I've been promising myself that I would blog bef0re I settled into bed, after coming in from work (when everyone else is leaving for it,) but I've no desire to sit at my desk and be constructive then. Compromise comes. I'm in bed now. And online. All hail Avram. H is moving out, but looks like she's leaving the wireless hub up for now. So we'll see how this works out. The problem is blogging after bed, is I lose so much of the trains of thought, with their subtler instinctive connections, that I built patrolling at work, with that much time difference. Hell, I barely remember my own name when I get up. I could start writing at work, because they let the back door guys get away with alot of personal computer use.. I saw my supervisor using Paint during his short watch last night... but considering the relation of work and the computer in my last job's disastrous plummet, I'm good to be wary. But with time, we'll see. All they really want the back door guys to be aware of anyone coming for their employee IDs and that's a bare percentage of the time there.

It's just the right kind of irony that in the end, that I passed up the riskier shuttle job for this less-paying but steadier job. It would be alot easier if I didn't carry my childhood resentment of external structure as a control source, but the truth is undeniable, that for now, the anchor of this cheeseball job, with it's low expectations and wide open times, is exactly what I need. I think I'm probably more upset, under the emotional currents of relief and curiousity, that I am definitely in a major time of confluence, where so many things are coming together without much say-so on my part, or control over timing and delivery. It's hard to accept something I've always understood, but long desired to be wholly wrong.

There was a time when I thought spirituality... and life, in general, was about power through understanding. Like some Kabbalistic wizard-rabbi, if I knew a thing, I had mastery over a thing. And then I swung another direction crazily, into the intensity of belief.. That if I believed something, on faith, built by mind and heart, and all that, I would feel the connection to the Big Cosmic Banana. I'm just getting over that enough to work on what trying something I've picked up and dropped so often, because I don't like the ego ramifications.. That I am defined in a greater scheme of things by my Awareness without the real need for Belief, or Understanding. It's hard to describe how much I hate this idea. It's as close to surrendering to the "enemy" as I can imagine, and old soldier of the psychic wars, I can't ever surrender. Uneasy peace through bad truce or icy detente, yes... but surrender? Never! This is one of those points where it would seem natural to wax reflective about how all this is part of the great "journey" or some vaguely predetermined "crucible," but that's crap, really. It's good to know these truths in my past, for perspective, but they are no longer really "truths," as they no longer help me live best now, and I should own them little as they can hold me back. Damn you, Buddha, for teaching me this. Just had to be said. Oh, yeah, Buddha is still kicking my ass.. and so is Zoroaster. I left these books on my unread shelf for years, and now I read them just when I need them. That's Awareness. It's the proverbial train wreck.... what was it that Woody once said. "I'm not afraid of my death. I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Mmm.. well it's now getting past my bedtime. Not much more I can say on the confluence as it is. More than this, and I'd be forcing meaning that has yet to be.

Maybe later.

And I have to put up some stuff about Zoroastrianism and human rights too. And balance my checkbook.

Good night, friends.

I had to share this fine example of a Deep Left movie review, coming from the old-school communist wingbats of MIM, the Maoist International Movement. This comes from the electronic archives of MIM Notes, the diatribe mouthpiece of the die-hard communist. My favorite feature is the use of "Amerikka" and "Bu$h." Following that, it's "wimmin" and "humyn." You'll understand, when you read this....."

"Serenity": revolutionary plot with hope for the future of humanity

[Spoiler warning]

"Serenity" offers viewers a revolutionary plot with hope for the future of humanity. This science fiction movie is set in the future, when humans have expanded beyond earth into the universe. The Universal Alliance, created by "civilized" people who rule over many worlds, complete with a large military force, try to enforce their will on other worlds where humans resist the Alliance.

The insidious nature of imperialist propaganda is revealed early in the film as one main character is shown as a child in school learning about the "outer worlds" that are not a part of the Alliance. The teacher asks the class why the outer worlds would resist "civilization." While other kids give answers about the savage nature of those people (answers no doubt lifted from today's Amerikan classrooms about Third World peoples), the character River says that the Alliance is meddling where they have no business and should be stopped. This mis-education starts from an early age, teaching kids to accept imperialism. And when they do not, they are often labeled as crazy, a fate not tremendously different from that faced by River.

A small crew of mercenaries who originally fought in a war against the Alliance are brought back into politics when they shelter River and her brother from the Alliance. The movie shows the crew awakening to the political reality of the situation and the importance that they take up the struggle against the Alliance for the good of humanity. And as they do so, we see the ruthless violence of the Alliance (a.k.a. imperialists) murdering everyone this small group of resisters ever had contact with in an attempt to flush them out.

The powerful role of the media is shown both as a way the Alliance finds River, and as a tool for the resisters to fight the Alliance. The resisters see the need to expose Alliance atrocities (experimenting with drugs on outer world humans which resulted in deaths of millions and grotesque mutilation of others) to all of humanity. Their goal is to take control of the media to do this as an attack against the powerful Alliance.

The movie demonstrates the potential power of a small vanguard, and the importance of controlling the media. But it leaves out the key role that class plays in imperialism. The outer worlds are being "meddled" with, but we never see them being exploited. In fact it appears that all people are living un-exploited and it is just the power-hungry Alliance that is trying to "civilize" all worlds. While the analogy works to a point, this is lacking some crucial facts about imperialism, facts that dictate who will rise up against it and who will ally with it.

MIM would presume that those people living within the Alliance would likely benefit from the exploitation of the outer worlds and as a result, have a material interest in maintaining the Alliance. No doubt the exposure of Alliance atrocities would shift many people into the camp of the resistance. But material interest is a powerful thing, as we see with Amerikan citizens who continue to support imperialist wars in large numbers. Perhaps Whedon recognized this weakness and concluded the movie with the information that the Alliance was weakened but still intact to give viewers a realistic picture that it would not be the release of information about Alliance atrocities alone that would bring down the power.

- From MIM Notes, Nov. 1 -15, 2005.

"Huang-Po says, 'Buddhas and beings share the one and the same mind. Otherwise they don't differ. This mind has never had any form or characteristics. It has never been created. It has never been destroyed. Thus, it is right here. If you think about it, you miss it. It's like the sky It has no borders. Only this mind is the buddha. Buddha and beings aren't different. However, beings are attached to perceptions outside themselves. But the more they seek, the more they get lost. They send a buddha to find a buddha. They use the mind to chase the mind. They can exhaust themselves for kalpas, but they'll never succeed. They don't realize that when they put an end to thoughts and reasoning, the buddha will appear before them. The mind is the buddha. The buddha is an ordinary being. When it's an ordinary being, the mind doesn't contract. When it's a buddha, it doesn't expand. When it meets conditions, it acts. When conditions stop, it ends. It doesn't need to be pinned down or realized. It is already perfect. If you aren't willing to believe that this is the buddha, even if you cultivate for endless kalpas, you will never reach the Way. To cling to the perception of a dharma means that the dharma exists outside the mind. Hence, you are attached to perceptions. Whether you do evil or good, you are attached to perceptions. When you do evil while attached to perceptions, you waste your rebirth. When you do good while attached to perceptions, you waste your hardships. Neither can compare with recognizing your own mind right now. Outside the mind, there are no dharmas. The mind is the dharma. Outside this dharma, there is no mind. You can use the mind to eliminate the mind, but the mind still exists. And to cling to perceptions of no dharmas means to allow perceptions of attachment and non-attachment, good and bad, mortal or sage to continue to exist."

- from the commentaries translated by Red Pine for The Diamond Sutra

Friday. Well, my Friday. German tavern. Lowenbrau and bratwurst mit sauerkraut.

I've regained the proper patina of structure with the return to the repetitive mundanity of checking in and out hotel employees. The regain in order of course means that everything else is falling toward the comfortable chaos I know and love. By the sixth chapter of the Diamond Sutra, Buddha is beating me about the head, and I'm thankful for one of the few object lessons from the last job, the one on how to keep a straight act when my reality is crumbling underneath me. So to temper the Buddhism, I've chosen some lighter reading, an introduction to Zoroastrianism. Lighter reading is always a relative affair with me, apparently. If I could become a monotheist, I'd go with Ahura-Mazda hands-down. It's like God without all the later useless accessories included free of charge with the Judeo-Christian package deal. I've felt the rewarding liberal persecution I've missed so much, when the required annoying moron co-worker told me I should stop reading The Nation Magazine, since it was (and I quote verbatim) "written by a bunch of pussies." Wait until I get to the reading of Das Kapital I'm planning after I polish off this load of books. The rest of my co-workers either share the comfortable camaraderie of job alienation, or better, they are fellow geek slackers. Ah, the brotherhood of my fellow laborers. The Revolution is neigh, just after the next undone patrol and lingering lunch. Okay, my job sucks, but at this point, I'm simply happy enough to be able to get back to what really counts, my progession as a reasonable facsimile of a human being.

I can literally feel my brain reawakening. It's a joyous thing, even if I know I come across as underenthused about my improved condition. I spent last family dinner bunkered in my room, because I couldn't process the social stuff that night. The job is good for how automatic it is, I can do it under any condition, but otherwise, I am wholly unfocused externally. I wish I could bring across the immense amount of myself I am sinking into... myself... just to reactivate lines of thinking and feeling deadened to a mote, while I was unemployed, and spending most of my time fighting off the idea that the Great Experiment had failed, so I could fall back into the Way of Failure as I always have. I felt a hell of alot worse than I let on, really, because I was even more tired of unloading my dramatic misery onto others, pointlessly. I've decided not to try to turn back now and glorify the mistakes and missteps made in my last job as a "learning experience" like I usually do. That past is dead, what I learned has been taken already, and the future looms all-encompassing as it is. It's not that I don't want to move on, but that moving on itself is a useless practice from which I gain entirely too little. That kind of empowerment is a raft that helped cross the river once or twice, but now needs to be cut free before I walk along the shore I've arrived. Buddha says so, and for once, I'll trust in someone bigger than myself for that. Even if I'm him. But we won't go there, quite yet. To summate: I never knew chaos could be this comforting.

Just a note: The new post is fine. It is manning a desk. I can read. But I don't know exactly what a full shift is like, as I had to be sent home on my first shift ever. I was hoping that my dry wit would be the first impression left on my fellow workers, but I think its the fact I barfed into a wastebasket. And people ask me why I am so interested in comedy.....

3 A.M. and I am still awake. And this is just the preparation for my first graveyard shift. It's just so damn odd. I remember when being awake during the day felt entirely wrong, now being up at 3 is as much a chore as being up at 7 A.M. was when I started working days again at the last job. And farther back, there was a time when this was then prime period of my day. It's amazing how fluidly we can define time in our lives, how fluid and elusive it can be to quantify the linear units of our lifespans. Of course, this wonderment will not make changing my schedule back around again suck any less. I just wanted to note this. And just for irony's sake, I am reading a novel about time travel to pass the time until I get to sleep at seven (even though I doubt I will make it past five.)

I did charge up Avram so I could sit on the porch, smoke heavily, and ramble on in this blog. But something called November is getting in the way of that. Never has clearer evidence been shown I would never survive Winter anywhere one state away from the Pacific Coast.

With the exception of the purchase of some plain white tees to wear under my fine new uniform shirt (with patches), I'm pretty much done for the day. I did buy the novel I wanted at the used bookstore on Broadway, but the internet cafe is still closed due to some electrical problem, so I came down to the Avenue. I'm sitting at the bar against the window looking onto University Avenue proper, and it's a good sign I'm watching the people going by with a writer's eye, imagining possible interpretations of them. But the reawakening of the eye has come at the price of the foot inserted into the mouth. I'm trying to be upbeat and all, since I'm employed, but last night I hurt a new friend, who had been there completely for me in the last few weeks, and in return, I wasn't there for him. We'll call him D, for now. A statement of my self-centeredness is that he uses my real name, and I'm not even sure I've asked what his real name is, in the first place. D says that my blog is a "sweet and sour" reading, as the lessons of my life recorded here are bittersweet comedies. That comes from the fact that I do learn most after I dove from the high board into the shallow end. I've been less than happy to record a loss from the same day I had a remarkable gain, but D is right, my life seems to be mostly sweet and sour. A tale of uneven vision, with one eye clear and the other, cloudy. I had been so needy from the second round of job rejections, that I failed to see how much D needed support in a time when he was working on a new story, being a writer too. I had failed to read his blog, even though he had been so uneasy giving me access, and I failed to read his story critically for him even though he had asked thrice. Even in the odd comfort of sharing this narcisstic blindness as a common human failing, I feel pain in my hypocracy as a torch-bearer for human compassion, since I seem to lack any until after I've abused another in the gain of my own comfort.
I won't lie, that he does read my blog, and I am weaving some kind of public apology to him. But I doubt that will do much, since this is confessional is clearly more for smoothing my own hurt than for cleaning his pain. I'm just terribly fond of him, and feel that something must be said somewhere.
So much the cost of living by experience, since this is a state where I live still by the shape of my present outlined by the lines of my past and future. Whether it is dysfunctional of me to feel worse for this state, because I don't mind what harm it heaps on me, only the hurt instilled in my wake on others. It make uncomfortably clear that Buddha was right, we can't help others, to help ourselves, unless we let go of ourselves to do so. There is gain taken from working your way through the crowd to get further up the line, but what good is getting to the head if you had to elbow and scratch others along the way. The more I desire freedom, the more damage I do as I try to gain it, blindly and unintentionally. You can't gain liberation for yourself unless you desire liberation for all, even if they probably not liberate themselves. To live free is the best way to teach freedom, without being reserved and selective. I have alot more to learn about being sincere.
Or least if I have to eat my foot, I should bring along some Tabasco.

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." - Goethe

1

I’ve added one of those nifty blogger add-ons to my Word so even though the connection at the upscale bakery café bit the big one, so to speak, I can import what I write on Word later on a stabler connection.

Stability. There’s a word. It is possibly a word I have regained, at least temporarily, into my lexicon of life. Yes, I have employment again, and of course, with the appropriate injection of immodest irony, I have returned to security. I go across Lake Washington, to the small downtown of the bustling exurban Mecca, Bellevue, to man a tiny post on a gigantic three-building site. The total crew needed to watch this site is fifty. My last site employed maybe that. But I jump forward without reality, since I will not know exactly what I have gotten myself into until tomorrow night. Any wayward individualist angst I could express is overpowered heavily by the simple sense of relief. True, the site might not work out for me, but I doubt that. Since I don’t plan to stay over six months at this site, under any circumstances, it makes the idea of playing the good underling all the easier. Much tongue-biting will be made. It was very clear, especially considering they hired me before even doing the background check, or making much of my termination, that they were desperate for a warm body with the right numbers to fill the vacant post. From my semi-understanding, I’ll be manning a desk to check in night employees through a back door.
But yes, I am relieved. Elated, no, relieved, yes. But for now, it is enough. And like some bad 80’s television show, any moral at the end of the latest episode would feel contrived and tacked-on. But one thing is certainly clear, whatever my future will hold… it is not the private sector that will provide it. If they will not exploit my talent, then it is wholly upon me to exploit them for myself. Its weirdly comforting to know that the stubborn pride that got me into this mess, might be what will get me out more wholly, because if I don’t write now, then all I just went through would seem pointless and I won’t allow for some meaning to be gained, even if just in spite, I’ll take it for now.

Keep watching this space again, true believers, since once I am sure that things are working out in the short term, I can return to the biting social commentary and philosophical acrobatics you know and love. All three of you. Okay, maybe four. We’ll see.

A note, that this post and the next one will be posted probably not far between in times, as I am wandering today, like the conscript who knows this is his last day before he has to fold up his civvies. I’m heading back up to Broadway to purchase a used copy of a time travel novel in a series I had most of, read over a number of times, and then sold in the Great Sundering of my collection before I moved here to Seattle. Even though, I’ve returned to commentary on The Diamond Sutra, I have this drive still to return to some comfort reading while I adjust to employment again. The desire is not as strong as it was when I was still unsure if I had a job, or someplace to live in a month if I didn’t have a job, but I’ll appease it nonetheless. I am still faced with the great unknown, ridden by my lack of a plan for my further future, unsure how to return to my explorations of self without falling into narcisstic havoc, but at least I feel the returning focus from getting back on track.

Oh, and just a note…. The conflict of the American psyche can be best marked by the fact that Kansas has accepted a “questioning” curriculum on evolution, but all seven intelligent design supporters up for re-election in Pennsylvania were swept from office. The past and the future are in conflict, and not all Americans are voluntarily blind.

The weather and my demeanour fairly match today: gloomy, precipitous, yet cleansing. I've had a fairly bad day. After waiting a week, I found out today that the dream job of blood bank courier stays just that, a dream. The hiring manager was effervescent with praise on the passionate and clean interview (one I still do consider the best of my life,) but the job could not be obtained on moxie alone, and went to another candidate, who "fulfilled the factors necessary for the position;" i.e. he or she had a vehicle and experience in some driving position. There is an outside chance I will wear the ugly suit again for security, but due to the HR having expanded information on my last termination, this stands as a long shot. I can do the shuttle job, but for once I agree with my father, who sees fiasco written over this one. Least I could make a week's training wages and then do a very short stint after that and learn the lesson of my last job, get out with your head still attached.
Oddly, instead of the usual depressive lethargy that marks great disappointment, I shut down the emotional repercussions rather solidly. (Okay, yes, I did do somewhat of a fetal cry, but it was alot shorter than usual.) I'm in a physically level and mentally deeper place than I'd expect. I had a talk with two of my finest online friends, both whom I trust to hear me without total bafflement, and some of what I said was the most sensible and responsible things I've said in a long time. Although profound, I've been cautious not to delve too deep, for there the Balrog stirs, the demon of overanalysis, whose intellectual flames burn away any true meaning from my thoughts. (Yeah, that is about the corniest metaphor I've done in a while, but I need to get them out of my system now and again.) I'm chalking it up to some kind of internal battle-weariness in the face of an uncaring exterior enemy, who is simply fulfilling its role, and doesn't act as if under serious siege by me. The interview for the ages prove that I can sustain an open line of communication, and get my words honestly across to others whom have something I need, even if that message doesn't turn into the desired results. It is a hopeful thing.

Actually, what began this introspective mood was the ride returning from dropping a purse forgotten by my housemate, T, she who floats gaily through life. It called for a busride downtown to do so, but I did it without reservation. I was thinking about how I had forgotten again to put on the cheap chain from which hangs the promise ring given to me by my one and only real love, FF, who has now vanished into the aether and I haven't had contact for three or four years. The relationship was an odd online affair, where FF loved me unrequitedly, and I spurned that for two years, until I annoyingly found that I wanted to return that love. We met only a few times, being a bi-coastal affair, on the last of which he gave me the promise ring. It's a tiny thing, of cheap gold and diamond flecks, but he saved for months to purchase it for me. Unfortunately, that same trip, it was readily apparent, we were not ready for each other, no matter how ecstatic our love for each other. He was not even a he at the time, although probably is by now, and I could not deal with that within our small and rare visits to each other, as my love was much more asexual than his. He had desires to join friends in Canada, and I wanted to stay in San Francisco. Afterward, I kept the ring, and put it on a cheap steel chain thing I found somewhere, and I go through these sparadic periods where I wear it around my neck. I always thought I did so when good luck was needed, but this made little sense as my luck was no better than any other time. Like the love we had for each other, I had little idea what to make of the promise carried in the ring, I think. But the promise ring carried something more than the memory of a time when I undeniably felt something within, that didn't come from my illusion factory of my head, but the promise that broke a belief long-held before our time together; that love was denied to me for another man. I believed that misbegotten curse with the wholeness of myself, and had even convinced myself that I had made some peace with it. I had something special with another on a level I still fail to understand, it ended well, but that did little to assuage my heart, and the ring stayed in a little chest. Then I started wearing it again, and it didn't remind me of the end of my love, but the time before that when it was still present and possible. I didn't know why I wore it, really, but I liked it. And there has been none after FF, but the ring reminds me, that it can be had, if I just hold on, and believe it will come again, this time maybe when it will come together into something even longer, even if that relationship itself is not a life-bond. I think I'm going to wear the ring around my neck alot more.

That's why I am guessing I am holding onto the interview, as part of the shot at a meaningful job, without the impact of a percieved failure to have what it took to gain it, rational or not. It is the promise that next time, maybe I'll do better, and things will change until I can gain work that is rewarding to me beyond the monetary gains that back my independance. When I was fresh from program, I still held onto some older beliefs, such as that faith in the hope that things would change, had kept me alive. Later on, I lost that in the shredding of past to make a functional present, and recently tend to chalk my survival up to my conceited pragmatism and cowardice over the mystery of death. And recently, I've not asked much of myself about this, trying to find a compromise position between all factors that could really be made. Now, I think I was probably right in the first place, that the way of hope, no matter what means polluted it, was what sustained me, and with it, I crossed over to now, still striving to be better, and go further. I don't consider it an ego-trip to acknowledge that others haven't been able to walk the corridor of knives that leads to the unending sky. Their pain might have really been greater than mine, but the pain I carry is as great as anyone else's in the rending. I still enjoy my birthdays, even uncelebrated, because the amazement I keep adding years onto the prophecy of my impending death before reaching adulthood.
I've been discontent for so long now, carrying that as a negative expression of my unwillingness to move as forward as I can, and I tried to make something more of that discontentment, that I ended projecting onto others. I don't understand how others can not keep going when the promise of change I see in them is not fulfilled. It is contradictory to my thinking to find some spot where anyone can believe themselves content and able to best answer the challenges of life. But still, they do. My life is in the end, a narrative whose theme is the promise of change, the faith that there is always something more to be reached. In other words, I am only content, when I am wholly discontent. This is my way, and I should not expect it will must be for everyone else. Growth is possible from an anchored place in one's life. But I need the promise that there is change toward which I must always strive even if without some "demonstrable" gains. That I will change, and love change. To appreciate it. And hopefully to wear around my neck as a reminder.