#9

intoxicant iridescence recedes, leaving the ground beneath fallow, perhaps for good. there is nothing left for you here. vivacity is elsewhere, banished by black magicians with delusions of grandeur, at costs perpetually deferred until too late. what is it to be deprived of contact if not a kind of spell, as in dry. look around: crests have fallen, illusions dissipated. trees become barren. a tiny wheel in a big machine whose only function is to drain sputters, but this is by design. or, not design exactly, but in keeping with the mechanism’s propensity. design implies rationality. there is none. whirr and cough, there’s no need for niceties. this was a misery so eloquently denounced that it couldn’t help but return eternal. this enchantment is true to its meaning. whether a waste land is renewed depends on whom Scylla captured, et cetera desunt.

#8

leitmotif of emptiness, yawning across time lost. why should one hole up in the nothing of consciousness when so much is left out in the cold? echoes of knowing reverberate in the abysmal expanse, giving an impression of solidity that evaporates on closer listen. wherever one sets down, from Abydos to Luxor, is not home. undertaken as mortician’s work is the burden of maintaining, though a slip into chaos beckons seductively. there is nothing but depth, with surfaces mere shimmers of interference run on behalf of a Man who may or may not be behind the curtain. light escapes, revealing pomegranates of blue that either bait the trap of knowledge or point the way out (in?). wherefore this wandering? distances recede the faster they’re chased, and branching alternatives sprout in every direction exponentially, leaving one to reel in vertigo. the day is deep as the night is long. flaming spirals whirligig within, inspiring equally the urge to build a world, and to tear one down. in the midst of paradise, no one remains. cast down into material to search in the dark, we are lost without a polestar.

with a .45 held against the baby yoda’s head

a smart friend of mine informed me he’s been giving himself a break lately. rather than be upset with himself that he wasn’t doing what a younger version of himself expected him to do, he’s allowing himself to enjoy what’s at hand, free of any nagging guilt over, for example, not reading as much as he used to. “besides,” he said, “it’s not like my friends are really keeping up with literature lately anyway. no one’s reading whatever cutting edge novels are being published nowadays.” if cutting edge novels are even being published, of course.

this was supposed to be helpful perspective on how I’ve been feeling like I’m not living the life I once vaguely imagined for myself, one which rejects bourgeois society in favor of bohemian devotion to art. (inb4 “bohemian devotion to art is so bourgeois“) I do appreciate the sentiment, that as long as I’m following my impulses rather than denying them, there’s not much else to do. but what he said about reading, it only reopened the other front in my war against discouragement, namely the fear that literature has become atrophied, unable to contend or compete with the present landscape. that maybe there’s some other medium better suited to the moment: video art, performance, music, something yet to be defined.

i think it would be fun to try out some other media, and I’m still figuring how to make interesting music, but maybe it’s better, more countercultural, to stubbornly insist on working in a medium that isn’t so easily masticated into “content” served up alongside jailbait TikTokrs, lifestyle Instagrammers, and post-Soundcloud-rap Soundcloud rappers. and who cares about traditional publishing; there was a brief moment in art history when it was possible to be a total freak and have Viking throw a bunch of money at you for it. otherwise, it’s always been a struggle to get truly out there. Melville, Henry Adams, Bill Burroughs, all of them were largely denied recognition from the mainstream while they were alive. Adams was so overlooked by his contemporary publishers that he self-published his autobiography and welcomed anyone pirating his work.

there’s no neat end here, just wheels spinning, looking for traction.

conspiracy twitter review 2

decalcify those pineal glands, flouride enjoyers, we’re going on another trip down the rabbit hole.

Dimitri (@drposhlost)

Dimitri here is one of the hosts of Subliminal Jihad, a podcast that “[explores] deep politics, occult history, conspiracy, and ontological ops from a critical-paranoid perspective.” what exactly “ontological ops” are is beyond this humble blogger’s understanding. Subliminal Jihad is sort of like if TrueAnon had less discipline; the episodes are long and rambling, the hosts do research that they should have brought to the studio while on mic, the sound quality sucks, and the host who isn’t Dimitri has worse uptalk/vocal fry than Liz Franczak. would it fucking kill you, Khalid, to start a sentence without saying “and, like, yeah”? also what’s up with everyone saying your grandfather was OSS, Khalid? what’s that all about?

they’d be mad at me for this comparison, and it’s likely they’d use my point about their lofi production values to bolster the argument that they’re the lefty parapolitics pundits that should be trusted, not the Pritzker-backed Chapo mafia that Brace and Liz run with. last time around I was glib about the idea that Brace Belden is some kind of intelligence asset, and to be clear, I understand being wary of the man’s mercenary background and his podcast’s overnight success. but spending so much time combing through newspaper clippings for the name Belden in order to link such personages to the Rockefellers or some other demonic elite family? it reads as pathetic. even if they’re right and Belden receives checks from the State Department, Subliminal Jihad’s jihad against him seems primarily motivated by spite and envy. the other possibility is some kind of The Man Who Was Thursday situation.

it also endlessly pisses me off that Dimitri uses a screencap from PTA’s Inherent Vice adaptation as his avi, in part because additionally, the show’s merch store includes a shirt bearing the text “Dracularity: Subliminal Jihad, Every Single Episode, 2020-“. my opinion is, leave Pynchon out of this, you fucking nerds, but if you must bring him in, at least credit the man for coining “Dracularity” back in 1973 in Gravity’s Rainbow.

all that being said, I do appreciate how unrelentingly critical these two are towards the Gettys (and their minion Gavin Newsom), as well as being highly disdainful of that Coward of American Leftism, Noam Chomsky.

eleven (@eleevn)

somewhere between the extremely, ahem, hermetic, and the more mundanely parapolitical, lies eleven. when I first encountered eleven’s tweets, I thought I’d finally found someone who could balance real world political concerns while keeping an eye aimed at the high weirdness that comes with an interest in esotericism. spinning false flag attacks and psyops as instantiations of black magic meant to bewitch the masses into subservience? based. you go, girl. right there with you; fuck Michael Aquino, all my homies hate Michael Aquino. even cooler? conceiving of the fractured (“schizzed”?) media landscape as a deliberate effort to parcel people out into something akin to Alternate Reality Games, with reference to papers that argue ARGs are highly useful, if of questionable morality, for studying the behavioral effects of manipulated variables in a given environment. any content served to you by what’s colloquially known as “the algorithm” should be treated as highly suspect, even if you don’t believe there are sleeper agents awaiting activation via an MKUltra trigger.

then I got a little freaked out because she tweeted some things about graphene and about DoD officials writing papers on the efficacy of employing graphene for biosurveillance, not at a distance a la the NSA, but from within, via injected nanotechnologies; that, in fact, this graphene material is of interest to DARPA for its potential to facilitate neural interaction with machines, fulfilling the wildest wet dreams of the transhumanists and vindicating years of tinfoil hat hair.

it is difficult to immerse ones thinking in the paranoid imaginary without occasionally being struck by The Fear; there was a week or so a while back where I was basically convinced the Mandela effect was an operant means of psychological control, and that reality is even more malleable than I sometimes optimistically believe it to be. now, so as to not become insane, I don’t think about it so much.

but on this graphene-in-the-vaccines thing, a little more digging suggests that there’s not much reliable biological application of graphene technology as it is currently understood–if you trust Wikipedia, that is, and Wikipedia is a perfectly acceptable resource for many things, a gift unto humanity so far as the democratization of general knowledge is concerned. but Wikipedia is also notorious for downplaying what are understood to be actual, historically verifiable conspiracies: don’t read Wikipedia if you want to know anything worth knowing about 9/11, JFK, Franklin Credit, OKBOMB, etc. so, but, like, what eleven is suggesting w/r/t graphene is ultimately a more “studied” elaboration of the same old vaccine paranoia, that the NWO is chipping everyone with receivers so that HAARP antennae can maintain a docile population via electromagnetic frequency modulation. which, like, if that’s possible, I really don’t think any of your posting means anything, girl, so you might as well go outside, get laid, eat shrooms, and enjoy whatever version of the Simulation They’re broadcasting to you or whatever.

the day after writing the above, eleven posted a thread theorizing that, because smiling “evolved” from an expression of fear and submission in primates (literally a line from the Office’s Dwight Schrute, and also unscientific), the proliferation of open-mouth smiles and hearty laughter in artistic depictions, previously reserved for images of the insane or dimwitted, is evidence of a ruling class psyop to inculcate an instinct for compliance among the plebeians, and it’s like, have you ever met a smiling baby? this is just an reactionary argument for puritanical decorum via restraint on natural exuberance. which, and I don’t often like tipping my hand so clearly, is something I am firmly opposed to.

Unconscious Abyss ∞🔮 (@UnconsciousAby)

my apologies; I wrote all this before Aby went private.

it’s hard to take seriously anyone suggesting an ancient occult conspiracy undergirding all of society, which is recognizable by its symbols, if the person’s response to this problem is to primarily post Twitter threads about it. it’s like, homie, I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I can’t imagine They would let you chase online clout if you’re anywhere near giving up Their game.

of course, whatever exactly Their game is, it’s hard to parse from the things Unconscious Abyss posts. they obviously have a wide range of occult/alchemical knowledge and I do not doubt the rigor of their studies, but a lot of these tweets are like, uncontextualized quotes, or like four suggestively similar images quoted tweeted with another four suggestive images, all without referent to any overarching thesis or argument (or even an explanation). are alchemists based, or are they cringe, Lord Abyss? because if they’re cringe, you seem to be exceptionally familiar with their esoteric symbolism, so why should anyone trust what you have to say about it all? if everything is part of some grand, global process of occult initiation, wherein news stories and historical events are ritual enactments of manipulation, what makes you think finding coincidences in names and shapes isn’t merely They’re way of throwing you off the trail? plus, it’s not like the Atlanteans invented the color green, so to presume metaphysical ratfuckery on the basis that two things happen to be green is just naive epistemology–superstition.

on the other hand, it is true that the Enlightenment and its consequences are extensions of western occult principles: Isaac Newton spent much of his time studying not physics but alchemy, the chemical structure of petroleum was arrived at after August Kekulé had a vision of the Ouroboros, and the alchemist’s dream of material transubstantiation is now matched by the technical abilities of modern science. if the contemporary world isn’t a result of a Freemasonic plot to install a global world order conducive to the accumulation of power by an elite cabal of sorcerers, then it sure looks like one if you squint hard enough.

QUWBWALBOSBIDSS.. IHGWTS?

[w/r/t a Department of Energy official]: quarked up white boy with a little bit of clearance blasts it down nuclear style.. is he DOE-ted with the sauce?

[w/r/t the anime girl in the “chill lofi beats to study/relax to” YouTube channel]: quirked up lofi girl with a little bit of chill studies hard relaxual style.. is she beated with the sauce?

[w/r/t the Try Guy cheating “scandal”]: quirked up Try Guy with a little bit of clout loses it all infidelity style.. is he Fullered with the sauce?

[w/r/t Don DeLillo’s classic White Noise]: quirked up White Noise with the Most Photographed Barn studies Hitler airborne toxic style.. is it DeLillo’d with the sauce?

[w/r/t Bob Odenkirk being shamed for following a foot fetish Instagram account]: Odenkirk’d up white boy with a little bit of ‘gram kicks it down fetish style.. is he footed with the socks?

a friend of mine shared a quote, from Cioran I later learned, that has since hung around my mind like a pall of smoke:

To have devoted to the idea of death all the hours which any vocation demands. . . Metaphysical outbursts are the attribute of monks, debauchees and bums. A job would have turned Buddha into a mere malcontent.

upon first reading this, a taunting voice arose from within and hissed “that’s you, a mere malcontent. what hope do you have for beauty if you actively wish for 40 hours each week to pass as quickly as possible? where else does this lead but the grave?”

some people go through life only barely aware that another way is possible, ostensibly happy to work for wages that can be then used for acquiring things, with their little remaining free time reserved for mindless distraction. others are so at odds with the demands of the machine as to reject and be rejected by it, and are therefor cast out into psychosis, criminality, and/or death. the dream, the ideal, is to slip between the mechanisms and find a path for remaining human, without critical (ie fatal) sacrifice.

then there’s what I do: imagine myself as strident or eccentric despite leading an extremely safe life perfectly in accord with society’s unjustified demands.

I have no desire for glory or fame; I might argue that the present historical moment suffers from a devaluing of glory, but it is not in my nature to be a Napoleon or a Lenin. I also believe that acceptance of one’s mundane existence is a step on the road to [REDACTED], and that the present historical moment suffers from an excess of people who believe they’re special, that is, outside humanity and beyond the reaches of death.

I do not wish to be God, nor do I wish to be Caesar. I only wish to have the courage of Cioran’s monk/debauchee/bum. but unfortunately I am a coward, full of regret.

this weekend my brother is getting married. I’m officiating.

I regret not being closer with my brother.

I regret that my family is only a source of pain for me.

I regret being the son of a fascist federale.

I regret that my mom has never been well.

I regret wishing this week would be over and done with.

I regret every time I did not speak my mind for the sake of politeness.

I regret allowing people I disagree with to think otherwise.

I regret preserving illusions.

I regret not making more dumb mistakes in my 20s.

I regret not cultivating broader curiosity about the people around me.

I regret being irritated when a stranger tries to make small talk.

I regret my passivity.

I regret my desire to appear “put together.”

I regret closely guarding my exuberance and my clownishness.

I regret every day I spend anxiously clicking around the internet to waste time at work.

the friend who posted the Cioran assures that “It’s never too late to change tho.” we shall find out.

Madame Blavatsky on Destiny

Yes: “our destiny is written in the stars!” Only, the closer the union between the mortal reflection MAN and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reincarnations—which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of all is it Fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, and man is a free agent during his stay on earth. He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths that lead him in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery—if such is decreed to him, either in the snowy white robes of the martyr, or in the soiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course; for, there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the two. Those who believe in Karma have to believe in Destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and this Destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable Law of Compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made Destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in the whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is—KARMA.

The Secret Doctrine, H.P. Blavatsky

“a mystery is not a problem to be solved”

when everything’s up in the air it’s difficult to find solid ground to work from. the 15th we got keys (well, technically the 13th) to our new house, which is up on the hill and has a breathtaking view of the city and ocean. but I’m mostly out of breath from schlepping boxes up and down stairs and driving them the two blocks between my old and new places. it doesn’t look like I will have finished the story I wanted to submit during September submission periods, but publication is merely an ordeal to be borne once the actual activity of art is completed, so now merely is not the time. once life is settled into routine I can resume the work of derangement via writing.

listening to a lot of recordings of Terence McKenna talks while packing. I’m someone who before this rather enjoyed McKenna’s thought as a kind of curio, but the more I listen to him talk, the more I’m impressed with his rigor, range, and gumption. the way he explains how the world corporate state/neoliberalism works not only disavowed me of the idea that he isn’t a totally serious thinker, at least politically, but it basically summarized it all better than I’ve ever heard anyone put it, including explicitly leftist intellectuals like Michael Parenti. despite the more harebrained of his ideas generally serving as his calling cards (stoned ape theory, Timewave Zero, etc.), McKenna is an exceptionally lucid and critical thinker who is among a group of maybe four public intellectuals in recent memory whom I still hold in high esteem: David Graeber, Mike Davis, and I guess Charles Bowden, but Bowden is more journalist/writer than intellectual. once I have more time I want to devote it to writing about literally whatever the fuck I find interesting here the way McKenna seems able to discuss basically any topic that comes his way. enough of these little update posts, I want to write multiple-thousand-word essays about quantum theory, alchemy, shamanism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, literary history, drugs, paranoia, apocalypse, aesthetic theory, technology, whatever. I also want to do the s*****s and a**d that are in my fridge, and, ideally, track down some D*T to sm*ke.

currently I’m rereading Dubliners for the first time in years, so maybe Joyce is a decent place to start wrt longer-form blogging. I need practice using way more words than are strictly speaking necessary: my tendency towards concision is a good one, but it should serve to temper a predilection for babbling, which I tamp down for fear of being obnoxious. from now on I want to risk being obnoxious.

alright that’s enough earnestness from me today.

The Bodhisattva Hani Hanjour, Blessed Pilot of Impossible Flight Paths

this past Thursday I was summoned for jury duty. in my experience, jury duty is an opportunity to do a lot of reading. so with this in mind I brought along my copy of the Lotus Sutra to study while being held in the jury services waiting area.

the Lotus Sutra is one of the many books to survive the radical culling of my personal library I must do in preparation of moving this week. the new lease starts on Thursday, but moments ago I received word that we can pick up the keys tomorrow. my current apartment no longer is capable of housing all my books, so for that reason alone I’m overjoyed to be relocating. add the fact that I will be cohabiting a delightful house overlooking downtown and the ocean with a woman I love dearly, all for a reduction in rent, and I couldn’t be more excited. it is a privilege to have books to pass along to someone else, so there are presently three bags full of titles I will be sending off to some friends, plus I’ve donated at least four bags worth to the library that employs me, plus I traded in two more bags worth for $70 in trade credit. I had to restrain myself from immediately using all of that credit to purchase an unabridged two volume Isis Unveiled by H.P. Blavatsky and a copy of Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Instead I picked up a textbook on electromagnetism, a book of stories by Malcolm Lowry, The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, and The Epic of Gilgamesh. if it is in my fate to own the books I passed up, they will be there next time I visit the used bookstore.

back at jury duty, the Lotus Sutra seemed to be protecting me. I made it through the first round without my name being called, and the morning was moving along nicely. I thought that so long as I maintained the right view, the right intention, the right speech, the right action, the right livelihood, the right effort, the right mindfulness, and the right samadhi, then the selection of jurors would pass over me and allow me to escape the bureaucratic hell karma had determined would be my lot for the day. since this desire is obviously a vulgar, profane goal arising out of my ego, and not out of my buddha-nature, with 30 minutes left in the morning session my name was included among those prospective jurors who would be required to return to the courthouse that afternoon for potential placement on a jury panel that had begun selection the day prior.

the case needed one more alternate juror to begin proceedings. were I being questioned for an official spot on the jury, and not as a potential back up, I might have kept my mouth shut and participated, but, not wanting to sit through the entire trial on the off-chance I’ll be needed to fill a vacant spot come deliberation time, I told the judge I harbor deep resentment towards my ex-FBI father, and this resentment has led me to a principled, political opposition to the police as such, and the judge dismissed me. the use of expedient means by buddhas and bodhisattvas is one of the prime lessons of the Lotus Sutra. the next day, the day I traded in books, Mercury retrograde started.

yesterday was 9/11, never forget.