The Politics of Cataclysm

Geographies remember cataclysm.

Blight and storms and deforestation change the foundational makeup and memory of every existing plant, every surviving animal.

Did you know that trees, both ancient and new, speak to each other, warn of danger from distances? 

That whales craft stories that span entire oceans, that orcas enact vengeance, that elephants hold death rituals?

We humans exist amongst a confused contingent of witnesses who know trauma, and experience forms of mental destabilization we have no control over. 

To dismiss cellular memory; to mock the ways that trauma stays within a person and disorders their sense of safety, is abominable. It is reckless. It is cruel. 

Geographies remember cataclysm and so do human bodies. 

Every living thing knows trauma and trauma is always disruptive.

Let's not forget this any longer. Let's choose to refuse mockery and reckless cruelty. Let's find a better way to move forward together.

You see, we are all hungry, we’re all scared, and we are all, to a certain extent, lacking in proper nutrients, lacking in proper care. Proximity does not necessarily increase compassion or decrease dehumanization. It’s simply not enough to live next door to people who look and live and think differently. Some tables are not safe places. Some conversations are not productive. As the Internet comment sections often remind us, it's nearly impossible to debate a person into kindness. The transformation of the human heart isn't an easy process. Breaking through trauma and cataclysm can take a lifetime.

But in as much as it depends on me, I can endeavor to be a peacemaker, breaching conflict with coffee and bread. Not because this isn’t serious. Not because food is an all-encompassing remedy. But because I was once wrong and hungry and someone, many someones, offered kindness and sustenance as I found my way out of it. I learned to be less reckless, less cruel; I learned to listen.

May we all seek this grace in 2024 and beyond. May we feed one another, break bread with one another and listen. May we build longer tables and shorter fences. May we remember the hurt other people have had to endure; and may we listen to them, hold space for them, and may we cast our ballot with them in mind. 

"What Holds Your Hope Together.."

I've come to reluctantly understand that most Americans are such committed inhabitants of the current moment that we tend to break out in hives if we can't reduce all previous epochs of history into neatly spliced multi-year chunks, in which a handful of visual and verbal and musical cliches come to represent those decades in their entirety. It seems as if we have become such insufferable children of this immediate impulse that we have begun to react to any art which demands anything beyond a cursory appreciation, let alone an immersion even one inch deeper than the surface, like someone has asked us to murder the reincarnation of our childhood puppy. 

With that being said, it's still rather perplexing to me that Adrian Borland's exquisitely wrought and idiosyncratic musical landscapes of the 1980's, which he recorded as the leader and songwriter of a band he aptly named The Sound, have achieved the posthumous gift of near complete and total cultural invisibility, while steaming horsepuck like Kajagoogoo still soundtracks the throwback 80's dance parties of unendurable, over-privileged 30-year-old tinder addicts, who by some immeasurable miracle make even the Baby Boomers look like paragons of astuteness and wisdom. 

Try this: Tear your ever-deadening eyes away from your hand-held digital crack pipe, sit alone in a dark room with the moonlight shining through the window, even if it's at a third floor room at a semi-dilapidated motel in Modesto, and let the opening track from The Sound's "From The Lion's Mouth" album, "Winning," wash over you for the duration of its four minutes and eighteen seconds. Let it find its way into your skin. Let it show you the truth about who and what you are. Then, when you're done, when you finally understand, throw that fucking phone into the ocean. 

Keep Making The Stuff You Dig..

Make stuff from your heart. Mean it. Even if other people are going through shit around you, don't let it stop you. Keep creating. It's not your job to manage other people's unhappiness. Just fucking create. 

Hibiscus Dreams

Trudging, albeit trepidatiously, deep into the belly of another forbidden beast, with only your fresh and fevered footsteps as my guide. 

But, as always, throbbing heart in hand, I jump into the cleansing fires of banality banishment; eyes on fingertips, wide open and searching. 

My legs shake, feet unsteady, drained of old life force by my red-assed Goddess, with bleeding teeth and a dark case of coffin burn. You sweetly pointed at the fresh grave of our mother in the furthest corner of the cave. 

Saturnal Sunwheel, with fresh hibiscus and a smile on her headstone. The tears began to slowly spill. 

"Your blood is only as sacred as those who feed on it," you reminded me. "You aren't obliged to love someone just because they have chosen to value you."

The stars start to sing a low, ancient moaning song and begin to bleed into the black velvet curtains of space. 

It's raining salty hibiscus red blood from the heavens and we open our mouths to drink of it. 

Professing myself to be wise, I look ever more the fool. 

Stained with the wet, sacred insides of the spilling stars, I saw through the mirror and lost all remaining faith in your apocalypse and smirked at your transcendent telemarketing scheme. 

The Earth is a cemetery. We are graves with pussies, legs and cocks. 

Your sacred symbols are death totems you no longer know how to decipher. 

Your uniforms are burial shrouds you no longer know how to stitch and weave.

I taste your sweet, stinging, nervous sweat. 

Acheron, the river of woe, is overflowing and your feet will forever be wet with it. 

And now, you can walk anew.

Spreading and weaving and sewing and seeing; spewing pieces of ourselves into the web of reality, singing out of true names, of faceless and fearless love. 

Eternally now - it is the moment of our gracious abandon and greatest sacrifice. 

The moment of creation. 

The moment of rebirth.

The moment you became.

The moment you remembered.

Creation's Constant and Unfolding Welcome

One of the most beautiful things I started doing in 2023 was to deliberately slow down.

I don’t mean slowing down from work or movement or art/music/magick and other things that give me radiant joy. No, I mean actually moving slower. 

Walking along the craggy coastline at an unhurried pace in the morning so I could notice my surroundings—how the light dances off foamy waves, how the hulking freighters dot the watery landscape like floating lanterns in the distance, or how the trees curve outwards as if to catch a glimpse of the ocean beneath them as the first ancient rays of sunlight begin to kiss the edge of the Pacific.

With each step, I learned to take time away from the hurried impulse to know what I believe, as if my beliefs are only valid if I can define them or immediately act upon them. Slowing down is deep soul care. And feeling uncertain is human. And basking in some of that uncertainty was a warm and beautiful revelation. 

Theologically speaking, I was once willing to believe in anything that could save me or heal me from the dark alleyways of childhood memory. Whether it was chanting Om Kreem Kalikayai Namaha during Puja or taking part in ritual at Lodge or sitting in church pews, praying to a celestial Father to feel love, hope, connection and communion. But what I came to realize was, I lacked the wonder to consider that, perhaps, I’ve been saved and held and loved and maybe even healed all along.

Funny how the demise of certain theologies and the slowing down of the frantic pace in which we meander through the world makes it easier to trust that there is no lack, and, strangely enough, no rush. 

My soul is not hanging precariously on the edge of hell. Or ruin. Or sin. Or destruction. I need not readily available and definable answers for all my spiritual queries, I simply need to trust, to breathe and to slow down. It's all here, with every slow and deliberate step.

I continue to learn a powerful lesson through this practice: That there is time to slow down and behold the beauty of both the outer world and the world I carry within. 

There is time to taste, to dwell, to sink toes into salty waters and breathe in aromas and wander up coastlines; to slow down and accept creation’s constant and unfolding welcome. After all, it was there, waiting for me, the whole time.

Scenes From My Dream Journal, Volume One..

Death rang when you were trying to remember how to laugh sincerely. She danced around, hips circling, telling you "send money, baby." Like you, she's grown bored of the charade, of the rotting washbucket of recycled souls denying their divinity and reliving repetitions. She's teaching moondance and raising funds for an extended temple hermitage where she longs to spend her nights singing drunken hymns to the old gods, renaming the stars and setting satellites on fire. I don't know why she longs for celestial poetry and ceremonial destruction. After all, the world has plenty of prayer and fire. But if you return Death's calls, please tell her a joke or send worthless nudes - do not send an offering. I hope she doesn't disappear for too long. I can't bear to think of a world without the sweet relief of our Darling Mother Death. We are near crisis with the news of her impending self-imposed exile. We are burdened by abundant births of endless cycles of karmic shame sludge and will surely drown in sickened skin sacks if Death raises enough money for her selfish exodus. How quickly the world will weep and wonder why their Gods have forsaken them. We must convince her to stay and have mercy upon us, lest she follow through and doom us to carrying the cross of our own life and finding our own way home.

The Most Important Meal Of The Day

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. This is because you are weak, your egg skills are weak and your bloodline, collapsing under the weight of its own culinary inefficiency, will inevitably crumble and be forgotten. 

I, on the other hand, possess unfathomable and otherworldly omelette skills. Through ancient magickal techniques, I have gained the ability to transpose the very atoms of the yolk and white into the pan before me and create a delectable breakfast concoction that the very Gods themselves would kill for.

You want to know these omelette making  secrets? You want some easy spell or grimoire to unlock this omelettic sorcery for yourself? No. I simply cannot do that. I'm sorry. You have no idea the sacrifices I've made to gain this awesome expertise. And, to be honest, you're not ready for this kind of power. It is what it is. Your bloodline will fail, and it will fall. 

This is not your fault. It was written long ago. One must not tempt fate. But perhaps, if you're lucky, I'll scramble you a tasty breakfast to help you disburden your sorrows, if for only a day.