Psyche, Death and Empire

I  “steal from the page again and again”, to learn and internalize this material so that I may make it my own and yet still recognize that I am a offering service to ideas and ideally, to those who stumble across this page.

Suicide and the Empire is a overwhelming image to consider, much less  behold: A nightmare spectra through the lens of Media and national security. The consequent violence of global corporate capitalism is no longer shown on national television every night, with body counts and narrated by Walter Chronkite.

The violence of capitalism, or more palpably, the vested imperial “interests” of the “Allied Forces” as we collectively (morally speaking) take our daily toll, or perhaps "daily bread" literally every day harvested from the forests, oceans and underworld of human suffering that now taint the legacy of our progeny.

Our suicide is that of both species and individual. the toll of death spans the worker in Calcutta and the miner in Alaska as well as the veterans and the active duty enlisted souls fighting “on” any side in the conflict that mirrors our psyche.

This is in how we either confuse or deny the outer and inner, or the soul unites them in death, is a failure of our imagination and courage more than our desire to experience "wealth" or deny our mistakes in any way; imaginal, constitutional, or racially, or in a religious war that mirrors our inner conflict with out global suicide.

How we simultaneously as a species, and as individuals are to find redemption in these apocalyptic times is one of the primary issues of this writing and my interest. It is only through the separation of psychically felt experience with the daily deluge of travesty and deception we all find ourselves either fighting or perpetrating, every morning we return to the world from the realm of Hypos, brother of Pluto. We are living in a expanding invisible "world" that is Hades realm.

I’m re-reading and ingesting one of my favorite books by James Hillman.
I thought this excrpt might evoke a new vision, or, perspective.

“Analytical despair is nothing else than facing reality together, and the a priori of all human reality is death. The individual is thus encouraged to meet his overpowering need for the transcendent and absolute. We are back to Spinoza’s proposition that the liberated man thinks of death but his meditation is of life.

Transformation begins at this point where there is no hope. Despair produces the cry for salvation for which hope would be too optimistic, too confident. It was not with a voice of hope that Jesus cried “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” The cry on the cross is the archetype of the every cry for help. It sounds the anguish of betrayal, sacrifice and loneliness. Nothing is left, not even God. My only certainty is my suffering which I ask to be taken from me by dying. An animal awareness of suffering, and full identification with it, becomes the humiliating ground of transformation. Despair ushers in the death experience and is at the same time the requirement for resurrection. Life as it was before, the status qua ante, died when despair was born. There is only the moment as it is— the seed of whatever might come—if one can wait. The waiting is all and the waiting is together.

This emphasis on experience, this loyalty to the soul and the dispassionate scientific objectivity towards its phenomena, and this affirmation of the analytical relationship may release the transformation the soul has been seeking. It may come only at the last minute. It may never come at all. But there is no other way.”
Pg 92-93  Suicide and the soul: James Hillman

To suggest that this excerpt offers hope or meaning in the conventional “feel good” sense of the modern social context would be absurd. What is does attempt to emphasize or address is the collective despair that seems to be acted out unconsciously by the species in our collective action and in-action.

I  write in the endeavor to  re-frame or re-vision what is both happening and imagined in life; in this crucible of intimacy and evocative exposure, inherent in life and experience. As we aparently casually ocupy seperate and distinct spaces on the planet as well in the social order we find ourselves inevitably isolated by the rules of the market, class, gender and fate.

Reflections

Emotions perceived: Dreams and Visions

know the “score”  feign calm an apathy

not wanting to feel, or to to heed

 the call of soul unsaid lacking privacy

Emptiness / tears, w’not belie, the ancestors. 

Cannot hear of their voices in 

the light of day I'll not dismay, though few know

who will make through each day 
 in despair or joy

Fall to addictions, belief, consumption

hope, and  media democracy

Five or a‘hundred to one, 

their not coming for guns

 I’m no fucking slave

nor die on knees.

I’ll not kneel to any god that I don’t see:

we seem to this agree: not bother one another

Yet Hermes, Hypnos and Hades are all visit  me

Have danced this round before

Many voices raised in song

Yet all I see if fucking war

Must be a cacophony

Sundry mourning (revised)

Lust in Reverse, compelled and enraged,

Suffer the rage of of one's shadow

We must disengage

Too much to feel this way.

Storm passed: Wonder at the sun

water vapor all is discuise'd

we shall see but shadowily and unknown

The World storm has begun

Blade Runner has come

The corporate Deity

commerce and destruction

Greedy hands and 

empty souls conspire 

minds to make bombs.

Kill the innocent 

the poor alike

"Fuck em"  

They don't surf or sing for 

your tax refunds.

For the deaths 

we've paid.

The country's soul is bankrupt

No honer in refusing to face

Our mercenary sons,

The dog's of war are 

Loosed nay, not return 

In my lifetime

Nightmare

Jealousy and regret 
feelings of this age

Wrinkles above an below 
 result of a furrow’ed brow

Raging storms always come:
Nyx at night and Hpnos in day
Sober in the  mourning yet still
grumpliy amazed

Wonder at the sun and the sea.

Vapor and shadows fill my eye
haps no future to be

Central mthemes and melodies
shadowily and ghostly shades 
dance on the beach whispering under
 the red moon and clash o' the sea.

Excerpts form The Dream and the Underworld: credit James Hillman

the pronounced distinction between emotion and soul, between emotional man and [psychological man, comes out in another of Heraclitus’ fragments  (85): “. . .  whatever it [Thymos]  wishes, it buys at the price of the soul.”  Thymos, the earlier Greek experience of emotional consciousness or moist soul. did not belong {or too} words added in the underworld. (Pg 42-43)

“What one knows about life may not be relevant for what is below life. What one knows and has done in life may be as irrelevant to the the underworld as clothes that adjust us to life and the flesh and bones that the clothes cover. For in the underworld all is stripped away, and life is upside down. we are further than the expectations based on life experience, and the wisdom derived from it.” (Pg. 43)

The other side of the mysterious identity, of Dionysos within Hades, says that there is a zoe, a vitality in all underworld phenomena. the realm of the dead is not as dead as we expect it. Hades too can rape and also seize the psyche through sexual fantasies. Although without thymus, body, or voice, there is  hidden libido in the shadows. The images in Hades are also Dionysian— not fertile in the natural sense, but in the psychic sense, imaginatively fertile. there is an imagination below the earth that abounds in animal forms, that reveals and makes music. there is a dance in death. hades and Dionysos are the same. as Hades darkens Dionysos toward his own tragedy, Dionysos softens and rounds out Hades into his own richness. Farnell describes their fusion as a “mildness joined with melancholy.” (pg. 45)

To be raped into the underworld is not the only move of experiencing it. there are many other modes of descent. but when it comes in this radical fashion, then we may know which mytheme has encased us. we are dragged into Hades’s chariot only if we are out in Demeter’s green fields, seductively innocent with playmates among flowers. That world has to open up. When the bottom falls out, we feel only the black abyss of despair, but this is not the only way to experience even this mytheme. 

For instance, Hekate was supposedly standing by the whole time, listening or watching. There is evidently a perspective that can witness the soul’s struggles without the flap of Persephone or the disaster of Demeter. In us is also a dark angel (Hecate was also called angelos), A conscious (and she was called phosphoros) that which shines in the dark.  P(pg. 49)

These circular states of receptiveness, turning and running in the gyres of our own conditions, force us to recognize that these conditions are our very essence and that the soul’s circular motion (which is its native motion, according to Plotinus) cannot be distinguished from blind fate. It is as if the should frees itself not from blindness but by its continuing turning in it. Ultimately, if the spontaneous mandala heals, it does so because it compels a recognition of the limitation of consciousness, that my mind and heart and will turn only in a circle, and yet that same circle is my portion of  an eternal necessity.

excerpts from social mediia on human rights

As "for the issue of aborting a fetus diagnosed with a congenital condition is concerned. It is high time that we accept that a woman’s right to choose is sacrosanct at all times and in all circumstances. Even at those times that one might personally disagree with her choice or her reason for it. Perhaps especially at those times."

So rarely do I expect to find another man sharing my imprinted feminist / humanist perspective. I was actually hoping a woman wrote it. I'm sure many have written better such as "keep your laws off my body"!

Which speaks volumes of the loss of rights humans "suffer" (allow) to be taken or wilingly surender for the destiny of one's body, soul and spirit.

The idea that someone really knows better than the person experiencing the body is so obscene it makes most evil look prosaic.

Another ay of denial

I am awed at the #ecommunity
Particularly the slight interest from Singapore,
I don't know, what  to believe
About the waters I am stepping in too.

I know: I cannot step into the same water twice.
We can pretend their is nothing to be troubled by;
as we watch our children die.

I don't have to be a Parent:
to know the loss of a child.
A wound that never seals.
a voice, a life,
that never dies.

Water from our eyes, washing the ground
release the bones of our ancestors,
and those they killed in fear and greed.
To whom we owe amends.

Knowing nothing brings back a child's smile
Once the eternal love of a child's trust is broken.
Our absolute powerlessness in this love
goes on beyond anything we ever imagined.
Perhaps makes it all possible.

Target Video Underground Forces Vol 4 [04]. ?

A premise

I realize that I have allowed the anger and abuse  experienced as a  child to turn into self abuse. To become excuses to not be alive & rational, (at least is that not our razion de et tare?). My greatest fault is that I have lived my life doing so very little to move myself with compassion and more importantly to me, the world, away from the consumption of way too much shit. OK maybe that is an "ego" trip, to have such a goal for a life.

Yet realisically, based on growing population. As well as literately blind greed and capitalist avarice. Which has not even had the grace to uplift the species, But in shear hubris, the 1% seems to be incapable or disinterested in compassion or moral equality: except as empty words.
 
Do you recall the old SF stories (now likely movies) about “evil” people (always someone else?) development and release of bio-weapons, or aggression? Obviously this is not an answer; because death imposed, rather than life given freely, will never make meaningful social and humanitarian change. I mean, Christ. We we are not dying for “their sins, but our own. .  . More on this later. . .

Sin of course is simply a word meaning mistake, and life for me, has mostly been a mistake of inaction. And worse, of greed, and hubris. I do not "enjoy" recommending it at all, but there has to be a huge culling of the human capacity for environmental destruction, for both our moral and emotional "spiritual" growth. Not to mention our species survival in balance to "the garden" we have been lovingly given. Or rudely invaded, it's not a "closed"perspective.

I don’t know that any real discussion is had over the social and moral value of consumer commodities and even simple human impact on the planet’s bio-sphere, except by folks like Derrik Jensen, who get no respect or fraction of the audience they deserve.

 We as a species seem to be incapable or morally unwilling, to consider our place in the planet, (remember, were 3 miles deep in a gaseous atmosphere) much less the Universe, not as “bold explorers” or even as mere proto-sentient beings. Slowly beaming aware of our own hyper violent natures, irrational behavior and lack or stewardship. Or "Constitutionally incapable to be honest" about what violence, manufacturing and capital truly imply.

I don’t think it’s unusual anymore (as it was in the ’60’s) to argue that we have no more right to a “manifest destiny” as Americans to the world Than humans have a right too manipulate or destroy more than a small 20% ? of the sustainable biosphere. If one is mature, I believe that is proven in restraint. Peace is the way.

Sikim 2006

 

Some strange movement: 2006

Up late, I rise reluctantly, groggy and a bit

grumpy. The depressive extremes of yesterday’s
emotions still echoing through me. I wish for a different

experience, fearing to repeat the recent past.

Often "my" sufferings seem so personal,
 objectionable,

 some inane reason.
Or lack thereof.

The habits of shame, depression and despair

so believable, so much more poingent than

any pleasure.

 Pleasure, that often seems, impersonal.

not unlike the belief of truth, bliss and joy that
Juxtapose my emergent awareness of existence.

I seek or gravitate toward the “good” all the while
Contrasting my suffering against the whole of humanity
All of my experiences feel so personal or conversely distant
This dialectic of seeking attention & approval,

or

not giving a fuck at all
From those I know & love or those

or the greater majority of those I don’t.
 
It seems

I mirror the world

albeit imperfectly.

A good night with the Alma Matter 2008

Requiem 4/2008

Love brought us together
 

Anger and pain
the catalytic stretching in the mix

We are not alone in separate journeys

This path is holy
 others
and shadows come and stay 

Sleep safe and wake in peace,

you are  free canim

And from as close as affar,

I whisper prayers of blessing

Love on the evening breeze.

I love I.T. (from 2009)

I fucking love the irony of computers & black websites so obscure that the government funds them and still has no idea they exist. . .

running black op's so strange, they occasionally do some good

Most of the time just torturing innocent people

like we do ourselves, and those we love

so much we cannot believe what we do

And still we say "I love you"

The same word in birth & suicide.

So it struck me how much i use my computer to connect

my last 5 relationships came via the internet

women i would have married, except for their intelligence

why i continue in this folly of imagination

defies my own. Paradox of choice.

2009

Blatently stolen

The historical experience is one of going back into the past and returning to the present with a wider and more intense consciousness of the restrictions of our former outlook. We return with a broader awareness of the alternatives open to us and armed with a sharper perceptiveness with which to make our choices. In this manner it is possible to loosen the clutch of the dead hand of the past and transform it into a living tool for the present and the future. ~ William Appleman Williams

No opinion can be trusted; even the facts may be nothing but a printer's error. . . .

~ William Carlos Williams, from In the American Grain (1925). The Virtue of History

My father argues, He never stopped advancing a perspective, any more than i do.

His points to me were as follows, violent resistance to the republic is both futile and self defeating.

As an adolescent i found this very disappointing after reading Heinlein and the A cookbook. I felt animate change was in the air in my little coastal town like it Beirut was to be smited by the sword of Aries just years after my birth in 60.

That the sins of the parents will be visited onto the children for many generations, in many different ways. Best to break the chains unless your heart is steeled.

Complexity is the nature of the universe, simplicity is to accept that.

I'm so excited to be going to this wonderful ancestral event.

Growing up ashamed in the USA

-->

I grew up ashamed, it didn’t help that I was smart

I said mean things about our country &

I knew people hated me, and they knew why

Truth is Evil if used without love,

I wanted to have friends,

What I was: Alone mostly

Sometime we don’t know, that our focus is outside,

That what we hate is merely an aspect of what’s inside

And so an opportunity for grace Is waiting on its knees

I’ll be no harsher when I’m judging my country

We tend to take everything so seriously,

Criticizing my Country, the good old USA

Is my most Patriotic act, in grace it is received,

Born with these eyes, no wonder I lost one.

Still burning bright, I love what appears to bring me joy.

Still what hurts causes scars in both

And we carry them too this day

I wonder why reflection is so difficult

Or is it the change that is denied?

No matter that the money flows

Our new cars on the way

Cruising straight to hell

For sure we know the way.

Is it radical or conservative to say

Our consuming is eating the earth alive.

America has led us here.

As my actions every day.

I'm so bored being of the USA

I grew up ashamed, it didn’t help that I was smart

I said mean things about our country &

I knew people hated me, and they knew why

Truth is Evil if used without love,

I wanted to have friends,

What I was: Alone

Sometime we don’t know, that our focus is outside,

That what we hate is merely an aspect of what’s inside

And so an opportunity for grace Is waiting on its knees

I’ll be no harsher when I’m judging my country

We tend to take everything so seriously,

Criticizing my Country, the good old USA

Is my most Patriotic act, in grace it is received,

Born with these eyes, no wonder I lost one.

Still burning bright, I love what appears to bring me joy.

Still what hurts causes scars in both and we carry them to this day

I wonder why reflection is so difficult? Or is it the change that is denied?

No matter that the money flows where?  Our new cars on the way

Cruising straight to hell

For sure we know the way.

Is it radical or conservative to say

Our consuming is eating the earth alive.

America has led us here.

As my actions every day.

Growing up Ashamed in /of the USA

-->

I grew up ashamed, it didn’t help that I was smart

I said mean things about our country &

I knew people hated me, and they knew why

Truth is Evil if used without love,

I wanted to have friends,

What I was: Alone

Sometime we don’t know, that our focus is outside,

That what we hate is merely an aspect of what’s inside

And so an opportunity for grace Is waiting on its knees

I’ll be no harsher when I’m judging my country

We tend to take everything so seriously,

Criticizing my Country, the good old USA

Is my most Patriotic act, in grace it is received,

Born with these eyes, no wonder I lost one.

Still burning bright, I love what appears to bring me joy.

Still what hurts causes scars in both

And we carry them too this day

I wonder why reflection is so difficult

Or is it the change that is denied?

No matter that the money flows

Our new cars on the way

Cruising straight to hell

For sure we know the way.

Is it radical or conservative to say

Our consuming is eating the earth alive.

America has led us here.

As my actions every day.

Holland

-->

The grey spring tease’s me with blue skies

Brilliant sun from another time

I move hesitantly toward

Another home with more friends

Than my heart will allow

So it breaks and opens anew

This longed for homecoming

Into my own heart of hearts

Pain was the only lover I trusted

Now I find that it was only

An invitation into silence.

This quietness that has stolen over my body

Slows my reactions, and speeds my heart,

Like a soft caress from the divine

I am swept away into this love of sensation

While this body has indeed become a temple of god/dess.

Energy releasing beyond even stories of healing

Doors opening where there were only walls

Wanting dissolving into accepting each moment of life

Again, clumsily, with what grace I know,

I point towards silence.

A Truth - 2009

-->

This gentle beauty

that you are

Radiates light

form and soul

shining outwards

as life.

Memory

-->

Love is a bobby pin lying under the bed.

Later someone wonders if something is to be lost or found.

The bobby pin never wonders

only loves. Longing for

what it once held.

Consumption edit from 2009

All that is necessary is an apathetic,

sedated, distracted populace.

No mater how good fine or

freedom loving, all that is

necessary is their inaction

and the world is lost.

School of Night

I woke a few years ago thinking of a lover as old as myself, "Suzy Creamcheese" a petite and pretty little brunette who slept and comforted me many days and nights and introduced me to cocaine and Marin and many things when I was still a teenager in San Francisco in 1977, and not very adept at getting myself around. She was usually up for a friendly fuck and I love her now more than ever and miss her. Yet she remains with all my loves, in my heart for as long after I am gone.

It is interesting to realize I have more of my life behind me than ahead, this fact puts some of my current feelings and mood inhabits different perspectives. I often think that I am alone and miserable, when in reality I’m adopting a perspective that brings with it much pain and alienation that is unnecessary.I may be isolated and morose, but this is a result of my own choices and actions as much as any objective truth that is fixed and unchanging. I often wonder what my life is like when I am happy and care-free as opposed to depressed and unhappy. While my life is full of  responsibilities and tasks these are the results of taking responsibility for my own life rather than ignoring it.  While I would like to find wonderful friends and lovers who give me all I desire, The fact remains that I am responsible for my perspective and mood. So often my own anger at myself and “the world” overwhelm my desire and ability to enjoy and act in a happy and free manner. I have much to think about in this vein.

I don't know if it's aging or not feeling like I've met my life goals

It's not that i don't know that you love me, but that
I can never go home, and that's what i need.
Wish me the best you can, try not to hate me.
I hope I'll see you someplace better,
or that i'll be able to appreciate what is.

I stand in the halls of sorrow after everyone has gone

Every seduction, hope and love has died between her doors

I stand in the halls of emptiness finally all alone. The loves

That might remember me will fade and soon be gone, even my

Grand Nieces and nephews will forget my name in time. And

Perhaps some idea spoke to stranger in passing will make some

Other less pained, then I have at least attempted my life’s desire

In love and service albeit, in vain.

2009?

My take on Suffering (continued)

I started out with the perspective of personal unhappiness. Fixed and factual; just a reflection of the pain and suffering that is endemic to this planet especially at this time. It still feels that way at times, yet i can see it is unhelpful to be rooted in this belief or perspective. I choose not to continue the violence towards myself and others. For it is violence to not accept love, beauty and awe as well. Life is (for me) neither good, nor bad, it simply is an experience that is. I may need to write more about this , but let me continue on the thread i am meandering on and get back to appreciating without judgment in a bit. I love to write about love, not as a Hollywood saccharine sweetness, but as a force of the universe, a god, that we are between, Like Venus (love) and Mars (war) we on earth orbit between these tow poles, often forgetting that there is more space than matter in the universe, and we are surrounded by space, and when we allow ourselves some space, it is much easier to deal with emotions or reality, for they are (however powerful) only occurring temporally in vast spaciousness, that is also within us.

I have come to question the validity of "my"feelings, as they tend to loop, and if (or when) i carefully examine them, I see that they (the feelings) are habitual and originate in very early experiences. So what is happening actually is rather than be present, with a situation that is unique and never to be repeated, In fear, or unconscious habit, I contract and lose touch with reality and emotionally fall into a traumatic loop of the past. It's so bizarre actually, It's like time travel, and the irony is I'm missing out on life and so of course there is a deep knowing that life is pointless, if not lived now. So this desperation or seeing that I'm not present can reinforce the hopelessness in the moment.

The real miracle or wonder in life is as soon as i accept whatever is going on (even me not being present, or "looping") I seem to have access to the present which is (not to be overly cliche) truly a present or a gift. For I am surrounded by beauty and love and horror and destruction, yet i am not starving, or being tortured (except at times by the past) and I have been given the key, and i have been encouraged to walk out of the cell of my beliefs, into freedom of not knowing.

I love Leonard Cohen, he speaks of this so eloquently. "I don't trust my feelings, feelings come and go". He also speaks of how the inherent flaw "crack" in everything in the physical world is where "light" or god comes in. There is that moment when you see your beloved as less than perfect and all of a sudden, your heart is sundered open for there is no going back in love, only forward into what is to be.

We have no choice, if we truly love, for love cares not for us, it only cares for its inevitable movement forward into life, into to what is, and to be, and again and again, we fall to our knees, saying "yes".