priming the pump

Monday morning, Michelangelos, ready... go!

I'm sitting here listening to Kid Cudi, putting off my Peace project. shit, fuck, shit. I really feel clueless right now. I'm supposed to give a presentation called, "Modern Problems, Ancient Roots," about the common ground between conflict, culture and economics - every time I start talking about it, it sounds worse. It's really important to me, close to my heart, and I can't handle it coming off like pooh. I'd rather it was a little vague then be a weak argument.

I've got to start really hitting my main points. Start overview, work into main points, expand main points, begin conclusion and then end with actions anyone can take to make a difference. Unfortunately, it's not that simple and I want to play my stupid card games. But it is that simple, I just can't fake it for this and the pieces aren't falling into place as easily as I was thinking they would.

I can't seem to find a tangible, founded argument in "Man and Nature," as good as it is it might just be for me. I can't go through the whole metaphysics and cosmology of it and all I really want is what I don't have: a solid way to reveal the process by which science separated itself from Christian God concepts.

I have to define the ancient roots too, which is the real troublesome point, since I basically plucked it out of thin air. It's not that I don't believe it, it's that its not a simple thing. I could spend 15 minutes on the "ancient roots," but it'd be hard to keep it fact based and not grounded in my own conjectures. FUCK.

a dreary post from an rainy, mid-semester day

I'm sitting in the atrium, enjoying the view when I look behind me to see a goth kid wearing foundation and eyeliner. I mean, I guess this is normal. I'm really not used to seeing dudes in make-up. Even in, what my mother refers to as, my dark(est of) phases I didn't wear make-up. I struggled to dye my hair - I remember being torn between what I called "the natural" (which was hippie style) and "the plastic" (which was along the lines of goth or punk). Most of the time, to which my mother will attest, I just looked bad. There is a foolishness in exploring the anti-culture, it's not necessarily bad and I'm not trying to judge it in a negative light, it's rather hypocritical and self-delusional; either pretend carefree or outright attack on normal.

Then I thought this fella looked like he was taking an exam or something. The special needs kids get to take their tests how and when it best suits them, and I thought, wow, this kid is a special needs kid. Does this change his appearance, or the impetus behind it? does his appearance change his status - can you fight the system if you already exist on its fringes - are you just showing your colors?

Is wearing make-up a sign of special needs, or do special needs have any influence on appearance? Do handicaps aid or hinder one's counter-cultural expression...?

Reading Man and Nature by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Blowing my f'n mind a little. Obviously, as I never do, I am not agreeing with everything and struggle with some of the phrasing. In some ways the book seems to be written with a theory in mind and collecting facts to fit it, but I agree with the dominant theme of the idea: Man has taken the sacred out of nature; scientific study of a desacralized nature leads to exploitation not stewardship. Man is [the only animal with, not only the opposable thumbs and both a self-conceptual and big-picture intelligence needed to manipulate the planet, but also the only animal capable of being arrogant enough to need to be] capable of being stewards of the earth. Exactly how G-d made us, but we've lost the idea of restraining our internal self-desire while materializing our experience with the world around us, desacralizing nature. Science as an ends to itself. Consumption as a way of life. Both idols in their own respect, as we worship our things and we worship our own knowledge, all the while we take from the world around us in the name of quality of life while the less fortunate suffer.

With all our knowledge and the wealth of the world, there is no reason for people to suffer beyond our own ridiculous nature. We have the power to right OUR wrongs but those who are most able to aid do not. Meanwhile, we keep our heads down and the blinders up: staying selfish because we don't know how to do anything else. Get out of line, rise up, and get sanded down, knocked off or locked away; intellectually ostracized and ridiculed for seeing something beyond the facts of a scientific ideal that rose out of the western renaissance - A worldview. A science. Other people have had other ideas that are not necessarily any less correct, but these views are marginalized and disregarded as superstition at worst, philosophy at best and religion if you must.

Fuck yeah, I can get behind that idea. That idea and the idea that until man as a unit can realize his role as caretaker of the earth, steward of biological life and solve his own spiritual crises, through this process, the natural world can be saved and harmony can be restored.

too much; overrated

Yup. what a morning. Forgot my lunch on the table, remembered halfway to the bus stop, probably would have had time to turn back and collect it but my track record with the bus led me to just keep truckin'; if I'm early the bus is late but if I'm on time it's early. This morning was just another example.

Reading Kent Haruf's "Plainsong", it's good. It's touching quite a few of my tender areas which is sad and uncomfortable but it's leading me to be more thankful for what I have today. Makes me wonder how many of the other students in this class are relating to the material. Or if any of them might be experiencing something akin to my 2005.

I finally got around to listening to K'naan's "Troubador," (which is amazing) and Kid Cudi's "Man on the Moon," (which is rather solid) straight through and I'm glad I did. You should too. "Man on the Moon" is packed with tight rhymes, weed references and some interesting philosophical points spread between the concept of dreams. "Troubador" is really, really moving. I hope every somali brother (or anyone from a war torn region) I know gives it a listen. Life and hope in the face of human suffering.

Plenty of sadness this morning but plenty of life as well. Chillin' to some Matisyahu; it's so different. It's no less valid and though I fall on the side of the minorities who reside in Israel I don't have a blind hatred for the normal people who live amidst the selfish majority. Whatever, it's American music anyway, which just reminds me that the art created in the society of those on top is very different than the art of those pushed to the bottom.

Literature class blows. I love reading but I like to choose what I read and I've got a lot on my plate right now. None of which involves reading Plainsong, regardless of how well it's written. The story is moving but it's a little contrived and seems to focus on some really sad aspects of human interaction. It strikes close to home for me and it's at least as uncomfortable as my own thoughts on other matters.

America wake UP! Being on top of the world isn't awesome, we're smashing the lives of the rest of the world with our ignorance, our doctrine of preemption and our primary interest: consumption (re: corporate interest). We don't want our government to take care of us (welfare, healthcare) because then they'd have power over us (and we're afraid they'd abuse it) but we're blind to the corporate reality within which we live. High fashion might be art, but fashion trends are a fool's bargain and a hypocrite's crutch. Who cares where it's from if it makes you feel good; who cares how you look if you're true to yourself?

WE the people have to take control of the government back and if we refuse to let it take care of us we have to at least let it control the unchecked power of this country, our corporations, their profits and unscrupulous leadership; not the other way around. But it's not comfortable. It's not easy. It's not normal. It is if we make it so. This is our culture and we can either shape it or we can be shaped by it. It's a choice, but if you're not informed, if you're not aware, it is made for you.

Of course I say this wearing store-bought clothing, talking about the music I like to listen to from the privileged position of waiting for my first class of the day. I see my friends and their facebook posts of the food they eat/make/buy - how blessed are the people I know? Sometimes I wish I could enjoy these same things, and sometimes I do (and I do eat/make/buy some amazing food, trust me) and sometimes I post about it; but most of the time I fear the joys that fill the lives of so many I know ring so hollow for me in my life.

I see plastic bottles and I think about the ocean (here | here), the lack of recyclability and the pollution that goes into making it.

I see the cars around me and I think about necessary these beasts of burden are to life in America. I think about our lifestyle and it makes me sick - thank god for freedom eh? I mean, here we are free to do how and what we choose but how many families are stuck in a life of working to pay the bills and feed the kids, barely scraping by - meanwhile nobody is raising their kids (regardless of the quality of life they can provide). Keeping the head above the poverty line, maintaining a certain standard of living - a standard that is bought and sold, exchanged in the form of stocks, credit and cash - all so a select few can reap the reward. A select few who would have you believe that they are where they are because they are so f'n awesome (and some of them are in their own way).

Perhaps G-d's got us all laid out, every meal, every cent we ever digest from the moment of our birth or before, but even then, we could be doing a better job with whatever free will we might or might not have. G-d is no excuse for us to be shitty to each other or the planet we share. G-d isn't a company or a designer label or a bottle of water. G-d isn't greed for oil and money. G-d isn't fossil fuels and the American way. I believe G-d wants us to thrive here, but this isn't thriving. This is a lie and there's too many idols to smash by myself.

"guess if I was a simple mind, everything would be fine." - Kid Cudi, Man on the Moon (title track)

Running Barefoot Through the Woods in the Snow @ 30

What an incredible morning. Up before the sun, just dues to the great beyond the beyond and the dog and I went for a run.

I have never "gone for a run." When I think of running I think of sweaty, sinewy people wearing numbers. People with less body fat than a late-winter squirrel. I think short shorts with to-the-waist-line splits up the very short sides, silly sunglasses and gasping faces covered in splotch. Running, even more so than dancing is something we do for ourselves and not because we look good doing it.

When I was a child I had this book that my mom gave me that was chalked full of prompts to help me record and remember that time in my life; boxes for favorite activities, foods, friends, school stuff, yearbook picture, etc. When I was 8 my favorite things were macaroni and cheese and running. By the time I was a tween, you'd never have guessed. I wouldn't have guessed. In fact when I was seventeen and I looked through it for the first time in years I was shocked to read it. I still loved Mac'Cheese but running?

"I believe it's jogging or yogging. It might be a soft 'J'." - RB

I did some sprinting in Junior High Track, but I was mostly a field athlete, I loathed training with the Cross Country team twice a week; though I liked the trail-running, the pace was too intense for me. I played some football, I was on the Defensive Line. I hated running laps. I felt the same in PE.

I'm not opposed to activity, I'm just a little lazy and I don't like being pushed, punished or forced to run at a pace that isn't my own speed. I like hiking, and I rode my bike a lot during my high-school years. I like riding a bicycle and still do it regularly in three seasons. I'm not completely unfit - though I am pretty out of shape.

I'm a year free from a decade of smoking cigarettes. I'm at least ten pounds heavier than I want to be (for being 30, for having well used knees, for being comfortable in some of my favorite shirts). I've talked about trying to run regularly for about two years, and thought about it for five.

This past Thursday night I read an article about these friends who live in an NYC apartment and are working on a more natural lifestyle based on the entirety of human existence - not just the past 10,000 years of agriculture based society.

Ideas like fasting, followed by exercise followed by a meal focused on fresh/lightly cooked fruits and vegetables and meat. Focusing the majority of intake on fresh fruits and vegetables and some nuts. Is it healthy? it can't be worse for me than fast food and it feels really natural. Also, I find staying out of gyms and shedding the "Zoo human" persona the modern world so easily guides us towards really appealing. As a student of comparative religion, I find the primitive very appealing.

The concept is this: Human beings had certain skill and attribute sets that allowed us the prominence we so easily take for granted today. By taking this prominence for granted we are losing sight of an aspect of what makes us what we are and we're tending towards a water-softness that the fremen despise. Though our society is very intellectual in its pursuits, using a computer or a smart phone is far easier than inventing one and don't help you get away from zombies or apocalypses.

Basically, I feel like a societal slave without much freedom - and I know that I have more freedom than many, daresay even most I know. However, I also have numerous advantages over my ancient human ancestors thanks to the marvels of the modern world. Access to grocery stores, libraries and of course plenty of work to do. There was a time in my life when I spent my free hours running and playing, now I spend my free time with my head in a computer, my body otherwise at rest.

I've never been good at scheduling a work-out time. I understand the importance of routine but I also feel that routines are habits and habits are prisons and I am addicted to freedom. What if I can capitalize on this, what if I can work out AS a use of all my time, not just try to schedule it into my free hours...

So thursday night I read about this stuff. I read about Vibram Five Fingers (It sounds like a kung-fu style but they're actually just shoes). Friday afternoon I tried them on, Friday evening I came home with two pair, KSO TREK and Classic. Upside here is that I was also able to take care of an ulterior agenda, participation on the 3/50 project. I know I didn't do it quite right but its a start.

So this morning I took it easy and slow. I'm still getting over the last legs of what was a very slow brewing, low grade, sinus-focused, head-cold that is lingering longer than I'd like to admit. But, when I strapped on my new foot protection and snapped the collar on Lt. Uhura, I knew we were going for more than just a pooh-walk.

As we turned the Apartment complex corner the wind blew my light thermal hood off my head and I knew this was either going to be a very short, cold walk or we were going to have find a way to stay warm. Lt. Uhura and I have never really done any kind of organized running before. She walks like a champ but she's young and excitable. Once she found the right stride to keep up and not get ahead we settled right in - and then I ran out of breath.

So we walked until I got my breath back, and then we ran again. We made it to some trails back behind a frozen pond and we ran some more, back and forth along the western edge of Stricker's pond. I started thinking about breakfast. I started thinking about how if I were one of my ancient ancestors, I wouldn't be able to open my refrigerator and grab up some eggs and quickly cook them up. I started imagining a life where my dog and I were foraging for eggs in the brush. I hardly even realized I was sweating until we got inside. I'd be lying if I said I ran the whole time but I only walked until I caught my breath.

By the time I was cooking up breakfast, I figured we could have grabbed up some veggies too - a carrot, an onion and some lettuce. I utilized some of the awesomeness of my modern life and heated some olive oil on the stove along with the eggs. Gave the onion and the carrot to the oil to knock some flavor into the carrot and some onion off the onion, and then used the whole mess to spice up a lettuce and raisin salad. Nestled the eggs onto the plate, sprinkled some fresh dill and a little paprika over the whole ordeal and voila - the healthiest morning I've had in years, and the best breakfast since my uber-healthy suhoor's from first week of Ramadan.

As a child I was barefoot. At home, at play, in the yard, in the 'hood, at the beach, camping, in the mountains when it wasn't too cold, and any other time I could get away with it (social norms be damned)! I loved playing and I loved running, why did I ever stop these things? These shoes give me the feeling that I've got my bare feet back, and my attitude since discovering them has been filled with random runs and a new way of looking at every material thing I come in contact with.

I cannot express the incredible feelings collected by my entire body while experiencing something very close to running barefoot over fresh snow - without freezing my toezies off, not even the little useless nub-of-a-one on the outside.

Crazy, this is the second time in less than year that my life has been changed for the better in a flash and a moment from something amazing that is emanating from NY. G-d willing, I'll get there myself soon enough to actually be a part of these things but for now, Madison, WI, I am still in love with you and I would love to have the best of both worlds.

"Be the change you want to see in the world." - MG

Erwan LeCorre, John Durant, and everyone else who's involved though their names don't seem to be catching as much popular notice - reading about what you're doing is inspiring on many levels. Time to put a little Northwoods into this movement, Wisco style.

Also, I love having killer calves.

I am sure that I don't know everything and though I may not always know what is right, I occasionally find myself feeling like I'm certain that I know something isn't.

Today's focus lies on:
1.) the difference between being an exemplary example and the dangers of being noticed;
2.) the idea that diversity can be taught from a standpoint of authoritarianism;
3.) questioning whether or not authoritarianism can allow for freedom of expression

two and three deal specifically with a class I'm taking to fulfill my diversity requirement @ university. The teacher stated that the classroom as "not a democracy" in the first twenty minutes of a two hour course. This was said in regards to whether or not recording class was permissible, and as a response to my statement that in the state of Wisconsin, only one person has to know that a recorder is on - and it doesn't have to be the person being recorded. In the end, her answer was ambiguous.

Her reasoning had to do with statements being taken out of context, put on youtube, and also to promote "freedom" to speak and do as any given individual requires. Meanwhile, I don't see what's wrong with having all of that recorded for posterity. How often does foolishness result negative attention, how often should it? Seems like a natural repercussion of this modern age of the all encompassing microscope vision of a globally connected humanity.

Context. She gave a story about an educator who emulated the dancing of Kanye West by grabbing his crotch, waving his hands and singing out, "hey, ho" repeatedly. Her allusions to his fate were as ambiguous as her ruling on recording class. The context of the story was that the educator was a male, who had/has a propensity for making fat jokes and possibly black jokes. Apparently his picture was taken mid-dance. Apparently his actions were deemed offensive enough for some sort of action against him. The story was super vague, and the context was just as limited.

The implication was that he was a white racist? I don't want to spend a semester discussing whiteness and blackness, because the concepts are meaningless to me. I see people, and their merit isn't judged on anything but exactly that - their merit. The more we focus on race, ethnicity and gender as concepts that form and separate us the longer they will persist. The longer they will separate us from the real "other" the silent minority (10%ers) that dictates life to the acquiescent, majority (85%ers).

I guess I hope that I find myself in the 5% that isn't included - otherwise, I guess I'm just another clueless, closet racist white guy.

"Most white people don't think racism exists," she says. Oh no, it exists, I think to myself while sitting on my hands and biting my tongue, and maybe classes like this help the tragically left behind racists of a bygone era's mindset, but they don't do anything but further a thought pattern of western bias as universal truth and keep perpetuating the ingloriously aging idea that people are to be told what to think.

Isn't diversity something that has to be experienced? Step outside of the familiar and explore the unknown - that's where the ideas that lead to progress can be found, that's where the future is hiding from the present. History is important, respect is also important, but by golly do I despise working withing the constraints of a context where social conjecture is preached as a fact-set.

Like a Saint of Sinners

Honestly, I wonder if time is moving faster these days...

My parents used to fight about what my mom perceived as my dad's ever changing personality. Sometimes I wonder if I didn't get some of that, though fortunately I'd like to believe that I also have plenty of my mom's immutable-ness underneath. Sometimes I feel like a shape-shifter.

My mom likes to talk in conceptual summaries and fantasy metaphors, my dad loves the end times/conspiracy theory rhetoric. Sprinkle in a whole lot of fundamentalism with an equal percent of Star Wars mysticism, a pinch of an absolute religious rebellion and you've got the context for my vocabulary.

If my mom's a woman sized pixie, and her husband was a wizard; my dad is a bard; this makes me the man-child of a bard and a pixie, guided by a wizard after my father the bard succumbed to the succubus' embrace; self aware and noble, he has some rather altruistic ulterior motives of his own, but cut off from me nevertheless.

My steady diet of star wars and pentecostalism really fed into my already vivid imagination. When some teenagers sneak out to have drink and fornicate, I would sneak out to play RPGs with my geeky friends. I did anachronistic reenactments, I fenced in a round. I felt free and happy, "wasting" my time. I still don't see it as a waste, but it seems so wasteful.

I should have been studying, excelling in something - some math or some science - but I still can't see it that way. I don't see a point to it, even now as I dig myself into debt to go to school, I'm loving it, but I don't know what to do next! I still don't know what to do when I grow up.

After realizing that I needed to spend the effort I spent playing video games on real life things got pretty real for me but I've still got the same hangups. I don't want to be a part of a system that hurts people, let alone the planet we all share. I do want to teach children how to read, somewhere at some point, but I wonder if I'm innocent enough to do that without imprinting my own opinions on them; optimally it would just be a desire to learn, think and desire/quest for truth.

My desire to think flows naturally into realms of spirituality, religiosity, metaphysics and mysticism - basically BS. LOL, guess it's time to start writing fiction again. Maybe that'll keep me from thinking too much of my own opinions.

Basically, over the past month I've lost my concept of what I thought truth was. It became that much more elusive to me again. I turned the entire christian upbringing I had upsidedown over the course of my late teens and entire twenties. I made it all make no sense at all. Jesus wasn't the son of God who saved my immortal soul, he was a dude who preached awesomeness, and may or may not have been an egyptian wizard, trained in techniques we'd mostly call chemistry; science meets functional superstition.

Somehow, that was more believable to me. Later, he became completely human, just a legend written a hundred years after he died by people who either said they knew him, or said they knew people who knew him, and they all either knew what he said or what he meant by what he said and did while he was around. The Qur'an seems to be a little unclear, but seems to allude to either not dieing, or not being crucified (or just not being dead after due process?)

Killed, rose again - meh, maybe, maybe not. I don't really even know anymore. It saddens me in a way, the world is just that real to me know. So much of the 'real' things that happen in 'real' life just lead me to not believe in what was fed to me as miraculous and true. People don't rise from the dead every day, and people aren't the son of God. He's got a special set of rules.

If it happened today, would science be able to explain it?

If it had a scientific explanation would it be any less miraculous?

and bam, I can't not believe in it again and again, because you know, if you don't believe that Jesus Christ died for your since, you don't go to heaven. It's just that simple to the people who believe it but it's not that simple to me, because the world I live in is different - the same but different.

I don't even know what to make of it, Rome had science and philosophy, economy, religion, they had their modern givens. Islamic societies of the middle ages had the same, greece, egypt, renaissance europe... right and wrong - but in the face of Biblical Truth, absolutely meaningless. Everything mankind has ever done is absolutely meaningless in the face of religious truth - because the next world is where it all counts, where it all matters... but it stems in what we do in this life.

Gotta believe in God - or Jesus - or Jesus as God - but not as a metaphor... never as an obtuse concept, always out of reach. Gotta have strong faith, or you might as well have none. Islam, Christianity and Judaism can tear each other's throats out over the same basic idea because they've all got a slightly different details (added/altered/invented/corrupted)in a text given to them by the same big(gest) GOD.

Always literal, always infallible - but not always that way! These books are not considered infallible by groups within each religion, though certainly not the orthodox opinion, as it pretty much takes faith in the document to have faith in what it says. Its easy to have faith in one divine author than it is to have faith in the unified voice of three dozen men, as translated by thousands of scribes. Or passed down in oral tradition by a hundred men for a couple hundred years.

'Course this is the kind of talk that gets you imprisoned in the middle east, and makes your anties fear for your immortal soul all around the globe.

See, when things get this belligerent I switch into fantasy mode, and it gets easier to think of myself as a shapeshifter in a world gone mad, and not just a child of the west who refuses his context to find people the same regardless - but then I think about judgement day again, and I think that I better get fundamental on something I believe, but then I get confused as to which one is the right one.

I just pray that my actions on my knees, the contemplations from the repentance, the thankfulness, the desire to make something better by my presence will be enough to save my ass if it becomes necessary. Because other than that, what sends you to one heaven, takes you straight to another hell.

Scholarship outside of data collection is opinionship - it's not without merit, but it's not necessarily, and probably not, truth.