friday soon rolls around (oh and playlist POW0406)

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Friday soon rolls around. I actually have to put on a tie today, which is not my normal Friday (if there is such a thing). The machine needs me and so I answer the call. Last night was painful, but i think the loop may have passed now – i’m on the other side – next step sense checking and integration into my life. I have some more stuff rolling out on Twitter today (as always) so hook up with me there if you haven’t already done so (and please don’t say you don’t understand Twitter, which is what I hear from a lot of people in my demographic – you are smarter than that, figure it out…use your imagination and make it whatever it is you want it to be…how did I get on this soapbox?)

Before I go, here’s a Friday playlist for you (i haven’t done one of these for a while (there’s only so much time in a day (even if you don’t sleep much like me))).

peace and love to you,
clay

plaything for the gods

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i was in the desert once
lost in meditation
i was trying to get to
grips with being a
plaything for the gods

i met some souls sitting
around a fire in the open night
they were contemplating
Good and Evil
Lust and Sorrow

all of my incantations
and prayers ignored
by the old gods, i consigned
myself to the enigma of the
meek and their gospel of love

until i stumbled upon a
switch labeled universe
next to a button marked
“Boom”

in a moment of weakness
i pressed the button

First time I went away from home alone

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Hey up! Day 4. I forgot that people are busy. My challenge to speak to 30 different people for this year has hit a snag and it’s only day number 4. But I’m a person, so if I talk to myself, does that still count? lol.

If you fancy a chat, let me know, help me reach my goal!

Looking at the world through different lenses

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It turns out I’ve known Justyna for just over a year now. We met through a mutual company we both do some contract work for. JJ is a kindred spirit. We both dig philosophy, start things we never finish, and think about things way too much. So here for #AudioMo Day 2 is Justyna.

Being with my tree

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#Audiomo Day 1. I love this time of the year when the Audiomo community comes together for the month of June to make and share audio. I thought I’d add something extra to the 30-day challenge this year and that is to have 30 conversations with 30 different people for my posts this year.

First up is my friend Sara Beth Hunt, novelist and podcaster.

Being with my tree

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Day 1.  I love this time of the year when the Audiomo community comes together for the month of June to make and share audio.  I thought I’d add something extra to the 30-day challenge this year and that is to have 30 conversations with 30 different people for my posts this year.

First up is my friend Sara Beth Hunt, novelist and podcaster.

this has to go where i want to go

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– William S. Burroughs

Trying to ID the entity that is me when I know I am you and you are me even though I am by myself a whole lot of nothing outside that which is imagined or imagined to be me.  It’s a permanent condition I’ve tried many times in the past to shake loose.  When I let go, I spiral out of control like the pilot that becomes the plane.  Being out of control is not so bad considering being in control is a massive illusion, one I could do without.

And then I found out that happiness isn’t the reward for a life well lived but a mechanism used to control my behaviour. That, I’m told is the reality of being a human.

Damn humans.

I need to take a happy pill. That’ll sort me out. I get to retire from ordinary life and consign myself to the happiness bed. It’s not as plush as it sounds, trust me. There’s much sadness. I am sad. Sad tomorrow. Sad for the rest of my life which is to say I’ll only know joy, delight and profound contentment.

Life is nice among the normal people. I can be free, but my brain is programmed to want more than I already have which is to say I am a slave.

The real question is how much more significant is your life compared to mine? I’ll be experiencing your life tomorrow even though you told me your intensity of feeling would be beyond anything I would ever be able to comprehend. The price of being different comes down to basic wiring really. You flick the switch and the light bulb above the brain comes on. That happened over millions of years along with natural selection. Turn on or turn off? Tune in or tune out? Drop out or forever remain home with the lights turned off until some jackass comes and tells you you’re being selfish.

Can you relate?

Anyway, my eyes are getting heavy and this fresh cup of coffee hasn’t got me jacked in yet.

– clay

 

 

Where is her glory?

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outside, the rats
huddle against the
cold grey shade of sky

eyes trail behind her
shivering as she sings
softly like a morning bell

metallic breath blows
grim where is her glory?

invisible weight

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i gazed upon the gods being sold
in department stores and arcades

their light i have seen shimmering
against your skin and it is not my mind

i sing the virtues of dissatisfaction
drink from the blood of the bank

an innocent evil designated for Hell
invisible weight i carried for your love

nostalgia for the familiar

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We are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers. – Carson McCullers

her destructive rage

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metaphorically speaking
a kooky dream bounces between
erotic romance turned
gripping taboo

restrained, repressive
struggling to contain her
destructive rage, she
falls unkempt in blood

slightly deranged
a killer on the loose

Revisiting my old friend pleasure

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Tomorrow I’ll be diving into a conversation about being an ethical hedonist.  I dug through my old notes and found a post I wrote in 2007. It’s a good start.  We’ll be making a podcast out of the conversation which I’ll post a link to here once it’s ready to go.  Until then take the quiz below and see if you too need to add a little hedonism to your life.

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Whatever happened to good old-fashioned hedonism, you know, the doctrine that states that pleasure is good and that pursuing anything other than pleasure is absurd and irrational? The only thing we pursue these days, it seems, is work, work, and more work, so we can buy more things we don’t need or have the time to enjoy.

The things we do enjoy – sex, drugs, rock and roll, fatty food, and cigarettes, are deemed to be not good for us and will shorten our lives.  The prevailing thought seems to be “If I avoid all things pleasurable, I’ll live a long happy life.” I’ve had just about enough of that.  Bring back the old school hedonism like the kind practiced by some of the greats like Epicurus, Cleopatra, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Dumas, Flaubert, Balzac, and Timothy Leary to name a few. I want to run through the garden naked, get drunk on good beer, and chase naked girls with flowers in their hair.  Sorry. I digress.

Here is a simple test, courtesy of Michael Flocker, to see if you’re in the machine too deep.

(If five or more of the following statements are true for you, then you are in serious need of hedonistic intervention.)

1. You no longer remember anyone’s phone number because they’re all programmed into your cell phone.

2. You email people at work who are seated within twenty feet of you.

3. You make itineraries for your vacations.

4. The idea of a full week without internet access fills you with terror.

5. You are bored at home if the television isn’t on.

6. You absolutely must watch the news every day to be sure the world isn’t ending.

7. You regularly watch sitcom reruns that you have seen countless times before.

8. You are unable to sit still and think in silence.

9. Your conversation regularly revolves around the lives of others instead of your own.

10. You buy shoes because they match your ipod.