Feeding time

Some humans lack the willpower
they'll gorge themselves obese
and when they die, well then goodbye
wonders never cease!

Fish get by on gillpower
they'll eat anything you've got.
Chum and scum and guts and tripes
and worms and grubs -- the lot

Whales fill up on krillpower
omnivorous they are not!!
There's species that eat weirder stuff
like faeces, piss and snot.

Speedfreaks use their pillpower
they really don't eat much
their bones poke through their broken flesh
which bleeds at the slightest touch.

Bakers use their millpower
to grind up wheat for bread
we roast for toast to butter up
and smear our favourite spread.

Windows use their sillpower
so we can put down stuff
plants and bongs and keys and thongs
(I'll stop now, it's enough!)

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View from a shit-stained boulder

Lost, thirst-maddened, flyblown and with feet burnt black, the Seeker wondered the endless desert. Tongue grotesquely swollen, he climbed the highest mountain. Eyes horribly bulging, he swam the deepest sea.

For untold aeons he searched and looked hither and thither, high and low... driven by the primeval, urgent, elemental urge to Seek. Seek what? Doesn’t matter. Shaddup.

Lost, the Seeker sought.

Out of time, outside of time, high upon a craggy crag the Seeker encountered an elderly guru of dubious provenance, indeterminate gender and reproachable demeanour. Gnarled and nut-brown ze wast, perched cross-legged upon a shit-stained boulder, the smell of an oily rag emanating from zer ambiguous loins.

Jubilation rose within the Seeker’s throbberous heart. Humbly on chafed knees approached he the Nut-brown. Then eyes downcast spake he demurely, saying:

See fish below the submariner's temple

SEE-FISH BELOW THE SUBMARINER'S TEMPLE, roughly 60cm x 50cm. Oils. finalised in 2000, maybe?

The eyes of Poseidon are deeper than guile
swimming in tears that drown every smile
while always the temple looms on the hill
in the clouds from which the rainwaters spill.

Frozen in time eternity sleeps
in the place where a god eternally weeps
on the shimmering shores of an unmapped ocean
the sand is drenched by waves of emotion.

.

... Not published in AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.

We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes. Read 'em and weep!

The Assembly of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities

The male buddha Vairocana in union with the female buddha Akasadhatvisvari.

This post is about the so-called "peaceful and wrathful deities" in The Tibetan Book of the Dead (deluxe edition, Penguin, 2005).

Here's a crude summary: when you're dead, initially you may encounter things that may seem to be deities but which are really just products of the mind/imagination.

According to the Book (p 387), the deities are symbols that emerge from:

the meditator's own awareness ... and sensory and mental processes.

The 42 symbols of peacefulness:

represent the quiescent natural purity of these fundamental components of our being.

Awarewolf

I came upon a golem
“encountered” one might say
eating dust as golems must
all bloody, muddy day.

I came upon a zombie
a zombie that I saw
gobbling brains ’til brainy stains
remained upon the floor.

I came upon a vampire
a vampire I did see
drinking blood that streamed in flood
bright red quite readily.

I came upon a werewolf
“awarewolf” as it were
hungry eyes saw my demise
my death, if you prefer.

I came upon the humans
in their global sauna
they ate a world and then they hurled
their guts out in a corner.

Sign of success (dream)

I am employed by a firm of consultants. My office is in the middle of the alfresco dining area of a luxury hotel. I am happy. I feel good. I am not concerned about the fact that my office is in a terrible mess: papers everywhere, ashtrays full of butts and ash, and strange green caterpillars crawling all over the back of my chair.

The caterpillars have long, bristly hairs. Could they be dangerous? Are the hairs tipped with potent neurotoxins? Should I kill the caterpillars? I decide not to.

I find a sign on which most of the lettering is faded and illegible but I can read some of the words: "Director of Superannuation… in honour of… recognition… excellence…"

Two workmen enter the office wanting to affix the sign. We have a friendly conversation. I say "I'm amazed, astounded, really bowled over. Nobody tells me anything. It's the first I've heard of it. Without any inappropriate modesty I feel it is richly warranted…"

The workmen respond by saying they have known about it for some time--the fact that my achievements are to be recognised by means of the sign. The workmen go away. I go for a walk in the garden. When I return, the sign is no longer to be seen. I search my office, but the sign is nowhere to be found. The green caterpillars are still crawling on the back of my chair. I am not worried, or upset. I feel cheerful. I suspect the workmen may have taken the sign. But they probably have a good reason for doing so. I don't know what that could be.

President Bill Clinton enters the office. He is CEO. He knows about the sign. We look for it together.

"You are one of my best generals," he says to me.

Beatings for One Person Each

Painting by William Blake

Basil baulked at bulk-bashing
Preferring to inflict higher quality beatings
On fewer victims

Bernadette broke a sweat placing bets
Her bibliophilous solution-toed calculi
At longer odds and shorter jockeys

David the pecs was tortured to death slowly
His bibulous problem-head unwhole he
Glugged a bevvy of big-bosomed babes

Unsolved on ebay, watch: onsold
To unrealtor Esmeralda Glutz
Unreal water but no crusts in all her dusty huts

As below, so above

According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the respective values of certain pairs of physical properties---such as position and momentum, or time and energy---cannot both be known simultaneously. The more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other is known. For example, the more certain you are about the position of a sub-atomic particle, the less certain you are about its momentum.

The uncertainty has nothing to do with the inadequacy of measuring instruments, but rather is a fundamental property of Reality: when some things are known, other things can’t be known at the same time.

“So what?” I hear you say, “Who cares about where a sub-atomic particle is at? What’s that got to do with the real world?”

The story of the story of the magic painting

St. Anthony Plagued by Demons, engraved by Martin Schongauer in the 1480s.

In my harsh and bitter years of toil as an indentured servant in the household of a cruel, demanding master, every day I would arise three hours before the sun. My first action would be to retrieve my bloodstained, battered notebook from its hiding place. Then, in the light of a spluttering, stuttering candle, with the stub of a pencil I had found in the fields, I would write down what I remembered of my dreams the previous night.

On one particularly dark and frozen morning, I began to write about a Magic Painting that was a doorway, a portal. Anyone who looked into the Painting was miraculously transported to another world. And everyone returned from the world of the Painting miraculously healed of all wounds: physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual.

But before I could finish writing the story of the Painting, I was summonsed to my duties, which were many, unvarying, heavy and onerous. Much later, two hours after the sun had died in the arms of day, my body aching and bruised from strenuous labour, I crawled onto my thin and threadbare mattress in the corner of the dark and tiny stall assigned me by my keepers.

The Evil Sandwich

Once upon a brunch I bought a Sandwich from a gnarled and rustic seller ensconced quite gaily in a gaudy booth one inauspicious day.

‘Twas ham and cheese: I remember it well, as if ‘twere but this very toothsome morn itself that I reluctantly but expectantly forked over six clinking dollarim — sponduleks if you will — to that aged and curly purveyor within zir gaudy booth that foul and fractious day.

And though the absence of tomato hinted at the manifestation of dark forces as repulsive as a botched cosmological constant, still I remained initially at least unaware if not absent-minded as to the true and fundamental nature of the Sandwich.

Linden dollar exchange rate crisis

Second Life and the Linden dollar have faded into relative oblivion. The currency is no longer current, having been supplanted by Bitcoin and other virtual mediums of exchange. And these days Second Life itself is worse than inadequate, it's claustrophobic. Who would want to smear themselves across a paltry two lives, now that the technology exists to support dozens if not hundreds of lives per person?

But let's not dwell on the limitations of the past. Let's not get too smug about how far we've traveled in the last few years. To maintain our blistering pace of cultural change we've had to jettison some real good stuff that in future we will wish we hadn't.

But that's enough commentary; let's eat some meat (below).

Meat jockeys ride again and again

Soul, Self, Consciousness, Mind and Personhood may not be the same thing, but they are the same kind of thing.

• They all refer in one way or another to the essence of a person.
• They are all of the same nature: they’re immaterial ie non-physical.
• They all do the same job: they’re meat-jockeys, riding embodied brains.
• And they’re all immortal*, at least in theory (unlike the body, which can’t keep it together after death).

To a duellist the mind doesn’t matter, it’s immaterial. Instinct and intuition are critical in a fight to the death where there’s little time to think. Also immaterial is the soul. There’s little love or joy or oneness when you’re piercing eyeballs with a rapier. The body, on the other hand, is very material to a duellist: you can’t duel without one. In fact, you can’t even duel with one: only two will duo. Duellists understand how one opposes another, which equals two.

the zillion names of god

There are no disagreements, there is only confusion about labels. There are no arguments about meaning, there is only a failure to understand the difference between the signified and the signifier. This confusion is especially relevant and important in relation to so-called disagreements about god or gods, and the nature and meaning thereof.

Both the pantheistic position and the panentheistic position are unassailable, logically, because they are constructed on the bedrock of axiomatic definition, and the truth of any axiom is as agreed in advance of its application. (Although if Godel is right then all positions are unassailable from within but may be assailable from without).

The Riddler

Audio composed and performed by SRS

The Riddlee asked the Riddler,
"Oh won't you riddle me?
that I may pass from hence to thence
upon the Count of Three?"

"Just one riddle," the Riddlee said,
"no less nor even more
that I may move along the groove
that leads to the Earl of Four."

Quoth the Riddler to the Riddlee
“A riddle I’ll contrive
that you may travel across this gravel
towards the Duke of Five.”

“For Fuck’s sake,” quoth the Riddlee
“Quit your stupid tricks
time is fleeting; I’m late for my meeting
with the Marquis at Six!”

The Riddler grinned an evil grin
and counted to eleven
but all four nought: he stopped three short
upon Viscount of Seven.

The Riddlee pondered for a while
then said “I’ll tell you straight:
just add one, now I must run
to meet the Baron Eight.”

the illusion of difference

People argue a lot, very often about a thing called "god". We fight and kill for reasons to do with a thing called "god".

There are many different fights about god, including but not limited to fights about the existence of god (whether ze exists), the nature of god (what ze is), how we should interact with god, and whether there is one god or many gods or many aspects of the one god. There are fights between people called “believers” and people called “atheists”. There are fights between those who believe they believe in a different god to the god or gods in which others believe they believe. There are fights between people who believe that god is “X” versus people who believe “Y” is god. There are fights between people who believe the name of god is Poseidon and people who believe the name of god is Neptune.

Of course, god is not the only thing we kill each other about. We kill each other for political reasons (to do with power), economic (wealth, resources), cultural, racial and more: you name it, we’ll kill in the name of it.)

many mansions

What do we mean by "real"? Is matter more real than energy? Is a tree more real than the idea of a tree? Is the idea of a tree real? Are ideas real? Is a sound more real than a thought? Is actuality more real than possibility?

What is an action? Is an action real? An action is not a physical thing. It is not a thought. Or is it?

Is the idea that there is (are) a god (gods) less real than the fact (assuming it is a fact) of there being a god or gods?

In my father's house (the multiverse/reality) are many mansions: the Mansion of Matter, the Mansion of Mind, the Mansion of Memory, the Mansion of Mystery, to name but a few.

You can find roast chicken in the Mansion of Matter. You can find a recipe for roasting chicken in the Mansion of Mind. You can find molecules in the Mansion of Matter. You can find ways to understand what a molecule is in the Mansion of Mind.

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broken on the wheel (the keys to your karma)

If there aren’t enough bodies for the souls of the dead, the problem is ghosts.

If there aren’t enough souls for the bodies of the living, the problem is zombies.

If there are more dead ancestors than living descendants, the problem is grave.

But there are solutions to these problems, at least in theory.

It’s not true that every body implies at least two others. Sex isn’t the only way to reproduce, though it’s more fun than gene-splicing. Progenitors can and do produce multiple offspring, and are frequently alive during the lifespan of their offspring, though mostly wish they weren’t. And what about weird stuff like in vitro fertilisation, cloning, parthenogenesis, toner-less photocopying, and virgin birth?