from The White Goddess; by Robert Graves

My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry - "true" in the nostalgic modern sense of "the unimprovable original, not a synthetic substitute".  The language was tampered with in late Minoan times when invaders from Central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for matrilinear institutions and remodel or falsify the myths to justify the social changes.  Then came the early Greek philosophers who were strongly opposed to magical poetry as threatening their new religion of logic, and under their influence a rational poetic language (now called the Classical) was elaborated in honour of their patron Apollo and imposed on the world as the last word in spiritual illumination: a view that has prevailed practically ever since in European schools and universities, where myths are now studied only as quaint relics of the nursery age of mankind.

Kombucha

 Kombucha is a living organism.  The kombucha itself is actually a living symbiosis of different, beneficial bacteria and special yeast cultures.  It looks like tough, rubbery jelly and varies in colour from cream to browny yellow.  Because it is a living organism it grows to fit the shape of the container.  New layers grow on top of the old and can be peeled off to start new cultures.

 The first step is to obtain a healthy kombucha.  Ask around your friends, or sometimes you can buy them in organic stores.

In some parts of old China and Japan, it was often the custom for families to give a new bride a kombucha as a wedding gift.  This was nurtured throughout her marriage and then passed on to her own daughter.

Keeping a Healthy Kombucha

The Kombucha organism will literally last for centuries (because it continually renews itself) - but it must have the right conditions in which to grow.

Avoid:

• allowing the Kombucha to be contaminated by cigarette smoke - nicotine will kill Kombucha.
• allowing it to come into contact with metal - remove rings before handling your Kombucha; use only wooden or plastic spoons to stir; keep in a pottery or glass container.
• extremes of temperature - Kombucha grows best in a warm environment (not hot). Keep it on the kitchen bench, or in a cupboard, away from sunny windows and ovens.
• allowing dust to contaminate your brew - keep it tightly covered with a gauze, muslin or fine cotton cloth secured with a rubberband.
• allowing insects to contaminate your brew - they'll be attracted to it, so keeping it tightly covered (as above) will keep them away.
• using oily herbal teas - oils can spoil the Kombucha.
   

Recipe for Kombucha Tea

I have found my Kombucha brews best in large jars.

3 litres of boiling water

1 cup of raw sugar

4-6 tea bags (whatever flavour you like; I use Green Tea Berry, Black Tea Chai Spice, Black Adder Liquorice)

1 healthy Kombucha organism

1 cup of Kombucha fermented brew (mother tea) as a starter

NOTE: As you become acquainted with the process and the needs of your kombucha friend, you can alter the recipe for the health of the kombucha and your personal taste.

Method

Use clean utensils.

Wash hands thoroughly.
We have a very hot water temperature, which is perfect for sterilising all objects involved.
Infuse tea bags in boiling water until desired strength; remove tea bags.
Dissolve sugar in hot water and add to tea.

Add the mother brew to the cooled tea mixture and then float the Kombucha on the top.
Cover tightly with cloth and rubber band.  It needs to breathe, hence a lid is not appropriate, but it also needs to avoid contamination.

Place the Kombucha brew where it can sit undisturbed for a week. It doesn't require any light, so it can be left in a cupboard during this time.

You know the Komucha is ready to drink when it is neither sweet (because all the sugar has been consumed) nor sour (because the organisms have not been starved).

After a week or longer of fermentation it is ready to drink.  However, I prefer to bottle for a second fermentation.

Second fermentation

Sterilise glass bottles (wine bottles work well), a funnel and a porous cloth.
Remove the Kombucha organism temporarily from the jar into a dish where it is safe from contamination.
Filter the brew through the cloth into the bottles, leaving half a cup of space at the top of each bottle.
Leave one cup of brew in the jar for next week's batch.
Dissolve 1/4 cup of sugar in 1/2 cup of water and add to each bottle.  The bottle should be full.
Seal the bottle and leave to brew for another week or two.
This second fermentation in the sealed bottle should produce an effervescent carbonated effect.
Repeat the above process, adding infused tea and dissolved sugar to the mother brew and floating the Kombucha organism on top.
I like to wash the organism in cold water before replacing it, rubbing off any dark spots or contamination.

You can bottle the resulting brew and store it in the fridge. if you leave it out, it will continue to grow and ferment. It will still grow, but at a slower pace in the fridge.

Any small piece of the Kombucha will also start to grow, so you may need to strain it again before you drink it.

Once you have the knowledge of how to keep the organism healthy and happy, you can try different tastes.  The brew should be neither too sweet nor too sour.  If it is too sweet, then the organism simply hasn't consumed the sugar yet.  If it becomes acidic then you have been brewing it for too long; feed it a little more sugar and leave for another few days.  Seven days is usually a good time to make a brew, but I like to check on them every few days to make sure there is no contamination and that they are not becoming acidic. 

How much should I drink?

Kombucha is a probiotic drink, so it adds to your intestinal fauna positively.
It is controversial amongst those who resent people taking responsibility for their own health.  The only possible side-effect I have found in my research is rare cases of lactic acidosis, which is caused by excess consumption of lactic acid (i.e. vinegar).  Only improperly over-fermented Kombucha is high in lactic acid.
Start with a small serve - 1/4 to 1/3 cup - take it first thing in the morning (to aid digestion) or last thing at night.

Gradually increase your intake until you find a suitable level - up to two cups per day is beneficial.

Often your Kombucha will be effervescent.  It depends on the mixture and the temperature. Water supply will also effect the taste.

Experiment with different combinations of teas and waters and enjoy the experience.

Care of your Kombucha

You will notice that your Kombucha grows new upper layers very quickly. When it becomes too thick, you can separate the layers where they naturally part and either give them away or use them yourself and discard the older, bottom layers.

When dividing and replacing your Kombucha, ensure that you've removed any rings, that your hands and all utensils are spotlessly clean. The Kombucha is easily contaminated and this will spoil your brew.

You can wash the Kombucha in cooled, boiled water to remove any darker strings that often grow.

Leave the Kombucha on a clean dish with a little of its brew while you clean the container.

Always keep a back up Kombucha in case your main organism is damaged in any way.
My Kombucha organisms grow so quickly I can't resist expanding my production and brewing more.

Other Uses for Kombucha

Don't simply throw out any excess organisms.  If you can't give them away, you can use them as;

• poultices - if you have a burn or minor injury, cut small pieces of Kombucha and bandage them to your skin - the antiseptic qualities of the Kombucha help healing.
• indoor garden compost - cut into manageable pieces and bury just below the surface in your pot plants to give them a lift.
• outdoor compost - if you have a prolific grower, use the excess on your fruit trees and garden plants (bury just below the surface).

Thank you for the information, Jennifer Stewart:

http://www.write101.com/kombucharecipes.htm

Strip Ourselves

I am barren with desolation.
My life is a well of emptiness with a ladder that I choose not to climb up and out of.
I am trapped in my own assumptions and conveniences.
Pity me not, but love me and desire me and invite me to foreign paradises.
Become a yearning throbbing genital of the earth and draw me in, become my lover or my confidant, exist with me in the most intense sobriety of presence.
Cry with me, become pathetic, sob into my warm body and slap me 'til I sob too.
Let our naked bodies feel exposed and safe together, let our genitals meet in calm acceptance.
And then we shall dive into the ocean and she shall take us as we are and strip us of our pretensions.
We do not enter her with togs or with surfboards to hide from her or conquer her, we allow her salty goodness to refresh us and deposit us in a sandy sunny world not entirely the same as the one we dived in from.
And then we burn our hair and our clothes in a fire of driftwood and we no longer subscribe to the shame and personality that have obscured our power most of our lives.
I am naked beneath my clothes and I am a real living human being beneath my culture.
I am hot-blooded, breathing and desiring, weeping alone and overwhelmed with the beauty of a veiled humanity before me.
I cannot rave at the masses because my sanity holds me back almost as much as my fear of arrest.
I am the masses and I am listening carefully for the secret to unlock my life from the profane time adulthood has thrust upon me.
I remember sacred time from childhood, and I have rediscovered it in the wild, in the pure wilderness of earth, in the wildman in my body and in the purity of my fellows.
How can I tell you I want to eat you without appearing as a sexual predator?
How can I tell the world I want to be eaten when I am so comfortably marginalised by my comfy social democracy?

I transform the moment I am experiencing into the eternity we all deserve.  I reject the historical crisis we have talked ourselves into as I reject the culture that has structured this conversation.  Time begins anew whenever we choose, when we celebrate the New Year, when we submit to the ocean, when we strip ourselves and walk out into the night.

Free the Earth Day

I need some feedback on an idea, my friends.  I have a potential solution to some of the many problems which face us as a global community.  I wouldn't even consider this a possibility if I hadn't personally witnessed the global communication and coordination that made Occupy occur simultaneously in 1600 cities in 80 countries around the world.

My idea is that simultaneously all around the world many people, on the same day, stop paying rent and stop paying their mortgage.  That we all declare that from today onwards our home is ours and that we no longer have to pay to live on the planet that we were born on.

The primary benefits, as I see it, are that economic disparity would be drastically leveled, the global economy would be severely damaged and many people would not only have a significant financial burden lifted, but would be able to actively pursue an increasingly money-free life from the base of having a secure home.

What do people I think?  I am curious both about what you think the consequences would be, and how this could become a succinct meme to be successful on a global stage.  The best meme structure I have so far constructed - I'm sure we can do better - is Free the Earth Day.  "From this day on the earth is free and we don't have to pay to live here anymore."

Feedback, my friends!

The Gospel According to John 1:1-27; a translation for those who share my cultural and linguistic paradigm

In the beginning was language
and with the language is God
and the language is a god.

Language created all forms, no form was created without language.

In creation was life; and creation is the light of humanity.

And the light of creation shines in the darkness of the void;
and the darkness does not understand.

And creation spoke through the human form.

Humanity came to experience life,
to create form,
that all life might be manifest in form.

Humanity is not that form,
humanity experiences form.

Creation is the light of humanity
and everyone is a creator.

Humanity identified with language,
language was spoken by humanity,
but humanity did not recognise its own voice.

-

Creation speaks,
but humanity disregards what it hears.

Those who listen receive the power of creation
because they understand that they are not the form,
they are not the created,
they are the creator.

Language creates
and we live in its creation.
We can see the aura of form,
the aural rhythm emanating from language,
its beauty and its honesty.

We experience the voice, that which emanates,
and we announce,
This is the source of which we spoke;
that which endures our form is compelling
because it also preceded our form.

In the revelation of this experience we receive the strength and inspiration to create.

Much has been created before us, but nothing compares to the truth and beauty inside of us.

-

No one has seen the truth of reality.
Within our form we are imminent in the womb of the creator,
we have been declared.

The believers come and ask,
"Who are you?"
"I am not the messiah."
"Are you Elijah?"
"I am not."
"Are you the prophet?"
"No."
"Who are you then?  We cannot return without an answer."

"I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Open up the gates for the way of God,
as you claim you have always intended."

They are believers who ask,
"Why speak then, if you are not the prophet?"

"I speak merely with the language of my birth;
but there is a truth amongst you which cannot be spoken.
It will endure and it has preceded.
I can barely insinuate a single detail of its vastness."

-

The cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico; by Carlos Castaneda (1998)

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge was first published in 1968. On the occasion of its thirtieth year of publication, I would like to make a few clarifications about the work itself, and to state some general conclusions about the subject of the book at which I have arrived, after years of serious and consistent effort. The book came as a result of anthropological field work which I did in the state of Arizona and in the state of Sonora, Mexico. While doing graduate work in the Anthropology Department at the University of California at Los Angeles, I happened to meet an old shaman, a Yaqui Indian from the state of Sonora, Mexico. His name was Juan Matus.

…

The irreducible description of what I did in the field would be to say that the Yaqui Indian sorcerer, don Juan Matus, introduced me to the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico. By cognition, it is meant the processes responsible for the awareness of everyday life, processes which include memory, experience, perception, and the expert use of any given syntax. The idea of cognition was, at that time, my most powerful stumbling block. It was inconceivable for me, as an educated Western man, that cognition, as it is defined in the philosophical discourse of our day, could be anything besides a homogeneous, all-engulfing affair for the totality of mankind. Western man is willing to consider cultural differences that would account for quaint ways of describing phenomena, but cultural differences could not possibly account for processes of memory, experience, perception and the expert use of language to be anything other than the processes known to us. In other words, for Western man, there is only cognition as a group of general processes.

For the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, however, there is the cognition of modern man, and there is the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico. Don Juan considered these two to be entire worlds of everyday life which were intrinsically different from one another. At a given moment, unbeknownst to me, my task mysteriously shifted from the mere gathering of anthropological data to the internalisation of the new cognitive processes of the shamans' world.

A genuine internalisation of such rationales entails a transformation, a different response to the world of everyday life. Shamans found out that the initial thrust of this transformation always occurs as an intellectual allegiance to something that appears to be merely a concept, but which has unsuspectedly powerful undercurrents. This was best described by don Juan when he said, “The world of everyday life cannot ever be taken as something personal that has power over us, something that could make us, or destroy us, because man's battlefield is not in his strife with the world around him. His battlefield is over the horizon, in an area which is unthinkable for an average man, the area where man ceases to be a man.”

He explained those statements, saying that it was energetically imperative for human beings to realise that the only thing that matters is their encounter with infinity. Don Juan could not reduce the term infinity to a more manageable description. He said that it was energetically irreducible. It was something that could not be personified or even alluded to, except in such vague terms as infinity, “lo infinito”.

Little did I know at that time that don Juan was not giving me just an appealing intellectual description; he was describing something he called an energetic fact. Energetic facts, for him, were the conclusions that he and the other shamans of his lineage arrived at when they engaged in a function which they called seeing: the act of perceiving energy directly as it flows in the universe. The capacity to perceive energy in this manner is one of the culminating points of shamanism.

According to don Juan Matus, the task of ushering me into the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico was carried out in a traditional way, meaning that whatever he did to me was what was done to every shaman initiate throughout the ages. The internalisation of the processes of a different cognitive system always began by drawing the shaman initiates' total attention to the realisation that we are beings on our way to dying. Don Juan and the other shamans of his lineage believed that the full realisation of this energetic fact, this irreducible truth, would lead to the acceptance of the new cognition.

The end result which shamans like don Juan Matus sought for their disciples was a realisation which, by its simplicity, is so difficult to attain: that we are indeed beings that are going to die. Therefore, the real struggle of man is not the strife with his fellowmen, but with infinity, and this is not even a struggle; it is, in essence, an acquiescence. We must voluntarily acquiesce to infinity. In the description of sorcerers, our lives originate in infinity, and they end up where they originated: infinity.

Most of the processes which I have described in my published work had to do with the natural give and take of my persona as a socialised being under the impact of new rationales. In my field situation, what was taking place was something more urgent than a mere invitation to internalise the processes of that new shamanistic cognition; it was a demand. After years of struggle to maintain the boundaries of my persona intact, those boundaries gave in. Struggling to keep them was a meaningless act if it is seen in the light of what don Juan and the shamans of his lineage wanted to do. It was, however, a very important act in light of my need, which was the need of every civilised person: to maintain the boundaries of the known world.

Don Juan said that the energetic fact which was the cornerstone of the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico was that every nuance of the cosmos is an expression of energy. From their plateau of seeing energy directly, those shamans arrived at the energetic fact that the entire cosmos is composed of twin forces which are opposite and complimentary to each other at the same time. They called these two forces animate energy and inanimate energy.

They saw that inanimate energy has no awareness. Awareness, for shamans, is a vibratory condition of animate energy. Don Juan said that the shamans of ancient Mexico were the first ones to see that all the organisms on Earth are the possessors of vibratory energy. They called them organic beings, and saw that it is the organism itself which sets up the cohesiveness and the limits of such energy. They also saw that there are conglomerates of vibratory, animate energy which have a cohesion of their own, free from the bindings of an organism. They called them inorganic beings, and described them as clumps of cohesive energy that is invisible to the human eye, energy that is aware of itself, and possesses a unity determined by an agglutinating force other than the agglutinating force or an organism.

The shamans of don Juan's lineage saw that the essential condition of animate energy, organic or inorganic, is to turn energy in the universe at large into sensory data. In the case of organic beings, this sensory data is then turned into a system of interpretation in which energy at large is classified and a given response is allotted to each classification, whatever the classification may be . The assertion of sorcerers is that in the realm of inorganic beings, the sensory data into which energy at large is transformed by the inorganic beings, must be, by definition, interpreted by them by them in whatever incomprehensible from they may do it.

According to the shamans' logic, in the case of human beings, the system of interpreting sensorial data is their cognition.  They maintain that human cognition can be temporarily interrupted, since it is merely a taxonomical system, in which responses have been classified along with the interpretation of sensory data.  When this interruption occurs, sorcerers claim that energy can be perceived directly as it flows in the universe. Sorcerers describe perceiving energy directly as having the effect of seeing it with the eyes, although the eyes are only minimally involved.

To perceive energy directly allowed the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage to see human beings as conglomerates of energy fields that have the appearance of luminous balls. Observing human beings in such a fashion allowed those shamans to draw extraordinary energetic conclusions. They noticed that each of those luminous balls is individually connected to an energetic mass of inconceivable proportions that exists in the universe; a mass which they called the dark sea of awareness. They observed that each individual ball is attached to the dark sea of awareness at a point that is even more brilliant than the luminous ball itself. Those shamans called the point of juncture the assemblage point, because they observed that it is at that spot that perception takes place. The flux of energy at large is turned, on that point, into sensory data, and those data are then interpreted as the world that surrounds us.

When I asked don Juan to explain to me how this process of turning the flux of energy into sensory data occurred, he replied that the only thing shamans know about this is that the immense mass of energy called the dark sea of awareness supplies human beings with whatever is necessary to elicit this transformation of energy into sensory data, and that such a process could not possibly ever be deciphered because of the vastness of the original source.

What the shamans of ancient Mexico found out when they focused their seeing on the dark sea of awareness was that the entire cosmos is made of luminous filamaents that extend themselves infinitely. Shamans describe them as luminous filaments that go every which way without ever touching one another. They saw that they are individual filaments, and yet, they are grouped in inconceivably enormous masses.

Another of such masses of filaments, besides the dark sea of awareness which the shamans observed and liked because of its vibration, was something they called intent, and the act of individual shamans focusing their attention on such a mass, they called intending. They saw that the entire universe was a universe of intent, and intent, for them, was the equivalent of intelligence. The universe, therefore, was, for them, a universe of supreme intelligence. Their conclusion, which became part of their cognitive world, was that vibratory energy, aware of itself, was intelligent in the extreme. They saw that the mass of intent in the cosmos was responsible for all the possible mutations, all the possible variations which happened in the universe, not because of arbitrary, blind circumstances, but because of the intending done by the vibratory energy, at the level of the flux of energy itself.

Don Juan pointed out that in the world of everyday life, human beings make use of intent and intending in the manner in which they interpret the world. Don Juan, for instance, alerted me to the fact that my daily world was not ruled by my perception, but by the interpretation of my perception. He gave as an example the concept of university, which at that time was a concept of supreme importance to me. He said that university was not something that I could perceive with my senses, because neither my sight nor my hearing, nor my sense of taste, nor my tactile or olfactory senses, gave me any clue about university. University happened only in my intending, and in order to construct it there, I had to make use of everything I knew as a civilised person, in a conscious or subliminal way.

The energetic fact of the universe being composed of luminous filaments gave rise to the shamans' conclusion that each of those filaments that extend themselves infinitely is a field of energy. They observed that luminous filaments, or rather fields of energy of such a nature converge on and go through the assemblage point. Since the size of the assemblage point was determined to be equivalent to that of a modern tennis ball, only a finite number of energy fields, numbering, nevertheless, in the zillions, converge on and go through that spot.

When the sorcerers of ancient Mexico saw the assemblage point, they discovered the energetic fact that the impact of the energy fields going through the assemblage point was transformed into sensory data; data which were then interpreted into the cognition of the world of everyday life. Those shamans accounted for the homogeneity of cognition among human beings by the fact that the assemblage point for the entire human race is located at the same place on the energetic luminous spheres that we are: at the height of the shoulder blades, an arm's length behind them, against the boundary of the luminous ball.

Their seeing-observations of the assemblage point led the sorcerers of ancient Mexico to discover that the assemblage point shifted position under conditions of normal sleep, or extreme fatigue, or disease, or the ingestion of psychotropic plants. Those sorcerers saw that when the assemblage point was at a new position, a different bundle of energy fields went through it, forcing the assemblage point to turn those energy fields into sensory data, and interpret them, giving as a result a veritable new world to perceive. Those shamans maintained that each new world that comes about in such a fashion is an all-inclusive world, different from the world of everyday life, but utterly similar to it in the fact that one could live and die in it.

For shamans like don Juan Matus, the most important exercise of intending entails the volitional movement of the assemblage point to reach predetermined spots in the total conglomerate of fields of energy that make up a human being, meaning that through thousands of years of probing, the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage found out that there are key positions within the total luminous ball that a human being is where the assemblage point can be located and where the resulting bombardment of energy fields on it can produce a totally veritable new world. Don Juan assured me that it was an energetic fact that the possibility of journeying to any of those worlds, or to all of them, is the heritage of every human being. He said that those worlds were there for the asking, as questions are sometimes begging to be asked, and that all that a sorcerer or a human being needed to reach them was to intend the movement of the assemblage point.

Another issue related to intent, but transposed to the level of universal intending, was, for the shamans of ancient Mexico, the energetic fact that we are continually pushed and pulled and tested by the universe itself. It was for them an energetic fact that the universe in general is predatorial to the maximum, but not predatorial in the sense in which we understand the term: the act of plundering or stealing, or injuring or exploiting others for one's own gain. For the shamans of ancient Mexico, the predatory condition of the universe meant that the intending of the universe is to be continually testing awareness. They saw that the universe creates zillions of organic beings and zillions of inorganic beings. By exerting pressure on all of them, the universe attempts to become aware of itself. In the cognitive world of shamans, therefore, awareness is the final issue.

Don Juan Matus and the shamans of his lineage regarded awareness as the act of being deliberately conscious of all the perceptual possibilities of man, not merely the perceptual possibilities dictated by any given culture whose role seems to be that of restricting the perceptual capacity of its members. Don Juan maintained that to release, or set free, the total perceiving capacity of human beings would not in any way interfere with their functional behaviour. In fact, functional behaviour would become an extraordinary issue, for it would acquire a new value. Function in these circumstances becomes a most demanding necessity. Free from idealities and pseudo-goals, man has only function as his guiding force. Shamans call this impeccability. For them, to be impeccable means to do one's utmost best, and a bit more. They derived function from seeing energy directly as it flows in the universe. If energy flows in a certain way, to follow the flow of energy is, for them, being functional. Function is, therefore, the common denominator by means of which shamans face the energetic facts of their cognitive world.

The exercise of all the units of the sorcerers' cognition allowed don Juan and all the shamans of his lineage to arrive at odd energetic conclusions which at first sight appear to be pertinent only to them and their personal circumstances, but which, if they are examined with care, may be applicable to any one of us. According to don Juan, the culmination of the shamans' quest is something to be considered to be the ultimate energetic fact, not only for sorcerers, but for every human being on Earth. He called it the definitive journey.

The definitive journey is the possibility that individual awareness, enhanced to the limit by the individual's adherence to the shamans' cognition, could be maintained beyond the point at which the organism is capable of functioning as a cohesive unit, that is to say, beyond death. This transcendental awareness was understood by the shamans of ancient Mexico as the possibility for the awareness of human beings to go beyond everything that is known, and arrive, in this manner, at the level of energy that flows in the universe. Shamans like don Juan Matus defined their quest as the quest of becoming, in the end, an inorganic being, meaning energy aware of itself, acting as a cohesive unit, but without an organism. They called this aspect of their cognition total freedom, a state in which awareness exists, free from the impositions of socialisation and syntax.

These are the general conclusions that have been drawn from my immersion in the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico. Years after the publication of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, I realised that what don Juan Matus had offered me was a total cognitive revolution. I have tried, in my subsequent works, to give an idea of the procedures to effectuate this cognitive revolution. In view of the fact that don Juan was acquainting me with a live world, the processes of change in such a live world never cease. Conclusions, therefore, are only mnemonic devices, or operative structures, which serve the function of springboards into new horizons of cognition.

Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Washington Square Press 1998)

Patterns of birth and death

The only memory of our homes found by archeologists will be the fruit stickers in the compost,

all the rest will be looted for resources by the deteriorating many of our descendents.

I know it will all be gone as I know I will die,

because I believe in time.

The illusion is obvious, it's now hip to reject Reality,

the linguistic entity that defines our lives.

Sensitivity draws me towards the details of times' plurality

like the plurality of dreams,

but the extent to which these universes exist

is the extent to which I can talk about them with my friends.

Communication creates my reality, and communication rejects what I do not like.

Time heals everything

                                        that shame does not obscure

                                        that is exposed to the light

                                        that is not breaking into dense carbon beneath the surface of my skin

                                        that is spoken into honest air

                                                    with friends and lovers

                                        that is not subject to censure by The State.

It rises to the surface,

painful as a volcano,

spews its wrath,

releases hate-gas into the atmosphere;

the trees breathe, the earth eats, the waters rise and fall,

themselves cleaned by rain and salt, patterns of birth and death.

Uninformed

There is no need to be informed. I am no longer curious. I do not consume The News on TV, radio, newspaper, nor my Facebook newsfeed. I have well-informed, intelligent, politically-aware friends on Facebook who post what would be some interesting perspectives on world events if I had any interest in exposing myself to that anymore. I am happy to learn if my friends have had a baby or a moment of inspiration, but I simply need not follow the link of posts about radiation pouring into the ocean, war here, there and everywhere, political corruption or violence on small or mass scales. More of this type of information would add nothing to my life.

I used to smoke a lot of marijuana and it used to be inspiring and exciting and social. Now I do not smoke marijuana, because when I do it simply provokes paranoia and is depressing and anti-social. I figure that I smoked too much, hit my threshold and now it will no longer work. I do not regret my time with marijuana, it changed me forever, opened my mind to new modes of perception and was ultimately a positive experience, albeit one that I no longer need to repeat, neither enjoying it nor getting anything out of it.

Similarly, I am glad that I have pursued the knowledge of current events to the extent that I have in my life, critically out of any form of mainstream media. The internet, independent documentaries, word-of-mouth, travelling, and especially hitchhiking and therefore speaking to a wide and diverse section of the population, have exposed me to many new perspectives on the world, undermining the belief systems I was taught to not consider alternatives to, taught by television, schooling and an ambient cultural haze. My exposure to critical current events stories have repeatedly transformed me, shocked and inspired me. The perverse facade of culture has been torn off and I would certainly feel exposed and vulnerable if it did not leave me with an entire multi-dimensional universe populated by loving and beautiful entities who I encounter daily. It is certainly habitual to continue to pursue this culturally-critical media, like it can become habitual to suck on a pipe of marijuana every day. It will eventually fail to serve a purpose.

How much more informed can a person be about current events? While people quibble over details, whether global warming is worse than the acidification of the ocean, whether we should not vote at all or at least vote for the least worst party, the trend is rather clear. Industrial Civilisation must come down. There is no other alternative and if you do not agree then perhaps you have not exposed yourself to enough hours of diverse independent current events. The Global Economy must collapse if any positive change is going to occur on any large scale. National governments must fall or be brought down if any type of community organisation is going to occur on any reasonable scale. Simply, when the impediments to making positive changes are removed, we can begin to rebuild a healthy and stable human world.

This is the bad news and the big news. Now, I suppose, it is time for me to focus on the good news, the positive, what is going to rebuild and strengthen what is valuable in this world. This is not an act of denial for me. The spread of what we now call Western Civilisation around the world over the last few thousand years via war and genocide has resulted in the destruction of countless human cultures, extinction of countless species and degradation of so much of our planet. Put simply, nothing justifies that, not even stupormarkets. This will always be in the back of my mind, until I find something larger and more significant, a wider perspective, that will render my person even more equipped to contribute to a positively changing world. I cannot forget. It is, for some reason, not a choice for me. It is not an aspect of my character. So I choose now to place that necessary negativity aside, in my past as it is so undeniably in the past of my culture, leading us inevitably to the present.

The best thing about the present leading into the future is that it is yet undetermined. It will be the decisions of all of us that will determine the future. To create a positive change it is necessary to focus on the creative, not simply the destructive. So now, having reached the reasonable conclusion that massive cultural rebirthing needs to occur before humans can live in healthy relationship with our environment, there is the next step of exploring the beautifully exciting and inspiring possible futures that we each contribute to creating around us.

It might still be necessary for my hitchhiking experiences to focus on the negative, because so many of the people I meet in this way are so relieved to be able to talk to somebody honestly about the global cultural crisis manifest as Industrial Economy. They hesitate to mention to the people in their life that they hope the Global Economy collapses, cos they think they are the only one who feels this way. They don't often get the opportunity to really discuss these things, to air their opinions, to even hear their own voice speaking what they have been thinking for years, to be able to judge their own thoughts in the presence of another intelligent critically-thinking human being. Of course these people have deliberately embedded themselves in the media machine, the same media machine that so many of the people in their lives are also embedded in, so they all repeat the same garbage fed to them by their own decisions. So they think that they are the only one who questions it, they think all their friends and family are stupid and love all that consumerism and hierarchy, never daring to bring the subject up; except with a random hitchhiker.

Having taken these steps over and over again, it is now necessary for me to take the next steps, to re-imagine the world I would like to live in and then make decisions in life that reflect that. I can no longer expose myself to marijuana. Taking gluten and dairy out of my diet have unambiguously alerted me to the extremely detrimental effect they have on my body. Corporate media is equally indigestible by the human body. I cannot look back now. There is no room in my life for toxic exposure to television, and now it is also necessary to cut back progressively and perhaps permanently, on media that makes me feel angry, powerless, hopeless, apathetic and paranoid. In light of my loss of cultural innocence, a bright and inspiring New is necessary to search for amongst the soil and plastic I find myself amongst.

It is widely acknowledged that positivity is often completely inane. It is so widespread for great art to be extremely negative and destructive that some people claim that an artist must suffer great pain and produce work only from this place for it to be worthwhile. I guess this assumes the alternative is denial. It has certainly been necessary to develop this rich and complex language for talking about our cultural problems, to express them through cathartic art and to understand them through scathing analysis. It is surely necessary now to develop a language to express, understand and manifest a great future without inanity and denial. A language to talk about the positive and creative developments in the world. To create art and debate around a positive future, of hope, love and life, without the dichotomy of cynicism or denial that we have accepted in the past.

Babel

To the Babylonian 'bab-il' meant 'Gate of God'.  To the Hebrews the same word meant 'confusion', perhaps 'cacophanous confusion'.  The ziggurats of Mesopotamia were 'Gates of God', painted the seven colours of the rainbow and dedicated to Anu and Enlil, divinities representing Order and Compulsion.

It was surely a marvellous intuition on the part of the ancient Jews - sandwiched between bullying empires - to have conceived the State as Behemouth or Leviathan, as a monster which threatened human life.  They were, perhaps, the first people to understand that the Tower was chaos, that order was chaos, and that language - the gift of tongues which Jahweh breathed into the mouth of Adam - has a rebellious and wayward vitality compared to which the foundations of the Pyramid are as dust.

from The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, 1987