The Best Thing About Advice...

...is that you don't have to take it.

In the corners of your teenage room
Where days collect with dust and setting sunbeam crossing
There your thoughts mature too soon
And sleep won’t come but tangled sheets your turn and tossing
Tomorrow holds the keys in keeping
Won’t open gates that unjustly keep your mind from flying
Across the fields so ripe for reaping
Your rightful place whose existence your elders keep denying
But your wings will unfold in time
Perhaps in looking back you may regret your impatient waiting
But you will live your own life not mine
And there are infinite pleasures encased in anticipating.

View From the Treetops (29 Mar '09)

Sublime

You’ve got cucumbers on your eyes
too much time spent on nothing
waiting for a moment to arise

Memory comes when memory's old
I am never the first to know
Following the stream up North
Where do people like us float

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Ridiculous

Some years ago, driven by the wide eyed publicity surrounding it, I read Paulo Coelho’s much acclaimed piece of "inspirational" fiction "The Alchemist".
I was less than under-impressed - a half baked fairy tale that expounds the 'philosophy' that in order to achieve your dreams you merely need to wish them to be true.

Some weeks ago I stumbled across the author’s blog – and like a moth to the flame, was drawn back again and again.

The hallowed author graces his adoring disciples with free readings from his latest offering, quote of the day (from his own extensive back catalogue and, for the lucky, a chance to pose a question on his blog.

Day by day I became more and more dumbfounded by the his philosophical offerings. I kept trying to put my finger on exactly what is was that I found so exasperating.
It wasn’t just the emptiness of his daily aphorisms or even the messianic air that fills his blogspace like the smell of farts captured in an airtight room, it was the air of deep respect that the man seems to hold for his own wisdom.
The one that tipped me over the edge was:
Quote of the day:

"The inevitable always happens. We require only the discipline and patience to deal with it."

Call me bitter and twisted (if you will) but how the fuck did this guy get published? Surely somebody in his publishing entourage should be saying “hold on Paulo – this sentence is meaningless”

"The inevitable always happens. We require only the discipline and patience to deal with it."

So astounded was I that I felt compelled to leave this response:
"As a pseudo-philosophical statement this starts off on the wrong foot - there are two problems with it:
1.To say that the “inevitable always happens” is redundant!
Inevitable derives from the Latin word vitare (to avoid) and the prefix in (meaning not or without). It refers to something that cannot be avoided.
2. to say we require ONLY the discipline and patience infers that discipline and patience are one thing.
Perhaps you should have written: “Discipline and patience are required in order to better deal with the inevitable.”
Perhaps I am being disingenuous here, but I find fault with your “philosophical” statements simply because, at first read, they sound like philosophical statements, but on closer inspection they are merely statements."

What makes these ridiculous statements all the more annoying to me is for one thing the quasi-religious weight given to these offerings by the author (who describes himself as a pilgrim) and for another, the mindlessly adoring (and often arse-kissingly nauseating) responses offered up by his flock.

Now, good luck to the man for finding his niche and making a successful go at it - I don't begrudge him that, but surely he cannot believe that what he puts forward as crumbs of wisdom are to be taken seriously?.

Just as flowers often bloom in shit – all of this pseudo-philosophy got me fired up enough to dredge up something I wrote a few years ago and rewrite it. Unlike Mr. Coelho, however, I can’t pretend that my Fables are by any means philosophically sound, nor should they be seen as 'life lessons'

I have stewed over this for weeks now and just cannot shake my indignation - it is bad enough that people live their lives trusting in some god to make everything better (at least the bible is reasonably well written - in parts) - but this to me is a subversion of the empowering idea that we are capable of making our own way through life. Coelho returns it to the mystical without includung any substance, the man is a charlatan, a tent evangelist with no message, an elixir salesman without elixir.
I sure many will disagree with me and find my indignation puzzling; pop over to Paulo Coelho’s blog and make up your own mind, but if you do happen to find yourself reading one of his inspirational novels... don't say you weren't warned.

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The Far Queue Welcomes Careful Diverse

I'm Your Ghost

Contrails mar a clear blue sky through opaque window pane
Clouded mind rubs tolerance against the sunbeam grain
Frenetic birds invisible flap frightened forever skyward
Scattered thoughts wrench to swing the tangled curtain cord
Floorboards creak and lampshades sway yellow fringe eyelashes
Eyelids clenched like fists against the phantom lightning flashes
Picture ghosts hang wooden squares in hollow-echoed halls
Dust and dreams in clouds do flee the feet that softly fall
In this house of secrets, house of books with numerous lost leaves
Gaping doors morose birds nest shelter in darkened amber eaves
The fireplace raked an eon past to leave this knot of ashes
And madness runs to safely seal those welded window sashes

Out of His Mind: Phase VI ~ ...and With Awareness: Questions

The Ribbon of Extremes ~ Yves Tanguy

it is a convoluted process, this maintenance of memory, especially when the body has no input to the process, it being no longer a sensory apparatus.
for instance: i can remember the birth of my children and the love of my wife in technical detail but i need to superimpose just the right measure of the visual memory of my diseased body and the associated pain in order to lend gravity to the full memory.
there are times [and time is an resource of which i appear to have a limitless supply given that i have no evidence of mortality] there are times when i despair that my past life is nothing more than fabrication; a construct designed to hold my mind together; emotional string and glue for time’s own gravity.
i do fear what that would imply: that i am some construct; some mechanoid in a cybernetic egg.
this i refuse to believe.
what vengeful universe would create so unjust a scenario?
and for what purpose would such a clinical soul be primed?

stop

i must maintain equilibrium since all is connected to me and with distress comes escalation; the music tends to chaos and the colours fade to grey; all of my constructs fade to insignificant trinkets.

Rawhide

"In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality" ~ William Burroughs


This outsider unsettled
Butterfly pinned upon a mount of rage
Where logic flies
From chickens hypnotised

There is no reason
For this glass-cased collection of lies
Where children swing
From catenaries of future crimes

The past is lost
But not yet severed from the mind’s nerve-ends
And daydream heights
Offer not the sustenance they once did

A bouquet fenced
Between cemetery and railway line
Bloodstains washed
From the twisted frame of a wrecked car

There are no reasons
Behind these fortress walls all arrow-pierced
Mere scar tissue
Over ever-tender wounds and scalpel love-bites

On The Beach

Beach Side ~ Grant Yang

The receding water sucked at the shoreline, dragging suspended grains of pale sand into its deep green interior.
He stood like a marble giant trapped in slow-time while plankton empires rose and fell between his submerged feet.
The horizon was lost in the blue haze caused by the cumulus clouds boiling from the Gravity Plant looming on the headland.
Sikuma touched his hand and he exhaled a chest full of salt air, realising he’d been holding it - in anticipation of what, he wasn’t sure.
Ever since Dadelus had gone over he’d had this uneasy feeling in his gut, as if something was waiting to conclude.
“Iskandor, we need to go; it’s almost curfew” she slipped her hand in his and squeezed with just the right balance of urgency and tenderness.
He turned and they walked up the beach toward gap in the teeth of the weather-beaten fence; Iskandor’s mood trailed like a cloud; his thoughts remaining with Dadelus and the look on his face as he’d turned away at the cliff edge.

Howl at the Moon

Escape ~ Thierry Doizon

The moon pulls his at collar like a long lost lover
The clouds chase the headlines as the crowds duck for cover
He chews at his words before they fall from his lip
His chest littered with reason-crumbs and Freudian slips

The wind blows a chord between the buildings and sky
Rattles the times on the no-parking signs
The street takes his footsteps without batting an eye

The sky draws back a fist in the colour of night
Scatters rain stars across his black-shouldered flight
He looks through his brow at the passing parade
Spits in the teeth of this cold wet charade

He sees himself reflected in the glass passing by
A silhouette, a spectre, a wandering chalk outline
Whose thoughts must accept what the other ghosts deny

That the world is a question of answer bereft
That the culture of gain is tinted with theft

That the powers that be don’t care who you are
And the path to extinction may leave a visible scar

On the face of a planet that will surely survive
The loss of the fruit from this self-centred hive

So the leaves levitate at the level-crossing gate
Where he waits for the train and tries to compensate
For the rise in his head and the anger and hate
And all of the day’s superficial debate

The night birds flap in his mind awoken
Whispering words that are better not spoken
…aloud

War

Fables from a Forgotten Place: The Prophet

The Word ~ Judson Huss

The busy pathway between Here and There runs across the top of a small grassy hill.
Some time ago (nobody can remember exactly when) a man sat himself down, cross-legged, on a particularly lush patch of grass by the side of the path at the top of the hill.
Once settled, the man began to shout out at the passers-by and soon a small crowd gathered to hear what he had to say:.
“There is no thing that is part of nothing!” He yelled
People looked at one another, puzzled by the apparent wisdom in the man’s tone.
“The inevitable always happens!”
“?” some people began to mutter, unsure how to react.
The small crowd grew steadily for a while as more people passed by on their way to Here or There, and the man continued to shout.
“I am the eye through which I see”
Over the course of a day or two (possibly three) there was a constant eddy of people who stopped to listen, attracted by the mere presence of the crowd already there.
Soon everybody had either heard the man’s words or had heard of him.
Suspecting him to be a little mad and perhaps, dangerous, people soon chose to pass him by, doing their best to ignore him.
Over the course of days; weeks and months, people ceased to notice him, his voice became a accepted part of the landscape (like the view or the grass or the pebbles that litter the side of the path)
And over the months and the years the man’s hair grew long and grey and his words grew hoarse and littered with spelling mistakes. One by one his sentences turned to sounds; to unconnected syllables slowly solidifying until one day the letter S (or perhaps it was the number 5) fell from his mouth to rest on the ground in front of him.
He paused for a moment only, then cleared his throat and continued with his unintelligible aphorisms.
The passers-by did not notice.
Soon the grassy patch on which he sat became littered with letters of various size, hue, font and script; a disarray of curlicue and arabesque; describing arcs and exclamation marks; brackets and umlauts; foreign accents and brush stroke pictograms somehow passed his lips where the Immigration Officials from The Departhment of Language had long abandoned their posts.
Punctuation marks became entangled in his hair and beard while like-minded letters gathered in alliterative angst between his ankles.
His shouts had slowed to mumbles.
His body had become a small pyramid of jumbled letters and matted grey hair.
Eventually his mumbling stopped, to be followed shortly by a long sigh; a sign that any passer-by might have mistaken for a gentle gust of wind across the patch of grass on top of the hill.
Soon the elements eroded the pyramid until it became a mound.
The grass grew over the mound and the mound became a part of the hill.
Traffic on the path across the top of the hill is still busy since there is always a lot to be carried back and forth between There and Here.
Most travellers pass the mound without pause but there are a number of (perhaps more sensitive) souls who stop at the top of the hill and take a moment to catch their breath and admire the view, the grass or the pebbles that litter the side of the path; and some will claim to hear the voice of the hill on the gentle breeze that blows permanently across the grassy mound.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Zdzislaw Beksinski

So here I run:
From the jaws of wolves on paws respected
In the woods where words set fire to rain
To the hounds that howl at the moon reflected
In the barcode windows yellow-tear stained

And here you hide:
From the hearts of heroes hardened hectic
In the chiselled groves of marble milestones
To the marrow whispers now turned septic
In the blackened stumps of shattered bones

So keep your distance:
From bells that own your peeling skin
In testing grounds where infinity begins
To chemical baths and buckets of sin
In books that calculate the mess we’re in

And I won’t shy:
From carrier pigeons with messages unread
In the rush to communicate the urgency of need
To the hanging man who’s better off dead
In the brightly lit rooms where they manufacture greed

...and the Sheep Look Up

The Conversion of St. Paul ~ Carravaggio

I am the voice that whispers love is all you need
I am the force that drives you to justify your greed
And all those who declare war for what is right
Will use my name to justify their power and their might

I am the chink in your armour that lets the demons in
Allowing self-doubt and the concept of original sin
To fester and bloom into a cancerous flower
That will fill you with fear and cause you to cower

I am the resurrection and I am the light
I am the horror that haunts you in the night
And all your panicked prayers and ritual guilt collection
Will only serve to drive further in my direction

Out of His Mind: Phase V ~ The Eyes are the Soul's Lost Windows

Eloquence ~ Linda Bergkvist

i try to understand my space and how it works; this is a basic human trait.
any specific knowledge of science and nature acquired by me in my previous life has been mostly lost; what remains is basic computation skills; my ability to rationalise my surroundings and my need to learn.
that and time infinite.
i do not understand how [or why] my body retains the abilities to see and hear and yet cannot feel or taste.
perhaps the mind finds the former senses are easier to emulate. [Perhaps this is all a construct of my mind] [if so, how do i shut it down?]
from where i stand it is therefore the intangible [the mind] that is a certainty; leaving all that is of the senses [that which we trust above all else in life] called into question.
i am in the realm of everything unknown.
but this unknown, vast and boundless, is no longer a terrain of horror and of fear.
the loss of bodily desires does not preclude the appreciation of beauty; appreciation by visual stimulus [a trait that in life, for the male human, is intertwined with the libido’s hungry needs].
the appreciation of beauty now takes on a philosophy of contemplation.
i dredge from memory’s leaky vault images of sensual beauty now infused with meaning greater than the touch of hand on soft flesh or tongue to taste.
meaning beyond the sine wave of desire; gone the need to possess in entirety; to swallow whole; to enter that which cannot be entered with thought.
gone evolution’s chaotic drive toward the abyss.

Like Silence Through a Fish-eye Lens

Aerodynamics for Psychonauts ~ MARS-1

Through roots and leaves the leaving routes the day behind you now
Sinking fast the light recedes through neon night to stellar plough
Where cryptic clues in package stash behind the doors of dreams
Lead you through the maze of days between daylight’s woven beams

That breathe the sun’s beguiling light in pulsating chlorophyll
The toothless tiger whose keeper caged refuses to keep still
Will drain the hearts and sap the wood behind the schoolyard wall
And exhale the night into the world where trip will turn to fall

The calculated paths of falling birds will root themselves in lore
And chequered patterns proliferate on littered forest floor
Where cats with cataracts hold court for acolytes of Freud
And long dead faces rise once more to fill the memory void

Raising dust the red rust horns of stampede metaphor
They pierce the posing purple sides of pampered matadors
Whose gleaming swords can’t pierce the myths we all believe are true
And ring the planet’s Saturn soul to steal a moon or two

The mathematical significance of hungry babies’ cries
Will solve the riddles propagated by childhood’s long demise
And cards that lie face down with all their colours calling
Won’t stop the crumbling walls of sleep from accidently falling

Into the arms of long lost friends and parliaments of rust
Whose scattered voices choke back tears that trail a line of dust
Through all that you know and all you need and all that you want to be
And wash you clean to leave you free the rising day to see

Now you return with the sunrise mind all cottoned by the ride
Fingers grasp the garbled messages cast up by the tide
But words on dreamscape paper writ will crumble in the light
And falling through the clouds will echo things you can’t put right

I Am the Resurrection

In the Country of the Blind ~ Alan Pollack

Everybody knows that it’s bad luck to pass the Souq without closing your soul-gate; and to enter is ill advised by those who value all sense of decency.
My mentor used to say that no good ever came from the Souq, he would list its sins on his fingers:

• Profit-Gain Viruses such as Gate-loggers who suck all the thoughts from your pattern, leaving you incapable of complex-function and easy prey for the slave traders who lurk in the shadows and alleys of the necropolis;
• Mischief Viruses like The Imp of the Perverse whose sole purpose is to countermand your subroutines while pumping your serotonin levels to disguise his actions.

…to name but two

But what are we if not obliged to disregard the advice of our elders?

The Gatekeeper gives me the eye, the firewall bank glittering behind him in his booth.

Thyristor passes me at the entrance, a white lace hem of prejudice showing on his brow. He gives no sign of recognition other than a subtle angling of his sleep-stick in my direction – a convenient tree on which to lynch his fears.

My proximeter sensors shriek briefly before readjusting personal space parameters to the environment. Colours collide while vendors leer and lurch across my path offering:

• Neurotic body imaging
• Plasmetal endo-skeletal enhancements
• Third-eye upgrades and Zen Armour
• Pre-EMP operating systems for that retro feel
• Adrenaline courses and endorphin patches

…they say if you can’t get it here, you can’t get it anywhere.

Babylon.

As I approach his stall, Nand graces me with a lop-sided smile (probably a result of overuse of his own product), as he offers me a free sample of his latest code-hit, “This’ll make your gates tingle baby,” he promises.
“Leave my gates outta your sales-pitch Nand; I’m here to see my ‘sistor”

She emerges from the stall, umbilicals, her lifeline to the code, writhing black angel wings from between her shoulder blades, her irises enhanced and multicoloured, “What brings you up here among the heathen?”
Before I can change my mind I activate the initiate sequence: my arm strikes out with precision honed in the simulator – I plug directly into her neck-port.

I activate the psalm-code.

I see the Souq from behind her multicoloured irises – I feel the shock of commerce suddenly halted by the psalm-code – watch the pieces of leeched-on programming decay before my scrutiny – I fly through the room – see it in its broken down components – I see Thyristor, his dream stick unsheathed; the dull blade at the short end pierces the gatekeepers throat while the long end with its wetware is wired into and overriding the firewall – I am the cleansing light that runs between the lines of code that constitute the Souk – I am the new the old the right the light I am I am I am I 01 10010111100111001101010100101000101101010110100100 000001 001 1 1
1
1
0

Curtains

This card was given to me by my sons (Heckle & Jeckle) on my birthday - it took me a while to get it, then I laughed my arse off.

The Cartoon comes from the strange brain of Tim Whyatt
This from the About the Artist page on his site:
"Tim Whyatt is a cartoonist who lives on a remote island about 10,000 miles off the coast of New Jersey called Australia."

Parallel Lines will Meet at Infinity

Autumn Cannibalism ~ Salvador Dali

The streetlights string their lines between the moon and sometime soon
Headlights cut a vanishing point into the night’s cocoon
His hands command direction home his heart no more to roam
Fingers run his tangled hair no substitute for comb

She awaits him yet on kitchen chair with hope laced in her hair
Watches headlights cross the wall with gaze now turned to stare
Her hands command her heart be still to hear his car approach
And fingers tap an ancient code and, tingling, long to touch