Life Happens

The warrior has fallen, fallen into the path of disbelief. I must rely on things outside me for comfort, because what is inside is dead. I'm running away now from everything I stood for, my words have fallen silent. Who would want to listen to a hypocrite. I can't see anymore good coming from me, my insides are eating away, and soon nothing will be left except the devil inside. And this devil only knows destructions I started hitting myself again. I don't know how long its been, but doing it that hard has been about a year, one year for the cycle to start over, one year of running to finally end up at the beginning again. Fucked! All this talk of change and no change. The world doesn't want change, it can just sit there and fuck itself to death. For me, I ran into a wall of concrete, see I thought it was all grays and there would be a way to sit through it all. But everywhere I looked soon hardened, And the last opening . . . Welll I was running full speed grabbing at this final hope until bam! . . . style="font-style:italic;">daydream delusion I awoke from this dream that I'd been dreaming that I had been in a dream and everyone else was too and that if I could show other people the way too. But there is no way out of this shit. I am bound to keep climbing an ever steeper hill with an ever steeper load. heh, If I were really dreaming then the hill would get smaller or I could just fly up there no problem. So why even write anything you ask, because really what I'm doing is breathing my last breath of air before I hit the bottom. You see falling is not death itself, it leads to death but as long as you aren't there yet then you are never dead yet. So what have I done? Tricked myself into falling in a hole so that I might come to see death, and right at that final instant avert it? But how will I re-climb all the ground that I had lost in the meantime, a straight vertical drop. But I'm not really here or there and if time and place don't exist without some point of reference. Then I am as much here as I am any place else. I have lost my frame of reference you see, and so I am afraid that I ended up where I started. But the truth is I never really went anywhere, I was always here. And what I saw as progress was a lie cast infront of me. A false mountain was built under me, so that the inevitability of my not succeeding would drop me straight to death. But that's just another one of the lies the devil casts in front of us. As long as I'm here, then I'm not dead, and since here is no more than an inch from death and an inch from enlightenment. The devil needed an extra pull to break me down, he needed to create the illusion that death is so far away so that he would trap us into it. As I realize now that death is always close by then it cannot scare me, "To never think of dying is to never think of living." So where do I go now? The train whistle blows and I wonder where its going to, will I ever know, will I ever get on? So given this anecdote, am I really depressed? Shouldn't I infact be happier to be out of the dream. I know it felt amazing dreaming but you can't start dreaming from within another dream. You must come back to reality, realize you are still here close to death. And when you start to dream this time, reality will change with it. See all was not lost before, dreams can be used to assist you, because without them you wouldn't have arrived here. And what is here? It is the doorstep to yourself. You two could meet but not in the land of pen & paper or books or movies or conversations, the self is in the unconcious and that is entered through the gaps of mind. So as long as you, Brian continues writing then you will not meet yourself, but don't stop writing too soon either, because really it is responsible for bringing you this far, you must feel yourself drift away from your pen not pull the pen away from yourself drift back into that flow of mind you've felt it before, if only just briefly. If only just . . .

philosophy class

I can learn to draw;
to paint, to film,
To take pictures.
I can read
outside of this institution,
I can learn [carpentry]
outside this institution.
But what would I
do... It seems like I would do
nothing. I would just
be, I guess I would...

So what's the difference between my
being here, than being
anywhere else? I am still
being aren't I.

(I am in a doublebind aren't I? If I stay then I am submitting to this reality, but if I leave then I am saying to escape this reality I must leave. Leaving and staying are both actions within this reality, if I leave to leave this reality then I am only further asserting its existence. So either decision is a decision within the discourse of reality and therefore I will be trapped in both cases.)

Sitting in this chair...
why am I not walking around or
flying about or in outerspace? But
actually I am nowhere, yet
at the same time everywhere
all at once.

I am nothing, and
I am everything.
I am you, and
you are me.


Somos iguales porque somos differentes.

Rip Currents

One week since I have returned. One week and I have done nothing. Nothing... except let the familiar currents of this country take control.

Rip Currents... I know how to get out of them, but what is it that has stopped me from using that knowledge? The best of us fight against it, and swim towards that visible shore line. Fighting it and fighting it... telling ourselves "I can make it, I can make it to that point... and once I get there, things will be different, things will be better. "I can make this current run in a different direction. It does not have to lead to this violent distructive whirlpool." Maybe it doesn't have to but that is the nature of this current. That is the nature of its power, that's just 'what it does.' Eventually it will consume all of your energy, you will get exhausted and then you will drown. Then there are those that never notice its presence, they just keep drifting out to sea. That way might be easier atleast it is in the beginning, not knowing, not fearing, just drifing along letting the current guide you. But when that person does finally realize where s/he's been taken, s/he is miles away from shore and s/he can't swim. Now his or her life is over. Regardless of whether s/he lives or dies s/he is at the whim of the current.

As I said, I know the answer, but knowing and doing are two different things. Sometimes I panic, I whell up with fear and swim as hard as I can towards the shore. I don't trust what is inside, that strong feeling rising from below and to the left in my gut. Instead I look at everyone else I trust that they must know where there going and we yell at the others on their black intertubes as they drift by and further out to see. "HEY, DON'T GO THAT WAY! IT'S IS VIOLENT AND DESTRUCTIVE AND HORRIBLE. COME THIS WAY WITH US, TOGETHER WE CAN FIGHT IT!" In response the tuber says, "Dang! Look at me, I'm sporting 22inch rims!" Almost out of reflex the words,"Damn, that's hot!" came to my lips; but I only opened my mouth and stared blankly. Out of the corner of my eyes I caught a glimpse of something strange; it was out along the left side of our group (the ones swimming towards shore) and it wasn't a tuber. I started angling my way that way, and as I got closer just as I could start to make out what it was; it vanished. "Damn!" and with that I stopped swimming and began treading water for a little while. I'd been swimming for some time now, and hadn't really given much time to thought. And from my gut came that strong feeling again, but this time I understood it. 'The way out of a rip current is first to forget the golden sands and then swim parallel to the shore.' That is.. perpendicular to the current. Informing the others of my discovery, they were quite resistant and thought I was crazy. So off I went on my own, swimming at a good pace; and soon with every stroke I began to feel the fear and anxiety that covered me for so long, drift away as I was finally released from that horrible current. But I did not turn to swim towards the shore,... I was done with that beach.

It's time for something else, it's time for something completely different...

-- Brian

And now I have connected my past with my future, all that is left is to fill in the present.

Where's my sushi?

7/9/07

Even now I’m running avoiding what it is I have to do, but more importantly it is something I want to do. And when you start to hold yourself back from your wants and desires, this is a sad moment in your life. Because when you know what you want and are in pursuit of it that’s when you are happiest.

I feel like I have failed to show you who I truly am, what a great person I am inside. I refuse to live with this type of disappointment. I don’t know what it was that has held me back. But it has, and because of this I have failed.

But with some people it is certainly much harder. We are more afraid; we don’t open up. Is it then only a fault of our own or that of the other? Where is my Sushi when I need it? Where is my strength when I need it now? In concentrating on everyone else, I feel you have been left out. Although I may think it, all is not lost. It is never the case, I know myself pretty well now, and I will be able to find it again soon. This is what I wanted to write about. My greatest contribution: knowing myself and understanding what that means. What does that mean? It means you’re free. Free to live your life, being who you are and not succumbing to the pulls of society. Without this (self-knowledge) no matter what you do you will be pulled back into society, like the earth’s gravity pulling on satellites. It is so strong, that ‘what goes up must come down. We don’t want to come back down. We want don’t want to come back down, we want an alternative world, we want to run tangent. It will be our escaping velocity into the greater universe, the plurality of another world. This is self-knowledge, our ticket out of this wretched fucking world. But not only is a ticket for ourselves, it is a ticket/vessel for everyone else. So the question becomes how do we breach this higher consciousness. For me I feel it is first necessary to break down (deconstruct) our current conciousness, our current world/societal view. Asking key questions like: Where did it all come from? Why do we choose accept it? What are its epistemological roots? From this we start a dialogue or a discourse you will.

The path to the other is not easy, it is infact the most difficult. Along the way likely sacrifices will be made. I might even end up dying for it. But what life would I be living if I did not pursue my dreams. It would be a lie, would it not? And what is death next to living a lie. This lie I speak of can be known as capitalism. And within that lie are thousands and thousands of lies upon which it has been constructed. Let us pick an example, and if you have one in your own mind feel free to share it. INSERT LIE HERE. Once I get….., I will be happy.

HAPPINESS

That’s probably the biggest fucking lie in the world or at least how they tell you that you will achieve it. I will be happy once I get…. There are millions of ways to fill in that blank, married, a car, a good job, a house, a girlfriend, a coke, turn 21, graduate from school, a kid, re-decorate. THINGS THINGS THINGS, and most of these have become commoditized. And in economics they say a rational consumer will be able to judge how much happier they will be with a Lamborgini Diablo, than an apple. HOW THE FUCK can you compare? But more and more lies are flashed in front of our faces at the speed of …….(biggest # I can think of)

Where does happiness come from? It comes for the most part unexpectedly it comes form inside. The path to self-knowledge also brings with it happiness, ie. we know more about ourself, we know more what makes us happy. And in that we realize that its not that car or that toy or whatever we bought. It’s that conversation I had, that walk in the woods, that moment sitting on the couch after a hard day that makes us happy. So lets talk about work. What should that entail? Simple trading away our time for money in some job that we hate. For the hope that sometime in the future we will have enough time to really do all those things we want to do. Only to realize that when we get to that point we won’t even go do it. Or is it a wife and kid and having a nice house, in a nice neighborhood with a SUV, “living the American Dream.” Fuck American Dreams, that’s a Capitalist dream, and I HEART CAPITALISM. =P

“Okay so I believe you and all this is all apparent. Why hasn’t anybody done anything about it.” And there in lies another problem, the answers do not lie in a select few but rather in everyone. Because everyone is living in consent in this horrible fucking system, And really I do not blame you for it, or think of you negatively for it, there are a great number of good people in this world, you didn’t know. I don’t even believe that the people who created Capitalism knew how horrible it would be. Maybe they did, but if they didn’t it does not lessen my critique. It is time for it to go, and time for us to change. But for those of you who don’t believe me, that’s okay too. Formulate your own opinions on the world, and act on them. I’m sure that at some point some of what I have said here will ring true in your own mind too. But logistically speaking, opinion is no better/worse than yours, we should maintain our own dignity, or what is the point of living?

Opinion: Most of what I have told you is the result of personal experience. I haven’t simply read it in a book and regurgitated it here for you now. I have felt so much of it in my own life that it has rung as truth in my ears. Education and comprehension does not exist somewhere outside ourselves, as in a book, guru, or classroom. It is for us watching and listening to everything around us constantly in order to not simply understand but comprehend the world. This is a process of our whole lives, and once we stop to question, stop learning as most do when they are 30 or so, we are truly dead. We aren’t much more than robots carrying out pre-set orders marching about thoughtlessly day to day. And in this colony of robots, we forget our pasts, cultures fade away. And the Guardians of this world sit back and collect all the things that we have produced ourselves. They themselves think they are happy, enjoying this world they have destroyed. That is why when an uprising or riot takes place here or there, they use all their power to crush it. They are afraid of this new thought, they now thoughts are contagious. They’ve been very good at spreading the same thoughts to all of us. And they are afraid of that thought themselves, because if they believe in it they will finally be confronted with the horrible mess of a person they are. And at that point all that they have constructed will never be able to hold them up for the subsequent crash towards the ground, as the real hegemony of gravity takes hold. Their world will crumble. This is the world as it is, and how it will become more and more wretched and disgusting.

Join me now as I say “Ya Basta” and blast off towards a brand new colony. Join me in thinking freely and starting dialogues with others about an other world. Join me in complete rebellion so that we may one day see the Guardians of Hegemony crumble to the ground. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME CAPITALISM.

_BRIAN

**Final Project Final PROJECT, I don't want to do my final project.

*** I finally ate my sushi, and it was awesome! But it had some cheese in it...

Bread, banana, and a coke

Oventic Day 7/8 8:30pm 6/17/07

What’s going on? Well today I discovered that “Waking Life” has a castellano language selection. So I showed Pedro, one of my promotores, the part with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy -à Who was speaking of evolution? Was it Wallerstein?

Anyways I’m in a room writing his, and in front of me 2 promotores estan mirando este pelicula. Y afuera la luna y tres planetas estan en linea en el cielo. The moon and at least three planets are in line. It’s beautiful. In this moment I feel time has collapsed and I am seeing what I saw some years ago in Wrightsville Beach. Does time not exist for the stars and planets, or is it much much slower. Maybe there’s no difference. Why does it exist for us, as it does not exist in any other animal or any other thing? Does that then make us time, or are we the keepers of time? As it seems to me, we have created time. But when did we create it, and why? It must have existed before Capitalism and all of its demands that are largely based on time. And us complacently trading away time in some job (labour) for some reward money. So given time does not exist we really aren’t giving anything away…. But we are putting ourselves through uncomfortable activities so that we might store up money and such that we can buy back time in the future so that we can do what we want. But how will we then know what we want if our only real experience until this point has been a mechanical surrendering to various forces (or one force). Don’t we learn from experience? And if so this points to a process i.e. constantly experiencing and constantly learning. And from this we should have a better understanding of what we enjoy or love. This process isn’t a set amount of time, it varies, it’s a plurality variant on the person, we can’t predict its outcome. And why would we want to? Aren’t some of the most rewarding experiences surprises? It’s like you go on living your life, feeling generally contented, and then BOOM something unexpected happens, and you are filled with joy. Isn’t that where the beauty in relationships occur, when you first meet. You are a bit nervous and maybe a bit scared but you got to this point by trusting yourself. And then you trust yourself a bit more and amazing things can happen. This is what happened when I came to Chiapas, I knew I was doing the right thing because I had been trusting my feelings all the way here, but I really had no clue what I was getting myself into. THIS IS THE WHOLE KEY. The what part can be adapted to, but the how is the important part. When looking at what I am doing now I don’t know how this happened. But when I look at how it happened, I can fully understand what it is I’m doing now. The word how again points to the process, and this points to Zapatismo. In addition to what I was thinking the other night, and struggling with here in Oventic was the question “What is different here, what makes this community, an alternative world, an answer in a series of answers in creating a better world, simply what’s the difference from here and that of capitalismo. And with this it came to me that the question was how as well as how this place came to be, how I felt here. How differences are very subtle in what they are, physically, etc. It seems to make sense. But something is still troubling me even now. It could be my lack of will to fully accept my thoughts as they are or the fact that I have written so much here, when I still have homework hanging over my head. I’ll go with the latter. As I said to Arturo, “We can’t meditate (stay in the moment) all the time, because then we would starve. For now school is my bread and butter…..Or in tonite’s case bread, banana, and a coke.

pinche caballo

&

pink lasers

The magic of being alone

Day ? Week 2

The first Week at Oventic has come and gone. I think time must really cease to exist once you get outside of Capitalist society. And in this case, I kind of feel lost. Maybe I’m not ready for the changes yet, as I stretch my boundaries and attempt to begin anew I feel myself being drawn back and being my former self or that other self which tries to hold me back. Maybe it’s my left brain seizing back control. I almost feel that the root of the problem may just be since I haven’t written to you in a while. It’s like this journal opens up a portal to what’s in my greater mind and when I can find that, I can find comfort. It is like I am placing a cushion for me to fall back on, or is it a spring, that allows me to spring forward and embrace what’s new, or confront whatever is bothering me. Is this falling back to step-forward or should I be able to continue my momentum in a forward direction…I’ve lost that train of thought. Instead I’d like to bring up new developments since I have been writing.. I am alone. Is it again or is it anew. The last time I thought about this was when I stayed home during university this semester, the 234 was very quiet, and I had this idea that I would get work done that week much like I have that idea now. So let’s take a moment and try to understand what is good about being alone (not indefinitely, but in this instance. And then again, am I really alone? We could very well say that I was alone when I got here. Definitely, I came to Mexico alone, so why should it scare me that I am alone again. Is it the fact that I very much could still have people around me? Well, I’m really not scared anyway, I’m excited because this decision now, I have created on my own. I have created an alternative universe for which only exists for me. And what a place to create an alternative universe in; then such a place as so otherly as this. A caracol; a doorway community in which the whole world exists. Because they like me have created this place, this alternative universe, they chose not to go on with society, just as I have chosen not to follow the group back to San Cristobal. No matter what even if there are negatives, it is for me to overcome. And of course this alternative universe won’t have everything that the other one had, the luxuries, these things that we feel familiar with and comfortable with, we throw that away, leave it behind, declare it useless. So from this we can begin again from the beginning, construct a new world based on our values and what matters to us. And this I think is where the magic in Zapatismo can be found.

From the Mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Brian

**This is an entry from my journal a couple weeks ago, I felt that there are something meaningful things in it. Tell me what you think.

21YEARS

I have exactly 5hours left until my birthday. The big Kahuna. T-w-e-n-t-y O-n-e

So what the hell, I'm writing a blog about it. As you can see in the photos, the party started early. Because I pretty much have the best reason for not drinking on my 21st. Alcohol is prohibited inside Zapatista communities. And that's where I'll be tomorrow, good ol'e OVENTIC. No matter... we went out last night for what should be dubbed "Grandpa's B-day Dance Party" I would have invited every one of you but, of course I'm not gonna pay for your ticket, So... I am sorry. Our once in a lifetime opportunity has been crushed.
And it really is a big deal. Now the only days I have to look forward to are 25:Damn all my friends are getting married, 30:I am going to be bald "thanks Slugger", 50:I trip over the hill into a nose-dive to my death, and 99:I just couldn't stay alive long enough for that letter from the president.

But the Chinese in me is really saying, "我希望是一万年!"

So we, (the S-club 7) *for Colin*, started off the night at Tampoco. Of course that flaming mess of a shot was for me. Before I had the chance to set the glass down after chugging it, the bartender covered my mouth and shook my hea. (It felt a little bit like SB2kO7, but fuck it, it was fun.) The cool thing about this bar was that there was hardly anyone there so they were stoked to have us and give us free shots. Miles was stoked to make me drink 4 of them. Stumbling out of this bar with a bill of 710pesos, we made our way to something called club Blue. At this point my memory of the night sort of streamed together into flashes of uncoordinated dancing. Apparently my friends Chris, Teresita, Charlene, Jack, Miles, and Amy took turns on 'Brian duty'. After looking at some of the pictures, I don't blame them. I was a little bit out of control.

Anyways, my pre-bday party was awesome, and I only threw up *just a little bit* But lets not wait for birthdays to celebrate, lets do it now. Este momento es sagrado.















Char & Miles Amy Teresita Chris

Jack (he doesn't drink)

luv ya lots...

ED _Comment

Well so far on this blog, I have not really written anything on what I have been physically doing, and the 'mind-posts' all seem to come out atleast a week later than I originally wrote it. I guess these are things I need to work on. To answer this I just think I haven't had time, and the 'mind-posts' are more or less directly out of my journal that I try to keep up with on the day to day. Anyways life living in a snail community does tend towards a snail pace. Which reminds me of a sort of joke I thought of...
Why did the caracol cross the stream? Because the agua's caliente.
Porque el caracol cruza el arroyo? Porque el agua es caliente.

**The key to understanding this chicken-cross-the-road style of joke is in understanding the Zapatismo the meanings of 'caracol' and 'aguascaliente' and then apply your spanish knowledge.**
***It is a stupid joke anyway so don't burst any veins in concentration.

Okay, next up a more 'practical' post and hopefully some pictures. Maybe I should just post pictures and then describe them in the captions... ^^that's a swell idea.........


Brian

---And remember, don't stop learning---


>>>Translation of my Blog title: Nunca hacer errores es como nunca aprender
To Never Make Mistakes is to Never Learn.

???should that be : to never make a mistake is to never learn????
- vote on it in the commentaries or something

PEACE

Alternative-World -- Plugging Holes?

The differences between this world and an alternative might/will be subtle. Do the answers then lie in the subtle differences? Then our world should not be completely scrapped should it? Is it merely a matter of filling in the holes, the small gaps, that we know exist but just write off as the remainder, or externalities (Even if we do seek the whole number, we never spend the time to re-calculate. We try and find other ways to patch down that remainder. So what # are we searching for, or what equation is it, or is it instead something like the Fibonacci number from which we get the golden spiral which can be seen in nature on a snail's back-->caracol).
Our problem lies within our question, What do we do? From this we realize that our problem is trying to fill in the holes directly. We do not first ask why there are holes. We instead conlude prematurely that "these holes are bad" and attempt to fill them. We even expend a lot of money & energy to fill them (our lives included), just as the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dyke.... We must learn from this that plugging up the holes is wrong (or atleast what we are using is wrong). Shouldn't this be a sign that where we built was wrong and the problems will re-occur until we move and start-over. This starting over for most is scary. But why must it be? We will soon realize that this new path makes us content, no matter how barren it is, it is our path and that dignity will go a long way.


From the Mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Friday June 15th, 2007
Caracol II Oventic

-written shortly after hearing students making music and taking short walk-

Brian

Me Encanta Mi Vida

6/6/07

Good morning, its 6:40am Week 1, Day 4.

I woke up early this morning to a familiar feeling, a rumbling in my stomach that was a regular visitor to me during my time in China. In addition I had a sizeable hangover from tequila and XX ambar, (not necesarily in that order). Our bathrooms, if you didn't know are not much more than glorified outhouses equipped with 'fill your own bucket up with water flush' and 'squat over the toilet seat hope you don't miss.' Unlike los banos mujeres that are within spitting distance from the rooms, nos hombres tienen que caminar por 100m. (I should have sent you a text message Anthony) Fortunately, I didn't quite have turista....

And from this state, I realized that this is the happiest moment of my life. Este momento es el mas contento de mi vida.
I want to tell you all (mom, dad, Colin, my friends) that I LOVE YOU.

...until our next embrace



From the Mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

- This is me exactly as I want to be.


***Thanks Colin for the courtesy bucket imagery.