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Entries in existence (12)

Monday
Jan292018

Literary Outlaws

Music is the fuel.

Welcome to Planet Insane Asylum. You are released on your own recognizance.

Create a new world. Ride a bike. Explore. Life is the destination. Warrior attitude.

Understanding by design. UBD.

Your story emerges from nothing. Discover a point of departure a direction.

Only the mad ones sing with the fools.

Events, characters, setting, impressions. Energies and frequencies.

Remember Coco speaking in Fujian, China watching 15,000 university students walk past old village people. "They are all peasants."

Years later the rich Chinese man in Laos served you fresh green Fujian tea at the Luang Prabang guesthouse. "Children are tools," he said. He had two. They arrived in a Raging Rover using GPS.

Discernment with sensitivity.

Engaged by a stimulus. Disengaged from a stimulus.

Truth-Force.

Signal-Noise

High season in Vientiane. Perfect for drawing twilight as scooters mumble putt putt exhausted fear based laughter succumbing to circumstance.

Yoke said a verb is a condition.

Her insight was victorious. Word got back that all but three 8th grade students were caught cheating on their Lao exams. No surprise there. Delight in their sly cunning attitude. Oh, to be human.

Determination chopped ice, shifting passive years, gears and fears into a zonal transparency of blank eyes. Is-land tourists became localized stimuli wandering blank.

It's a meaningful coincidence.

We are literary outlaws.

Explanation is a well dressed mistake.

We connect the dots forward. Play an infinite game of chess.

Checkmate, said Death. I always make the correct move.

Existence precedes essence. Flame your life.

Friday
Aug112017

Yin & Yang in China

I have paintings, poems, stories, translations of oral traditions to finish that I haven’t even started yet.

If I had more time I’d make them shorter.

I stepped outside of myself and saw a blind man going down life’s street. Neither of us had seen each other before.

Dressed in rags, he stooped under the weight of a torn shouldered bag. He had no left hand. His right hand stabbed cracked cement with a crooked staff. In the middle of the sidewalk he stumbled into a parked motorcycle, adjusting his way around it. Chinese schoolgirls eating sweet junk food on sharp sticks whispering silent secrets about his stupidity passed me with empty black wide eyes.

I remembered...if a man wants to be sure of his road he must close his eyes and walk in the dark, and a blind man crossing a bridge at night is a perfect example how we should live our lives...the enlightened mind.

I followed him. I sensed a lesson in existence.

He continued scraping his staff against steps leading to shops and worked his way along a long concrete wall.

At the far end sat a beggar in rags made from boiled books. His skeleton supported a battered dirty greasy cap, threadbare jacket, no socks, broken shoes. He struggled to light a fractured cigarette. His cracked begging bowl was empty.

The blind man ran into him.

“Go around” screamed the beggar. “Can’t you see I’m here you idiot!”

“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“This is my space. Pay attention. Keep moving you fool.”

“Sorry to bother you. Maybe you’re a little sad, angry or lonely? Maybe I can help you.”

“What! Are you completely crazy as well as blind? I have no wife, no children, no parents, no friends, no home and no job. I live here hoping people will take pity on me.”

“I see. I know the feeling. I’m on my own. Maybe we could work together, be a team.”

The beggar rubbed his stubble. “Hmm. Let me think about it.”

“Take your time. Knowing our destiny means there’s no hurry.”

“Really? How can you be so sure?”

“Call it a hunch. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”

The beggar laughed. School kids passed them. One dropped a coin into the bowl.

“Thanks kid. Good luck on your exams next week.”

“I hate school. Too much homework. It’s so boring and tedious. I’d rather be home playing computer games or chatting online with my friends. I am an only child. I am a little Titan in my universe of want, want, want.”

“Your attitude sucks. Only 5% of the Chinese population has a university degree. Did you know that every June, six million students graduate from a university and 60% will not find work. They will wander the street like us. Your society faces hard cruel lessons, a reality outside your textbooks. Your people have fucked up your environment. Do you sleep where you shit? Sixteen of the most twenty polluted cities in the world are in this beautiful country. You sound like one of those single pampered little emperor kids I see every day. Busy, busy, busy. Get used to it or you’ll be out here with us.”

“A fate worse than death,” said the kid walking away. “My father owns a factory. He is rich man making huge profits off the sweat of poor illiterate fools and idiots like you, you bum. My future is filled with lots of money, a big house and a new car. Thank God for the one-child policy. I will buy a trophy wife. I will give her blood diamonds imported from mines in Africa or Burmese rubies. My country is investing huge amounts of capital all around the world to export raw materials. We feed our machines of consumption 24/7. As you know our country was squeezed, manipulated and exploited for years by big nose foreigners. Now it’s our turn to cash in billions of T-bills and let them dance to our sweet tune. And my family has a multiple-entry visa for Macau so we can leave whenever we feel like it. So, fuck off beggar man.”

“Yeah, begging isn’t a job, it’s an adventure.”

He looked back at the blind man.

“A team, eh? What’s your name?”

“My friends call me Yin. And you?”

“I don’t know my name. What’s a good name for a beggar?”

“How about Yang.”

“Does it mean anything? I’d like my name to mean something.”

“Why does it have to mean anything?”

“Well doesn’t a person’s name mean they have an identity, you know, like it defines their character, personality or something in the abstract?”

“Well, Yang symbolizes many things. For example, it stands for original integrated knowledge that has become buried by mundane conditioning.”

“You don’t say.”

“Real knowledge tends to become submerged in the unconscious.”

“Well, all I know is that my real knowledge says I’m hungry. If I don’t eat soon I’ll be unconscious. So, let’s say I take this Yang name. How will it help me realize my true nature?”

“It will give you dignity. Self-respect. Everything has already happened. We just need to experience it. Experience is the greatest teacher. A name like Yang will give you strength.”

“I need some of that. Ok. From now on you can call me Yang. Shake on it.” He reached out taking Yin’s dirty right hand. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Let’s get some money and buy some food.”

“I’ve been here all morning,” said Yang, “and all I have to show for it are a couple of Yuan. How about you? Any luck today?”

“I’ve been collecting old plastic bottles from trash containers,” said Yin shaking his bag. “I know a man who’ll give us some money for them. He’s not far from here.”

“Ok,” said Yang, “let’s go. Maybe we can get some spare change along the way.” He struggled to his feet and took Yin’s stub.

“What’s across the street?” asked Yin.

“A bunch of cheap restaurants for the high school kids,” said Yang. “Let’s beg there. People are happy to share their change when they have a full belly.”

“Good idea. Life is change. Can you help me get across?”

“Sure. We have to be careful, it’s busy - lots of pedicabs, trucks, buses, bikes. Let’s go.” Yang guided him across the river of traffic dodging bells.

“What fine music!” yelled Yin.

“It’s incomprehensible to me,” hollered Yang.

“It sounds like an angelic orchestra rehearsing for a play.”

“You are one strange animal.”

Yang stationed Yin outside a place filled with tongues and food smells. “This is a good spot. Do you have a begging bowl?”

“Sure. Doesn’t everybody?” He fished it out of his bag. It reflected 10,000 things.

“Wow! It’s beautiful. Where’d you get it?”

“From a kind stranger in Tibet.”

“I’m impressed. Never been there. I wonder how beggars survive at high altitude. May I see it?”

“They practice compassion and meditate on the process of death. Here,” said Yin. “Take it. See if it brings you good fortune.”

Yang accepted the gift and gave Yin his wooden bowl.

“Good magic. You stay here and face this way. I’ll go next door and beg in the kitchen where they sell mutton. See if they’ll give me some scraps.”

“Ok,” said Yin. “Good luck. See you later.”

He stood silent inside the swirling chaos of humanity and took three deep breaths. He meditated on a single breath, a point of awareness. In-out, in-out. The emotional monkey mind loving the circus of sensory entertainment fell asleep.

He felt still, calm, quiet, focused concentration. He returned to The Temple of Complete Reality at Qinchengshan.

It was a clear above the mountain as wisps of white clouds circled the temple. Autumn colors exploded red, orange, and green near turtle and dragon gate guardians. Streams of life danced around rocks.

Feeling balance and harmony he meditated on the root below the surface of appearances.

A coin played in the bowl.

“Thank you very much.” 

Thursday
Apr072016

take amazing risks

More Cambodians and Burmese own a cell phone than have a toilet.

Welcome to the entertainment capital of the world!

The science of imaginary solutions that regulate exceptions.

To do amazing things you have to take amazing risks.

Bolano: "he didn't believe in countries and the only borders he respected were: Borders of dreams - musty borders of love & indifference."

Borders of courage or fear - golden borders of ethics.

"To never be polite again." Camus on outrages we inflict.

Acting as a fundamental form of existence.

To be natural with a mask. My mask is eating my fAce.

The entire universe is a vast theatre.

"Black and white are the colors of photography." - Frank

Thursday
Mar202014

98%

Did you know that the world is made up of 98% helium and hydrogen?

The remaining atom particles are life and inside these atoms a very small part of that is intelligence.

The rest of the pyramid is garbage.

Existence precedes essence.

Monday
Dec232013

Mind movie

Dear Edie,
I have a lot of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside.

We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky ways of cloudy innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.

We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere, or one universal self. Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes through everything, is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about.

I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the one vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.
The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Your eternal old man,
Jack
The Portable Jack Kerouac  Read more…