Apolitical America: Nightmares of the Preventive Paradigm

"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed, and today people have lost faith in ideologies...But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians promise to protect us from nightmares...But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It's a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, security services and the international media." BBC Documentary Power of Nightmares

As George Carlin said, "You have no choice, you have owners." Yet, before I heard the words of this comic genius, I had an inkling that America was having its way with me, and I desperately needed to get out. When the twin towers came crashing down, I was a teenage male, bent up in a corner, with only one response, the one I thought my American family wanted to hear, "I would kill to get revenge." As I watched the growing stores of books on international post-Cold war espionage supporting the drama of "war on terror" dialectic, I became more and more sickened and disillusioned. Bush's maddeningly insane propaganda machine of backwards language and foolish bad humour turned my stomach. I fled America, to live in the Middle East. I needed to hear the breathing from "the other side". I found human hearts, not enemy minds. I found a camaraderie so naturally human, and so deeply universal, that I was fulfilled from my need to be "American" at all. With Obama's "war on terror" claim to fame at finally finding success in hunting down Osama, I remain ever firm in my convictions. American "terror" propaganda is so deep-seated that it is truly beyond politics, it is the very lifeblood and backbone of American society. 

See my post: Flightless Dreams and Dark Humour of a Post-W.orld...

__________

A gargantuan supply of Spanish rice, washed in a tantalizing array of chiles and spices galore, wades in a fine cream sauce. A team of cooks work with exceptional efficiency in an open kitchen. The dining area is of a posh nightlife design. Smoke wafts among whisky inhalation in the metropolitan air. 

New York Restaurant by Edward Hopper

As I stare into the blaring kitchen lights from the dim seating area, I notice a cook saunter over to a telephone on the wall. His white frock is stained with stout culinary effort. Taking another sip from my snifter, eyeing a fantastic belle at the table across from me, the dining lights suddenly dim uncomfortably. The kitchen light glares out over the tables with the stillness of an all too noticeable silence. Everyone is motionless. 

At the Moulin Rouge by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

My eyes survey the room with blundering anxiety. The white frock of the cook at the phone reflects a brutal white light over fearing eyes. His mouth opens, and out emits a breath so hot I can feel it nearly twenty feet distant. His eyes become two open holes. The man falls, and I can see his frock begins to stain red. Crawling along the open floor, he is steaming hot. As he unbuttons his cook's clothing, his chest pours with ashen blood, a red so crimson it floods my eyes with a blinding hue. In my mind, I kneel to help him. I sit, frozen. 

Triumph of Death (detail) by Peter Bruegel the Elder 

All realize the man will soon die. One cook slowly meanders over to a phone, shakily dialling to quell the emergency at hand. In a last gruesome attempt to breathe, the man on the floor has almost completely undressed himself. Swelling with heat, blood pours from his chest and mouth. Staring at me with empty, soulless eyes. I faint. 

_________

"Fires beneath the throat, hand and breast of a reflected sky
Inside the single-eyed, whose perfect clock chimed roughly over the groundless

Patience, dusting off wine bottles
Into Californian eternity
...

The idealistic round elegized by madmen before indulgent crowds,
A folklore, pained to vulgarity in the thick mire

Soaked with herbal grime,
That dream-forsaken wine of the ancient, pours

Sending women to mind thankless law
In the first civil war before nationhood or tragic mores

The fallacy in and out of sight,
Instantaneous with thoroughly flushed wives, fanning themselves awake

As the flies descend and drink their salivating gore-fest tirades,
The Queendom, saved by the ranting duration of a minor apocalypse

When all the rest of the world lies in tears
Shaken only by worldwide fame"

excerpts from "Co-creative Wondering"

Vibrant Dream Colours from Water Fasting

Fasting & Dream - Water & Lime cleanse, 7 days

Details: dreams are very realistic, relaxing without unusual, frightening tangents, if I noticed weather, colors or textures in the dream it was always very pristine, a lot of conversation style dreams, where when I haven’t fasted I don’t recall ever having dreams when conversations ever made sense or went anywhere, though conversations in dreams when water fasting was similar to having a conversation in daily life, it wasn’t disjointed or restricting, speech was very flowing, surroundings are extraordinarily vivid and lucid, upon eating again, bad dreams return...

_______

An Iranian friend, steeped in the tragic wisdom of silence, broods in a shadowy corner. His long Sufi beard and uncut hair masks him in an aura of incredulous perfection, looking from stolid eyes at my cowering brother. We are in a room of ghastly hosts, a live auction of sorts, only to entice participants in creative performance. “Create art to reflect your dearest love relationship!” The auctioneer steams with cacophonous temptation. My love stands upon the stage, white and delicate. Throwing myself in a purge of color and form, I choose vermillion, ebony and a touch of cobalt. The canvas thins over a pale, dried grass and carpet springing untamed from the welcoming floor. Without impediment, I stretch a rudimentary sheath of black over the rough medium. Paint filters in between the cracks as I begin to include a light bluish, red-bordered sailboat along the top of the canvas. I draw with unknown talent, creating instantaneous angles and exacting renditions of my sailing ego upon a clashing infinitude of ocean waves. The ebony drips flat with humongous brush strokes into the saturated grass and carpet thread, conveying icy death in the storm clouds beyond. The ship tosses, animate in the innumerable play of dancing strain on the veld of sea and sky. Livid vermillion lies agape near the sun-opened crests, stark, aflame, directing the sail away from the inexorable closing of opaque storm ahead. I embrace my love, unafraid.  

_______

Painting

"Dreams about painting often signify renewal and emotional growth for the dreamer...The painting is symbolic of your intuition and inner realizations." (iDream)

_______

“A beautiful body

gone cold with death,

yet still contained in glad purpose

towards another weary world decay

feeding sacred bushes that smoke & thin in the desert winter

blinded on sandy beaches, hidden beneath a glade & cliff,

as profaned skeletal thunderbirds fly with mouths shut

before a lunar god dreams a song inside another human.”

All so caught up and timed

each finger presses against her hair

and her snoring wink uncovers a madness in spring

bringing together all things in the mystery of continuity

- excerpt from "Repeated Dance of the Fluid Earth"

Dreaming is a Choice between Fear and Love

"ARE YOU THE NEW PERSON DRAWN TOWARD ME?"
By Walt Whitman

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?

Do you think I am trusty and faithful?

Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?

Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?

Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion? 

_________

I am in a dimly lit college dormitory. Occupying a strange room with my new wife, I await an old acquaintance. I’m being enticed to be a part of an international marijuana trade. The benefits will by high and the peer pressure mounts however I turn my back on the offers and listen to the silent wishes of my new wife, whose dear presence reminds me that trafficking only leads to indirect violence, and all the filth that follows in the wake of easy money. We stand in the smoked out room, where dusty, creaking lights sway as above a reptile’s glass cage. The old life of chronic marijuana use wafts in my subconscious as a strong, deep inhalation, and I clear the smoke of self-conscious perception through a mind and body purified by love. 

_______

Love without Music

Is there love without music? 

And why does music spark love?

Music provides the innocent

backdrop for the play to unfold,

and become sweet

as the spring in a mid-winter sun

fading against the whisky iris of my lover’s cat

scratching the butchered skin of L.A.

deranged toxicity, madness of memory

from beyond the grips of fatigue

and into the failure to be,

true and awake, light with the speed of thought,

a slight wink on the riverside blue,

and what's new from another lazy, sick waiting?

she sits transfixed

and I ignore the heart

that beats quicker inside

with every finger drop

word flatness

I rinse myself blindly in an alcoholic fight

through perfect humanity,

knowing the loveless embrace of non-feeling,

and her lust

and her lust again,

a secretive tear at the loss of an eyelid

dimming in the thick listening

of night fallen

anew

with shared melancholic delight…

March 01. 217am 2010

Butler mansion. (N.W. Calgary). My love sleeps smiling, I sober up, listening to music of nostalgic kisses