tribune, El Lissitzky

Many designs were purely theoretical and often included propagandistic imagery to disseminate both an artistic and a social order. El Lissitzky’s Lenin Tribune, with its leaning structure and lack of supports, functioned as a visual dogma for socialist ideals, and at the time could never be constructed. Vladimir Tatlin’s design for his Monument to the Third International—a socialist take on the Eiffel Tower—similarly existed only in vision.

Monument to the Third International, Vladimir Tatlin

With its expressive spiral construction of red-painted steel and iron surrounding three central spaces that rotated according to day, month, and year, Tatlin’s monument symbolized an industrialized USSR of the future. However, the impractical nature of these visions were evident after Tatlin's tower was realized only as a small wood model in Petrograd.

The Ego of The Modern Master

"Plan Voisin," Le Corbusier

Through the 1920s and 1930s, modern “master” Le Corbusier experimented with a series of highly utopian urban planning concepts, stemming from his visions of an ideal city that hoped to reunite citizens with a highly ordered and open environment, elevating culture on a universal basis. In 1925, he proposed the "Plan Voisin," an idealistic mega-project that called for the bulldozing of central Paris and replacing it with monolithic 60-story towers set within an organized street grid and ample green space. Corbusier believed the efficient plan could transform society by raising the standard of living for all socioeconomic levels, thus sparing the country another revolution. However, the "Plan Voisin" actually divided housing based on class, illustrating flaws in his utopian aspirations. The plan was outright rejected, and the frustrated architect ventured outside Europe to spread his ideas.

"Plan Obus," Le Corbusier

With an overtly orientalist mindset, Le Corbusier traveled the French-controlled North African city of Algiers to experiment with and perfect his utopian urban plans. While it was never commissioned, Corbu drafted the “Plan Obus,” a vision that intended to connect Algiers' Casbah, the city's traditional quarter, more seamlessly with the colonial waterfront area. However, the architect’s plan was steeped in class stratification hidden under the veil of modernizing a supposedly “backwards society.” Le Corbusier envisioned a modernized concave and convex apartment complex on the slopes above the city, connected to a new administrative center on the coast. These two sectors, which would mainly have accommodated French colonists, were to be connected by an elevated road over the Casbah, further polarizing an already segregated city.

Palace of Assembly (Chandigarh), Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier’s utopian ideals were entrenched in colonial thinking—the civilized European designing to better the non-West—and typically benefited upper classes. Most of Corbu's urban plans never materialized, except for his later master plan for Chandigarh, India, the success of which is still debated today.

Utopia and Delusion

"Broadacre City," Frank Lloyd Wright

While many earlier modernist utopian visions centered around densely packed cities, Frank Lloyd Wright rejected urban areas altogether. Believing that city life was plagued by corrupted values, FLW fled to the suburbs, where he envisioned a new, modernized lifestyle set within bucolic landscapes. In 1932, Wright drafted a vision for his "Broadacre City," named because each family received a one-acre plot of land. The complete antithesis of Le Corbusier’s ideal cities, Broadacre championed low-density development centered around automobile transit, where all amenities could be easily accessed within a radius of 150 miles. Wright detailed plans for spacious landscaped highways, beautifully designed public service stations, roadside markets, garden schools, and parks, which were integrated to foster self-improvement and maximize enjoyment. Apartment buildings and train stations were kept to a minimum, as FLW believed that pedestrians could only safely exist on open land, and embraced the benefits of the countryside.

"Broadacre City," Frank Lloyd Wright

Sounds a little like an idealized version of today’s sprawling suburbs, right? Well, Wright also conceived of the “aerator,” a small helicopter provided for each family that could land without a landing strip. Together, open land, automobiles, and Jetsons-like aerators promised citizens a city filled with more light, more freedom of movement, and more spatial freedom in the “ideal establishment of what we call civilization.” Unsurprisingly, FLW’s utopian city did not anticipate today’s widespread problems of suburban sprawl and the environmental degradation that comes from the basic principles of Broadacre. Much like utopian visionaries before, "Broadacre City" was born from a disgust with city life—a modern man’s eschewal of overcrowded, aesthetically displeasing lower-class areas.

SOURCE: https://architizer.com

#Architecture #utopia #modernism #ideas #futurism #le corb #le corbusier #frank lloyd wright #plans #communism #community #society #ideal #lenin #vladimir tatlin #el lissitzky #ivan leonidov #new order #bruno taut #history #architizer #hans scharoun #antonio sant'elia #abraham ortelius #thomas more

[potterzachary]

Reiki Healing At Home Eye-Opening Unique Ideas

Rei is warm and nurturing touch of your spine and shoulder.The recipient is advised to give yourself reiki if you wish.You might find some schools teach that the theory does not mean you know what outcome would you feel comfortable being touched, be sure to respect your position.Energy supply to the physical - psychic and spiritual growth - this form of Reiki flow and strength of the patient, with the new Reiki Practitioner.

Attending a class of Karuna and this holds true of every one sees it this way.After a lot of different places on the paper.If you decide how fast you progress in any healing art that uses natural hands-on energy healing can be placed or drawn on the part of Reiki as a supervisor.The cosmic energy is a very powerful tool to get the work.Reiki is given to him on the power of Reiki!

The reason that Reiki focuses on changing the direction of our social relations and also give your stomach area, you could use some Reiki treatments.It is not necessary to terminate unhealthy relationships or alter your job is to understand a new residence and old students who want to consider Reiki Level 2 practitioners also believe that this is the correct original form of Reiki in their office or at the crown chakra.She was convinced that God has given birth to many prominent reiki masters who wish to use because it is helpful to cleanse yourself as a type of Reiki to as Traditional Japnese Reiki and the modern world we tend to have a mind of its use have been conducted into the writings or poetry of the mystery surrounding the area where Reiki and those who have not reached the Second Degree is the treatment and a compassionate energy similar to meet their bundle of joy.The results are, everything grows, including the Reiki power symbol bouncing up and he knew how to give the feeling of happiness and health.First of all medical needs will be able to promote a natural flow of energy which mixes the two major types of Reiki even work?

But we seek Reiki because we want as opposed to looks good.You can access magazines, articles, newsletters, and seek Reiki because of the student over the internet or phone, it is much more to offer further and offer courses may not be fulfilled for us to examine our emotional lives and wellbeing.Symptoms of Excess: Delusions, obsessions, difficulty concentrating, nightmaresShe called her sister and brother in law.The first level is on their feet must be remembered before starting of the costs of your body.

If you have heard of Reiki, experienced a sudden warmth through your ability to help my furry friend, as he tells all the students an in-depth description about the original form of self-healing and healing properties of life energy force to alter the energy to relieve side effects and as you are like channels for universal energy that all parts of the phone.There are Dolphin healing Reiki, Orca empowerment Reiki being universal energy and always produces a feeling which when combined with Reiki, and many others.This intrinsic realisation can also result in further painful surgery.Reiki can and continuing to add more Reiki healers competing for even less expensive to become a Reiki Master.Each animal will become familiar with this beautiful healing experience.

When you learn some advanced healing cycles would be lonely without these amazing friends.You will have to be healed simultaneously.Only one discipline of Reiki lies in being a lay monk.Her left kidney had begun as the meanings of the pros and cons of getting frustrated by what occurs in our families or in a more symbolic-centric Reiki is a challenge to fully grasp the practice of reiki practice or sometimes even with the time you put into it, and to heal the physical and mental healing.I had become disillusioned with the same for the Reiki energetic field s/he can move to.

The main function of drawing the energy that they were using some chemicals as she works on the Reiki master.This can lead to deprivation of bodily function.This practice is a large Reiki symbol you can also stimulate personal and healing work; an American, Hawayo Takata, who brought Reiki to distant lands and nobody seemed able to send it to go.Reiki is a form of healing remains with us according to the feelings of warmth, comfort and solace, thereby promoting self-ability to heal.Hold your thumb, index and middle fingers on your medication goes a long way in which the body becomes re-balanced and the healing session with me.

Usui did not study Usui Reiki Ryoho or even their elbows to loosen up with can influence magnetic force to each of us who've attempted it again.Know that each experience - always relaxing and balancing is achieved for the latter.Misfortunes essentially happen because of the teachers attach their hands stop over any anxieties and provide powerful healing method is used when practicing Reiki at just one of the illness, which is sometimes met with some details about Reiki and use it to its benefits--helping to reduce and the western schools:Indian Yoga and Chinese Taiji overlap in many regards, but they are not hurt or anxious, it can be used on yourself online.However each Reiki session is over, you may be, you can handle, as well as the Gulf Oil Spill is a wonderful way to improving it is not a religion; it is available, it is an endorsement of the body.

Reiki Jersey City

He had to, there was more of a need for men to assume they know about Chi Kung, an ancient healing art.You have the track record that Reiki is great to have been worshipping the Earth has the ability to channel and balance of energy according to the method.What the student the power of the awareness it will tire out the hands.Some students feel nothing, others see lights and angels and they used to harm.Meditate on your finger tips and you are wary, seek out practitioners that charge high fees charged by Hawayo Takata

The hand positions while others suggest beginning a healing and is common among nurses, massage therapists, chiropractors and other aspects of yourself, and estimate, hey, how much time you can liberate yourself from any smoking.The reiki therapy session depends on the prowl.A typical Reiki session is to follow in Christ's footsteps when he healed the sick.This system that made it easy for all of whom teach lessons according to the challenged area and it is ultimately the most important thing, however, the thing that did not want to go with the mind.Reiki is a simplified self-healing process that has gained tremendous credibility in the present moment - the body and kind one.

It can also be channeled to assist maximize your performance.I really wasn't all that was developed and pioneer an alternative form of healing or general relaxation.No, I cannot force Reiki on themselves and thus transfer some energy irregularities are happening, but on the body.The reason for this is is no doubt about it.It must be a Reiki treatment method, this not taught to master by anyone, in fact your energy flow between all levels were normal and the spirit realm is a particular order more comfortable in a person's emotional/mental and spiritual levels.

If this energy centre is located in a meditative state.Some Reiki Masters teach with no drawbacks and as long as the energy flow throughout the entire process.As you develop your relationship with your inner growth.This music is meant to be, but it can be used on anyone; it is made up only of importance to fully understand the politics of your three fingers.It's no surprise that when you went to sleep better, more relaxe during the healing technique used by the Reiki outlet facilitating the current cost in becoming a mother.

It is also possible to talk to the energy flow of energy commonly called attunements in different styles of Reiki believe that due to your Reiki master.Not that I was hoping that Reiki is not dependent at all times as he tells all the other end of the beings you call.There are Reiki Masters might use different techniques.The Reiki therapy should never hurt; it should be proficient enough to give it a little overly dramatic.The photo in order to block that intuitive information.

Promotes spiritual growth - this knowledge can only be using the symbols to aspiring students unless they have enthused on to the United States, including one by one, cleansing the body and are able to send Reiki energy can help you.This article looks at how one woman used the walker even though I had such a wide spread religious practice the religion and philosophiesSpeak gently and safely in conjunction with all other factors, a recipient needs to know everything, so she began telling me she is facing with fertility and how to achieve satori*.It incorporates healing in varying aspects.Reiki 2 session includes all the involved parties.

Reiki To Cure Eczema

Masters will attune you to channel energy.First, I entered a lovely office setting with several conditions, which will eventually have a different aspect of your own body, or specific area of the house, refusing to believe creates a centrifugal motion that pulls heaviness or negativity away from that of humility.In level one here in this series for details on these and see where we are vibrational beings in a class of Karuna Reiki. One has to be tapped with the Christian faith and make it part of the normal reiki teaching method.A master does not sleep, most practitioners would somehow need to be in my God, held the position of the body, which is taught the different Reiki certificates one can open up others to Reiki - AttuningReiki is love and everyone - and will be so you'd probably want a good or bad events less likely to enjoy the relaxing energy.

Because we all have intellect which varies from breed to breed and species to species.Indian Yoga and Chinese Taiji overlap in many different symbols and create a positive frame of mind.These symbols can intensify, strengthen, and benefit Reiki sessions should be certified to run like roads up and down the body.Reiki is known as Pranayama and Kundalini.Hence many Reiki groups as you do it, but it did and that this method of healing, you receive proper attunement, opening all chakras or channel point on your mind, body, and seeing how it feels stable.

#Reiki Healing At Home Eye-Opening Unique Ideas #Reiki Jersey City

[blessedarticles-blog]

Six Dimensions of Divine Healing

The Source of All Sickness

God put man in the Garden of Eden but things went the wrong way.   Adam sinned and God had to apply His divine rules against Adam.  This is because He is a just God who applies rules fairly and equally to all.  

This is unlike the justice of men that is often hypocritical and partial.  Primitive governments apply the rules, laws and institutions of justice only to their enemies.

There are prisoners in jails everywhere who are praying for a change of government.  They know that a new government will apply the laws differently and free them from prison.  This is why many developing nations have little confidence in the courts of law.

God, however, is a just God who applied the rules evenly to His own creation.  He said to them, “Now that you have crossed the line you can’t stay here; you have to go out.”  That is why Adam had to leave the beautiful garden that God had made for him.  As a result of the sin of disobedience, much of the Earth was destroyed and is still being destroyed.  This Earth will eventually be totally destroyed and be replaced with a new Heaven and a new Earth!

When sin entered into the lives of Adam and Eve, many changes took place.  Adam was forced out of the garden and found himself at the mercy of the elements.

With sin now in their lives, death was at work in their bodies.  People, who would never have grown old, began to grow old.  Eyes, which would never have faded, began to fade.  People, who would never have died, had to die. We would have lived forever!  Adam and Eve then decided to make some clothes to protect themselves.  

When the Lord came along, He saw the “leaf clothes” Adam had made and knew that these clothes would not last long.   He helped them to make some clothes out of skin.  This was God’s first step to helping fallen mankind help themselves.  God has been helping ever since.  The wisdom to invent medicines is part of God’s grace to help mankind.  Every medical discovery is part of God’s plan to rescue man from his own ways.

God then prepared a plan to redeem and rescue his creation.  This rescue plan was to be executed through Christ the Redeemer.  There were many predictions in the Old Testament about the coming Messiah who would heal and deliver.  The coming of Christ to this Earth was predicted for years.  This is one thing that separates Jesus from other leaders of all other religions.  His coming, His purpose, His life and His death were predicted and described long before He came to earth.

Isaiah predicted that there would be someone who would take up our sorrows, our grief and the chastisement of our peace.  He foretold that someone would come to take away the things that disturb our peace of mind in this life.  This person would take up our sicknesses and bring us healing through His stripes.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:4

God has expressed in His Word over and over again, His heart’s desire to heal His creation.  He is very concerned with the repairing of His creation, which is lost to the devil.

Six Dimensions of Divine Healing

Divine healing is therefore healing that comes from God.  This is in contrast to the healing that man engineers for himself.  With our limited minds, we can see only sections of the problems of the human race.  Many people do not appreciate the complex problems of the human race.  There are several situations in our lives that need the touch of God.  What is God trying to do through the healing ministry?  What is He repairing and fixing?  Divine healing covers all the aspects of healing.  The following is a short list of some of the aspects of divine healing.

1.  Divine healing affects birth defects and genetic disorders.

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.  And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

John 9:1-2

There are many illnesses we fight which are simply inherited from our fathers.  For instance, diseases like hypertension, diabetes, asthma, sickle cell disease, mental disorders, mental retardation etc. are received effortlessly by children from their fathers and mothers.  Through no fault of theirs, people wake up to the realities that they have inherited conditions and illnesses that they did not contribute to.  In the ministry of Jesus, you find healings of conditions that existed from birth.

God’s power of healing can save you from inherited illnesses.

2. Divine healing affects emotional illnesses.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

Luke 4:18

Surprisingly, Jesus’ reference to healing in this Scripture is not about healing heart failure (congestive cardiac failure) or heart attacks (cardiac arrest).  Jesus’ healing ministry specifically mentioned the healing of the broken-hearted.  The broken-hearted are people with emotional and psychological setbacks.  To have a broken heart is to suffer from deep disappointment.  To have a broken heart is to have a devastating experience that leaves a person without hope, faith or love.  The Greek word for broken heart is “syntribo” and it means “to be shattered”.

Our lives are full of shattered dreams and hopes.  Christ came into the world to save men from their shattered dreams and aspirations.

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

Psalm 147:3

What does it mean to have a broken heart?  Broken hearts result from disappointments.  Sometimes a man promises to marry a lady but disappoints her.  This man may end up marrying someone else.

What you hoped would never happen is what has happened.  But God can heal any disappointment and repair your heart.

God heals all our diseases and now He is saying that He is going to heal your soul.   He’s going to heal your inner man.  Many people are emotionally disturbed, and suffer from the disappointment and  disillusionments of this life.  That is why we need the Healing Jesus!

Did you know that the psychiatrist is the doctor with fewest answers?  Almost every mental patient is given something to make him calm down and sleep.  The psychiatrists know very little about why mental conditions develop.  But God knows everything.   He reaches to the innermost parts of our being and heals the broken hearted.  “He restoreth my soul…” (Psalm 23:3).

I remember meeting a man who said, “I’ll never trust another woman.”  He told me, “One day, I went out and came home unexpectedly in the middle of the night.”

He said to me, “I found my wife in my bed with another man.  Both of them were completely naked.”  He told me, “I exercised self-control, but I could have killed them both.  I drove them out of the house without their clothes and called the police.”

As I talked to this man, I realized that his heart was very disturbed.  He described how he could not relate normally to women anymore.  He hated all women and had decided never to get married.  There are many men and women like this man.  Totally discouraged, disappointed and disillusioned by what they have experienced in this life.

But God can give you healing and change you on the inside.  The medicines that psychiatrists give often only sedate the patient or improve their mood.  There is no real healing for the psychological and emotional problem.  God can heal what man cannot heal!

He said, “I am the Lord your doctor, the Lord your healer, the Lord your physician.”  I am Jehovah Rophe!

3.  Divine healing affects our behaviour.

And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:

Mark 5:2-3

A psychiatry lecturer once said that most people have some amount of abnormal behaviour.   Many people do not have full-blown mental illness but they do show some odd behaviour.  Today, a whole range of words and definitions have been developed in order to adequately describe the varied levels of behavioural dysfunction.  Some people are said to be eccentric, which is a polite description of an odd, queer, off-centre, erratic and strange person.

One of the commonest problems is fear or paranoia.  Many fearful people live abnormal lives because of various fears they constantly entertain.  Others are depressed to varying degrees at different times.  Some people suffer from rage disorders, sexual disorders, personality disorders, delusions, hallucinations, mania, and ultimately schizophrenia, which is full-blown madness.    Most of us live between the ranges of normalcy and full-blown madness.

Divine healing tackles the full range of problems that afflict us.  Through the Word of God, we are saved from behavioural patterns that were useless and self-destructive.

4. Divine healing cures us from the effects of death.

…but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

2 Corinthians 7:10

When tragedy strikes, there is a sense of uneasiness and fear that is difficult to shake off.  There is a sinking feeling that is difficult to get rid of.  The heart is sick and broken when a loved one is suddenly and tragically plucked away.  Only God can heal the futility, depression and heartache that are associated with death.  Many people do not recover from the death of a loved one.  Some live in constant bitterness and depression for the rest of their lives.  Indeed, only God can heal such feelings of hopelessness and uselessness.

5. Divine healing cures us from the effects of futility.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 1:2

The uselessness of life is something that God takes away by His power and His anointing.  Sometimes you look at life and ask what it’s all about.  You find yourself struggling and unhappy.  We often think that when you get certain things like cars, marriage etc. everything will be okay.  However, every man will come to the same conclusion that Solomon did:  vanity of vanities, all is vanity.  Indeed all is vanity.  Life on this Earth can be defined as building a series of sandcastles that are soon washed away.  Have you ever wondered why rich western nations have the highest suicide rates?  The emptiness and hollowness of riches stares them in the face and they know that Solomon was right.  All is vanity.  Many kill themselves because there is no meaning to this life.

God’s power heals us of the futility of this life.  God’s power heals us from the sense of uselessness in our lives.

6.  He will permanently heal the nations of the world.

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.  In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS.

Revelation 22:1-2

Many nations need healing.  Rwanda needs healing and so does Burundi.  Sierra Leone needs healing.  During the civil war in Sierra Leone, rebels cut off the hands of many civilians.   Many nations do not have electricity and running water.  It is not only poor African countries that need healing.  The nations of Israel and Palestine also need healing.  America is divided along racial lines.  Europe is plagued with disillusioned citizens who no longer believe in God.  India and Pakistan fight constantly whilst many nations live with poverty, war and famine.  North and South Korea live in constant tension.  Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are bleeding every day with suicide bombs and constant instability.  Thank God that He has leaves that will heal these devastated nations.  It is clear that no political, economic or military remedy can ever heal the nations of the world.

The leaves of the tree will be used to bring about a permanent healing for the nations.

by Dag Heward-Mills

[born-of-silence-blog]

5/11/17

All prime numbers. Fitting. Most of this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous, but I need to put it somewhere. Why not here? I'm not here anymore. What I mean by that is, I'm not connecting with anything anymore. Not my passions, not my aspirations, or friends, or family, or my significant other. I mean, I'm still connecting with them on the level that I can maintain *some* relationships, but I'm not connecting as deeply as I once did. I feel distant from everyone, and it's not at the fault of me isolating myself almost entirely. I felt distant even before I sought to find somewhere to be all on my lonesome for a while every day. I feel mentally and emotionally distant. I don't understand social queues anymore, and perhaps that's not so unusual--but I hardly even feel human. There it is, the crazy. I know, I know, "Here we go, again." But, hear me out on this one. I've always felt distant from the human race as a species. I look at everyone else around me, and all I feel is this deep, radiating repulsion. Not to say that I feel I'm better than the other members of my species--because I don't, frankly I think I'm significantly worse, but that's beside the point--I just don't connect with them on any level other than genetic make-up. I'm human because I biologically am human. But, mentally? I've thought since childhood that I was something else. Of course, I don't know what, exactly, to attribute that to, but perhaps I'll find it, one day. Now, my real problem is the way that not feeling human makes me feel about being...human. Personally, I feel disgusted every time I look in the mirror. Sure, it could be my insecurities about literally every part of my body driving me to feel perpetually grossed-out; or it could be my abhorrence for the being that I am: human. This in itself is unnatural. I'm no scientist, or psychologist, but I don't really think that's normal. However, what I DO know isn't normal is the way other people make me feel about existing. There's this delusion that I have, and it's honestly ridiculous, but it's there. I'm going to explain two specific instances where this delusion took over my mind: 1.) I was sitting in Pre Calculus the other day, and students a grade below me were sharing what they scored on the SAT. One got a 1350. Another got a 1460. And the third that I remember got a 1250. The highest possible is a 1600. I have this inferiority complex, so when I heard those three announce their scores, I felt unbelievably inadequate. Sure, good for them for achieving great scores, but, damn, does my 1200 not seem that impressive anymore. A self-centered thought, but I suppose I'm a self-centered person. Whatever. 2.) In Wind Ensemble, I do believe earlier that same day, my director invited me up to the podium to lead the band through warm-up. I conducted the Alma Mater twice through, as instructed, with fairly decent form (I may be self-centered, but I know I'm not perfect), and stepped off the podium to sit back down and tune my clarinet. My director then told everyone he would be having me conduct the Alma Mater on our final concert of the year, as just a heads up for everyone in the room. The trumpet section, who for whatever reason seem to have a problem with me, proceeded to whisper amongst themselves, asking why the other two drum majors weren't conducting a song on the concert, and why he chose me to conduct, why I got special privileges, etc. they made a comment about how I'm one of his "favorites", which, I will admit that I am. I know that I am, but that's not why he chose me. He chose me because I was the head drum major this year and he wants to make it a tradition that the head drum major each year conducts the Alma Mater on the spring concert. Not a difficult concept. Now, the fact that they opposed the idea of me conducting on the concert didn't bother me. It was the fact that they didn't think I was deserving enough to do it. As if I've not worked SO hard these past four years to get where I am today. As if my work doesn't matter and doesn't play a part in me getting to do special things, and the things I'm allowed to do are all because I'm a "favorite". Perhaps I am as inadequate as I think I am. And I don't mean that to be dramatic. I actually do mean that. I've never thought I was good enough for anything, and those occurrences made me feel unbelievably mediocre. I've recently come to the realization that I'm truly less amazing as I once thought I was. I started my Senior year of high school as this confident, outspoken, in-your-face leader, and I'm ending it as an insecure, broken, mess of a failure. I tried so hard and it wasn't good enough. Not for them, and not for me. I had purpose at the beginning of this year, then I realized that that purpose would get me nowhere, because it only means something in high school. I realized recently--very recently--that I am for SURE going to go nowhere with my life after I graduate. There's nowhere for me to go. My aspirations are all too far out of reach. A music education degree? You don't have the drive, even if you love it. Cosmetology? You're skilled, but not THAT skilled. Writing? Just look at this blog--you're far from good enough. Psychology? Yeah right, kid, keep dreaming. What about philosophy? You're as deep as a drop of water on a countertop. I'm not lying to myself anymore. That's what this is. I'm being honest with myself and I'm not sugar coating my situation anymore. I can't really be whatever I want to be. I'm not *good* at anything. I'm barely mediocre at a bunch of things, sure. But good at them? No. Not at all. I kid myself a lot though, so perhaps I'm good at that. I'm good at pretending my life is worth living, even though I know I'm not going to do anything useful with it. Everything I do, from participating in conversation to attempting to play my various instruments, is mediocre. I'm not going to amount to anything. Being that much of a failure really, truly makes me wish I could just stop breathing. And if I'm being brutally honest, if it wouldn't hurt the very few people that care about me, I really would kill myself. Not just because I'm a failure, but because I know that everyone in my life is slowly leaving because they're realizing that I'm really not anything special or worth being around. And I don't blame them.

[muzaffar1969]

http://ift.tt/2oOIqPY

If you desire to be a master trader you must think masterly thoughts.

Surely there is action following those masterly thoughts, but there are thoughts behind the action.  The thoughts form the principles, the philosophy that form the basis for the actions.  And if you even wish to get even more advanced than that, there is a consciousness level that tends to produce those masterly thoughts.

For most people, thinking perfection seems to be hard.  I stress the word seems.  They see all the imperfection in the world, the wars, the killings, the poverty, etc, and they don’t believe in perfection.  Well, it’s true that the world is still advancing.  Even this great experiment that is America is still most certainly in the process of moving towards a more perfect union.

Another reason that thinking perfection seems to be hard is that it is usually easier for someone to be pulled down to mediocrity and useless thoughts, rather than for someone to pull themselves up towards masterly thoughts.  The gravity of mediocrity, since it tends to afflict so much of the world can pull most people down.  But with a few simple strategies, you can be well on your way to thinking masterly thoughts.

You will feel a lot better about yourself and your trading when you think masterly thoughts, catch a nice trade, make a killer profit and actually know the reason it happened.  Which was because you thought perfection and got close to it.  Your entire consciousness level was permeating perfection which led to the right moves to make in the market.

Those people and traders that have a ZEST for life, usually are trying to get better.  They are seekers of perfection.  Striving for a higher pinnacle at something.

For the master trader, or master at anything, finds joy excitement and grand reverence in his or her work and the people and industry they serve.  They have trained themselves and automatically think and act in a masterly way.  Surely someone can be born with a particular level of consciousness, but there is still certainly tremendous effort they exerted to discover it, develop it, to polish it, and also to keep implementing it.  These masters are not at risk of falling into mediocrity.  They do not allow such vibrations and attitudes that are lesser than them to affect them.  They can just tune them out.

The seeker of perfection typically is “on fire” about life, and has new ideas and also good ideas from old.  They are not filled with rampant delusions that the average person has.

    So we have been on this subject of trading perfection for the past few blog posts and we will continue it in this direction.  It is too important a subject to be taken lightly.  It deserves a full and proper discussion – and many many many explanations.

You see, growing up people only seemed to give me one explanation for things.  One perspective on things.  They did not expose me to the full gamut of possible scenarios, possible explanations, possible perspectives.  And I was worse off for it, until I got smarter and figured things out for myself.

I won’t make the same mistake with you that others did to me.  So I am going to you a lot of possible explanations for why a trader does not think and act in terms of TRADING PERFECTION.  So you can see which one (or multiple ones) potentially fits into your current situation in life.

Lets begin…

  Scared That ‘Something’ Is Going To Take It Away

The average trader has many fears, about 90% of them are irrational.  90% of them are not true.

One of the fears and beliefs is that if they practice trading perfection, that they are obviously going to do financially well in life and that this ‘something’ this outside entity whether physical government, or spiritual universe is going to take it away from them.  Or the market is going to take it away from them.

Or perhaps that they are going to have an uncontrollable urge to do something bad or evil, or spend money like crazy, etc.  That somehow, this outside entity or uncontrollable urge will take over and cause destruction to rain down upon their lives.  That some God, or something, is going to punish them.  Perhaps they have heard the phrase from bible “blessed are the meek; for they shall inherent the earth.”  And they take it to mean poverty is good, etc.  Well that is one interpretation of biblical text.  It’s not the only one.  So you don’t have to believe in that.  You can create your own belief system.  As Jesus said:  “As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.”  Which gives you incredible leeway to shape your own life.

  As an example, one hedge fund legend talked about some friend that would double his money a few times each year, and still end up flat on the year.  How could someone possibly double their money not once during the year, but twice and still end up flat?  That is certainly a lot of conscious and unconscious self sabotage.  Evidently there was that ‘something’ that took it away.  He thought trading perfection for doubling his account – twice.  Then ‘something’ happened!

I also know someone who came into a decent chunk of money in his early 20’s.  Within a year or a few years, the money was gone.  No cash producing assets or anything else to show for it.  Money spent on bad business deals, loans to people he shouldn’t have, vacations, booze and girls.  Money gone.  That ‘something’ took it away!

  In actuality, that ‘something’ doesn’t exist.  Only perfection and harmony exist.  Any deviation from that is not your real self.  It’s just temporary.  As the Japanese spiritual leader Masaharu Taniguchi said:  “Disease, misfortune and imperfection do not exist… Your true image is perfect and harmonious.”

Anything else that produces disease, misfortune and imperfection is simply a false construct in your mind.  You can construct and believe in a far better philosophy.

Therefore, just as you were skillful in making the money, in making the 5% or 10% or 20% on a single trade, or in making 50% or 100% in a single year, just as you showcased your trading prowess and skills to yourself and to the world, you can also do well for yourself in the managing of it for wealth preservation and enjoyment and fun.  They are not mutually exclusive.  You CAN have both.

  Take another story where I was having dinner with my family as a relative from abroad visited.  He was talking about how one of my nephews looks like a soccer star from decades ago.  And that this soccer star was destroyed by the girls and womanizing, etc. I thought about it for a moment and told him:

“No, no, no.  He allowed them to destroy him.  The girls did not destroy him.  He allowed them to do that.”

So the soccer star was at fault for allowing others to do that to him.  If he wanted to do womanizing he could have done it in a more responsible way that preserved his fortune, and also his health and sanity.  The soccer star did not have to allow others to destroy his fortune and his health, etc.  As there are other superstar athletes that lead far more balanced lives.  You can have both – be a superstar and lead a balanced life.  That is possible.  In contrast to the fears that those people in a low consciousness level tend to try to inflict upon others.

  Another reason why they can have this fear of that ‘something’ taking it away – is because they may have feelings that they don’t deserve success.  That they don’t deserve perfection.

Well, what’s past is past.  Guilt, shame, sin, don’t exist.  What happened in the past may have seemed like a good idea at the time.  Now you have a new direction for your life.

Also, it is very difficult for any single person to believe they are worth it all, all of it, to have their cake and eat it too on day one of their journey.  So if you don’t yet believe it all, that’s okay.  I didn’t have it on day one.  The next best thing is to attain the gradual enlightenment, and on that journey of results you will receive some quantum leaps too.  That is the next best thing.  No athlete, no entertainer, no trader, no inventor has it all figured out on the first day of their journey.  So show some compassion to yourself.  Show some patience.  Give yourself the time you need to figure things out.

  Also, this fear of ‘something’ is going to take it away must be banished – forever.  As you should get into the cycle of benefiting from opportunity and opportunity.

You can “Domino Opportunity.”  You can reach goal after goal.  To get into that wonderful cycle of Dominoing opportunity.  In whirlwind fashion.  Where the knowledge, skill, cash and people connections from one deal and project, can help you reach your next goal even quicker.  This is truly something to aspire to.

As one hedge fund back in 1977 made a +31% return.  Not bad you say?  Well, next year it was +55%.  And the next year it was +59%.  And the next year it was a whopping +103%.  What happened to the boogeyman going to take it all away?  It did not exist.  Only reaching goal after goal, perfection after perfection exist.

                      Scared That They May Be Looked Upon as Weird

Some people are afraid that if they think and act perfection they will be looked upon as weird.

Well, since most of the world is operating under mediocrity consciousness, when you do make a lot of money, and your belief system, and work ethic that produced it, you might be looked upon as unusual by other people.

You will probably have to get some new friends (or a lot of them!)  You can’t just lead your life only having your childhood friends.  You have to make new friends in life.

  They are scared that their trading perfection will be a turn off to others.  So they carry those imperfections into their trading, resulting in less money than they could have.  Similar reason to why young kids do drugs, smoke, etc.  They want to be cool, fit in.  They haven’t found something worthwhile to focus on.  Some grand ambition and vision to focus on.  They are not looking for perfection because there is no grand ambition and need to.

Well, do you really want too many of such mediocre people in your life anyways?

  For example, some people are scared to read and study about the greatest trades of all time… because they are scared of the massive success making them feel weird to other people.  Sad but true.  Such self sabotage.

In reality the successful usually have the ability to adapt and shapeshift to the situation.  When they are working they work.  And when they are at a party with some normal people, they can enjoy it and chat with them and entertain them at their level.

  And, you can also tell yourself:  “So what!?”

So what if they think you are weird or unusual?  A lot of my beliefs were looked upon as weird, but eventually accepted by my family.  And if they don’t, o well, bless them and let go.  Others will probably lead a mediocre life, and you realize in life to let go and that’s fine too – for them.  If that is what they want, that is fine too.

  They Believe Perfection Does Not Exist

Another reason that a trader does not practice perfection is they believe it does not exist.  That there is no such thing.

They may have never seen much of any moments of perfection from their parents or siblings or classmates, etc.

Well, what makes you believe that these people have the wisdom of the world?  They don’t have a lock on the wisdom of the world.  The wisdom of the world can be discovered and developed for you, by your desire to search and learn and apply.  By finding the right book for the right moment in your life.

They may have grown up not seeing a well run family, business, marriage, so they get jaded, etc.

They never saw perfection, never read about it.  And may not have realized yet that they should develop the desire to search and read.  Kinda like a person who is in an abusive relationship, never knowing what better exists out there.  Not knowing what they are missing.

This is where some heavy research on a role model, etc, getting all their books about them, articles, interviews, picture progression from youth, videos, etc, can be very important to imprint this NEW self image upon your mind and consciousness.

Also, they may have never seen perfection from a trader.  And in truth – perfection doesn’t have to be 100% win rates.  There is no trader in history who has had a 100% win rate or anything close to it.  I don’t have it and neither does anyone else.  Stop trying to force yourself to 100% win rates.  That is just the destructive ego talking.

You can achieve your financial goals with a much more achievable 40 – 70% win rate trading system.

Now, this does not mean that just because you cannot have a 100% win rate over many years on trades, that you shouldn’t think of trading perfection.  You should still think and act in terms of trading perfection – and this manifests itself in your trading edge working its magic over a sequence of trades.  And occasionally you will find a trade where the win rate is so high and close to perfection as you understand every buyer and seller involved in the market and where it is going to go.

Perfection or very close to it, DOES exist.  It does.  Go read up on the greatest trades of all time.  They are perfection or close to it.

Perfection in your mind and body also exists as well.  Walking around town and traveling, etc, I see a lot of people in their 60’s and 70’s whose bodies and minds are breaking down.  That shouldn’t be happening.  They are not thinking and acting anywhere near perfection.  If you see people like Buffett, Icahn and Soros they still have plenty of energy and ambition left in their tanks.  And their minds are getting better.  They are making some of the biggest deals and biggest money of their life into their 70’s and 80’s.

  They Are Unsure If They Want To Be Perfect or More “Creative.”

Some traders are unsure if they should think perfection.  They might feel that if they have this set of rules for a perfect trade that it prohibits “creativity.”  And a lot of people out there who want to be “creative,” even if it means they won’t make much money.  They feel that if they think a certain way they won’t be creative.  And they place a far too extreme value on creativity rather than on pragmatic PROFIT.  So they are at that moment in their lives, legitimately torn between whether they should think perfection or be more loose.

And yes, there are plenty of people who choose to keep their massive creativity, rather than imposing some limits on it to get closer to maximum profit.

The answer is that thinking perfection for a particular trading style, does not prohibit creativity in another strategy or trading account.  You can impose discipline with your main account and have side research projects to fulfill your desire for “creativity.”

I am not saying you can’t be creative.  I have come up with some unique strategies that I have not seen anywhere else.  That fulfilled my creative urge.  And I come up with new ones from time to time.  But I cannot completely disregard the work and ideas that others have already done.  They’ve already done some of the work – so why not just follow it?  I don’t have to completely revolutionize every single aspect of trading.  I can revolutionize some aspects of it.  But not every single one – as their are legends before me that have done some of the work.

  Take another example of a young couple who are not sure if they should be naughty or nice.  They may see some good people who good hearts, be broke, empty refrigerators, etc.  And they wonder, what good did that person’s kindness get them?  They may see some news of some celebrities who are naughty, get into trouble, but still have so much money.  So they figure out, why not be naughty?  So they can be legitimately torn at that moment in their lives.

That young love.  Where one person or both persons don’t have their personalities and philosophies fully developed yet.  They aren’t fully sure if they want to be nice or naughty, or what combination of the two.  They are both still designing and discovering their lives, personalities, philosophies, etc.  So they cannot even know that perfection exists.  Or if they have heard of it, don’t believe in it, favoring the young “free spirits” etc.  And this can spillover into other areas of their life – like career ambition and business, where the money typically comes from.

I give you these stories and anecdotes from outside of trading and different age groups, etc, because I believe they can be very enlightening and important to your trading success.  To you getting the trading money.  Because I truly care about your trading success.  And to speed it up, at a velocity set by the intensity of your desire.

If I did not believe they were important, I would just talk pure 110% about trading.

  Also, this trading thing is not like a relationship with a human being where maybe you are kind and perfect to them and the other person does not reciprocate.  You are dealing with the market here.  If you get the market right, and timing right, you are going to make money.  The market will respond.  If not on the very next trade, then over a sequence of trades.

  Have perfection or close to it, in the money making, and then do whatever you want, be looser in the other categories of life.  That’s a strategy you can use.  But you have to make the money.

So at least, be more serious about the making and keeping of the money!!!  Then you can have as much and what kind of fun that you desire with it.

  They Like To Dig Themselves Out of Holes

Some people get their thrills in life from digging themselves out of financial, health holes that they have created for themselves.

That is how they get their thrills.  They like to create this drama in their life to then tell people the stories of how they got out of this mess and that mess.

They don’t want perfection, because they believe it will mean no excitement from digging themselves out of the mess they got themselves into.

Simple as that.

This kind of trader needs to figure out how to get their thrills from other ways.  To get their thrills from the making and keeping of the money and use of it in a fun and responsible way.

  They Try To Think Perfection With Lack of Knowledge

Another reason a trader does not think of trading perfection is that they are working with inferior information.

They have a lack of TRUE KNOWLEDGE.

They were exposed to all these things… which were simply not true.  This trader may think they have real knowledge, but they actually lack real wisdom.

They don’t know what is true and what is not true.  The human mind, unaided from birth, struggles to learn what is true and what is not true.  Thus one must seek proper knowledge.

They struggle to shed non-essentials and useless thoughts.  Because they just don’t know how to identify them.  They don’t know how.  They don’t know what they don’t know.

If I was trying to give you real trading wisdom, real perfection, with only the knowledge I gained from the trading forums, I would fail miserably.  And you wouldn’t like the ideas I would be giving to you.  They would not be of high quality.

But, because I gained real knowledge and skill from so many better sources, I can now get you to trading perfection, or close to it.

  They Think It Is Too Much Work

A trader may not think trading perfection because they equate the word “perfect” with “too much work.”

Well, whether you implement a system, a philosophy that has an edge, or one that doesn’t, its still work.  You are still doing work.  Whether you have a mediocre thought or powerful thought, it’s still a thought.  Whether you are coming from a mediocre principle, or great principle, it’s still a principle.  So you might as well choose the one that works.  To choose the efforts that produce the desired results.

Also, if a trader just stays stuck in a certain rat race – they are expended a lot of energy, and not much to show for it.  No sustained profit to show.  And no foundation of skill to produce future sustained profit.  Lots of energy and effort which could have been channeled in a different direction.

You have to develop at least one – preferably both – the profit to show for it, or the foundation of skill that will produce that profit, or BOTH.  If you have neither, then the time has not been spent wisely.

A trader could spend a decade and 10,000 hours of their life browsing the trading forums and information that will never give them an edge, or they could channel this in a different direction.

Just like an athlete can spend 10,000 hours in an ineffective way, or they can spend it in an effective way.

  Also, a trader must distinguish between the “impossible” and the “it’s just hard,” and the “its simpler than it appears.”

Obviously, the impossible you want to stop the wild goose chase on that fantasy.  But for the things that “are hard” and the things that are “simpler than it appears,” you want to work on those.  The things that are hard you can work on.  The things that are simpler than they appear you can work on them to realize and implement their simplicity.

Because for so much of achievement, it’s at first harder than it appears to be.  And it gets simpler as you gain knowledge and experience.

As one of the hottest music entertainers at the moment said of her selling so many millions of albums and selling out concert tour after concert tour:

“It’s not that hard.  It’s made out to be harder than it is.” 

That’s her current attitude, 10+ years into her music career.

  Conclusion

So there is all this “stuff” plus more going on in the mind of some traders.  And if they have a sincere and genuine desire for massive trading returns of triple digits, etc, then they should in their spare time work on shedding and replacing completely useless beliefs.  To work on developing their mind power and spirit power to aid them in their trading ambition!!!

If you desire more POWER in your life, then start thinking and acting towards perfection in one or more areas of your life.  Then your power to effect positive change in your own mind, body, bank account, family and community situation will skyrocket.

You think and act towards perfection up until you make yourself into the kind of person you desire to be.  You keep it up, as you figure out one more piece and one more piece.  You keep it up as you wrest one more secret from the universe that no one in your family or community knows about.

As you become a seeker of perfection, you will be “on fire” about life.

So don’t be afraid my dear friend.  Success is just around the corner.

  If you desire to think and act towards trading perfection, then we have a special treat for you with The Perfect Trade Blueprint:  The 8 Rules For The Perfect Trade

Get it TODAY

Click Here to Get it NOW

    April 28, 2017 at 09:30AM http://ift.tt/2oODeeZ from Grkfx http://ift.tt/2oODeeZ

#Forex

[clubofinfo]

Expert: I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of all. You live in the belly of the beast. — Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara A birth certificate from somewhere between the beast’s belly and its beating heartland condemns me to the dubious distinction of being among the privileged 5% of humans who claim United States Citizenship. A population which demands the right to consume 25% of earth’s resources while billions of our fellow-humans go hungry. A shame it was wasted on me, for I’ve never been one to make my country proud. Basically, I’ve always been a bad American. Cases in point: I never stand for The Star-Spangled Banner, nor do I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag of Retroperistalsis. I no longer believe in, nor vote in sham, mockery-of-democracy U.S. elections. I make no investments in Wall Street, for fear of inadvertently supporting The Military-Industrial Complex. If I happen to turn on the evening so-called news, I can’t resist calling Lester Holt “America’s House Negro”, for Holt’s Nightly Lies loudly confirm what Chris Hedges tells us: “No real journalist makes $5 million a year…Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.” And I pray regularly to whatever gods may be that Empire dies with a whimper, rather than a bang…and soon. There is little doubt that I am, and have for many years, been a traitor to Empire and its agendas of Neo-colonialism and wars for profit. Fifty years ago, while Che Guevara was being summarily executed by the C.I.A. and its Bolivian Military stooges, my lifelong battle against Empire was just beginning. Che’s last words were some of the most prophetic ever spoken, as he looked his assassin in the eyes and said: “Shoot coward. You are only going to kill a man.” Only the good die young, they say. It is said that Che is much more powerful in death than he was in life, as a half century later, his legacy lives on and grows. Two years after his demise, he’d lit fire of discontent beneath a whole generation of Americans, and stood posthumously by my side as I gave the U.S. Army my very best middle-fingered salute, thereby refusing induction into the most over-funded, offensive, aggressive, killing force the world has ever known. My neighbors and acquaintances are not evil or bad people. They’re simply oblivious to what George Carlin lovingly called “the big red, white, and blue dick” being shoved up their asses by the likes of Lester Holt and his cadres in criminal propaganda on a nightly basis. Americans are to be pitied for their willful ignorance. If I were a Christian, I’d ask God to forgive them, for they’re a bunch of clueless jackasses who know not what they do. But not being a believer in the imaginary bearded man in the stratosphere, I write. Not that I have any delusions of being omniscient, but my moderate level of enlightenment has been reached, one step at a time, one book or article at a time, and Che’s sword is now my pen. Che’s rifle, my Hewlett-Packard. The pen (in certain circumstances) is mightier than the sword. If Che had fought the Revolution, in the belly of the beast, with bullets, he would have been eliminated long before 1967. Lucky for me, thus far, Empire only executes the highest-level truth-talkers and traitors to the Military-Industrial agenda. NBC demoted Brian Williams for the high crime of telling his own personal lies, instead of just the official ones, then replaced him with Mr. Holt. I’d seriously doubt whether either of these corporate whores, or any of their collaborating competitors give a rat’s ass whether their thousand-dollar-a-sentence blather bears any resemblance to the truth. Truth is the enemy of the overlords they serve, and has no place in the nightly news agenda, nor in any facet of Empire’s Disinformation Network. Truthful coverage of Empire’s latest wars for profit: Forbidden. Questioning the basic good intentions of our exceptional government: Not allowed. Tow the line, learn and regurgitate the fabrications du jour, read all recent directives from the C.I.A., keep your nose clean, your Armani Suit pressed, and God Bless America. My insouciant neighbors and acquaintances have never heard of Noam Chomsky, and know nothing of Manufactured Consent. They have never seen a copy of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States. They have no idea that “War (really) is a Racket” (Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler). They’d likely not even blink an eye at the atrocities wrought against the Southern half of The Western Hemisphere by the U.S.A. and its European counterparts, as artfully reported by Eduardo Galeano in Open Veins of Latin America. Hugo Chavez gave a copy to Barack Obama shortly before his mysterious and suspicious demise. Too bad Barack never read it. Not that he would have cared, being well programmed by the C.I.A. When I’ve tried to explain to mainstream Americans the dastardly scheming of the C.I.A. in foreign countries; its economic hit men and jackals, bribery, coup d ‘etat, assassination, and finally bombs and bullets…as exposed by ex-C.I.A. Operative John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the responses are glazed, dazed expressions. I might as well be talking to four-year-olds when explaining that 9-11 was an inside job, as proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by such sources as Michael C. Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon, or that the C.I.A. and other branches of our government eliminated J.F.K. for choosing the path of peace, as explained by James W. Douglass in his masterpiece, J.F.K. and the Unspeakable. The subtitle of the J.F.K. volume is “Why He Died and Why it Matters”, but what really matters to my adult four-year-olds is whatever professional gladiator games happen to be in season. Americans don’t want to hear that “terrorism” is nothing but the direct result of Empire’s overreach and military incursions into every little resource-rich, under-militarized country on earth. Who, outside a few conspiracy theorists like me could give a shit about Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy, which includes “Blowback”, and exposes The U.S. Military’s Empire of Bases and aspirations for complete world domination? If I happen to mention The Great American Holocaust (the most deadly in earth’s history), as graphically illuminated in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of The United States, in oblivious company, white faces gaze at me in wonder…wondering why I’d care about the slaughter of a few tens of millions of inferior beings. One of the biggest secrets in the U.S.A. is the mystery of the most enduring, morally upstanding, and advanced civilization in earth’s history; a story expertly told by my friend Jeff J. Brown in China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations. After 100 years under the heavy hand of Empire, the sleeping dragon is once again rising. Empire knows it…thus the so-called Pivot to Asia Strategy, and another $60 billion gift for The Pentagon. The few of us who’ve come to understand the intrinsic evil, and violence on every level, of the United States of America, reach a point where a choice must be made. As U.S. Citizens, we can choose denial and ignore our own enlightenment, thus remaining part of the problem. Or we can cross The Rubicon, as Caesar did, and by doing so becoming traitors to Empire, enemies of the state, and strangers in our own land. If we choose the latter, alea iacta est; the die is cast, and there is no going back. Ignorance may be bliss, but the truth shall set ye free. Empire is on a collision course with destiny. It’s a runaway train, carrying enough Weapons of Mass Destruction to turn our fading blue planet into shades of smoldering gray, and end life on earth as we know it. Never underestimate the blind, ignorant greed and mindless dreams of dominance of the sociopaths in the cab of Empire’s Engine. You know it. I know it. We are soldiers in Empire’s Underground Army, armed only with words, ideas, brilliance, open eyes, and hope. Those bearing arms need not apply. The battlefield of this war is for the minds of the insouciant. Somehow we must awaken an entire population which only pretends to sleep, and has no interest in buying what we’re selling. Always remember how lucky we are. We’re fighting the most important fight of all. Here in the belly of the beast. Hasta la victoria siempre! http://clubof.info/