So what have we begun to learn so far in our introduction to the alchemy mind? We’ve begun to imagine the infinite optimism of deft attention, the treasure hunt of eclectically finding that everything is interesting.

                 spot,colorado,edu

We’ve begun to grok (drink in deeply) the understanding that we’ll be increasing the voltage of interesting to fascinating throughout our 66-Day apprentice druid adventure.   more »

My dear Colin Wilson, a brilliant surveyor of human possibility, often speaks of the exhilarating ‘hawk’s eye view’ which liberates us to our purposeful strengths. For myself, I have settled upon the Lapidary View. I like to treat everything as if it were a jewel. Or rather more shockedly, sudden, surprised – everything as geode.

                                                         americanheirlooms

The first time I saw a geode, I fainted. The idea that in that apparently dreary rock gleamed this staggering dazzle of crystals like a cave a wizard must live in goaded my heart and brain to permanent agog. I knew at once that the geode was one of these ravishing runes the multiverse loves to spring on you. “Dja get it? Did you get it?” Well, it’d be tough to miss the delectable pagan message of the burning geode. “Everything is jeweled inside, dumbbell, if you crack it open and notice.”    more »

pogblog's Glossary amplifies pogblog's fierce & droll vocabulary -- both the coined or invented stuff & the nifty and nefarious words you may not have discovered yet; for people who love words as much as mangoes or a great forward pass or an icepick in Mr. Cheney's eye; or for the just plain baffled .. . . includes: amethyst; aleph; assonance; blogovel; blood-dimmed tide; Blue/Bleu; cf; chatoyant; clint; clive/full; crapaud; Digrif; e=mc2; eclectic; enfers sanglant; filigree; frabjous joy;

                                                                andy goldsworthy

frisson; full clive; funes; gallynipper; gateau; grb gamma ray burst; grok; gwatwareg; hasyasattva; hoi polloi; karlsputin rove; lq/lizard quotient; masochists; maw; meme; mobbal; multiverse/many-poem place; nada; obsidian humor; oneiro; passive belligerence; pinguid; pog; polyglot; reagan's law; riro/reptile in reptile out; spooner; spiteful puffadder; stynking synnes vile; sursurly; third base; toot doot; tzolkin; vouchsafe; vrai; wmd brain; wolfofwolfs & so4th; .. .. ..   more »

On Face the Nation this Sunday, Cheney says that [the terrorists] "have reached a stage of desperation." .. Can one's bones crawl? The man is so crazy -- not metaphorically, but clinically, rubberroom, straitjacket sociopath really nuts -- and he has nuclear bombs he can, like, actually use and Iran is pissing him off.   more »

If sentimentality – or as the Brits would have it with ever so slightly raised eyebrow, “How wet . . .” – if sentimentality is false feeling, derivative feeling, canned feeling, bland feeling, or even rabid feeling of herds, then there is also a slippery slope of anti-sentimentality which can become yet uglier because the dry one-who-feels should have wit and sense enough to know better: cynicism .. .. ..   more »

We are on the cusp of a 'breakthrough' in multi-D consciousness. It's already well-under way in the Next Age communities -- it just hasn't broken through the Christian Iron Veil yet. (Not to suggest that you, dear reader, are or aren't Christian -- it's just that Fanged Christianity is in the ascendancy in America now rather than Tender Christianity.) .. ..   more »

Instinct is like salt, cinnamon, or cilantro -- damned tasty and essential, but you can't live on it. Listen, sure, but consider before you heed. Most people are afraid of any instinct because it can have embarrassed them or impoverished them or made them join patriotic or religious groups and kill people in the name of America or some such ghastliness. Keep your discernment. But if it passes the reasonably harmless test, do be swayed.    more »

"Spirit, mind, heart -- this is the trinity that people seek to comprehend, to tend, to organize. Then their life will be sweet, will be serene, will be complete. .. .. " Why is this not so?" Because of what no one can bear to attend to. Because of what seems �beneath us� as civilized persons. .. .. "Viscera. We ignore or disdain viscera to our implacable, even ferocious danger .. ..    more »

Niccolo Machiavelli was remarkably savvy. He knew how to codify wickedness or ruthlessness. He was kind of the satanic Hammurabi. The Perfect Pragmatist sans coeur. (Not that ole Hammurabi was warm & fuzzy. For instance: 'The witness who testifies falsely is to be slain.' So 'Bye bye, KarlBoy.') The Present Menaces are the genetic offspring of the Inquisitor DNA Line and the DNA Machiavelli Line . .. ..    more »

Housing revolting killers for their lifetime seems a cheap price to pay for our not becoming killers by proxy ourselves. .. .. I prefer to leave the Judgment of Death in the hands of Fate or the Universe rather than becoming a premeditated killer myself .. .. .    more »

Fugu is the expert filleting of the exceedingly poisonous Hypocrisy fish . . . The radical and aggressive treatment probably necessary for cheney viperiens extremos is emergency splenectomy. The metastasized spleen just has to be hacked out on the spot�at the bus stop (As if any of them would ever ride a bus!) or at the dinner party with the butter knife or at the humvee sales lot .. .. .. We need to explore with you students of comedy how people live in the apr�sWar world .. .. . .    more »

I put on my overalls, bought a new bucket, and a few rolls of Select-a-Size Bounty paper towels for mopping up. My first job back was construction clean-up on a mansion. Holy Moly. Construction clean-up is three times harder than window washing because all of the razor-blading and super scrubbing. Painters, by the way, who say through their rovianally deceitful lying teeth that the overspray they have mangially managed to get on 90% of the windows inside and out �is water-based and washes right off.� No X 1000. But of course they are gone skulking and cackling off to the next job, leaving the hapless window washers to scrape and scrape, ever unable to get all the damn specks off. There are as many micro-specks of paint on an over-sprayed window as there are visible stars on a clear night. Just it ain�t poetical .. ..   more »

�Dalai�s meme is Dirty Politics, Dirty Religion, Dirty Science. It gives us a handy, mouse-souffl�-tasty way to comprehend the wrongness and the rightness � to see the ideas of politics, religion, and science through a prism with the light broken into its constituent parts. The ignorant excesses distort the possibly noble pursuits.�    more »

In addition to being inherently cold, Karl Rove shared dna with a long bleak line of cold creatures which were anti-empaths. They invented the rack and burning people alive. They rose in the Dark Ages in the Inquisition, justified their atrocities in the Name of God and of protecting the world from sin and sinners. That strain of cunning and sickness went recessive in the dna until it exploded back on the scene in about 1950 in a batch of killers born on Earth in those years. Karl Rove�s birthday was 12/25/50 � an anti-christ indeed � in deed .. .. .    more »

I wonder what will become of Karl, Dick the Dick, and their Slithery Ilk who indenture our countrymen to poverty and sign the order for weapons as if their pens didn�t write blood. How do they not hear the screams of the mutilated collateral damage at night?.. .. ..    more »

"We have spent a lifetime perfecting our pernicious habits. If we could apply a modicum of that zeal and cunning to crafting positive addictions, we�d thrive, we�d soar, we�d gambol. .. .. .. Go on. Swallow radiance, guzzle radiance, snort radiance, shoot up radiance. Air should sear your soul; that you can breathe, that your eyes blink should shock you with glory and raw joy. Once pagan reverence has gotcha, once reverence is your modus operandi, once you�re hooked, you can just get on with living your life in a lively, passionate, sensible way. .. .. Once you get the balance point, you cannot unride the bicycle. Once you get the balance point, you cannot unswim. Once the black squiggles coalesce, crystallize, you cannot unread . .. .. .   more »

Mr. Rove is a serial Smearer. . .. . It is impossible to get the Smearodent Toothpaste back in the tube. What is John McCain to say? "No, I didn't father a black baby with a prostitute." Then just even more people hear about it and wonder. Or John Kerry and the Swift Boat ads. "No, it was dangerous as hell and I could have died and I was really brave, unlike you, you chicken hawk" . . . You can't rebut this garbage without sounding defensive or vain. The victim of these tactics is in a serious trap . . .    more »

Fundamentalist Christianity is an anti-jesusian, virulent sidebar. The real 8000 lb gorilla in America is the Church of Militarism. To speak out against it is a burn-at-the-stake heresy-equivalent. They do you with the gatling gun and finish you off with a flamethrower.. Dare to suggest that 99% of military spending is a colossal waste of money and in come the bunker-busting bombs, soon to be nuclear for cruds sake .. ..?    more »

The Nobel Physics Prize people are sweet, but antique in their visions and versions. One of the recipients of the Nobel Prize for ultraviolet laser short-pulse-light study , Dr.Theodor H�nsch of Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany and a professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, says, �Eventually, we may be able to enjoy 3-D holographic movies.�

Eventually, like last night?

Oh, oh, oh, these pesky physics prof lads are so behind zee times, golly. Our brains do the 3D holographic movies we call dreams every night, physics doods .. .. ..   more »

All the ocean. Every wave on every beach. The tumult. The surge. The purr of the lace flung up the tawny sand. The glisten. Listen. Attend. .. .. .. I am the Lordess. I do this and I do not cease. And I do this on every third planet of a billion billion suns. My name is Complexify. When you doubt, put your finger on my pulse and admire. I do do rather a lot to inspire. Every second that you forget, I remember .. .. .   more »

Of course. I knew at once the breathtaking truth. Our ideas of happiness are quite rigidly conditioned. We are all searching diligently or frantically for versions of happiness, items of happiness, that are imposed upon us by the subtle tyranny of the past. Birds of happiness are blue, we are quite sure. This tyranny is distinctly insidious. It prevents what?s happening right under our noses from being happiness. Instead we have restless, inchoate longings for happinesses defined, not by our own present deft attention, but by other agents. Parents, friends, movies, books, religions, the patterns of our own past .. .. .    more »

As someone who, in the upstairs bathroom, started smoking Parliament cigarettes pilfered from my Mother when I was twelve (tho I never smoked my Mother�s religion); as someone who smoked a pack a day, often Camel straights, for 30 years; as someone who went cold turkey seven days before my sister�s gala wedding with its parties and wines and champagnes, I�m here to bring you the good news that horrible and deadly addictions can be quit cold cold turkey, and after two weeks, 14 days, a fortnight of vigilance against the Insinuating Voice of the Inner Tempter, you are free and clear and living a more wholesome new life under a kind of cosmic Witness Protection Program. Nicotine and Religion and Heroin are three of the most addictive substances on Earth. They can be quit .. .. ..    more »

�I cannot believe that we just go to sleep at night and let day after day pile up like corpses along side the highway of history while these bastards loot and steal right out from under our noses and we do not whimper, not even like a kicked dog. Where in the hell, Obol, amigo de mi coraz�n, is our dignity and our sacred honor? Such sheepery and lemminghood disgust me about ourselves. They don�t even have to bestir themselves to defeat us. They must be putting saltpeter in the junk food. Are we tamed by aspartame?� .. .. ..   more »

When you look back from Y3000, it�s clear that what saved us from war, from state-sanctioned human sacrifice, was, as it is in Y3000, art and perception, an electric perception. Art-thirst replaces blood-thirst. Seeing art, doing art. And when we let loose all that art on the Planet, it shines pearlescent all the way to the FarStars . .. .. .    more »

" ... a mad dickensian masterpiece of serial venom.. . . . an alloy of platinum and plutonium ..".. .. Goodbye, good riddance, Toad Spawn. Goodbye your Maggoty Minions. .. .. The exorcizm of America is today! George Bush will be cast out! Oh frabjous joy. George Bush cast out of America�s body politic, exorcized from her national soul. These were the whispers in the corridors, in the forests, the gleeful suspense, the joyous dread. Today, it�s today. Toad Spawn, Be Gone! Gladness reigns once more. Take a very deep breath. The Exorcizm is today! Exhale utterly. Oh yes, see him go � his toxic influence; the emptier pipsqueak husk will strut around for a spate. See how lovely you feel, how light, how bright. Carpe comedy,, my sweets, and get re-enchanted with making our Planet, Home, better, cooler, more wide-hearted, fairer. Starting with raising the sodding minimum wage! . . . .[ToadSpawn update .. 09.28.05 .. ..   more »

When the script writers lost control of the domineering Religion Christianity, Gata was called in to do some re-writes before this Religion of Peace blew every one off the planet. Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn�t made enough of a dent to sate the virulent ebolaesque e christiani, a disease where you made damned sure that your enemies whom you were supposed to love bled from every orifice and from bullets holes if the other orifi weren�t enough. .. .. ..   more »

I really thought we�d put a stake in that blood-sucking Vampire, SupplySide Economics, in the �80s when it proved a think-tank Bright Idea that failed abysmally in the Reality-Based World. But behind a smokescreen of supposed Values, the giga-Greedy have slurped our blood all the way to the Swiss Bank. Of course true Christians or true any kind of gentle and loving Fellows would not count profit until AFTER the (fellow) workers had been kindly dealt with. The idea of screwing every centavo out of a workforce is so ugly that you know the people doing it have forfeited most of their humaneness and all of their claim to inclusion in the Family of Humanity .. .. ..    more »

First let's talk about improv for awhile. It would be the first class I'd put kids in -- outta the womb into improv. Improv teaches confidence, mischief, collaboration, glee. And a way of thinking intensely more useful than the default find-fault thinking that pollutes American thought patterns. The very first rule of improv is Yes-and. .. .. The fruitfulness and power of this approach has to be experienced to be believed. .. .. ..   more »

�You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.� Bucky Fuller .. .. .. We cannot fix where we are. We cannot fix the gordian snarl we�re in. We must take the small but distinct quantum step to the Sane Fruitful Vision where we act in the gloryful, gleeful, liberating light of the fact of The Burning Child. .. .. .. Once you see that, as every bush burns, every child burns in the forests of delight, you will be honor-bound, duty-bound, future-bound to make complete superb K-College education for every child an emergency Manhattan-Project national priority beginning today .. .. ..   more »

Some driftwood & detritus washed up by Katrina, Hurricane Suprema. Hurrikan; orkaan; ouragan; uragano; hurac�n; furacao. .. .. .. I�m not sure how vivid a demonstration we need about the meta-requirement to quantum leap to the collaborative model from the competitive, cutthroat model. Gee, a hurricane flattens the mansion and the hut alike and leaves us naked and wind-shocked, water-shocked sitting on the rooftop. .. .. ..   more »

�Do the psychic forces of KarlRovism have us cowed and enervated or can we take a stand? This is the question we will answer with our whereabouts on Saturday September 24 at 1pm. Like where were you when you heard Kennedy was shot if that was your era? This September 24 Peace rally is a barometer of how deep our resistance to war has become. Will it move us to a small but actual action? Or will we continue to eloquently lament?� .. .. ..    more »