UPDATED

Being self aware, having heightened perception and pattern seeking tendencies are evolutionary traits with survival value.

Biological evolution brings a species into harmony with it's environment.
      
The best harmony is a state of symbiosis where mutually beneficial exchange exists at personal, communal and ecological levels. (For reasons of simplicity, I call this "Utopia") 

The purpose of the mind's ability to track pattern brings us into a state of utopia.

You don't say!

. .-. . - .... .- -.-- / .- .-. . .-- .- -.-- / .- -. -.-- -- .- -.-- / .. .- .-.. . -.-. - ... -.. .- -.-- / .- -. -.. .-- .- -.-- / --- .-. -- ... ..-. .- -.-- / --- ..-. .-- .- -.-- / .. --. .--. .- -.-- / .- - .. -. .-.. .- -.-- / .. -.-. .... .-- .... .- -.-- / .- .-. -.-- ...- .- -.-- / --- -- ..-. .-. .- -.-- / . --. .. --- -. .-. .- -.-- / --- - .- -.-- / . --. .. --- -. .-. .- -.-- --..-- / --- ..- -. - .-. -.-- -.-. .- -.-- / --- - .- -.-- / --- ..- -. - .-. -.-- -.-. .- -.-- --..-- / .- -. -.. .-- .- -.-- / .- -. --. ..- .- --. . .-.. .- -.-- / --- - .- -.-- / .- -. --. ..- .- --. . .-.. .- -.-- --..-- / .- ... .-- .- -.-- / . .-.. .-.. .-- .- -.-- / .- ... .-- .- -.-- / --- - .... . .-. .-- .- -.-- / .. -- .. .-.. .- .-. ... .- -.-- --..-- / .- -. -.. .-- .- -.-- / .. ... ... .. -- .. .-.. .- .-. -.. .- -.-- --..-- / .. --. .--. .- -.-- / .- - .. -. .-.. .- -.-- -....- / .. -.- . .-.. .- -.-- / .----. .- -. --. ..- .- --. . ... .----. .-.. .- -.-- .-.-.- / . - .... .- -.-- / .. .- .-.. . -.-. - -.. .- -.-- / --- .-- -. ... .... .- -.-- / . .-. . .... .- -.-- / . -. -.. ... - .- -.-- / --- - .- -.-- / .- .. .-.. .... .- -.-- / --- -- ..-. .-. .- -.-- / .- .-.. .. ..-. --- .-. -. .. .- -.-. .- -.-- -..-. . ... - .-- .- -.-- / --- .- ... - -.-. .- -.-- / --- ..-. .-- .- -.-- / . - .... .- -.-- / ..- -. .. - . -.. .-- .- -.-- / .- - . ... ... - .- -.-- .-.-.-

"What time do you want to have dinner?"
"Oh, I could eat now. I don't care."
"It's 4. No one eats dinner at 4."
"That's arbitrary."

I know why the caged bird sings

Tell me if this makes sense (spoiler: unified theory of human evolution- implications to unified theory of everything)

Being self aware, having heightened perception and pattern seeking tendencies are evolutionary traits with survival value.

The purpose of biological evolution is to bring a species into harmony with it's environment.
    
The best harmony is a state of utopia.

The purpose of the mind's ability to track pattern is to bring us into a state of utopia.

http://socksonfloor.blogspot.com/2010/11/updated.html (UPDATED! SEE LINK FOR NEW VERSION)

Geologic Shifts

When did I become the guy who reads fine print for fun and goes to sleep to videos of explanations of irrationalities?! I've never read Catcher in the Rye but I've read the Misfortunes of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade. Sade... as in the gran'pappy of sadism. Maybe that is why I read fine print. And there you go, a full circle. I'm fascinated by the sadism and dysfunction of corporate policies- OR "Business Ethics" if there is such a thing. A lot of my friends have gone to college to study business. This seems like a poor idea. Look at the business we have today. Most of the stuff I think about either reduces to simplicity or absurdity. I can categorize my life into those two functions of the mind.

Then you have things that are both simple AND absurd. We call those things simply absurd and we try our best not to avoid them. That's right, I run head-on into that which challenges my world perspective. Mental flexibility is paramount. Once you realize that simplicity and absurdity are part of the same thing, you can start understanding the big picture.




"And I'd been extremely interested in this notion of randomness as it produces architectural work and as it definitely connects to the notion of the city, an accretional notion of the city, and that led to various ideas of organization. And then this led to broader ideas of buildings that come together through the multiplicity of systems." -Thom Mayne

"Architecture for me has been an investigation of a multiplicity of forces that could come from literally any place. And so I can start this discussion in any number of places, and I've chosen three or four to talk about. And it has also to do with an interest in the vast kind of territory that architecture touches. It literally is connected to anything in terms of knowledge base. There's just no place that it doesn't somehow have a connective tissue to."- Thom Mayne


---


I also had a vision last night that I toured my unborn daughter around the city of necropolis. That was interesting. 

Err

I'm standing on a mountain and I'm looking out to a sea- a desert of clouds. There is a man with a hawk head standing behind me with golden rays. I'm interpreting that to be the sun-god Ra, which would make the man behind him Anubis because he had the head of a dog-like thing. In Egyptian myth it is a jackal.

I'm standing on a mountain and I slowly realize it's at the top of a pyramid that is poking out of the clouds. I look directly into the sun and get a glimpse of insight that I almost immediately forget because I'm not ready. Well, now I know what I have to work on and where to find the next bit.

Psychopomp

Come get me out of this mess, Papa Legba.

Funny how the lowly cultural mythos all of a sudden seem the most important now. I listened to a Christian radio talk show the other day and I was able to really hear the wisdom for the first time. I was able to see past my own belief systems for the first time (really). The bible is still the worst literature I've ever attempted to read, but there is something to it.

Yesterday i caught my mom and her friend talking about me behind my back. Literally. I was driving and they were speaking in hushed voices. They called me vague! Bastards. I've noticed most of the people I talk to can only handle that kind of conversation for fifteen to thirty minutes before heads start to pop. An hour conversation gets me three hours of being screamed at because I've attempted to break their mythos and bring it into the real.

Right now I'm focusing on the separation between heaven and earth. It seems that while Hermes is the destructive force, psychopomp and messenger of the gods, he is always in accordance with the plan of Zeus, even when he causes problems for Zeus. Krishna, worldly incarnate of the lord Brahman, is the trickster in Hindu mythology, which is interesting in the fact that all gods in Hindu mythology are representations of parts of Brahman. It is particularly interesting in the Bhagavad Gita that Krishna, lowly chariot driver, admits and shows the prince Arjuna that he is actually Brahman. There those crazy Hindoos go and admit the truth. The structure is entirely dependent on the chaos. That is probably why I love the Bhagavad Gita so damned much- that and the Sanskrit reading of it is like sex for the ears.

Last night I went to an open mic night where a lady friend of mine sang a blues song she wrote about the importance of being a monkey. Monkey being one of the Chinese tricksters, I found that quite interesting. I'll have to ask her about that next month when I take a day off.

I just had to explain to someone why evolving in a moral sense is important. Her argument was that as long as a person does work to feed themselves and take care of themselves, the reason doesn't matter. If you act only to perpetuate the current evolutionary level, you're going to keep running into the same problems. Right now, those same problems are killing us and unless we do something about it in a morally responsible way, we're going to die. So! Yes, you may have people willing to help you with house work but unless they help you with house work because they believe it is the right thing to do, we're all going to die. Hah. I jest.

PSYCHOPOMP!
Love that word.

On the danger of safety

People often coagulate for emotional and idealogical safety. This is a good idea to a point. If we stay in these groups for too long, our common held belief starts to strangulate those in the group. We often need a trickster to come along with a hammer and carve out some new doorways.



Today I have been shunned by a particular family because my way of operating threatens the safety of this tight family unit. They make jeering remarks and try to fit me into their very specific mold. Being trickster I'm able to circumvent this and play their tricks backwards. Then they ignore me, which I get a kick out of. The mother was fiercely debating the son on preparation of leftovers. They were trying to come up with the best way to prepare the cold turkey because we don't have a microwave. I took a plate of cold turkey, potatoes and cranberries and ate them upside down on a footstool. The mother asked me why I was doing this and then asked "Is there any other value besides seeing the world in another perspective?"

...

Sounds like you don't value seeing things differently than you do.

If we do not have flexibility of mind, there is no flexibility of lifestyle; if you are a proponent of rigidity then you are a disciple of death and you'll still bend, but at a single point with a violent cracking sound.

“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”
- Bruce Lee

To RELAX

Remember filth, remember impermanence, forget self, re-invent world, purify thoughts, practice divination, draw pretty shapes, connect with divine, talk with good people, practice tolerance, practice being quiet, make good lists, channel Eshu/Legba/Loki, eat good foods, go bathroom, play paradox, dance, fight, play, consume new ideas, relax physical, heal emotions, create distance, enter that which has no space 'uʍop-ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ, destroy/create personal order, live wildly, attack joints, study language, practice mechanics of world, practice observation, meditation, breath of change, cultivate emptiness, be shifty, forget connections, revisit old connections.

Is there an elegant way to say "I want to fuck your daughter"? A damn good question.

I got in another verbal fight. This time they got frustrated at me because I was disregarding what they were saying. What they didn't realize was that I had an intense familiarness with what they were saying. I actually know the argument better than they do and unfortunately when I went to prove this, I proposed ideas faster than they could consume them. SO, I look like an ass who doesn't care what you say. In reality, I'm an ass that already knows what you're going to say for the next three hours. "But how can you be sure?!" The person I was talking with was arguing that individuals need authority figures to guide them based on their life experience being a manager of people. I brought that idea back to inception- the history of the compulsory school system and it's dedication towards extending childhood and creating a dependence on the market economy as a sort of moral code. "We need workers in our offices, let's create a dependence on offices."

The first goal of any institutions is to grow and feed that institution. School systems depend on us thinking we need school systems, so they manufacture distrust in the common ability- makes us believe we need a strong authority in our lives, so we grow up to need guidance in basic life choices. This also destroys the arts or any system that could create even a slight deviance in the system. We think as Americans that we're given the most freedom but in truth, you were born into a market economy that claims ownership on your flesh even ten years after you give up citizenship. YOU ARE NOT FREE. Sure, you can choose which colored sugar packet and if you vote for the left or the right, but either way, you're getting sugary nonsense. The left-right paradigm is a joke because both sides work for special interest groups and the market whore economy.

So yes, I know what they were saying, but they had no idea what I was saying. I say so much shit that flies over the heads of my companions that it feels like I'm hosting a 24hr airshow. WALL OF FIRE, GO.

To relax... I... learn.

Food of the Gods

I'm sick of pretending like I'm stupid. I'm sick of holding back. I'm not stupid. I should not need to hold back.

So many of my friends suffer but it's important to point out that ending suffering is not the goal right now. Suffering is the shadow caused by the self blocking the light of the world. Basically. If we do not have sufficient motivation to bring our culture into harmony with the world, ending suffering might very well end culture. Right now we have two major problems in this world.

1) pollutants 2) internal/external strife.

This can easily be expressed by the fact that we're using substantially more resources and creating more pollution than this planet can stand (for long). Also, we suffer due to our culture's disharmony with the world. We make up rules to confine the self because we fear the self. We have top-down authoritarian government because we stifle sovereignty (self government) because we don't trust our peers because we fear the self ...





We must first secure our future and our present before we can adequately explore the other states of mind. Just as we must first learn how to walk before we run in the Olympics. We must first learn how to walk the earth before we explore Olympus.

Like whoa

I spoke to a man today and he said something that perfectly illustrates the mundane mental illness.

This man participates in a certain ritual and while we were talking, I pressed him about the origin of the teaching he is into and I also introduced my idea about where it came from- the nature of the beast, so to speak. First he spoke in very broad terms, trying to brush me off by acting very well read. Then he started talking AT me instead of with me. He spoke about unrelated subjects and I brought him back gradually. He went back to speaking vaguely but I repeated the same line of questioning until he exploded.

(Imagine yelling) "No matter what you say, you'll never convince me otherwise. I'm 100% positive it is this way and you can't change my mind"

I calmly explained that I wasn't trying to convince him of anything and that I was merely exploring his teaching for my own education in my meditation practice. He calmed down immediately. What followed was incredibly interesting.

He admitted that I should talk to his friend because he wasn't a proper authority.

Auto Tune

I met a man with no ego. He was a sprite of a man with feathers in his hat and a near-constant smile. He spoke frequently of light beings and thankfulness and I wondered... is such a thing possible? I went back to the Tao Te Ching to see what the old boy said about light and darkness and there it was!

a clip from Ch2

"When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad...."

And here is Ch10 in it's entirety. 

"Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue."

So I can readily understand that such a thing is not only possible, but this man may very well have gotten there. This brings up more questions than it answers though, as good ideas typically do. Seeing that being self aware has survival value and is most likely a product of human evolution with the intention of the flourishing of the species, would being eternally joyful have survival value? Well sure, it creates the conditions that allow for a more peaceful accordance with the universe, but is it an end in itself? Most assuredly not. I think that a peaceful disposition gives us the tools to do the work, but is not an end to the work (I know it doesn't 'really' have an end, but there is a more definite end than this- I may talk about it later). 

My experience often brings up the question of if one must cognitively understand what one does. Does the dancer need to understand why they dance? Of the people I've asked, they have said no. Well, being that I am the artist who understands his art and why I do it, I think it is absolutely imperative. 

Why has every culture in the history of man had a form of artwork(from the handaxe onward)? Even the earliest languages have music that can be traced back to the mimicking of natural sounds and rhythm (which I think may suggest music predates language). 

(Quite possibly the very first jam session)

Point being that throughout history- regardless of when music started- we've had music but haven't really understood music- and so music remains the same. Only when we can use music as a language can it serve it's purpose and language doesn't function if you only enjoy the sound of it.

Play that funky beat, cro magnon man.

Substance of Mind

I woke up in the place where the rubber meets the road. I sat down in this space and tasted the heat waves.

In this place I can see the video play in front of the eyes of pedestrians. They look at me and wonder where my mind is at. They are quick and hesitant and deeply troubled; eager to jump from one fantasy into the next but frozen in fear of the real. In this space I can move between worlds as easily as you walk down the street. In this space I hold all the keys and there isn't a chance that you could ever hide. I could seek you out in any dark recess of this world and light you up like a moth.

When points of light become oceans, I can dance between your thoughts nimbly. The motion in my head slows to a crawl and so I can crawl between the spinning blades of your mind. I can enter the places that even you cannot because my mind has become a sort of zero point mass.

It's frustrating to hear people speak of fragments of this and hear the terror in their voice. Unfortunately there is no proper language for expressing these things for the simple reason that understanding these subjects goes completely against 99% of all human understanding at the moment. We live in a world where sincere dishonesty is rampant to a point of mundane mental illness across the board. Near everyone is sick with this disease. Dis-ease in their own world for the mere fact that it is the only thing they cannot escape- and because of that, the single biggest cause of fear and mental deviance from reality.

It is fear of the mundane that keeps us crazy. It is the fear of ourselves that keeps us in worlds of fantasy and what scares me is that I don't think we're going to wake up fast enough as a species to save ourselves.

That which has no substance
enters where there is no space.
-tao te ching, ch. 43

Message

It's a throbbing compulsion. If I were an undying pillar of fire, you'd be a tea candle. I tried to explain it in what I would consider simple language last night. It ended as it always does, he called me crazy on the simple premise that he couldn't understand what I was saying. He used circular logic and continued for a couple sentences after I had ended the conversation. What a poor, sick soul. It's difficult for us to recognize our own dysfunction.

Mine is my inability to live cohesively with the world of sickness. I'm not very good at finance. I consider that a dysfunction because I should be able to live in the environment I'm placed in regardless of what it is (within limitations).

It's a throbbing compulsion. It's a flickering in the wind that demands that I do the work. A silence louder than cannon fire. It is the quake in the soil that splits the glass house. The ignorant chewing glass shards and pretending it is filet mignon. There is a wide-eyed crazyness about them. They gape at me in silence as I walk around. It is sort of terrifying to know that the world around me is literally crazy. There is a sadness in the separation, but I rest assured there is one. I don't have to live that way any more.

They look at me with this look that screams they have no idea what is going on. I read the classics in literature- over and over I hear "I think I'm alive..." as if they were grasping to quantify this experience. Every single person speaks about this and yet none are bold enough to step into the center stage with it. We hear whispers on the fringe about the "creative edge" but as soon as we try to bring it into the living room... We've created a love child of our own madness and it keeps us away from truth.

Bamford says that "I believe in the mind and it's ability to create fantasy in times of trouble"
Sing it, sister. Listen to some of her stuff and you'll get an idea of what it is like to live over the edge. Once you start stepping on the cracks you become both most and least capable. All your flaws are highlighted and your abilities heighten to frightening altitudes. Coming screaming across the stars with hair ablaze, we try to catch a glimpse of the underworld.

I live in the space between heaven and earth. One of the few who journey to the place beyond death and life and into the underworld. The overworld- glittering and sparkling and filled with wonder and here we are, shitting all over the Louvre. It is a land of quiet desperation, this planet. Honestly, I don't think we're going to make it. I think we're going to burn up in our own shadow like the people of Nagasaki. Zip line into hell sounds like the zipper of your pants. 

Gypsies

I wish I could work the phrase "Look at me, I'm interesting" into a geometric pattern like the blocks below. I'm not that clever- though I DID make a pretty badass image of the repeating work "HI"-... the scaling got all fucked so you won't see it, but take my word on it's amazability.

Watch the Maria Bamford show... with your pug.

A word about the links above the header, these are the sites I frequent most often, the ones I feel are most important to my digital life here in the internet. Hold on, let me check what they are. Ask Nature catalogs certain behavior in the world which certain people could use in terms of bio-mimicry. Khan is a pretty sweet lecture series about scholastic subjects. Thankfully they were able to upload the whole headfuck process to the digital age. Thank god for that one- it is nice to have some reference material just in case you decide you want to revisit the ghost of math classes past. Bring a strong sedative. Sum of Awe is my personal radio station. Go listen to it. Look, I'm getting tired. It is all good stuff. Check that shit out.

Smudge

The first blemish on a blank page seems so far away from being art. The same is true for me when I start to write; I feel like I'm bursting into a quiet room with all my typical noise and thunder. This is just a little bit of filth to get me started- to get the juices flowing. The problem is not content, I have plenty of that floating around, I just need to find a starting point. A place from which I can leverage my way into the world with my pick and my spelunking gear. I do like a good fragmented sentence. I think they are most like real conversation because if you've ever noticed, conversation is a fluid thing- most akin to a messy sexual encounter. We're exchanging ideas and forgetting which limb is whose- but only if you're doing it right.

It isn't a clean thing. That is what I'm trying to say.

I did two immoral things this weekend. I censored a child and I washed some graffiti off the side of my house. To make amends with the wronged parties I invited the child to question his experience and his elders through the perspective of a few challenging coin games and I bought the rogue artist some proper outdoor paints and invited her back. All is well in the land of Oz.

I enjoy implicit structure rather than explicit structure because flexibility of mind is paramount to my lifestyle.

Hello. I'm Socks.

You are not Alice and this is not Wonderland. The mundane is forever magical; the magical, forever mundane.