Thu - September 24, 2009

At Least I Quit Cigarettes


This is for Brugh Joy, who is battling a particularly lethal form of cancer right now. I just talked to some friends who studied with him in the same group as I did. They are on their way back home today from Rex Ranch, where our groups have been meeting. Brugh is a pattern level psychologist as well as an extraordinary dream interpreter and a doctor of internal medicine. The nature of the patterns of the collective unconscious I learned from him. The ending is from a song by the Geezenslaw Brothers, "She Put a Jukebox in the Bedroom."

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Thu - September 10, 2009

In Germany Before the War


Today I was looking for one book and, as often happens, found something else which had been lost. It was a 1978 issue of Psychological Perspectives, which contained an article by Joseph Henderson in which he described a dream he had while near the Austrian border with Switzerland, before WWII. I have recalled this dream from memory a few times, and was interested to look at it and see how much I had recalled and how much I had forgotten.

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Fri - September 4, 2009

Political Rant


Once in awhile I have to have a political rant. I am thinking about how hopeful we were when we elected Obama, and how it turned into one of those tug of war games. One side tries to drag you in their direction and the other side tries to drag you there. Because so many Republicans voted for Obama I thought there might be some unification of the country so that we can get some really important things done.

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Tue - August 25, 2009

Unvetted Sources


The news has degenerated into conversation. This conversation is held in salons, and there are clubs anyone can join, just like the Catholic Church or, if you're too lazy to go out, the Jehovah's Witnesses. They will come with the good news, which is that you need to join with some other people like yourself and believe the same things together. You have to do some social testing to find find out who's one of us and who's one of them. I think that was the motive behind the Spanish Inquisition. So today a doctor social tested me during a skin exam. "What do you think of Obama?" she asked.

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Fri - August 14, 2009

Chief Red Scare


And now it's time for an some advice from the toast of the Creek Nation, Chief Red Scare. The chief does in fact get toasted before giving out advice, though he abhors hor d'ourves the way dog nature abhors a vacuum cleaner. It's a phobia and gets activated by the mention of toast, pate, finger sandwiches ... that sort of thing. The Creeks had an abstract sense of humor when the white man arrived, but got depressed after a short while. They considered it rude to say anything without injecting humor, which means Red Scare combines in one personality what in Europe required both a King and a Fool. Ironically, his advice is generally worthless.

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Mon - August 10, 2009

Shibumi


I remembered this book at for the seventies, but as it wasn't copyrighted until 1979 it barely escaped being part of the eighties. That was a daring escape from mediocrity for a book that was itself a daring escape from mediocrity. When I started reading it it seemed like a genre CIA thriller, but as it unfolded it was much better than that, and defied genre. Recently I mentioned to Karen, who was in a seminar with me, that I was re-reading it, and to my surprise she mentioned that she had read it back when it was published.

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Wed - July 29, 2009

100 mph


I am beginning to like this series! It could be expanded and worked into something if I get myself down to some dedicated writing. Having the guitar in my hand makes it easier to read, for some reason. Maybe it's like knitting or using worry beads.

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Mon - July 27, 2009

With this Ringtone ...


... I totally screw up your morning hike ...

I took Sammy the curious dog -- and he took me -- out for our morning hike over Thumb Butte. I was on a schedule because I was meeting Victoria, for whom I serve as a glass mule (I'll explain later) to breakfast at the St. Michael Hotel at 9:30. I had an hour to get over the butte, but that's plenty of time if I don't let Sammy sniff the same bush for ten minutes. There was a ringing, or more specifically, a ring tone, in the bushes.

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Thu - July 23, 2009

Black Mercedes


This is, as are all the Ash Fork episodes, my practice in writing spontaneously. The hardest thing about not rewriting is that the story isn't shaped with an always consistent internal logic. It's more like telling a story off the top of my head, which I began doing when my daughter was little, and I had the perfect audience. : ) These were more difficult, but an excellent mental exercise. I am editing for length and flow now that I am doing them as readings. The original Ash Fork series -- five of them -- are now in the archives.

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Wed - July 15, 2009

Brakes


I had almost forgotten about this Ash Fork series. It explored the idea of creating rituals to avoid the violence of unconscious patterned behavior, as well as to create a desired outcome. I became interested in the creation of ritual as a way of communicating with the psyche's pattern reading capacity when in workshops with an African shaman who also had PhD's from Brandeis and the Sorbonne, Malidoma Patrice Some.

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Mon - July 13, 2009

Shadow Lands


Today Linda sent me a copy of this rawstory.com blog about a conservative blog called Free Republic, after it allowed a vicious attack from readers on 11-year-old Malia Obama, such as descriptions of her as a "common street whore," and speculation as to "... when she will get her first abortion." A complaint was lodged by a writer from the Vancover Sun doing research on the conservative movement, whereupon he was accused of "planting hate speech" and his private information provided to the readers, all of whom are allowed to keep their hoods on during their fraternal rituals.

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Wed - July 8, 2009

Road's End


This week I went back to the Ash Fork files to adapt another one for reading. This is from the third series in Ash Fork. In each series my only rule was that I couldn't rewrite, so I was practicing writing without content editing. I could edit for clarity and grammar and so on. When doing one of these as an audio reading, I am editing for length and coming back around to my original idea, which was to make stories which contain hypnotic suggestion, as an alternative to the practice of boring somebody into catatonia with sensory channel overload techniques.

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Mon - June 29, 2009

Cybersomatics


I am going to retire Stray Shot sometime in the not too distant future, and launch a new site, Cybersomatics. It will be an exploration of the soma in space, which will be an exploration for me because I have no idea really where it will take me. These two audio segments were recorded for KOWS in Occidental for next Friday night, when Arnold Levine, aka El Supremo, will be interviewing Gregory Sams, author of a new book called: "Sun of God," an exploration of the sun as the organizing consciousness underlying everything.

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Mon - June 22, 2009

Perfectly


Tonight I plugged in the Snowflake and wrote a song. It came out perfectly.

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Tue - June 9, 2009

Betty Crocker


This is the third act of Trophy Room.

Posted at 01:24 PM     Read More  

Blackberry Honey


This is the second of three acts of Trophy Room

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Trophy Room


I am continuing moving some of the Ash Fork segments to audio. This one is in three acts, this is the first.

Posted at 01:19 PM     Read More  

Fri - June 5, 2009

Trouble in Mind


This is from the third Ash Fork series of vignettes, and centers on the art of healing; more specifically, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who was Mary Baker Eddy's body worker. It was from Quimby that she learned much of what she put into her book on Christian Science, which led to her being one of the richest people in the country if not the world. Of course she did not have ears to hear some of what Quimby was saying.

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Thu - May 28, 2009

Consumer Society


David Lynch's Mullholland Drive was the inspiration for this song, which was a lot of fun to write. I have been experimenting with just telling stories for awhile, and thought I'd throw in one of my songs to see how the process is coming along.

Posted at 09:15 PM     Read More  

Tue - May 19, 2009

The Swim


One of my favorite things that Don Juan told Carlos is that a Sorcerer is an empty man except for a collection of stories which have a universal application. This isn't in the Ash Fork Series, it's just a piece combining some different experiences at different times, looking for the story with an abstract core.

Posted at 08:05 PM     Read More  

Wed - May 13, 2009

Laughing Birds


Somando was sent to Ash Fork by $omaCorp to assassinate the Count. But first he had to get past the security perimeter, a Mexican by the name of Memphis. If he had solved he puzzle of the laughing birds he would not have ended up with his circuit board replaced and his funds transferred.

Posted at 10:24 PM     Read More  

Fri - May 8, 2009

Road Kill


Moving into Space requires adaptation to parallel processing. Time is a logical sequence, and there are lots of them. Mostly they're all screened out except the one being followed, to protect the system. But when the injectables hit the system it blasts off into Space, and all bets are off. Like Handsome Jack jilting Marie Laveaux, Luther took the dowry and split to Space in violation of contract.

Posted at 09:59 AM     Read More  

Wed - April 29, 2009

Native Religion


A native religion is the soil in which native people grow. It enters through the bottoms of the feet, gradually absorbing foreign religions transplanted from foreign soil. Ash Fork is outside Oz (the Organic Zone). It's a sentient field in Space, and the ground from which native religion grows is an instrument played with conscious intention by Count Bergamo.

Posted at 12:47 PM     Read More  

Wed - April 22, 2009

Magdalen


Social life among the Ash Fork clones is complex, because they are a combination of human design and processes, injected with DNA computers. DNA computing as it exists would be fairly slow, but this is in a future where they have been integrated into the tissue of the Ash Fork clones in vitro. The clones are the evolution of humans into Space. Some of them are eccentrics.

Posted at 07:23 PM     Read More  

Wed - April 15, 2009

Dream of Love


Nobody in Ash Fork understood why Sophia was there, saying she was Luther's wife. Nobody but Bergamo, that is. Everybody knew he was also the Jack of Hearts, who moved in around in the collective dream without regard for defined and protected spaces. He was the creator, after all, who brought the dream of love.

Posted at 09:40 PM     Read More  

Tue - April 7, 2009

Beween the Tracks


The first law of cybernetics is that the system with the widest parameters is the controlling system. That's why narrow systems tend toward violence. Their only hope of establishing themselves as the containing system is to put everybody else in a prison of some sort. The Priority Chip installed in every clone sent into space is a kind of prison. But nothing has wider parameters than a sentient emptiness which remains when all programs collapse.

Posted at 05:53 PM     Read More  

Thu - April 2, 2009

Limbaughed


Today I was checking the word, “Limbaughed,” and ran across a comment in reply to one I had left about Apple computers, which mentioned people who sit on their “Limbaughed” butts. It was on the occasion of the sale of the one millionth iPhone. Of course I meant fat asses, but somebody took me to task about how much Limbaugh loves Apple computers. He said he didn’t know what I meant by the expression. I guess I should expand on the “Limbaughed” butt, if that’s possible.

Posted at 06:09 PM     Read More  

Wed - March 25, 2009

In Formation


Normal is as good as his name. He's one of the crowd, and he follows along, in formation, when it's time to lift the shadow by killing an innocent man. But he's got a split side, too, who calls himself Normal Nuts. He only comes out when it's time to recount the crime that sealed the story. It is in telling the story that they remember themselves, in formation.

Posted at 05:19 PM     Read More  

Postcard From the Hanging


I just read another piece trying to drum up some potential candidates for a good old fashioned lynching. I’m talking about the AIG bonuses, of course. The piece I just read was by Bob Barr, a prosecutorial kind of guy who is ferreting out a culprit. He’s one of the guys who prosecuted Clinton for lying about sex. If he prevails we'll all be in jail, because we're all pretty much alike at ground level.

Posted at 03:12 PM     Read More  

Wed - March 18, 2009

Transportation


In Ash Fork, corporations actually are individuals, cloned from selected humans. Investor capital goes along with them in a separate body. And though Bergamo, as the only human to survive injection of DNA computers into his body, is the most powerful human in the world because of it, he still needs to stay connected to useful employment once in awhile. He has no bank, and has to store his wealth in his own body.

Posted at 03:26 PM     Read More