The Elf in Self

stonecarver

~ ~ ~

The self, transformed

becomes an elf,

on its way to being

stone.

~ ~ ~

fanpop

The elf in the self is a 

solitary soul,

sly and suspicious 

of snakes;

when met on the road,

she is playful and kind and certain

society's rules are a guise.

The elf self wants only to be self

unencumbered

by rules and opinions

of others.

And then, we'll agree

that the loss of the "e"

leaves

life's consonants

that must be whispered,

not hissed or aspirated

but rolled on the lips

and tongue

felt by the body

like a kiss.

Self as a word,

deconstructed,

brings us solely to now,

wholly to how

we can give to each other --

by discovering the elf,

and removing the vowels

we are left with the body

the shape of the utterance,

the impulse to say,

the impulse to stay.

sdakotabirds

September Equinox Channelling

( falconscience )

*

When two opposites meet,

face to face, well, they

stick together, right/

When two opposites meet,

well,

the negative and the positive

cancels each other out;

therefore,

there is

One.

A single, whole

entity.

( peppylicious )

When two opposites are not aligned,

that is

( physicssjsu )

 

the negative and the positive are farthest apart,

well I guess it gets really cold;

I suspect that's when

Ice Ages

occur.

Or something like that.

* *

Imagine it this way:

that we are all

rolling around inside

a giant ball, well, but

it's really like a half ball,

because -- remember the

sphere 

is perfect,

and the only way 

a perfect object

which is a 

sphere

can see its own face

is to break

itself

in half.

( murrayhudson )

and when the half meets

the half 

again

face-on

it fits so perfectly,

( dailymail )

but

in the meantime,

it's rocking 

It feels like 

its going

in circles

because it has to

rock its own

demi-circumference

twice

before it settles back

together again.

( davidasharman ) 

* * *

Imagine that creation was
a perfect sphere breaking
apart
so it could see its own
face, and then
in order
for it
to be
united
again, it would have to
rock back and forth
(do its demi
circumference
twice)
beffore its halves could
meld
together
again
at their widest
points;
in their perfect
shape
for awhile. . .

For
we are born of the compulsion
to have a compulsion
to see what we look like
when we walk
through a door --

the compulsion to break
ourselves in half
and see
is the compulsion
to create,
to see in
the compulsion to duplicate and
replicate is
the very compulsion that
created all
of us.

That's the truth.
(To fully understand
some of this,
read some of my earlier stuff on that
follow the link to representation,
The Fall,
and
The Grid,
always the Grid.)

That's the truth.

* * 8 * *

Let me please explain
the syntax of the previous
sentence ---
hold on tight --
this is the syntax
for a sentence in the Age of the Grid,
when sentences need to be
Understood across Languages.
In the Age of the Grid
SYNTAX
takes more value over actual meanings of words,
because, if we could all agree
on certain SYNTAX PATTERNS,
then we could communicate
Across Languages,
even translate
in real
time---

Let me explain a little further:

Here is a sentence pattern for theAge
of the Grid:
(I'd call it the Definition Pattern):

The first half of the sentence would
be the term or concept you seek to define;
the second half
of the sentence would be
the definition.

The definition --
the second clause
(which by the way is also the dominant clause)
(The first, the term to be defined
would be subordinate,
because
the first element of the sentence would be a term known by all.
It would work as a symbol.
It would need no verb.

) ).

An example:
M&M's: a milk chocolatey mess that melts
in your mouth and not
in your hands.

A perfect definition,
a perfect
proclaimation
of what you're trying
to say to each other.

Yes, this is the syntax
of the soundbite,
the syntax
of the momentary
blink
this
is the syntax of the next
generation.

(second rule for the Definition Pattern):

The first (subordinate)
clause
is often an internationally known symbol,
like Ford, McDonalds,
or
M&M's

(centerfornewmedia )

That symbol goes in the first part of the message.

The second part of the sentence
summarizes the new message --
ie: the argument --
you want to deliver
about the first,
well-known symbol.
Thus, even as this is a definition,
it is also an argument
for a new way of looking at things.

(Advertising has taught us, too,
that these arguments change
as the needs of socity
change:



It's just the way of the world.)


~~~~mmmmmmm~~~~

A shortened, elliptical version of this Definition Pattern
is the Direct Assault Pattern,
where you don't even bother
with the
second,
dominant,
clause of explanation.
In the
DAP,
you simply take that
internationally known symbol
and mark whatever message you want
to make about it
right over its face:

(worldkarma)

This is a very direct
and
unfortunately often
brutal
way to deliver
a message.

And its a syntax that is already in use
for much of the rest
of the world.

Consider this:

( killercoke )

It's only America that hasn't figured out
that the new language
of the new Century
is already taken
root, is
already making meaning
and changing minds.
And you'd think that America would
have figured out
and learned to communicate
more tactfully,
after receiving the kind of message
they did
on a rather ill-fated September Day
some Nine Years Ago.

Attacking one's central imagery
clearly expresses
what the other culture
thinks
of that central imagery.

( cargolaw )




Yes,
we have to protect ourselves,
but
we don't have to kill them all.
They are
our brothers
They are
the lover
we need
when no one else understands
US.
They are our
polar opposites, the ones
we don't tell
the rest of our friends
we love.
They are our
alcoholic sisters,
bisexual brothers,
paranoic mothers,
all the nutty ones
the ones
the human race has shunned,
the ones we love.

( accidentalmysteries )

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So we have a choice
as the rocking sphere
swings inward
towards its magnetic
center:

a) to love the Other,
all of the
Others
who we really love
already
or b) to shun
them
completely,
even knowing
that the other
will always
be other and
honestly be
other
for US,
we who need them
to hold us together
so we might be
one.

(Astronomy Picture of the Day

2002Nov25 )

read the letter

* 

I'm an absolutely miserable blogger.

When I write,

I write in abundance.

When I don't write it's because my mind is

a blank,

an empty page waiting for the words to form.

Blankness is frustrating.

Sometimes it's far more useful

when a creator at least has

a mold,

a model

of some kind
in which to shape
the message.

* * 

( firstschool )

Remember when paper looked

like that?

When the challenge of writing was not

to produce meaning,

but rather,

to produce shapes within a prescribed space?

I really loved learning to print because

it was like artwork;

it was also a little like

playing bumper cars,

or something like that.

My pen was the car,

bumping from hard line to hard line

passing through the dashed line,

grateful that it was there to guide me on my course.

There were certain letters I loved 

to produce:

SSSSSSSSssssssss

GGGGGGggggggg

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa

RPRPRPRPRPrrrrpppp

fabulous shapes that arched through those lines

in such interesting ways.

I loved looking for the points of balance:
the two corresponding curves in the
S,
the slopes of the
V

There was something else about those letters

that I love the most: 

I really felt they were shaped

like the sound they made.

I felt that writing them was the act

of finding an exact graphic representation

on the sounds I made in my mouth.

So too was the case with

XXXXXXXX

KKKKKKK

TTTTTTTT

UUUUUUU
VVVVVVVVVVV

and of course

OOOOOOOOOO

***

While I was in Greece

recently,

I had the pleasure of being with Greek people

who had some knowledge not only of how to read 

Modern Greek

but also

Ancient Greek.

It is interesting to stand at an ancient site

and hear people sounding out the letters there.

When the sounds and the shapes were put together, they even made sense to me.

And I had a little revelation.

Well, it was and is one of my funky little theories,
one of those things
that happens in my mind
when everyone else thinks
I'm zoning out.

It went like this:

***

( omniglot )


I recently met a Chinese woman who explained to me
the evolution of written Chinese.

Fundamentally, written Chinese is a series of pictographs --
each sign contains
a series of strokes
the work together to produce
an impression of a complete idea.

Originally,
the script was more recognizably pictoral,
but over time it became more abstract:

( commons.wikimedia )

This type of writing is called hànzi and I'm a little afraid
to try to explain much else about it,
because it's such a different
system for me.  I'm just beginning
to understand it.
Follow the link on the word hànzi and it
will bring you to yet another site
that explains the strokes
and the writing a little more.

Keep in mind that within this system,
one block of strokes
represents an entire concept,
and as new concepts have emerged,
different combinations of existing signs
have been used to signify those new concepts,
as you can see below,
and the translations are
amusing:

(the wikipedia article on this system
also appears to be
pretty helpful)


Notably,
when a young Chinese student is learning to write,
she doesn't use that three-lined paper
that we in the West use.

She does have paper to help her,
but notice how it emphasizes isolated squares;
it's really much more like
a grid

( cantonese )

For anyone who
has dared to read other entries
in this blog,
especially those
where the keyword is
"grid"
you can imagine I might
go a little crazy right now with the implications of this.
But I won't because that's not the purpose
of this entry.

Rather my purpose here
is to think about
the writing system itself,
how it is produced,
and the fact that it is,
at its very root,
historically,
representational.

Chinese writing began as an attempt to represent,
as an artist would,
the world that the writer viewed.
Its basis is concrete
and grounded in
observable outside phenomenon.
Unlike Western script.



or so we have thought, for a very very long time.


****

( ancientscripts )

I had had this rather fascinating introduction
to written Chinese
right before I left
on my trip to my own
ancient homeland.

And then I found myself wandering through ruins,
looking at an ancient script
that my guide claimed
any Modern Greek
could read today.

My own Greek
is long gone,
forgotten on the waves or torments
of time and history,
but I read along with my companions
as we looked at the worn inscriptions,
and I was amazed at how much
I could actually hear in my head.
My amazement continued
when I began to feel I knew why:
it was fairly easy.

Because of the way they were presented for me,
with each letter framed by a box,
I imagined that the box itself
was the frame for creating the form of the letter, and
I decided that those ancient letters were
representational.
But they did not represent
a cow, or a mountain, or a mother,
no
I decided that the boxy frame
defined the space of the mouth,
and the drawings within that box
represented where I was supposed to put
my tongue inside my mouth,
and how to hold my lips,
as I produced sound:

Θ, for instance,
told me to put my tongue
between my teeth
with my lips slightly open --
th is the sound it makes.

Γ told me to hold my tongue
pressed against
the top of my mouth,
and curve the tip of it
down to the bottom of my mouth
and press it there.

Do it, the sound you produce will be "g"
which is what that represents.

Δ is the tip of the tongue
against the front of the mouth,
a harder obstruction to that frontal space
than Λ,

Δ, by the way, is "D"
Λ is "L".

Now if you look at the chart above,
you can see the letters
changed from place to place,
but in general
my funny little rule applies,

and I began to think that writing,
as we know it in the Western World,
may actually be more representational
than we give it credit it for.

In fact, here is an alphabet
that precedes the Greek
that even more fully exemplifies
my thoughts:

( historian )


Many today may argue
(like Saussure)
that Western words and letters are
arbitrarily chosen,
and demand a high level of
abstract thinking.
I'd agree with the latter part of that
equation,
because clearly,
the Western alphabet,
just like written Chinese
has evolved over time
and moved so far away
from its original source
that  it is all abstraction and
seemingly random.
We don't so clearly
see the original pictures;

If you agree they are pictures.

And what I'm thinking is they are pictures
of the inside of the mouth:

( soundsofenglish )


graphically representing the face
and the contortions it must make
to produce the sounds
that make up words.

In a sense, reading languages that use this type of alphabet
is much more
laborious
than Chinese,
because you must be
much more patient
to read Western languages,
putting one sound after another
in a line, until words, then sentences,
then paragraphs
are decoded.

This type of writing dooms us to
linear thought.
(Linear writing and thinking
are two parts of a trinity,
and the third is
time.)

Yet, it also allows for more flexibility,
more words, and perhaps
more subtlety of meaning.

*/*

The other point my mind went to,
as I contemplated this theory
was the relationship between the scribe and the exterior world
suggested in both types of writing systems:

As I say above,
the Chinese system represents
concrete, identifiable
objects that exist
outside of the writer/scribe/viewer.
It is a system
where the writer
represents his ideas by showing the world
he observes.
There is little sense of the person doing
the actual writing.

 (Metropolitan Museum postcard)
( brooklyn.cuny )


Whereas in the Western system,
it's all about representing something
that is happening in the writer's body--
it's a very somatic and physical form of representation
located solely in the body
of the writer.
It has everything to do with the changes
that the outside world
does to the body of the speaker,
and has little to do
with representing the outside world itself.

If you get what I mean.

Historically, Chinese script is more about external objects,
representing them,
knowing about them;
while
Western script claims a subject,
and the subject is
the writer himself.

Notably,
the first-person pronoun
in Greek
is

"ego"

The Logic of The Language of the Mind of Human-Kind, Part Three

(from the Church of Panyia tis Skripous near Orchomenos, Greece

photo by me )

1.

With regards to the NPR broadcast about symbolic thought (see link a couple entries below),

a friend said this to me:

"I thought just thinking is symbolic thought!"

Quite frankly, it is, if thinking involves taking something unsaid

and making it said.

Think about it this way:

our brain is just a murky cauldron of impulses

and frequencies,

and in that sense it is a bit like the universe itself.

Once we suffer the desire

to articulate some little part of that murk,

and once we produce a 

receptacle - any kind of receptacle -

to contain the meaning we intend to convey,

we are entering the realm of symbolic representation.

Thus,

1. a ring or a bead is a receptacle to symbolize our union

and promise to another person

2. a cross is a receptacle to represent a certain branch

of religious belief

3.  painting a wall blue is an attempt to symbolize -

and hopefully produce - calm.

4.  wearing a John Lennon t-shirt signifies one's alliance to what

he has come to represent.

5.  a sigh, too, can be significant, if uttered

in the presence of others, with the intent

that it be heard

6. words, like these words I write to you,

contain a vast number of impulses

that my sad poor brain 

feels a need to articulate

7. something like a stop sign is a complex

symbolic representation, as it combines a shape 

(that shape alone has come to signify Stop!);

a color, red, which suggests urgency;

and a word.

The most challenging form of symbolic representation is words, because

words assign physical sounds,

and arrange those sounds in a number of ways, to

signify specific concepts.  Those concepts

can be either 

concrete or abstract--

table what I write upon, is concrete--

love what I feel for you, is abstract

If you think in words, then thought is symbolic representation.

But it's a higher order of symbol than a bead.

By higher order, I mean, 

more evolved.

(babypicturesphotos)

2.

The question I think is fascinating,

and the question broached by that NPR piece,

is

at what point did the human animal begin

to assign various combinations

of sounds and intonations

to both concrete and abstract concepts?

Furthermore,

at what point and how

did we begin to represent those physical utterances

as symbols - ie: in writing?

I can imagine

as with some animals and human babies,

the first attempt to produce

sound with discrete meaning

is probably the isolated sound

"ma."

(For how many cultures does some form of "ma" mean mother?)

As has been said

by Freud, Lacan,

and countless other scholars,

the beginning of language

is desire.

But there's something 

more subtle and significant than that,

where language is concerned.

Yes,

DESIRE is the 

beginning

of everything,

period.  Desire

for another, 

for the act of coupling

for the act of transcending 

our isolated bodies, 

and the byproduct

often

whether planned or not

is another,

a new, single entity.

For the first year or so 

that baby human is no more than

the human animal.

She has human needs and desires

linked to survival and satisfying

her body's needs,

and those needs are continually fulfilled,

usually

by 

ma.

True, the baby does not start saying "ma" right away.

It screams,

as an animal screams.

At the beginning of life,

the baby human animal is convinced 

that he and ma are

one entity, and 

if ma's not there,

there's something wrong in 

babyland.

The baby begins to suspect pretty early

it might be alone,

and it screams.

It screams for the sake of survival,

though ironically

in much of the animal world,

a screaming abandoned baby

often expedites its own death.

Anyway --

The point at which the baby decides to just say

"ma",

indeed,

the point at which the baby 

decides to start imitating the sounds

made by its parents

coincides with the moment at which

the baby becomes resigned

to the idea of being alone,

of being an entity separate from its mom.

Lacan calls this the Mirror Stage,

the moment at which the baby looks in the mirror

and recognizes itself as a complete being,

and at that point the baby begins

its excursion into symbolic representation,

and socialization.

As Ferdinand de Saussure said,

the symbol represents anything that is not present;

it stands in the place of that which is

missing,

lost,

yet to be found.

When the mom is missing,

you say "mom."

When your cat is missing,

you post a sign on a telephone pole.

When you sense in your gut that

there's something greater than you,

but you haven't seen it,

you say "God."

The question becomes,

when we move this theory and equation 

into the history of humanity,

at what point did the human species

evolve from the screaming, impulsive animal 

it probably was

to creatures that developed a complex system of representing thought?

(tvrecappers)

I would say it came at about the same time someone ate an apple.

Very shortly after the moment of eating an apple,

the first signifying act produced by humans

recorded in written human history occurred:

it was a leaf on the genitals,

an attempt to hide the fact

that those two naughty kids  could suddenly see

that each of them were 

single,

alone,

and different

Up to that point, they thought they were 

one and the same,

with each other and with God.

If you really want to go far with this,

perhaps

the story of Adam and Eve is an allegory,

but a fairly realistic one, at that,

that tells us 

the story of evolution

including

the precise moment at which

the human animal

entered the realm of symbolic representation

(thereby, making them

social,

civilized,

god-less

human beings).

NPR does Semiotics

(recipes)

While I was eating my dinner tonight,

I heard this on the radio --

National Public Radio, to be exact:

Mentally Modern

I'm kind of sad that I can't make a more illustrated link to this story.

It discusses Evolution

(oh, one of my favorite topics)

and how symbolic language

is one of the key things

that distinguishes us from animals.

I don't agree with everything she says --

she's very beholden to Ferdinand de Saussure

and other standard semiotic theories,

and an entry I want to write this week

(hopefully today or tomorrow)

addresses some of Saussure's concepts

directly.

But I just think it's thrilling that 

they're talking about this stuff

on the radio.

I love the radio.

The Logic of The Language of the Mind of Human-Kind, Part One

1.

a.

"I can be like this and drive a car!"

b.

"I can drive a car and be like this!"

These two

grammatical shifts

(patterns that are,

by the way,

fairly typical of the dyslexic reader)

shows the bipolar thinking

that occurs inside our brains

at all times.

While one side of our mind thinks:

"I can be like this and drive a car!"

the other side simultaneously thinks:

"I can drive a car and be like this!"

but, depending upon our driving abilities,

and because of the nature of our language,
we can put the emphasis on only one element of the sentence,
so we choose the element that amazes us most
to emphasize.
The difference between those two sentences
is a matter of emphasis.

Grammatically,

in English,

the first clause contains the idea that amazes us most.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

( neuroskills )

For English speakers 

and many people

in the Western World,

the first clause in a sentence

is the clause on the left,

Whether it's subordinate

or not, it is the 

favored  clause;

therefore,

the topic that we put

in the first clause

is the most marvelous in that equation, while the one

we put in the second

is the one we take for granted. 

This is because,
in the Western World,
our thinking favors

the left side of the brain,

which means

the right eye leads, like

a leading dancer in a dance;

the right eye leads best

when it leads from

left to right.

Remember that equation, if you can.

(braintraining - please follow the link to see why I chose this image!)

2.

Western Society,

for as long as we can remember,

has been a paternalitstic society --

ie:

we are being led by the left

side of our brain.)

We are being led by the left side 

of our brain because

Adam -

not Eve -

that's right,

Adam

plucked that goddamned apple

          and ate it

               even though

         God said

"don't do it."

OK, so
this seems like an extraordinary leap,
both of faith and of logic,
but

let's go ahead and imagine

the inverse of the story we've always been told:

God said:
"Don't Do It"

and

Eve

echoed "don't do it,"

because she

respected her father 

(ie: she was a daddy's girl)

But Adam

                         -- oh that naughty boy --

did it because he was kind of

impulsive and goofy, not to mention way too proud,

when that nasty snake told

him that the apple would make him

as great as God.

He knew that was not true,

because while he was part of a perfect creation, it was obvious that he was only 

half of God -- that's right --

don't forget that First Chick,

she's the other half, and

hot damn 

(Adam, the First Dude

thought when his eyes were suddenly opened by that nasty apple.
At that moment he became
the First Dude, and Eve became
the First Chick.
And he, in his insecurity brought on
by the fact he thought he was
supposed to be
a perfect entity unto himself,
thought):

she may be better than he

because

she can actually reproduce a human life,

while all he can do

is 

insert his little knob and squeeze.

OK,

that may sound crude but

imagine that that

was the thought that went through

Adam's Insecure Brain

at the moment of the Fall,

when he thought he could

Disobey God

and get away with it:

The Half of God

that we call Adam

first made the horrific mistake

of doing the thing that the Half of God

that we call Eve

knew we shouldn't do:

we shouldn't eat the apple

because

the Entity That Created Us

said so.
And then,
in his insecurity over some of the truths that were revealed,
he opted to
lie.

*****
A little background:

So at the beginning of it all,
God said:

I want to see myself and in order for him

to see herself,

they had to divide themselves -

male and female -

in order to produce

and reproduce

the world

that we are in 

because

the world that we are in

is the inverse of

God. See other

entries by me about 

Creation.

Part of dividing himself in half then involved
creating a creation
that was also divided in half
to reflect this new
impression of God himself,
who is everything,
but is also divided
in half.

3.

Now, honestly, if you're still with me, I commend you because

this all started with a 

seemingly unrelated

sentence and its inversion:

a.

"I can be like this and drive a car!"

b.

"I can drive a car and be like this!"

If God were in 

a situation

where this thought applied,

S/he would think

both these thoughts

at the same time,

the exact time,
and they
would cancel each other out,
because
God can get a little tipsy
and drive a car
and no one would get hurt,
or we'd all get hurt
but no one would care.

'nuff said about

God itself.

4.

But once God decided  to create,

he had to create

Another He, but

He can't be a He; he has to be

a shade different:=

A She.

In order to create 

another self

(if the Self, in the Case of God,

is ALL)

God had to break herself; it's

just that simple:

in half

~~~~

And the logic of the language

of the two halves of the Mind of God

might be summarized best

 in those two sentences I started with.

I Can Be                    I Can Drive

Like This                           A Car

And Drive                        And Be

A Car                              Like This

The Left Side came to dominate

the Male Mind

in the Western World

Because the Western Male Mind

understands, inherently

how to drive a car,
not to mention,
how to fix one.

The Right Side is

the Female Mind

in the Western World

Because the Female Mind

is naturally capable of thinking a bunch of related thoughts

at roughly the same time,
and being kind of artsy.
Unfortunately, this makes her appear
a bit scatterbrained

and only minimally

mechanical.

5.

Now, I know that's an absolutely horrible

generalization,

but for what I'm trying to say,

one has to accept some generalizations,

some stereotypes that,

generally 

prove themselves to be true.

This does, however, raise

the issue of sexual politics:

For the past

howeverthehelllong

the First Dude
seized the moment
and

controlled the story,

so, when confronted, he told the story the way

most men would tell

the story:

he blamed it on the First Chick.

For the past

howeverthehelllong

men controlled language because man collectively knew

that language

was the magic tool

God gave Humans 

to fix the mess He got us into when

She decided that 

He wanted to see Herself.

Language and Mind

were the gift God gave

his multitudinous manifestations

so we could bridge the gap produced

by the universe God created

to reflect his divided, unified
Self.

Man knew that,
so
He

collectively

took control of language,

told the story,

and made Woman

the guilty party.

!!!

Subsequently,
all the traits of Man
became the more respected ones
(including logic, science, and driving a car)
while the traits associated with
Woman
became ridiculed.

Notably,
a little laughing gas
generally would make
even the manliest man
a little womanly, and
sometimes,
when he's acting that way
he can do something downright genius
because he has the correct
balance of creativity and logic

!!!

A key problem, though,

is: it's getting harder and harder

to make that generalization:

sometimes women are capable of thinking
"I can do this and drive a car"

and sometimes men think

"I can drive a car and do this!"

The men who think

"I can drive a car and do this!" get into a hell of a lot of accidents,

because they keep driving

a car

and doing that,

even when it's not wise for them

to drive a car.

This is because those men

whose minds are wired a little more like a woman's (poor things)

believe, quite gullibly,

that all men by nature

can drive a car,

when, in fact,

that isn't true.

They believe it because

they read it in a book written by

some silly Dude who thought

that the art of driving a car

is second nature to 

everyone who wanted to drive a car,

and all people who would want to drive a car

are guys.

And he was wrong.

In fact, it was another way entirely:

It didn't matter who ate the apple.

What mattered was that 

they broke

a law,

the law given by God,

a simple, stupid, random law,

that He gave because

He had to;

and then they tried to cover it up

with a fucking leaf,

as if God wouldn't know

what that all meant . .  ..

(if you dare, read on.  .  . )

The Logic of The Language of the Mind of Human-Kind, Part Two

OK, you're wondering:

so what's the 

big deal?

All over the world

we may encounter

people who either think:

a.

"I can be like this and drive a car!"

or

b.

"I can drive a car and be like this!"

Generally, those who think the latter

should only drive a car

when they're sober, and those

that can say the former

should make an art of driving

 a car when they're high--

 ronniepeterson

 The problem is:

there's no real way to tell

the difference.

Not all guys 

can say the former

and not all chicks

can say the latter,

but we live in a world

unfortunately unable

to see subtlety.

 We've been living in a world

dominated by the belief

that only guys can drive cars.

pitstop

We've entered a pretty monumental shift,

they're calling it paradigmatic.

It's happened at least

once before: 

millenia ago

Eastern thought used to dominate

and the Eastern hemisphere

tends to be able to think:

"I can be like this and drive a car!"

The East reigned over the earth

for a long time

and then something happened:

the earth experienced

a seismic change

that reversed

everything.

In the Bible, that shift is best represented

in the story of when the Tower of Babel tumbled,

and the tribes of men

were scattered;

berrigan

In the speculated history of the science of geology,

it was the 

moment

when the single land mass from the beginning of time

burst in half,

along a fissure line

so enormous

that it can only be equated 

with the mirror God used

to see Himself at the moment of Creation.

both images from Rodinia  

If you've been following my logic

this long,

you may be able to make this logical leap:

the Earth itself then represents

the moment of creation

over and over again.  

We just have to see it.

If only we could see that,

we wouldn't be

so scared.

skyserver

Life & death,

the spinning of 

our Globe

within the sphere defined by our Sun,

which spins within an even larger sphere

all show us the action of

--perfection--

wheels within wheels

sciencebase

Imagine this:

very occasionally,

a certain point

on all of the wheels

align themselves

and something happens

something  perfect

and if one of the spheres

is not as perfect

as it is capable of being,

it might be doomed to go on,

on its fallible,

disposable sphere,

 maneuvering it in avatars

that were oh so perfectly desgined

to inhabit imperfection

until it either

redeems itself

or 

destroys itself,

masuteche

As crazy as this might sound,

this is what I believe

will be

the essence of

2012

All of creation

will come into alignment

and something's going to happen:

something will change

in the course of the cycle,

that will cause other changes.

We've been moving towards this for some time now:

the world is becoming more dominated

by people who are both mechanical and intuitive,

but it's hard to give up

old beliefs.

The solution we have to accept

and enact

before 2012

if we want to live in this new world 

that will no doubt 

be produced

at this time

is the absolute easiest one --

and that is this:

we have to accept that it doesn't matter

who ate the apple,

we ate it together,

male and female

white and black

straight and gay

and all shadings in between.

We messed up together:

no one's right

no one's wrong;

we all just must

simply love each other

and learn to be terrifically honest

about who 

should be doing the driving

and who

should be telling us how

to steer the course,

in all its intricacies.