Meanderings One.

The promise of warmth drove me toward Los Angeles. I had never been there, and the hatred bred within my Colorado heart to abhor that city needed to be confirmed, or denied. Looking out across that wind-swept desert, stretching out between Grand Junction and the Sierras, filled me with excitement.

What drivel.

The cars made their goings down the highway I lived off of. The slamming of car doors, opening and closing, kept me awake in my drowsy sleep of imperfection - too hot, too cold, somewhere in the middle, but anxious. 

The cars are our protective bubbles. They replaced the horse, whose majesty evolved alongside our own. But now, we had evolved our own mechanical slaves that run on ancient sunlight and come with climate control.  Driving through the Reservation, looking into the expanse of a black and cloudy night, and so little infrastructure, wondering what the car has brought the American Indian - is it the same power as the horse?

I wondered if the Indian selling shoddy jewelry at the gas station was truly in need of a tank of gas. After we drove off into that dry and frigid night, my fingers cracking from the lack of moisture, shame overwhelmed me. I should have given something. But, lacking job and taking this trip on credit and with the hope my new degree would bring a career, we were, ourselves, in the beans-and-rice times.  Yet, here I sat, comfortable in my car-bubble, free from fear of the frigid cold, and that Indian was peddling jewelry for gas. 

I hate myself. 

I hate my culture. My race.

My Programming.

I can’t get his face out of my mind, my fear of him, my shame of where he is, of where I am, because of all those before me have taken. Have, ‘won.’

I could have helped. I should have helped. But years seeing those around me fall to addictions have programmed me to believe most asking for money are asking for fuel, not to feed their protective bubble cars, but to feed their damage with substances that make them forget. I cannot give through channels of peddling and cardboard signs, with that money possibly feeding someone’s need of bottle or powder.

How Imperial.

We drove on, after I tainted their water with my Imperial urine, to defeat the storm that came upon him that night. And I couldn’t spare a tank of gas.

Thoughts of a Colorado Scorched Nihilist.

The fire had scortched her heart like it had seared the hillside.  The trees stood like black sentinels overlooking her downhill valley drive toward money.  Black sentinels that reflected the scar she had experienced in mentally giving up everything, yet winding up losing nothing.  They reigned on the horizon, and reminded her of the futility of it all.

Nothing felt better than being in the FJ.  Driving in the FJ made her feel in control, ready to drive away from any harm that came at her.  She could think in the FJ, knowing it was hers, her big blue ox, taking her into the forest, to remember her origins.

She loved her woman.  She loved holding her at night, hugging her tightly as her body became more toned - she could get closer to her lover's core as she lost weight, and it made the love linger longer in the morning.  The morning would come, bright with anticipation of newness, of birth, of hope, only to be dashed by chasing the money to give to a landlord and the debtors who don't care.

Death didn't seem like the end in nature the way it felt in the cultural construct of the mental framework of neurons derived from years of social conditioning.  She looked at the sentinel trees, lonesome in their death, yet their sacrifice gave more life to the understory, and the grasses and shrubs had already begun to fill in.  Death gave new life.  She thought of that, recalling a week prior releasing her father's cremains on the tundra.  His ashes lingered there for a while, defying the wind, and then dispersing to provide new carbon to the alpine.

Tomorrow she would have to return to the concrete palace of her monetary need.  She did not look forward to it.  She hoped it would be different, that something positive would happen, that the monotony wouldn't be as painful or as empty of meaning as the morning drive felt.  She hoped it wouldn't be hurtful, that kindness would discover her, that compassion would dance in her heart and she would remember the joy she had in lovemaking on her weekend.

Her lover's health concerned her.  She looked at her silent sleeping lady, curled up with the black cat stray who had chosen her, and wondered if she could ever provide the economic stability needed to make her lover not hurt so much physically.  She couldn't think of anything but to go back to school.  She wanted to provide for her beloved, for her beloved was the kind of soul-family that is so  perfect it defies logic and science.  It was a phenomenon, and it was to be treasured.  The cat placed his paw on her arm as she typed, and the silence of his love and her lovers arm wrapped around her waist was all she lived for.  It was divine, if there was divinity at all.

On the dusk drive not too many evenings ago, she saw an owl.  The owl looked right at her and her lover, as if to burn it's intense energy into them.  The owl healed the burn caused by the fire; it reminded the women of unity, of the greater picture.  But those symbols fade into the grey of concrete and cash and debt, and soon they were afraid once more.

The woman had woken this morning to the image of her beloved being t-boned in the corolla.  The corolla didn't have adequate protection from those kinds of impacts.  She received the call, coming from her in-laws, who the State had deemed next of kin.  She didn't even know her beloved hadn't made it into work.  She held her crumpled and cold body in the morgue, her tears falling on it's hard lifelessness.

What is the purpose of life?  To torture the soul with the hope of eternal love?  To taunt the inner child into believing it isn't broken?  All I know is that my beloved and my cats mean more to me than money, more to me than happiness, and more to me than false dreams of a broken childhood.

Sense of Self

I cannot contain it any longer.  This sense of self has built up a pressure which begs release.

I was 21 and had just recently discovered that I couldn’t stop being interested in the occult, and that I couldn’t stop being interested in women.  I couldn’t hold it back, and I was scared.  My interest in women led me to seek other beliefs because I always felt like the judeochristian god had made a mistake in making me.

I read a passage in the bible late at night, and that passage mentioned something about how people who denied the judeochristian god would burn for eternity in a lake of fire.  I was terrified: how could this god state that he loved me, yet also state that I was a blasphemous entity who sinned simply by desiring women?  I had wanted girls since I was in 2nd grade.  I remember asking mom when I was in grade 3 if it was okay to have a crush on someone even if it was a girl, and mom said no, that girls were supposed to like boys.  For 13 years I had tried to hide this, tried disparately to like boys, even got drunk to try to have sex with one of them, and the time had come where I couldn’t deny it any longer: I was a lesbian, and if that was true, God had made a mistake with making me, and if god made a mistake, then perhaps the entire Bible was also a mistake, so why should I trust it any longer?

I sobbed myself into a frenzy, knowing that if the Bible was true, I was going to spend eternity in hell simply because I was a lesbian, and I couldn’t deny it anymore.  I sobbed into my pillow and hoped that maybe magic existed, and maybe God could also be a Goddess, and that maybe women weren’t the dirty little ribs they were projected in countless verses in that holy book.  Maybe me liking girls wasn’t a mistake, maybe God didn’t make mistakes, and only humans did, and the humans writing that book were all men and perhaps they were flawed, too.

I was whimpering into my pillow, hoping for sleep to come to my endless insomnia, crying out to the god I had loved all my life not to smite me for feeling how I felt, and I felt a presence come into the room.  I had felt the presence before, once as a child as I tried to sleep after a nightmare.  It was solid golden love, the kind of white light the sun puts out when you stare at it midday.  It was feminine, but it was also masculine, but it felt more mothering in that moment than it felt fathering.  It came to me and held me in my sobbing, and gave me a presence of love and gratitude and appreciation for my simple existence that I stopped crying and simply felt held.  Held like I was a baby in it’s arms, held like I had never been held before.  

It told me all the answers to all the questions I asked that night.  It even told me about aliens, and how all the fearful conspiracies I was scared of wouldn’t really matter even if based in truth, because I was being looked after, and I was loved as much as I felt in that moment all the time.  I just couldn’t be aware of it all the time because I was distracted by reality.  It told me I wouldn’t remember most of what we talked about because now wasn’t the time for me to remember all that, but instead to remember I was connected to divine love all the time, no matter what I felt, no matter how bad it got.  

I asked if there was a mental or physical image I could remember and recount that would quickly remind me of it’s love for me, and my specialness simply by Being.  It gave me warmth, and the sunny golden white color, and this color surrounded our universe, which was expanding into it, but it was greater than the universe and held the universe in it’s hand.  That golden white then pricked into the universe in a wormhole like stream, like the wormhole of Farscape films, and spiraled throughout the universe and into our galaxy, and had tethers to all the other galaxies and solar systems we passed in that white light.  It then came into our solar system, spiraling and threading around all the planets, encompassing all the planets, but then it finally got to earth, and split up like a root system around the earth.  The earth was surrounded by this light of love, and each single tether was connected to every single person, and everyone had the umbilical chord of divine white light connecting them to it all the time, and connecting us all in a grid to one another, and ultimately every single thing in the universe.  The image then zoomed out, and the entire universe was encompassed by this white light, and it was everywhere, even though at first it looked as though the two were separate.  I then felt extreme joy and love, struggling to stay awake, and the loving goddess like entity said, you will sleep now my dear, and remember this forever.

this conscious awareness of a universal grid of love has governed my life for years.  It wasn’t easy at the beginning.  I woke that morning and wrote everything down into a word document entitled “God.”  That document was never found again, nor was my printed copy of it.  It said I would forget, all but the image, and I did, but I never lost the sense of the grid, and I never stopped feeling th e love teeming into me from whatever that entity represented.  

I never wanted to be deeply spiritual, but this awareness of this collective love from the white light of golden appreciation has changed all that.  I sought to ignore it in science and agnosticism, but I couldn’t, as it would scream at me to remember.  I was cut off from it when I focused on the pain of the world, the injustice, the rape of women, the death of animals, the BP spill.  All of that grieved me into states of depression that left me with no hope, wanting to die, attempting to die.  Being a lesbian in a nation so wrought with Christian ideology, I felt like a blasphemer, and I tried to end my life because of it.  I was hospitalized, I was persecuted for being gay, I was shamed.  And I made it through.  

I have made it through in large part because of that night long ago.  All I wish to do is share this love that I have found.  It will sound insane.  It will sound like I am very individualistically selfish, but I have come to realize my sense of self is as broad as the light which came to me that evening.  You and I truly are one, and it doesn’t matter how different we are, we are the same, connected by the same grid, the same love, and all I want to do is love you as much as I can.  I want to love as deeply as possible for as long as possible in this physical form, because I know that the awareness of love can heal and be the catalyst for moving things which are distractions from this love.  All of the suffering is but a contrasting shadow to challenge us to be more.  It is there so we can desire something better, no matter what that contrast is to you, it is present simply to make you be something greater tomorrow than you are today.

How I Will Vote Today, and Why.

I am posting how I will vote today, because I think as a member of a tail of a population, it is statistically interesting.  Also, I think I'm funny and want to write me down some political humor.  Here is a link to a sample of my ballot:http://car.elpasoco.com/Election/Documents/2012%20Sample%20Ballot%20Rev%2012%20Combined.pdf

I did a lot of research, as much as possible on the judges in particular.  I don't mind if you disagree with everything I post, and I don't mind if you agree, JUST VOTE!  I try to base my vote on human rights equality and on changing a system I find to be broken (which is a laugh - systems as broken as our nation pretty much need to implode and start anew, but whatever we'll play the game).

El Paso County Ballot issues specific to my local region:

President:  Barack Obama

Why:  He at least entertains the idea that LGBT persons deserve equality; he is liked by countries who were polled that I admire and respect; Bush put us in a pretty crappy situation and I think this guy is really trying to keep us afloat, but I certainly do not agree with a majority of what he practices and preaches, such as getting my vote in the first election, then strengthening the sketchy Patriot Act.  If I could vote for anyone and have it count, I'd vote for Barbara Marx Hubbard with Ralph Nader as her second in command, but that's simply not possible yet so I'll have to choose something other than a corporate businessman who shipped manufacturing jobs out of country to save some dough, and who continues to consider homosexuals less than deserving of equality.

HR District 5:  Dave Anderson, Unaffiliated

Why:  This guy is very eager in strengthening local economies.  He is also an advocate for transparency of food, seems to be all about buying locally and supporting local farms, and is level-headed enough to attack these issues directly.  I would rather him than Dough Lamborn, who literally told Beth in an email he 'understood her desire for civil union equality, but simply would not vote yes to it' presumably due to his religious beliefs.  I can't vote for a man who is so closed-minded on the topic of diversity.

Regent CU:  Daniel Ong, Libertarian.

Why:  I'm sick and tired of the Republicrat Demicant option.  Daniel Ong graduated from CU as a non-traditional student, and saw how economically difficult it was for nontraditional students to graduate from college, and vies to support their population in education.  I am in considerable debt because of CU, and I'd like to see someone as the regent who supports a person like me returining to school, completing an education, and not winding up a debt slave.  He seems like the best choice for this.

Regent CU, District 5: Undecided and undereducated information to vote.

Why:  Not a single person from the UCCS region answered the questions posed by CU students with regard to the positions at hand for this election.  I think that verifies the continual fact I see that COLORADO SPRINGS IS LAME.  I do not like Hybl and would not like to see him retained, however he at least works to give money back into the community.  I am unsure about this one.

State Senate, District 12: Dave Respecki

Why:  Both the other candidates, James Michael Bristol and Bill L. Cadman are in favor of traditional marriages as being those between a man and a woman.  Bill Cadman, as the State Senate Minority leader, blocked LGBT equality in the recent vote in favor of an amendment to ensure us equal rights with civil unions in Colorado.  I will not vote for such a person, and I cannot fathom how the vote nearly went through, and persons like Bill Cadman voted in favor of THEOCRACY, rather than equality.  Dave Respecki has little to say on this issue, but sometimes actions speak louder than words, and the other options sound dire to me.

State Representative, District 20:  Goldenborough

Why:  Bob Gardner, the current Representative (Republican) also responded negatively to Beth and my plea to him regaring passing the civil union bill.  He stood in favor of Christian theocracy versus human rights equality, and therefore Goldenborough gets my vote.

District Attorney:  HOW IS IT A CHOICE IF THERE IS ONLY ONE OPTION?

Retain Supreme Court Justice Coats

Why:  He seemed very level headed and neutral with the cases I reviewed, and I think level-headedness and balance is essential to justice being properly carried out.

Court of Appeals:  Retained all but Graham.  What he gave his time to gave me the willies.  Sure, not necessarily educated, but instinct ruled him out.

District Judges, 4th Judicial:  Retained all but Schutz

Why:  I would prefer to see more humanists and less Judeo-Christians in seats of power.  A bias indeed, but I think people need to keep their beliefs out of court, and most persons are not big enough to do that.  I kept Sells, a known Christian, because Bill Ritter put him in, and I don't think Ritter would do that if the guy wasn't balanced.

County Commissioner District 3:  Morris

Why:  Too many Republicans down here, we've got to balance it somewhere, to create some level of comprehension in the minds of those in powers that we'd prefer diversity.  It's another option where I feel I have little choice because both parties are identical to me, but I'd prefer someone who isn't all about Neoconservatism than the opposite.

Amendment S:  No

Why:  I don't like seeing a change in status in any area of employment where temporary worker status increases from 6months to 9months.  I've been a temporary worker in Colorado, and we don't have a lot of rights being a place of at-will employment, and to extend that sketchy temp-period of time for state employees sounds really scary for those people and more like slavery than anything else.

Amendment 64:  Yes

Why: Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a doped-up dreadhead, at least not anymore.  I will say that marijuana saved my life.  I was on many different prescriptions at one point for a misdiagnosis.  These prescriptions depleted my already deficient brain of neurotransmitters, and I attempted suicide twice while in that state.  At one point, the only thing keeping me from 'doing me in' was weed.  It's a medicine, and it should be as readily available to people as possible so people who are unable to afford insurance can at least get some relief of pain/illness.  I do not like how it is being treated as a drug and restricted to persons 21 or older, especially for persons who are younger than that and who use it to fight cancer and such, but I think an amendment could take care of an issue like that.  I also believe that growing hemp for fuel, food, textiles, and paper is a much more renewable option than is growing and cutting down trees, or water-needy cotton for the same purposes.  The best shirt I own is made of hemp, and it's lasted longer than it's organic cotton counterparts.

Amendment 65: Yes

Why:  Corporate personhood is the biggest threat to our Constitutional rights as citizens.  If a corporation is considered a person, with the same rights as you or me, then we have absolutely no level playing ground because they have more money than God, and we as average citizens can't typically get that much money.  Money buys lobbyists, lobbyists tell Representatives how to vote, and voila, you wake up in the Corporate Oligarchy we are all living in.  This amendment will help us take our rights as citizens back and keep large corporate monies out of politics, which will help us regain democracy.  It's a bipartisan issue, and to learn more, go here: www.movetoamend.org

1A: Yes

Why:  Colorado Springs is not only LAME, it's unsafe.  This will help make it more safe.  I don't mind taxation.  If we're gonna play the big-britches game of developed-nation-states, we need to wear the big taxation underpants.  I know it's all fucked up and us poor people will get taxed more, but that means we'll revolt and maybe get off the couch now and again, right?  Give a shit about something other than the current television program, perhaps?  Let's shake it up and increase taxes

1B: Yes

Why: Limiting terms means we have more democratic control.  Limit those motherfuckers as much as possible to hold them accountable while they are our elected representatives.  

4A: Yes

Why:  Fires are terrifying, let's help mitigate them with taxation.

5A: Yes

Why:  Southern Colorado is lame, and our roads make it even more lame.  Let's put some money into making our roads less lame so rockslides don't happen and people can start transitioning from driving slow in the left lane, to driving slow in the right lane.

The Botched Birth of a Maddening Thought.

I’ve been using this blog quite poorly, and haven’t been editing every little thing.  One of my favorite writers and researchers uses his blog as a pre-game for seeing if the idea will take, and what people would like or be interested in reading, which helps him in navigating the seas of book-writing.

Forgive that, I was using the blog as a guinea pig, thus you as readers as guinea pigs, and so I wasn’t editing it much.  Sometimes ideas need to get out, and sometimes forcing some sort of social pressure on Self assists that getting-out. Although few humans have made the choice to comment, there does seem to be some interest in what stories I have to share, based upon the frequencies of visits in the last year.

I am a fairly paranoid person, and I think too much.  This has been more of a handicap than an asset to my life purpose, but I now see that is just one perspective, and a rather negative one at that.  I have stories and injustices in my head constantly screaming at me to be acknowledged and shared.  Most of these stories are darker than what is easily conveyed in conversation, and so they have been sitting in my head for a decade or more eating away at my trust of others.  Well, others have helped in the waring down of my trust, but that is not the issue here.  I cannot go on with all the stress of my life and also hold and contain these stories inside my head.  It builds up too much anger, and it isn’t healthy to keep these tales hidden.  The tales are too large for a blog, and I would prefer not to have a ‘serial blog’ unless I have no other choice.  For now, a book will have to do.

This requires considerable encouragement from anyone who considers me or my voice of any value.  It is the first 20 readers who change the course of the writer’s path, which makes your interest very valuable and important to me.  I need encouragement, as for me beginnings have always been difficult.  I was the last kid to remove the training wheels, and I’ve never been blooming with the rest of my peers on the standard path, which makes me second guess myself all too often.  

I prefer to read nonfiction, and fiction hasn’t ever been my favorite thing to read, because most of it isn’t very good.  Lately, I’ve begun to realize that dark psychological murder mystery and conspiracy thrillers will more likely be where my mind will wander each day in weaving tales, and that is a good medium for me to explore in the writing of a novel.  I have an outline for a story centered in my tiny mountain town, Green Mountain Falls.  It will be perverse, it will involve justification, and it will touch base on deeper issues I observe in our culture, namely the abuse of the innocent by persons holding power.  This will be the core of the tale, as I do not wish to waste my life writing unimportant stories that will perhaps bring home bacon but not have any cultural criticism involved.  

I will begin to use this blog as a means of forming and shaping this idea, discussing the writing journey, its obstacles and joys, as well as getting smaller stories out which may not be suitable for a thriller.

That is all.  Thanks for reading, if you are doing so.  I will keep you posted on this idea, and give you snippets of the story so as perhaps you will reveal to me if there is interest in you or in others for such a tale.

A Rapidly Realistic and Quite Unromantic Zombie Tale.

Once upon a time, in order to get her partner Beth off her back, Jenny decided she would attempt to write a retarded story about a retarded fear everyone but her seemed to like to indulge in.

The fear surrounded the dystopic posthuman monster category known as zombies.  Jenny didn’t think zombies were very interesting, in fact, she thought they were about the most bland monster anyone could conjure up in their imaginations.  She thought they were about the most absurd form of fear anyone could have, because as a rule Jenny did not think people would devolve, or turn into rabid raging savages as time passed.  The concept of “The Road” was not exactly what Jenny believed would happen in the future, and to drag on and on the likely 1950‘s-imagined-and-created monster which first represented communism and later represented savage capitalism really didn’t interest her at all.

Most of Jenny’s friends loved the idea of zombies.  For Jenny, the Zombie Apocalypse wasn’t something to look forward to, nor was it something that ever seemed even remotely biologically possible.  It goes against all manner of viral life and biology to have something ‘return’ from the dead and walk around, attempting to ingest all other humans and turn it into itself, thus rendering no possibility for long-term life overall, as matter will decay, including zombie bodies.  No one ever goes into the rate of decay of the human body, and the explanations of zombies still existing months after viral infection is completely absurd - the lack of circulation because of the heart stopping would almost immediately result in a rate of decay which would override the viral infection in the brain, thus rendering skeletons, not zombies.  I can hardly imagine a mind such as mine could ever outdo the likes of Larry Blamire in a tale, as I cannot recreate or improve on “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra,” and that’s about as retarded as a real live zombie possibility would literally be.

So, no, I don’t want to write about zombies.  I mean, all I could say was:

Once upon a time, there was a virus that wiped out the brains of some cannibals in a forest.  This virus, which was actually a prion, but let’s not get too technical as most people can’t even fathom a protein which behaves as though it is biologically capable of reproducing without all the necessary ingredients for the comprehension of ‘life’ according to the ‘experts.‘  So for the sake of the fact that most people reading anything are fairly more intelligent than those who do not read, but most people reading fiction are likely less intelligent than those who read nonfiction as they would prefer to hide in entertainment, and so they don’t want to think, ergo we will call our brain-prion a ‘virus.‘  

This ‘virus’ infected some pigmies who were still maintaining the restrictive shamanistic practice of ritualistic cannibalism.  In so doing, a small number of human beings contracted the illness, because only a few of them were actually allowed to be high enough in the hierarchy to participate in the rite, thus making all of these persons also male.  

The ‘virus’ took several years if not decades to manifest, and when it did, the persons affected were so debilitated by it that they could barely move.  The lack of food going into them resulted in a weakening of the body, as the ‘virus’ caused enough nausea to reduce apetite, due to the fact that it was slowly ingesting brain tissue, which would naturally make these ‘zombies’ dizzy and unable to eat, much less be able to tell their legs to move properly.  

I would imagine the effects of the zombie ‘virus’ would assuredly induce an overall lack of the central nervous system to convey the proper signals to the external organs and limbs of the infected person, creating numbness and tingling, and likely paralysis, which means that the ‘zombie’ would just lie there, moaning and groaning for want of nutrients and water, and eventually succumb to comatose paralysis and death.  If the ‘virus’ at that point switched into its desire to reproduce, and if that reproduction for some bizarre reason took the pathway of induction into another host by way of a bite festering with particulates located in the saliva, well, I suppose the now-paralyzed-semi-corpse would gnash it’s teeth, and most family members would probably have enough agility to avoid a bite from their once virile kindred.  Caretakers of an ill person who dies yet still maintains mobility to gnash and thrash will likely listen to their natural aversion and behave accordingly with avoidance and quite possibly extermination of the ‘mobile’ corpse by way of fire or decapitation.  Such an act of extermination would render the 

‘virus’ unable to reproduce, and there the story would likely end.

If the story did not end there, keep in mind that pigmies live near the equator, so there is a high rate of decay occurring due to the even amount of sunlight, heat, and moisture.  So, chances are this zombie would only last as long as the body was able to avoid decay, and if in the likely possibility these pigmies are living at a poverty level similar to that found in most developing countries, they are living in either squalor, or close enough to natures processes that decay would occur likely even more rapidly than it would in a developed and sterile nation such as the united states.  

If by some random chance the zombie bit and infected another human, chances are that human is either slow, immunocompromised, or stupid, in which case the ‘virus’ would not spread nearly as rapidly as hollywood projections would like us to imagine.  If in the highly unlikely chance that the ‘virus‘ were to infect someone in a developed country, it would be rapidly eradicated due to big-government infringement, and wouldn’t hardly even make the news.  If it hit someplace like the US, it would likely hit a coastal city, which as anyone with half a brain knows, a coastal ecotone means more moisture and thus a higher rate of decay, and once again we run into the inevitable reality that the bacteria which feed on dead flesh would outpace the ability for the ‘virus‘ to populate more hosts, and thus the zombie story ends rather uneventfully and quite unromantically.

The End. 

Contact your Congressperson to vote no on PIPA.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

STOP SOPA/PIPA - Protect Internet from Censorship

What is SOPA?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) is on the surface a bill that attempts to curb online piracy. Sadly, the proposed way it goes about doing this would devastate the online economy and the overall freedom of the web. It would particularly affect sites with heavy user generated content. Sites like Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, and others may cease to exist in their current form if this bill is passed.

What is PIPA?

The Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968) is SOPA's twin in the Senate. Under current DMCA law, if a user uploads a copyrighted movie to sites like Youtube, the site isn't held accountable so long as they provide a way to report user infringement. The user who uploaded the movie is held accountable for their actions, not the site. PIPA would change that - it would place the blame on the site itself, and would also provide a way for copyright holders to seize the site's domain in extreme circumstances.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation laid out four excellent points as to why the bills are not only dangerous, but are also not effective for what they are trying to accomplish:

• The blacklist bills are expensive. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that PIPA alone would cost the taxpayers at least $47 million over 5 years, and could cost the private sector many times more. Those costs would be carried mostly by the tech industry, hampering growth and innovation.
• The blacklist bills silence legitimate speech. Rightsholders, ISPs, or the government could shut down sites with accusations of infringement, and without real due process.
• The blacklist bills are bad for the architecture of the Internet. But don't take our word for it: see the open letters that dozens of the Internet's concerned creators have submitted to Congress about the impact the bills would have on the security of the web.
• The blacklist bills won't stop online piracy. The tools these bills would grant rightsholders are like chainsaws in an operating room: they do a lot of damage, and they aren't very effective in the first place. The filtering methods might dissuade casual users, but they would be trivial for dedicated and technically savvy users to circumvent.

Anti-Change-Girl and the Journey of Embracing Change

There is a lot of fear in this world.  It keeps everyone from being who they really are, which is beautiful Love, and glorious Light.  You came to this Earth to experience being the Creator of your own reality, to embrace what it means to choose to evolve as a unique and special individual.  

The fear we are all exposed to comes from the uncertainty of this time.  It isn’t a time like any other.  Some compare it to the fall of the Roman Empire, but it really isn’t comparable, because the Roman Empire didn’t completely rely on a finite energy source which was quickly disappearing, like we do.  Their world didn’t have roughly seven billion people on it, either.  So, from my understanding of history, we are experiencing something that has never been experienced before.  Just like every one of us, this situation is unique.

The essence of 2012 is the summation of this uncertainty.  We have all heard talk of Mayan and Zuni prophecies, of the End of the World, and of Extraterrestrial Disclosure.  There is a tremendous amount of fear circling these predictions, and what was but a joking whisper of conspiracy theories has become a rather loud cacophony of differing opinions, disbelief in some, belief in others, and fear abounding.

Out of this noise I keep hearing and reading and hoping and fearing, the only thing that seems to calm my heart and soul is the idea of a massive conscious shift in awareness that we, the human species, must change and embrace drastic change to survive the consequences of our collective actions.  We all live on planet Earth, and most of us would like to keep living here, which means things have got to change.

Change is a scary thing for most people; no one really likes the initial resistance that change brings to your life, so most folks try to avoid it, and then in avoiding it, most lose the ability to control the change.  By not embracing and allowing change to come into your life, and by not changing how you think about and identify with change, it has been my experience that change winds up controlling you.  What I mean by this is difficult to communicate in words.  I will paint a picture.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was forced to move to Canada by her Evil-Parents.  Her Evil-Parents had made a decision about her life, without consulting her, that they would move to Canada in the hopes of pursuing a better, more successful and bountiful future.  No one seemed to give a rats ass about what the little girl wanted, and shrugged off her vocalized hurt by saying repeatedly that the “change would be good for her in the long run.”  Huh, whatever that meant. to Anti-Change Girl, that was a death sentence, because life in her perspective was more about playing and less about years passing than it was for her more wizened parents.  

Anti-Change-Girl decided she would be aggressive and rude in approaching this change of place and experience.  She resisted it by placing a massive flag of her native nation outside her window.  She protested by screaming “America is better than Canada!” while biking around her neighborhood.  She got into fisticuffs with boys who called her a boy, and not a tomboy (there is a distinct difference, you know), and she refused to wear dresses like the Canada-girls and would pack jeans in her knapsack daily to prevent the enforcement of dress-attire on her by her evil mother, who apparently wanted Anti-Change-Girl to be prissy and Canadian.

Time passed, and Anti-Change-Girl found her niche, like most animals do.  She was an artistic tomboy who loved nature who sought to extend kindness wherever she went.  Most people didn’t really know what to do with her, but she had friends, and wound up loving Canada.  One day, her Evil Parents decided to change her life without consulting her, and moved back to the United States.  Anti-Change-Girl had to try to fit in once more in a now foreign native home.  Her “evil” parents had been right in the beginning, when they believed Canada would be good for her, she just didn’t see it until much later, when she recognized that a different nation brought to her the awareness that global diversity is beautiful.

What sparked this altercation in how Anti-Change-Girl views change was the acceptance of Change being the only constant in life.  It was the initial change of moving to a separate country, unique in it’s culture and systems, and then returning to her native land, which caused Anti-Change-Girl to be the different entity she is today, and which will enable Anti-Change-Girl to be more adaptable to the changes facing her and her species.  She had no understanding of this long-time-comprehension as a child, for she had no past to go by and to learn from.

Change is inevitable.  It is why you choose to be here, now.  The only thing you can control is how you think about your reality.  From that thought comes the allowance of the thought being born into material reality, and the allowance guides you to take the actions necessary to create what it is you wish to create in this existence of yours. You are here to be a Creator, are you not?  Anti-Change-Girl needed to alter her understanding of the change of moving, and it took her many decades to do so.  She wound up seeing it as a tremendous learning experience that shaped nearly every aspect of her identity. 

By embracing change as inevitable, and by allowing change into your life to make the life you wish to make, the fear of uncertainty dissipates.  This is what the “mass consciousness shift” is on about, but it all begins with the individual, and grows into the greater human consciousness, and ultimately changes the world, and how the world is experienced by the individual.  

It boils down to how you wish to experience this moment of Now: Do you want to see the Change that you are experiencing in your life as, “Yet another experience where someone is taking advantage of you?”  Do you want to experience change as, “Yet another horrible Trauma that winds up with you as the Victim?”  That will only keep you in a state of victim, continuing to live your past-experience, never moving beyond them.  To move past the hurt and the trauma, the death, and the change, you must see that how you think about those experiences shape how you respond to them.  If you think of an ending as a negative, you will never see the ending as a new beginning! 

How you choose to see yourself shapes your reality.  If you hate how you look, how you feel, and where you are, you will create more hatred, not less.  You will resist change, not embrace it.  You must begin to love and accept yourself, and accept the changes you are now experiencing as inevitable aspects of the human condition.  You are Love manifest in Material form, and to be the change you wish to be in this life, you must accept yourself, and accept the changes not with negativity, but with hope in growth towards a new beginning.

A Wise Shaman once told me that the highest form of Creation is first to think it, then to speak it, then to sing it, and finally, to dance it into being.  What will you dance into being today?

When A Tree Falls

When a tree falls in a forest, does anyone care?
Does anyone give a shit, about a tree?

All I have, all that I am, was given to me, by the planet I stand upon, and by Her trees. The green life. Every cell in my body, well, almost every cell, carries a small organ whose roots can be traced to some of the first beings on this planet which derived their energy from the sun. Via endosymbiosis, that purple photosynthetic bacterium became the mitochondria which were inevitably given to me by my mother, who got them from her mother, all the way back to the first female Homo sapiens.

Can you see the connection? Can you see the link?
The chain of evolutionary history traces my very existence back to photosynthesizing organisms, light-eaters, making me somewhat “one” with all present green life, albeit vaguely. The Matriarch of All I know, all I can touch and experience as life, or that which was once alive, is this planet. This Earth, and her wondrous biosphere.

I owe her everything. She gave me my breath. She gave me my energy. I cannot see Earth as anything but Mother, feminine and holy, sacred and patient. I cannot fathom a lifeless sphere, I cannot tolerate matter without nonmaterial substance. It makes no sense to me, to see a world with no soul, a planet with no heart.

I am a virus on her back, a solitary virus in a sea of human-plaque, our square-like brick ever breeding, always consuming. Consuming is all I do. I am not chloroplast-life, I am mitochondrial-life, and I eat and use and ingest that which is before me. Me, and my seven billion brothers and sisters.

I am a virus who woke up and realized I no longer want to be a virus. I no longer want to thrive on the back of my host, sucking life from her and the species which represent her whole. Don’t they have a voice, too? Don’t they have a say as to what us pink viral primates do with each and every breath that the forest, the green life, more or less, gave to us in billions of years of experience?

If it were me, and I was in the position of Gaia, I would kill us all. I would terminate all life, and let the biosphere begin anew, or close to new. But she won’t be doing the killing, our ever-patient Mother, no, we will be doing it. We will choke on our own filth. We will kill an atmosphere that took three billion years to form. For what, exactly, for money? For power? For the primate-driven need to be Alpha?

Where does patience come into our genes, where do we find a place in our human hearts to stop this maddening consumption and embrace symbiosis?

I don’t think it will ever happen. It isn’t because I am a pessimist. It isn’t because I am depressed. I am those things at times, but I am more often seeking the silver lining than many believe, because I am still alive. I haven’t done myself in, and I do think of it, with all the sorrow I know I create. My house is warmed by ancient sunlight, taken from the Dakotas, the raped hole filled with toxic waste, like semen left in a victim after rape. My isolated life in the mountains exists, all because of ancient sunlight, removed rather impatiently by my need for a warm belly, a warm plate, a warm bed.

All of this is my fault. Not mine alone, no, but for my part, I know. I know I have built structures out of trees that are older than I can comprehend in my pitiful +/-80 year lifespan. I know I fueled up my vehicle with gulf oil after the Deepwater Disaster. I know I eat the shrimp which should be feeding other mammals. I know, and I carry that knowing none too easily.

This knowing keeps me up at night. I can’t get to bed without distraction, and I am addicted to distraction because it keeps me from leaving sooner than my loved ones would like. I cannot do that to them, they love me so much. It would be unfair to my Mother, who links me to this cycle of giving and patience that I can barely comprehend.

So, when a tree falls in a forest, do you give a damn? I know you don’t, nor do I. You wipe your ass with redwood just like most of us. You pick the mucus out of your nose and smear it on a Kleenex, not caring if that Kleenex was once a tree a thousand years old. After all, trees have no feelings. Trees don’t weep when they are cut down. They don’t lash out and smite you as they are toppled by your machines. Hell, matter has no feeling, no conscience, according to the Darwin-world we have all adhered to. We live each day like this, believing a rock carries no worth, aside from it’s usable ore. It is the religion of our era, to see all matter as void of magic, unless of course, that matter is human.

The Elephant and the Crocodile

Had a dream last night. This is it’s tale:

I wondered what to do with the elephant and the crocodile. The crocodile was a rare albino, and the elephant was one of the oldest captive elephants in recorded history. They were starving in their cages, and no amount of peanuts thrown at the elephant could sate his appetite, or remove the weakness from his thin form and give him life again.

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo had gone bankrupt during the economic depression, and to salvage what they could, sold the animals which weren’t endangered to the strip malls in the hopes that their captivity would remind those shopping of the natural world. Zookeepers became part-time clerks who mucked stalls and prodded depressed beasts awake long enough to make a spectacle for the shoppers.

The government had just done something that made no sense whatsoever. They had made the decision to use small nuclear warheads on American soil. I believe their reason was to detonate the bombs underground in the bottom of deep shafts, to shock the planet into coughing up more fuel to supply our materialist greed. There never is a good reason for nuclear detonation, so I forgot their claim for it’s greatness, except to recall they were using the event to show how they were ‘safely getting rid of nuclear bombs in the name of world peace.’ By using it on us, and not others for a change.

Most Americans didn’t care, and only a handful put up any level of resistance. Those sparse few who found out about it found out too late to make any real change to government action. All our news and internet were now censored propaganda, very much like the internet of Our-Motherland-China, so finding out about anything required a level of tech-knowledge that only a small number of persons possessed.

We had about a day to prepare for the seven warheads striking our Colorado eastern horizon, and could only salvage enough water for a month, but not enough food. I found hoarding food and water to be an act of folly; we were only delaying the inevitable death-by-nuclear-fallout by a month in some unknown future. I tried to gather as much water as I could, but the purest water was to be found in the richest neighborhoods, as they had access to the water which was most cleansed by filtration, and most Americans, myself included, had to make do with fluoridated-arsenic-and-Fukushima-laden tap supply. My father and I had to make a trip to the Broadmoor to find a spring which the public could access, and that was when the nukes hit.

My father was a shadow that followed me everywhere. He’s dead, but his memory and warding protect me throughout life. At times of intense stress, I can make his form out, following me. I was alone when the warheads met the horizon, aside from his ghost. My partner was "safe" and in our shelter in Manitou, but our separation only brought to mind how slim our chances were of seeing each other again, especially if I couldn’t get home with the water before the bombs hit, which was my present situation.

The Broadmoor was decorated with fancy strip malls and promenades, glitzing with the gold and green and red of Christmas, that most spectacular consumer-driven time of material worship. People were out and about, shopping the deals at the promenades, eating out and rutting in the bounty of glitzy things placed before them. Most Americans were too distracted to even notice the mushroom clouds popping up in the distance. Many were crowded around the flat screen tele-stations, little outposts of nonstop entertainment, to watch the current football game, shouting and whooping for their choice teams. I was near one of these tele-stations when I noticed the explosions in the distance. They happened almost instantaneously, blooming upward into the sky and dominating my view. They were surreally beautiful, reds and oranges and purples mingling with the blue and pinks of sunset. It looked like a Maxfield Parrish sky, and for a moment all was silent save for the football game blaring at the tele-station. The quiet seemed like a frequency-wake coming off the explosions, a tsunami of malice, hushing up all life before it. The birds stopped making noise. The cars came to halts in the middle of the thoroughfare, people getting out to witness Death running to meet them.

People began to vacate their cars and the stores and seek shelter. Most of them hadn’t any idea this was going to happen today. Some just laughed and continued watching the football games. I was so brokenhearted, for an instant the football seemed more comforting than anything else in the world. My eyes lingered on the red and white uniforms of the opposing team, watching them chase the ball around like ants hunting a crumb. It gave me a second of peace, but the terror soon welled up inside me. I may never see Beth again. I may die here, in this rich neighborhood, this material-mecca. I may die here...

I ran to a nearby mansion. The woman who owned the mansion had decorated it in the Roman style. She had onyx busts sitting on top of marble pillars, lining her garden which was beside the mall, so she could wander from her house through a garden and into a shopping center, never having to go far for her wants. Her house was decorated with a dark mahogany, each square tile of wood lined with shiny brass, which must have taken hours for her maid to clean. Her kitchen was lined with copper pans and her countertops were made of pink granite. It was decadent, warm, and inviting, so I ran inside through a broken window bordering her front door. Her front door was oak, ornately carved and lined with fleur-de-lis, pineapples, and spirals. A wall of glass flanked the eastern-facing side of the mansion, and I could see the mushrooms ever-expanding in the distance. I wondered if my kindred in the eastern country had made it, but I suspected they had not. When they had given over their property’s mineral rights to the gas company, I suspected they were closer to ground zero than anyone. I tried to phone earlier to warn them, but got no answer.

There were people eating outside the mansion on a deck, which circled the home and connected the owner to a five-star restaurant. The people eating dinner were carrying on as if the explosion hadn’t happened, but some were beginning to wake up from their gourmet-coma and panic at what they saw. I could not keep the tidal wave of people from entering the mansion, and part of me felt safe around more people, knowing that perhaps we could work together to survive this. I kept wondering if I wanted to survive this, and deduced I only wanted to survive if I was with Beth.

The woman who owned the mansion had it well-stocked with food for the coming holiday. It seemed she may be entertaining an army, and her availability of fresh produce was unbelievable. An icebox fridge set at the perfect temperature for vegetables and herbs was filled to the brim with all manner of organic bounty, and the first thing people did was immediately begin raiding her home for food. The woman phoned her home, and I answered. It seemed as though she had been alerted to a break-in, and she was quite irate. I told her that there had been seven nuclear explosions not 100 miles from her home, and that people had run in for cover. She was more concerned about her possessions than she was food or fallout-armageddon, so she aked me to “keep people in check and let them take all the food they want, so long as they keep my stuff alone. I saved for years working in a jewelry shop as a manager to obtain that wealth, and I’d like to keep it with me. It’s all I have.”

I found it to be bizarre that the woman cared less about the destruction of the biosphere supporting her, and the death soon to hit all of us nearby, than she cared about her bloody things. I figured if she didn’t see her food as gold, she wasn’t too bright and I wasn’t going to mention anything about it to her.

We created a feast before us, a feast lacking in meat and animal-products, but oddly nourishing. It gave everyone in the home energy, and it calmed their fears about the looming mushroom clouds in the background. We all believed if we kept ourselves shut up in the house, we may survive the initial fallout. The overall lack of knowledge regarding nuclear fallout was astounding. It was as if everyone believed that if they simply ducked and covered, they’d be okay.

People were looking to me for answers. They saw that I was more prepared than most, that I had an understanding that this event was going to happen before it did, so people began to rely on what I told them. I needed people to forage the nearby mall for items, blankets, foodstuff, and any survival gear or weaponry we could find. I led a team through the Roman-garden and into the mall’s covered promenade.

I figured we would soon have to eat our own kind to survive, and I wanted a crossbow for that moment, if it came. Something to protect myself from ravenous packs of humans seeking weaker human flesh to feed upon. Trauma can cause carnage and a lack of moral compass when it comes to survival. Nuclear fallout addles the logical mind, as well. I was expecting my jaunt back to Manitou to be a violent one, and I sought the sporting goods store for protection.

I found a crossbow and a handgun, and I loaded up. The security guards were as panicked as everyone else, apart from the children, which the parents were keeping calm by placing them around the animal pens in the middle of the mall eatery. Mothers were searching everywhere for peanuts to give to their children, so that the children could feed the elephant. My sister was in the mall, and I was glad to see her, but she seemed to have had some sort of nervous breakdown as she was just giddily kicking her bare feet in the water of the crocodile pond, laughing maniacally as the crocodile would lazily attempt to pull her in. The albino crocodile was so frail it hadn’t the energy to pull anyone in, and my sister found this to be quite hilarious. I looked at the crocodile, it’s ancient eyes glazed over with cataracts. It stared into my soul with a piercing gaze of knowing, it’s eye moistened with tears as it had been weeping. I heard a splash and looked to see the elephant had fallen into the water with the crocodile, it’s trunk lifted above the water level to breathe, it’s skeletal mass struggling to swim. The crocodile didn’t bother with the elephant, their shared years of captivity seemed to have created a level of mutual respect between them. They were alone in a sea of monstrous selfish primates, more kin than enemy. Neither animal attacked the other, both seemed more calm in the same pool of water than they were when separate. I wondered if the people would eat the animals, and I woke from this madness to the sound of a backhoe moving up my street outside my window.

The Worker's Poem.

I am a warehouse worker, I fit in no square peg
My edges are round and fruitful
I stand on obese legs
I work till I am humbled
I slave till I am bent
My fingers they are raw, dear
My neck, it aches, a-burning red

I am a warehouse worker, I stand and repeat moves
Over and over I robot, until the break behooves
My master to shout out, “lunch, last box, or break”
And when that word is uttered, an echo does it make
Around the warehouse floor, the workers they do whoop

And dance and mingle vaguely, and chatter about their hurt.

We are the poor-caste workers,
We stand on pained legs,
Our backs, they are a-broken,
Our souls bent, distorted, strained

All we do is complain, yes, all we do is gripe
About all our suffering, injustice, and crime
Of the few against the many,
Those who can afford the things
We pack and toil over nightly
We covet and we see

The disparagy between our peoples
The many with so few
Packing for the richmen
Packing for, likely, you.
We like to cook, too, you know,
We like to share food with friends,
We are no different from you,
We just have so little at the end

For there are children to feed,
And divorces to pay for,
Health concerns too costly to afford
The likes of Le Creuset and Kitchen Aid

I am a warehouse worker, I’m tired and underfed
My weight comes from my allergies
To subsidized eggs and bread
I have so little energy
I cannot make it said
In adequacy, how angered
The rich have made me red
We packed $800k today
We packed and stumbled home
To bottle, to wife, to bed
Too tired to revolt.

Viking Lament

If things had been the way they were in the Viking Period, none of this would have happened.

Someone would have slandered my wife, and I would have taken an axe to their entire family. End of issue. Their family, in turn, would have complete right to come after my family with axes, and the end result would likely be something along the lines of a big bloody mess where everyone gets killed until a Godi steps in and tells everyone to knock it off.

I wish often that things were this simple. I wish we didn’t have any problem with people that we couldn’t solve with a little bit of slaughter, or the fear of slaughter pushing on everyone’s subconscious to behave. A little bit of death can scare folks into submission to lawful order.

Unfortunately, we have all fallen away from this particular methodology of conflict resolution. Perhaps, in our dystopic future, we will be able to behave in this simplistic and animalistic manner once again. It seems as though we will not be able to evolve.

Community

There’s a lot on my mind lately, and these thoughts have been hindering my creative capacities.
As it has taken so long to get to the stories I’ve been working on, and to post them here, I have decided to just do a little bit of streaming consciousness writing here, to allow myself to become better understood, and to also bring light to the fact that creativity often does not allow itself to be hindered by a set schedule. Oftentimes, creation happens all at once, and sometimes it trickles out of the creator slowly. This kind of activity is universal, and you can see it each time you step outside into Nature. Geographical processes can take millions of years, or minutes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of community. According to The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which is a much better resource than the Macintosh or a free internet dictionary, the word is defined as such:

community
I. A body of individuals. 1. The commons as opp. to peers etc.; the common people. 2. An organized political, municipal, or social body; a body of people living in the same locality; a body of people having religion, profession, etc., in common; a body of nations unified by common interests (freq. w. cap. initial, in the title of an international organization). b. The members of such a body collectively. 3. A monastic, socialistic, etc., body of people living together and holding goods in common. 4. A group of animals etc. living or acting together; Ecol. a group of interdependent plants or animals growing or living together in natural conditions or inhabiting a specified locality.
II. A quality or state. 5. The state of being shared or held in common; joint ownership or liability. 6. (A) common character; (an) agreement; (an) identity. 7. Social intercourse; communion; fellowship, sense of common identity. 8. Commonness, ordinary
“Community.” Def. la. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 1993. Print.

I feel this particular word is evolving a new meaning, which is the topic of my blog post today. I will return to the more entertaining stories shortly, which have been delayed due to research.

Community implies locality, but with our global interconnectedness brought upon us because of technological advancement, this particular definition of a localized meaning of community must be re-understood.

Perhaps because we are all living on one planet, that is our new definition of community. I have moved to a location where I have chosen a minimal interconnectedness with my peers because I have chosen to work on myself and not my relationships with others outside of myself. This choice defines community. I am in communion and walk a common ground with my Self. I am working to seek love inside of me to further my love with those outside of me, first starting with my partner, Beth. If I can learn to love myself and get to know myself, then I will always have a localized community, and this community will never be tainted by the needs outside of Self. The community of One will follow me everywhere. This is why it is so crucial to look within and to work with the inner self and learn to love yourself and forgive yourself of your faults: if you don’t have yourself, you have no community. After all, the only member of your community who will be guaranteed to be there for you every step of life and even when you die is yourself.

I see so much consternation about the lack of community in our American culture, and how that its absence is the “root of all evil,” and “why we are in the mess we’re in.” Many people blame a lack of community for most of our societal problems. Although I think there is something to be said about this particular lament, I feel it is a skin-deep complaint to a much deeper concern.

The lack of community is ultimately a general lack of forgiveness and extension of love to all aspects of the individual self. The self is a perfect extension of the All: the self is dark, light, grey, evil, hateful, spiteful, compassionate, loving, giving, all at once. We experience this, and some choose to not acknowledge their “Shadow Self,” or as Tori Amos so aptly defines as our “Dark Prince.” Those individuals who deny their darker self do themselves and their communities a great disservice, because the “Dark Prince” is there, and won’t really ever go away. It is lurking in the subconscious, waiting for a chance to get out; to be noticed, even in a moment. Usually, if it goes unacknowledged, it is left unchecked and misunderstood, and manifests itself in the life of the individual in manners which are all too often harmful to that individual, as well as that individuals’ loved ones. The cycle of abuse could be defined as the acting out of the abandoned shadow self, demanding attention by harming those who are closest to the individual inflicting the abuse.

Community seems to lack the definition of the Community of Self. It also seems to lack the more broad definition of members having something in common with others globally. We are an interconnected species, thanks to the Internet. Most of my members of community live hours away, and in many cases, states away. This distance is shortened in an instant with the aid of social networking tools like Facebook. Sure, we all mock Facebook, and I would agree that it isn’t used to it’s full potential, but Facebook pulls many members of a community together, albeit in a manner which hasn’t evolved as fast as it could.

I’d love to see Facebook used for idea exchange, and conversation that allows many people to put in their ideas and hopes, and dark sides, too. It seems that positivity on Facebook is honored, and negativity is condemned, save for the ‘blackish-grey’ exception: complaint, which is prevalent on Facebook walls, and most American conversations.

Perhaps the reason why Facebook is so poor a social tool is because it isn’t allowed to let out the Dark Princes on the Wall? The inner darkness isn’t given a voice on Facebook, and so for the most part, the sense of community lacks there, as well as in real life. Which brings us back to our little dilemma of self.

Everyone would have community, all the time, and be able to be in the state of communion, all the time, if they would learn to get to know their whole selves. Most people don’t take the time, and so far, I’ve seen a whole lot of hiding and defining self as whatever the Self “does,” rather than what the Self chooses “to be.” It’s a difference of verbs. Etre is the French verb meaning, “To be.” The French have an entirely separate word for the act of doing something: Faire. We English speaking North Americans seem to use both being and doing interchangeably. One of the first things people ask you is, “What do you do?” As if the act of doing defines who you are Being. Well, it doesn’t. Just because someone works in a successful occupation as an engineer doesn’t mean that person is successful at Being who they really are.

I observe a lot of hiding in my culture. I even experience a lot of others redefining self as “what you do.” Shakespeare had something going for him when he said, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” It really is the question! The answer to our lack of community is there, hidden between the lines of that little phrase. If an individual chooses to take ten minutes a day and stare at their naked self in a mirror, and try to accept all the darkness, as well as the light and grey, they just might wind up being able to feel more balanced and whole, and actually truly give back to their loved ones, rather than hide from the shadow self and abuse those around them. They might even be able to get to Be whatever it is they came here to experience Being!