New Year's Revolutions

According to Wikipedia, the following are characteristics of stable, high-functioning adults:

1. Altruism (constructive service for other people that brings pleasure and satisfaction);
2. Anticipation (realistic planning for future discomfort);
3. Humor (an interesting inclusion. Apparently, the ability to point out absurdity or unpleasantness while causing amusement or pleasure is a mature skill. A good way to deal with situations that would otherwise be too difficult or distressing);
4. Identification (the unconscious modeling of oneself after a role model);
5. Introjection (identifying with some object or idea so strongly that it becomes a part of oneself);
6. Sublimation (we all know this one-- transforming a negative impulse into positive behavior. Turning darkness into light. Alchemy);
7. Thought suppression (not to be confused with repression. The ability to push conscious thoughts or emotions into the pre-conscious in order to better deal with present reality. Delaying dealing with an emotion or need until later, and then processing and accepting it).

Something for me to think heavily about. (These traits are the fourth level of psychic "defense mechanisms", the level being called Mature. The first three levels of d.m.'s-- Pathological, Immature, and Neurotic--are even more interesting, but I'll address those in further blog posts).

Also, if you'd like, you can watch my cover version of Queen's "You Take My Breath Away" which I whipped together after thinking that C minor was such a pretty-sounding chord:

Click Here!

If you think that sucked and need a palette-cleanser, I recommend Morrissey's "Ouija Board, Ouija Board":

The Table is Rumbling

HAIL SANTA

This Seems Somehow Important

In Buddhist cosmology, there is a deity known as Ragaraja, or Aizen Myouou in the Japanese. He is depicted as a red-skinned, scowling man. He represents the point at which sexual agitation becomes enlightenment, and romantic love becomes love for all living creatures.

The first time Pattie Boyd first met George Harrison, she thought he was one of the most beautiful men she'd ever seen. One of the first things he said to her was "Will you marry me?" She laughed, and so he said, "Well, if you won't marry me, how about dinner tonight?" From there, of course, they famously wound up together. (Look at this incredibly beautiful picture):

In one of the most well-known pieces of rock and roll lore, Harrison's friend Eric Clapton fell hard for Boyd not long after. After she rebuffed his advances, Clapton retreated into heroin and isolation. He found an important artistic parallel in a Persian story from the 12th century, called Layla and Majnun. The story was about a moon-princess, Layla, who was carried off by her father to be with someone other than the man who loved her, which resulted in his eventual madness. This struck an obvious chord with Clapton, who went on to write a pretty good song about it.

Eventually, Harrison's interest in spiritual matters and his changing personality alienated Boyd, who divorced him in 1977. She would marry Clapton two years later.

The relationship was stormy. Clapton carried on several affairs and developed an alcohol problem, although there were apparently several wonderful nights, about which Clapton wrote a rather less good song. Clapton and Boyd divorced in 1988.

Strange overtones

In the music you are playing

I'll harmonize

It is strong and you are tough

But a heart is not enough

Dear NASA,

If intelligent aliens should ever send a delegation to earth, it occurs to me that the Japanese would make excellent envoys of humanity.

1) Their culture is fascinated by novelty and innovation. Any peculiarities of the alien form or culture would be therefore more appreciated and embraced. In fact, you'd probably see a new fad in Tokyo of dressing more like the Betelgeusians by the end of the day.

2) The Japanese tendency towards proper etiquette is well-known. (We wouldn't want any British yobs chucking lager cans at the landing craft, for example). We could count on them to at least make a decent showing of human propriety.

3) They have a wonderful tolerance to the grotesque. This is the culture that has given us the terms manga, guro, yaoi, seppuku, and hentai tentacle rape. The aliens could be bloated, screeching sacks of bilious ooze-- I doubt one of the delegates would even raise an eyebrow.

4) You know as soon as they cast eyes on any sort of interstellar craft, within days they'd have a plan to make one smaller, cheaper, and more fuel-effective, thus ensuring humanity's place in the competitive spaceship-market.

5) The collective cultural memory of Japan has already experienced the shock of meeting "aliens", thanks to Admiral Perry landing on the island in 1853. The disorienting steps of meeting highly technologically-advanced "outsiders" are therefore not going to pack quite the same wallop.

What do you think?

I Am Going to Go Through These Fucking Walls

There's another scene in The Men Who Stare at Goats I wanted to tell you about, the first scene, in fact. It opens on a tight close-up of this older army guy, grizzled and grey in the mustache, looking really intently at something.

"Boone," he says, face wicked with sweat.

"Yes sir?"

"I'm going into the other room."

And he gets up from his desk and charges pell-fucking-mell right at the wall, charging with the purest of Intention. And he hits the wall and WHAM, back he goes, sprawling onto the ground.

"Dammit," he says.

Okay, so yeah, that's pretty much what we would expect would happen. But then you have the course of the whole movie, all of George Clooney and Ewan McGregor's ramblings and so on. And in the very last scene (I'm spoilering this shit, look askance if you have a delicate constitution) we see McGregor staring death-rays at a wall, now compleat with mustache of his own, get up and charge pell-fucking-mell right at a similar wall.

Guess what happens this time. (It's literally probably better in your head than it was on-screen).

Anyway, my point is that I feel like I'm staring at walls right now. I'm staaring and staaring and my blood vessels are about to go critical, but that's the necessary part. Because by God, I am going to go through these fucking walls. And I'm not even going to knock them down, because that's cheating, that's bullshit. I'm going to go right through them.

Oh heavens, I am well and truly sick. My head is a veritable swamp of mucus.

So it occurs to me that control is a human invention. To say that everything is under control is that everything is artificial, stilted, jammed, and a whisker away from going completely disastrous. If you really wanted to reassure someone, you could tell them that nothing is under control, because then everything is flowing smoothly and nicely along their natural lines. Nobody with any kind of agency (and therefore greed) has a say in the show.

To try and direct things is to set yourself up for failure. What you can do is look where things are going, or where they want to go, and ride along the top of that like a surfer. No surfer would ever try and tell a wave to move away from the shore. He or she acquiesces to the larger movements, the larger forces, and so travels much faster than is ordinarily possible. If you get really good at it, you look like some sort of genius force of nature, but really all you're doing is riding waves.

I Remember Summer

And love, it would seem, is a skill.

I walk through these summer nights with you

Telling you about my favorite mystery,

Of a cherry petal snowfall

In the hottest days of June

There are some voices, some singers

Who can pull you through time into

A faded and dusty aching feeling

Through the decades you go spinning backwards

Open your heart, it's about to begin

And listening to the radio by the open window

You beam out your purity to the stars

And the unimpeachable feeling

They had it right, it's like white lines

Of rain slashing through a dry night

And if someone did it once,

They did it for everyone, we have all succeeded,

We are all sent reeling, we are all caught up,

And nothing, no nothing can stop us now.