Beard on Beard

OK, tikkie platvloers misschien, maar dit is echt wreed grappig (voor trekkies). Meer bij Jandrew Edits.

Huishoudelijk: Blinde Schildpad is in ieder geval tot en met volgende week dinsdag met reces. De redactie belooft u echter dan u dan zult horen hoe het afloopt met Majoor Robbie en het Zevententakelige Onding Uit De Hel en of Marilou eindelijk ten huwelijk gevraagd wordt door die sexy cardioloog. En hoe zou het met Fatima zijn, die we het laatst hebben gezien toen het veerpontje naar Mont-Saint-Michel in de mist verdween?

That is all

You live in confusion and the illusion of things.

There is a reality. You are that reality.

When you know that, you know that you are nothing, and in being nothing, are everything.

That is all.

Kalu Rinpoche (1904-1989), via Ken McLeod

Mental graffiti [wk 33]

Echt, ik ben sprakeloos...

(via This Isn't Happiness)

-o0o-

(via Kottke)

-o0o-

We are moving away from poetry as a literature – let alone as a canon – toward poetry as a practice, not so terribly different from mindfulness meditation (or maybe mindfulness meditation turned inside out, towards words rather than away from them).

-Ron Silliman

32. The Dude abides

This is part of the Mind Training series

32. Don't lie in ambush.

Oh, I'm so sure what the future will be like! I never leave my home without small change, my cell phone and a six pack of desiccated I-Told-You-So!™. I have no need for time to actually pass and for stuff to actually happen, thank you. I cannot be surprised, for I am a highly trained Ninja of Gloom. Watch me punch myself in the groin at the snapping of a twig!


This does not make me any happier.

This does not make it any easier for me to make others happy.

Basically, as long as Endemol doesn't want to buy my life for daytime TV, it just leaves me cranky, tired and impoverished in so many ways it's a miracle the UN do not intervene (although it's propably the Chinese veto again, defending my sovereign rights to repress my own populace).

Actually, how I end up dealing with my own preemptive angstiness is probably what decides whether I get more juvenile as I age or actually turn out, at some point, mature. Consider the following two sections the canonical continuation of Blinde Schildpads Course in Depression. I leave it up to the reader to decide which of the Legs of The Trousers of Mental Hygiene to slide down.

The Left Leg of Damnation

Okay, so you're sure your life from this point onwards will suck. You also know that this is a bovine fecal sentiment. You know this because I just told you, and, well, because you're not a retard.

But still, undeniably, you feel how you feel, even though you don't want to feel how you feel. So there's obviously something wrong with you, right? You can't stop feeling this way because you're mind is somehow broken. Kaput. Unsalvageable. Maybe you're ill. Or insane. Or evil.

So by all means, try fighting your demons. But it's no use: it becomes increasingly clear the end boss is you. At which point you have successfully general- and internalized yourself into a nice double bind.

Now sit down in a corner and wait to be right to fear the future. Because you will be.

The Right Leg of Letting Go

Okay, so you're sure your life from this point onwards will suck. You also know that this is a bovine fecal sentiment. You know this because I just told you, and, well, because you're not a retard.

But still, undeniably, you feel how you feel, even though you don't want to feel how you feel. But this is what the mind does, right? It perceives (imperfectly), interprets (imperfectly), thinks (imperfectly) and projects (whaddaya know: imperfectly). Mind is lossy.

My expectations have turned out to be right countless times before. But then again, I've been wrong at least as often. And in any case, what happened generally happened, so there's no reason to think that what will happen won't, just because I feel it might (or might not, whatever the case may be)*. All these thoughts are just part of the scenery.

Thing is, life continues and I continue with it. This is, somewhat surprisingly, a joyful thing. It means that the bad stuff will always go away and the good stuff will always come. And as long as I'm willing to deal with the insecurity of never knowing exactly where I might end up, it's at least certain that I will end up somewhere instead of remaining stuck in what I think I know.

Letting go means admitting there might not actually be anything wrong. With yourself or with the world. Or with how you feel. Even if it turns out you weren't right, either.

Now get of your ass and let the next thing happen. And the next. And the next. See if you don't smile most of the time.

*) Yes, I have been reading David Foster Wallace. Now go read that sentence again. It will make sense if you want it to.

Vis

ik zie vis die niemand anders ziet
in de luwte van een bolder
in het Schuitendiep
onoplettendheid heeft ze verborgen
maar echt verborgen blijft niets

I can haz lolfractal?

Mental graffiti [wk 32]: gevaarlijke gekken van de laatste halve eeuw

I was basking in the afterglow of the Moody Blues' "Om" song when Sandy began to speak of "the gray people" -- regular citizens going about their daily business -- that she had been observing from her vantage point on the corner near the Hall of Justice.

"We were just sitting there," she said, "and they were walking along, kind of avoiding us. It's like watching a live movie in front of you. Sometimes I just wanted to kill the gray people, because that was the only way they would be able to experience the total Now."

That was an expression that Manson had borrowed from Scientology. When ranch-hand Shorty Shea was killed, he was first tied up, a few of the girls gave him blowjobs, and when he climaxed, his head was chopped off because he had reached the Now.

Paul Krassner - My Acid Trip with Squeaky Fromme

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

James A. Haught - A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

+ iets om het beter te maken

Antony and the Johnsons met het Metropole Orkest - Crazy in Love (oorsp. van Beyoncé)

Maceo Parker - Uptown Up

Y'all say it with me: what's funky?

IT's funky!

WHAT's funky?

IT's funky!

That's right, now!

Dat zou ook kunnen, ja

Ik hang al tijden niet meer rond op E-Sangha, wegens teveel roddel, achterklap en fanboys die precies weten wat hun heilige Lama Yogi Dorje Pema Rinpoche Tulku (een authentieke wrathful mahasiddha) bedoelt met elke wind die hij laat, maar soms logt men per ongeluk nog's in en komt iets vet tofs tegen. Zoals deze anecdote van ene Hermit Yeshe Dorje:

Once an American, who was a former member of Trungpa's vajradhatu sangha, was studying with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche. Tulku Urgyan had just given an entire seminar of students the Pointing Out Instructions and other meditation advice up at Nagi Gompa. This American explained to Chokyi Nyima an elaborate plan for setting up big tents for people to sleep under and to provide meals and so forth in the future so that the event could become more sophisticated and draw bigger crowds and charge more money.

Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche listened to the entire intricately detailed plan and then said, "Yes, we could do that. Then again, we could just sit back, relax and see what happens!"

Bobby McFerrin haxzorz ur br1

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic ScaleWorld Science Festival on Vimeo.

Iedereen en alles heeft dit filmpje inmiddels als geblogd natuurlijk, maar vooruit. The mind, she is for to be playing with, no?

(Thnks, G.)