“Truth” is the word we use to distance ourselves from anything that could more legitimately be labelled truth

“To date, the enterprise of thinking has moved us radically away from understanding anything.”
Terence McKenna, Psychedelic Salon podcast

http://www.matrixmasters.net/salon/?p=680

Terence is a genius freak.

He will raise your intelligence to another level if you are ready for it, beyond the illusion that we can make statements that are either true or false.

All truths are only half truths at best.  It was a mathematician who said that!

How we decided that sounds we make with our mouth can somehow correlate to a reality beyond the perception of our senses is beyond my comprehension. “Truth” is simply something that resonates in our body in a certain way. Historically this has always been myth. I believe we used to have a healthy understanding that “truth” is a good myth. Today we seem to marginalise myth as primitive and give our modern myths great names like Science, and claim that they are True cos they have been Proven. It is simply a continuation of the exact illusion religion perpetuated at its worst.

Agreed brother. I have often been at ends with those that rationalise their dogmas as “scientific truths” when the scientific method says that all possibilities must be considered and even when “proven” are only really probabilistic assumptions.

Pretty mind boggling to think how well refined the human brain is to be able to decode multiple sensory fields. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

“Never let reality get in the way of a good trip.”

I reckon truth is real and always will be, it's love/God/the original vibration, the absolute. It is our minds that are only capable of grasping a few aspects at a time. Which is why people say there are many truths, or truth depends on perspective.

To insist that science prove the nonexistence of something is endless and silly, especially if it doesn't exist. Remember science serves us pretty well most of the time.

Science is theoretically a great way of looking at the world. The problem with science is that even theoretically it is built upon a culture of dogma, where the truth was handed down to the masses from the authority, The Church, The State, Science. This is why science is so reactionary against religion; Dorkins, for example, one of the leading science writers in the world, writing a fuck-you-religion book. In reality, science is compromised by a lot of petty people with their petty little ideologies, trying to prove what they think they already know about the world, a perspective often completely culturally-sanctioned. And today, science is increasingly being commissioned by institutions to support the "facts" they need to justify their financial gains. This is well-documented in Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre, how drug companies fund and control all the “scientific” tests utilised to prove that their drugs are safe so they can get them out on the market as soon as possible, regardless of their efficacy or safety.

As Mark suggests, reality is real, we assume. We don't really know, but it seems likely that their is a real reality out there. However, all we have is our perception. There are theories of perception that include more than five senses, but ultimately, the only source of information we have on the physical world in which we exist physically, are the physical senses of our physical bodies. Everything else is rumour and speculation; and anybody who is trying to convince you otherwise is trying to convince you of something.

The only reason we can talk about the possibility of “Truth” existing or “God” existing is because we have words for these concepts. God definitely exists. God is a character in a myth, in some cases. God is a word we use to describe an experience, in other cases. In fact, “God” is a word we project onto a myriad of confusing and complex experiences. “Ghost”, “alien” and “illuminati” are also words that we project onto a hugely diverse range of experiences, simply because we don't have a complex vocabulary to talk about these things.

Contemplating the possible utility of the word “truth” pointing to something in the reality I experience, I would consider that, rather than guaranteeing for me that something “exists” in “reality”, “truth” is an experience of resonance in the body. My body is my only source of information about this world we share, so when I feel this resonance in my body, this “yes”, I call this “truth”. I could get this feeling equally from a drama film as a documentary, from a conversation as a scientific discovery, from some wild theory of Terence McKenna or from some simple rational humanistic assertion.

Ben considers science serves us most of the time, Terence McKenna would suggest that this is only because science makes us nice toys. I definitely concede that religion did not bring us iphones.

By that reckoning, truth is intuition, and I agree. But don't shoot the messenger: science is simply a vessel by which we enhance our senses to explore the universe. It is not its triumphs or travesties. Iphones, nukes and dodgey pharma is human abuse of science.

Sure we each perceive reality differently, and its fun to pretend that this could be the Matrix or the underbelly of a cosmic squid, but unless you're high or ill, we disregard that in favour of evidence and common consensus. Sometimes your intuition fails you, and a group of eyes swear something is majestic, but science enhances that intuition and hey presto! Rainbows are just water, not magic. I heard a good phrase last night that I can apply here, “Even bullshit is high in fibre.” Be open minded, but keep your feet on the ground.

Science is a field of study, and the language and body of infomation constructed from it. Science doesn't hand down truth, or dogma or rules on how to live and treat people. The Church does impose dogma or rules on how to live and treat people. The State does also. Science does not, but some scientists do or the scientific community does at times. To me it's a real shame the subject of science is tarnished by the way it is used by some. I think it should be treated and thought of as what it is, and kept about information gathering and verifying, kept impartial. I really think some scientists use of it as a weapon against Christianity and Islam are detrimental to the subject's repute. It's like using a nuke to blow up a performance of Hamlet. It certainly is good for the destruction of religion, but I do think to use it in a serious manner is overkill and really just to satisfy the feelings of vengence against religion.

The miserable little child in me that spent 7+ hours per week in church meetings and Bible studies, forced to sit still and silent when I just wanted to draw and play and read something other than the Bible; that had to pray at least 7 times a day; that had to carry a card that said I was not allowed a blood transfusion, that had to be ready to say I was happy to die rather than have one; that never had a birthday celebration; that wasn't allowed a hot cross bun while all the other kids in class had them and I was hungry and had to pray for them cos damn those buns were the work of Satan; that was told spiky hair was demonic, that having long hair was too; that was taught Satan was everywhere in everyone always trying to attack me and take over my body and mind, even second hand purchases had to be prayed over in case they were posessed by Satan; that gay people were sick disgusting abominations that deserved to be punished and the gleefully told story of Sodom and Gomorrah; that anyone who isn't in my religion is a potential threat, a sinner, unclean, wrong and to be avoided; the fear of life that had me waking from nightmares everynight sometimes twice or more, often pissing my bed from fear, even seeing or feeling Satan trying to get to me after I woke; the sad, miserable, terrified child in me loves Dawkins, he is my hero for what he does. However, thats the little child in me. Understand it's not impartial science, it's personal.

I feel hesitant to challenge such a personal visceral account of the violence of religion.

First of all, I don't believe Science exists outside of what we say about it and how we practice it. Just like I don't believe God exists outside of our images of it and how we use it to relate to one another. So when I talk about science, I am not talking about some truth-encompassing perfect concept that we humans, in our imperfection, can only approximate. I am talking about the actual practice of science, how it is practised in our world, in our time.

The main problem I have with what science is becoming in our cultural world, is that it carries the delusion directly from religion: that sounds we make with our mouths, and transliterations of these sounds, can somehow correlate to an objective reality. Language is a complex system of symbols that we place significance on, that we share understandings of, that exist culturally, not naturally. We can refer to natural phenomena with language, but we cannot replicate it or contain it, or capture every perceptual angle for an objective view outside of our limited ability to interpret from our own point-of-view.

The way religion sought to control us with its dogma, claimed to be “ true” , is exactly the way government now controls us. It has created an unreadable literature called The Law that is supposedly real because it has been spoken into existence by those who have been ordained by Democracy.

The collapse of religion does not herald the liberation of humankind from dogma. It persists unchallenged to this day, only it has changed form. Just like Roman Paganism seamlessly became Roman Catholicism, there is a continuity today between the Christian dogmas that we have struggled with for generations and the dogmas of Government, Industy, Ownership, racial and political superiority that continue to oppress us. As long as science is claimed to be “ true” and used to justify anything, good or bad, it perpetuates this illusion, this confusion of language, the dogma inherent in the way we speak from day to day.

If we cannot become aware of how we hypnotise ourselves and each other with our language, we can never overcome it to experience the beauty and peace of the real world, where we can live together in harmony with all life on this planet.

Saving the Third World from Poverty

The Third World is the same wherever we go. It is us First Worlders who have created the Third World, thanks to our evil plan of World Globalisation. Without rich consuming countries wanting more more more and therefore wanting to trade with every part of the world, much of what is now the Third World would simply have remained the world, or Planet Earth. To convince these Earthlings that they want our abstract little notes and coins, that they want to trade all of their precious resources for it, I guess first we have to teach them to envy us and our superior lifestyle and culture. Being “Christians” we sent Missionaries ahead to “convert” the Earthlings to our peculiar religion, appropriately worshipping a genocidal god, and had a lot of success. Being Consumers now we send Hollywood to convert the Earthlings to our modern, updated, secular religion, worshipping our new god, Economy. Unlike Jahweh, the Christian god, who is clearly genocidal in his official literature, Economy wants to wipe out all species on this planet, not just specific races of humans. Hollywood, it seems, has been far more successful than the Missionaries. As a result more people than ever, living as heathens, close to the land, are now living in poverty, perhaps because they suddenly have to pay for food, perhaps because their environment is becoming increasingly polluted as a result of industrialisation. Either way, they want cellphones, they want Coca-Cola and they want action movies. As I sign of their independence, they may even form their own centralised government, therefore becoming, like us, a country, and even making their own action movies with local actors and locations. As a continuation of their independence from the imperialism of global advertising corporations like Coca-Cola and McDonalds the may even develop their own soft drinks and takeaway chains, so the profits from diabetes, obesity and heart disease can stay in the local economy.

Having established a centralised authoritarian government that worships the Economy, they can now embrace their position in the world as Third and Poverty. Some heretics, living in small tribal groups in unity with nature, remain outside of the classifications of Third World and Poverty, but they are being worked on. A growing proportion of this exciting new country are now futilely striving to become First World, and therefore lose the final link they have with the environment they live in, the humans they share their environment with and even a full experience of their own bodies. Hollywood has been the great teacher for a century now, sending movies, television and pop music from Los Angeles to (almost) every corner of the world. The American Dream, now officially dead in all remotely intelligent discussions in America, is now the dream of all who worship Economy, who see it not as a dream but as a literal truth. Stable governments worshipping Economy and welcoming Globalisation are being deliberately spread, not for the sake of some ancient Greek philosophy, Demokratia, but for the sake of Trade in praise of Economy. We will never extract and consume all of the planet's resources if we focus only on First World Christian Capitalist countries.

It is noble, even necessary, to spread our way of life, with alienation and airports, bureaucracy and border patrols, concrete and carbon monoxide to the entire planet. By some anomalous miracle of green politics most world governments have agreed that Antarctica will not be exploited and is not even a country, though it has been tentatively drawn on to define which rich countries look after which pieces of mouth-wateringly immaculate virgin-white continent. The most empathetic and least money-obsessed among us even volunteer in poor poverty-stricken Third World “countries”, helping them “develop” their lives, environments, communities and bodies into something that can serve the Economy and so bring them a paper-thin slice of the money-pie. Meanwhile they are very quickly losing connection with thousands of years of cultural tradition, the way-of-life and unity with the environment that have successfully brought them here (when it is widely agreed that the Industrial Consumer way of life will definitely not last 1000 years or bring the human species into any recognisable future). While 100,000 years of folk medicinal knowledge is being lost forever in our lifetime, modern psychiatric drugs are spreading like a plague from the eastern United States of Amnesia.

Outside of the executive boardrooms of major corporations and the debate chambers of “secular” Capitalist Governments, we know that this progress may not be “good”, but we recognise that is it “inevitable”. That's how things are now. We can't go back to being Cave Men. We must all step into and live entirely within the Real World, and forget that anything else ever existed, because it didn't. It has always been like this and if it hasn't it was always leading up to this. It will always be like this and if it is unsustainable we will have to be unsustainable “Sustainably”.

My friends and I compare our Third World experiences in countries in Central America and South-East Asia, finding similarities in tropical fruits and tourist economies. “Everything is so cheap!” we exclaim with delight. Many of us travellers are peripheral beings in the West, but in the Third World we become white Messengers carrying wads of divinely-ordained money. We are seen as “rich” by the locals and are treated as such. They want what we have, though we have travelled halfway across the world to get away from it. All we have is this universally-recognised abstraction, currency, which is terrifyingly finite. We battle with the locals for possession of this abstraction and they blackmail and threaten us by withholding the resources they possess, food and shelter, exchanging them for our notes of abstraction, just as we taught them.

I am told that Guatemala is a very poor country. I found, upon flying into the United States of Anorexia, a profound paranoia and distrust. They suspected me of wanting to overstay in their free country and so questioned me and checked my documents for hours before allowing me to pass the border. Upon flying into Guatemala, with a long line of locals wanting to cross the border, they saw me, the tallest, richest, whitest person in the line, and waved me through. Come, stay, spend your money, enjoy our food and our women, they seemed to be saying. They tried to sell me bus tours and any number of contrived travel options inside the airport and, upon seeing me proudly stepping out into the hot air unencumbered by their expensive controlled holidays, gave me pitying looks. As soon as I stepped outside the doors of the airport I was leaped upon by thirty taxi drivers willing to take me anywhere. I did not choose one, somehow one of them chose me and led me away to his car, naming a price that sounded cheap until I realised it was in US dollars.

This was Guatemala City, the central temple of Economy in this “developing” country, and so I took the bus straight out of the city, to Cobán, less developed, more poor, more welcoming, more comprehensible, more “authentic”, cheaper, the great dream of the rich foreigner, able to buy anything in the poor naïve Third World town. In Cobán, my local town for six weeks, the streets are dirt and lined with women selling fruit and tortillas, men selling energy boosters and cigarettes. I would walk through the streets a perfect Gringo, with more money than Spanish. They would try to talk their prices up to much more than they usually charge, but, I slowly learned, could be talked back down to the normal price. I learned with my Canadian friend, who has good Spanish and is a social genius, that to break through the image of Rich Gringo is very easy. To make a joke, to give a compliment or to simply humble ourselves, we suddenly transmute in their eyes into a real person and they laugh with us and empathise with us as the strange foreigner in a difficult situation, and we are friends, sometimes family, and they don't even want to charge us. We found that if we ask for food, say we have no money, it will be given to us without second-thought. Money is secondary to everyone eating. I was surprised and confused by how much the large gathering of Westerners I met in Guatemala became obsessed with living as cheaply as possible and talking the price of everything down as low as possible. While it made me feel more confident to learn enough Spanish to facilitate commerce, it made me feel satisfied and comfortable to later learn enough Spanish to laugh and joke with bus drivers.

Outside Cobán many people don't even speak Spanish, the language of four-hundred years of Colonisation, Christianity and Capitalism. They live in small villages in a variety of relationships to their Mayan traditions. It amazed me the extent to which they have survived these centuries of Colonisation, while México is progressively polluted by America like a leaking landfill above them. We received visits from Mayan shaman women, who blessed our gathering with ceremonies around the fire. We brought our multi-cultural performance into their village and they all gathered around us in fascination of our strangeness. We received a lot of sun and a lot of rain and we discovered, upon digging toilets, that there is about two metres of topsoil. Consequently, there was plenty of food, not only tropical fruits but maize, their staple food and the central god of the Mayan cosmology. Everyone had bananas and wanted to give them to us in appreciation of meeting us. We weary travellers always appreciated a bunch of bananas to nourish and delight us. There was plenty of food, but every village had a tienda, a little shop selling candy, chips and softdrinks, and every tienda was painted with either a Coca-Cola or Pepsi logo. It seems, unless they take the collectivo into town, the tienda is the only place to spend money, and only on junk food. In the poor Mexican villages, the Mexican Mayans all seemed desperate to sell us anything to make a tiny amount of money. The Guatemalan Mayans, less advanced, were less interested in our money. But every day, as Cobán sucked us towards it, bus after bus was filled with perfumed young men and round old women also sucked into town for their chance of making money.

Despite what is often referred to as “Poverty”, there were cellphones everywhere, and the cellphones that we Westerners left lying in our tents tended to disappear. There were satellite dishes in the most obscurely-placed houses, all with the mark of the beast, the “Claro” logo, the huge central American cellphone corporation. Why would everybody in Guatemala want a cellphone? The advertising in Cobán was very aggressive. “Claro” logos were everywhere and constantly there were vans driving slowly through the narrow streets shouting through loudspeakers on their roofs advertising for everyone needing a cellphone. Desensitised and over-exposed to advertising, it just aggravated me. New to its power to manipulate and the novelty of advertising not being completely insidious in their environment, the locals surely responded conscientiously to the advertising.

It is such a relief for me, Western Consumer of New Zealand, distant outpost of the British Commonwealth, to not have a cellphone for a while, to not use it for a while. We rich Capitalists, dissatisfied with what our culture offers us, consumption, accumulation and entertainment as the meaning of life, travel all the way to Guatemala to gather together in the remote river valley of Rio Sachicha, to live together on the earth without commerce. Yet we are pulled over and over again to the urban centres to satiate our craving and buy something, anything, to have it and take it with us, not even caring if it is later stolen by some poor local. We exhaust ourselves in the exuberance and chaos of the Third World, we obtain their intestinal parasites, and we retreat home to our sterility and stupormarkets to recover from our loss of illusion-of-control.

We educated post-consumer hippies are confused and conflicted by the development of the Third World, by Guatemala, surviving 400 years of Colonisation, only to embrace Capitalism now. We want to support their development, we want to exploit their resources, their naïvety, their pure land and way-of-life and we want to leave them untouched, to maintain a life not defined by our failed institutions.

I guess we learn and we return to New Zealand and Canada and Finland with an experience that reverberates through our bodies, rather than media-produced images in our heads. We may not understand, but at least we don't pretend to understand. We may not reject Imperialistic Corporate Industrial Consumerism, but at least we worship the Economy with a disrespectful irony and sarcasm.

Domesticated primates running digitally on extra-terrestrial software

Chris Kirk

6 October

I am a human being trapped in an alien landscape of domesticated primates running digitally on extra-terrestrial software. I personally don't identify with the culture in which I was born, but luckily I meet beautiful human beings who transcend their culture just for a moment with me sometimes, or sometimes for their whole life. I am glad I am here surrounded by these strange and fascinating people. I want to smell them and touch them and look into their eyes, but there are strange psychic barriers in the way sometimes. I don't know why.

Darius

Critical mass eventuates population collapse once environmental equilibrium unbalances to an extreme which creates a point of total instability. The bees are dying on mass.  If pesticides and fungicides are not completely eradicated global famine could result.  The US may default in 11 days, if their debt ceiling is not raised global economy will implode and world war could follow as per usual. If these 2 events do not manifest due to intervention there are many more potential actions of global human culture that are pushing the limits of tolerance that could collapse. Survive and contribute to writing the new paradigm that will naturally follow. Prepare, unite and survive.

Chris Kirk

I am ready. I am just gathering up health and sanity, cos I may need a stockpile. I can't handle this civilisation farce anymore. I wish the people who love me would just come be with me here in paradise. What the fuck are you all doing in the cities? Are you really trying to play that game? Have you noticed you are losing? Have you noticed that the people who are winning are more miserable than you are? Or that people are collapsing into sociopaths all around you? Withdraw, my friends, please. Come roll in the grass with me, swim in the ocean before it's totally radioactive, help me learn how to sprout and graft fruit trees. I don't want to come visit you in TV-land anymore.

Eva-psyphae Macula

All very well and nice. But if all the people leave the cities your little bush huts and self-sufficient circle jerks of xenophobic culture cringing will be lost and you'll just have crowded beach and trampled grass.

The console works just fine, the software needs updating, but all controls are still intact and the levels are all still fun. However I think its fair to say that we all need to chip in on a rather large power bill that's been stuck on the empty fridge door for centuries. Like any shared house situation, those that are accountable are not always responsible and others ended paying more than their share.

If the '60s and '70s can teach us anything, is that the '80s and '90s is what happens when that approach is taken. Abandoning the game does not finish the level. It just leaves a seriously fucked character with only a few lives left and the boss to face alone. Group hugs and acid won't fix this problem.  Nor will burning spears.

Coded language, psychic cyphers and data bombs will be our tools.  Our generation is that lost child who crawled his way through the flower fields of zombies and reality gameshow sets to find his tribe dancing in whirlpools of splintering metal tectonic bass, and screamed with ecstatic affirmation and agonizing confirmation in the middle of the moshpit, we are indeed fucked.

As the monitor flickers in the dark and the controller lays cold, the world burns.  The war dance is over.  It's time to take back the city.

Chris Kirk

I hope that one day I will take my children or my grandchildren on field trips to the cities. They will see the decaying buildings, skyscrapers with hundreds of glassless windows covered in vines, pavements cracking, streets of weeds preparing the soil, metal and concrete skeletons of alien technological non-entities from some dark fairytale that actually happened, unexpected reclamations of industrial, commercial, so-called "pubic" spaces, fungi consuming piles of plastic. 

I will walk them through like a museum of filth and perversion that is slowly collapsing back into the soil, the earth finding ways to consume it all over thousands of years. I will tell them stories about what went on there, the uniforms, the bureaucracy, the stress and the hopelessness, the cars and the pollution, the Economy and the shopping malls and stupormarkets. 

I will then take them home and tuck them into bed to dream of a better world, a world I am not capable of imagining, so compromised and traumatised by paranoia and cynicism. They will create a better world in the remains of what we are too scared to confront, disassemble and abandon.

Darius

Cities can be wonderful places which hold an important utility for humans and have for many millennia; I don't know why anyone would hope for their destruction. I think it makes much more sense to hope (and work to to create) in the future that cities and the people who live in and manage them evolve them to become clean places of artistic beauty, social vibrancy and environmental harmony.  It can be done, we have the knowledge to make it so globally.  There are many people all over the world right how who are working to make it so. 

To wish otherwise and to think the world can only be improved by destruction seems rather narrow minded, selfish, short sighted and ignorant. Cities don't take up alot of land area actually and many people greatly prefer living in them to living in the country side. Oh but you don't like them therefore they shouldn't exist at all and destruction should be hoped for and relished, despite all the good people that love them and would feel a great loss to live in a world without cities, who hope to and work at removing the negative effect they have environmentally.

Christy

Remember, dear friend, all is as it should be, if you are truly in the moment (reality). If you think it should be different, then you are arguing with reality.  Insanity.  They should, they shouldn't, he can't, I can't, etc.  Love what is.  If you don't love what is: PAIN.  The Work of Byron Katie. Highly recommend it. Peace brother.

Darius

Do you actually realise that if cities were all gone then there would be a lot less green spaces in the world. If there were weeds preparing soil then there would be much more soil being removed everywhere else. As I said cities take up far less land area per person than in the countryside since everything is built vertically, and since they are built from glass that means far less trees need to be cut down to build all the houses which would be needed if there were no cities. Besides it's a fact that cities pollute less than the countryside with all it's cattle.  Glass and steel don't eat cattle, people do, and they would whether they lived in a city or not.  If not, the meat would be transported further, rather than the singular small area cityscape, creating a greater carbon footprint.  Glass is made from sand which is abundant in the many desert waste lands on earth and steel is mined from isolated places. Deforestation, for lumber and cattle, and nuclear technology are what need to be removed.  As it is now, cities could be what is keeping the earth from destruction by population overload.  If everyone left them it would create even more strain on the environment due to lumber needs and energy used for greater travel-distances.  Everyone would need a personal car to visit family and friends and employment, rather than public transport. 

Not everyone wants to work from home, not everyone wants to grow their own veges.  (I fucking hate gardening with a passion, if I had to grow my own food rather than pay someone else for it I would consider that a misery and a waste of time.)  Though many others I know love the garden and almost always grow with a huge surplus.  Some of them love piano music but would hate to practice to hear it.  I love to eat fresh organic produce. The earth and everything and everyone in it need people to hope and work towards improvement, a greener environmentally harmonised city and countryside culture, simple. What it doesn't need are hyper-emotional, reactionary people who just want to see it all burn, who are just plain weak.

Chris Kirk

http://www.personaproductions.com/2013/10/paterson-by-allen-ginsberg.html

Ivanovic

And thank god for Chris Kirk also.

Gracias, familia

Chris Kirk

11 October

Thank you to everyone around the world, in other worlds, who has loved me, who has touched me, who has looked at me and talked with me, slept with me, shared a home with me, appreciated me when I'm pathetic, appreciated me when I am ecstatic, sang with me, danced with me, especially naked, especially in the rain, who has wrestled with me on the lawn, who has licked my wounds, who has grown on my windowsill and reached out to the sun, who has nourished me and kissed me.

Thank you to all of you have revealed your beauty to me, to all of you have seen my beauty.

Thank you to my home on the hill and everyone who has been born or died here with me.

Thank you to the mother from whom I emerged, in whose womb I lived in for nine months and whose loving home I lived in for 18 years; whose breast I drew milk from; whose nurturing love I drew confidence from.

All those warm nights of snuggling.

All those friends, come and gone.

Nothing is more important in my life than the beings I share my life with, especially those peculiar human beings who I'm so fond of. Sometimes they break through it all and we are present together. I am ready for you friends, family, lovers. Come to me now, I am here and I always will be until I go and then I'll be gone forever.

Jiveny

Beautiful words Chris

Chris Kirk

My love is my hope, my guide, my meaning and my purpose.

Jade

Love you chris

Olly

Yes Chris! good stuff, I love the synchronicity of this connected world, the friendships that forge, and the paths of our lives. Quite incredible, come join your family in Tasmania

Maria

Thank you for your gifted being co love you xox

Margo

Piggies wiggly piggy loveeeee

Carolina

I love this

Bec

love u beautiful      

Paterson by Allen Ginsberg

What do I want in these rooms papered with visions of money?

How much can I make by cutting my hair? If I put new heels on my shoes,
bathe my body reeking of masturbation and sweat, layer upon layer of excrement
dried in employment bureaus, magazine hallways, statistical cubicles, factory stairways,
cloakrooms of the smiling gods of psychiatry;
if in antechambers I face the presumption of department store supervisory employees,
old clerks in their asylums of fat, the slobs and dumbbells of the ego with money and power
to hire and fire and make and break and fart and justify their reality of wrath and rumor of wrath to wrath-weary man,
what war I enter and for what a prize! the dead prick of commonplace obsession,
harridan vision of electricity at night and daylight misery of thumb-sucking rage.

I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins,
eyes and ears full of marijuana,
eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border
or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman;
rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun;
rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati;
rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies;
rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver,
pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain,
come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage,
streetcorner Evangel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions,
with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp,
screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality,
screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world,
blood streaming from my belly and shoulders
flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways
by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.