tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42449002298457056082024-03-13T05:14:34.785-07:00The Christian NihilistAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-61394850267867234322014-02-11T16:17:00.001-08:002014-02-11T16:17:20.467-08:00A toe in the waterAlways too many things.<br />
<br />
Always too many things.<br />
<br />
Divided in too many ways.<br />
<br />
Try too hard and too little all at once.<br />
<br />
I'm in my own way like a snake curled up on itself.<br />
<br />
Ouroboros, but more springlike.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-10214539252641816152013-06-08T23:27:00.003-07:002015-06-13T05:16:43.668-07:00Mimesis, Smoking Jackets, and the Dusty Smell of EruditionI saw photographs of a man whose acquaintance I've held for some years now. He posed before a fireplace with a carefully stoic expression and a pipe, a sweater, and other smoking-room accoutrements. I've watched this carefully guided transformation of his somewhat casually for quite a few years now, and the meticulous grooming of the aura and persona struck me full force tonight.<br />
<br />
It's not that I hadn't noticed before. The previous awareness is what has led to the possibility of my being so conscious of the creation of this guise or image. But something about this more recent picture struck me acutely as does a slow, laborious change after years once one has achieved some distance and then looked back.<br />
<br />
One element that helped catch my attention was the responses of others toward this man's photo. Of course they expressed some sentiments of its being so captivating, so brooding or erudite--so positively literary or something. I'm playing it fast and loose here about their responses because it wasn't so much the specific content of their feedback that drew my thoughts but rather the overall impression that the appearance and posture were clearly designed to produce in the observer. And the fact that I had an intimate enough knowledge of this person's life to understand just what the process has been made this situation all the more clear.<br />
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I thought to myself, now all the observers will see him as a certain way, and that is what he wanted before and still clearly wants (at least on some level). The funny thing is that the aesthetic and impression, the apparent identity, has been purposefully and carefully cultivated to reflect that very sense. "He looks so much like a professor," an observer might offer. True enough. He does.<br />
<br />
But the (further) funny thing is that he specifically observed certain personages, like professors and poets, and crafted his own appearance and sensibilities with their auras and aesthetics (yes, with their fashions) in mind. It's a re-projection of what they themselves, usually, picked up from others with whom they had a similar relationship. (A character in a novel once mused that magicians love to cultivate the cartoonish trappings of their archetypes, and it's true; we do.)<br />
<br />
I don't think there's anything wrong with this. I have long detected certain elements of this mimetic and conscious cultivation in myself and my own personality and psyche--which neither condemns nor justifies the behavior, though it does help me to understand when I see it in others. And when I see it in others, it helps me understand what I see in myself. The result is both to eliminate and excise rotten places in myself like cutting out bruises in fruit, as well as to give more purposeful attention to parts of myself that need to be actively, consciously cultivated.<br />
<br />
This includes mimesis. Actively working to shape myself into certain patterns that I recognize as good, right, and most high. And while I'm comfortable enough with my beard and with standing in impressive places with an erudite manner while looking like a disaffected Ivy Leaguer who escaped his banal campus for the soul-revealing haven of an Irish tavern, that's simply not sufficient for my highest form of becoming.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-37278510287530947922013-06-03T00:47:00.001-07:002013-06-08T23:02:12.532-07:00passing of aeons, part IGod.<br />
<br />
I will talk to you like this.<br />
<br />
These days I feel such a compulsion, almost like a necessity, to stay silent. Still.<br />
<br />
It's what I felt when I still lived in Kansas City. How can it have already been nearly two years since I left? Yet it has been, and I don't know how time has slipped away. I mean I think about that place, how different it was, and strangely it seems both immediately almost within my grasp (just out of fingertip length) and unbelievably far removed. How things were so very different in some ways. In other ways, they were exactly the same. The curious thing is that while on some levels it feels like our relationship was so much closer then, like we were so much more closely living relationally in intimacy, nevertheless our relationship now feels just as sweet, just as close, even though in outward ways it probably wouldn't be perceived to be such. But I don't suppose that's really what matters about all these things.<br />
<br />
How strange life becomes sometimes. These shifts happen, and suddenly the qualities or general character that defines one period no longer are the qualities or general character that define the next period. Like unfolding aeons, but unexpectedly so. So things continue to pulse throughout them all, and even though certain realizations, lessons learned, and growth stay on, the new becomes something--such a development--that is wholly different and wholly, specifically its own that a disconnect with the previous aeon becomes absolutely, undeniably, unequivocally established.<br />
<br />
How strange this thing, life. It continues to move forward, and it is so rarely what you expect. I guess I thought there would be more returns. So often on the crest of a new age, a new aeon, a new period, I have no clue just exactly how thoroughly a break with an old period is about to occur. It's not that I would go back. That could only be death.<br />
<br />
But still. How strange to see life in this manner. It's a miracle when anything real and truly good is preserved from age to age, period to period.<br />
<br />
I think I didn't expect to be in this place so long--long enough for it to truly become a period and an era entirely in its own right. To be able to see it unfolding is terribly strange, but it also makes complete sense. At this point I don't even really feel a melancholy or a sadness; I just simply observe it, somewhat less touched by the passing of aeons as I once was. I am no longer just a sapling--how completely strange. The bark on this tree has become thicker and harder, causing certain passings of time and friction to be less effective, even while the inside (perhaps, and let's hope) has become ever softer.<br />
<br />
The emotional grating of previous aeons passing away becomes less and less as I become more like the mountains--more like the ancient trees. The pain becomes less. The strain lessens.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-14277422696510669162013-05-13T02:36:00.002-07:002013-05-13T02:36:41.021-07:00Alone Context"A writer needs to be alone."<br />
<br />
I wonder how much this is true. Tonight it's quiet and sleepy outside, and I hear some gentle hum of electronic appliance quietly turning in the house somewhere. Being a writer without a prism is difficult in the way that being a parent without a child must be. You have a waling sense that you should be giving birth to something, but the context is always slipping apart so that the product can never be formed and the end result can never be born.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-19949701687436767302013-01-24T11:01:00.001-08:002013-06-08T23:32:30.972-07:00Return after political season hiatus.Things have been blank here, and fortunately so. One downside to being one of maybe 5 Christian nihilists on planet Earth is the overwhelming oppressiveness of political horse crap pressing down upon us. It's exacerbated by necessary fact of our having very little support structure. You can understand the logistical nightmare of trying to convene conference between 5 individuals worldwide. We simply can't promise we'll be there. It's an elite group, so it has that going for it, but I just wanted you to be aware that there are downsides. It's my job as public liaison to both set your apprehensions at ease, as well as to simultaneously discourage any attempts at joining our loosely official syndicate.<br />
<br />
That is, of course, the danger in going public with one's ideals: screaming, salivating fans. Too much obsession. If I'm not careful to keep this cabal in shadows, soon we'll have a Justin Bieber type of situation. I just can't handle thousands of screaming teenage girls wilting in violent adoration and threatening to tear a chunk of flesh off my body. Too much. I much prefer a quiet, secret gathering, cigarettes and a mystical vibe. We can switch up between hooded occult and Bukowski aeshetics. But it's got to be one of the two, you know. Things in this world have their Proper Order. Order of Operations. Orbium Coelestium.<br />
<br />
But now that the political season has waned a bit--<i>cooled,</i> I say, but not dissipated entirely--I can return here to cast into your mind the thoughts which are nearly direct reflections from the heavens above, celestial orders. We all have our orders. Okay, maybe that sounds heavy-handed. It was a fancy way of saying the (somewhat) quiet ruminations of a Christian nihilist. I'm the pen and pad, as it were--the letter from us to you. It was beginning to over-exhaust me, this past election season. I'd about had my fill. Of course, on ye olde sociale medya sites, the irritation presses on, only abated somewhat. And I just want to make something definitively clear right now, so that in the future if the issue arises, I can point back to this highly reputable publication to verify my stance as legitimately and defiantly established early on.<br />
<br />
If you morons decide to have another civil or revolutionary war, leave me right out of it. I'll tell you this; I want a semi-automatic rifle, but mostly because they're awesome to shoot and because I should be allowed to. I'm not interested in everyone's stupid squabbles, so if you decide to openly battle it out because your grasp of civil discourse has eroded to such an alarming degree--well, leave me out of it. Whatever is resolved from it will doubtless be unworthy to partake in.<br />
<br />
Here's a clue that applies to basically everyone I hear whining today:<br />
The problem is in yourself. Shut up, fix it, and then try to help other people, but not because you're pissed off.<br />
<br />
Oh. And leave me the hell alone.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-82426299959351560972012-11-05T23:52:00.000-08:002012-11-05T23:57:18.628-08:00A Little Gentle Nudging Annihilate political consciousness. Do yourself a favor. Take your little pet hobbyhorse out to the back alley and show it the inside of a gun barrel, then all smoke and brain matter. Paint the brick wall bloody with your politics, please, I beg of you.<br />
<br />
Important Issues.<br />
<br />
You will vote, and it either will or will not happen. But please, let me alone five minutes from your insipid, everlasting conversations. Everyone who agrees with each other should live together in isolated communities and enact the policies they want. Then they should shut up and leave everybody else alone. The communities that don't collapse can count themselves to have justified their positions, but in the meantime, at least the rest of us can actually get some sleep without all the brainless screaming in the streets--you mindless mob.<br />
<br />
It seems like the people who talk about liberty the most are the ones who won't stop screaming, who won't get out of everyone else's face, who can't shut up.<br />
<br />
You find yourself agreeing with me. You're now thinking about the people who irritate you because "they're so stupid." You think I'm agreeing with you and your side. But you're wrong. Because I don't. Not really.<br />
<br />
All the little worker bees scream in a seething mob. They have big plans. They're so sure of being right. They don't see the cancer in themselves. They have only begun to glimpse the evil they worship, if at all. They pray to the statue. All hail the great and powerful Oz.<br />
<br />
Goodbye.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-49876775412731831782012-10-30T13:00:00.000-07:002012-10-30T13:00:18.969-07:00Primary and Secondary Being, part I<br />
God's primary existence and focus of being is, essentially and necessarily, within Himself. That He creates and gives Himself as well as ultimately brings others into Himself to share of Himself and His primal being is necessarily ontologically secondary. And it's important that I have a place to have all to myself really [initially referring to a private musical project]--but where I am, there He Is also. There is no place of me where He is not.<br />
<br />
Myself isolated includes Him, and that's the central difference between my life previously as trying to focus and isolate myself out to clear reality and clarity--I was looking to locate myself in my isolation, singularity, and individuality without and apart from Him and His singularity as well as His multiplicity--His communality. It is also the difference of many people trying to live God-towardly or at least calling themselves accordingly, as well as of those who are trying to locate and uplift and clarify their individuality but in and of themselves primarily and of a primary sense. Without realizing that to truly and perfectly understand their individuality and isolate it out to clarity, they must realize and embrace that the necessary reality and nature of their own being, properly and absolutely speaking, is secondary being--necessarily and unavoidably bound up in permanent relation to God, to Primary Being.<br />
<br />
In order to truly enthrone, uplift, embrace, identify, isolate, clarify, and realize my own individuality, I have to understand its true essence. I will never become fully and wholly myself--and wholly, perfectly, completely unified with myself--until I realize the true essence and nature of my own being. It's completely natural and absolute that this is so. So unavoidably, it's absolutely in my own self-interest to embrace the reality that my being is secondarily related to God's being, and this requires not only the recognition of His Primary Being but also the acceptance and embracing of it. This is true Godliness embodied in my own life, and there can be no life nor any true form of Godliness without it--absolutely and necessarily.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-75485690383607488732012-10-20T18:13:00.003-07:002012-10-20T18:19:16.793-07:00Praised Be the Idol, Humming in its Awesome PowerOn the right is the sound of flames licking up the air from the fireplace next to me. On the left, the sound of a television in another room chattering away its endless chatter. Voices and buzzing and blathering faces, building up in my stomach's soul the vile gray nausea of too much empty chittering.<br />
<br />
You know what I mean. A culture, a land full of blatherers who Can't Shut Up. They fill their lives with suffocating noise in proportion to the emptiness of their souls and minds. They make the television and the multiverse of screens the ultimate mimesis of their souls, or rather they conform themselves to the empty image of the LED voice speaking nothing to no one at oppressive volumes in despotic torrents. Oh, how we bow down to our precious idols and are remade into their image.<br />
<br />
Once we forged our idols from wood and stone and metal, glorified ourselves by casting our own image as we perceived it into dead matter. Glorifying ourselves and our evil, we conceived of what we lusted to be and then cast that desire into earth. We bowed down and were remade along the lines of our vanities. We committed incest with ourselves, masturbation in frenzy multiplied by masturbation. "Hallowed be my own semen and feces in my throat. Hallowed be my name. Worthy is the phlegm." By the sorceries of our imaginations, we fancied ourselves gods and rulers, lords of demons.<br />
<br />
Oh travesty of travesties that our revery was broken by the revelation that our idols' great fault was their inability to speak. Grievousness, our croaking terrible grief! If our idols cannot speak, they cannot be gods. If they are not gods, neither can we be.<br />
<br />
All praise to Babylon, our wishes were granted. Now our idols can speak! The black box of our deification chatters forever in the humming glow of its own power. We lift up the box with hollow hands and point our lives toward it, bowing down over our erections, over our genitals burning. We must be gods! And the skies must be empty, for the glory is ours to be taken and swallowed eternal. Swallowed eternal! I am the lord of my own seed. I give myself breath; I give myself life. Who am I to stand above? I deign before myself alone, for the glowing box of my own glory chatters incessantly into the night. Who is god if not me?<br />
<br />
My flesh is warmed from the heat of the screen, and at last we can writhe together with lust bodies in blood, semen, sweat, feces--the glory of gods! Enclosed by the empty sky as an iron door locked and bolted from the outside seals us forever in a humming, sticky pool of our own tepid glory.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-48365749651000413412012-10-15T20:26:00.000-07:002012-10-15T20:27:05.847-07:00"The Quiet of a Silent Place, part 1" -- (plus a prelude)<br />
The nihilist dumps it all out and fails to act except for a great churning of feeling he doesn't know how to purposefully direct. The Christian still thinks there is value in the whatever, including the expression. The result of this pairing ('x') taken as one function ('f') is the output "poem". F(x). Here's a newer draft of something. Feedback will not be rejected outright. Hint, hints.<br />
<br />
--------------------------------<br />
<br />
Space cleared out in life for me.<br />
Cutting out rotwood.<br />
Humming head vibration.<br />
Euphoric swelling.<br />
Frisson of giddiness.<br />
My world with sweet delicacy,<br />
a clean taste,<br />
rose petal blossoms<br />
with every inhalation.<br />
Spiraling galaxy of my soul stretching out<br />
far, long.<br />
Blood clean and rich.<br />
Fellows of my life<br />
and friends far away.<br />
Quiet today, yesterday, tomorrow is.<br />
Clean house with clean sheet bed,<br />
empty mailbox,<br />
and a phone not ringing.<br />
Pens silent, small on the table,<br />
a lovely look,<br />
waiting for rapture<br />
by spindle fingers<br />
wrapping softly as lovers.<br />
<br />
Never loneliness today.<br />
<br />
Ink bottles into wells deepen,<br />
joyfully expanding,<br />
I dipping my drawing cup<br />
into the black milky water --<br />
drinking deeply.<br />
Solitude,<br />
a greatwine.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-36421547482829516402012-10-06T15:55:00.002-07:002012-10-06T15:55:44.282-07:00Refusal to Supplicate Before the New GodI've thrown many of my poems away. Maybe they were worth saving. I thought they were worth hearing, but they weren't heard, and I threw them out. I'm alright with this. I've made my peace. The greatest treasures are buried at the bottoms of oceans, scattered among the wreckage. Only a few divers go down that deep, and only a few will know what they've got when they uncover it.<br />
<br />
Most lies in the wreckage. The rest never got spilled onto paper--in the ink bottle still coagulating. I wonder if it's worth pulling the stopper out to let the air in, to let the words out.<br />
<br />
There's all this chattering, all around me, chattering almost incoherent from open mouths filling the world with suffocating foam. Little black eyes, fat little ears with cauliflower spirits, the well doesn't go down deep, the wells don't go down at all. Like fake pockets sewn onto pants, stitched up at the top so nothing can enter.<br />
<br />
You want to be read, to be heard, to find listening, to communicate something real. I almost feel the response coming automatically. Why should they listen? What is there to hear? Where does it all go? The flow of the river, it carries over the hill, into the horizon, into the receding lines beyond the world of experience, into the burning lava of the sunset and heat lines refracting in the atmosphere--melting all the universe, melting all our lives, melting all experience. The river carries over the lines, but where it goes from there? Does it end in the final place where the overheld breath, blue with lungs ballooning, releases in a lovely sigh of flow past a blockage?<br />
<br />
At the end of the day, the readers want what they've already read, publishers want what they've already published. The same stale lives, the same stale words, the same stale eyes staring out from behind the pages. Something pithy, something trite, empty of spirit but heavily vulgar. How profound to glorify the lowest.<br />
<br />
I don't want poems for orgies in the sewer. But all the Authorities long ago conceded that beauty is a corpse, and the Lover is a necrophile. But the Necrophile is a poet, a seer, an artist, a prophet. Hail to the new god, hail to the king. His spirit pours forth as black seepage from his bowels, and we supplicate on our knees--mouths open, children watching.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4244900229845705608.post-4608837322690656402012-10-04T16:17:00.002-07:002012-10-04T16:41:33.610-07:00A Greeting for the FirstWell, well. Here you are, and aren't we pleased. This is the Nihilitorium, and I'm the Christian Nihilist. Save your applause. That comes for later. Standing ovations given too early are the <i>other</i> kind of premature ejaculation. Don't be offended; I'm being purely denotative. The colorful connotations are your own ingenuity. Reader-response in full effect. Control your own meanings, and I'll control mine. I'm the author, and I'm fenced in according to all the world's Best Authorities. Hand me a shovel; I'll bury myself.<br />
<br />
Of course I won't. I have too many important duties, and the nearly-endless scrolls of ancient knowledge strewn across my black-stained teakwood worktable won't read themselves in front of a fire hearth with a flagon of something frothy and biting.<br />
<br />
So welcome anyway, even if you do have that sour look of insolent quivering about your eyes.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11018572171802102929noreply@blogger.com0