This is my last post and when I said “watch” above I meant it. Did anyone see?
Let me explain—not as some voice through a fiction suit with some name that has no pronunciation or something. I am speaking to you as me, Brian. This will not happen again for a long time. I am doing this because from my v. first day in this place, I have felt so totally at home in the Magick. It seems as good a place as any to take off the mask for a moment, to reveal.
To begin with making this entirely relevant not only to my opening sentence (which different people will recover meaning from in different ways based both on what they do see & what they don’t see), but also to this thread (which is always a nice topic to see pop-up!). In my life—the whole of it and not the slice that was my fiction suits—I try to be spontaneous magic(k). And here I hope that we recognize the close and intimate link between “improvised” magic(k) and “spontaneous” magic(k). I have really never been much of a ritual magician, nor a chaos magician, nor any other sort of magician. I have only and ever been the focus for the G.O.D.O.G.. This is, to decode only a surface scratch, “the grey order disorder grey.” And that brings me, for the moment, to a brief explanation of why this is my last post.
Let’s begin with how what I have done for the last twenty-four hours wrt this community has been an entirely spontaneous magic(k)al happening or event or whatever. Somewhere near the beginning I wrote, “Swing my Apocalypse,” coupled with my last post to the “Hey!” thread which said, “I have become death: the destroyer of worlds.” See, the only world we have is our own, and thus, the only world we can destroy is our own. And like the time when I got fired from a job during the week of the Tower, it was entirely by my own design and summoning that I collapsed my world here in upon itself to see what would come out. This is what we must do. This is what magic(k) is & not what magic(k) can do for us, OSISTM.
As many regulars in this forum are likely aware, part of a magician’s or shaman’s duties or roles is to tear hirself down, to rip hir own world to shreds, shake the pieces in a bag, and then throw them into the air to see the new picture to be juggled. It’s not in any way a pleasant process, and there is pain, sorrow, suffering. This is often referred to as “The Long Dark Night of the Soul,” but a modern writer and magician (Antero Alli), and I believe RAW, call it Chapel Perilous. So last night I willingly entered the Chapel to see if I’d make it through, and what would be waiting on the other side. Let me tell you some of what I’ve discovered:
My main problem with this place, this Litherland (a word I will never use again, as it was a term of endearment), is that I was living under an illusion of what this place was. When I first got here I was under a double spell of enchantment. Not only had I thought I found such a great place where intelligent people dialogue smart and sharp about interesting matters, but also, it was pretty much my first foray into the modern world wide web (did only a little bit of BBS stuff in the old days). So I was hooked, lined, and sinkered. And I fell in love. In love with this "Litherland."
But this is where, thanks to the Chapel, I have come to see through this particular illusion and the other phantoms that accompanied it. See, I always have held a naïve idealism about this place. I figure that it is a special place, full of special people, doing wonderfully special things. But it isn’t, most aren’t, and v. few here are really. I now see that for the most part this is much like any other group of humans: there are feuds and bullies, there are hands that wash other hands, and there are hands that wield the knife waiting to be plunged into a turned back. There are idiots and morons. There are assholes and fuck wits. There are fearful people, lonely people, and desperate people. There are mean spirited people and there are apathetic people (too many of these!). On the other hand, there are good and decent folks here too. Honest and straight-up. Or shy but a word a minute once you get to know them. Or gruff on the outside, but pussy-cats on the inside. Or sweet people—people simply nice even when they are trying to be mean.
I could leave my apartment, walk down the streets through the pubs, stores, and eateries, and I would encounter a pretty fair cross section of people who are basically much like most people here. There is no Litherland of green pastures, gentle breeze, and rolling hills. There is only this ugly, grey rectangular structure with sharp pointed ticks and scratches, which most of us here have some degree of skill in deciphering (some clearly more than others). That’s it. Like Mr. Fear (god bless that old man’s crotchety but typically correct and timely locutions!) spelt out for me—as the angel of death in the Chapel that tore my skin from my bones—you are not people: not in anyway that counts, I believe he said. And while I don’t agree with his whole view (because I have met and drank with some of these people—without knowing them before, and without meeting them through friends of friends—fer chrissakes I am putting up one for a week right now!), I do think that many of you aren’t real people, but because I now see this place as mostly a reflection of what is in the world (How could I have been so blind? How can some of these people continue to be so blind?!), those of you who are “not real people” to me are this way not because of pixels and bits, but because you are the walking wounded (as am I, but do you attempt to heal yourself is the question)—like most other humans on this planet. To put it in terms of PKD, people are largely reflex machines—androids—and the genuine human is a rare find. Where I figured we had a community of genuine people, it turns out, like the real world where all of you are, that it’s mostly another group of androids.
Without the gloss of my illusion, Haus is simply some asshole who works in an office somewhere or whatever and appears to get his rocks off by belittling people about there spelling or other linguistic mistakes, and not the brilliant but sharp and caustic opponent I made him out for. Flyboy, say (and you might think this is because I had it out with him earlier, but no, it is because this is how I’ve pretty much always pictured him from way early on—I don’t have images, as in pictures, of most of you, but for many of you there is a myth, or better, was a myth), is not the valiant hero’s sidekick in his tights and shiny emblems: ready to assist fallen comrades in the blink of an eye. He’s just some guy who has to pay rent or a mortgage, or maybe he’s having a fight with his lover, or perhaps he stepped in some dog shit and ruined his new loafers. Whatever. And Tom, well, he’s the guy suckered into paying the bills for this large quivering billowing mass of typically teaming and twitching human flesh—except here it is more the flesh of our minds, I suppose.
Do I sound a little bitter? Well yes, my illusion has been shattered and now I see this place closer to what it is and not what I dreamt it was. I see the dirt and squalor and stupidity that is everywhere else in the world, and previous to this, I could not admit that such refuse was in here. So, you might see why I needed to have a big freakout today: it was the magic(k) that pushed me through the comfort, and into the cold brutal reality. I know I see again (for now), but I have no doubt that the rest of the people who were also blind (in their own ways) earlier today are likely still blind now. Whatever.
I have given up caring about the community because the community I cared about was a lie. Now I care for those of you decent folks. The rest, well, fuck ‘em.
Now, these are merely some of the aspects of my personal transformation. Note also how the board has transformed: no more admin.. What is next? What will fall next? Time will tell. I also note that several good threads popped up here in the magic/k during those turbulent times. As well, my guest did a lengthly mediation on the tarot and accomplished “some of the best work [he’s] ever done.” Please don’t get me wrong here—I am not so much the egotist some would make me out for (the one’s that exist as if they are reading in a dark room with a laser pointer)—I don’t think I am personally responsible for the crazy chaotic current of good and bad that whipped around last night, I simply caught the wave and went through the door—it was in the timing. It was improvised. It was interdependent co-arising, for myself, for the current, for my guest, for Hermes Nuclear, for everyone, really, but most people likely felt the current co-arising in a more mundane manner: indigestion, a sharp blow to head by some chance accident, a nice hot bath, the perfect timing of you and your partner’s song that has gone into creating a moment that you both will remember for the rest of your lives. Or whatever. That is the way it is when you live in a world of humans. And I do live in a world of humans, even here in this B-space, with it’s B-people. So good old Jack is both entirely correct and entirely out to lunch (which is sometimes a good thing, but in this case…): sure fictionsuits here are a mix-mash of fantasy, imagination, and magic(k)—they are not real people in any sense; however, since magic(k) is the only reality, and since there are mere people behind the fantasy and imagination, all there is here are simple, scared people wanting to be held by other’s (whether in arms, in text, in ideas, in theory, in drama, and in etc.). Sleepy human beings suffering (Siddhartha nailed it in this respect years ago, ya’ know: don’t argue this point, don’t debate it, merely accept it without mind at all because debate and argument are forms of suffering and you only "verify"--if you'd even want to call it that--his satori with your objections). And to quote dead and gone Burroughs, “Human activities are drearily predictable.”
So in wake of this whole crazy go around in circles and get diZzy, I am no longer any Dr. or mod or zero, this place does not deserve an avatar of the godog. When you see me again I will be someone entirely new. You will know me, but you will not know me. And those worth remembering I will, while the rest I have already forgotten as they are as shallow as a puddle in the street.
“Hit me hard, tear me apart
To rise again is my special art
You can’t kill me.
With all the things that cut me down
Shake, break, mutilate—grind me into the ground
I’ll grow up again with the first rain, just the same.”
“It ain’t no big thing.
It’s a small thing.”
Ego ipse custodus custodio?
And it is still TIME TO STRIKE!! so PM me if you are interested. It will be the strike that doesn’t make a sound, the strike that is not so much a blow but a passing—gone before you know it, but by then it is too late.
Good luck Barbelith. Like a Mobius band, I’ll be seeing you around. |
