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shared resources

I feel like it’s their bedroom, and that I am intruding. There is a new couple sleeping in my wretched underpass skate spot.

Almost every morning I hit one of my favorite spots for skate abs (always thinking of new, saleable names for skating) – an underpass to I95, highly desirable because it is covered. It’s actually more desirable for houseless than skaters.  There is always broken glass, somebody’s bean plate spattered all over, cracks, fissures – a tetanus dream!

They’re an elderly couple.  Actually, I don’t wake them – they are already up, doing their morning toilet. He sets out a bucket for her to sit on, and I think she holds a small mirror in her lap (unfortunately, I can’t study her. She might take it wrong).

He has some nice chocolate pin-stripe dress slacks.  And he wears an undershirt, under his shirt.

I am always being quiet for sleeping people.  I must get up at the wrong time. Tiptoeing through my APT.  And now, cracking quiet ollies in the far corner of a metropolitan underpass.  shhhhh…

But then the Santarian roosters start to crow.  You can’t drown those beasts out with a pneumatic drill.

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mind-body THIS!

you don’t have illusions. there are NO illusions – unless the whole thing is an illusion, which is pretty conceivable. I mean, I have no problem accepting that I can ONLY perceive the world vicariously, as a by-product of my sensual perception mechanisms, combined with the cerebral mechanisms used to interpret the sensory input. it’s pretty lean and clean psycho-biology.

yet, that alone makes is complete voodoo for most of this hapless, under-educated society! science is way more mysterious to the minds of the sheeple than religion. still, if they will accept either one, they accept it wholly, blindly, without examination, and decry the other – the one they didn’t accept – as instrumentations of the devil!

then there’s the problem that both my sensory organs and my “mind”mental” interpretive mechanisms” are by-products of “accidental” training – we don’t consciously train those mechanism – because we think we can’t? or, we just don’t think… so, we have the two key players in our ability to perceive and interact with “the world”, running along as untrained, unavailable, Willy Wonka machines!

for whatever reason, I got to train my sensory tools – through painting, dance, music, etc. so, IF any accuracy is possible in these mechanisms, those training system seem to be the way one would go about achieving that accuracy.

the cerebrum, on the other hand, is problematic. training “the mind” to interpret “the body” accurately is likely impossible – because we have no idea what “accuracy” would look like. oh, we THINK we know – we say shit like “common sense”, “logical” – those are all just more systems invented by humans! they are tautological – there is no empirical test for the quality of empirical methods themselves!

maybe t’ai chi and things like that get closer at making a clean refined connection between the incoming sensory data and a clear mental interpretation of that data – not because the Asians are ALWAYS better at this kind of thing – but because the test of the combination of the mechanisms – a system! – is also possible: if you react, say, in fencing, and your reaction is effective, then you have successfully made the circuit –

1. in with the opponent’s data,
2. interpret that data and
3. formulate a response,
4. encode that response for your own psycho-biological output
5. press “go”.
6. if they are dead when you wake up, especially if they are really dead, with a pinpoint wound in the carotid artery on the neck – voila!

It really would be he same mechanism we would apply to any act of perception/reaction, even though this might not be apparent at first. But, you would have no problem if I compared fencing to, say, an argument with your spouse, right? the difference – and this IS the deal, man – is that you don’t EVER practice communicating with your spouse, do you? I mean, sign up for T’ai Chi and pay $300 a month – for absolute precision training! But, what have you ever signed up for, as far as communication training? Marriage counseling? With someone who has a 2-year certificate in “marriage counseling”, which is based on which 5000-year tradition of mind-body coordination? What a joke….

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Feldenkrais on the “big disconect” between mind and emotions

from Awareness Through Movement, p. 52

We have seen that the structures used for thinking are loosely linked with those housing feeling.  Clear thought is born only in the absence of strong feelings that distort objectivity  Thus a necessary condition for the development of effective thinking is continuous withdrawal from feelings and proprioceptive sensations.

Something very interesting about this passage, and unrelated (although not so much!) to its content, is people’s initial perception of his intent: they assume that he is advocating objectivity, that he is, like 1,000 Platonists before him, supporting the notion that we should separate our feelings from our “rational” thinking.  He is not advocating anything. He is presenting a biological reality (a fact!), objectively. The opinion is in your head, not his. The next paragraph demonstrates that his theory – this is indeed the main theory behind this book – is that the “body” informs the “mind”.

Nevertheless, harmonious development remains more important to the individual than discordant development even if effective thinking is the disturbing factor.  Thinking that is cut off from the rest of the an gradually becomes acrid.  Thought that proceeds mainly in word does not draw substance from the older evolutionary structures that are closely tied to feelings.  Creative, spontaneous thought must maintain a link with the early brain structures. Abstract thought that is not nourished from item to time from deeper sources within us becomes a fabric of words alone, empty of all genuine human content.  Many books of art science, literature and poetry have nothing to offer except a succession of words linked together by logical argument; they have no personal content.  This also applies to many individuals in their daily relationships with others.  Thinking that does not develop harmoniously with the rest of man becomes an obstacle to his proper development.

How many films have you seen recently, which you would describe as “clever”, “well-crafted”, but which also leave you with no feeling of satisfaction? Or, you see an art exhibit that is clearly spectacular, but, you forget about it almost completely, a few days later?

We have come to be master content crafters – the desire for content to fill up our tedious ours and our trivial electronic devices (whose purpose it is to provide content), has produced and economic niche for those who can create content.  But on a deeper level, this condition has also created a place in the human (at leas affluent human) psyche, for exactly this content.

I’m using the word content here as a paradox: it is precisely content devoid of content – something akin to a table of contents – the shell of substance contained. This is possible because we are trained in detecting logical continuity, as a validation for sense. This is opposed to another validation of sense – intuitive satisfaction. The fact there there is so much content available these days which fails to be even logically coherent, makes the simple trait fo being able to trace a line of reason from the beginning to the end of a piece of text or music something noteworthy!

What made countless viewers – and now, subsequent generations of viewers –  react to Picasso was that, in addition to being parsimoniously integrated, his visual constructs also has a personal effect – on countless generations of viewers! Likewise for J.S. Bach, and Richard Bach.

But not, say, for Iggy Pop, who had the emotion and the physicality, but had trouble stringing together the logic behind his ideas (I, of course, grant that it may just be my own intellectual weakness that does not allow me to follow what might be an entirely cogent, complete expression from James Osterberg). Another example might be Kafka’s novels: a man who could make a perfect literary creation, such as Der Plötzliche Spaziergang – one single sentence, perfectly constructed, logically precise, but filled with deep, universal feelings, could not expand this perfection to a longer work.

To end by returning to Feldenkrais: the strongest statement he makes is not about vapid art; it is that we humans will stagnate right here, right now, unless we can close this gap.

Thinking that does not develop harmoniously with the rest of man becomes an obstacle to his proper development.

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communication the greatest discovery of the 20th century

little-know fact that communication, or the art of communication, was not always with us. of course, it was available as an academic discipline, called “rhetoric”, invented by our pal Plato, and dispersed to intellectuals in ivory towers.

but, down on the ground, the sheeple, the masses – even mocked this art. it was a measure of disrespect to say to someone, “ok, let’s get through all this rhetoric”, meaning something artificial, meant to confuse, not to illuminate.

it reminds me a bit of the internet – it was in use, really, full and practical use, in the 1980’s. but, the common goatherd would have spit on you and told you you were wasting your time with electronics, if you had mentioned communicating with someone via electronic mail. until 1994.

so it was with communication. like a lot of things that improved our lives, it came out of the 1960’s exposure to Eastern culture, in which openness and understand were the very foundation of a joyous life. it’s hard for people these days to even believe that at one time, not long ago, no one in the United States knew what yogurt was. Coffee was coffee. Just coffee. Just beer. Just wine.

At some point, psychologists expanded that aspect of psychotherapy which proposes healing benefits to getting in touch with deeper feelings, and expressing them to someone else. now, no one would have said something so ghey as “get in touch with your feelings”, but they would have said “try to tell me how you truly fell, not how you think others would like you to feel”. That kind of convoluted sentence fits perfectly into the psychology of the 60s.

It took the business community to push the power of communication – effective communication – out to the peasants, as something that was “good for you.” I want to say it was Norman Vincent Peale’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” that broke the sound barrier, and reached white suburbia, with the “good news” that, maybe your only problem is not being understood; that, if you keep your consciousness trained on what it is that you want to achieve with this other person, and you execute your communication with skills that contribute, not detract, from this goal, you WILL get what you want. and you will be happy.

This is dense. The first revelation is: communication is used to get something. At a minimum, the communicator wants to get a nod of understanding. This would have been, and still is for many, a difficult concept to accept. Of course, everyone “understands” what I am talking about. But to accept that we are objective-driven, in all aspects of our lives, and thus our disappointment, our feelings of ennui, come solely from the inability to get what we want – that will ruffle feathers (of chickens).

So, let’s say your goal is to get people to like you. Now, first you have to come to accept that you want this. You know, you might be swimming in your own bullshit, and respond, “I don’t need anybody. I don’t give a shit what people think of me”. All that is confusion, pal. Even Van Gogh wanted desperately from Monet to like him.

The second really hard thing is what Noam Chomsky referred to (a lot!) as the empirical method. Who cares what it’s called. It’s the idea that you want to be objective. We all know that too! Jeez. Why don’t you say something we don’t know already! Well, think of objectivity this way: you have to describe the actual outcome; then, you have to state what your original objective was. If the two don’t match, your method failed. You have to now stop. You don’t get 20 more seconds to come up with external variables that cause you to fail, because God and your mom told you that you are NOT a failure honey. It’s just this” you didn’t get what you want. If you still want it, it’s on you to fix the method you employ to get it.”

Again: here you are in the boardroom, giving a presentation. If you pull yourself out of the situation, Matrix-like, for just a second, you’ll notice that some people are checking their email; others are looking into space; but mostly, people are glaring at you, with their faces set like Stonehenge.

Now ask yourself: “ya think they like me? think they gonna accept my proposal”. Obviously, not. So, here’s where you say, “fuck ’em! I’m a genius, and they are just cattle. I will live on in the hearts of the true, the good forever, while they languish in their own feces”.

I mean, you really have to look at this. It’s tricky. Because, in terms of self-communication, you WILL try to fool yourself. Just believe me for one second – one second of true acceptance that you are stuck in a cycle of blind entitlement, and that you are a bulldozer – you are shaped like a bulldozer, you look like a bulldozer, and people talk about you behind your back.

Now, what do you want to do? What can you do? It’s overwhelming? Like losing 100 pounds? Do you need TV show?

No. You just have to examine your communication in a very clinical way. After you do the above – what the Buddhist call “waking up”, you can begin to see. Extended examples to follow.

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go gently into gentrificatioin

Gentrification. Pretty clearly, the White Man’s Manifest Destiny. And in Miami, the White Man includes the affluent Cubans and Colombians – just so no one feels left out.

The funny thing is, the only people that would take offense at that statement are, indeed, the “gentry.”

It’s funny for so many reasons. The first reason is that it’s so obvious, and yet some well-to-do will have the absurd audacity to deny it, or defend their position. Absurd because, who are they struggling against? Like,who, among the serfdom, cares about the sensitivities of the Baron? Go ahead and eat your mutton in peace!

But this denial is even funnier as “the elephant in the room.” I mean, we are talking about highly visible housing development – trophy houses sprouting next to tenements. Funny.

Nevertheless, those neighborhoods sucked anyway: shitty housing (as in “container”), designed for human waste, by human sanitation bureaus. Overseers building shanties for slaves. At least the mess is cleared away.

But the humans,abandoned by everyone in the world, don’t get washed down the drain, to the horror of the sanitation department.

They live on. And this is because, unlike the landed gentry, who are ultimately the true transients, the hood rats are real. They actually have a culture – the only culture there is in America.

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Choice is the only right

The only right you have is the right to choose. You always had it. No one gave it to you. No one can take it away. The freedom to choose is in-born, inalienable. Some people might call this free will.
But that confuses the issue. People don’t associate their political freedoms, or even personal freedoms with free will, the freedom to choose.
If I said the Bill of Rights is bullshit, the United States Constitution is bullshit, people would be indignant. They would say that people died to give us those rights. I would say, poor stupid bastards. Their deaths didn’t give me anything I didn’t already had. They died to prove their belief in themselves, their belief in the freedom to choose. And they proved it mostly to themselves.

Because it’s only ever a personal thing – between you and yourself, or you and your God.

Jesus didn’t choose to die. He chose to speak his truth. Death was the consequence only. The message of Jesus was not martyrdom. It was freedom. And the Cross is the cost.

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Canada border

I’ve complained about this before. Getting into Canada for perfectly legitimate reasons is difficult. In fact, I am going to re-up my previous vote that Canada Customs and Immigration is the worst in the world. And I’ve been to the world before.

It’s worse than the United States, which by all rights should be the worst.

By worst I mean something not so profound something like crazy inefficient, in the name of efficiency. When you walk into Customs hall and see that it is completely packed with people – every time I come to Canada – it is valid to wonder if there isn’t some obvious improvement they couldn’t make. Because it’s not more populated than say, Berlin, or more dangerous, or more prone to attract illegal border activity. So why the Disneyworld lines?

And then there is the questioning procedure. I read that at least 1/3 of connecting flights are missed due to this questioning.

So, do the United States and Canada simply have such great treasures – in such abundance and of such higher value than any other country? Of is minimum wage not attracting the highest grade personnel?

O, ‘sti!

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man

I am not a Man right now. I used to be a man. I know what it’s like to be a man.

A man provides strength to those who depend on him. His wife holds onto his arm for stability; his daughter, he holds in his arms, carrying her to safety. His son watches him – this is the most frightening, because this is where the cycle is maintained. This cycle has caused the deaths of billions, due to eons of false men, killers, rapists, who will their shit onto their sons, and onto the world.To be dependable, the man must be selfless – almost completely selfless.

And he must be disciplined.

Now, at this very point in my life, I am not dependable. I am selfish. I was truly selfless before, most of all when I was married. And I was happy. Happier than anyone around me, in my discipline, my dependability, my selflessness. The obedience of the son of man is true freedom, true happiness.

Now, I allow myself to fail – to fail myself and to fail others. Not all the time, but sometimes. But, to be dependable, to provide strength to others, a may may never fail. There are those, the new age, who would say this kind of thinking is unrealistic. Don’t rely on them.

I realize that I know these things, but I can not do them. The only reason I can not do them, is that I will not do them. I have lost the inner sense of the strict adherence to discipline, to the aesthetic of discipline, that I was (apparently) born with. There was an inner law. A discipleship. My discipleship.

So now, I am a good guy. Just not a good man. A good man is hard to find. Good guys are everywhere, wearing costumes, wearing capes. It seems to be good enough.

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love is art

in “Gigi,” Aunt Alycia says “Love … is a thing of beauty, like a work of Art. And like a work of Art, it is created by artists. The greater the artist, the greater the Art.” The Marchesa Casati once said “I want to be a living work of Art!” So, how do YOU make your life a work of Art? How do you make Love in your life a work of Art?

oh, that old question…don’t think Gig and Marchesa Casati were the only two to suggest it.

if you agree that art is not creation, but transformation, through work, of one thing into another, by the artist, then love is a transformed re-creation of something (don’t know what that is – perhaps it could lit be “any thing”) into a work of art.

although many artists mistakenly take ownership of this, they were in fact, only the transformers. so, love does not belong to the transformer;

however, it will take on the likeness and image of the transformer.

like having children – they look and act like both people, but they are not the possession of both people.

further, they have some quality which comes from neither parent – that is the “original” – the thing that was transformed.