Even in absurdity, sacrament.     Even in hardship, holiness.     Even in doubt, faith.     Even in chaos, realization.    Even in paradox, blessedness

 

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"Life expands or shrinks in proportion to one's courage."    ~Anain Nin

{ Friday, 31 December, 2004 }

This is a moblog* post:

11046172410003.jpg

It's all arbitrary time!


*Moblogging is posting from a cellphone or other wireless device- if a picture, it's taken from the phone.

jaybird found this for you @ 23:57 in Live from the road... | | permalink



This is a moblog* post:

11046104170001.jpg

Festivities begin


*Moblogging is posting from a cellphone or other wireless device- if a picture, it's taken from the phone.

jaybird found this for you @ 22:04 in Live from the road... | | permalink



The year in cats...

  • Ursula announces her candidacy for President: Let Freedom Roar. Ursula is due to be on the campaign trail after she awakens from her nap. The planned route is around the backyard, on top of a car, and through the hole in the fence. Bush and Kerry were unavailable for comment.
  • Avatar is to be Ursula's vice-presidential running mate: Not to be overshadowed by the Democrats, Ursula the Cat announced her running-mate for the US presidency while attempting to eat a fallen leaf on the sunny deck of her home. Attending the rally were a gnat, a few startled houseplants, and the ghost of "Lambchop."
  • My cats accept their party's nomination: The delegates, which consisted of a beheaded grasshopper, a previously chewed stick of gum, an ambitious flea and a very liberal grass clipping, expressed their desire for candidates worthy of bringing radical change to American politics.

  • The would-be feline President and Vice-President comment on the final debate.
  • U and A sign up for official Friday cat blogging duties, but promptly fall asleep.
  • The duo on their respective thrones: it's reigning cats...

  • Their extremely silly Cat-mas post: Let's just say for the sake of fun that Avatar does indeed, want to be a spaceship. How do we do this? My first thought was to utilize the ecstatic shamanic techniques of brujos and ayahuasceros, designing an elaborate ritual to shapeshift my little Persian cat into a mid-size interstellar vessel...
  • U and A show the world which of them is top cat and which of them could care less about hierarchical political systems. Or, perhaps the human is projecting too much.

    Happy New Year, cat bloggers!

    jaybird found this for you @ 19:08 in cat blogging | | permalink



    this year's ten best...

    A tiny list of staggering memories and life-altering recollections from my own dizzyingly bedazzled brain cells, listed in the random order that randomness deserves:

  • Fulfilling a childhood dream and lending my voice to a Japanese cartoon series.
  • Taking a cosmic vacation with friends Gustav and Casey to Folly Beach, SC.
  • Performing for the first time in a professional theatre.
  • Two bittersweet goodbyes: JenWo moved to Chapel Hill, and Gustav to from whence he came in California. This a 'best' because the memory of their leaving is full of the laughter and joy that make those friendships continue to be so important.
  • Finally getting the second book published. Er, that is, after I fix a few things.
  • Two weeks of training (and after hours partying) with good friend Ms. Sarah in Greensboro.
  • The deep joy in the continuing joy of knowing there is an amazingly cool little girl in the world named Luca, who is evolving and growing, full of curiosity and inner glow.
  • Delivering two fiery public oratories: the Gay Rights Rally and the Rolling Thunder Democracy Rally.
  • Meeting and spending a bit of quality time with two real-life spiritual gurus: Tom Robbins and Andrew Harvey.
  • The ever-powerful high of having two of the best people on Earth to call my dearest peeps: Joshua and Robin. Thanks for a great 2004, guys.

    jaybird found this for you @ 16:59 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink



    2004

    "The heavy curtain of time is falling across the stage of our drama; the desires, the derelictions, and the dreams both birthed and abandoned all bow in unison in a chorus of goodbye. In the fiery eddies of nebula and the churning black seas, no event will be marked; but tonight, amid splendor and champagne, one human theatre will shutter its doors and another will open, glittering and virginal. We do not know what shall transpire upon that new stage, and in our fascination, there are as many choices to ponder as there are irrevocable fates to bear witness. How gloriously remarkable it is to be present at a death and birth simultaneously, how terrifying, how trite, how ecstatic, how utterly singular to the utterly singular predicament called life on Earth."

    ~Isadore M. Upinsky, "The End of Time and the Beginning of Something Else."

    The Friday on the other side of my windows is warm, bustling with activity, and not at all indicative that it's the end of a human time cycle, albeit an arbitrary and cosmically inconsequential one. Though, there seems to me to be a thin blanket of melancholy draped across the preparations for festivities as the cataclysmic aftershocks of Southeast Asia's devastation ripple though our collective beings. While the American media's short attention span is already about to twitter off into mid-broadcast forgetfulness, the people of the planet cannot. Our interconnection binds us all to every horror, every joy of every moment. A good friend is presently sick and weak, she says in likely sympathy to the culture and people she loves in India. We are all a little sick, and choiceless to be so, as our experience is plumbed to new depths of tragedy. Yet, doubtless, in the calamity little miracles will surely spring up as tiny flowers in the rubble. Children will be born, enemies will drop their guns in exchange for tools and duty, and perhaps the frailty of life will finally be examined in a way that inspires wonder, grace, and thankfulness.

    No doubt, this year has been a harvest of bitter fruit; another election has further divided America, Iraq has been a blood bath whose effects will be felt for at least decades, Haiti was crushed by wide-spread flooding, and the Darfur region of Sudan persisted as killing fields. Yet there is no true line between light and dark, and so much of our human involvement was painted in gray. And in the light? More love as San Francisco and Massachussets confront the lunacy of taboo and allows same-sex marriages, more people than ever before became politically active in the attempt to own their democracy, and we have seen images from distant worlds which up the mystery and wonder of this solar system dance. For me personally, the year is a mix of all sweet and bitter, another milestone toward the eternal.

    Perhaps, in the spirit of those songs sung at the stroke of midnight, these are verses well worth singing, written in mystical appreciation by John Denver:

    All this joy, all this sorrow All this promise, all this pain Such is life, such is being Such is spirit, such is love

    City of joy, city of sorrow
    City of promise, city of pain
    Such is life, such is being
    Such is spirit, such is love

    World of joy, world of sorrow
    World of promise, a world of pain
    Such is life, such is being
    Such is spirit, such is love

    All this joy, all this sorrow
    All this promise, all this pain
    Such is life, such is being
    Such is spirit, such is love
    Such is spirit, such is love


    Ring your bell, drink your wine, good people, and revel in the joy of another arbitrary chance to make things right. And after you're through dancing, start giving, start working, and start loving your way to overcome all that was lost in the withering year, and let your sweat and determination show for a better 2005.

    jaybird found this for you @ 15:17 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink



    Veddas (or Wanniya-laeto): the ancient and presently endangered forest-people of Sri Lanka. (more: 1, 2, 3, 4)

    "...the surviving Wanniya-laeto community retains much of its own distinctive cyclic worldview, prehistoric cultural memory, and time-tested knowledge of their semi-evergreen dry monsoon forest habitat that has enabled their ancestor-revering culture to meet the diverse challenges to their collective identity and survival."

    jaybird found this for you @ 11:10 in Culture, People & Customs | | permalink



    { Thursday, 30 December, 2004 }

    No brainer, er... Did animals' 'sixth sense' save them from tsunami?

    Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a "sixth sense" for disasters, experts said on Thursday. Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found. "No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department, said on Wednesday

    Hardly a case, I think, of a 'sixth sense,' but rather the application of the existing ones in tune with the natural environment, something we humans have long since abandoned at-large. If animals can navigate by detecting differing magnetic fields, subtleties of light and the stars, and simply by sensing changes in the earth, than biologically speaking 'higher order' creatures must have the same talents. It's thinking too damn much, and intellectual over-analysis (versus sensual intuitiveness) of our surroundings that's made that a latent talent.

    jaybird found this for you @ 20:06 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink



    Mapping Miracles into the Machine

    The fact is that as I type this document the things that I am thinking at this time at this place are affected by things in the room, by my past and present(and future?), by things outside the room, etc. In this way this document is connected to everything in the universe in its creation and existence. In its own way, this document, or any form of data for that matter, provides a glimpse into the underlying pattern that created it. In its own way this document is a "miracle" because if one figures out the probability of my creating this exact document at this time in this place the probability is almost zero, yet I AM CREATING IT. It is not like creating objects out of thin air or moving objects with your mind, or raising the dead, but just as miraculous in its own way. This document is miraculous in its uniqueness, which is connected to everything involved in its creation.

    jaybird found this for you @ 16:34 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink



    Rudy Rucker: God without God

    We could simply say that asking God for help has an organic effect upon a person’s brain. In other words, expressing a desire to have a spiritual life might activate, let us say, certain brain centers which release endorphins that in turn affect the threshold levels of one’s neurons. And these changes nudge the brain activities to a new strange attractor. A deterministic chaotic bifurcation occurs.

    Do I really think it works like that? Well, to be truthful, I’ve always felt comfortable about reaching out for contact with the divine. The world is big and strange, and we have only the barest inkling about what lies beneath the surface.

    jaybird found this for you @ 11:30 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink



    The Loneliest Mystery of the Deep

    For the last 12 years, a single solitary whale whose vocalizations match no known living species has been tracked across the Northeast Pacific. Its wanderings match no known migratory patterns of any living whale species. Its vocalizations have also subtly deepened over the years, indicating that the whale is maturing and ageing. And, during the entire 12 year span that it has been tracked, it has been calling out for contact from others of its own kind.

    jaybird found this for you @ 07:25 in Forteana, Phenomena & the Bizarre | | permalink



    { Wednesday, 29 December, 2004 }

    Does God Make Monsters?

    Because no-one knows for certain what cryptozoological / mysterious creatures are and where they come from, myriad debates rage about their actual origins and their purpose here on Earth.

    Sasquatch, or "Big Foot", is something of a beloved cryptid, because it is typically gentle, and it reminds us of ourselves. Some people believe it is the "missing link", and if we can capture a Sasquatch for testing, we may find just how humans evolved from apes. But is Sasquatch a natural creature, or an abomination? What about ghosts, dragons, aliens, and other inhuman entities?

    jaybird found this for you @ 20:56 in Conjecture & Speculation | | permalink



    Hey, Jesus, tell us about your buddies...

    Noted Methodist theologian Rev. Theodore Jennings Jr. and Dr Morton Smith, a world renowned Bible scholar, say there is irrefutable evidence that Jesus was at least bisexual. Dr Rollan McCleary of the University of Queensland, in Australia, says he has discovered through his research that three of the disciples were gay.

    Prof. Smith points to a fragment of manuscript he found at the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem in 1958 which he says alludes to Jesus having a homosexual relationship with a youth he raised from the dead. The fragment shows that the full text of St. Mark, Chapter 10 (between verses 34 and 35 in the standard version of the Bible) includes the following passage:

    "And the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God".

    jaybird found this for you @ 16:30 in Gay, Lesbian, Queer & Free | | permalink



    Stunning before/after satellite images of tsunami

    jaybird found this for you @ 11:32 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink



    The Monadology of Wilhelm Leibniz

    ...there is no way of explaining how a Monad can be altered in quality or internally changed by any other created thing; since it is impossible to change the place of anything in it or to conceive in it any internal motion which could be produced, directed, increased or diminished therein, although all this is possible in the case of compounds, in which there are changes among the parts. The Monads have no windows, through which anything could come in or go out. Accidents cannot separate themselves from substances nor go about outside of them, as the 'sensible species' of the Scholastics used to do. Thus neither substance nor accident can come into a Monad from outside.

    jaybird found this for you @ 07:27 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink



    { Tuesday, 28 December, 2004 }


    Build an Atomic Rocket to Outer Space! (via blort)

    jaybird found this for you @ 20:12 in Radical Undertakings | | permalink



    More detail of how the Sumatran quake affected Earth's rotation

    By some estimates, it was equal to detonating a million atomic bombs... it probably jolted the planet's rotation. "It causes the planet to wobble a little bit, but it's not going to turn Earth upside down..."

    Please notice the link above to the Earthquake/Tsunami relief blog, and donate to the wide variety of available charities.

    jaybird found this for you @ 15:01 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink



    Nguzo Saba: the seven principles of Kwanzaa.

    Kwanzaa was created to introduce and reinforce seven basic values of African culture which contribute to building and reinforcing family, community and culture among African American people as well as Africans throughout the world African community. These values are called the Nguzo Saba which in Swahili means the Seven Principles.

    jaybird found this for you @ 11:58 in Culture, People & Customs | | permalink



    New Comet Now Visible to Naked Eye

    A comet discovered earlier this year has now moved close enough to be visible without binoculars or telescopes by experienced observers under dark skies. It is expected to put on a modest show this month and into January. Comet Machholz will be at its closest to Earth Jan. 5-6, 2005, when it will be 32 million miles (51 million kilometers) away. People with dark rural skies and a good map should be able to find it on Moon-free nights now into January.

    ...and, it's got a green coma. That's rather unusual.

    jaybird found this for you @ 06:54 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink



    { Monday, 27 December, 2004 }

    The little people of the far north: A bit about the culturally accepted presence of elves in Iceland.

    jaybird found this for you @ 22:34 in Forteana, Phenomena & the Bizarre | | permalink



    "Living Rock:" absolutely bizarre plant species.

    Living stone plants (Lithops species) are members of the mesembryanthemum family. They are natives of South Africa and Namibia, where they grow among stones in the dry upland regions or along the edges of river courses that are dry for most of the year. They are succulents, which store water in their fleshy leaves, but are not related to cacti.

    jaybird found this for you @ 18:07 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink



    Mixed views on UN indigenous decade

    In 1994, hopes were high that the agency could fight their cause and secure a declaration on the rights of indigenous people, to stand alongside the universal declaration on human rights. But the declaration lies unsigned, and the UN's own test - a measurable improvement in the lives of some 250m indigenous people in around 70 countries - seems unlikely to have been met. Many indigenous campaigners say they are frustrated at the failure of diplomatic moves to improve life for some of the world's most disadvantaged people. But most have welcomed stronger links between their indigenous groups and interested organisations, and a sense of growing political power.

    jaybird found this for you @ 13:15 in Culture, People & Customs | | permalink



    The Birds Are Falling: Avian losses could hit ecosystems hard

    If many bird populations dip toward extinction in the coming century, as scientists predict, widespread harm could come to ecosystems that depend on these birds to pollinate plants, disperse seeds, scavenge carrion, and control insects...

    Consideration of the recognized threats to avian survival—including alien predators, chemical contaminants, and fishing gear—led the scientists to forecast that 500 to 1,300 species will vanish by the end of this century, and that up to 1,050 others will become so depleted that they'll serve no significant ecological function. In contrast, only 129 bird species are known to have gone extinct in the past 500 years.

    jaybird found this for you @ 09:33 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink



    { Sunday, 26 December, 2004 }

    Discovery: Natural selection acts on the quantum world

    If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?

    Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states.

    jaybird found this for you @ 19:39 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink



    earthquake/tsunami cataclysm

    More on the crisis is South Asia:

  • first hand reports and slideshow from the Amritapuri Ashram in southern India.
  • A WaPo reporter is swept out to sea, and fortunate to be alive.
  • A Flikr photostream from Chennai.
  • Creepy: “All the planet is vibrating” from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy’s National Geophysics Institute... Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth’s rotation. He likened its power to a million atomic bombs the size of those dropped on Japan in the Second World War, and said the shaking was so powerful it even disturbed the Earth's rotation. Alessandro Amato, director of Italy's national earthquake centre, said an effect on the rotation was possible but he did not know whether it had yet been established by the most sensitive instruments. WTF? Not enough info, but enough to scare the beejeezus out of anyone.
  • The Red Cross needs your help.
  • Blog entries: Suman Kumar, Extra Extra, Ceneus, and Lady Kiadri.
  • Compendium of Live Journal reports.

    Eerily, the Bam earthquake in Iran occured exactly one year ago today.

    jaybird found this for you @ 16:23 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink



    stop/go

    Stop. Breathe. Feel exactly what it is your hand is resting on. Notice the light that somehow illuminates your view. This is, suddenly, your world. Somehow, someway, you have arrived at this point to do just this... taking a second to be aware of your place in the Universe, to be enveloped by it, and it within you.

    And yet, you may as well be afloat on the wind, a seed wandering and tumbling above the massive Earth. You can see only this right now; from your chair, do you really hear the temple bells of Kathmandu? From your eye, do you see that squalid slums of Rio? Is your hand sifting through the rubble of Iraq? The map of human life is incomprehensibly dense, and yet that itself is so much dust among the silent galactic roar and froth of timeless abyss.

    This minute gone by is alive, a singular feat of sorcery in the unknown repertoire of a chancy magician. What will you do next? Where are you planning to go today? Such slight questions, such mangificently tricky answers. These words here are nothing, really; you are turning them, transforming them into your next thought, you make the moment alive. Feel the repercussions of your being. Breathe. Go.

    jaybird found this for you @ 11:38 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink



    Eyewitness to the Sri Lankan tsunami

    We made our way out of the hotel, through the incredible rushing water. First of all we climbed up into a tree for a couple of minutes but then that began to fall down because of the water. We were swept along for a few hundred metres, trying to dodge the motorcycles and the refrigerators and the cars that were coming with us.

    UPDATE: More here.

    jaybird found this for you @ 07:24 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink



    { Saturday, 25 December, 2004 }

    After the shin-digs

    Just checking in; had a wonderful dinner at Ramya and Jennifer's, and right now I'm trying in vain to rid my little ecumenical shelter of the bits of wax that are everywhere after the candlelight services. I noticed that the dance club is open tonight, and that could be a fun way to top off this overly symbolic day.

    I sincerely wish all those that celebrate Christmas that it was absolutely wonderful, and to those who don't, I hope your day was absolutely wonderful.

    jaybird found this for you @ 23:00 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink



    this week's welcome wagon

    The sidebar is open, the barkeep is knowledgable, and the service... top notch. Visit these fine new additions:

  • Qubikuity: Ruminations on the ultimate and trivial
  • Vortex Egg: Cybernetics and magick.
  • Points of Departure: Take a left at yogurt, and then straight on 'til salsa!
  • We make money not art: Technology, art, culture and the evolving world.

    jaybird found this for you @ 14:30 in Blogosphere, Tech & Internet | | permalink



    Santa Claus and Mushroom Shamanism

    Santa Claus and Christmas have a hidden secret: namely the powerful entheogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria. Though perhaps challenging and difficult to accept, a close examination of this strange relationship offers deep insight into the nature of the human soul. This long forgotten key to the hidden meaning of Christmas helps to explain the very nature of the classic religious experience. And as we probe deeper into this mystery, it may even shed light on the widespread religious and political oppression that still dominates much of the world.

    The most obvious connection between Santa and the fly agaric mushroom is their appearance; both are rather portly, bright and jolly looking. Moreover, both are red, white and black, three colors that resound throughout time with symbolic meaning. Santa, as we all know, wears a bright red suit with white trim and sports a long white beard. He is all covered in "ashes and soot" from sliding down the chimney to deliver his gifts on Christmas Eve, hence the black or dark color in the trio. Likewise, the fly agaric is bright red and white. The famous polka dots are actually the remainder of what is called the universal veil, a white shell-like membrane that protects the mushroom as it breaks through the ground. This fierce and sudden eruption through the earth also accounts for the additional black color, in this case bits of soil that cling to the mushroom as it emerges.

    jaybird found this for you @ 10:02 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink



    will god listen to the drunks?

    A thousand fingers held aloft hundreds of candles
    Hoisting as high as the arm can reach
    Glory, glory, this strata of light, these symbolic flames
    Reaching high toward the view of a godhead,
    With golden hope, praying for more than this.

    This is a stunning ritual;
    We encircled humans placing our hope to flame
    And ascending the fire, as a beacon,
    As a play at the wonder of starlight,
    Here, haloed around us,
    Hallowed by thy name.

    They say a child is born,
    But what of the world, promised as dominion of the meek,
    For the strong have torn it in their haste
    To simulate heaven
    And the world is dying for it
    And the arguments raise the child's name in defense
    Of turning paradise into a scrap-heap of by-gone fancies.

    Where is the truth promised from those ancient birth-pangs
    And those scrolls writ of wisdom and desert dust?
    Lost, for in the rush to understand the words
    The meaning is obscured beyond hope of comprehension,
    Resolved back into the black water of mystery and sacred river,
    To be found again one day in surprise at the trawling of a net.
    I stand with all you holy people to pray for the lost
    And I stand in the desire of letting go, and creating anew.

    In the deep sink of time's rushing flow
    New forms will arise from the nurturing brine
    Of the dissolution of this fevered idea gone astray.
    Who can negate the cycle of creation and destruction?
    No thing I know.
    Perhaps, in the ardor of our ceremony
    We will chase of yesterday's ghosts, and prepare the midwife for tomorrow's child.

    Let us on this silent night
    Clamor to understand the simplicity and relative ease
    At which the holy permeates the cracks in our lives
    In our thinking,
    And in the impossible conjunction of forces
    That somehow make life to exist.

    Those candles, that luminous wave of souls
    In clasped hands and whispered spells of the word
    Their intent is love; to make it, to be drunk on it,
    To uphold light to find their way, and this is good,
    And guide too from the froth that new being; usurper of paradigms, fool of the gods.

    jaybird found this for you @ 01:42 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink



    { Friday, 24 December, 2004 }

    hierarchy