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...