A feast of fantasies

Courtesy of Technoccult, thanks Klint!

Happy Solstice
Filed under: occult, magick — Klintron @ 1:14 pm
If you missed these links last year, or if you just want to refresh your memory, these are great conversation starters at Christmas parties:

The Psychedelic Secrets of Santa Claus Santa and the aminita muscaria mushroom.

E-Sheep: Saturnalia a Jack Chick parody about the origins of Christmas.

Pagan Origins of Modern Christmas Traditions

Wikipedia: Christmas linked Holidays

And, why not: Wikipedia: Christmas
Happy holidays everyone!

From My Friend Will in Palestine...12.15.2005

HUMAN NATURE

"What is human nature?" He asked rhetorically.
"Look around you," He continued, "Everything that people are doing, this
is human nature."

*

The IDEA was to go and live among THE PEOPLE
and listen to the buzz and hum of their talking
to car horns and dishwashing and footsteps and grind
to the laughter, arguments, and crying children
of their LIVING,
until it became possible to hear the RHYTHM and MUSIC
within, underlying, all of this
and to write songs of THE PEOPLE LIVING.

*

I returned to another narrow street
lined with concrete housing blocks saturated by poverty and trauma
ground-floor falafel stands too small for furniture
lit-up portraits of posturing fighters, rifles on display
like low-budget home-grown 'Join the Army' ads--
except that everyone knows the men in the pictures are dead--
hung from archways spanning alleys where children play football
or burn garbage--
Oh refugee poverty under occupation
I walk your streets again a foreign white-faced man
and see how my eyes and mind have aged--
I have mortgaged my AMERICAN birthright again
for airplane tickets and taxi fare
to come and live briefly in an Arab ghetto
which, like all ghettos, is constantly under attack--
SO WHAT?

The saga of occupation is written with refugee spraypaint on concrete walls
and punctuated with gunshots and bulletholes.
The boys in the street say they are 20 but look 14
they put their arms around each other and say they are fighters
one pulls out a cheap little switchblade with a plastic handle
says, "How do you like this?"
his eyes go wild like a street cat--
"No thank you," we say, and walk away.

Then the foreign soldiers come in the night
drive jeeps into Balata refugee camp,
which is built atop the ruins of a 4,000 year old city--
They shoot their M-16s, break into a house,
and haul another Arab to jail.

*

In the village the Patriarchs walk over limestone hills
worn smooth by a million footsteps
and remember the days before their was a nation called Israel
or settlers in single-wide trailers with high-power security lights
over there, across the valley, lighting up the desert night
in bright electric pools of paranoia--
They wear suit jackets over traditional robes
and the Matriarchs bake bread over the embers of sheep-dung fires
and everyone praises god in conversational litany:
Thanks to Allah there is sun, thanks to Allah there is rain
Thanks to Allah there are olive trees, thanks to Allah there are sheep
Thanks to Allah there are houses, thanks to Allah there is food
Everything is from Allah!

Then the settlers come in the night with saws
and cut down olive trees in the village orchard.

The wound on Ibrahim's ankle, left by a soldier's bullet years ago,
has healed and grown into a thick mass of scar tissue
and a lingering ache--
He wraps it with a threadbare ace bandage
his dusty feet in a pair of work boots made into sandals
by cutting off the back part down to the sole.

*

East Jerusalem at this hour is a desolation of paving stones
chiseled with irregular divots for better traction
Orange streetlight haze over retro-fit electical conduits
snaking over and into 500-year-old stone walls--

The women have gone inside the houses
a few men stand in groups and pairs smoking in the shadows
or closing down the last restaurants and shops--

At the quiet coffee stand the man with a cleft upper lip
invites you to sit in a plastic chair in an alley
and the boy makes the coffee in a long-handled metal pot--

And the hustlers on this side of town are right out on the street
in your face interrupting you in mid-sentence
with the hustler voice that grinds and slices into your brain--
"HELLO, HELLO!"
"TAXI TAXI! You want taxi! Where you go!
TAXI TAXI TAXI!!!" Nerve shattering as a TV commercial.

*

They were friendly and wanted to help
but could not speak the language
so we filled their mouths with sweet tea and bread.

*
AL QUDS

I have nothing to say about Jerusalem,
except that it is where a lion-faced tomcat paused on limestone steps
and peered into my eyes for 3 minutes.

Jerusalem is ancient and exhausted from religious wars.
You can read a fanatical text written in blood
on the Old City's fortress walls
but it ain't worth the effort--
if you want to see the cruel face of GOD
stare directly into the sun for 1 hour.

Everything that could have been said about Jerusalem
someone has already said.
Everything that can be said about Jerusalem
Someone is now saying.
Everything that it will ever be possible to say about Jerusalem
Someone will say soon enough.

The man behind the counter at the art supply store says:
"Jerusalem is a most holy place for 3 great world religions
Christianity Islam Judaism
GOD made it that way for a reason
so if people are fighting over it
this is because of money and politics."

A damn fool or a wise man came here one time
and scratched these words in the dirt:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE JEWS THE MUSLIMS AND THE CHRISTIANS
IS THE STYLE OF THEIR HATS.

*


*************************************************************************
This is not simply a list of reports documenting human rights violations,
protests, or action in Palestine. This is one project in my continuing
performance of the role of writer and artist within society-- and is
indeed nothing less than a series of letters in prose and poetry to my
friends, family, and to ALL OF HUMANITY AND ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN about
nothing less than THE MYSTERIOUS EXPERIENCE OF LIFE ON EARTH.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW E-MAIL:
This is my new e-mail: madrone@resist.ca
I have closed the old account so anything sent there will bounce back to you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW PHONE: 54 647 8139
I recently had a mobile phone surgically implanted inside my skull and
wired directly into my central nervous system. The doctors assured me that
there was no risk of brain cancer incurred by the operation, that the scar
would be hidden by my hair, and that these days having a stubby antennae
protruding from your forehead increases hipness factor and sex appeal.
They had to remove a small part of my brain to make room for the phone,
but it was the part only used for quiet reflection, introspective
meditative thought, ethical decision making, and practical financial
planning, and nobody has time for any of these things in this day and age,
so this sacrifice is insignificant when weighed against the fact that I
can now pay a phone company to talk to people who are far away while
ingnoring people who are right in front of my face. So OK, here is my
phone # in Palestine and Israel, where you can reach me from now until
late february:

011 972 54 647 8139

That includes international calling code and country code for dialling
from the U.S. Bear in mind the difference in time zones.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you do not want to recieve e-mail from me, please reply and indicate this.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

*Anticopyright: all writing sent via this list is anticopyright, free to
all, not for profit. PLEASE forward, post, publish, print, copy and
otherwise share and pass on anything I send out as you so desire.

OK take care
remember that water is life

WILL

smoke curls

it always has.
it always will.
for some reason i am obsessed with its doing so.
if it is happening nearby i must bear witness.
when i drink alone i think about smoke.
i watch it do its thing whenever possible.
i feel that i must title some significant cryptic work of art after smoke.
smoke defines the way i see myself.
merciful before the wind.
unpredictably beautiful.
passionately independent.

i sat down and sketched

a picture of the view from my mother's porch between puffs of a cigarette with numb fingers as my life force flowed out thru the ink: blood in yesterdays river beds. this is not what real used to be here in this place grown so foreign. but the fields grant me sanctuary from the storm of my everyday emotions. time gnaws on my backbone by the minute, an ornery old rat who has to cut his teeth on the remorse of spent youths. other ways it could have gone build their castles and crumble in the wake of an incoming wave of sleep. i dream behind my eyelids when i blink and the world rewinds at night. those four precious hours of restless nothing fuck! to think my hands have handled the millions of ages and pages and dust and words of wandering hermits i cannot know. it pains me that my path lies as it does, between the roses and the thorns. casting the die for the dead. rolling with the punches of the living. asking what we can of who will listen. listening to what we can of that which makes it through.

too busy

been working on other blogs

traveling for a couple days

will post from Walla Walla a bit

hope this offends no one

cary, i'm coming for you

R.I.P. Stanley 'Tookie' Williams

Stanley Tookie Williams died by lethal injection early yesterday. a great man goes to the grave, to fields beyond those that we may know. thanks to boingboing for the following link to Jasmina Tesanovic's first hand testimony. And please read this article on the actual history of the Crips street gang. You will learn that Williams was not really the founder our mass media made him out to be in the weeks preceding his wrongful death.

Stanley 'Tookie' Williams Death Rapidly Approaches

I wrote Gov. Arnold. I posted on my blog. I talked with friends and family about this issue (none of whom had any idea who Williams was). This is a tragedy indeed. My only hope is that death is quick and painless for this great conflicted man who has tried his utmost these past years. Like our dear leader Mr. Bush I sort of hope that race riots do ensue so that Bush can declare an emergency and fuck some more shit up. I like it when he does anything remotely terrible because something always goes wrong on his end of the stick as well and controversy breeds growth. Death, however, does not and cannot breed life. Ask me on some other tuesday at 12:04 in the morning and I might vehemently defend the death penalty under certain circumstances (for instance: if your last name ends with or rhymes with Cheney). But right now I'm feeling green and humane and forgiving. I'm feeling like it's worthless to pin so much gang violence on one man who's hands have been clean for decades now. I'm feeling like we should take a good long deep look at the root causes of our nation's problems and stop treating the symptoms like some hack doc out to shave a quick buck off the hairy hairy thighs of his next obese victim. So peace out Stanley. I'm roastin' one for you right now my man. And tomorrow I will try to track down your kids books to procure for and read to my children in the hopes that your words will strike a chord some day in the hearts and minds of some troubled youth and convince them to go another way. And when that plunger is hovering over your arm, I hope your regrets are few and that you've thirty years in heaven before the devil knows yer dead.

Alexander Pope: Still Kicking Ass 261 Years Later

From the full choir when loud Hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from Heav'n,
One human tear shall drop and be forgiv'n.
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.

the only pope that ever mattered, alexander pope. hey, don't fuckin' knock "the first English poet who could live off the sales of his work alone."
and an excellent collection of quotes

if you want to know what the war was for find out what the victor took

- old saying I discovered in an old pamphlet from 1938 entitled Life and Deeds of Uncle Sam.

Edge - Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world.

The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

Ray Kurzweil's Accelerated Intelligence - Raymond Kurzweil (February 12, 1948 - ) is a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic musical keyboards. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and technological singularity. Check out his book The Age of Spiritual Machines!

Woot - How strange. They sell one item per day at gross discounts. Interesting concept.

Pirate Papa Blog Launched

I scoured the internet for days, turning up only vague message-board references and a few scant articles. Bare bones to be sure. But there were thousands of mama 'zines and resources for young mothers, articles, essays, books, talk shows. What about the fathers? What about the single dads and creating some community and resources for them? What about the punk papas, the anarcho-green papas, the socialist papas, the homosexual papas, the papas who never get to see their kids because of work or custody battles or some other barrier thrown up by a society willing to focus only on the symptoms and not the root causes of its problems? What about the papas who no one ever helped?

Where are our shelves upon shelves of books? Where are our homemade 'zines? Where are our legions of social workers? I always hear everyone talk about how rough young mothers have it and it's true. But our society is geared towards creating more young mothers than it is young fathers and the pieces will only start clicking into place when we stop effectively ignoring half of the equation and start fostering a truly egalitarian system of parental education in this "great nation." Read More...

Pirate Papa is currently seeking submissions, personal stories, resources, zines, ideas, words, wishes, good food and some solid rest.