Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 at 1:40 pm by Stuart Davis
Song Of The Day: Digging In The Dirt / Peter Gabriel
Word Of The Day: Grotty / Unpleasant, dirty, nasty, ugly, generally displeasing or disagreeable.
That’s so weird. We used to say “Grotty” (pronounced GROH-dee) when I was a kid, and I’ve totally forgotten about it, until today when I was randomly flipping through the pages of one of the volumes of my Oxford English Dictionary and saw it, hiding in the open right next to “grouch”. Will grotty make a comeback? I don’t know. I’ll forever associate it with perjorative taunts fired back and forth while we rode arond town on BMX bicycles “nice grotty wheels, jas!” “oh, right, like YOUR life isn’t grotty…”. Oh days of repartee, the clever folly.
I’ve been writing a lot of songs lately. I seem to have as much control over the songwriting muse as I do over the weather. I go through periods where I wait for inspiriation to show up, invite it, conjure it with meditation, exercise, laughing practices, try listening to great artists. Nothing. Then one day the muse shows up and she’s completely wired on blow and X, and she won’t SHUT UP. For the first three days I run around like a mad stenographer, trying to keep up with her vesuvian gush of ideas. The problem is it’s not one song, or two songs, it shows up all at once, like two completely finished songs, and three partially formed, and all five of them are competing to be midwifed first, and they throw tantrums, like “if you don’t fucking sit down and complete me RIGHT now, i will evaporate on you in an instant, and you will NEVER hear from me again, cuz you didn’t give a shit” and you’re like “hold the FUCK on for a second, I’m presently occupied trying to write down your sister over here, and I love you all equally, and I WILL get to you, but I need an hour or two to hear these others first” and the song is like “BYE! good BYE! i hope you’re happy, you KILLED ME!!! MWAH MWAH MWAH” and I’m like “shiihhhhhhht” and I think I’ve lost it, and then at 3am that song comes back, standing in the bedroom doorway of my mind, holding a teddy bear and going “I can’t sleep” and then it crawles up on the bed and goes “BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH” and repeats itself till you finally wake up and get out of bed, get a pen, and write down the whole song, which of course you would have remembered anyway in the morning, but the creative process is fear-based, compulsive, ultimatum-driven process, it’s always telling you “if you don’t SOMETHING right NOW then this song will disappear FOREVER” which has never, once EVER in my life been true. I always remember everything, I never forget stuff, but it doesn’t matter, when you love music, and you love writing, you believe that voice every time, and if you were to lose something, you just couldn’t forgive yourself. So all last week I walked around with this disembodied Siren reciting new songs into my head, literally day and night. It was quite awesome, and I knew it was a good sign when I got into the Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness. Are you wondering What’s
Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness?
In meditation practice, there are (for the sake of convenience here) basically three stages or depths of practice in witnessing awareness. First, one is capable of witnessing the contents (thoughts, sensations, emotions, etc) of waking awareness. In sitting meditation or throughout the day, the witness observes the passing of states and their contents, but doesn’t grasp them, or avoid them, just watches. Then, stage two, the practitioner can do this not only during waking awareness, but also while dreaming. It’s not exactly the same thing as lucid dreaming, but they are related in some ways. During waking and dreaming states, the subjects Witness abides. Stage three, the Witness is maintained during waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. This is also known as constant consciousness, or Sahaj (I think), and it means 24 / 7, there is constant consciousness, observing the passing of all states and their contents. No, sorry, this isn’t enlightenment, but it’s a good sign in your meditation practice. Very few people have this stabilization as an enduring (weeks, months, or years) trait. I have had a few times in my life when I’ve had it, but only for a few days at a time in intermitten spots, usually when I was sitting meditation 4-6 hours a day and combining it with lots of solitude and focus. Even then, except once or twice, mine only went through waking and dreaming, not deep dreamless sleep. That means when I die my soul will black out when it hits the Causal realm, in case you’re wondering.
There actually IS a reason to practice, cuz when you croak, the filters which previously so kindly and gently compartmentalized (isn’t THAT the perfect word here, compart-MENTALIZED) the contents of your interiors -emotions, psyche, soul- those filters are yanked out, and the summation of your individual interiors, and here’s the real bad news, also the collective’s interiors (culture, socio-intersubjective domains) all that shit comes flying at you at a super-luminal speed, and at that point whatever your shadow was (the unconscious or suppressed aspects you shoved into the basement or hid in “others”), it comes back 10 times as strong and kicks your disembodied ass until your soul literally passes out, at which point you are kindly re-directed by the sublte circulatory system of the Kosmos into another unconscious birth as a corporeal being of some sort, maybe on Earth, maybe elsewhere, but you are going BACK. This process continues until you finally fucking WAKE UP, and WAKE UP permanently, not as a glimpse, a state change, or one of the infinite EUREKA realizations that millions and billions have and have had throughout history.
Constant Consciousness does not mean you are “Enlightened”, there is still a duality in Constant Consciousness, the subject is still witnessing the rising and falling of phenominal objects (subject / object), but it’s a really important tool for being able to do good work in the Mystery for many reasons. Not the least of these reasons is that a practitioner cannot acheive a conscious re-birth until there is constant consciousness. We have to be able to maintain stable awareness through all states, forms, and phenominal experience before we can successfully navigate the Kosmos by CHOICE. Until then, we are not choosing, we are not navigating, we are being helplessly taken by the flow of an amalgam of forces and influences we can’t even begin to imagine. That’s why imagination is also crucial. But in the short term, we first access constant consciousness through waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. At that point, we are more effective in beginning to be useful to the Mystery, and we also have a much much better shot at acheiving conscious re-birth. Any true bodhisattva, any authentic shaman, will have this capacity. There are very, very few people with this stabilized, enduring capacity, but it truly, really is the God-given inheritence of all humans, of all self-reflexive beings.
The point of course is not that “I” want to permanently wake up so “I” can save myself from Maya, Samsara, and the dense brutality of delusion in the realms of form. The point -and we practitioners really, really have a fucking problem remembering this and living it- is that the spontaneous, native impulse of LOVE (the compass of all practice) is to awaken because it is our natural condition, it is the real us, but even that is only a fraction of the REAL “us”. Once we tumble over the edge of “I”, the fully unfolded, naturally expressed impulse of LOVE is to awaken for all people, all sentient beings, everywhere, and to continue working until they are all free. This is so simply, plainly evident when we are alive in Love that even to think of “me” working to help “you” or “us” striving to aid “them” is ridiculous, and it’s not a matter of theory or intellectual tricks. Our direct experience, our immediate knowing when we are awake in Love is that we are TWINS, we truly, undeniably the TWIN children of God, of the Absolute, of Love, and to turn away from that is to cut out parts of our own body. And thank God. Thank God that we can see that although our dramas will continue, they are OVER. The drama of life, struggle, suffering, learning will go on and on, but it is also OVER forever. Because the part of us that has never slept, has never changed, wasn’t born, and doesn’t die, that part has been remembered. You can forget it again, but it doesn’t forget. The difference between unconscious practice on the path and conscious practice on the path is the transparency of the drama. Awake in love the drama is transparent. Asleep in love, the drama is opaque.
Acquiring constant consciousness frees a practioner up a bit to be more effective as an agent in the Mystery, as a secret operant of Love in the drama, through conscious rebirth and simple abiding Presence while incarnated in any lifetime. It does not mean the drama no longer continues. The Kosmos has been and will be unfolding for a long, long time. But the agent of Love is not trapped in time. The Kosmos is the body of Love. We are the discreet expressions -sentient beings, reflexive beings, and all beings- and part of that body. With constant consciousness we can stop mistaking the impermanent phenomena for identities. Do you want to be a spy for love? Then you have no identity. And you have all identities. It’s really cool.
Anyway, the whole reason I brought up constant consciousness is that the creative process for me sometimes includes what I call Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness, which is where I continue writing songs through waking and dreaming (oops, still not through deep dreamless sleep, there is nothing in deep dreamless sleep that’s like a creative process) states. Last week, my creativity was rolling through waking and dreaming states, and it was a kind of witnessing, but not quite the meditation variety, more like a poor man’s constant consciousness, cuz I was cheating by active engagement (not a true witnessing), and it only went through two, not all three states. But it reminded me to get back on this practice of being a better practitioner, to get back on this work of being as useful as possible for love, and I really need to get square on deep dreamless sleep so when I die I don’t just pass out like a shit head.
For an amazing study in all this, buy one of E.J. Gold’s amazing books, including Life In The Labyrinth, and American Book Of The Dead. Really useful material for any practitioner.
Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 at 1:40 pm by Stuart Davis
Song Of The Day: Digging In The Dirt / Peter Gabriel
Word Of The Day: Grotty / Unpleasant, dirty, nasty, ugly, generally displeasing or disagreeable.
That’s so weird. We used to say “Grotty” (pronounced GROH-dee) when I was a kid, and I’ve totally forgotten about it, until today when I was randomly flipping through the pages of one of the volumes of my Oxford English Dictionary and saw it, hiding in the open right next to “grouch”. Will grotty make a comeback? I don’t know. I’ll forever associate it with perjorative taunts fired back and forth while we rode arond town on BMX bicycles “nice grotty wheels, jas!” “oh, right, like YOUR life isn’t grotty…”. Oh days of repartee, the clever folly.
I’ve been writing a lot of songs lately. I seem to have as much control over the songwriting muse as I do over the weather. I go through periods where I wait for inspiriation to show up, invite it, conjure it with meditation, exercise, laughing practices, try listening to great artists. Nothing. Then one day the muse shows up and she’s completely wired on blow and X, and she won’t SHUT UP. For the first three days I run around like a mad stenographer, trying to keep up with her vesuvian gush of ideas. The problem is it’s not one song, or two songs, it shows up all at once, like two completely finished songs, and three partially formed, and all five of them are competing to be midwifed first, and they throw tantrums, like “if you don’t fucking sit down and complete me RIGHT now, i will evaporate on you in an instant, and you will NEVER hear from me again, cuz you didn’t give a shit” and you’re like “hold the FUCK on for a second, I’m presently occupied trying to write down your sister over here, and I love you all equally, and I WILL get to you, but I need an hour or two to hear these others first” and the song is like “BYE! good BYE! i hope you’re happy, you KILLED ME!!! MWAH MWAH MWAH” and I’m like “shiihhhhhhht” and I think I’ve lost it, and then at 3am that song comes back, standing in the bedroom doorway of my mind, holding a teddy bear and going “I can’t sleep” and then it crawles up on the bed and goes “BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH” and repeats itself till you finally wake up and get out of bed, get a pen, and write down the whole song, which of course you would have remembered anyway in the morning, but the creative process is fear-based, compulsive, ultimatum-driven process, it’s always telling you “if you don’t SOMETHING right NOW then this song will disappear FOREVER” which has never, once EVER in my life been true. I always remember everything, I never forget stuff, but it doesn’t matter, when you love music, and you love writing, you believe that voice every time, and if you were to lose something, you just couldn’t forgive yourself. So all last week I walked around with this disembodied Siren reciting new songs into my head, literally day and night. It was quite awesome, and I knew it was a good sign when I got into the Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness. Are you wondering What’s
Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness?
In meditation practice, there are (for the sake of convenience here) basically three stages or depths of practice in witnessing awareness. First, one is capable of witnessing the contents (thoughts, sensations, emotions, etc) of waking awareness. In sitting meditation or throughout the day, the witness observes the passing of states and their contents, but doesn’t grasp them, or avoid them, just watches. Then, stage two, the practitioner can do this not only during waking awareness, but also while dreaming. It’s not exactly the same thing as lucid dreaming, but they are related in some ways. During waking and dreaming states, the subjects Witness abides. Stage three, the Witness is maintained during waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. This is also known as constant consciousness, or Sahaj (I think), and it means 24 / 7, there is constant consciousness, observing the passing of all states and their contents. No, sorry, this isn’t enlightenment, but it’s a good sign in your meditation practice. Very few people have this stabilization as an enduring (weeks, months, or years) trait. I have had a few times in my life when I’ve had it, but only for a few days at a time in intermitten spots, usually when I was sitting meditation 4-6 hours a day and combining it with lots of solitude and focus. Even then, except once or twice, mine only went through waking and dreaming, not deep dreamless sleep. That means when I die my soul will black out when it hits the Causal realm, in case you’re wondering.
There actually IS a reason to practice, cuz when you croak, the filters which previously so kindly and gently compartmentalized (isn’t THAT the perfect word here, compart-MENTALIZED) the contents of your interiors -emotions, psyche, soul- those filters are yanked out, and the summation of your individual interiors, and here’s the real bad news, also the collective’s interiors (culture, socio-intersubjective domains) all that shit comes flying at you at a super-luminal speed, and at that point whatever your shadow was (the unconscious or suppressed aspects you shoved into the basement or hid in “others”), it comes back 10 times as strong and kicks your disembodied ass until your soul literally passes out, at which point you are kindly re-directed by the sublte circulatory system of the Kosmos into another unconscious birth as a corporeal being of some sort, maybe on Earth, maybe elsewhere, but you are going BACK. This process continues until you finally fucking WAKE UP, and WAKE UP permanently, not as a glimpse, a state change, or one of the infinite EUREKA realizations that millions and billions have and have had throughout history.
Constant Consciousness does not mean you are “Enlightened”, there is still a duality in Constant Consciousness, the subject is still witnessing the rising and falling of phenominal objects (subject / object), but it’s a really important tool for being able to do good work in the Mystery for many reasons. Not the least of these reasons is that a practitioner cannot acheive a conscious re-birth until there is constant consciousness. We have to be able to maintain stable awareness through all states, forms, and phenominal experience before we can successfully navigate the Kosmos by CHOICE. Until then, we are not choosing, we are not navigating, we are being helplessly taken by the flow of an amalgam of forces and influences we can’t even begin to imagine. That’s why imagination is also crucial. But in the short term, we first access constant consciousness through waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. At that point, we are more effective in beginning to be useful to the Mystery, and we also have a much much better shot at acheiving conscious re-birth. Any true bodhisattva, any authentic shaman, will have this capacity. There are very, very few people with this stabilized, enduring capacity, but it truly, really is the God-given inheritence of all humans, of all self-reflexive beings.
The point of course is not that “I” want to permanently wake up so “I” can save myself from Maya, Samsara, and the dense brutality of delusion in the realms of form. The point -and we practitioners really, really have a fucking problem remembering this and living it- is that the spontaneous, native impulse of LOVE (the compass of all practice) is to awaken because it is our natural condition, it is the real us, but even that is only a fraction of the REAL “us”. Once we tumble over the edge of “I”, the fully unfolded, naturally expressed impulse of LOVE is to awaken for all people, all sentient beings, everywhere, and to continue working until they are all free. This is so simply, plainly evident when we are alive in Love that even to think of “me” working to help “you” or “us” striving to aid “them” is ridiculous, and it’s not a matter of theory or intellectual tricks. Our direct experience, our immediate knowing when we are awake in Love is that we are TWINS, we truly, undeniably the TWIN children of God, of the Absolute, of Love, and to turn away from that is to cut out parts of our own body. And thank God. Thank God that we can see that although our dramas will continue, they are OVER. The drama of life, struggle, suffering, learning will go on and on, but it is also OVER forever. Because the part of us that has never slept, has never changed, wasn’t born, and doesn’t die, that part has been remembered. You can forget it again, but it doesn’t forget. The difference between unconscious practice on the path and conscious practice on the path is the transparency of the drama. Awake in love the drama is transparent. Asleep in love, the drama is opaque.
Acquiring constant consciousness frees a practioner up a bit to be more effective as an agent in the Mystery, as a secret operant of Love in the drama, through conscious rebirth and simple abiding Presence while incarnated in any lifetime. It does not mean the drama no longer continues. The Kosmos has been and will be unfolding for a long, long time. But the agent of Love is not trapped in time. The Kosmos is the body of Love. We are the discreet expressions -sentient beings, reflexive beings, and all beings- and part of that body. With constant consciousness we can stop mistaking the impermanent phenomena for identities. Do you want to be a spy for love? Then you have no identity. And you have all identities. It’s really cool.
Anyway, the whole reason I brought up constant consciousness is that the creative process for me sometimes includes what I call Poor Man’s Constant Consciousness, which is where I continue writing songs through waking and dreaming (oops, still not through deep dreamless sleep, there is nothing in deep dreamless sleep that’s like a creative process) states. Last week, my creativity was rolling through waking and dreaming states, and it was a kind of witnessing, but not quite the meditation variety, more like a poor man’s constant consciousness, cuz I was cheating by active engagement (not a true witnessing), and it only went through two, not all three states. But it reminded me to get back on this practice of being a better practitioner, to get back on this work of being as useful as possible for love, and I really need to get square on deep dreamless sleep so when I die I don’t just pass out like a shit head.
For an amazing study in all this, buy one of E.J. Gold’s amazing books, including Life In The Labyrinth, and American Book Of The Dead. Really useful material for any practitioner.
Black Blue Kosmos
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 at 10:28 pm by Stuart Davis
 |
| Black Blue Kosmos |
|
artwork by Dennis Wittrock photo by Sheila Ryan |
Black Blue Kosmos
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 at 10:28 pm by Stuart Davis
|
| Black Blue Kosmos |
|
artwork by Dennis Wittrock photo by Sheila Ryan |
Love
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 at 8:13 pm by Stuart Davis
Song of the day: Lullaby / Billy Joel
Word of the day: Dhyana / Profound meditation; the penultimate stage of yoga
The other night I was in Safeway looking for licorice, I was sort of standing around in the candy isle staring at the shelves in a daze, and this song Lullaby by Billy Joel comes on the speakers. I happen to be standing right under the speaker when I hear him start singing:
Good night my angel time to close you eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you’ve been asking me
I think you know what I’ve been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Where ever you may go
No matter where you are
I never will be far away
Good night my angel now it’s time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
Remember all the songs you sang for me
When we went sailing on an emerald bay
And like a boat out on the ocean
I’m rocking you to sleep
The water’s dark and deep
Inside this ancient heart
You’ll always be a part of me
Goodnight my angel now it’s time to dream
And dream how wondeful your life will be
Someday your child will cry and if you sing this lullaby
Then in your heart there will always be a part of me
Someday we’ll all be gone
But lullabies go on and on
They never die that’s how you and I will be
Sometimes in life, you get caught with your guard down. As strong as the facade is, it still just drops from time to time, you think you’re alone, no one can see you, or you’re just not paying attention to keeping your persona up for the world. I was in one of those little windows of openness when this song came over the speakers in safeway, standing there holding my bag of licorice, it came through the speakers and right away I took it in, listening to it with my belly and heart. I knew this was the song Billy Joel wrote for his daughter after he was putting her to bed one night and she asked him “What happens when to people when they die?”. The lyrics felt exactly like what I would want to say to my daughter, and suddenly I knew why I was so afraid to be a father all those years, why I was so set on not being tied to someone like that. I was really just so deeply afraid of completely loving someone knowing that no matter what I will have to say good bye to them, and they to me. You can’t change the fact that you die, that every one dies, and I just didn’t want to have a family because I knew if I did I wouldn’t be able to help loving them absolutely, my heart and soul would be forever entwined with theirs, and one day we’ll have to let go. This song came on over the speakers in Safeway, and I just lost it. I thought of my daughter, my wife, and some inexpressable love took over me, just rose up from down inside, and I started crying, seeing my daughters face and hearing these lyrics. I was crying under the horrible flourescent lights of the supermarket ceiling when one of the Safeway employees came around the corner with a broom, ready to sweep the aisle till he saw me wiping tears off my face. He paused for a second and then turned around and went to the next aisle, embarassed like he’d seen something very private. He did see something very private for me. I have a feeling of love for my daughter that I just can’t describe. I don’t think it’s unique, or that it’s somehow special to us, I think it’s what every parent in the World feels deep down for their kid. Even though it’s universal, I don’t think it’s ever any less in intensity for any person. That part of us that is pure, naked, selfless love is always there. Feeling the ache and great love in this song brought me back to the day we had my daughter’s baby shower. We were going around the room, one person at a time, saying things about Ara and what she means to us, and when it was my turn to speak I couldn’t, I just started sobbing. I was just caught off guard in that moment, I had no idea where the feeling came from, I just couldn’t say anything without crying, in that room with a bunch of people -half of them strangers- I just couldn’t believe how much I loved my daughter, I didn’t even know that I had that inside me, it came up as a surprise. Probably in part because my mom was there, and my daughter was born premature, spending months in the hospital as a fragile, perfect being we watched, talked to, and held all day and all night, and I think for the first time in my life I actually got it- not the idea, but the feeling of how much my parents love me, and how much my wife loves my daughter, and how no matter how afraid I’d been all my life of loving that way, it was over, I now loved Ara that way and I always would. My soul lives as much in her body and heart as it does in mine.
Love
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 at 8:13 pm by Stuart Davis
Song of the day: Lullaby / Billy Joel
Word of the day: Dhyana / Profound meditation; the penultimate stage of yoga
The other night I was in Safeway looking for licorice, I was sort of standing around in the candy isle staring at the shelves in a daze, and this song Lullaby by Billy Joel comes on the speakers. I happen to be standing right under the speaker when I hear him start singing:
Good night my angel time to close you eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you’ve been asking me
I think you know what I’ve been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Where ever you may go
No matter where you are
I never will be far away
Good night my angel now it’s time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
Remember all the songs you sang for me
When we went sailing on an emerald bay
And like a boat out on the ocean
I’m rocking you to sleep
The water’s dark and deep
Inside this ancient heart
You’ll always be a part of me
Goodnight my angel now it’s time to dream
And dream how wondeful your life will be
Someday your child will cry and if you sing this lullaby
Then in your heart there will always be a part of me
Someday we’ll all be gone
But lullabies go on and on
They never die that’s how you and I will be
Sometimes in life, you get caught with your guard down. As strong as the facade is, it still just drops from time to time, you think you’re alone, no one can see you, or you’re just not paying attention to keeping your persona up for the world. I was in one of those little windows of openness when this song came over the speakers in safeway, standing there holding my bag of licorice, it came through the speakers and right away I took it in, listening to it with my belly and heart. I knew this was the song Billy Joel wrote for his daughter after he was putting her to bed one night and she asked him “What happens when to people when they die?”. The lyrics felt exactly like what I would want to say to my daughter, and suddenly I knew why I was so afraid to be a father all those years, why I was so set on not being tied to someone like that. I was really just so deeply afraid of completely loving someone knowing that no matter what I will have to say good bye to them, and they to me. You can’t change the fact that you die, that every one dies, and I just didn’t want to have a family because I knew if I did I wouldn’t be able to help loving them absolutely, my heart and soul would be forever entwined with theirs, and one day we’ll have to let go. This song came on over the speakers in Safeway, and I just lost it. I thought of my daughter, my wife, and some inexpressable love took over me, just rose up from down inside, and I started crying, seeing my daughters face and hearing these lyrics. I was crying under the horrible flourescent lights of the supermarket ceiling when one of the Safeway employees came around the corner with a broom, ready to sweep the aisle till he saw me wiping tears off my face. He paused for a second and then turned around and went to the next aisle, embarassed like he’d seen something very private. He did see something very private for me. I have a feeling of love for my daughter that I just can’t describe. I don’t think it’s unique, or that it’s somehow special to us, I think it’s what every parent in the World feels deep down for their kid. Even though it’s universal, I don’t think it’s ever any less in intensity for any person. That part of us that is pure, naked, selfless love is always there. Feeling the ache and great love in this song brought me back to the day we had my daughter’s baby shower. We were going around the room, one person at a time, saying things about Ara and what she means to us, and when it was my turn to speak I couldn’t, I just started sobbing. I was just caught off guard in that moment, I had no idea where the feeling came from, I just couldn’t say anything without crying, in that room with a bunch of people -half of them strangers- I just couldn’t believe how much I loved my daughter, I didn’t even know that I had that inside me, it came up as a surprise. Probably in part because my mom was there, and my daughter was born premature, spending months in the hospital as a fragile, perfect being we watched, talked to, and held all day and all night, and I think for the first time in my life I actually got it- not the idea, but the feeling of how much my parents love me, and how much my wife loves my daughter, and how no matter how afraid I’d been all my life of loving that way, it was over, I now loved Ara that way and I always would. My soul lives as much in her body and heart as it does in mine.
presidents day is so… soft
This entry was posted on Monday, February 21st, 2005 at 9:30 pm by Stuart Davis
Song of the day: Every Little Kiss / Bruce Hornsby
Word of the day: Chrestomathy / A collection of selected passages from an author or authors, esp one compiled to assist in learning a langauge.
It’s presidents day. A holiday planted squarely in the center of the “Wha??-why-is-the-fucking-post-office-closed-today-OH-it’s-presidents-day-shihhhhhht” category. Why don’t we all go out and do something presidential today? You, Jimmy, you divert funds from the public trust into an espionage project, Debby, go deregulate radio- AH HELL, deregulate all media- this is ‘merica, Bob, you’ll be giving tax-free rim jobs to feckless mulinational corporations, and Me?- well, folks, there’s a blow job with my name on it waiting in the oval office… you can’t spell “internal” without “intern”.
i think one of the reasons i feel more affinity with democratic presidents is that their impropriety tends toward sexual indescretion, wheras republicans tend to have more of a greed / avarice shadow. Kennedy got to sleep with Marilyn. Marilyn. the sexiest woman on the planet (’cept for my wife) and i’m not saying that because of historical inflation, or retro-romantic amplification of her beauty via myth-building, or idealization. i know how brutal and full of hurt marilyn’s life was, and how fucked up she was on drugs and shit, but plain and flatly simple, this is one time in history when the media actually got it RIGHT. this is one of those rare occasions when a woman’s fame, adoration, and legend are in proportion with her actual charisma, glamour, and radiance. i never met her, and i never get over her. she was like 36 when she died? did you see those last film snippets of her of the movie they never finished, where she’s sitting naked by the edge of the pool, but you only see her back, and she’s looking back at you and laughing, and then she gets in the pool, and so on? she was blasted on medication, clinically depressed, and generally caving in- and she was cosmic drop dead STUNNING. and it was not a matter of looks. she had 1000 watts of “IT”, whatever the fuck IT is, plus a full course of something extra in her presence that literally makes my stomach feel weird. i used to watch her movies all the time, like watch six of them in a row in six days while i did shit in the studio, i would have them on the back ground, but i stopped because i felt like it was pumping my gut full of microwave radiation. jesus. i’m being sincere when i say it made my body ache, and not in a lustful way. she’s just some kind of Goddess, perhaps the first and only real American Goddess. all the others- Jayne Mansfield, or Madonna, or Gwen Steffani, or even those like Lauren Hutton (who is really, really beautiful and charismatic), or sophia loren- or, ok, i’m gonna say it- even Julie Christie- they just aren’t in the same category. cuz it’s a category of ONE. there’s marilyn, and then there’s everybody else. well, i guess i’d say there’s marilyn and my wife, and then everybody else… there are truly innumberable moments when my wife gives me those same feelings marilyn does, but it’s cooler cuz i’m married to my wife, and i can just be like “come here, YOU!”
anyway, i’m not here to write about marilyn, or kennedy, or presidents. who gives a shit about those frat boys? presidents day, and i say this with love and a warm regard for our highest office, right now president’s day feels like celebrating the biggest hemorrhage in a drug smuggler’s colon. i mean, forget left or right, conservative or liberal, our leader has a cognitive capacity that makes one wax longingly for the days of triple-digit IQs in the white house. you do NOT have to be a genius, or even smart, to be president. there are many intelligences in the human being, and at least a dozen of them are critically important in having the over-all ability to be a good leader. they inlcude lines like “perspectives” (capacity to take the role of other, to inhabit a multiplicity of perspectives including those which differ from yours personally), “ethical”, interpersonal, creative, etc. cognitive is just one of them. our president, for the record, is a one sad abacus when it comes to ALL of these lines, but especially cognitive. he is a fucking IDIOT- there’s more spark in the static of a welcome mat than you’ll ever see in those eyes. does that mean he is worth any less as a human being? NO. all human beings share the same absolute value, their fundamental value is absolute, all sentient beings have the same absolute value, because we are discreet expressions of the Absolute, or God, or Love, or whatever you wanna call it. but we are not all equal REALIZATIONS of that Absolute. the presidents cognitive capacity is not something he chose- he was born this way. it’s not his fault. but it does really, truly mean he should not be president. no one with an IQ under, oh.. 100 should be allowed to hold the office of president. why? because the cognitive line, while it is only ONE kind of intelligence, happens to act as a -pardon the pun- as a governor for the entire assembly of other intelligences. think of it as the gear shift for the whole car. if you’re shift only goes up to 3rd gear, then you’re only going to drive that car 45 miles per hour, it doesn’t matter how kick ass your fancy new tires are or, or that Mazarati built your engine, or that the fuzzy dize on your rear view mirror are made from a weave of Marilyn Monroe’s pubic hair, or that you have four expert race car drivers in the vehicle coaching you the whole way. 3rd gear- that’s IT. nothing will change that. of course a cognitive liability can be managed and neutralized if it is accompanied by high marks in other intelligences and an INTEREST on the part of the subject. certainly a leader with highly developed interpersonal, emotional, perspectives, etc, lines of intelligence who happens to have a modest cognitive capacity- that leader can still be quite effective. but fucking (hey, i just said but-fucking;-) FORGET effective. we just need a leader who’s not a total, utter dip shit, who is not a collosal historical embarassment, one who does not jeapordize the political, economic, and social inheritence of generations to come. i look at this guy, and Caligula starts to seem appealing.
do you think i’m just bashing republicans? then YOU ARE STUPID TOO. i don’t hate republicans, although in the ridiculously polarized, radically simplified version of “dialogue” we have in this country where we’ve sacrificed all nuances for the convenience of simple binary interpretations of all phenomena- in THAT dialogue since i’m not “FOR” our president i must be against our country, huh? let me fucking say something to the americans who think people who have views or opinions that differ from their own are “unamerican”: the FRENCH- the entire government of FRANCE is MORE AUTHENTICALLY AMERICAN THAN YOU ARE. why? because dissent and divergence was engineered into the very fabric of this democracy from its very inception, and for very good reason, that is precisely what has kept us strong and alive, but now you lazy, monocular sloths want to do away with anything that doesn’t converge perfectly with your aberrant interpreation of new fascism via the old testeament. well FUCK YOU. thanks to YOU i suddently want to have gay sex for the rest of my life, although i wasn’t gay before i met you, and you know what else, heretofore i want to solely focus all scientific advancement toward making it possible for a man to conceive and give birth to children - although i never cared about science before i met you, now it’s my life, and MAN i want to be fucked and pummeled in the ass by hundreds of black men and asian men and south american men while i read aloud from the bible, the koran, and the torah until i get pregnant with sextuplets -although i never wanted children before i met you-, now i’m going to name all after YOU and other obdurate ideologues, and then i am going to fucking abort every one of those goddamn little fucking abominations -although i never felt an impulse toward infanticide before i met you- now it’s my passion, cuz you know what, YOU have finally sold me on a simple black and white version of the Universe where there is good and evil and NOTHING in between, and since YOU know what is holy, and since YOU know what is right, good, moral, and ethical, and since I DO NOT confrom with your version of what a human should be, then I MUST BE THE PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL, i must be the DEVIL, you have provided my role for me. congratulations, your ridiculous, all-engrossing fear has finally created that which was previously merely a chimera. now that you’re able to successfully reify all the wicked, contorted projections of your own unconscious, maybe TOGETHER we can create a world-wide cataclysm on the order of that Apocalypse you’re always dreaming of. it’ll be grand! you’ll finally get to see everyone who’s different from you burn in hell, and we the damned will get to be sodomized by demons with crucifix-phalluses! let’s parse the Kosmos into digestable bits until it fits into that Mr. Yuck face you call a way of life.
it’s not about republicans. if i were a republican, i would be pissed right now, cuz my party has been hijacked by extremes that caricature the party. there are many cool republicans, and there is no way, no way in hell for our nation to move ahead much less function without fully including all the issues on the conservative agenda. that’s not lip service, that’s just reality. my dad is a republican, and i LOVE him, he’s a great human being, i trust him, admire him, respect him- and WHAT’S MORE my dad loves ME, even though i am a loud-mouthed freakish weirdo who writes disturbing things like this blog, and creates all sorts of difficult, strange art in the world, and even though my mom and dad are christians and republicans and i am buddhist and politically chaotic- they accept me and love me, and we have a great family. i would take ANYONE- Bob Dole, COME BACK, McCain-wherefore art thou?- anyone but this evolutionary dead end that is now in its 2nd term. the whole fucking country should get the Darwin Award this year, for electing this psycho-spiritual malignancy not once, but TWICE! president’s day? with leaders like this who needs an axis of evil? hey, America- the call is coming from INSIDE your house…
fucking wake up.
presidents day is so… soft
This entry was posted on Monday, February 21st, 2005 at 9:30 pm by Stuart Davis
Song of the day: Every Little Kiss / Bruce Hornsby
Word of the day: Chrestomathy / A collection of selected passages from an author or authors, esp one compiled to assist in learning a langauge.
It’s presidents day. A holiday planted squarely in the center of the “Wha??-why-is-the-fucking-post-office-closed-today-OH-it’s-presidents-day-shihhhhhht” category. Why don’t we all go out and do something presidential today? You, Jimmy, you divert funds from the public trust into an espionage project, Debby, go deregulate radio- AH HELL, deregulate all media- this is ‘merica, Bob, you’ll be giving tax-free rim jobs to feckless mulinational corporations, and Me?- well, folks, there’s a blow job with my name on it waiting in the oval office… you can’t spell “internal” without “intern”.
i think one of the reasons i feel more affinity with democratic presidents is that their impropriety tends toward sexual indescretion, wheras republicans tend to have more of a greed / avarice shadow. Kennedy got to sleep with Marilyn. Marilyn. the sexiest woman on the planet (’cept for my wife) and i’m not saying that because of historical inflation, or retro-romantic amplification of her beauty via myth-building, or idealization. i know how brutal and full of hurt marilyn’s life was, and how fucked up she was on drugs and shit, but plain and flatly simple, this is one time in history when the media actually got it RIGHT. this is one of those rare occasions when a woman’s fame, adoration, and legend are in proportion with her actual charisma, glamour, and radiance. i never met her, and i never get over her. she was like 36 when she died? did you see those last film snippets of her of the movie they never finished, where she’s sitting naked by the edge of the pool, but you only see her back, and she’s looking back at you and laughing, and then she gets in the pool, and so on? she was blasted on medication, clinically depressed, and generally caving in- and she was cosmic drop dead STUNNING. and it was not a matter of looks. she had 1000 watts of “IT”, whatever the fuck IT is, plus a full course of something extra in her presence that literally makes my stomach feel weird. i used to watch her movies all the time, like watch six of them in a row in six days while i did shit in the studio, i would have them on the back ground, but i stopped because i felt like it was pumping my gut full of microwave radiation. jesus. i’m being sincere when i say it made my body ache, and not in a lustful way. she’s just some kind of Goddess, perhaps the first and only real American Goddess. all the others- Jayne Mansfield, or Madonna, or Gwen Steffani, or even those like Lauren Hutton (who is really, really beautiful and charismatic), or sophia loren- or, ok, i’m gonna say it- even Julie Christie- they just aren’t in the same category. cuz it’s a category of ONE. there’s marilyn, and then there’s everybody else. well, i guess i’d say there’s marilyn and my wife, and then everybody else… there are truly innumberable moments when my wife gives me those same feelings marilyn does, but it’s cooler cuz i’m married to my wife, and i can just be like “come here, YOU!”
anyway, i’m not here to write about marilyn, or kennedy, or presidents. who gives a shit about those frat boys? presidents day, and i say this with love and a warm regard for our highest office, right now president’s day feels like celebrating the biggest hemorrhage in a drug smuggler’s colon. i mean, forget left or right, conservative or liberal, our leader has a cognitive capacity that makes one wax longingly for the days of triple-digit IQs in the white house. you do NOT have to be a genius, or even smart, to be president. there are many intelligences in the human being, and at least a dozen of them are critically important in having the over-all ability to be a good leader. they inlcude lines like “perspectives” (capacity to take the role of other, to inhabit a multiplicity of perspectives including those which differ from yours personally), “ethical”, interpersonal, creative, etc. cognitive is just one of them. our president, for the record, is a one sad abacus when it comes to ALL of these lines, but especially cognitive. he is a fucking IDIOT- there’s more spark in the static of a welcome mat than you’ll ever see in those eyes. does that mean he is worth any less as a human being? NO. all human beings share the same absolute value, their fundamental value is absolute, all sentient beings have the same absolute value, because we are discreet expressions of the Absolute, or God, or Love, or whatever you wanna call it. but we are not all equal REALIZATIONS of that Absolute. the presidents cognitive capacity is not something he chose- he was born this way. it’s not his fault. but it does really, truly mean he should not be president. no one with an IQ under, oh.. 100 should be allowed to hold the office of president. why? because the cognitive line, while it is only ONE kind of intelligence, happens to act as a -pardon the pun- as a governor for the entire assembly of other intelligences. think of it as the gear shift for the whole car. if you’re shift only goes up to 3rd gear, then you’re only going to drive that car 45 miles per hour, it doesn’t matter how kick ass your fancy new tires are or, or that Mazarati built your engine, or that the fuzzy dize on your rear view mirror are made from a weave of Marilyn Monroe’s pubic hair, or that you have four expert race car drivers in the vehicle coaching you the whole way. 3rd gear- that’s IT. nothing will change that. of course a cognitive liability can be managed and neutralized if it is accompanied by high marks in other intelligences and an INTEREST on the part of the subject. certainly a leader with highly developed interpersonal, emotional, perspectives, etc, lines of intelligence who happens to have a modest cognitive capacity- that leader can still be quite effective. but fucking (hey, i just said but-fucking;-) FORGET effective. we just need a leader who’s not a total, utter dip shit, who is not a collosal historical embarassment, one who does not jeapordize the political, economic, and social inheritence of generations to come. i look at this guy, and Caligula starts to seem appealing.
do you think i’m just bashing republicans? then YOU ARE STUPID TOO. i don’t hate republicans, although in the ridiculously polarized, radically simplified version of “dialogue” we have in this country where we’ve sacrificed all nuances for the convenience of simple binary interpretations of all phenomena- in THAT dialogue since i’m not “FOR” our president i must be against our country, huh? let me fucking say something to the americans who think people who have views or opinions that differ from their own are “unamerican”: the FRENCH- the entire government of FRANCE is MORE AUTHENTICALLY AMERICAN THAN YOU ARE. why? because dissent and divergence was engineered into the very fabric of this democracy from its very inception, and for very good reason, that is precisely what has kept us strong and alive, but now you lazy, monocular sloths want to do away with anything that doesn’t converge perfectly with your aberrant interpreation of new fascism via the old testeament. well FUCK YOU. thanks to YOU i suddently want to have gay sex for the rest of my life, although i wasn’t gay before i met you, and you know what else, heretofore i want to solely focus all scientific advancement toward making it possible for a man to conceive and give birth to children - although i never cared about science before i met you, now it’s my life, and MAN i want to be fucked and pummeled in the ass by hundreds of black men and asian men and south american men while i read aloud from the bible, the koran, and the torah until i get pregnant with sextuplets -although i never wanted children before i met you-, now i’m going to name all after YOU and other obdurate ideologues, and then i am going to fucking abort every one of those goddamn little fucking abominations -although i never felt an impulse toward infanticide before i met you- now it’s my passion, cuz you know what, YOU have finally sold me on a simple black and white version of the Universe where there is good and evil and NOTHING in between, and since YOU know what is holy, and since YOU know what is right, good, moral, and ethical, and since I DO NOT confrom with your version of what a human should be, then I MUST BE THE PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL, i must be the DEVIL, you have provided my role for me. congratulations, your ridiculous, all-engrossing fear has finally created that which was previously merely a chimera. now that you’re able to successfully reify all the wicked, contorted projections of your own unconscious, maybe TOGETHER we can create a world-wide cataclysm on the order of that Apocalypse you’re always dreaming of. it’ll be grand! you’ll finally get to see everyone who’s different from you burn in hell, and we the damned will get to be sodomized by demons with crucifix-phalluses! let’s parse the Kosmos into digestable bits until it fits into that Mr. Yuck face you call a way of life.
it’s not about republicans. if i were a republican, i would be pissed right now, cuz my party has been hijacked by extremes that caricature the party. there are many cool republicans, and there is no way, no way in hell for our nation to move ahead much less function without fully including all the issues on the conservative agenda. that’s not lip service, that’s just reality. my dad is a republican, and i LOVE him, he’s a great human being, i trust him, admire him, respect him- and WHAT’S MORE my dad loves ME, even though i am a loud-mouthed freakish weirdo who writes disturbing things like this blog, and creates all sorts of difficult, strange art in the world, and even though my mom and dad are christians and republicans and i am buddhist and politically chaotic- they accept me and love me, and we have a great family. i would take ANYONE- Bob Dole, COME BACK, McCain-wherefore art thou?- anyone but this evolutionary dead end that is now in its 2nd term. the whole fucking country should get the Darwin Award this year, for electing this psycho-spiritual malignancy not once, but TWICE! president’s day? with leaders like this who needs an axis of evil? hey, America- the call is coming from INSIDE your house…
fucking wake up.
Stuart In The Studio
This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2005 at 11:59 pm by Stuart Davis
Stuart In The Studio
This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2005 at 11:59 pm by Stuart Davis