Newton, Massechusets

Yesterday I met Orville Pierson and his wife. They both did work with a guru in the 70's that helped them understand their spiritual paths. After a few good conversations, Orville was to my surprise interested in my thoughts and compelled to point out that I was a very High person - that for my age both in this life and in the Dharma cycle, I was advanced greatly in my sense of larger understanding. While identifying with most everything I've been going through on that level, his suggestions to me can be summed up as listening to the universe by going inside yourself rather than projecting into the cosmos, as often times this is easier to do and is more personal in the experience and insight gained; Attending to the help of mantras and even music as a focus ; and to find my own guru to help sort through the spiritual planes, from either internal or external directions of entrance. Those kinds of journeys always need some kind of guide with some experience to help you understand and deal with what is encountered.

The poem below was inspired by a meditation last night where I removed myself from my thought stream in preparation for sleep. But as I was watching and even bemusing at my thoughts whilst they assembled into a pile of white noise (there was quite a bit of garbage data floating through my head) something disturbing and eventually paralyzingly frightening occured. I collected the resonant white noise of my thoughts into a little ball and watched them float away. The void in which my true self had centered was awaiting the flow of the Tao to arrive, on which it could take my spirit deep inside for a nice drift into sleep. But instead of a quiet stream of trickling and peaceful energy, that newly established void was quickly filled with the energy of external spirits that were not at all peaceful. My soul was paralyzed and my body stopped breathing properly. The void was under an accelerating invasion of feelings and entities only describable as fearful, sad, creepy, evil, moaning, pained, disturbing, and aggressive essences. I could only finally dispel them by forcing myself to breath, reopening my mindvalve a little ways, and calling on the mantra of Jesus Christ to come and help me cancel that shit so I could simply pass out.

The most unsettling thing about it was that it seemed like when I let go of my thought noise and prepared to meditate into the greater planes, I became momentarily vulnerable, as if being in that state of limbo turned me into a blinking red fish-in-a-barrel target for (I hate to use the cliched term here, but I somewhat applies) demonic possession. I know now what Orville said about the help of a guru guide. But it's still unsettling - why am I such a high priority target for external entities? Because that sort of thing had happened to be before, I just didn't register what it was at the time. I hope there are other external energies and spirits out there who are more kindly or better yet will just leave me alone.

Om Namah Shivaya, Jesus Christos.
Until I find a guru somehow, these mantras get me by for now -
"I submit to my inner consciousness"
to step away from the chattering of my mind
"Jeshua the Anointed"
to watch my back from behind
And why?

Because of what I find inside the void next to my mind -
The mind is a processor of information,
Input and Output;
The mind is a filter of perceptions,
Half truths and constraints;
The mind is a live wire,
60 Hz hum and distorted signals;
The mind is a distraction,
Data Buckets and misunderstandings;
The mind is the ugliest part of your body,
Frank Zappa;
The mind is a tool,
Numbers and Colors and Relational links;
The mind is Dual,
Id and Ego

But when I begin to step aside
and watch the chatter on that line
The void between gets filled with fear
and demons: Ill spirits, crowding too near
Blocking my Tao.

New York City (Supplemental 2)

Penn Station is like a shopping mall with 65% more creeps, 40% more cops, and 100% more Amtrak. Which by the way, is handled in a system of scheduled arrival and departure times because they go nation wide. NJTransit is a similar setup (state wide) and so unlike the DC metro where trains ran routes nonstop, I find myself with a ticket back to metropark that leaves in 15 minuets instead of three. Its not really a big dicotomy against the speed, noise and adreniline of manhatten though, becasue that waiting-for-the-trains bit is comparable to 300 tourists with explosive diarrhea waiting in line for a malfunctioning rollercoaster. I hope I end up having a decent evening tonight. It will be my last outing here in Jersey/New York and with Kristine until god-only-knows-when. I've got a Journey to continue and she's moving away from her Mom's place post-graduation. I'm gonna miss her.

New York City (Supplemental)

By the grace of God, he Amtrak reject equipment I was on stayed stable on it's NJTransit line, placing me somewhere in the tunnel dungeons beneath Penn Station. I emerged to the daylight, heat, noise, and carbon monoxide near the Borders' Bookstore at Madison Square Garden. The foldout map of the island in hand, I began the 40 block epic journey to the place I now sit: A bench dedicated to "Chuck and Christina Micheals" on the outskirts of the tree museum known as Central Park. Even as the latino bag lady sleeps on the bench over from me, the pidgeons and sparrows come by asking for food, and the more easy-going BoHo couples hold hands and stroll (there are only 2 kinds of young hip rich people here: Paris Hilton wannabes and arty bohemian hipster wannabes...oh, and well dressed gay dudes), I can still hear the Honking of the Yellow NYC taxi cabs.

Well fuck, it's raining now. And I really wanted to go see the Pit of Abbadon and check for thermite residue. Guess it's back to the trains.

New York City, New York

Imagine former nutjob ambassador to the UN John Bolton but a little chubbier and with a Bronx accent. He made little punch holes in an 8 Dollar slip of paper I bought from him after he questioned why I took the corridor line to Madison Square when I could have transferred to the 4170 Amtrak at the airport and hopped the RF line metro to wall street.

Dude...WTF. I just want to go to Manhattan Island; I don't know what you're on about. 33rd Street station is fine.

[Hand drawn depiction if the NJTransit guy punching my ticket and questioning my rail-line logic.]

Clark Township, New Jersey

Sitting at the local Barnes and Noble with this book in hand and my silly Gonzo hat drew a little more than its fair share of unspoken attention, though I can't really decipher the body language around here as its expertly masked under layers of tristate area misanthropic grit apparent at least a little bit on every local person. My only inclination is to take it as a mixture of indignation and some flavor of jealous derision - "How dare this gypsy scalawag show up in our town, drink coffee, and wax free-spirited in our hardened and somewhat conceited presence!" Not all are like that, but there are enough. A category of "Generics" as the Phiz would say. Generics with Lead feet and attitudes.

[Handwritten cartoon of the scene upon coming down off the Delaware Memorial Bridge]

Little do they know I was born and once lived here. I need to go find Kristine.

Its good to be back.

I95 North of Baltimore, Maryland

I'm at some truck stop off of I-95 in Maryland called "Perryville Travel Plaza". It's located immediately following a - get this - FIVE DOLLAR TOLL BOOTH for which I was monetarily unprepared. I was summarily informed that I should roll through the booth when upon pulling away my licence plates would be photographed and my address would be mailed the toll charge plus fines in a letter from the Maryland Transport Authority. I must be getting close to New York. Fuckin' bastards. Tom left this for me last night before I vacated his place in the late morning.

[Handwritten poem on a notepad scrap:
"Washed upon this distant shore
I've found myself wondering
why so vaugely familiar
a sunrise upon some place I've
been spit should arouse my senses so.
Step, stand, sunken sand footstep
suspicions suspended
past confirmed upon the sand
lay an apple once bitten"
-Tom Thrasher]

One of the most profound senses of spiritual peace a person can experiance is to recognise a key moment of existential deja vu, and place it neatly back into its Dharmic context to learn something needed. But Zen is very to manifest or come across in a place like Washington DC.

Unleaded Gasoline is $4.10 per gallon this afternoon.

Alexandria (Supplemental)

I'm sitting in front of a cafe next to the VA Square-GMU metro entrance in the middle of Alexandria. There is a middle aged dude in a ratty long sleeved shirt, worn cargo pants and a boonie hat. He's hawking the stairway down to the station with a change cup pacing around the passing politi-yuppies saying "any change for a homeless person? Can a homeless fella get a little respect and love?" Some folks have tossed him change but most just pass him by quickly and uncomfortably. He does look in a bad way, probably been out of work for a while and maybe a casual drunk. But interestingly the man's begging shtick also makes a point. Nobody wants to deal with the guy because they are either too class-consciously guilty to interact with him, they don't want to encourage his begging behavior, they don't trust his intentions, or they dismiss/are ignorant of his circumstances. Even the bums make political statements in this town.

Its interesting, about 2 minuets ago two Alexandria cops, one male and the other female, sat down at the table next to me for a smoke and coffee. As they approached the table they seemed to be discussing some rather Guilty-before-proven-innocent-crook-chasing anecdotes/underhanded bully banter typical of beat cops when they think no one else can hear them. As they took their seats I glanced over just to scan who the voices were and we all three of us caught eyes for a hanging millisecond. I noticed they were local police and they noticed that I was actively writing with pen in hand. Their chat promptly trailed off and slipped into more general and idle topics at lower volume. I was simply writing commentary on this homeless guy's soapboxy performance, but apparently just my passive display of a recording device (however primitive this pen and paper my be) was enough to cause the local Blue's to modify their behavior.

They say that a Government should be afraid of its people, and maybe the suits on the hill really aren't. It seems though, that there is always one good way to scare the Law's long-arm footsoldiers - let them know they're being monitored. All one has to do is watch the watchers. Homeless dude left. Its a shame, I was about to offer him ten bucks just to leave these metro folks alone for the rest of the day. I'm getting on the train back to Fairfax; the beltway still does and always will suck.

For all their R&R demeanor, those cops never really did stop keeping an eye on the metro beggar. Reminds me of that Monet painting.

Alexandria, Virginia

Thrasher invited me to come into Alexandria, to GMU's Law campus where her has an internship with the Mercadus Institute of Human Studies. Their fourth floor offices feature an extensive philosophy, poli sci, econ, and history library. Tom's cubicle resides near the edge of its office space. He call his desk "The Outpost" and has made a little hanging sign to that effect - the last stop on ye olde Kings road before there be bandits and dragons beyonde. I'm sitting awating his return from lunch. Once he arrives I hope to brave the catacombs of ancient tomes that his position sentries. I may even be able to actually find out what it is he does around here and what a group like the IHS can do for ME! Well, failing that, they can always provide the White House with data and policy sugesstions that will most likley be entirely ignored. At least as long as Dubya's administration is still in the executive, God knows they love to hear outside advice from third party sources.

A Joke for Today
Kevin Costner walks into a bar. Barkeep piques up, greets him, "Ehey! Hows it hangin'?"
The actor shouts a reply - "Back, and to the Left"

Orange Line Metro, Washington DC

I'm fairly certain that some of the folks that drive the trains on the DC metro are stoned on the job. IT turns out to have been a good guess on my part, as apparently Thrasher knew a guy who worked down there and knows some pretty embarrassing stuff about the way the metro is run. For anyone taking the rail for any significant distance into the city, your first hint will likely be the asynchronous acceleration and breaking maneuvers that are often performed as if there were no human passengers on board but rather crates of meat an cheese on their way to a refrigeration factory before a massive industrial cheese-spoilage disaster occurs.

Aside from the joys of public transport, I had the opportunity to watch Charlie Wilson's War this afternoon, to which I have only to say that it was a fairly relevant and poignant piece of historical fiction to have come out last year and a good stab at a lot of the more boneheaded cold war war policy. The fact remains however that Tom Hanks is still a giant chode who ends up overacting his roles while somehow simultaneously failing to keep the same faux accent consistently through his films. I was pretty surprised myself to learn that a 1980's Good ol' boy House Rep from the 2nd Texas had the uncanny ability to randomly entertain constituetns with a flawless Tom Hanks impersonation. It must have been great fun at fundraising dinners.

It just seems all the more amusing lately seeing as how I'm surrounded by the DC vibe if super-serious political hardass-ery in between the skechy street vendors (be it Arab dudes selling questinable hot dogs and "FBI: Female Body Inspector" T-Shirts, or Black dudes dealing boxes of Foakly's and making you listen to thier rhymes) and those suit-coated shitheads at the National Gallery who lean over and bark "SHHHHHHHHHHH!!" in a condesending manner with their finger over thier lips when you're just trying to discuss a fucking Monet painting with a friend.

[Hand drawn cartoon of the Mall looking east]

Fairfax (Supplemental 2)

Tom and I met up yesterday about 6PM and headed over to the Asian food market. After exploring the exotic fruits and Koren marked boxes of god knows what, two large mackerels were purchased and fried up with tiger shrimp by us later on. Over a drink and coffee, we discussed the ideas most common to both our intellectual thought trains: the eccentricity of human communication and its relation to the idea of a non-dualist consciousness. The two themes overlap in the sense that both are related to the concept of meaning. In human communication, the core purpose of, the merits of, and the pitfalls of that activity are meaning.

The conveying of a concept, concrete or abstract, is an overarching theme in society even more so than unquantifiable emotional connections or expressions because even those activities require the exchange of information to signal your intentions, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions to another person. The other person by definition may well have a different set of those things, necessitating the exchange in the first place. But it seems to me that the entire discussion of of effective and truthful communication between people becomes a unique nut to crack at when faced with the non-dualist outlook of a non-dual existence. It seems almost immediately a worthwhile consideration. If it is supposed that all matter, energy, space, time, consciousness, and experience are qualitatively of One Essence (call it God, the Flowing Tao, The Ephemeral Energy, the Pervasive Uncertianty, the realm of Plato's forms, the Higgs Field for all I care - YHWH has no vowels), then it calls into question the idea that any one person is a separate consciously perceiving entity from anyone else.

Oh shit, I'm sorry. Did I just divide your mind by zero? Well, just reason it out for a moment. You could easily cry foul the entire idea as solipsist, but that would really only apply if the end result or logical reduction is some absurdity like "the entire universe is in my head /a figment of my ego's imagination, and this is the nature of reality". For all practical purposes, it clearly is not. But absurd solipsism is a different thing altogether than the statement "My perception could be the result of my Brain-in-a-Vat (TM)", with the input into that vat being provided by the Greater Oneness of which I and everything else is a part, and the signal becomes distorted when my ego projects vast amounts of emotionally and mentally ignorant bullshit into the program. But the kicker then is that my ego is not my true self, but is instead the part of the Vat Signal that I falsely think is me. Sort of like someone playing World of Warcraft and thinking that the Level 60 night elf that represents them is the real them.

As such, the next step is to consider that the ego is not real and neither is anyone else's (at least in the psychological context, if you're uncomfortable with the more literal consequences of my Matrix analogy, it still holds). Ergo to say: my true self is a purely consciousness/spirit based entity that is not just made of the material world in the dualist sense, nor is it only just an emergent property of the neurons in my brain, in the monist sense. But rather that my true self is more than anything a part of a greater element, a little piece of the Tao that is self aware, the same Tao that the systems of the tangibly physical are made of. By necessity it is in a different form than that scientifically quantifiable and touchable "stuff"; The true self, the consciousness or spirit, is the purest example of a non-dual essence because ultimately the term holds no philosophical acknowledgment of separation.

So, if we take this line of reasoning for the moment as a working model, then what of communication? What makes this a special case? It should become apparent almost immediately - If nothing is fundamentally of a different physical or philosophical substance than anything else; if all distinctions are illusory and are virtual distinctions; if "I" don't exist and neither do "You" (as the use of those pronouns would de facto invoke the inferance of dualist seperation); then all communication between people is in a sense always and only focused between diffrent aspcets a single subject: The Holistic Source from which all else derives. When "I" communicate with "You" It is no different then when "I" talk to "Myself" or "I" talk to "the wall" or "I" make a "spiritual divination" by interpreting a pile of sticks.

The eccentricity of communication in a non-dualistic framework is that reality (or at least the four-space in which humans normally reside) exists so that God can talk to himself, by personifying himself in a massive relative illusion and using its different manifestiations as observational agents, including you and me and everything else.

I for one can say my life has gone better and been more full since I started letting this Ineffable Higher Power into my daily perception, but that's just me. Though, I guess "me" is a misnomer. Now I've certainly divided your mind by zero. See you on the dark side of the moon.

[Life is a waterfall
we're one in the river
and one again after the fall -
swimming through the void
we hear the word
we lose ourselves
but we find it all]

Fairfax (Supplemental)

University Mall is a set of collage-oriented retail and Freshman 15 food shops off of VA 123 Across from the Campus at George Mason University. Tom Thrasher, a partner in crime (mostly public disturbance) during High School, a good friend, and soon to be graduate of GMU has called on me to stop for a few days and take in a greater experience of the area. Not that I'm lacking in experiences around here, far from it; since he's been a student here I've come around quite a few times for a slice of beltway college life. For the most part that consisted of a little too much partying for the school's own good and subsequent dealings with the local security goons who take their jobs way to seriously. Though the case can be made that those days are well behind us, I won't forget the weekend I came around for the foray of the GMU Men's basketball team in the Final Four a few years back...mostly because I don't really remember that weekend at all (there were many drinks).

But these days Thrasher runs a weblog on the economic and theoretical landscape of the ongoing Information Revolution themed around Hayekian ideas of the Extended Order, or as we had previously mused together, "Industrial Revolution 2.0". Originally feeling law school way back, I feel from him an increasing sense of entrepreneurial and journalistic gusto no doubt triggered by his economic schooling and interest in social evolution. He is always the first and last to remind me that emerging socio-economic orders are always a dense jungle, and where there is a jungle there also are machete-toting mercenaries ready to blaze you a custom trail to your destination. Hence is the nature of the service economy in an information heavy phase of civilization. I'd take those kinds of opportunities over being a desk jockey at a beltway think tank office any day.

He'd better ring me back soon. The night is nearing and the air is thick with the feel of approaching rain.

Fredricksburg/Fairfax, Virginia

::(NOTE: Most of this weblog is transliterated from a handwritten travel journal. Many of the entries contain personal illustrations in between the paragraphs for humorous effect. I'll upload a gallery of the drawings when I have the chance. For now I'll insert themed placeholder notations::)

Woke up at 7:30 AM this morning, changed clothes, piled some bags back into my trunk. After shuffling upstairs for some cereal that was offered to me, I said goodbye to Pat's wife and made my way back northeast into the Richmond. It wasn't until I'd gotten deeper back into town that I realized my interest with this city was still bordering on zero, even after all this time of living somewhat close to it. I had the option to either force myself to be interested in the sights and cruise the city aimlessly for an arbitrary number of hours or I could just find the road to I-95 and keep going. I chose to keep going - at least until I found a gas station/skeevy trucker plaza to park at and sleep for another 2.5 hours.

I goes without saying that the 95 road between Richmond and DC is for lunatics, truckers, and lunatic truckers. By lunatics I mean anyone who's time is money enough to forsake all reasonable speeds below 70 MPH and ride it balls to the wall on a regular basis, probably becasue they're late for a meeting or someone moved thier cheese or some shit. So aside from Truckers and those just passing through the concrete warzone hoping to survive, this lunatic group accounts for about everyone who drives that road, who qualify for the catagory just by virtue of the fact that they are the type of person who is commuting from Richmond to DC. Comedian Lewis Black comes to mind.

Although, I did get run up on by a slick new jet black Lexus with deep tints that turned out to be the personal vehicle of a member of the Virginia Legislature. #178 to be exact per the licence plate, which explained the otherwise contradictory menagerie of cross-partisan candidate-support bumper stickers pasted on the back - they were all the names of incumbents. Speaking of INCUMBENTS:

[Hand drawn political cartoon of Mugabe @ Zimbabwe elections: "Poll's Closed"]

I call this poem "Lol, Politics":

Actor A desires outcome Q
thus takes action W;
leading Actor B to hire Actor C
using X amount of money;
to force Actor D to make action Y
at threat of gun point;
influencing Actor E to vote
in favor of issue K;
catalyzing outcome Q
which could have been something different;
Had Actor A not been
a power hungry douche nugget.

Richmond (Supplemental)

I'm just about ready to strangle the bitch who lives inside my nav computer. The GPS tracking works wonders as a real time dynamic minimap, and it can plot destinations and waypoint routes via specific street addresses, etc. But barring that, the CG female voice that acts as a liaison between an impossibly confused driver and the route plotting algorithm from hell is akin to a backseat-driving Jewish Princess on the rag, except without the normal human emotive intonation, or the eye candy, or the ability to attempt to reason with her. after refusing to offer any other route to Midlothian besides a few contrived innercity manuvers followed by an unnecessary toll road, the navcomp continued to bark orders at me before the instructions even seemed relevant to my current position. Also, when I made a wrong turn into a walmart parking lot and began a simple u-turn correction, the system suddenly went to confused-ass mode and dropped my route from the map claiming that "It is not possible to correct route destination cause you didn't do exactly what I said BLAH BLAH". What if the nav calculator in the Apollo 13 command craft was such a fickle digi-prick? "Unable to correct ballistic trajectory 'cause you did something entirely unexpected. Reprogram everything from scratch and hold your breath, or touch here to close this message and slam directly into the moon." This thing is never directing me anywhere again until I can find some time to go into the option settings and tell it what for. I'll just use the satmap for now, thanks.

That aside, I ate a fairly posh dinner with Pat, his Stepford-wife, his princess daughter, and his daughters navy seal boyfriend who I think may be "a little dim". I've settled down for the evening in the slick basement layout of a bedroom/half bath featuring 900 channel cable TV (at least 300 music and 100 HD among them) as a comfortable yet preponderant reminder that my dad has, over the course of his career, managed to network with some awfully well off corporate seniors. My hosts tonight were friendly enough, yet it somehow seemed ineffably disingenuous as if they didn't really want me there or they somehow identified me as "not one of them" because I was amused by the cornucopia of luxury-class standard items (the ole' silver spoon analogy, except alot of it in reality shoddy and just for looks/prestige). This environment of modern American upperclassity seems destined to cross paths with me continually because of my upbringing, even when I semi-passively avoid it. I've spent some time on the other side of the tracks in my dealings with other people before, and its not something to aim at. But these folks in this 6 figure dreamland lifestyle, they feel almost tangibly soulless due to what I can only classify as materialistic gluttony. And I personally draw the comfort line when I feel like and know that I have to put on a face in this kind of culture in order to even fleetingly fit in - it only solidifies my bias stated above. They say the middle class is disappearing in this country, and now I can say from some experience that it probably is. It makes me identify with what Ernesto Guevara went through, for godsake. Yet, unlike him and probably the folks who own this house, I know I'm not particularly guilty of anything.

Richmond, Virginia

I left Chesapeake later on in the afternoon than I'd have liked. By the evening I'd entered Richmond via Nine Mile Road, which is apparently the wrong side of town to enter from. After passing through from the east and finding myself locking my doors at a stoplight, I simply followed the skyline into downtown and meandered the roads near VCU until I got hold of Pat Gregory on the phone. An associate of my father's from the United Dominion Reality Trust, he retired from his position as CIO on a fat pile of pensions and stock options. I would too, considering the job description and the reality market, even if UDRT deals mostly in apartment property holdings.

Near South Pine Street VUC is constructing a new building for the School of Engineering. So far it looks structurally sound, albeit still covered in Georgia-Pacific logo'd Tyvek. The CAD rendering of the completed building is proudly displayed on a sign near the contractor's fenceline, and bears all the hallmarks of a contemporary university building - that is, a not quite modernist brick/brushed aluminium/right angled layout with at least one convex glass facade. Guess thats what you get from a combination of a university's scant budget plus the need for an IT laden facility thats utilitarian yet still welcoming to its visitors. They did the same thing in the 60's/70's I suppose, except for some reason they figured it a good idea to use a horrid blocky window/steel pipe railing/drab green panels/stucko on cinderblock combination of something from the dark recesses of Andy Worhol's worst nightmares. Though come to think of it, that may have been the point.

After digesting a lagre cheesesteak from a hole in the wall collage bar called Mojo's just down the block, I'm off to meet up with and possibly stay the night with Pat for a day or two, in a place off the southwest side where the opposite of Nine mile Road exists. Now to navigate the crosstown evening traffic.