The Diamond Island

It’s been many years since DEVO released an album. Hek, nowadays albums are being questioned as a form of experience delivery. Ever since their magnificent masterpiece Oh No It’s DEVO!, the record induhstry has slowly managed to disrupt their energies and subsume their influence into the blood pool of sacrifice to the ownership.

Not that they were wholly defeated, mind you. They survived as best they could, finding ways to continue to be creative and get their work out in some form to people in need of it. Their concerts especially allowed them to continue to perform and keep the baseline light glowing.

Watching them sing a sad version of “Jocko Homo” in concert, I was struck by how they recognized their shadow—that their best years were behind them and they had served their purpose. That’s a hard truth to allow into your depths, to affect you. It changes you and your work, oftentimes beyond recovery.

So out comes their latest effort, Something For Everybody. I want to be wowed and thrilled by this development. Their concerts are great and their connectedness is cool. I’m digging that they have survived and have not given up that last inch.

But after their last album, and the intervening years, are they still able to reach me? I’m not the same as I was when I grew up with them, their every word humming in tune with how I felt and how I saw the world.

Having listened to the songs for a while and listened to what the spud adventurers have mixed up for us, I can only say the result is mixed. Is it possible to both get it and not get it? At times songs like “What We Do” and “Watch Us” are such devastatingly spot-on pieces of mutato beauty it brings a moisture to my eye.

Other songs such as “March On” and “Human Rocket” just don’t connect with me at all. They resemble a strip-mined DEVO that has played out.

There’s the sorrowful “No Place Like Home”, full of fatalistic remorse at the end. It makes “Beautiful World” from New Traditionalists seem hopeful by comparison.

The humorous “Don’t Shoot I’m A Man” cribs on previous insights, yet still manages to be good. It’s hard not to like the current DEVO bridging the past and present with skill.

Straight up pop songs like “Fresh” dance along a similar knowing playfulness and innuendo. Not my cup of tea, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that they are having fun and showing us a secret passage in the heart of darkness.

One thing that strikes me is DEVO’s utter mastery of electronic music making. They demonstrate fluency and command of just about every techno trick in today’s music. That’s the benefit of being a pioneer in the field who has stayed dialed in, practicing every day with devotion.

In a way they are showing off and in another way they are showing how out of tricks today’s popular music is. It isn’t even shallow any more; it’s got nothing at all. Is it any wonder today’s music business is fading away? It’s all been done and there’s nothing new left to explore. And copyright forbids us from remaking the older stuff into something new.

I’m left considering how this album leaves me mostly in the middle. Is it that I only like their unabashed forays into utter creativity and this tempered metal is somehow less palatable? I suppose so. I do come away with some gold, so can I really complain?

There’s a song called “Step Up”, which in my mind stands up as a hidden alloy of metals surprise. Insightful, hopeful, but also realistic of what needs to be done. Wasn’t it always up to the listener to hear the message anyway? DEVO have done their time, dug up their gold, and shared some with us. Do we want to become dependent on them for what we ourselves need to do work on?

We need the prophets to reflect back to us how we have gone astray. But if we do not heed them and find our own way what good have they done? The call of the divine could saturate us with every kind of delightful revelation and treasure of form to reassure us. Yet if we do not live it, respond, are we alive? Are we DEVO?

The other day I was reading a book for a class I was taking. One of those woo-woo marketing and business books barely above the level of pseudo-science called The End of Membership As We Know It.

There’s a part listing the three dominant generations of people in the country, along with characteristics that supposedly define them. I’m only doing a drive-by deconstruction here, so I’ll list some of the more interesting elements to me here:

• The Boomers—Typically hard working, loyal, confident, competitive. These folks grew up in a time of affluence.
• Generation X—Typically anti-authority, self-reliant, family focused. These folks grew up with workaholic and/or divorced parents, cable TV, and were reared to be self-sufficient (I take this to mean they were latchkey kids).
• Generation Y—Typically digital thinkers, feel entitled, needy. These folks grew up micromanaged by parents, with technology, always rewarded for participation, and were reared to be high achievers.

Okay, I get that generalities are a good starting off point for discussion. I understand that in order to make sense of things you have to try and identify qualities people seem to have in common so you can take the discussion further.

I also get that generalities never survive close scrutiny. Once you start narrowing your peepers in at the details, you start to see how different people really are and how useless it is to try and ascribe labels to people. The individual always throws the bell curve of conformity, so to speak.

Forget all that. This list of qualities is almost complete and total junk. It’s a bunch of lazy half-baked imagery taken from the minds of business blankers who have strange fantasies of what the hoi-polloi are composed of.

It is, to put it not so nicely, wrong in the way phony people deceive themselves to cover up unpleasant truths about how people really are.

For example, “Gen X is anti-authority.” Really? Coming from parents of divorce and workaholics, of having to come home to a TV dinner and take care of themselves I would think it would be the opposite. That they are looking FOR authority, for structure, for someone or something to believe in. For a generation known for being “slackers”, how does the self-reliant come in?

I mean, this is so dysfunctional a description as to make absolutely no sense.

If anyone were “anti-authority” it would be the Boomers. You know, the flower children, the hippies, the children of the generation before them known as the Traditionals? Of course, what about all the anti-authority boomers who sold out to work for The Man? Is that the definition of “loyal”?

Generation Y are digital thinkers? What, they have electricity for brains? Okay, okay I get that it probably means they grew up comfortable with the Internet. Hello? Generation X grew up with Atari, ColecoVision, Apple II and the original Macs.

A lot of the Gen Y descriptions sound patronizing to me. Boomers were never raised to be high achievers or weren’t needy? George Carlin did a brutal comedy routine that mocked the Boomers as the most needy and entitled generation to ever exist.

Boomers didn’t grow up with technology? Some of the most significant technological advances in history were made while they were growing up. I know—television, the space program, the atomic age and the first computers don’t seem very exciting now that big business has moved on. But dude! Come. On.

See what I mean? There’s no depth or insight to these stereotypes. And that’s what they are—stereotypes that business leaders have towards middle class white consumers who have the money to spend on their products.

You want to know what I think the defining characteristics of these generations are? Okay get ready for this.

The Boomers are really Generation Boom, as in an explosion announcing the imminent end of the industrial way of life. They are the heralds and prophets of what will be.

You think the sixties are over? Dude, they are just getting started. The Booms were just the warm up act to the main event.

Or to take a bit of off the cuff from Rambo: “I’m alive, it’s alive, innit?”

Generation old X, middle Y and youngest Z are all siblings. They are the Omegas. The last generation to know mobility and prosperity. They are the disciples of the prophets, spreading the message and laying the foundations of the time to come.

They are more clever and resourceful than can be imagined by the vampires in suits.

No wonder the ownership struggles to understand these strange hybrids. So much promise! So little return on investment. Thus the narrow-minded and pathetic attempts to label them into alphabetical batches of human capital by manufacturing date.

Into this fun and exciting historical moment of decline and DEVO-lution will come into existence what I can only conceive of as Doom Generation, or “Doomsers” for short. They are the generation that will know war and collapse, as the end of the industrial age gives rise to an age of electro-agriculturalism.

They will see the rise of kings so powerful and horrific as to make Henry VIII look like a homesick hobbit. They will carry swords and use the telephone. Their children will be part monster, part truth-seeker and will grow up to build the foundations of an inner life beyond the reaches of academic or mystical conception.

No, you won’t be marketing to the Doomsers. They will see right through your medieval attempts to deceive their buying habits and laugh at your quaint nostalgia for the past.

And the Omegas will be stuck in the middle of two worlds, transition to transition, circuit to switch as the old world crumbles before a revelation of individual consciousness that will seem to the owners of the world like a zombie apocalypse, where a single scratch or bite will spread the venom of life to their cold blood.

Whatever has been going on since I started down this creative procedure it has been going about its business hidden from conscious view. I haven’t been immediately aware of much more than “something” is happening, and so I’ve waited for the next step to appear and indicate whether I might join in with a conscious intent of any kind.

“Still waters run deep,” said my friend Kimaroo recently. Oh yeah, that’s right! I forget these things, whether its concerning people or matters of psychic complexity.

Then, an eruption. Or rather, an image of molten liquid in motion as if it were magma spilling out of the earth. And yet, transition into a process more amenable to human interaction: A foundry.

I live in the area of the country that is known as “the foundry” after all. Funny that something I take as a negative about the place I live should suddenly take on a very vital and important force of life!

I watch the opening sequence of the 1976 adventure yarn At The Earth’s Core and then it strikes me that this is exactly what is happening. Strange primordial powers deftly transformed by a sleight of hand into a process familiar to human endeavor. Though still fantastical given that a fantasy craft is being built out of this process, incredibly.

When I started I was composing a crystal matrices to bring together the elements and intentions I would need. Next I revealed the components and blueprints I would use (I’ve found others since then). I’ve been working on transpersonal narratives necessary to my journey. Molds that will serve to form the parts I will use to build the finished craft. And now, we are at the foundry.

I search for and find a diagram that shows me how it all works on a mundane but necessary external level. The elements are brought together into various furnaces and other mechanisms that turn the elements into the compounds that will make up the parts. Moving from lowest to highest, from the Blues up.

The central image of the molten liquids is where it all comes together—the crucible and cauldron of utmost hazard and intense energy directed towards the formation of psychic parts. Sparks fly, liquid fire falls to the ground in sizzling droplets. I am witness to a process inside myself of great childhood power.

The parts, cooled and cleaned then go to a place of manufacture. Industry is a word that has to do with women’s work. It may be directed towards mostly destructive, accumulative ends—yet the hands that strike the anvil and thread the wire are borrowing the true form of crafting: Introspection. Creating substance out of thought and from that substance, goods.

I dreamt of a UFO being sighted in a way that was also recognition of a form to be. Input from the dream state, cooperation from the unconscious.

I come across a video of The Bamboo Saucer, a film that in a way is about earthlings struggling to understand a UFO and direct its use towards peaceful means. This is, in a sense, a training manual and familiarity exercise to show me that I have been studying up for this since I was young.

K and I watch GalaxyQuest, and it dawns on me this is also a relevant experience of understanding. Of knowing that what you imagine is real, while also recognizing that it is absurd and that life is filled with terrible changes into new forms of consciousness from which life emerges, better than before.

I’m coming to an understanding of the tremendous forces at work within me, of me choosing to become part of this process and behold a beautiful, mysterious Karavos revealed to me.

Her name is coming to me.

Lately, as I’ve walked around the loch with the honeycomb hideout bunch, there’s been a most unusual sight. The days were getting shorter so basically it’s night by the time we get around to our grand excursion of the day.

I’ve been seeing a lot of homes that have replaced their lights with ultraviolet-blue colored bulbs. At first I thought it was a Halloween thing, but they’re all still up. Even though the holiday lights came out, still they persist.

The lights add an eerie, spectral quality to the portions of the walk where they exist. However, I also find them comforting and inspiring. You see, lights of these kinds always reach into the hidden crevices of my mind and draw forth feelings and imaginings of the strangest kind.

What causes the secret, hidden wonders of the night to glow? The sound of the vuvuzellas, of course. A quality in these lights is aware of the call and answers with it’s own light.

Or rather, perhaps the glow is perceived only by those who hear the call of that buzzing noise—noise—noise! We see reflected back at ourselves the glow within that dances with organic, firefly mystery in the concealed reaches of our inner haunts.

What comes out to play if we but listen? Our true natures, hearing the rousing dirge of ecstasy that inspires and illuminates what was shadowed and unknown.

If you hear, you will see.

No sooner have I witnessed the spectacular display of magnificent enlightenment that is smarter than the average bear then I’m drawn into watching videos of erupting lava. Unbelievably hot material charged by the heat of the earth and forced onto the surface. Lambent orange-yellow creation and destruction that is dangerous, hypnotic, and moving on a deep level.

The forces of our central being called forth to the range of our consciousness by the awakening sound of the noise—noise—noise!

It is an actual external event we behold with our senses and contemplate with our innermost thoughts. We are reminded of when it is an internal event, our vast panorama of experience widened and enriched by the forces inside ourselves.

Sometimes, forces we did not expect demolish towns we built for ourselves. At other times we are fortunate to be removed enough from the process to have a reasonable level of safety, but are close enough to allow the magnitude of the event to move us.

This eruption of energy from the deeper levels of our existence brings new land, full of delicious minerals for the plant life that inevitably follows. It is true we need the greatness inside to come out and renew our conscious life.

It occurs to me that while there is a certain impersonal fate to the catastrophe of an eruption in the external world, there may be a meaningful connection to the volcanic activity in our psyche. There is a story, a drama hidden in the seemingly inscrutable mystery of how we came to be experience this eruption, however we find ourselves participating in it.

The world hears the call and responds, dancing. There is movement and heat, and the flush of release and timeless joy.

And what is our part in that?

Pick out some movies that use eruptions to drive the situation such as Dante’s Peak, or resolve it: like One Million Years BC. We are forced to adapt and respond to what has come forth as a result of the call.

The vuvuzellas have been calling all this time. The difference is that someone heard it.

They look closer at what is happening, they are alert to the change in themselves. The journey to widen their small worldview has begun. Kaboom.

I admit, does one really want to be around when the ultimate volcano finishes off all the dinosaurs? At least in the psychic adventure, all that was no longer needed or had become a wasteland of inauthentic life gets destroyed. Blown away.

It’s time to know you live, so that the world may live and be renewed. Hear the call; accept the eruption that is the response.

Yet always there are still those lost souls who need to experience the call through others. They have wandered too far seeking the dew from faraway flowers in shadowed glens.

Yogi Bear is a generally decent being. Smarter than the average bear, he hunts the elusive picnic basket while dodging the romantic inclinations of Cindy Bear. The Ranger does his best to keep Yogi (a yogi? A teacher?) within the confines of general bear existence without havoc ensuing to either the tourists (voyeurs?) or the picnic baskets (containers of food—life—bliss?).

Kind of a standard cartoon tension you find from Hanna Barbara outfits. Well sometimes things get turned upside down and all havoc breaks loose. That’s kind of what happens in the old early-eighties movie Yogi’s First Christmas.

After those killer bees woke me up to the vuvuzella phenomenon and dialed me in before I missed the train completely, I started getting the shakes one day. You know, patrolling the perimeters of the neutral zone for invaders from butt-town who don’t like to get down.

Hey! That’s right, wasn’t there this movie with Yogi Bear in it I actually liked? Sensor sweep is ON, Babykins. Oh yeah there it is coordinates ready to beam aboard for ducats transfer. Hey, cheap considering the civilization one is poring over.

So in a nutshell, what is that dang show about?

It’s winter at the Jellystone Ski Lodge. Yogi Bear and his compatriot Boo-Boo are fast asleep in hibernation land, so the Ranger is looking for some well-deserved (he thinks) rest. When the bears are down and out for the winter, he gets his summer vacation so to speak.

Special guest stars include various characters from other cartoons. Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound. Besides offering a number of views on events in the movie, they also double as generic extras in every scene requiring “people”.

Their presence is to ensure that this is a memorable and fun holiday at the lodge. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with such a festive and interesting bunch? Who wouldn’t sympathize with them and their friendly outlook?

Only, the manager of the ski lodge says there’s trouble! The owner of the ski lodge, a Mrs. Throckmorton, is coming to inspect the premises and make a decision as to whether or not to close the lodge permanently. See, there have been all these strange happenings driving visitors away…

Chances are, unless the staff puts on a grand show of all grand shows the lodge is finished! Because while the Ranger is good at dealing with Yogi Bear, he is generally poor at just about everything else. The manager is really just a satellite extension of the Ranger, representing “the suits” behind administration.

But wait, there’s more!

There’s a mean old hermit who hates Christmas and all them “do-gooder city folk” ruining his solitude with their crummy good cheer. Well, this time, he’s decided he’s had enough and is going to go Nuclear Grinch on all their big behinds.

Although, he doesn’t have any elaborate plan other than ruin or destroy stuff. Which is actually kind of funny even though if he’d pulled any of it off people would have gotten hurt or killed.

Extra bonus!

Mrs. Throckmorton’s nephew is a spoiled rotten little brat who hates everyone and especially hates Christmas. He decides to make everyone pay by makin’ mischief. Oh! Who could it be pulling these pranks on us nice cartoon characters?

The little brat eventually hooks up with the hermit and they join forces to make this the worst Christmas ever. After a song where they sing about their mutual hate of Christmas and the horrible things they will do, of course.

Good times.

Looks like the lodge is toast. Not only that, but the good guys are going to work their little rumps off trying to make a good impression, and when they fail will probably think it was all their fault for not trying hard enough!

Unfortunately for the bad guys, Yogi Bear hears Christmas singing and wakes up. He decides to find out what the noise—noise—noise is all about and leaves his cave. Boo-Boo has to keep an eye on him of course, and follows Yogi through the secret cave tunnel that leads RIGHT TO THE DAMN LODGE!

Okay, we are in weirdo land here folks. The Ranger finds all his powers useless during the winter. Yogi declares his intention to see what this Christmas thing is all about, and there’s not a thing Ranger can do but gnash his teeth while the manager panics. A bear on the loose is clearly much worse for the lodge’s prospects than all the vandalism and near-fatal accidents going on.

The guest stars are, of course, delighted to see their friend in a holiday special and support him fully. Yogi then proceeds to use his magic powers of effortless compassion and easy going slack to foil every damn plot by the bad guys by sheer dumb luck.

Every. Dang. Time.

Mrs. Throckmorton is immediately impressed by Yogi Bear and makes sure he is promoted each time he does something amazing. I mean, with a ski lodge with Yogi Bear protecting it from all danger and making everyone smile, who wouldn’t be impressed?

Somewhere off screen the owner must be seeing dollar signs, but from what I can tell she is just really excited that there is this awesome bear who fixes everything and is super polite and friendly while he does it.

Oh yeah and Cindy Bear gets wind of Yogi being up and decides to pursue him despite the need for her beauty sleep! Mistletoe and a music number showing Cindy at her most alluring, hoo boy.

Will Yogi manage to stay awake long enough to see Santa Claus? How will our two villains make out on Christmas Day? Will the lodge be saved instead of sold down the river for an oil refinery or strip mall? I’m pretty sure you can guess the answer to these important questions.

Watching this old show, I’m struck by how wholesome the story is. Ever since dark realism infected the popular entertainment feed trough, it’s been difficult to find any shows that dare to tell a story where things work out like gangbusters and pull it off. It all comes down to stance and technique, folks.

Yogi Bear rides the luck plane on nothing but good-hearted excitement and optimistic curiosity. This is the true spirit of adventure folks; watch a master at work. We’re all in need of this kind of energy awakening in ourselves to see and do things that have never been done.

All the other characters are driven by immediate, real world needs–responsibility of one form or another and the fear of rules not being maintained or of not doing one’s duty. The villains operate from a more selfish and dissociated form of behavior; sabotage of a system in which they feel cut off from.

Along comes Yogi Bear with his evergreen heart chakra glowing with warmth in the heart of winter. He hears the noise—noise—noise and is affected. Do we hear and are we affected?

The vuvuzellas are calling, even in the darkest night of Xmas Not.

The other day I went about my patrol business as usual. It’s a strange charge and a difficult burden being the park ranger for the Mysterious Island beyond the reaches of many imaginations. Boiling coffee in a hat can be a drag. Pulling improvised cosmic torpedoes out of your bag of tricks is a common state of affairs.

Then those ding dang killer bees started making noise in the main hallway of the honeycomb hideout. What is that crazy noise?

They’re all set with sweet sweet honey for the winter, plenty of mega-zhord stings stored up for a beastly Spring of ultimate bushwhack, and wing music beats from the sampladelic depot near party central to keep them warm. They may make surprise jackup-in-the-box snow strikes in time for Xmas Not, just you wait Henry Higgins!

That’s what that noise is. Those glorious, outrageous, thrilling vuvuzellas that made the world wince and tremble during World Cup time. The videos were enough to make me tremble with longing, such awesome noise—noise—noise!

A lot of Grinches were pretty put out by those things, laughably complaining that they should be banned because they were “too low”. This from a sport that invented the term “football hooligans.”

Methinks it was a little bit of the ol’ jealousy of being outdone to infinity, mixed in with a general dislike of brown people.

I used to have a red vuvuzella when I was a kid and lived in New Hampshire. Ivy league students would blow them furiously during an annual bonfire in the central park of the university I lived beside.

I thought it was outstanding, so I badgered my folks into getting me one. Wasn’t hard, as they liked the noise too. Though the scale could hardly compare to those videos on YouTube—that sound was epic, man.

Broke my vuvuzella and forgot about it, until the killer bees reminded me.  “Hey, like dig, right? Remember that thang you used to have and blow every now and then? Check it out, it came back and you shluffed the notice.”

Argh! They’re right. As much as I am listening and straining with all my might to understand, still the boundless life rushes past me in countless ways.

This time, I gather to myself a number of mp3s of the noise—noise—noise, droning incessantly like a world of bees insisting that the people awaken. Awaken to judgment and resurrection to the sound of trumpets blaring in a chorus of people answering angels with a swarming sound of “yes!”

This gets me back in the frame of mind of beekeeping. Not just the physical manifestation, but also the psychic one. Of hearing the sound and recognizing my own innate calling to myself of the call.

Xmas Not is coming, and the Grinch came sliding down in a sleigh blaring a trumpet having awakened his heart.

The Celtic new year has just gotten underway, and here I am a little dazed at the last year of activity. Never mind all the nuclear meltdowns spewing radiation from afar, east coast earthquakes that feel like a jackhammer wedging of earth, hurricanes of doom missing by a few hundred feet, and rainfall soaking the loch above levels I’ve not seen since I can remember. The external world has been an expression of an inner volcano clearing its throat for an eruption.

Building a UFO can seem a little like a Noah’s Ark project at times like these.

Internally, all my life energies have gone into deep, sweeping currents rushing through the earth. I’ve had to get by on emergency life support and reserve warp only. Right at a time when I’ve been fighting a lot of battles on the home front. Lucerna’s kung fu lessons have basically kept me alive long enough to adapt to the transformational energies going on. The last year has essentially been panic and fear, dialed way up for sustained periods of time. The blinking and beeping lights on the emergency panel have been loud and overwhelming.

Thank goodness for the life support music from UFO girl!

In other news, it ain’t just me. Hek-sistah X is off on a retreat to re-visit places of great meaning to her, Hexe the Incorrigible is recovering from illness, and Alexi is busy fighting for his dream in a new land. The Quest Station is full of notes and doodles galore, all around adventure is ON THE GHOD-DAM AIR.

The garden is in shut down procedure, cats are in snuggle mode, and the honeycomb hideout and killer bees are settling in for the long winter. And it’s going to be a doozy—ran into a wooly bear and it had no orange stripes, which means you better be stocked in the larder and armed with plenty of anti-ice-weasel traps. Ol’ winter wolf has reared up dramatically and her howl is driving away the last of the summer lifeforce. Batten down the hatches and brace for impact at your stations of the cross, icy depth charges ahoy.

I made sure to give out lots of candy to the monsters dressed as humans and the kids dressed as monsters, while I still have candy to sacrifice.

In a previous post, I discovered instructions from UFO Girl contained within my past self-explorations.  Decoding the instructions has required I “sit on it” for a while and let the recognition sink in fully. Now there is a growing thought in my brain that I’m ready to examine what’s available for consideration.

A being transport of pure sound, conveying mobility through space and time, enabling us to experience new ways of playing. The time has come for me to hypnotize myself into understanding the plans and going about the ceremony of putting together what has been uncovered.

I imagine a number of qualities such a vehicle of the mind might require for it to be a useful conveyance for me.

• Imminence, or a sense of the ability to move one location or state of mind to another.
• Intuition, that ability to understand and reason by mysterious and irrational means.
• Integrity, which is to say both completeness and honesty as a way to “hold it together”.
• Consonance, or the ability to maintain harmony and accord.
• Epistle, that is, messages and transcripts across gaps of perception.
• Precursor, or the ability to project one’s intentions and ideas through crossings in affect.
• Organism, which simply means the awareness and maintenance of life consciousness.
• Psyence, because one always needs a new word and which represents healthy models of system.
• Constellation, that process by which disparate parts and wholes organically relate.

There was this article in a science fiction magazine I read a while back. I still have the magazine somewhere in one of my transport boxes.  The article was about this guy building his own cylon robot out of available materials.

At the time I took it literally and seriously. Could you really make a cybernetic brain using sauerkraut as a baseline ingredient? If only I could save the shef boi-ahr-dee cans and use them to build my cyclon’s armored covering!

However, there is an important lesson here in building anything out of ideas and into substance. The stimulation of the imagination and the working out in one’s own psychic make-up how such models might work is an important step.

Is the plan we have built a put-on? Might it not also be a signpost, saying “look here, in this box for the diagram of your dream.”  Sauerkraut and tin cans indeed!

Watching the glowing light in my brain, I find myself getting wide-awake-sleepy, tick-tock.

I ran into a whirlwind chimera the other day.  I invited her to sit down for a spot of refreshment and we got to talking about some of the systems of doom we were working on.

She’s the sort of adventurer who works with Chaos magic and prefers to storm the walls of challenges with a sharp sword and a little surprise cleverness.  You know, the random encounter table does come up with some interesting unique beings when you roll double-ohs.

We swap stories and techniques, and then I get to thinking that since she might be on to something with this direct, full on warrior vitality, maybe I could stand to learn a thing or two about taking action.

Sure, sure, I’ve read all about it and have a good grounding in the theoretical principles.  I’ve taken a few tumbles in the school of sword swinging through active and immediate striking against obstacles to certain kinds of experience.

But you know, the fact is I go with the flow a lot of time, and find all those people out there taking action non-stop a little confusing.  How can they waste so much energy moving decisively?  Then again, I understand I must do the same to them–how can anybody waste so much time doing nothing?

So as of now, I’m taking action on something that’s been rising to a boil in my brain. That’s going to be my technique for practicing a larger field of experiencing another side of me that’s been coming to the forefront of consciousness lately.

In Dungeons and Dragons, the Tomb of Horrors was an adventure module known for the sheer number and interconnectedness of its many traps, tricks and puzzles. The module was sheer death and destruction for any adventuring party that attempted to reach the central tomb, where a monstrously powerful spirit dwelled among a pile of treasure.

Well, it’s another name for the super death trap maze a part of me built in my psyche to hold some of my treasure.

So how will I go about evading or disarming the traps, defeating the tricks, and solving the puzzles–especially since I am woefully poor at such things?  I shall draw them out of me and transform them into items of art for my own amusement!

And as I do so I shall glean small insights into, and experience of, the nature of an important aspect of me.

Stay tuned, wayfarers!