“I sit here before my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatlalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. The Writing is my whole life, it is my obsession. This vampire which is my talent does not suffer other suitors. Daily I court it, offer my neck to its teeth. This is the sacrifice that the act of creation requires, a blood sacrifice. For only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have this transformative power, they must arise from the human body--flesh and bone--and from the Earth's body--stone, sky, liquid, soil. This work, these images, piercing tongue or ear lobes with cactus needle, are my offerings, are my Aztecan blood sacrifices.” ― Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Oriented in the sea of tech-no-cyberspace



“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
-Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Across from me Nahuatl is being taught while I discuss the parts of Speech in the English language to everyone and no one. Everyone is present, and absent. It's a ghost town. Banshee echoes and howling ghosts. shrieks and cries and zounds. I'm thinking about the texts that I need to read for an online theory course I'm taking, and my friend sends me a text message, "dude, you need to relax and forget about dead letters. It's all about image. Nobody cares, and who can blame them? the kids just wanna have fun coz OMG skool is sooooooooooooooo f'kn boring, u know? swing by l8r. Take care~"

I get it. We live in the "insta" world. Insta-nt gratification world. The passing trend world. The post about a tragedy and show that I care world. The image world. The you tube world. The meme world. The me me world. It's a period of massive miscommunication, of massive over-communication, of Desmadrezation. 

Meanwhile...


The rhizomatic arrangement of my educational space allows for confusion, madness, and play. The class clown is a class act. The teacher, supposed ringmaster, is reduced to the hunger artists. The crowd cheers. Maniacal laughter cackles from near and far. Pearly white innocent incisors and canines shine through rosy colored sanguineous gums that continuously repeat, "ha ha ha ha ha!" Everyone is on the cusp of madness yet sanity is maintained through free-play. ha ha ha ha ha.

On top of the desk, the poster of Fernando Barragan's "A Sacred Journey" shows a picture of a family holding each other, but my thoughts are on the suicide prevention pamphlet that an old lady handed me on my way to work, which was a bit strange, though not in the least bit any stranger than the person whom was sitting next to me on the bus. People are a mystery, and when asked "how are you doing?" you can always say, "as good as the next man." You never really know what people are feeling and/or thinking. The front of the pamphlet said, "we want to help you find a reason to keep living," and I think that perhaps my purpose here seems similar.

I let go; I cannot control this, not through force and punishment at least, and who would want that approach? the force of love seems more transformative than one of fear. I wasn't placed here to be a dictator (was I?). I'm given a paper with some questions to hand out; this is called "covering material." These minds already know, they already know everything and so nothing means anything. Nothing seems new. Everything is "boring." Everything is at the tip of their fingers. Click. Click. Click. Tap. Tap. Tap. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Like. Like. Like. Tweet.Snap.&Chat in the insta-skype-face-snap-pinterest-kik-twitter iworld and value meals from McUniverse. Worshiping, hunched over as if in prayer to the graven images of the i-Mages. The iMage masters of sorcery and hypnotism, casting spells with wands of holly wood. Creating and setting the trends and apps that are consumed as eagerly as oxygen and that suppress and seems to expand the great void within.

Collectively, we skip from page to page to app to game, Monday through Sunday, like a schizophrenic fragmented mind altering between realities and bouncing off of paralyzing white, cushiony walls inside an insane asylum. As if consciousness, nay hyper-consciousness, is not enough to make one go crazy.

Brilliant minds. Oriented in the sea of tech-no-cyberspace. I re-read part of an essay and get stuck on the phrase, "dehumanizing practices." Above us the helicopters chop and the sirens wail outside. Across the nation, a car burns in the streets of Ferguson. Army rifles and tanks patrol the streets. A metal bird, An Md 500 series helicopter, chops from above and canines growl in the hot pavement.
ha ha ha ha ha.




Monday, November 24, 2014

Smells Like Teme Spirit


"Computers handle vast quantities of information with extraordinarily high-fidelity copying and storage. Most variation and selection [of information] is still done by human beings, with their biologically evolved desires for stimulation, amusement, communication, sex and food. But this is changing. Already there are examples of computer programs recombining old texts to create new essays or poems, translating texts to create new versions, and selecting between vast quantities of text, images and data

...This is a radically new kind of copying. The information itself is also different, consisting of highly stable digital information stored and processed by machines rather than living cells. This, I submit, signals the emergence of temes and teme machines, the third replicator" (Susan Blackmore, The Third Replicator.


Selfies explain a narcissism inherent in the binary fractal self-replicating algorithms of the universe.

The Selfie goes, "badum, badum, badum, badum" marching to that rhythm of unique sameness. Like xx-chromosome and xy-chromosome will produce xx and xy and so on and so forth, repeating and reproducing. Two parts that make a whole--yin-yang. Taegeuk. self-similarity ad infinitum, almost like a Matryoshka Doll.

Jakob Boehme, a shoemaker born in the 15th century, asserted that the Universe created a way to look at itself. How? It took a giant selfie to create its self. Well, not exactly like that, but somewhat similar. Boehme stated that the universe is like a mirror that God created so to understand himself. Some would call this the Big Bang; I prefer to call it the huge orgasm of time and space, or the Freudian Pleasure Principle in God, or Gravity jizzes on the void. But these are all mere theories based on limited, thus incomplete, observation via human subjectivity-relativity.

And then God, the self replicating algorithm, said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness...So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:26, 27).  Selfie. E-selfi: the eventual upload of the self into the "e" realm, into the great élan.

And then there came a time in history where a man named William Burroughs wrote, "The word is a Virus." A virus--a small infectious agent that is able to multiply within living cells of a host-- ideally, replicating ad infinitum.

So what's the BOG deal with all this information? the point is no point. Kipplization to re-arrange the teme machine. Information replicates with the aim of self-preservation; it seems to be a basic law of the universe (?): preserve and perpetuate, dissipate. Proliferate. Conquest. Kipple will reverse if may constitute the Telos of the Teme Machine.

For what purpose?

In the end..."the lights [start] crackling like atomics and the boot or finger-nail...[turn] into one big big big mesto, bigger than the whole world, and you [are] just going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was all over..."

References/Allusion:
"The Third Replicator," Susan Blackmore, NY Times (2010)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Phillip K. Dick  (1968)
The Ticket That Exploded, William Burroughs (1962)
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (1962)
The Bible
Computers handle vast quantities of information with extraordinarily high-fidelity copying and storage. Most variation and selection is still done by human beings, with their biologically evolved desires for stimulation, amusement, communication, sex and food. But this is changing. Already there are examples of computer programs recombining old texts to create new essays or poems, translating texts to create new versions, and selecting between vast quantities of text, images and data - See more at: http://onthehuman.org/2010/08/temes-an-emerging-third-replicator/#sthash.l6hZIRhv.dpuf
Computers handle vast quantities of information with extraordinarily high-fidelity copying and storage. Most variation and selection is still done by human beings, with their biologically evolved desires for stimulation, amusement, communication, sex and food. But this is changing. Already there are examples of computer programs recombining old texts to create new essays or poems, translating texts to create new versions, and selecting between vast quantities of text, images and data - See more at: http://onthehuman.org/2010/08/temes-an-emerging-third-replicator/#sthash.l6hZIRhv.dpuf
Computers handle vast quantities of information with extraordinarily high-fidelity copying and storage. Most variation and selection is still done by human beings, with their biologically evolved desires for stimulation, amusement, communication, sex and food. But this is changing. Already there are examples of computer programs recombining old texts to create new essays or poems, translating texts to create new versions, and selecting between vast quantities of text, images and data - See more at: http://onthehuman.org/2010/08/temes-an-emerging-third-replicator/#sthash.l6hZIRhv.dpuf           df

Friday, November 14, 2014

Niño Raro

"All that is solid melts into air"
-Marx and Engels,  Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

There is a force that holds everything together. Everything, force together, holds, would Yoda say. Force everything together holds something, there is. Force the hold everything is there together. there there, where? how? which? what kind? &c...



So I'm reading about power and systems and I start thinking that without rules and a certain law to reinforce the under-lying structure(s), everything falls apart. A "force" seems to be regulated by some sort of rule(s), it seems. Sort of like sentences that have to do with grammar rules. Or, for instance, your gradual, physical decay--a matter of entropy rules. And Matter? Subatomic particle rules. Capitalism? Machiavellian rules, perhaps.

"So...what's the matter?" 
said the stranger next to the piscean eye'd man breathing out hot air,
 lost in thought (and lost indeed),  and
staring at a small peanut shell
that lay on the floor.

"Oh...just thinking that there is nothing between us---
Nothing but empty space"

"oh...but I guess that's still something"

"I guess...well, now that you mentioned it,
you're stepping on something"
Nothing as something, and something as nothing.
Abstractions and dust. Dusty abstractions.
Decorated value. Funny money.
Marionette Dummies. Bloody countries.
For Golden Honey. Simulation and Simulacra.

"What? where?"

"Here"
He pointed to the "string" reeling out from underneath his black boot
to
her black heels.

"Can you see it? here, follow my hand"

"I don't see anything. You're crazy, and weird...you know that?"

"Yeah...
my dear mother would often reminded me.
She'd say, a que raro eres, especially
when I'd go out to stare at ant colonies"

"ant colonies!?"

"yeah, I know...it's weird. And, I don't really know why.
I think it was the organization of it all:
The unity of something that seemed so fragile"

"hmm, interesting"
"meh, it's nothing. c'mon, let's go decay together and pass time"
"that's all?"
"yeah, what else do you want?"
"I'd like to make love"
"shit out of luck, I don't know what that is; I mean, in theory I guess"
"fuck your theories; c'm~oooon"








"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
[...]
Surely some revelation is at hand"
-William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming (1920). 

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Emperor's New Clothes

"The personality can do no more than look on helplessly while its own existence is reduced to an isolated particle and fed into an alien system."
-György Lukács,
Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat

"Conspiracy" theoreticians and tin foilers do not have the credentials, nor the recognition, of the flat- squared-hat & tassel club to be taken seriously. The development of their framework on a particular subject (aliens, Big Brother, Occult, Psychomagic, etc.) ranges from the well-researched to the completely absurd, yet in some ways their bizarre perspectives and cooky theories reflect the circus of Reason, which is traditionally robed in the guise of justice and righteousness.


Galileo echoes from the past that Nature continues to speak in mathematical language. There's a crazy tin-foiler (#N3ophyt3_J@ck) that argues against the genius of Galileo. What a fool. #N3ophyt3_J@ck has a theory that we (humans) emplace a mathematical language onto Nature and thus impose a structure, a mathematical one in particular, on the strangely familiar (m)Otherness of Nature. Why? to make sense of senselessness. To make sense of the (m)Other.

#N3ophyt3_J@ck are you familiar, familiar, iliar liar..with the randumbness of fractals?

N_J@ck continues...and suggests that Senselessness surrounds us in various forms of reasonableness. The senseless parades and makes fun at us through the mask atop the pulpit inside the Judge's court. It serves a life sentence to the man who steals bread while it taxes the white collar with a fine slap on the wrist. That's just ice for you, best served ice cold. Impartial. Indifferent. Just. Everyone whose anyone know "this," but not everyone is anyone, in fact, some are none, i.e., no ones, no oneness with everyone. unrecognized. Until, of course, the everyone "sees" the no one, and then everyone becomes "no one," then things may start moving. anyway....

"This is the system we emplace, impose and perpetuate; if one has effectively consumed this reality (blue pilled, as the Matrix puts it), the rest is history...we are all refractions of Alice in Wonderland wandering in search of order amid a constantly shifting and confusing world of semantics. Simians configuring senseless semantics."-#N3ophyt3_J@ck

I could've just re-watched the Matrix instead of reading N_j@ck's blast on reality.

This "cover" is nothing new nor something that I take offense with. In fact, the absurdity of cloaked senselessness is absolutely sensational: the world turns into a carnival -- and the greatest performances are usually the most exaggerated, the most exaggerated to the point of normalcy. "Reality" TV mimics life mimics reality mimics mimicry of mimi- or copies of me me me...do re mi falsetto~~~in the Baudrillardian surreality. idle worshipers and performers going round and round in the eye.

עובדי אלילים 
But at the moment what fascinates is meaning and purpose in this structure that cyber handle N_j@ck is obsessed with and thus possessed by. Reality and its mirage of illusions are essential and fascinating, #N3ophyt3_J@ck.

Meaning and purpose, dear cybernauts, that's more like the usual cup of tea: Our mixing up (and in some ways confusing) of "How" with "Why."

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Curse Words

Sometimes I wake up feeling suffocated, lonely, and with a mild sense of panic. I have no "beautiful" description to convey the feeling(s), and this highlights the measure of my communicative skills, but I think it also makes me more of a human and less of a writer. My communication (and listening) skills seem terrible (or perhaps they are); they resemble a gorilla grunting and jumping up and down while from my guts I go Oo! Oo! Oo! and point to something, expecting the person on the other side to understand.




Last night a small shadow in my room appeared to disorient me as it reflected some sort of giant reaper hovering over me, which confused my sense of location. It was a simple shadow cast in the shape of an "M" inside my room. I knew it wasn't real, even though I saw it there, over me. I attributed the response to psychological projection. Demon's in my subconscious closet. I think that I think I "think" too much (do you know what I mean?), and this makes me crazy, or stupid, or both.

If I'm insane, 
It's this "game" that's made me change.

I turn to my red desk and see countless articles of GovernMENTAL power, ESPeCIAlly ones that tie plausible speculations to conspiracy theory, religious prophecy, parapsychology, pataphysics, and (f)art. On top sits an article detailing the "Georgia Guidestones" next to one about DARPA and techno-bio network systems next to one about ISIS next to another one about Isis, goddess of love. There's too much information (and shit) and my mind is scattered and shattered in bits and pieces within each sentence and paragraph that I have underlined and noted. Enumerations and itemization being schematized and systematized into a coherent rhizomatic web. For what purpose? I'll get back you on that...I'm still untangling these things as they further entangle me in a loop that ensnares in the reverb. I'm certain that all those texts swim around in the mind/subconscious somewhere.

I laid there staring up at this shadow and start thinking.

Is the lack of headlines about people dying in the streets of America making me crazy? is it? Am I a hypocrite for getting paid by the state while criticizing the state? Did I miss something in class? in life? Why don't I "get it", whatever "it" is? Why do I have so much trouble following the program? Why should I worry about the supermarket price of Fall fruits in a Califonian Winter? Why did I cry when I read aloud the Shema Yisrael? Why did I cover my eyes? Why is it hard for me to forgive my parents? What does the history of the West have to do with the way I feel right now?



Perhaps...



In the end it's all a big fuck you. All the tears and fears and the pain and feelings resemble a grain of sand that gets soaked in the oceans' ebb and flow, and you remain silent and reserved with the other grains that make up a larger landscape. And there's no reason why the water soaks you, it just does and that's the way it goes, back and forth. And then you start to think that probably Love does not exist and that the grain of sand next to you is there by chance; and that it's better off to abandon your humanity and become complete gritty sand, but there's none to abandon in the first place since it was ditched way before you were born. Someone gave a big fuck you to it a long time ago and they're giving it a big fuck you to it today. Take a look out your window. That man pushing the shopping cart that contains no groceries. Big fuck you. Lady sleeping in the park bench. Major F.U. The cop (outs) just doing a Mcjob. ALL CAPS FUCK YOU (this includes me). The game is rigged for you to say, "and a big shout out to all the fuck yous" 



But... 



then you start realizing that abandonment, the expletives, the Blaspheming, is what the obscene wants, even desires. Perhaps you realize and might question that maybe this world, the one built by genius of humanity, wants you to Curse. Wants us cursing each other. Wants you to use curse words. Wants us to kill each other slowly with spells of curse. That perhaps this world forces your solitude into loneliness, because that's when fear can seep in a lot easier, and after the fear settles in, you start cursing and casting spells on others, and, inadvertently, yourself. Cursing, which causes abandonment and cynicism, and which spells hex hex hex. Cursing your neighbor and the other, and an "other" and your brother and your mOther...until your humanity is slowly shred and pulverized that you indeed become that gritty grain of sand. Yet, even then, there is still an essence and form of "is-ness" that seems to remain "you." But, I'm not here to polish. I leave that to those that know what they're doing.

This is just as reminder--it's not a completely cursed world.




Friday, October 17, 2014

Mexican Archetypes

Nostalgic tunes
"drunken father figures playing music really loud, yeah." -El Random Hero




From "Echoic Childhood Memories"
El Random Hero's Blog
(http://justarandomhero.blogspot.com/2014/10/echoic-childhood-memories.html)

Thursday, October 16, 2014

nada nada limonada

It's payday and I have performed another magic trick: as soon as the money comes, it goes--POOF! I'm back to "normal," hustling for petty change and breadcrumbs here and there, helping students with their papers about pro-choice, pro-life, and no-choice and no-life, and my life at coffee and tea shops. And, it's another 2 weeks of re-telling myself to hold on, to keep writing, to keep job hunting, and that I still have my freedom. That it could be worse. That the science steam engine still flows from my nostrils and that the steel and iron creatures of industry provide me with the motivational forces that balance my feet in the current space and time. Instead of stepping on the Nepalese rugs of the coffee shop, I could be making them.


And...around the time I'm about to lose my mind in the uncertainty of the morrow, I take to the water. The water seems to consume every fractured fiber in my nonsense conscious, and after twirling and twisting about, I am spat back out in some sort of reconfiguration. In the pool, it's the bleach. In the ocean, it's the salt. The salt is more effective at it that the bleach. Remember Lot's wife. Destruction & Transformation


Then...when I take things so seriously that they blind me and that in turn reflect a petty and comic worldview, I put on the blinders, being so lucky to have blinders, and go to sleep. Then, at meetings, we talk about what we talk about when we talk about what we are talking about when we are suppose to talk about talking. And when the workday is over, my lungs are exhausted from talking and questioning and my mind feels duller from feelings of being unable to puzzle a coherent thesis or topic sentence anymore-Just go with the list. Here is a template: if A, then B; thus, rationale. While XYZ, ABC, and therefore and thereby whereby the mess therein and the mess wherein reflects the nonsense conscious which illustrates and highlights the twilight of the nada nada limonada.