Resist: Fall in love.

Join the Resistance: Fall in Love

Falling in love is the ultimate act of revolution, of resistance to today's tedious, socially restrictive, culturally constrictive, humanly meaningless world.


Love transforms the world. Where the lover formerly felt boredom, he now feels passion. Where she once was complacent, she now is excited and compelled to self-asserting action. The world which once seemed empty and tiresome becomes filled with meaning, filled with risks and rewards, with majesty and danger. Life for the lover is a gift, an adventure with the highest possible stakes; every moment is memorable, heartbreaking in its fleeting beauty. When he falls in love, a man who once felt disoriented, alienated, and confused will know exactly what he wants. Suddenly his existence will make sense to him; suddenly it becomes valuable, even glorious and noble, to him. Burning passion is an antidote that will cure the worst cases of despair and resigned obedience.


Love makes it possible for individuals to connect to others in a meaningful way—it impels them to leave their shells and risk being honest and spontaneous together, to come to know each other in profound ways. Thus love makes it possible for them to care about each other genuinely, rather than at the end of the gun of Christian doctrine. But at the same time, it plucks the lover out of the routines of everyday life and separates her from other human beings. She will feel a million miles away from the herd of humanity, living as she is in a world entirely different from theirs.


In this sense love is subversive, because it poses a threat to the established order of our modern lives. The boring rituals of workday productivity and socialized etiquette will no longer mean anything to a man who has fallen in love, for there are more important forces guiding him than mere inertia and deference to tradition. Marketing strategies that depend upon apathy or insecurity to sell the products that keep the economy running as it does will have no effect upon him. Entertainment designed for passive consumption, which depends upon exhaustion or cynicism in the viewer, will not interest him.


There is no place for the passionate, romantic lover in today's world, business or private. For he can see that it might be more worthwhile to hitchhike to Alaska (or to sit in the park and watch the clouds sail by) with his sweetheart than to study for his calculus exam or sell real estate, and if he decides that it is, he will have the courage to do it rather than be tormented by unsatisfied longing. He knows that breaking into a cemetery and making love under the stars will make for a much more memorable night than watching television ever could. So love poses a threat to our consumer-driven economy, which depends upon consumption of (largely useless) products and the labor that this consumption necessitates to perpetuate itself.


Similarly, love poses a threat to our political system, for it is difficult to convince a man who has a lot to live for in his personal relationships to be willing to fight and die for an abstraction such as the state; for that matter, it may be difficult to convince him to even pay taxes. It poses a threat to cultures of all kinds, for when human beings are given wisdom and valor by true love they will not be held back by traditions or customs which are irrelevant to the feelings that guide them.


Love even poses a threat to our society itself. Passionate love is ignored and feared by the bourgeoisie, for it poses a great danger to the stability and pretense they covet. Love permits no lies, no falsehoods, not even any polite half-truths, but lays all emotions bare and reveals secrets which domesticated men and women cannot bear. You cannot lie with your emotional and sexual response; situations or ideas will excite or repel you whether you like it or not, whether it is polite or not, whether it is advisable or not. One cannot be a lover and a (dreadfully) responsible, (dreadfully) respectable member of today's society at the same time; for love will impel you to do things which are not "responsible" or "respectable." True love is irresponsible, irrepressible, rebellious, scornful of cowardice, dangerous to the lover and everyone around her, for it serves one master alone: the passion that makes the human heart beat faster.. It disdains anything else, be it self-preservation, obedience, or shame. Love urges men and women to heroism, and to antiheroism—to indefensible acts that need no defense for the one who loves.


For the lover speaks a different moral and emotional language than the typical bourgeois man does. The average bourgeois man has no overwhelming, smoldering desires. Sadly, all he knows is the silent despair that comes of spending his life pursuing goals set for him by his family, his educators, his employers, his nation, and his culture, without ever being able to even consider what needs and wants he might have of his own. Without the burning fire of desire to guide him, he has no criteria upon which to choose what is right and wrong for himself. Consequently he is forced to adopt some dogma or doctrine to direct him through his life. There are a wide variety of moralities to choose from in the marketplace of ideas, but which morality a man buys into is immaterial so long as he chooses one because he is at a loss otherwise as to what he should do with himself and his life. How many men and women, having never realized that they had the option to choose their own destinies, wander through life in a dull haze thinking and acting in accordance with the laws that have been taught to them, merely because they no longer have any other idea of what to do? But the lover needs no prefabricated principles to direct her; her desires identify what is right and wrong for her, for her heart guides her through life. She sees beauty and meaning in the world, because her desires paint the world in these colors. She has no need for dogmas, for moral systems, for commandments and imperatives, for she knows what to do without instructions.


Thus she does indeed pose quite a threat to our society. What if everyone decided right and wrong for themselves, without any regard for conventional morality? What if everyone did whatever they wanted to, with the courage to face any consequences? What if everyone feared loveless, lifeless monotony more than they fear taking risks, more than they fear being hungry or cold or in danger? What if everyone set down their "responsibilities" and "common sense," and dared to pursue their wildest dreams, to set the stakes high and live each day as if it were the last? Think what a place the world would be! Certainly it would be different than it is now—and it is quite a truism that people from the "mainstream," the simultaneous keepers and victims of the status quo, fear change.


And so, despite the stereotyped images used in the media to sell toothpaste and honeymoon suites, genuine passionate love is discouraged in our culture. Being "carried away by your emotions" is frowned upon; instead we are raised to always be on our guard lest our hearts lead us astray. Rather than being encouraged to have the courage to face the consequences of risks taken in pursuit of our hearts' desires, we are counseled not to take risks at all, to be "responsible." And love itself is regulated. Men must not fall in love with other men, nor women with other women, nor individuals from different ethnic backgrounds with each other, or else the usual bigots who form the front-line offensive in the assault of modern Western culture upon the individual will step in. Men and women who have already entered into a legal/religious contract with each other are not to fall in love with anyone else, even if they no longer feel any passion for their marital partner. Love as most of us know it today is a carefully prescribed and preordained ritual, something that happens on Friday nights in expensive movie theaters and restaurants, something that fills the pockets of the shareholders in the entertainment industries without preventing workers from showing up to the office on time and ready to reroute phone calls all day long. This regulated, commercial "love" is nothing like the passionate, burning love that consumes the genuine lover. These restrictions, expectations, and regulations smother true love; for love is a wild flower that can never grow within the confines prepared for it but only appears where it is least expected.


We must fight against these cultural restraints that would cripple and smother our desires. For it is love that gives meaning to life, desire that makes it possible for us to make sense of our existence and find purpose in our lives. Without these, there is no way for us to determine how to live our lives, except to submit to some authority, to some god, master or doctrine that will tell us what to do and how to do it without ever giving us the satisfaction that self-determination does. So fall in love today, with men, with women, with music, with ambition, with yourself. . . with life!


One might say that it is ridiculous to implore others to fall in love—one either falls in love or one does not, it is not a choice that can be made consciously. Emotions do not follow the instructions of the rational mind. But the environment in which we must live out our lives has a great influence on our emotions, and we can make rational decisions that will affect this environment. It should be possible to work to change an environment that is hostile to love into an environment that will encourage it. Our task must be to engineer our world so that it is a world in which people can and do fall in love, and thus to reconstitute human beings so that we will be ready for the "revolution" spoken of in these pages—so that we will be able to find meaning and happiness in our lives.


What if everyone decided right and wrong for themselves, without any regard for conventional morality? What if everyone did whatever they wanted to, with the courage to face any consequences? What if everyone feared loveless, lifeless monotony more than they fear taking risks, more than they fear being hungry or cold or in danger? What if everyone set down their "responsibilities" and "common sense," and dared to pursue their wildest dreams, to set the stakes high and live each day as if it were the last? Think what a place the world would be!

fucking weak

Night Elf Druid Night Elves are the sexiest of the bunch.  They're the hot flower children of Warcraft: at one with nature, and dancing all the while. As a druid, you tend to be relaxed and accepting - though if there is something you don't want to do, then you won't do it - simple as that.  You're an easygoing and versatile person. Find out your real-life WoW race and class at QuizGalaxy.com

  that sucks. i fucking hate night elves.   Blood Elf Rogue ftw!

kissing in the rain

something tells me that unless i finish uploading the rest of my songs to this computer, i'm going to run out of blog entry titles very very soon.

anyway. on to other things.

several times in the near past i have signed petitions and such to stop the Canadian seal hunt. this is all i can do, really. i have no money for diesel, let alone a donation of 50 dollars to Oceana.

today they sent me two emails, the second within a few minutes of my deleting the first, saying won't you please help us and DONATE? DONATEDONATEDONATE!!!!

Oceana, LAY OFF. i have done what i can. i don't have any money. very very very literally. i feel just as bad about the seals as anyone else does, but when it comes to action donating money is just not on for me. i will gladly go up and tackle the seal hunters, bludgeoning them until the snow runs red, but i don't have any money! STOP ASKING!

so i have officially moved to Powell River, as much because i love it here as because i can't afford a plane ticket back to Maui, so it is here i stay. my last blog had to do a lot with my life on Maui; it didn't feel right continuing there after my move to PR.

Powell River is a small town, about 20,000 people. its community college is more dysfunctional than Maui's. (imagine THAT.)

still, it is fun here, and it has a nice small-town feel which is unbearable in the winter but quite pleasant in spring and summer. i have yet to spend autumn here; reports forthcoming.

i now live with my mom, but it is temporary, at least only lasting until i get electricity, plumbing, and floors into my own house down the street. my own house used to be a grow-op, and is therefore in bad shape. (for you Americans, a grow-op is a place where peope grow marijuana illegally. i know you're thinking "how else is there to grow it?", but up in Canada things are more lax. or they were a few years ago. i'm not sure if the law still says so long as you have under 50 plants it's ok, but it did last i heard.)

i spent december and january here (about half of each month) with my mom, dad, grandparents, and travis, though not all at the same time. while at my grandparents' place i was, for some reason, waking up extraordinarily early and got to see some nice winter sunrises (of course, it helps that in winter the sun doesn't rise until around 8:30).

after christmas (ugh) with the folks and solstice (yay!) with some local pagans, mom, travis and i headed up to PR for new year's and some r&r (no, Ashen, not THAT kind...).

being the only two men in the group, travis and major instantly bonded.

almost immediately afterwards, we headed on down to my dad's farm on hornby, where travis's skills proved numerous and my surliness endless.


i'm upset because my stepmom is a superficial, fake, german bitch. travis is happy because....well, i'm not sure what would lead someone to be happy at my father's place, but if anyone could do it, or at least fake it, it would be travis.

luckily while there we got to stay in the studio, so the never-ending sex we had and the chocolate binges i indulged in were hidden from my dad.

of course, we had to sleep on the mattress on the floor, because we were too fat for the bed. not actually said in so many words, but they didn't need to.

after the almost-good-but-hell-at-the-end visit, dad and margit drove us to the Comox ferry, which goes directly back to PR. below are pictures of the Hornby ferry terminal.

and my dad and margit, because hey--even the devil has pictures, right?

homecoming to mom was good, even if there is always tension no matter which family member i'm with. it snowed! yay! which is apparently really unusual for PR. we've had a lot of unusual this winter.

so we relaxed and vegged at mom's place, rescuing our tenant's cat from his negligence and changing his name from Meow-Meows to Crowley. not like he ever comes when called anyway.

snow was gorgeous, and after a few weeks of making sure i was super careful with my super fragile back, i threw it out on a walk and had to be carried home. luckily both mom and travis are strong like truck! no pictures of me writhing about in agony, but here's one from just before.

also got trav to go with to the live poets' meeting, which is hey--tonight! again--and very fun all around, if you do indeed like that sort of thing.


just as a side note, mom really loves major. who wouldn't?


playful wolffy.

so a short, picture summary of a chapter of my life. this may not happen as often as i'd like. i don't ever take enough pictures.


that would be me. a cat in a glass, going to the moon, brb.

actually, i'm a cat on the moon, going to class, brb.

jag

Iris

So I may have screwed things up…again.

It's continually amazing to me how I manage to fall so easily back into old patterns, allowing my life to fuck up royally and for me to be a waste of space, yet again.

Ok, so I'm dramatizing. Leo: comes with the territory.

I'm in two courses at the community college in my town. They are both online, but I could not afford the software for them (Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium and Macromedia Studio 8 – try over 300 bucks each, at student discount—they're a thousand each regularly). Ergo, I must go to campus everyday to work on my assignments.

So I go to campus everyday except yesterday, when I vegged out all day (stupid, I know). I get my Dreamweaver week 1 assignment in, no problem. I've been working on my Illustrator assignment, but I've never used anything like Illustrator before—it's completely new ground for me. Dreamweaver is easy—it's coding webpages, which I know, without the coding. What a breeze! Illustrator? The devil in software form. At least until I get to know the program a little better.

I've been working on this one assignment all week, and was going to finish it today. Like everyday, I get a late start—noon, which is earlier than the rest of this week—and immediately start doing what I've prioritized as the more urgent things. Namely, cleaning the house so mom doesn't freak when she comes home tonight (and she's still not home so I could've put that off) and walking the dog so he doesn't piss himself. Then I get diesel for my car, before it dies of thirst, return a few library books because I cannot afford late fees on top of everything else, and go to school.

It's 5:30 by this point.

I've forgotten that the office at school closes at 4:30 on Fridays, and stays closed all weekend.

My assignment is due on the 25th. Sunday.

Bloody Sunday.

Not even a week into my second foray into college and I've already fucked things up.

I'm not stressing about getting it done—I've explained things to my instructor, and I'm pretty sure she'll email me back saying yes, I can give you an extension. After all, it is the first week and it was as simple error in judgement, right?

However, I'm upset with myself, because once again I've done the same old JanaThing: procrastinate, don't get it done, and scramble to make deadlines, miss said deadlines, beg for extensions, and then probably miss those too.

*bangs head against nearby cement wall*

But hey. At least I got an hour of painting the kitchen in.

Now if only my internet would work better.

*EDIT* Followed my boyfriend's advice and what do ya know--internet is fixed. CHA-CHING.

i love Ashen sooooooooo much

i recently sent my sister some pictures, the above being one of them, to show her what i'd discovered i could do with pictureit! on my computer.

this is her summary of why they wouldn't load.

No need...I figured out why they didn't load the first time...it was being my Mom.

"Why aren't you loading the pictures? There's little boxes with Xs in them."

"I didn't let them load."

"Well, load them now, please."

"But if you download these pictures, something BAD might happen!"

"They're from my best friend!"

"Something could still happen."

"..."

"I'm just trying to protect you. Because I love you."

"They're just pictures!!!"

"Ahhh, but they could be pictures of anything, you know."

"But – wait, what??"

"You know...licentious things."

"....It's Jana sending me these, not some 40-year old male stranger!"

"It could be."

"WHAT?!"

"He could've stolen her identity. Identity theft is very popular right now."

"...Great, my computer is paranoid delusional..."

"Even if it is her, and I'm still not sure it is, what if the file's corrupt?"

"Her computer handled it fine. What are you, a pussy?"

"Don't call me names! I knew she was a bad influence on you! If Jana jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?"

"I'm from Hawaii. Everyone jumps off bridges there, it's like a major pastime."

"You know what I mean! Would you do anything she does?"

"Well, you better hope I don't – she's getting a NEW COMPUTER."

{Shocked silence}

"...I can see this relationship is one we're both going to have to work at."

enjoy the silence

i have been up for 12 hours, roughly, on 4 hours or less of sleep.

i'm very tired.

but regardless, i will push on in my plan to watch v for vendetta tonight for the 7th or 8th time. my plan to watch it on the year anniversary of its release (the 17th) was thwarted by mom's plan to use the computer and the forbid me from using it after her (at like 1 in the morning). thanks mom. way to be supportive of your daughter's never-ending obsession.

i'm not complaining. she's out of town for the week so i am free to do as i please.

and i please myself to watch v. again and again and again.....

and maybe get something done? school starts today; i must also find a job. and walk the dog every day, 2 or 3 times, and feed the dog and cat, and clean the house, and etc etc.

completely ironic that my classes start on the day everyone else's spring break starts. I HAVE NO SOCIAL LIFE LOLLERZ.

in other news: i got turned into a newt. but i got better.

over and out
jagged

precious things

"We learn from history that when good and evil struggle against each other, initially evil tends to take the upper hand until all of a sudden it disintegrates and collapses."

--Ghandi

perhaps right now is the time to take these words to heart. with such an utter despair gripping the world, the feeling like we can't change anything even if we did try, that it's all over so we should just try to survive every day--and indeed, that is all we can do--we need something to hold onto.

i for one don't want this world to end. because even if we are completely fucked up as a species, even if we are a cancer upon the planet, there are things worth saving. paintings. art. beautiful writing. love. yes, it sounds trite, but i would die if the world became a place where i didn't receive poetry from my boyfriend at odd hours of the night just because he was thinking about me. that sort of thing is worth saving. a mother's love for her child--the kind of love that makes death seem a small price to pay for the continued well-being of your son or daughter. good music. good food. laughter. good movies. even bad movies, because without the bad how would we know what good is?

evil is necessary for the proliferation of good. i do not subscribe to the secularized christian view of good always vanguishing evil for ever and always triumphing and that rewards come to those who wait. rewards come to those who work. the real reward of a good life is seeing the effects of your deeds, not some imaginary feast in the afterlife. i do not even believe in good or evil, per se, because those who we consider evil do not consider themselves evil. it is just a different perspective to them. how do we know we are not the evil ones?

we don't. we just feel in our hearts that things should be run differently, and we can see the effects of the current administration on the planet (not just the US--i'm referring to humanity's administration as a whole) as being generally bad for any other species here.

it could be said that this is supposed to happen--that we'll die out and the world will balance itself out again. even if that's true, how can someone, in good conscience, allow what's going on to happen?

we carry this false belief that accumulating wealth is the ultimate goal of life--or that being the most beautiful is, or the smartest, or the life of the party. these are high school ideas that we carry into life. they come from a culture of estrangement, the culture we were born into. we see ourselves as separate from everything and one else, and therefore we don't see our actions as affecting anyone else. the culture of estrangement, of power-over, of hierarchy, makes teenagers of adults. we've got a bunch of self-centered (admittedly not always knowingly) people running around doing things to accumulate whatever they can until they die, at which point none of this stuff matters anyway.

what matters is not being better than every one else. what matters is to be the best you can be, you, yourself, your individual self, while retaining the knowledge that you are not alone. you are brother or sister to everyone else in the whole world, to every tree, flower, bush, bee, bird, and wolf--you are a strand in a great web that stretches beyond this planet and out into the universe, that is the universe, and energy is what you are made of. the force does not flow thru us, because then it is seen as separate from us. the force is us. and how we choose to be, what kind of people we choose to be determines the 'light' or 'darkness' of it.

the point is not to do good.

the point is to do better.

and to remember, that at the end of the day, you are not alone. you may feel alone. especially if you are disconnected from friends, family, or just like-minded acquantiances.

and to remember, that no matter how futile it all seems, that no matter how much you want to give up for lack of any visible change, that despite all this, your actions will matter. because whether you are directly or indirectly a factor, things will change. they always do. and doing something, whether or not it works, empowers you.

this should not be about guilt.

this should be about feeling good about picking up the litter on your daily walk, even if it's back twofold the next day, because you made a difference in the world's fabric of energy, if only for a second. seeing litter is a depressing sight for most people. by picking it up, you are improving a small corner of the world, for a little bit, allowing some light to shine there, which will touch other people in their busy lives for a while, and reach out to touch the others they see or deal with, and so on around the world.

and the same goes for any little bit of activism. whether it be hugathon, chaining yourself to a fence to protest a nuclear reactor being built, standing on a corner with a sandwich board sign, or blowing up parliament to prove a point, to break down old structures so that new ones may be born out of the rubble.

this evolutionary stage we're on has grown stagnant. we cannot allow ourselves to live in fear. we must switch to a system of power-from-within, of acknowledging everything as sacred--sacred being whatever we value for being itself. our bodies are sacred, and what comes out of our bodies--here i speak of shit--is sacred, because it composts, and out of compost comes new life. life is a cycle. water-based sewage systems are probably one of the stupidest ideas we've had as humans. they disrupt that cycle.

so do the burial systems of our dead. cremation is more sensible than being put in your best clothing into a wooden box that will take longer to decompose than you will to be lowered into the ground where you will take up space that can be used by the living, but it's still pretty useless. my father wants to be composted when he dies. he can't, because it's illegal. the law says that instead of being useful when dead, he must rot where he will feed worms who will make the cemetary dirt very rich in nutrients, but it's being used as a cemetary so that's a moot point.

these systems we have in place prevent us from being the best we can be, as humans, and as mammals. we forget this alot, but we are mammals, so far as we can tell. we are apes, so far as we know. we must accept our place in the animal kingdom outside of biology class and work on making our place more of a niche than a gouged-out hold in the ecosystem's wall. we obviously have some purpose on this planet. let's develop it.

maybe it's art, of all kinds. music, words, paintings, textiles, the list goes on. maybe it's our mental capacities. we are capable of great things. but while we are officially secular, we are still ruled by fear-based, monotheistic, patriarchal thought-forms that teach us different is bad, rule by many is heretical, and female is dark and dirty.

newsflash: we are all dark and dirty. women bleed. men poop. humans eat, piss, fuck, shit, sleep, fart, and burp our way thru our lives, and try to hide it all because it's so 'shameful'. the ones who embrace all these natural bodily functions and the natural state of nudity are 'deviants' who must be 'locked-up'.

if we're so fucking secular, then why are we so illogical about the simplest things?

these beliefs are based on fear. fear from a triad of patriarchal abrahamic religions that still rule the world, like it or not. we claim to be secularized, but the truth is that men are valued over women, white over black/other colors, and the One over the Many.

i hate the terms white or black magick used so frequently by new followers of the craft. it emphasizes the belief that white = pure good righteous virtuous pure perfect ruling class and black = dirty bad immoral lewd impure slave class. the very usage in a power-from-within religion of hierarchial terms comes from the fact that almost all of us are raised in the culture of estrangement, and must come to the culture of connectivity, of immanence, from that place, and so must shed those old ideas. it's easier to fall back into old systems than to actively work at creating new ones.

this world is full of horrible things.

this world is full of precious and wonderful things.

what do you want to be humanity's last legacy?

left us so brittle

a new life, a new blog. this is so silly of me. i should be sleeping. instead i am sitting and wasting the hours of the night, the good hours when the right hormones get manufactured.

maybe mom's right. i just to want to shoot myself in the foot. no matter what. if i can prove to the world and myself that i really am that fucked up, maybe everyone will leave me alone.

stupid.

i've lost my feeling of wanting to post in my old blog. the magic is gone. so i'm searching for new magic. as if there is such a thing. i just need a change.

before i sign off, some notes.

i do not always obey the english language. i know its rules very well, but at 4:22 am pacific standard time the will to capitalize escapes me. correct my english and face my wrath.

i don't really care what you think, unless you're a friend. and even then, i care minimally. i'm me. i post a blog for no reason except my own. so if you're here to say 'ur a fukin twat 4 thinking that stupid', save your breath. go do something appropriately rednecked. what are you doing near a computer anyway?

feelings are intense. words are trivial. i'm a writer. i understand my words are crap, because of the language to which they are limited. when english becomes a noun-less language and we are able to abandon the language of estrangement, to embrace holistic thinking and realize that we are of the source which does not exist because we are the source and the source is us and we are all connected so thoroughly that we are one, then what i write will be real. until then i try to make small changes. success is not my aim. i aim to do it, regardless of consequences.

that is it, for now.

jagged over and out.