Existence 20160501

Here’s the deal, we are: love, god, consciousness, energy in many terms for these transmutable placeholders that equate to oneness, interconnectedness, which defining in a encapsulated construct will always be insufficient because what we are exists as the foundation of the atomic universe.  The atomic is a platform enabling perception for the oneness that simply is.  The oneness exists beyond space-time, no beginning, no end, boundless, beyond perception, exchange, conversing, earning, losing, thinking or comprehending, the oneness simply is. 

Our brains are evolving machines.  Our ego is a symbol of the thinking-pilot operating on a source code of genetics.  Society, mannerisms, cultural understandings and the raw materials: of family, ethnicity, gender, religion or spirituality are all part of that source code of a common oneness operating in the illusion of segmentation of perception.  Our mind perceives our body as a severable unit because it self perceives though sensorial experience inside the atomic universe that our body is independent. 

We are not our body.  We are not our mind.  The idea of I or individual or unit does not exist.  Any parceling that is done in the evolved atomic universe whether it be by galaxy, planet, elemental construction, genetic evolution to function off the source code in miraculous mathematics from a conifer’s seed cone to a platypus egg to a human genome is the atomic source code built on top of the constant foundation of oneness that is being. 

Life is fluctuating in a level of awareness to emulate the foundation of being.  We thin the veil to access to be what we are.  We do not seek to be like god or as god or as the higher than us.  We attempt to feel and be what we are.  There is no separation.  There is no severing between a rock or a plant or a feline or a human in this process of being.  The process of being is not journey or an attempt or a set of thinking, doing, or feeling procedures to earn or access this. 

Existence is removing what we put on top of being to access a thinner veil to attempt to be in our true nature.  In this way a rock can be, a plant can be, a bird, etc.  To view this idea of being as some higher functioning of evolution as if our higher cognitive brains will unlock some secret, climb some spiritual mountain to get to a place a speck of dust cannot misses the point.

The ego wants to see winners and losers, to see a purpose in the progression of time, of gaining and mastering and doing better.  These are illusions of the machine brain’s source code and a genetic bias of accessing the approval of progenitors and the idea of humans winning an existence competition with a rock.  This in some level as a conception sees the physical boundaries of the rock as a severable unit.  The human sees where the rock ends.  On a quantum level none of that exists.  There are no boundaries.  Atomically everything is shifting, held together in a relative basis exchanging.  It is the limited perception of a machine brain that imprints the idea of boundaries in a boundless timeless atomic universe.  Machine brains keep attempting to fit the equation into a comprehendible paradigm.

So what ends up happening is that so much of societal construction to an awakened mind is seen as this source code.  The awakened mind asks why are we doing these behaviors, participating in these rituals and being in these experiences.  An awakened human decodes them and seeks opportunities to participate in endeavors where the veil is as thin as possible and avoids endeavors which thicken the veil by adding cushioning for the machine brain (i.e. the ego.) 

The swath of human experiences are a mixture of the pith thin-veil access motivation and the thickening bulk of the plant around that pith.  That bulk represents the cushions and layers that make the process comfortable for the ego. (e.g. pop culture, marketing, national boundaries, branding,  identity politics, religious superiority, popularity etc.) Otherwise the ego will fear being annihilated or ignored when engaging in that experience.  We beguile our idea of self. 

For the awakened mind the challenge is knowing what the ego actually is, the idea that we are in tandem with this machine and we do not actually exist, but we are here to create these thin-veil opportunities and we can only do this in the body we currently inhabit inside the illusion that this “I’ we perceive ourselves to be, knowing through awakening that the “I” does not really exist, but in exchange “we” are actually this foundation of being. 

We are everyone and thing in the atomic universe and the foundation below the atomic supporting it simultaneously.  We never started and will never end.  The machine brain of our concept of “I” will cease to biologically function, but this is irrelevant.  Our ego revolts at its annihilation in death and seeks to earn some form of immortality through religion or goodness or notoriety or people liking us and saying good things about us to have friends who are willing to remember and wish us well, but all of that is ultimately illusionary and not the point. 

The point of any of those experiences is the access to being by thinning the veil in a paradigm that allows perception.  We can do that with others through love, sharing, giving, sex, empathy, volunteering, presence, yoga, listening, kindness, art, music, comedy, dancing, writing, painting, etc. These are the primary conduits of thinning the veil to be in presence.  We cannot however do these acts every hour of the day.  We must balance with work to support the societal structure and biological fuel for the vehicles for our machine brains to participate and perceive the experiences of thinning that veil. 

In this we see the balance of the atomic universe and the spiritual if you will foundation that supports it.  This is the grand interconnection of all things.  Without it we miss the point.  The awakened mind sees this interconnection throughout daily life and in many ways has a more difficult time interacting in society because the language one utilizes understanding the source code goes below all the other languages. 

Music, art, love, poetry get under the normal language used in normalized working society.  Artists are often viewed as outsiders or weird or inspiring but some people are not sure why. It is because of the cushioning and layering in and distancing what most people are used to and comfortable.  Moments of being present of talking in a certain way of thinning that veil whether it be in a concert field with thousands of people or one on one in eye contact naked sexual embrace these moments change our perception of existence. 

Even if we do not fully understand what the idea of being is, of what interconnected is, at least not the same way as another person does, we feel that these moments are different.  The average human is shocked and attracted in divergent polarities in the power of these types of experiences.  It is the understanding of what is actually happening and the inability to explain it either on a scientific or religious level and having to resort to some manner of philosophical wood-filler to build an idea of a bridge of comprehension that has been this elusive holy grail missing link neutrino. 

People keep attending to this idea searching for god or the atomic universe alone to be that glue, that answer or foundation and get tripped up in purpose or plan or karma or reasoning or math because the machine-brain sees life as puzzle.  The machine-brain tries to solve and wants to do good or be good.  Most people are good.  This is obvious.  Otherwise societal structures would not exist.  There is only volition holding it together.  Yes a mix of reprisal and long term repercussions for what could be done in the short, but these are irrelevant. 

Anything centered in an idea of start, arrow of time, to finish is an illusion.  The ego needs ordered time to perceive.  The foundation does not utilize time because it simply it is.  The foundation did not start to have a before with a story or a finality.  It is.  We are it. 

The machine-brain of the ego scrambles at that concept, because it feels like that idea is not enough.  The point of existence cannot be that stripped down and simple.  We want to make an impact, stand on the shoulders of genetic ancestors and make, build, do, think through discoveries, but these are only part of the equation of allowing the atomic universe as a platform for the foundation of being to be perceived.  We are perceiving that foundation in forms that are not readily digestible because the average being has layered so much cushion to facilitate the comfort and systematic infrastructure of the ego.  We have to operate with both. 

We seek to limit the power of the ego, but we must operate in a machine of the ego.  There is no abandoning the ego entirely.  It cannot be done and still be a being with a mind.  Minds have egos inside the genetic source code.  Even a plant has an ego as the plant’s drive to grow and consume resources in order to perpetuate genes.  This is the shared source code of nature.

Once we awaken to understand a broader spectrum of the implication of that interconnected source code and the parallel foundation of existence that coincides, we open ourselves up to this basic fulcrum of choice between love and fear in order to shift the center of our focus towards balance with everything we interface.  All we can control is this how we approach the intersections.  Our task is to be in that moment, aware of the confluence, the hum of everything that is actually transpiring, to be fully present as our being with everyone and thing that is sharing that moment with us. (i.e. the entire foundation of existence.) The task is not to solve it, but to be in that moment of now as fully as possible.  Do not try to hold on to it or possess or control, just be present in it suppressing the ego as much as you can and allowing the moment to be.

The mind, its thinking, its judgment: these are necessary threads to operate the engine of the vehicle of a being, but they are not being.  To be present, to cry with another human being, to laugh, to climb on a lunch table and yell food fight, to leap in the air, to meditate, to bellow lyrics at a musical festival, to plant a seed and water it to become a flower, to dance, to paint without thought of where the colors are supposed to go, but see the picture as it appears in flashes, to taste in an infinite moment of savor without gripping, just being in that taste not trying to control when it ends or compute what it lacks, to only be in what it is; this is existence.

If I am not here where am I,

I feel the vertigo. 

I am trying to anchor in this idea of being. 

I am trying to shed personhood. 

The machine of the brain comprehending is all a body is. 

A body is the arbitrary source code of genetics. 

The true matrix is not just the world or the atomic universe. 

Well it is, but the true way to access comprehending the matrix

Is to understand one’s body is the matrix.

The source code is one’s genetic assembly. 

The machine conducting human perception is not so much an enemy,

But a machine operating inside a systematic web of illusion

Evolved in the source code of what one is as part of the atomic universe.

Becoming conscious of this has me,

Distancing consciousness from my machine brain (i.e. the ego).

To participate in the human exchanges on a surface level instigates a level of trauma. 

Rattles, I see the layers, subtext mathematics in basic placeholders serving as symbols.

A computer, an orange on a grocery shelf.

“How is it going?”

“My daughter had her confirmation.  She’s a junior, not graduating yet,”

Seeing societal construction of worries, fears, tasks, basic come to work paycheck with fish eyes. 

Ant’s pheromone nature of instinct in iPhones. 

Bucking consciousness. 

[escape], but knowing there is nowhere else to be,

But in this machine as the idea of me.

Not that I want to be another person. 

The idea of segmentation is arbitrary, illusionary. 

The idea of I do not exist in any of the paradigms child assumed were real. 

None of this I am touching or serving is real. 

Panicking and calming meditating in cycles of consciousness.

Want deeper and oblivion.  

Want lost comfort in ignorance.  I

Want to have like sugar or being intimate or a surface level to extract brain pressure and be good, but

That quit working. 

I am like an addict understanding none of the drugs work. 

Deep awareness in love, sex, and human contact of going to and exploring that internal place together. 

I want to cultivate that and have failed horrendously. 

The inability to operate on the surface anymore or even to some extent prevents the spark. 

I felt becoming a farce of the machine of brain of the paradox of the matrix enveloping the whole deal of being consumed by the tentacles and layers of breathing the Jello in whole throat. 

Balance. 

This is a rabbit hole. 

No one would openly choose to enter if they were aware of the cost. 

Body to touch, hand to hold, lips to kiss, lungs to breathe with…

If it wasn’t for survival of the vehicle almost all human behavior would be altered or eliminated.  

Thus most of what people do is arbitrary and impertinent to what reality and existence actually are.
We are love, as basic an idea as it gets, god-juice, energy, love in conveyance
Independent of the atomic as one shifting our perception of illusionary barriers of segmentation

We hunger for the flow, sometimes enraptured in the encapsulation of a pill-casing termed identity
Of other, of self, of friend, of lover, of family, of enemy 
But the unbound is one love swishing inside itself, 
That is what we are  

The Illusion of Reality Atlantic article by Amanda Gefter

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

My response to the article.  

There are two levels: the metaphysical foundation of what are we, i.e. the machine question and what is reality.  I have written a lot on this subjects, but I wrote this once,

“What we choose is what we perceive in confluence with all beings.  The choices made by what is perceived to be volition in the forms of a higher cognitive function mind deliberately choosing, a lower cognitive function animal operating on what we call instinct, a bacterium replicated, a virus attacking a cell or a photon taking both particle and wave, these are iterations of what possibility is.  This is the universe.  Reality is the subsection of this confluence our perception is limited to digest in this current form.” 

The what are we question…

I think the ego wants to be touched the way a mother touches child in all the iterated physical, emotional, and mental forms to correlate with evolutionary instructions of survival, but reality is not touch.  True reality is an absolute interconnectedness that our human form hinders.  The pinnacles of the human experiences are when we are shedding this restriction when we express love, presence, deep personal conversations and acts of sublimating our ego for this greater idea of what we are, we feel most alive when we are letting go of our ego.  The ego to me is the evolutionary pilot of the machine of our brain that spiritual reality needs to be a person, but does not need the ego to be what we really are.  We meaning the collective entire universe we. 

The ego and sensory perceptions of the body coddling the ego perceive a biased image of reality based on evolution through the filters we employ inside the human paradigm.  A dog does not see a piece of fruit the way a human sees a piece of fruit.  A human does not smell that piece of fruit the way a deer smells.  Reality is a function of the observer.  This is the evolutionary advantage Hoffman describes that it is advantageous for an evolved organism to perceive reality in a distorted form. 

What the universe is: human, plant, mineral, plasma, etc. is of a common thread beyond the atomic.  Once you take atoms and time out of the paradigm of existence and you contemplate the metaphysical what are we, what is this, the big crayon type questions, I tend to get back to this idea that tangible reality perceived inside this human form is yes like the article alludes, subjective to the observer.  Reality is like a film strip where each member of the audience has a different camera angle and lens pointed at the same universe.

The kindness and hurt that our volition elects to engage is not consequence-based beyond space-time.  True reality is not evolving, saving, or damning the self in a paradigm outside the now.  The ego wants perpetuation in death, not annihilation so it creates tethers of consequence.  The ego is an illusion of the brain and to me has nothing to do with that metaphysical spiritual equation.  The ego wants the “you did a good job, bad job” thing.  The ego wants a personal purpose and to make a difference, to participate in the great big jello to see it giggling reverberating the good we did in the world and take some kind of solace in the wave’s vibration. 

The waves and the good we do or do not create are not about us or just us creating them.  The true basis of reality is interconnected, all of it.  So to think on the platform of time and claim “I did good or I did bad” is to segregate self and other, living and non-living, environmental setting from actors, it is to postulate a stage exists.  There is no stage.  There is only stimuli to our sensorial intake-devices interpreting physical reality in a manner comfortable to the ego in our brain. 

The quantum level of reality informs us that a particle will take two forms at once.  This quote from my book might help to explain, what I think that means

“Why did an atom go where it went?  Not because it chose to go left instead of right or to operate as a particle rather than a wave.  The atom went where it went because it simultaneously went and is all ways.  It went all possibilities.  Our brains may struggle to conceptualize this, because we perceive it went left.  The atom participated in forming this organized thing we call a star because we perceived it.  We perceive the light created from the star.  We perceive the energy moving into our skin supplying us with vitamins to survive.  However our observation in the platform of the now only truncated all the other possibilities of what it is also doing in the rest of that jar of space time called possibility (the realm of might).   

All that potential exists so that the definition of what is the barrier that separates one being from another, one nation, one planet, one galaxy, one nebula to the entire boundless or bound universe to a yactometer on a quark operating on a quantum scale, the largest is comprised of the smallest.  These rules of mathematics active in a particular universe as part of a multiverse serve to expose the flow of the whole shifting inside itself. 

In this we see that what we are is not a self, we are not a summation of particles, but we are possibility itself.  We are potential.  Volition is the paint brush of the potential that we perceive; it is not the determination of what we are, will be, or were.  We are always all things.  The past and future are only illusions.  We are always the is, as all possibility itself.”

This idea of we are possibility, we are the is, I am not me metaphysical popcorn gets back to this if it is all an illusion then what is the point, why are we here sort of deal.  Does being good or bad matter?  The short answer in my interpretation of reality is that first we are not the identities we perceive, so take of the I or the we mask and with it the human mask, or the Earth mask or the evolved organism mask.  We are not limited to any of those parameters.  Then for me I take off the god illusion that there is theistic master puppeteer or genesis engine or voyeur.  To me we are it, all of it.  We perceive ourselves as spliced, but that segmentation is an illusion.  These ideas of conversing to another, the idea of other and self are illusions in a paradigm of individuality beholden to the ego. 

So this gets us to the second question, what is reality…

The true nature of reality is.  Reality just is, without form or atomic matter or time, it is not hot or cold, or feeling good or bad, reality is a constant balance and does not require joy or anger, or want, reality is.  The human in us wants some kind of mathematical conclusion to the play, to explain, to be earned, it wants to feel, we may crave this eternal peace, and consciousness of all atomic reality, being ubiquitous and present. 

The human in us contemplates this idea of being and may think, “The idea of just being would be boring or sad or not happy at all.  Life cannot be that drab or dark.”  We may contemplate the idea as darkness as if there is something to sense to be seen as if we are missing the living and forlorn we are not reunited with the dead.  However this would be ego-talk, we were never us.  Time does not exist.  Time is an illusion like space is inside the paradigm of the atomic.  Space-time is an illusion of perception we manifested to participate.  I think that is part of what Hoffman is getting at when talking about how quantum physicists can teach neurologists about the walls neurologist’s are running into in research. 

Our true spiritual nature simply exists.  Atomic reality is a paradigm of segmentation allowing consciousness in order for a paradigm of perception to exist.  Hoffman talks about how in brain surgery segmenting the right form the left hemisphere takes one consciousness and splits it into two.  I think this is an apt analogy for how the atomic universe works. 

To me humans operate on three levels: a base spiritual reality of what we are as a foundation, on top of that is a layer of consciousness where we occasionally are aware of aspects of our spiritual nature, and a perception of space-time reality which serves as both barrier and corridor to access the other two.

In the spiritual sense there is no way to perceive, no before or after or during, there is only now.  So there is no way to look or hear or think etc.  In atomic reality what we see is relative to the viewer, (i.e. the theory of relativity and viewing a star that no longer exists in the light trailing in from the night sky or the way a baseball batter will see the ball where her or his brain projects the ball to be based on the frame of reference of the pitcher’s release hand and not where the ball actually is at that point in time of perception.)  So if there is a basic question of why do we exist evolved in this form of reality that is not true reality the answer to me is because it is a paradigm in which perception is possible.

We are simultaneously in both states.  We are in that state of being connected as everything and we are also here segmented in this biological illusion of a human self.  The us that is in that state of being: one has no physical distance from our atomic self, because the spiritual component does not take up physical space and two does not contemplate the idea of us or consider we are us.  The spiritual component does not think.  It merely is.  The we “there” is not a piece of a finite whole.  There is no boundary or space-time.

I think the greatest misunderstanding of life is that it is a journey.  There is no journey to travel to reveal what we are and how we grow to see that best.  We thin the veil through art, kindness, interconnection, love, music, mercy, yoga, empathy.  This is why these acts are the truly pertinent endeavors of being human.  We thin that veil by removing or dampening the obstacle of ego and self we created.  Animals, plants, stars, operate in the same mathematics.  Only there is no mind or is a less biologically-evolved mind to even include the ego. 

One can see the beauty in a rock in this way.  Entire groups of atoms just are.  They are just being a rock, not fretting when will the universe end or when will this planet get hit by a meteor so I can quit being a rock.  There is none of that.  There was no beginning to the atomic universe.  It simply always has been, just like the spiritual component we participate always has been. 

The atoms in us transpose and have been and will be parts of other nonliving and living illusions of segmentation in the atomic universe.  This gets back to the quantum scale of thinking Hoffman discusses.  To attach a status of living to a human being is to ignore the ideas on a quantum level of: “Am I what I have always been and will be?  Am I a machine?  Does the idea of I am exist?  In biological death what changes and in what paradigms?”

To me I find the following two ideas complete the puzzle.  Perception is the point of atomic life.  Being simply is.  These are the balancing weights on the scale of existence. 

Maybe ideas like that are reasons we may look at the Dali Lama and think whatever he is doing he is on to something.  We look at someone being at a musical concert alive in that moment playing guitar or spouting poetry alive sharing, those people are on to something. 

There is also a seesaw of balance with work to keep the species afloat to meet the basic human needs of food, shelter, housing, healthcare, etc. to maintain the vehicle of our bodies and the societal environment our biological life requires to function.  This physical balance facilitates access to the spiritual reality of being.  There is love in acts of work.  There is empathy and presence.  Our species behaves like a grand nest in which we are twigs.

The grand mistake is to think there is some great prize of a lifetime attained with stacked decades of wisdom as if we are climbing a mountain and being young one cannot see or contemplate it.  The nature of true reality is always here.  Most of society is trying to thicken the veil, while a minority is trying to thin the veil.  It is in this consciousness the fate of our species balances extinction and presence.  If we fail or succeed for what length of time is not the point.  The point is how conscious we are in the present moment as we perceive the strip crossing the projector of our sensorial bodies in the illusionary platform of space-time we stand.  That is atomic life; that’s the deal.  The rest of atomic life is past, future, and illusion.  Atomic life balances with being.  The two together are the answer I go with, but what do I know.  I will never be done reading and thinking about these basics, but this is about where I am now as explained in a few pages.

Jazz Fest in New Orleans 20160423 with Pearl Jam and gonna see a few friends

In the fields accustomed, no camera, the lack of wanting voyeuristic pats on the back, the space of the anti-Instagram, phone-kisses, winked-nudges

Grayhawk and Houma Nation putting on a show by the fry bread, I’m reading Andy’s Axeboy’s Blues in the grass tree-shade with blue sky writing above Big Sam for his funky nation. Mobilian tongue dancing feathered turning faster on the drum stops, The Fais Do Do stage in the backdrop Gal Holiday Honky Tonk drowning the call

This place is about the drum beat, indigenous with a European ocean paying seventy bucks a head to get sun burnt, like me here I have these fried green tomatoes and a seven dollar strawberry smoothie thinking of Jared Paul and the good attempts and the stale taste of my placated ego infused with the rhythmporium’s offerings

The organ and gate of men six foot two or taller escorting five foot girls in sunglasses, shorter shorts than what makes laying in grass without a blanket palatable to fair skin, the call of a woman in earshot who has given up on dating, spotting an African elephant mosaic tank top pony tail with a shirtless visor Bro with his beer in hand scanning side to side for where to look, what to do after the sex and this half-shirtless in public nodding

The savannah gaze, the eyeing up targeting system of who would allow a body, body to want in split second calculus of what is water, what is the fishbowl and the lines of bodies ogling bodies, the evolved corneas and retinas of under-surface to surface, of kelp, redwood, and fern, of fish, cow, and whale

Big Sam hits the Gentilly stage downbeat, white-hat, sunglasses, exposed chest hair, Japanese guitar player filling in with a Saints Cap and a Who Dat, burst clap, there is the rise up, the grand uptown funk, let’s go crazy, the purple one turned himself into a symbol because Prince understood something most people do not

Therein the crowd is the I am not here, the idea of reality concept of nothing but party skinned bones in the pot, flesh gumbo; what color toenails? What jersey, call and response: is two toned but one frequency depending on how one modulates listening, one idea of obedience in staged people, the idea of I need to be here in the way an extrovert ideal seeks to please external expectations to see as suitable, pragmatic to keep the surface of the water unperturbed; two is a connection of the all, participating in something greater entirely;

Beauty of a woman with flowers in her hair, a halo of pollen and ovum, the mechanism of the pollinator will come to the petal, tied and goading death for hopscotch genes immortality for the ego, extrapolation, collateral Darwinism

Zombie apocalypse grocery store of it all, windmill guitar seeing for aisles and aisles, the idea of the play-card, the commandment of why all this surface speak garble without speaking, the hyper complex human signal structures to avoid an intimate direct interaction, the anarchy of being present and acknowledging the drum beat underneath in this implausibility of wildebeests

The aviator sunglasses to make eyes bigger, face symmetrical, the foot tattoo covered and not when desired to expose the personal nature of ink on the page, the shrinking and taking of gray painted toenails.  Brain evolved to associate contact with increased likelihood of genetic reproduction and survival, the inescapable web of biting biological math

So it is to say, I am not here, not a lot of the time, there are waves, scents detected on the breeze, but this conversation, the one we are all having and occasionally listening, most through fear of death stitched to the underbelly annihilation of the ego, the path has taught me to let go as much as possible, to see color in the infinite darkness in the space beyond the atomic acquaintance of greeting in a form foreign to the surface conception of reality we inhabit in breath or the way you probably would like to hear it; the message, the general discourse, the way of what is up or going on; etc. but then there is this drumbeat

The tattooed foot-stomp anklet movement of painted fungus toenails doing the math, working out when to press and rise, release and press, to have a good time, to make some noise, the exposed skin to blast pheromones in claps of muscle tone, sweat and why this tattooed indigenous Mayan design white bicep exists walking past second lining for pussy to be viewed by bodies

Gambit, shake of hands or smiles in the strawberry lemonade vodka holders sweetness iced and coating the tongue, the lure of Eden floral halos planted, We are gonna turn this mother out, yellow can of who wants the funk to break it down jiggery mash

The un-seeing becomes as basic as seeing at an impasse of un-learning the universe appears for what it always is, the basics, the man with the microphone saying get down low on the floor and do you and modulated to what frequency ?  Do you put your hands up and clap bent knee and what is one hearing?  What is it to be in the moment and let go; the sub-vision of severed volition and dilution of dual wielders choosing the same act, taking the same action, but to do so for divergent understandings of the reality in which they participate

Big Chief Keke and the Comanche Hunters, Indians of the flame, got that water, the torrent of feather dress, spy boy, old yeah you right Bamboula family and get the hell out da way, cut short

The bladder call and Apu-Simpson’s check-out port-o-let line math to pick the one with the most men, no chit chat, stand-up speed rotation of the red to green turnstile in the stench of shit, piss, testicles and cunt rollup to deposit circular alcohol excavation, everything is easier for a penis

People chewing on each other enumerated like crawfish shells in the dirt after the boil, tasty and rancid, the exoskeleton exposed syphoned refuse, the black-lined tail veiny scar, not waiting the twenty-four hour fresh water purge for sacred intestinal chewing; the bodies chew in the mud, particles mashed swamp of moments indigestible shells swallowed, pulled-out meat tossed aside to gulp the grime, the bodies of claw, leg, and sucked head, peanuts and oysters mouthed, not for the nut or soft jelly mollusk, but for the hardened eternity in a droplet of sun of a body defending itself; we are salivating for outsides,

As we attempt to be in this melee genetically engineered to persist; to attempt an advanced operative persistence, this is to be a being, to take that soft essence and spit or hide it, to disguise the squish-belly in an infinite jest of drapes, masks for camera lenses boomed scanning crowds for broadcast and long division for a new reality show pimping time’s laughter in cell phone snap-shots crackling nebula of costumes avoiding prone abdomens, the videographers munching on labor scab bones impaled marrow licked, more gray toenails and flip flops, well-trimmed foot arches mimicking dance steps and spread legs asking angles to be measured, the dilation of centimeters, the way god comes flirtatious with death, to make parlay, to smash into time fear-ducts squirting and blood gushing apotheosis

Potential energy vomiting into kinetic embodiment to become the appearance of a being, a vehicle humming breath and blood starting a stamped number, unique identifier of self, idea of a person as wholly sacred because of irreplaceable manifestation in an arrangement of uniqueness, when rather is the opposite.

The truly glorious bombastic crunch of the universe is the commonality. The call and response is the interconnection, the linking of this tethered net of soul sinew.   The cockroach-star, crawfish-water, fern-bow, fish-whale-cow and me, the galactic sparkle-fist, twittering fingers and laughing echo, the carried torch of the octopus’ sexual tentacles slathering cupping surface distortion, innards mushy in the awkward belly of everything, a blessing of infinity strumming starlight for a chord, to hear patterns in the noise, to be rewarded for expecting the pattern, the departure and the return

The so much and the spider web sticky feet of thinking too much in the colors of bodies drinking and smoking and what is this; the streak of galactic hearts of steel and like a rolling stone, do you know how it feels to be on your own, and at the intermission I meet fifty-somethings Mark and Scott from London Ontario, and tell them about my New Orleans brother who lives in London Ontario in the snow who just spent seven weeks visiting here in my home with his Canadian wife and two-year-old daughter and is now tattooing in his new nation; Mark, Scott and me, we connect in true human awareness:

A contingent circle of faces waiting for Pearl Jam are privy to our small conversation about art, punk rock, citizenship, daughters, and beyond plastic commercialized imprint of a band coming out twenty-five years ago at the last time artists could sell records and make a living, and I tell him how my younger brother made his own label Community Records here in New Orleans and he gives the music away digitally and sells the vinyl and what people are paying for is something unable to be copied not in scientific technicality but art, and rhetorically expose what is art; what are the film makers, musicians, poets, comedians, photographers, authors, painters, dancers, sculptors, chefs, fashion designers, tattooers, architects, and teachers making, what are we making if not economic compensation; we are art and we are buying art paid for in a commerce of identification; we will pay to have some fired of measure of atomic bond that our being is not alone. 

This sea of thousands around us, are we here for the same reason; because at some point, probably over and over again we were touched personally by this art that is about to boom supersonic and just as in that is the human contract; that is to not to forget that we are connected; and with that a white woman with a literal interpretation of a third eye painted in yellow on her forehead turns around and smiles at me for the sounds coming over her ear.

The lights blur with the sun and Steve Gleason announces Pearl Jam to the stage with an electric tongue of his adopted home town and his original, the Defend, and Team and the black and white distortion of the state of love and trust.  The inside job and the body that fights to be a body in a mind that sees wife, son, hears the vibrations of kindness, inspiring and feeling unworthy of being the better man

This behavior is not unique, minding manners and the old punk speed, would you hit me? refreshing the sound of the Ramones opening for the first time I heard Eddie Vedder and crew back in 1994 with Joey’s Blitzkrieg sounding off one, two, three, four….

The do the evolution of a sardonic red Drumpf hat tossed to Eddie as he put the John Oliver joke cap on backwards or correctly depending on how one sees the universe, the scroll of the rock splintering in given to fly, Prince 1999 written in the sky, spreading arms in yoga to the Earth beaming, raising limbs, leaping, arching, pounding fists upward, unbridled, unfettered, unhitched to any human body even my own vehicle jousting exuberant, letting go in the rip of skin off chest, thrust belly up, back bent urdhva hasta to explode like a human sun in rock and shine and New Orleans, glorious New Orleans beaming in a field of humans spirits like diamonds every one of us, shining like wheat licking the sunlight within one another; wave came crashing with a fist to the jaw, deliver him wings, oh look at him now, but oh oh, high flying oh he’s flying…still gives his loves he just gives it away, some days he sees a strange spot in sky, flying, fly, oh…..fly  

New Orleans AirBnB's

In New Orleans hotels like any business generate sales tax, 4% state 5% Orleans Parish.  More importantly hotels generate hotel taxes of 9% to the state and 4% to Orleans parish.  Hotels pay an Occupancy tax of around .50 cents per room per night for small hotels and $1 for normal.  There is also a parking tax of 4% to the state and 8% to the state.  Hotels also pay licensing fees for occupancy and alcohol. 

The virtual economy of AirBnB bypasses the fundamental link between the private economy needing to operate in the infrastructure of the public economy that supports its existence.  Sure it would be great to not have to pay sales tax on what Amazon ships to your house or not pay that hotel tax and think well everybody else is doing it, what is the problem? 

One of the reasons public governments are so in debt is the gap the average person comprehends how these taxes not being paid translates to the police, fire, infrastructure, health, and education services the state provides.  The state of Louisiana is confronting the sharing economy, and the city of New Orleans and our leading industry most so with hotels.

The gentrification of neighborhoods, of putting business operations in residential zones, affecting quality of life, parking, noise, and culture is paid for under-taxed resources.  Most importantly this drives up rents in a city desperate for affordable housing.  This also hinders the traditional hotels that support a significant number of jobs in the hospitality industry in New Orleans. 

This has to change.  Tax laws need to apply equally.  Safety and health regulations, licensing, and zoning laws need to apply equally.  The sad part is what New Orleanians making a few thousand untaxed dollars a year selling out the other side of a shotgun home think is cheap, costs the economy and the state and city we live in far more than most realize.  According to federal tax laws you can rent your home out for untaxed profit as long as it is less than two weeks in a calendar year.  This isn’t just a Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest thing.  This is a fundamental shift in total housing use and the rules need to adapt for a digital paradigm. 

Marble Bag - 20160421

Breath-weight of January sixth cars smashing bodies and metal

Rejoinders of angles and vertexes the mathematics of comas and back aches

Red lights and trolls under bridges reaching out and smashing people you love

Alive like guzzled chevon hanging on in the mouth waiting for that slip of sunset

To let go like a rabbit hole that keeps tunneling into a labyrinth

Of what to do now on Thursday nights stacked for Good Fridays

Planned out for this tossed lot of fabric in the process of being stitched

The sewn papyrus of lovers weaving stories of nomadic normality

Of Palestine yoked Lebanese Jesus bumping Brooklyn and New Orleans

Like cell mates to be locked in this circle pit mosaic ridge-stones and fired bricks

Round, walling oneself in to see properties on streets like eye-candy

In the art of the deal, to make this fabric hold time in a net

To quell the fabric of what it means to be amassing decades on a second hand of fingers

That this thumb knows what heartbreak is because of the five sunk in the other palm

But now the knuckle has been pruned like a cat claw, thrown outside and asked

To fend with a stump bleeding poetry and cannabis numb-tongue recollecting

Seduction by an aunt to marijuana at twenty-two while reading the Bible

Fend-off Catholic asceticism to toke into a dragon’s maw

Sit inside and let the saliva germinate what a poet is supposed to be

Breathing

The stoicism-imprint of an older sibling accountant shell forming like a clay soldier

Around limbs and caked torso, burn off the hardening mud

In the blue notes of Miles Davis and the spirit of Coltrane

Humming the flower dance of the Agapanthia pustulifera finding home

On a park bench with Charles Mingus shedding the long horned beetle for a body as a vehicle

Rounding the block twice because nobody told him about the parking spot

That the ride ends here, interjecting room for pardon, for movement

And all there is an engine attempting to fire, yet stilled in this night

To imbibe to consider a waistline, filming numbers of inspiration offered

Of what poetry does for living beings to allow spirit to cast weight from the load

Hauled by these vehicles, to move more freely in the arms of a lover

Like moonstruck mist wafting in the breath of bedrooms

Hearing the sounds of neighbors and the repossession man pounding the walls

Siblings of demand dictating to a pair about identity politics, garbage cans that need taking out, and the trumpeter’s call when the Saints of New Orleans march

The skin rubbed by a thumb in circles of grief wider and narrowing non-symmetrical

The way god shakes the marble bag