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Monday, April 6, 2009
Afterlife pt 2
When you think you've died, you haven't actually died. Death is a two-stage process, and where you wake up after your last breath is something of a Purgatory: you don't feel dead, you don't look dead, and in fact you are not dead. Yet.
Perhaps you thought the afterlife would be something like a soft white light, or a glistening ocean, or floating in music. But the afterlife more closely resembles the feeling of standing up too quickly: for a confused moment, you forget who you are, where you are, all the personal details of your life. And it only gets stranger from here.
First, everything becomes dark in a blindingly bright way, and you feel a smooth stripping away of your inhibitions and a washing away of your power to do anything about it. You start to lose your ego, which is intricately related to the spiriting away of your pride. And then you lose your self-referential memories.
You're losing you, but you don't seem to care.
There's only a little bit of you remaining now, the core of you: naked consciousness, bare as a baby.
To understand the meaning of this afterlife, you must remember that everyone is multifaceted. And since you always lived inside your own head, you were much better at seeing the truth about others than you ever were at seeing yourself. So you navigated your life with the help of others who held up mirrors for you. People praised your good qualities and criticized your bad habits, and these perspectives - often surprising to you - helped you to guide your life. So poorly did you know yourself that you were always surprised at how you looked in photographs or how you sounded on voice mail.
In this way, much of your existence took place in the eyes, ears, and fingertips of others. And now that you've left the Earth, you are stored in scattered heads around the globe.
Here in this Purgatory, all the people with whom you've ever come in contact are gathered. The scattered bits of you are collected, pooled, and unified. The mirrors are held up in front of you. Without the benefit of filtration, you see yourself clearly for the first time. And that is what finally kills you.
At the outset of the afterlife you find a scroll that informs you, in the scrawl of an ancient scribe, that you now have the opportunity to meet the Creator of the universe - but only if you are among the most courageous. You wonder what magnitude of maker could require such bravery to be in His presence. You imagine a face larger than the orbit of the moon, a voice louder than a hundred blasts of Vesuvius, and you begin to suspect that your limited imagination is inadequate for the numinous experience in store.
You hear a thunderous booming voice in the distance, and your legs begin to shake. You look inward: Am I brave enough to handle this?
A great journey awaits. Along the way you face fears and conquer them, identify streams of self-doubt and ford them, discern the peaks of your arrogance and descend them, spot the clouds of self-pity that hang over you and hike out from under them. By the time the road ends, you emerge with renewed confidence - ready, you believe, to perceive a glimpse of the mastermind who crafted the masterpiece.
You approach the door of a great castle. Even now, the booming voice hanging over the landscape causes you to question: Am I among the most brave? Do I possess what is required? You throw your weight against the door, enter the grand foyer, and follow a hallway to a grand room.
And there you see the face. Indeed, it is larger than the moo's orbit. It is a sight beyond the pens of lyric poets. It is the ocean in its terrifying power and rhythmic grace. It is a face that looks like your father and like your mother; it commands the knowledge of a thousand scholars, the empathy of a thousand lovers, the mystery of a thousand strangers.
It is a face that makes the journey worthwhile. It is a face worthy of the master of the universe.
You quiver and shake, hypnotized, you in your cotton-mouthed ecstasy.
The volcanic voice booms forth, blowing back your hair. "Are you brave?"
"Yes," you stammer. "That's why I'm here."
The valleys of the lips curl a little, as though to laugh.
Then you hear an electrical buzzing sound. The face grows wavy with horizontal scanning lines and disappears in a flash of phosphors.
Nothing remains in the great space but a small yellow curtain where the face used to be. The curtain pulls back. A wrinkled hand pushes up glasses on the face of a wrinkled little man. He is gout-ridden, has a resting tremor, and a vial full of colorful pills. He is stooped. He is swaybacked and balding. You look at each other.
He says, "It is not the brave who can handle the big face, it is the brave who can handle its absence."
-David Eagleman
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Rest in Peace Taz, I hope when you look back on this world it is fondly.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
10:43PM
Music and thoughts
So I am in a mood to write things down as far as music is concerned. So, here are some lists for music. None of these things are in order, they are merely as they should be, present and accounted for. More to be added later.
Ten Favorite Albums:
Stranger than Fiction - Bad Religion
Front Porch Stories - Avail
Versus the World - Amon Amarth
Ten Thinking Songs:
Wait at Milano - Tim Barry
Tomorrow Wendy - Concrete Blonde
Odd Fellow's Rest - Crowbar
Hallelujah - Rufus Wainwright
Stones from the Sky - Neurosis
December's Spawn - Crowbar
Anagantios - Eluveitie
Last of the Mohicans Theme - Trever Jones
Down in a Hole - Alice in Chains
Everlong - Foo Fighters
Midnight Mayhem - Crimson Ghosts
Ten Songs to Sack a village, or charge across the field:
Twilight of the Thundergod - Amon Amarth
Cry of the Blackbirds - Amon Amarth
Asator - Amon Amarth
Forsvinn Du Som Lyser - Finntroll
Arcanae Hereticae - Behemoth
Meticulous Invagination - Aborted
Blood and Thunder - Mastodon
Disciple - Slayer
Fiery Father - Disfear
Ten Songs for the woods:
Running with Wolves - Korpiklaani
Pine Woods - Korpiklaani
Last of the Mohicans Theme - Trevor Jones
Ten Songs for you truck with the windows down in the summer heat:
Like Sprewells on a Wheelchair - Dillinger Four
Thousand Years Oppression - Amon Amarth
Story of My Life - Social Distortion
Back to the World - Street Dogs
Phantom - Disfear
Black and Red - Avail
Scuffletown - Avail
Airborne - Running Wild
Sunday, December 7, 2008
10:21AM
It’s pretty scary
It is pretty scary how fucked up things get, and you never even realize how far they are gone. I went to therapy yesterday (for those of you who didn't know I was doing that, there it is - name's not tony soprano so if i am doing it hopefully it's because i think it is the right thing to do).
There have been many things missing from my life, and not in the short term either. I have been uneasy and not at rest for quite some time now. It has been a frequent topic of conversation with some of my close friends for a long time now. There is a simple realization to be had though, it is very difficult to find the answer to a question, when you don't even know what that question is. Maybe you do find the answer, but if didn't know exactly what you were looking for, it isn't so easy to understand what you find.
Creativity. I don't know at all whether I consider myself (or whether that matters or not) a creative person. I do, however, love to create. I love to do. It is the reason I've been working on medieval armor for so long. Capability plays a large roll in such things, and I know those who are far more capable than I am, but i try what I can as I can. Creativity. It is very much a part of what is missing.
I am on the right path I think. It is hard to say what that path is, where the hell it is going or anything else but I have been getting some clues that it is the right one. I have to burn off all this excess shit. If it ain't necessity, you don't need it. When you sleep at night alone, below the stars and feeling old, it'll be ok.
I got to the brink with my job. I didn't even realize the precipice I was standing so close to. My awareness of it, will hopefully save that. It eats people, it induces comfort and challenges, nay defies, change. Complacency. That has been the theme of my life in the last 5 months, challenging complacency. I don't want to watch my life happen. I have watched it so much instead of being it. Some days, more than anything, I want to be left alone. I want to go away from the whole of the world and just stand in the woods and listen to the wind blow through the trees.
Peace. Peace is getting closer. Peace with myself and the things around me hopefully. Things can be hard, that is ok, it is a matter of balance and seeing things for what they are. Recognizing the pieces that are missing, and ultimately acknowledging that those pieces are not held by another person. I hold those pieces, they are here with me, along with all the other bullshit.
Hurt. The hurting is fading quickly. I still hurt some days, and it is a tangible thing deep in my heart and chest. But those days are coming less frequently. I have punished myself enough. That day is for me to decide and it is here. There is no sense in it. I take the guilt that is mine, and I am putting it away. I see some of the pieces that are missing, and some of them I have never known before.
Ok.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
6:01PM
Check also finding my totem animal, one of them anyway
Things i can cross off the list:
Pick up my guitar again (check)
Get on stage and play at least once (check)
Slowly but surely i'm going to get there
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
So i could use a hand with another dream i had, people gave really good feedback to the last ones i posted, and I was wondering what in the world is going on in my subconscious...
The dream only seemed like it was a few seconds long at most. Meg and I were laying down and she was looking at me. She smiled at me and said 'don't worry it's never too much' and then she kissed my arm and I woke up.
What the shit is that about?
Side note, I knew I voted for the right guy, he collects Conan Comics. Fuck yeah.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/obama-collects-comics-50_n_142755.html
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
4:05PM
Remember, Remember the 5th of November
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
I see no reason, why gunpowder and treason
ought ever be forgot
Friday, October 31, 2008
11:51AM
Happy Halloween (:
Sunday, October 26, 2008
3:24PM
I think i am utterly incapable of keeping my shit together for some reason. Dammit
Saturday, October 25, 2008
POST A MEMORY OF ME
It can be anything you want.
Then post this in your journal.
See what people remember about you.
Step 1: Put your media player on random.
Step 2: Pick your favorite lines from the first 20 songs that play. Not counting instrumentals...
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from -- no Googling until the day after it's been posted.
Step 4: Cross out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
(it was 25 originally but that is just too fucking many)
1:
"Salon korven klaanin
Kourat kontioisen
Salon korven klaanin
Vuorten voima ranteissain"
Salon korpiklaani
Salon korpiklaani
2:
I used to wake the morning
before the rooster crowed
searching for soda bottles
to get my self some dough
Brought em down to the corner
down to the country store
cash em in and give my money to a man named...
3.
Wasting feeling breeding inside me
A shadow of something crawling behind me
And I´m pretending there´s nothing in there
But hearing those whispers makes me to believe
4.
Nail in my head, from my creator
you gave me life now show me how to live
5.
A gift from the spirit of the ancient mountain
A forgotten pact
Now they are dragged forth on gnarled legs
Forward! Forward! Forward!
6.
I saw the path of the sun and the moon
I saw the path of truth, so lonely
A rune foretold war and horrors
A rune told me of blood and rage
7.
West memphis arkansas
get ready...to go world wide
8.
Well you're walking down the road
and the wind is in your face
you're down and out
and the unemployment line's a mile long
the money in your pocket may not get you through the day
but i know a place where thugs like us belong
9.
We were born against our will.
We were born with bloddy faces.
Bleeding like an autumn rain.
A rain, black from blood.
10.
The path leads higher up
Towards the black mountain's snow-white summit
A majestic view awaits
Ancient strength and true honor
I baptize my soul
In the stream of truth
Through the mountain it runs
This artery black as night
Out of the ice a statue
Of power, now rises
In the Nordic night
A thousand eyes shine
The mountain roars, fills me with might
This ancient God all the Troll tribes hail
11.
It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful day
and the sun's still shinning, shinning, shinning over the james
12.
Color yourself
Color yourself black and red
and when you find life slow and simple
then you've grown against the grain
Look at yourself
you've got your head held in your hands
there's proof you don't need
to possess or command
13.
You're december's spawn
Agony you hold within you
Since the dawn of time
You're compelled to do what you do
Broken skin so dry
Burning lungs, I breathe so slowly
I can't see the sun
I can't see it, feel it
14.
Manipulative Scum
The Time Has Come To Meet The Saw
Your Misery Is But One Step Away
Swing Of The Hammer
Reap What You Have Raped
15.
All good children go to heaven
16.
Forgive me for a second i thought we were eye to eye
my mistake i shouldn't have faked it
now it's cheers to a waste of time
i don't remember asking your permission
to have my own god damn opinion
and if this is how it goes
at all of your shows
please point me to the exit
17.
I can't believe the news today
i can't close my eyes and make them go away
how long, how long must we sing this song
how long, how long
today.
we can be as one tonight.
18.
shake the hand that speaks of freedom
kiss hate one final bow
till each twilight falls
then rest till dawn
and tomorrow's never sleep
19.
Thor! Odin's son
Protector of mankind
Ride to meet your fate
Your destiny awaits
Thor! Hlödyn's son
Protector of mankind
Ride to meet your fate
Ragnarök awaits
20.
I'm selling heavenly sketches
A world out of my mind
Ready to explode in purity to fill the holes inside
An ever moving stream with glowing rays of light
Emotions tied to pass lies and I know I should let go
Tamed with confidence of a brighter future
I found a flame in the burnt out ashes... burn out, burn out!
Fueled, these new shores burn, dark past lies cold
Shadow, my sweet shadow, to you I look no more
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
10:32PM
Today. Today i feel like shite. Boot straps, that is what i need to find, so i can lift myself up by them and get back on the damned horse. It is time to stop this mess, very much. I don't know what the answer is, but it is out there some where. I don't know she is, but she is out there somewhere also. I hope so anyway. When the time is right things will move in that direction. It isn't my job to worry about everything forever. So be it.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
I just wanted a little help with something if someone has some insight for me i would be most grateful. I have had alot more dreams in the last 3 months than i usually do for sure. Last night i had a dream that was unusual by those standards.:
I was talking to someone who knew both meg and myself. We were talking about the situation between meg and i, and i asked why he hadn't gotten in contact with me. He explained various things and then i asked if he believed what he had been told. He said that he didn't think those things could be true, so i asked again why he hadn't gotten into contact with me, which was met with an explanation of how things are complicated. Then in an unknown amount of time, meg and i were riding in the car together. We were talking generally about the things that had happened. I leaned over and i held her and at first there was a little resistance, but then she confessed i still held that place in her heart. I ran my hands through her hair, though i immediately noticed that they were covered in hairspray so uncomfortable to do so. I leaned my head against hers and felt that moment where i knew we were going to kiss. There was also a sexual tension at that point and I also think we were going to do other things as well. I then woke up.
So in other words in my dream meg and i reconciled a bit and that is where we wound up. Why in the world would i dream that, especially after everything else? I have had more than a few nightmares at this point about us splitting up and going out separate ways and about being called a horrible person and a complete and total piece of shit. I understand that i need to let go, i am just trying to make heads or tails of this one. Just want to know what it means, any thoughts?
Saturday, September 27, 2008
I want to see the Great Pyramids
I want to experience Karnak
I want to visit Constantinople
I want to stand in awe of Abu Simbel
I want to see the Himalayas
I want to charge at Pennsic
I want to compete in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
I want to visit Iceland
I want to see Korpiklaani in Finland
I want to find my totem animal
Today i tick one off my previous list, today i get a bike.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
I want to move to Helsinki.
I want to visit Norway
I want to travel the trans-siberian railroad
I want to finish my tattoo sleeves and not have to give a shit
I want to pick up my guitar again
I want to learn to play the violin
I want to get on stage once in my life
I want to return to Romania
I want to have something published with my name on it
I want to see Japan
I want to visit New Zealand
I want to get into the best shape of my life
I want to step into a cage and fight once
I want to build my own house
I want to build my own herot
I want to find a job that is a passion and not just work
I want to own a motorcycle
I want to ride across montana on it
I want to ride a horse out west
I want to see the northern lights
I want to learn swedish
I want to learn finnish
I want to learn Old Icelandic
I want to pick up my greek again
I want to pick up my latin again
I want to read the books i have been meaning to
I want to get my phd
I want to open a restaurant
I want to feel really talented at something
I want to write a book
I want to see Olympia national forest
I want to forgive myself
I want to find my place in the world
I want to visit the people i have been meaning to
I want to work on a movie
I want to see Rammstein in Berlin
I want to see Carthage
I want to be completely open with someone
I want to plant a crop and eat it
I want to make a suit of platemail
I want to make my world a better place
I want to walk in the forest and be able to name all the things i see
I want to teach at university
I want to make someone's life better
I want to visit my grandparents
I want to see yellowstone
I want to see the Grand Canyon
I want to take my heroes journey
I want to be at peace with myself
10:43PM
So i sat and quietly thought to myself this evening about a song with lyrics that maybe i wanted to post. To be honest though i couldn't come up with one this evening that i really wanted to throw out there. I suppose the point of this whole thing is rather to post when something provides inspiration rather than trying to force something out of it all. I am currently listening to Die Moldau by Smetana- it is a piece of classical music that i very much like.
I guess i have a question wrapped up in here somewhere. Have you ever had a night where it doesn't seem like anything you can say wants to come out right? Like everything you say is all wrong, and at that these things are also taken all wrong. It just seems to snowball for some reason.
Tomorrow is the equinox technically i believe. So there are some very specific things that need be done tomorrow. I miss edinburgh
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
10:00PM
Let that lonely feeling go...
Let that lonely feeling go...
Let that lonely feeling go... just a day
Ain't no roads here paved with gold...
Ain't no roads here paved with gold...
Ain't no roads here paved with gold... anyway
Just keep on movin on
Keep looking till your done
To settle down's a waste of time
Keep your pace
When you sleep at night alone...
When you sleep at night alone...
below the stars and feeling old,
it'll be ok
it'll be ok
When you feel like life's too long
and it's cadence is all wrong
keep your step and time
but change your way
Can't make everything right now
Ain't sense in slowing down
When you leave this world alone, what will you take
If what you seek ain't free, then steal it
if it ain't necessity, you don't need it
just leave what's left, for who comes next
If i had words to comfort you, i'd say them
i'd give you everything i got, if you need it
Going west, come with me, just stay the same
Don't ever change
- Tim Barry
Burning time,
Burning time and blaming memory
to return back to the comfort in an attempt to feel complete
then tokenize
with lying eyes as if to care
and it's a shock that you leave calmly
as fast as you appear
burning time,
burning time and blaming memory
oh i won't let myself be troubled
or deny i'm part guilty
the road will rise
blackened skies in time will clear
though it's a shock now to the body
to be without you near
-Avail, Tim Barry
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