Stay tuned and watch for something radically different. The way things look now, I’ll largely be developing it in place, which is kind of like changing into your bathing suit right there on the beach. Of course, that’s exactly how they do it in Denmark, and what have you heard lately that’s bad about Denmark? Or good, either?! Well, then.

Creative genius working overtime

Basically, there is going to be a LOT more content in a different package. I can hardly wait. In fact, I really don’t want to put more articles up until it’s ready. You know I will, though.

Today’s blessed relief comes from Hecate, whose “Discussing the Undiscussible” post goes directly to my own concerns of late:

Mystical experience, the experience of the mystic, what it is that mystics experience — that stuff is, almost by definition, idiomatic. It cannot be translated into any standard language, although it is possible that the language of exceptional music, exceptional art, exceptional poetry (over prose), may come close.

My deepest mystical experience — and this is odd for a mammal, living in the flesh — is observing bright, late-afternoon sunshine on leaves, grocking photosynthesis and the symphony inherent therein, being in a forest or a garden. Yesterday, I walked through the Brookside Gardens and sucked, as a hungry child suckles a breast, upon the amazing sight of sunlight filtered though deep forest shade. I see Fairies there, but I mean the word “fairie” in a scary and Earth-centered sense. I reminded myself that I can go on living.

When I wrote,

Because I DO have a mother, and I finally know I have a soul.

After growing slowly in my awareness all along, it’s here now in the nick of time. I’m talking about the Big Momma, chilluns, the all-enfolding love of all Creation. MOTHER NATURE, Mother Earth, the stuff my body’s made of, the thing we can’t define or do without, the ultimate redemption: Goddess loves me, this I know, for my tears, they tell me so. (Put it any way you want.)

what Hecate writes is what I meant. Late afternoon sunlight on leaves is something I understand, too. But I’m 200 pounds of do-the-dishes-when-the-spoons-are-gone, I can’t write about breasts and sucking. Er, suckling. That’s it, though: nourishment from “our Mother,” as a commenter expressed. And note how the author is replenished by the experience. (“I can go on living,” etc.) The line about the fairies is important, too, for conveying a sense of the quality of the energy involved. This is precisely what I’ve found to be true in really wild places, where I’ve felt it. A lot of you must know what I’m talking about.

It’s so important.

This is the extemporaneous speech Obama gave to union members in Milwaukee the other day. I first saw it over at Balloon Juice, where John C. said everybody had to watch. He scares me, so I did, but this is something really good:

It’s raining manna from the sky right now. Go git some!

If I make it through tomorrow, that’ll make a whole week without needlessly insulting half a dozen people. This time I only unloaded on one, namely Paul Krugman, in a public forum where thousands of visitors can see what an ass I am. This takes a special kind of talent all by itself, regrettably. I wish I could force accelerated evolution, but slow as bloody hell is where I seem to be. If I never judge another man, woman, child for being true to themselves and working things out on their own, it’ll be too soon. These things we learn.

(Other people learn, too, dammit! Some day I might need a favor from Krugman, he’ll remember, and bite me on the shin. Once I shake him off, the bodyguards will beat me stupid, and that’ll be the end of that.)

This is another plug: Raging Universe, which I’ve mentioned before, is an ironically rather quiet blog that frequently talks about the astrological background of the presidential campaign, among other things.
A short while back the author (a woman) more or less predicted the kind of race we’ve seen over the last few weeks, particularly as it relates to Obama’s recent “difficulties”… which as we’ve seen, are anything but. She also predicted that!

No matter what you think of astrology, you may find it interesting. This is almost astrosociology, or astrophilosophy, with a little Jungianism on the side. I like her quality of mind.

That’s it, I’m off again. Eliminating Safari bookmarks to AmericaBlog, Crooks & Liars, Juan Cole, Daily Kos, Eschaton, Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald, Huffington Post, Hullabaloo, Paul Krugman, MyDD, Talking Points Memo, TalkLeft, and Think Progress now… [done!]

The reason is simple. These days nothing makes me feel so completely worthless and terrible as reading about attempts to “fix” the American way of life, which I have neither the desire to repair nor the identification with to savor. I have more in common with chipmunks on the side of the road than I do with politicians, mass culture, or ideologies of any stripe — we all do, actually — and I simply must look out for myself. There’s no other answer. (I’m sure I’ll backslide again eventually, but never mind.)

Onward, chilluns, we each have lots to do.

UPDATE: It isn’t the blogs, is it! I will really have to get one of those things that keeps you from posting when depressed (a brain). As for online reading and the state of my psyche, the political stuff, which I’m addicted to and eat up like candy, really is very bad for me just now. It pulls me down and marches me in directions I don’t want to go. Your mileage may vary, as the saying goes. I’m sure I’ll go back to reading great articles by Digby, for instance, but I do need to take that world in very small doses, for my own good. It blocks out so much else that I have to fight to keep it in its place.

The “problem” is that blogs are where I get my news. What I’m really addicted to is the news itself, and in the current context, all the news is bad. Mainlining bad news depletes psychic energy and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was already rocky this a.m., and then I hit the blogs…

May the magpie that’s on the bird feeder right now peck the eyes right outa my head if I don’t stop leaving comments on political blogs.

I don’t even know who it is who does that. It’s like a disease. One in a hundred times, I say something compassionate or light-hearted, the rest of the time it’s like I have to draw blood. This stuff stays out there forever. Only a pure-bred idiot would persist in this kind of behavior.

Maybe it’s time to have my DNA checked.

The main reason I’ve always gone to political blogs is simply for the news.

However, a more personal reason for hanging around them for so long is undoubtedly the sense of community engendered by exchanging views and comments with like-minded people. This is a fine thing, and I’m a knave for ever dissing it. I know what it feels like to be marginalized, and now most of the nation is. (Imagine that, the Marginalized Majority.) So people are concerned and scared. They need a place to go and schmooze, at least. Flirt, crack jokes, whatever, maybe even raise the general level of awareness. Those of you who don’t spend a lot of time online might not know what this is all about, but don’t feel bad: you’re probably doing just fine talking to real people instead of cutesy usernames.

But I’m an Internet dude who would like to get out more. There have to be other places to visit online where there’s news and views of a different sort. I’ve found a couple of them and put them in the sidebar, but they aren’t enough. Where do people hang out who want to talk about life, art, and consciousness? Where do people go to read stories with a punch in the stomach? Where do crazy musicians, artists, nature mystics, and eco-freaks congregate online? Where do people go who care about cosmology AND punk rock? — heh, a little voice in my head just said “Austin.” Yeah, well. On the Internet, I mean.

I need a new bar. The comments only allow two URLs per, but send me what you have.

I feel like I’ve been Rip van Winkled. Like I’m coming out of a cloud bank.

There is no rational explanation for this, although political blogs are in the equation, I swear. No, the insider news isn’t helping to cut me loose, just the opposite. I already know what’s going on, but the emotional charge — which I revel in — sets off an even bigger surge, and I go blind. My father’s in there, too: absent, self-absorbed, quick to anger. Sound like any president you know? I’m serious. The “bad father” archetype is a killer — literally — and makes me feel viciously wronged. I get angry and argue. I strike out at friends. Getting back into reading what amount to dozens of fervent editorials a day (90% of which I mostly agree with) only makes me more crazy.

It was peaking pretty badly over the weekend. Then there was a localized event, a minor encounter in which I felt I was wronged. I over-reacted (just like the old man) in a way that made my wife wince when I told her about it. I couldn’t stop being angry, but I laid it all out again, one more time, and she took my side. Maybe that’s when the hole got poked through. Then something fell away today, and here I am. I feel like I’ve literally been gone somewhere for the last six weeks. Maybe for years.

On Sunday I worked on Web site nuts and bolts, my Web sites, and I did more today. Seems I just didn’t care about the news or read as much of it. For the third or fourth time in the last ten years, I spontaneously forgave my father again. (What I mean is, it just happened.) An old friend in Maryland had a birthday, and I sent him an email. He wrote back, describing the party and people I know. For eight years it’s been nearly impossible for me to think of my faraway friends without paroxysms of pain, confusion, and guilt, but this time was a hoot. I could almost feel like I was there.

And then tonight I picked up my bouzouki. Forget the MP3 with that earlier post, this was like a 90-minute musical whitewater ride.

That instrument has got the devil in it. As soon as I pick it up, it steals my soul and turns it into sound. I have to sit and play and play until I hear enough to get it back, washed and smelling like it’s been dried outside in the breeze.

The woman is letting me in closer now, too. Uncharted territory, but maybe that’s a sign.

If you don’t know this fellow, give him a chance: “‘2012′ and the Poet’s Dilemma” is Daniel’s latest offering at Reality Sandwich (see sidebar for primary link). The topic is very close to my own daily deliberations, and there are some great comments appended. Here’s a sample of where Daniel is coming from:

I am very concerned, right now, with the seeming incapacity of most people in our culture to awaken to the dire urgency of our present situation, and to move from passive contemplation to active engagement. I feel that not just individual works but the entire construct of the contemporary art and literary worlds are functioning as another pacifying and distracting mechanism - someone may read a novel about war and cry, but that doesn’t translate into organizing to stop the wars we are now waging. It sometimes seems to me that forces have conspired to depolitize culture and make it socially irrelevant.