The Tree of Knowledge

Again I find myself sharing here what I wrote to a friend of mine in an email a little while ago.
I told her of my plans for the weekend, a trip to my favorite city, Montreal, for a weekend of debauchery during a cyber-porn convention (did I mention I get weird conference invitations?).
Sounds glamorously wicked, hmm? Not really. This will be my second visit to one of the events in as little as one month, and I must say the "glamor" of the business end of naughtiness proved far less thrilling than about which one might fantasize. As I said to friend, it was much more "convention" than porn. Lots of small booths, shop talk about billing systems, some skin on display but again, this is a for-profit enterprise. So yes, campers, I will have attended two porn conventions in one month. Chalk that onto the Resume We Cannot Show No One. That's getting to be a fun read, I'll have to publish it here someday.

The funny part is, when you walk behind those closed doors, and see it all going down, you cannot help but be struck by its...banality. This I have found is a common theme in my many walks on the wild side. So many of us believe in angels and demons and petty, cruel deities playing dice with our lives. As I have gained experience in these matters, I realize more and more that there no demons in the dark, no angels in the sky. There's just people, having good days and bad days. I feel I know a little now of how the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge must have tasted; it is knowing the real over living in fantasy. Perhaps that is the fate of we knowledge seekers, and who says it has to be foreboding?

What I fear more than the castaways from Paradise are those who assure us that if we only expunge the grey areas, the contrast of Black and White will grant us somehow the purity to re-enter Eden. We can be free again, blissful in our ignorance again! Of course, this is all so much piffle from someone selling us something. There is no way back.

The gates of ignorant Eden are shut forever, and in a way, might that not be the point of the story? Perhaps the whole of the Eden story was not a fable of another time...but an allegory of the experience every human takes as they approach adulthood. The petty narcissim of childhood gives way to confused adolescence, and from the pain and confusion stumble young adults, unsure of their place in their world and reeling from the death of many happy, distracting illusions. They find they have only each other in this world. It's a love story, really. among people who've moved past pretenses of patriarchal omnipotence and the gilded fantasy cage of a perfect world.

Maybe that was the lesson we're supposed to take away, and yet how many simply come away with fear? Fear of God? Fear of snakes? Fear of snakes on a goddam...oh nevermind.
It's hard to package love. It's easy to package fear. Why don't we have a color coded system for kindness and respect? Hey folks, it's a Periwinkle Alert Day! Don't forget to try and overcome a deeply held prejudice today! Oops, looks like a Puce Alert Day tomorrow! How about not taking so much of the world for yourself and giving a little to someone worse off than you?

I know...ain't gonna happen. So, until that day, I'll be just fine over here on the outskirts of sanity and morality with a bunch of happy sinners who don't need speaking serpents to tell them that the world's a happily fucked up little ball of smile and tears with not a shred of sense to it.

Enjoy your day.

Golden Shores

Recently I wrote to a friend of mine telling him to fear not, for we are on our way to golden shores. "Golden shores" is my shorthand term for a better future, which is ironic, considering how little I actually enjoy the beach. Oh, I've had a great lost weekend or two in some dumpy little Jersey shore towns that would make great fodder for Tom Waits-ian dittys, but for the most part, I don't like the sun and sand gets everywhere, then I start to sweat (more than the typical sodden baseline) and I hate to use greasy sunblock and then my whole low self- and body image kick in. Oops, tangent there. What I meant to write about was the whole concept of a better tomorrow. Does it actually exist, or is a better tomorrow what people whose todays suck always tell themselves to look forward to. Makes you also wonder what kind of better tomorrow is the proper kind to have? Is it better to look forward to a long present form of existence, or hope for a brief life and quick painless escape to some other form of existence? Makes you also wonder about others' better tomorrows? Is the Arab myth of seventy seven virgins in an oasis actually valid, or was that some kind of agit-prop meme given to us by the same 'they' that long ago had us conjuring images of vodka swilling Politboro members hunkered down in dusty brown offices plotting only of our destruction for the glory of some runaway anachro-futuristic dream of nationalistic pride? If the meme of virgins in an oasis actually exists, what makes such a belief less valid than the typical cloud-skyscraper harp-playing dream of Christian heaven about which we Westerners are supposed to be dreaming. Do we even see our future in positive terms anymore, in this life or the next? I am not sure. Perhaps one of the consequences of living in the "future" that Modernism predicted is the death of the future itself. What is the future and why does it seem so hard to put down anymore on paper or on screen? Have we gone too far in our technological aspects that our shared social visions have no way of incorporating themselves into our dreams anymore? Where are we headed? Golden Shores? Virgin Filled Oases? Goo-filled egg chambers where our physical bodies can rot for eons while our minds are somehow bonded to wetware devices that allow our minds to exist in clockless presents? Who tells us what the Future may look like anymore, and do we have enough civic collectivisim left in our present to analyze and accept or reject it? If we're not in the Future yet, when will we be? What technological trinket now defines the future for us? Is it an interface? A propulsion system? A means of conveyence? A sustenance production method? An automaton companion whose emotions are the result of programmatic control? The Thirties listened to men like Gernsback, the dreamers of the Fifties took their cues from dreams of the Thrities, the Eighties added the proper circuitry and wiring to those dreams, in the Ninteties we raised antennae to the skies and added the ubiqutous communication necessary for those dreams. Where do we stand now? The proliferation of digital video and audio components now give that future the eyes and ears it would need to take over for us. Will we sign up when the future is completed, ready for us to join it? If, ten years from now, we are asked to join that Future that is forming out there in the mysts of Probability, what will our answer be? What happens to those who cannot trust the future enough to join it? Should it be joined? Can it be stopped? More to the point, who will control it? Government? Private enterprise? A not-for-profit confederation of creators and administrators? Will the future govern itself for us? Scarily, will it govern us? Can the human spirit actually comprehend and acquiesce to a future of socialistic collectivism? Can the future survive our present? Can we accept our future? Can we escape our blood soaked, gore laden past? As we sail to the golden shores conjured not just by our minds but by the minds of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand, what happens if we do not like what we see before we make landfall on them?

These are the thoughts that one simple metaphor inspire in me.
Stay tuned to find out more about what I actually think about...when I think about it.

My thoughts...

My thoughts should not be allowed to be seen, read, or heard.
My thoughts are corrosive.
My thoughts are explosive.
My thoughts cause sea changes.
My thoughts make the babay Jeebus cry.
My thoughts kill Santa Clauses, Easter Bunnies, and Tooth Fairies.
My thoughts dethrone gods and emasculate devils.
My thoughts cause sacrfices to be made, human or otherwise.
My thoughts sometimes entertain porn stars and drug dealers.
My thoughts have broken all ten Commandments, and caused others to break them too.
My thoughts have greater thresholds and flight envelopes than most thoughts.
My thoughts inspire the bourgeosie.
My thoughts conspire with the globalists.
My thoughts cause orgasms: spiritual, sexual, or otherwise.
My thoughts laugh at most rebellions as silly fashion statements.
My thoughts have broken hearts, smashed dreams, and drained wills.
My thoughts care not for the beautiful.
My thoughts should not be used while driving or operating heavy machinery.
My thoughts are borne of consciousness at least thirteen lifetimes old.
My thoughts know what really went down on 6/28, 11/22, and 9/11.
My thoughts speak the truth.
My thoughts know truth is relative.
My thoughts manipulate others.
My thoughts find beauty in horrorible circumstances.
My thoughts laugh at effort and scoff at honor.
My thoughts do not as of yet comprehend the Tao.
My thoughts have won awards, ribbons, medals, honors, and memberships.
My thoughts waste paper, minutes, and electrons.
My thoughts have a ghetto pass.
My thoughts breach Jerichos and cross Rubicons.

My thoughts are no longer confined to my head.
My thoughts will be here now
when time allows.

My thoughts may interest you.
Read on.