The Trench

2008-08-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

The Serpent In Canada

Most ambiguous of all animals;
neither good, nor evil.
How smooth your body, how supple,
compelling hands to reach out.
Even if it means being bitten.
A calmness upon you, your eyes glazed.
Whole lives pull back; tearing, tasting.
What is there to win?
What is there to lose?
All of it at stake, and then ash.
We'll be somewhere someday
and we'll know we've arrived.
A hundred years from now,
later peoples will marvel
at our stupidity and crudeness.
Who saw and who heard?
It is I, the soul of everything.
When the marriage is complete
the universe is the touching
of every molecule and atom.
We have so clumsily dealt
with the energies of our lives.
That perfected moment never seems
to come. Until it does.
And you fall off the edge.
And you could fly the whole time.
The most exact, appropriate phrases
bask in decayed airs.
Malfunction, corrosion, dismantling,
aborted sin, and wickedness.
The toys of children.
The oldest game.
I have made hundreds of beings;
all so unique, so perfect.
And yet they fear themselves
and hurt each other.
Verse cannot indicate the pain
etched into bodies and blood.
Like rivers wearing down rock.
But, it is our nature to thirst for powers of seeing.
To try and taste omniscience,
burying ourselves in a wash of ecstasy.
The last, faded spasm of the universe
trying to know all it can.
The tongues of the world mixing,
brushing up against one another on this crowded train.
Scents of beauty and foul smog.
Eternal fissures and pipes riddling the earth;
porcelain and moss.
Trickling waters; the piss of aeons.
The rust and lichen along the whole spectrum.
The smoke clears, in obfuscation uncovered.
Prone, standing tall.

2008-03-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

Turning

Oh, imperfect flesh
I love you most of all.
Witnessing this beautiful sunset.
I cannot play the tyrant and force
this moment to stay.
Somewhere in the world
it is always day.
I have made friends with
sticks and stones, grains and crystals.
Nodes within this web,
with cat claws
I pick my trembling way.
The fourth brain.
The fourth cup.
We don't know yet
how holy this blood is.
Tasted with caution,
tasted with courage.
And we find it is
its own reward.
To face the sun
and not stand beneath it.
I am my mother's sister.
Eye to eye,
not for, but with.
Blood is a small price for this
limitless love.
Rings of steel, tin, and copper.
With this light
I could stay forever.
But wings warn me
that I must go.
There is a rest for me.
And I shall not return,
lest I admit I have learned nothing.
And that the mad gods were right
and all we understand
is not mercy
but might.

2007-09-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

Body Without A Soul

Grow as if from nothing;
dormant, hibernating.
Now germinate + grow!

Home thou art my heart.
You see as I see
with "I's"
sleeping + waking.
The same, all the same
spinning + spinning,
swimming + swimming.

Disorder within
a secret order.
Coral seeds
in the seas.
It births itself
now it is female
now it is male
now it is all that + more,
an angel whose god is a whore.

As long as this flame burns
the world turns,
the world turns.
But, the moth,
the moth never learns.
'Tis not the moon,
but a sulpher glow.
The moth still circles
'til the wick burns low.

All these things which dream;
strange sylphs
dance strange steps.
Secrets kept,
no need to speak
--fear destroys the weak.

2007-08-19T01:36:00.000-07:00

The Birth of Chaos

Under the ground

--close to the Earth's heart,
I lingered over Desire's upstart.
He hadn't met me before,

but he knew my name.
He and I were one and the same.
We'd sealed ourselves there
in a watery cave.
He was just born,
fresh from the grave.
His flesh was cool,
withered, and dry.
There were no tears
in his eyes left to cry.
His arms were long,
thick with sinewed muscle.
We lay wrapped up together,
far from the hustling and
bustling of above.
Far from the civilised beasts and their rotten flesh feasts.
Far from the madness, the unkindest cuts, liars and tyrants.
Buried in pleasure,
buried in dreams.
Hidden together from the Vulture's scream.
He whispered to me
in our secret language.
Told me the truth in sepulchre tones.
Told me the knowledge held in his bones.
"I am eternal, and infinite too,
but I'd give all that up
to lie here with you."
Then came the ones from the City of Decay.
they broke open our bower
with shovels and spades.
In streams the light
tinted with night.
Down came the hands and took me away.
I looked at him, crying for once
and at the last I heard him swear,
"We'll meet again
after the pain,
we'll sleep as one
just like before
you'll know they can't hurt us anymore."
And they dragged me away
to the City's decay.
I smiled a grim smile.
I knew he was right
amongst the tombs, he'd take back the night.

For seven years they kept me
in whiteness. Bound in silk
a virgin princess.
They coddled my ugly,
inside commotion
but I could not show them
their brand of devotion.
They rasped and they lisped
and pledged their lust.
I was as cool a marble bust.
They beat me for denying,
they knew I was dying.
I was like them, I shared their fate.
They knew I couldn't save them.
It filled them with hate.
We all were quite damned
but their failure was planned.
He knew my name
he would find me again.

Another seven years gone by in a blur.
At the temple's gate a sound was heard.
The gate swung open
and there he was standing
--still bound in ragged funeral wrapping.
"She is not a creature
simply for pleasure,
she is the ocean
above false devotion."
He strode to the leader
and grasped his fine robes.
"By keeping her here you make it certain,
you've pulled your last string
--it's time for the curtain."
Up leapt the fire from his torch.
All the tyrants and liars
left there to scorch.
He took me by the hand
and lead me back to the tombs.
We went down, passed chthonic rooms.
Deep into our mother,
dead though she was.
Deep into the core
at peace together,
forvevermore.

2007-07-03T02:34:00.000-07:00

What book is this forever ending?
The true hospitality of someone you never met.
Golden, a ring of golden friendship.
Finally, treating each other well.
Religions of blood sacrifice
in pale words + phrases.
Bound to the most malleable laws
that make massive collapse
into the only sought after exit.
The egress that always cannot be witnessed, always we speculated.
Your silence and judgement a drop
absorbed into the soils
under all nails.
You were picked out, digested, and wasted away.
Cut free.
I know who I am and that I cannot remember.
What next?
We all fight our own wars.
Succubi, incubi.
Little men, women.
Digits.

The meek we feed to snakes,
but what of the mongoose?

You destroy! As do we all.
Taking it in. And are you inside?
Are you safe?
Have your battles been fought?
Enough death, it seems, is never enough.

2007-06-04T03:56:00.000-07:00

Sub-Sonic TranSpirit

Unsettlements.

Unending Transmissions in
primal super-real moments.

You can watch the entropy

at the corner of everything.
The decay and rot are constant.

Tendrils and shoots toward the light of the yellow star.

And we expect it always thus,

but what will become of us
with the spectral shift?
The back-brain wonders at the
shifting sands.
The clamouring winds.

The endless sacrifice.

2007-05-29T04:20:00.000-07:00

Such a small corner.

Nowhere to hide really. The sun beats down. Clouds furl past. Not here. I'm from nowhere. You wouldn't know it. I have no real memory of the place. Its always been there, and i've always been from there, but I can't recall it that well.

Just the mountains and the pines. They were all that mattered. Their continuity was my only anchor in this life. And they will be worn down, or covered in ocean, or broken apart, and ground underneath the surface. Even after beetles and fires. Lightening struck and arson fire. Just a few moments in time seemingly random and I am wary, I don't even trust those memories. I could only see in one direction. Somehow writing more, even if no one else read it, was enough for smallness and static. At least I could learn to tolerate my own work. Not likely. At least not 100% of the time.

Changing emotions. Felt to full extent--get beyond it through immersion. Plunge in all ways. All these people pouring out simple pure thoughts. Rays that haven't even reached me yet. Falling outwards, falling into. That's not really falling at all. Emanating. Poor old gods, nothing next to this. This is beyond age. All in (N)one.

hardy har

a sense of humour.

Fluid takeover now!!

2007-04-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

The Corrupt and Pagan Marriage

If "life does not live"
then "nothing comes of nothing."
This flesh is not real
if it does not think itself,
if all it did was feel.

If those that bear us do not name us
we have no tribe, no nation.
It is from the ancestors that we hang.
Suspended until severed
never broken
never fixed,
as in need of mending--snapped twigs. From the eye of unknown knowledge and the eye of blinded light--madhouse mind, sees without eyes.

Dream strider, no one cares
how you happened here.
We are thrown together
by unspoken needs.
Your raptor mask conceals
stone gray skin.
Like us all, you are bound
by the desire of your people,
be they one or legion.

We are all sorcerors,
encircling the gods we made
of our own higher natures.
Think--and it may be so.
Loosed and a thought is no longer
yours, adopted by others wily and wild.
You drag your cloth
through the ages
head bowed low,
pulling.

The Occular One.

2007-04-13T04:30:00.000-07:00

Today We Become the Enemy.

Our eternal fate.
we speak of what we have done,
what we are doing
and what will be done.

Our nature is ideology.
Do we feel that things fade from memory
or fade to memory?
Along the lines we draw
of culture, ethnicity, and language we find a persona(e).
Where is the soul located--if it is not local,
not at a locii. We speak our Fate
to no one but ourselves.

The rupture, an a-historical void of meaning
positions us in a place of
reconstructions and rediscovery.
This is the most uncomfortable time
that euphemism = unspeakable things.

Now, it is not so much a crisis
or a lack of meaning, as it is a surplus of meaning. The "occult" tendency is to actually, syndromatically, connect everything in Natura and the Socius (psyche, polis, et al.) to the edge of everything else. This way there are no remnants and even the rejected and the untouchable are contained within. Even if there are parallel universes--as within the quantum model--it all touches. The space between must graze the membranes of that which separates.

In the past the question was whether the inner monologue was a demon or an angel. Now, with hybridity, it is impossible to say for sure. Without a centre, without an author there are only constellations, and only readers. Therefore, it is possible to say that these archetypes are not ossified and immobile, but held suspended in a pupal state. Accretions of shrines, reliquaries, churches, slum houses, squats, and ruins. Finding pieces and connections in the subjective terrains of objects. Finding the gems through oversaturation and excess.

Since no one runs things it is unfair perhaps to make whole nations responsible for their fanatics and zealots. Leaders generate from within groups and are a product and extension of the group. Fascism occurs in cadres. Our desperation is in trying to become one with the image centre of the universe. We do not realise that we are trying to get to the heart of ourselves.

When we speak of [G]od(s) and divinity as being or absence we are asking if we matter in what we imagine to be a greater schematic, a larger design. We beg to be woven into the masterpiece and shudder in anguish and uncertainty as part of us imagines that such rote destinies do not exist. We move uneasily between linear and cyclical models of time. Most prefer the comfort of the parental autocracy.

We forget that if a source is acknowledged a budding; a flow; a sequence must be generating. This allows terminance, but disruptions do not indicate finality. The sentence ends but the thought goes on.

2007-03-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2001/1425.html

You have to laugh!! You have to!! "One is None." The G+T with a swizzle stick! Delish!!

2007-03-30T03:43:00.000-07:00

It is strange amongst associates when a break must occur. Sometimes a party has grown a little bit in a direction away from its partner(s). Rather than releasing, the other tries to desparately heal the rupture by clinging on so tightly that the other party is strangled.

All the while the individual claims that it is the one looking out for the associate even as it becomes obvious that this is a lie, and the controlling, domineering nature of the one begins to annihilate the other. Curtailing the will and destroying freedom.

Worse than this is the position of the third party. They can see everything happening. No winners, no losers, just a change, a shift. The partnership broken, the shared time at an end. There are still other connections to be made, other discoveries to be made, other trusts to betray. As if one who cannot be honest to themself even understands what honesty is, especially if things haven't been quite right for awhile and most everyone knew it.

The one thing out of this I could not countenance in the slightest was the attempt to tell the person who they could and could not see and speak to. That they could not go out with their friends, that their own potential was subjugated to the will of another. That they could not live for themselves, that they could only be in servitude and never of service. Never respected and always the second thought. Or even less than that. Tell the light to stop shining why don't you!!

No more! Done!

Brothers and sisters do not abuse one another in this way. Love commands that you not harm the other. We all have had our hearts broken and I suppose if they asked you to...but that is another matter. That you must love the person for who they are, not what you would have them be. That you can only help them become who they are, not conform them to your will. For those that do not come willingly...you kill the free spirit of their true self, and this is the gravest of cruelty. And not borne of love but of fear and then of hate, for ever are the two joined.

No more! It is done.

2007-03-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

Romano-British Dragon, 2nd Century.

Page 7.

The Chords of Flesh & Spirit

"So it goes." --Vonnegut

What does it matter? Another age of Death, a repeat of things already destroyed. It seems we can never learn, because we don't really want to, HATE & PAIN are easier than LOVE & PASSION.

Truths are lies. One is none. So it slowly goes.

This strange deception of Time, this bizarre alteration of dimensions, has made me prone to disturbing dreams. Thought patterns intersect spasmodically. Realities bifurcate and fission, only to rejoin and be smoothed over in the stream of Time.

!Ignorance chokes us before we get the chance to breathe!

Notes:

I wrote this at a time (1999 approx) when nothing was certain. Those were times when I thought that 'success' or 'failure' were cleanly divided concepts. All the writing from this time period has that unfortunate innocence. I have my codes, but now it seems as if those polarizations have run their course. And the true lesson was that all of it; HATE & PAIN, LOVE & PASSION, are congruent, vital and contradictory--in themselves, and each other. If anyone was ever influenced by the 50 volumes of this missive, I apologise for the lack of confusion. It seems like there should have been less clarity and more chaos.

Maddening.

Especially, the 'one is none' business. I don't even know where that came from. It seems like it came from somewhere. If anyone has read that or this I would appreciate knowing where the phrase came from.

The Vonnegut thing. I met a girl, a sweet Aries, who got "So it goes." tattooed on her wrist. Say what you will about writer's, the work sometimes lives beyond them. Rare treasures.

Also in the 2006 issue by Massachusetts band Unearth, the song titled, "So it goes" covers some of the same conceptual ground that inspired my own writing. Trying to find a way in the world. Finding many. Surviving, awakening, we make it somehow. I definitely found it vital to encourage all those impulses towards honesty. Even if they later proved to be naive, and in some ways lies. The Core remains.

2007-03-21T03:49:00.000-07:00

Swimming, just keep swimming. I have four fish. One of them has been swimming in circles. I thought it was dying, and maybe it is. It swims all around the tank, almost upright, some times diagonally, sometimes upside down. The other three fish don't seem too bothered. They don't avoid the circle swimming fish. Sometimes they school with it, sometimes they don't. Just like before.

It seemed like its fin on one side was paralyzed. I fed them and they all ate. Now it seems to be swimming more upright. Reducing the nitrates and cleaning the water seemed to help. Some kind of infection perhaps. Too many nitrates? I wonder if it will live?

I've always been interested in the sphinx. I suppose that must tell you a lot about the sort of person I am. Or maybe it doesn't and I just think it should. Smarmy old sod that I am. When I was young I made a sphinx out of clay. It had a Horus canopic jar between its paws and all. It was crude and simple but somehow more honest. I have to keep that place in mind as it is very hard to be serious about being compelled to do such things. I also made a Medusa mask and a small statue of Sekhmet.

I always thought to write off my juvenilia because of how crude everything seems in the formative stage of such a difficult skill. Being so hard on one's self is part of being driven, but it also becomes self-censorship.

So, excuse me as I begin to unleash.

I think the dream project would be to design a large, stone sphinx. Granite maybe. I've never worked with stone (let alone granite) on such a scale. I picture it being at least 10 ft at the wingtip. The Lions at the Vancouver Art Gallery are definitely the scale. Maybe there would be a whole pride of these things.

For now a dream, and perhaps an indulgent one.

2007-03-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

Red-Fleshed Doll

The nameless

without number

beyond number,

fingers numbing.

A blue sun. A black sky. For All-Time.

coming to an end.

Hoping the seeds of grand, new blossoms

have been sent.

Rich germination. Soaking in

the pupal resins.

Waiting to emerge Imago,

shed skin

rise anew.

Dioscuri, inseparable even in death.

The two halves by thalamus joined.

One destroys (IS).

One is destroyed (PAST).

Saved in effigy, fascinating repository of everything

that never was.

Avec La Lune, no lord, no king.

The memory of the flesh defeats the Messiah,

The soul's mettle only tested

when all has been rejected

every line cut.

Calamity and thoughtlessness

laid out, the only escape, a severance.

An orbital rebirth

writing for all, a single hand

using language.

Threading the lines through the needles,

inscribing into the meta.

Watching the fastbreed storm

of the human undermind

grind up the spawn. Caviar mortar in-between grains of sand.

The pearl inlay of the ancient avatar

in far off and hidden lands,

Torc.

Execution without trial

Ahead with nobody.

Partial lineages denoting massive forms.

The eye drawn before it opens

the fantasy spoken

and the scarab emerges.

The sun rolls over the mountains and plains.

A god rises, rules and dies again.

The Gorgon Triad; the saviour and scourge,

curse of the many and one.

Bloodmoon tongue

no shadow at noontide

all shadow without guilt.

Open wide the fissure, stare inside.

A warmth in the wind of the mind

storms up the coast, ice weaves

pulls frost-glass onto the leaves,

slick by the Sun.

Image "The Trench" by AO Spare

2007-03-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

The Dark Sun, Nemesis

Enough of this the unseen voice. A silent sanctity.

Words for all, thread through your teeth.

Though laid with doubt, we wonder why.

Blue fire from your eye, with murex mantle flowing.

Your gravity has crushed stone to dust.

Wearing the wolf, a brother/sister skin

Emulate in ever after creativity, looped from mother's vein.

Circling back, many mentioned--few received.

Another one of you, nobody, and me.

2007-03-01T01:24:00.000-08:00

What is that actually holds most sway in this world?

"The world cannot be explained without demonolgy" --Ionesco

Since there are no true rulers, we must ask ourselves what it is that gives structure to our lives. This lack of true leadership has left only those in power open to disassembly. If you watch them, listen to their speeches they state things and then retract them. No one expects them to be infalliable except themselves. which is why they fail. There is no hierogamos between the king/queen and the land. Politics no longer serves the polis.

We demonise the ruler who cannot play house with us. And rather than learning a goetic art we allow them to ensorcel us. Them! Those who would serve us in matters of beareaucracy! As if such things did any good other than complicating our already overloaded lives. In this proximity to this latter empire we eagerly await an aftermath to pointless piles of paper and endless media saturation. If content is void, void is content.

2007-01-31T19:10:00.000-08:00

Courage conquers all things.

Ovid

2006-12-20T14:06:00.000-08:00

"Long live the eyeball and the lucid heart" --Stan Rice

I suppose you could say that all art is caused by a disturbance in the field/flow. If it is true that the artist is the 'master of objects', then art is but a manipulation of the world. Further, all arts are merely the edge of a crawling chaos that is the well of our unconscious. An artist may be precise, even methodical, but the crest behind them is always the unspoken threat of dissolution. That's why they are the first against the wall and the first recruited for propaganda. As if the State wasn't aware of this.

It is only a young, naive artist who does not see this. Old, cynical artists often become paralyzed because of it. How do you make a move when you know that the outcome could be censure or death? You just do it, and try to have no alliance, except to yourself and your work. All artists should say they are apolitical even if they are not. The same goes for their religious convictions. If, post-humously their tendencies are uncovered; fine. They've moved on anyways.

History will judge them no matter what they say. No matter what they actually meant. The artist is never meant to have complete control of themselves. Even the most self-possessed still in some way channel the geist of their people. Even if they (especially) are hermetic, loners swearing to dispise society, they bring the rejected to the front. See it? Not this time. Maybe next time around.

2006-09-20T22:59:00.000-07:00

After suffering some severe spider bites I am back on the web.

A simple statement to start things.

I thought about changing the title of this log in accordance with the familiar tensions that arise from the recent shooting at Dawson College in Montreal. Gill's name on vampirefreaks.com was 'Trench'. However, I would rather talk about the rather tepid use of subcultural phenomena to create a profile of individuals like Gill.

Again, the double standard seems to be in effect. Interest in fringe cultures like 'goth' or 'metal' does not a mass murderer make. Obsession with religion is also not a primary motivator in homicide. I would argue that the only indication is a literal obsession with murder(or murder/suicide). Again, this is not a total justification, after all the many scholars and law enforcement officials who study this behaviour would be unlikely to recreate the actions of the subjects they study. There are exceptions to all assertions.

In terms of psychology there are many plausible reasons for what happened. The vapid 'why?' that floats across the headlines is the worst abdication of a heartfelt analysis of the actions that transpired. Representing as they do the void of destruction that could dwell in the breast of all persons, these subjects will always elude any true understanding. But, I would argue that the final psychotic break--although such a term has become unpopular--fits into the ancient logic of the scapegoat. In this case the scapegoat does not bear the burden and lashes out at the society that laid the weight upon them. That this is a violation of the scapegoat script is something that requires further analysis. The desired effect of pushing the individual to the edge of society is to remove them from the centre, but keep them at a distance that is conveniant for normalising forces within society. What is not anticipated is when the edges curl back into the centre often with explosive effects.

It is my belief that some persons must embody the roles at the margins. I do not mean this in the Leftest sense that there are minoritites within the majority that need to be included. I mean that whether the society or the individual desires it someone has to stand at the threshold. In the past these people would become shamans but now, as we apparently think we have no use for such things, they come back and destroy the group. Perhaps telling us in no uncertain terms that our values need to change.

2006-07-18T03:24:00.000-07:00

Earthbound, whether we want to be or not.

A drunken, demented choir follows me wherever I go. Wine soaked putti. Babies screaming themselves alive all over this world. Life is a savage and graceful affair. You can't help but laugh at that.

Is seeking succour in the works of others a way to not have to think on one's own? Taking all the pleasure in absorption without transmitting in response. Crossing river after river in the conversation, knowing full well that the ocean looms beyond. The totality of all experience so overwhelms us that we seek to atomise it and adapt a nomenclature for it. Once this has been done,we navigate by our own compass, sometimes asking for directions.

Strings and stings of interconnectedness make the brutality and the succinct nature of things most palpable. Perhaps for the first time we can say that what humanity has really been working towards is the Omega level civilisation. In other words, a society in which the very fabric of time and space is controlled. Think about religious politics. Ask yourselves why they were separated in the first place. A location in which the costs of theocracy are spectacularly bloody. Holy wars are the most violent of wars. A crusade must affirm itself at every moment. It feeds, like most human things, on the blood itself. The sacrifice.

Religion is like layers and layers of frescoes on buildings--removing the tesserae we discover the building itself. Every fresco is of similar substance, only the content of the images transforms slowly over time.

2006-07-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

I envy the singer of heavy metal music. They can fully vent their spleen and perversions in a socially acceptable fashion. At least I accept it. If I can know that somehow, somewhere someone is saying the things they really feel like saying then I can pretend that things like honour, honesty and truth can still exist someday.

It is with much trepidation that I admit that I am afraid of beauty. The implications of it crush me like an insect. By that I mean the fear and the beauty. They squeeze me into a very small space when I would walk tall upon this earth. The voice becomes a whisper. I need never be seen.

As soon as I speak I regret it. Is it possible to relax now? I do not paint for fear of being discredited. What I once loved I had to stop. The terror of painting became acute as the world ripped itself apart in places I had only read of or seen on the TV news. I draw again, but in a guilty, erotic fashion for my own damnable enjoyment. I remember when an Art Therapist told me that I had to find some other way of connecting with people than through my art: I cried. I cried because I could think of nothing else to do.

It ends up like this: I always want to look people in the eye--but only if I could not be seen--my eyes will always betray me. I cannot express emotion because all my defects of character become patent and obvious. A friend used to tell me that I didn't have to feel that way, that I could let myself come into my own. How could I tell him desires may destroy? He is a gentle fellow and always struck me as able to cope with those delicate and difficult things in life. I keep refuting myself, only because I need to avoid psychosis.

2006-04-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

Fascinating to think that at earlier times in history fossils were discovered and mistaken for mythical creatures like dragons and Cyclops. In Aix St. Jerome found a skull interred in a reliquary that was reported to be the same serpent that tried to devour Andromeda. It was later discovered to be a dinosaur skull. Similarly, mastodon skulls, with a large orbital socket on the anterior where the trunk muscles attach, looked very much like an over-size single eye socket. Thus was born the cyclops Polyphemus.

Wayne Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy includes a protoceratops that was a precursor to the griffin. Since most beaked animals were birds, to find a fossil of a beaked animal with four legs must have caused some confusion. The Loch Ness monster and the Ogopogo have both been conjectured to resemble pleiosaurs.

What is most intriguing about the phenomenom is that it takes pre-existant prehistoric animals and ascribes circuitous, mythical explanation for their difference from modern organisms. Occam's razor apparenty does not apply to flights of fancy.

2006-04-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

There is almost nothing more fascinating than the heterogeneity of life on this planet. Its amazing how time and adaptability have shaped life. I think the complexity of life systems is only barely understood.

I feel the same way about the human mind and emotions. In some fashion the desire to catelogue it is there, but could it really be possible. To know everything about everything in existence?

Regrettably extinction leaves gaps that allows others to inhabit instead. If only there were some way to maintain the multitudes, but then I have been accused of being a romantic. I sometimes feel that the there is space for it all, but I suspect that this is not true.

2006-04-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

The body can only feel In Extremis, when the heart has gone wild. Being able to feel every molecule of sound in a room. There is never a lack of input.

All this talk of ghosts lately makes me wonder if mass panic will start. I think it only inevitable that humans be reminded of forces much more powerful than themselves. Hearing about the birth of children, I wonder what kind of pain they will inherit. What kind of joy? Do we admit guilt or force them to deal with it later long after we're gone?

Think of all the people you know. Imagine them standing next to you. Who are you all? Do you even know?

Is the communication working for you?

2006-03-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

Secrets

One of Those Things

Since I was very young people have told me their most private, personal secrets. It started out simple enough, friends telling me about secret crushes and other desires. But, that has since escalated to extremely sensitive personal information.

What is concerning is that this information comes to me unsolicited. I do not ask to know these things. In fact, I sometimes wish I could completely forget them. I think, somehow, people can sense that fact--that I cannot, in good conscience, break a trust.

People confess their darkest, most troubling secrets, the kind you only could imagine were true, and that the confessor wishes to somehow erase. It leaves me in vulnerable spot, to be certain. I cannot betray those trusts, nor can I ease the sorrow a secret may cause. It seems I can only bear witness and keep my own.

2006-03-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

"The neighbours began to form mutual alliances(1), wishing neither to do nor suffer violence among themselves. They appealed on behalf of their children and womenfolk, pointing out with gestures and inarticulate cries that it is right for everyone to pity the weak. It was not possible to achieve perfect unity of purpose. Yet a substantial majority kept faith honestly. Otherwise the entire human race would have been wiped out there and then instead of being propagated, generation after generation, down to the present day."

Lucretius
from "On the Nature of the Universe"
trans. R. E. Latham, 1951, revised by John Godwin, 1994.

1. "mutual alliances" apparently refers to the social contract outlined by Plato in "Republic" and is the opposite of Cicero's idea of inborn justice from "On Duties".

This is not Lucretius at his poetic best, but Plato would have preferred it that way.

2006-03-23T15:21:00.000-08:00

Influence

Fluid seeps in from all around. The influx of other peoples' conscious and unconscious thoughts and theories are what make up one layer of my intellect. I accept that. I reject that. Somewhere in between I find that "original" is not a word one can use.

I was innocently working on my final term paper when I stumbled across mentions of Baudrillard. Now, in my four years at Emily Carr I have never read much of his writing. I've read reams of other stuff--Foucault, Nancy, Kristeva, Barthes etc. Perhaps all these ladies and gentlemen have filtered into me, little bits of Deleuze crop up now and then, scraps of old Stuart Hall from my sociology days. But when Baudrillard was presented to me in a book by Arthur Kroker (Poli-Sci Prof at Concordia) titled "The Possessed Individual: Technology and the French Postmodern" as a Lucretian (!) I felt a lot of things come together. Things also atomised at the same time. I think its a Lucretian thing.

Kroker from page 61.
"Not primitivism as a past long exterminated by the triumph of the rationalist totality, but as the actual destiny of the code: that is, the seduction of loss, excess and discharge, 'the necessity of lack,' as the inevitable, because so fascinating, point of imminent reversability of the law of value."

The aspirations of society up until recently have been to push the project as far as it could go. That the revolutions and technological innovations of the human "genius " have been only leading to a promised land of superiority without the realisation that the first people to use fire could have told us: you may get burned. They conquered theirfear by having to face it , but did not lose their respect for the volatility of elements.

After the French and Russian revolution it would seem that traits such as respect and dignity became equated with the absurdities of the aristocracies and therefore rejected in favour of a forthright rationalism that led to different sorts of debasements, other genocides. The point being on both sides of those histories basic laws of fate were excised. The will was believed capable of anything. Descartes will always have to answer dearly for pulling us out of our intuitions and making us believe that we could be in control all the time.

2006-03-17T14:52:00.000-08:00

I named this blog after the idea and natural phenomena of abyssal trenches. Those are fissures in the earth at the ultimate bottom of the ocean floor. I liked they idea of whole canyons and mountain ranges beneath the ocean, hardly ever seen by human eyes.

I've enjoyed the hard sci-fi of Peter Watts. His novels "Starfish" and "Maelstrom" explore a fictive world of post-apocalyptic proportions mainly taking place at the bottom of the ocean around and underwater power station called "Beebe"

Other than that I've been fascinated by marine life since I was little. Recently, I have returned to that interest as a metaphor for the sub- and unconscious worlds of the human imagination. These conceptions have been informing my practice as an artist on and off for the last 4 years.