Poem to Venus, to Auroras, and to Solar Siblings

We've learned clarity and confusion, order and chaos, the textures of the sky, we're using the cloud we can't be held completely responsible for, because we don't always want to be held, and when we know the difference between cirrus and Sirius, it gets more serious, unless you're Seussing us, silly goose in us, we still have to decide how much we should let them feed the ducks, because we want clean scenic routes, and you can go take a walk there if that's what it's about, we might be past the moon by then, in the grade of ten or eleven I wrote a science fiction short about colonizing Venus, it will take longer than Mars, but how much more romantic and poetic? Not that we should colonize, but to continue with the sci-fi, it'd be more like the Enterprise, and they found water on Mars, and Venus still has an ozone, so imagine what potential there could be for us!! Some kind of extraterrestrial forest, the possibilities of this life should never bore us! Au contraire, we should stay there, and continue to explore, learn and share, grow our knowledge of torus fields, auroras, and stegesaurus, integrate, conglomerate and realize our destiny may well be to imbibe healthy flourishing life to whatever environment discovered, if it is balanced and harmonied then leave it untouched, but if more can thrive, we should encourage our solar siblings hive to be inhabited by as much native growth and development as is beneficial, remaining judicial

Aperspectival Renown

Translucently lucid membrane, fluid and staying (in)sane, 
stained glass window pane until I make my breathtaking entrance, 
take a breath -
sustainable in trance-like minds, 
I'm thankful for like minds, transmitting insight in-flight, 
it's been night, we're alright, and apparently care 
Children've inherited New Blue Worlds 
and can have the keys to train dragon's lairs 
if they keep all their hairs they lose their heirs,
and we'll lose our errors
The accidents were happy as it so happened, 
and the buttons to irrevocable damage got closer 
and equipped with reverse buttons so we can better guide this ship together in the moment, 
Yes, we're moving, going together, grooving, is it surprising how well we're vibing? 
Cuz we're imbibing knowledge to the Enterprise of X-change, 
and intra-physical awakenings to intra-terrestrial fellow beings of sound 
are renowned and repeated, pleated not depleted 
and it's not so fancy you can't eat it, so be at ease, 
Together we can be pillars of strength 
To those looking up to us not too far above the ankle, 
And maybe we can realize we've only just begun 
To get the hang of this aperspectival thing


Happy Friday to all Beings
Chromation

New Day

perceptually speculate your paradigms,
to get the hang of shifting your mind

Stories and Updates from a Cultural REcyclist

Hiya, Happy Wednesday!! 

This following writing was written about 10 days ago, and gives an account of my experiences from that point back to my accident in Bandon, OR and carrying up to a little bit after Thanksgiving. Today, I just came back from beloved  Fairfield, IA and slept most of the day after staying up late last night into the early hours of the morning talking with my good friend Barbara about life, Integral, love, Integral Feminism, cross-country cycling, plans for Cypress Villages, and much more.   :::      

        So I’ve been back in Kansas for 2 weeks and 3 days, after being hit by a drunk driver in Bandon, OR on HWY 101 going south along the Oregon coast, life-flighted to Portland for a tibia repair surgery putting a titanium rod into my leg, re-aligning my tibia bone; healing with my wonderful, generous friend Carla at her awesome home in Portland; meeting up with Newport, OR buddies (fellow mushroom hunters, music makers, and life lovers) and road-tripping with them from Portland to Newport; spending a night, great day, and morning in Newport in a home just off the beach where I could see the ocean from the living room window, open a window and hear and smell the ocean and got to talk with a man who had worked on one of the first CAM (Computer-aided manufacturing) machines in the early 1970’s, was a neighbor to Ken Kesey, and went to a number of his more-organized-than-expected swar˜es;  taking a bus to Coquille and healing at the magical Mountain Homestead cob village for about a week; taking a bus back up to Portland on November 14^th for a follow-up appointment at the knowledgeable, friendly Emanuel Legacy Hospital on the 15^th; then taking a plane to Las Vegas for a short layover, and on to  Kansas City, MO airport (MCI).

        It has been good times in Kansas, coming in to Overland Park, KS where I was raised (born in Bakersfield, CA) and visiting family, friends, and neighbors for the first time in months. I was gone last Thanksgiving and Christmas, in Japan, looking for English-teaching jobs, and this year I had planned on cycling/working in Oregon or California, and so my family was very happy for my surprise holiday presence this year.

        We had an excellent Thanksgiving- a meal with all the trimmings, from white & dark turkey down to sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. My brother came in town from his Minneapolis, MN college and it was good to see him too.  I ate at the “adult” table this year, due to some planning fluke, and had great conversation with everyone that continued on after dinner with my Uncle’s Gary and Mark about everything from legalization (yep, that kind), to racial issues locally, nationally, and globally, to non-profit organizations. One thing I learned from my Uncle Mark, a veteran and veterinarian, is that not all of the “Adopt a Shelter Animal” organizations that ask you to send in money to support animals brought in off the streets spend their donations honestly, something that is pretty bad in my book. I saw Harry Potter 7 Part 1 with my sister, cousin, and parents and it was very dark (as to be expected) and very good. 

Dalai Lama Day, May 18, 2010

Dalai Lama Day was amazing AMAZING and beautiful. The morning was cloudy/overcast when we left at around 5:30am to drive to Cedar Falls, IA and as happened when I saw him speak in Japan, by the time we were in his general vicinity the weather cleared and it was beautiful. I rode up with my new friends Jenny, Faith, and Theresa and we had some really great conversation about sacred geometry and African art, astrology, moving beyond the role of the victim in racism, the practice of some form of spirituality being more important than adhering to one specific religion, Jenny's growing up in Waterloo (practically a twin city of Cedar Falls), the power and lasting benefit of meditation, and much more. By the time we got to Waterloo we were incredibly tuned in and energized and we could feel the goodness permeating the town as we lined up to get into the stadium.

The Dalai Lama was speaking with four other panel members who were each participating in some degree of social reform in Iowa. There were none of the musical/ceremonial processions that introduced His Holiness in Japan, but it seemed a little more to-the-point in a place like the midwest. There was some nice music playing over the speakers as everyone was being seated.

His Holiness (H.H.) said that in our educations we should have moral education. It should not be a religious moral education only, because some people do not follow a religion and lead a secular life-style and they can also benefit from a moral education. He also said that we are PEOPLE first, and that second comes race, gender, religion, sexuality, nationality, etc.

One of the panel members was highly involved in quelling domestic abuse. He said that in Iowa they have formed a group of men who are against domestic abuse and violence against women and they work as a group to put positive peer pressure on the community to make domestic abuse and violence against women in effect... uncool. What a concept!!

Afterwards, I got some wonderful prayer flags for the farmhouse. Then, we went to a delicious Chinese restaurant that reminded me of the one I visited with my family in Toronto a few years ago. So good!! We stopped in Waterloo so Jenny could visit her parents for a few minutes and then we drove back, with more conversations about sacred geometry and permaculture, organic farming and our future plans for gourmet compost on Cypress Villages. (Which I carried out with Faith and Nick the next day.)

Gratitude. Love.

Visions in Viridian

Green begins to mend the popped seams in the land of a thousand heartbreaks (where the human beat was assumed to be pre-programed for an industrial age inferiority complex, the trance of the train tracks de-railed compassion, following in the evolutionary footsteps of our large lumbering lizard brethren, lazy in a cock-pit fantasy of continuous consumption, yet bound to be bound; parenthetically found) to be reunited with youthful ancient dreams, re-aquainting each other with our synchronistic synaptic paths and Arteries now occasionally overlook the mechanical tracks as we smell fresher airs of contribution and reciprocity, exhaling change back into farms of wind and enriching our soil, sun-soaked squares carry the soft hum of electricity pulsing softly as the sounds of the snarling CO2 combustion machines begin to fade away, fade away ... fade away... now kept on display as heirlooms of achievement, toyed with for curious mind's release- as a sideproject, the sounds of the forest and the prairie start returning to the edges of infrastructure, cars swish smoothly by, and light rail allows for brighter skies, less interrupted by the rumbles of jet engines, the trees and plants have started listening to each other again

Freewrite #2 8/31/ ('99?)

This short story was written during a class I had in high school called Writer's Workshop, during a regular practice of the class called a Freewrite, wherein our class would begin with a 15 or 20 min. session that involved a piece of paper, a writing utensil, and whatever you wanted to write. And there was usually some music, too. It was part meditation, part pure expression, and I credit it nearly single-handedly with my development as a writer. As I've mentioned before on this blog, I'm mainly a poet, but here is a rather entertaining short story piece of my juvenile literature.

Once upon a time there was a squirrel. His name was Alfred. Alfred was a pretty normal squirrel, except for one thing. Whenever there was a full moon (no, he didn't turn into a werewolf-squirrel thing) he would get amazing superpowers. How he was so fortunate no one knows, but he was of a special breed of super-squirrels.

One day poor Alfred was crossing the street trying to prepare a stash of acorns for the winter when out of the blue a reckless teenage driver on his way to school ran a stop sign and crushed our super squirrel into the asphalt. Why not use his super powers, you ask? Well, because it's not a full moon yet dumbass. But Alfred was in luck, tonight there would be a full moon and his eye that didn't get run over had caught the license plate number of the reckless teenage driver: WATCHIT.

The full moon began to peek out over the roof of the house whose yard Alfred's tree was parked in. He could feel the positive energy of the moonbeams recharging his power (and scaring away all of the maggots that had bothered to pay his decaying body a visit). In one great blast of moon powered energy Alfred sprung from the asphalt, rejuvenated. Now it was time for action.

I would like to end this entry with a quote by Stella Adler. "Life beats you down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."

There's escapism, and then there's an insane skillful playfulness that pulls you into euphoria and beauty and actually accomplishes something. That is all.

!SLAM!

This is a poem I wrote quite a while ago. A little curious to look back on since I was in a car accident about a year ago, and when I wrote this I had never been even close to being in a car accident. There's also a nod/pun to Slam poetry in the title which seems a little smart-ass considering the subject matter in retrospect. You decide. All in all, it amazes me what imagination can come up with and I give thanks to the greater powers that involve me with it. Thanks for reading. Love.

Poetry pouring out as binary code

Poetry pouring out as binary code:
initiated by Spirit, interacting with mind,
integrated with machine,
flowing through fingertips touched to keys, popping into appearance as text,
turned out into the physical realm coded by binary
to be bounced back into textual visualization
for other integrated mind machine participants:
Poetry pouring out as binary code.

Goodbye to Gaia.com

The website Gaia.com is shutting down. It began as a site called Zaadz, which is Dutch for "seeds," and an honorable idea of being a community and network site for spiritual, progressive, and artistic minded people. It still seems to be pretty active today, the reason for the site closing being noted by the owner as the "current economic conditions." I really enjoyed the site initially- I had a few friends that signed on at the beginning too, there were some good questions posed for website discussion, and I was able to reconnect with old friends from the Rime Buddhist Center. One of my favorite things about Gaia was the tag names underneath the members' given names. They read things like, "wakingdreamer," "~SmAsHInG dUaLiTy~," "Tantric YoginiShaman," and "Post Metaphysical Punk." I think that many of these names pointed to individuals' true higher aspirations and some were even trans-religious, combining practices such as Yoga and Shamanism, Buddhism and Taoism, which demonstrates the zeitgeist of people looking to integrate spiritual practices together to form an even larger picture of what God and Spirit means. Another highlight on the site was my friend Michael Garfield's page and blog, containing essays on topics like Cymatics (the study of the visual patterns that sonic vibrations form on surfaces and in three-dimentional objects) and the Rosslyn Chapel, Integral Art, and the classical minimalist composer Arvo Part. I think that all of these essays and more will still be able to be checked out on Michael's myspace page: myspace.com/michaelgarfield. And, from my humble Gaia page, I've archived my only blog entry, about the death of Bob Nash, the last connection to the Beat Generation that flourished in Big Sur. He died about two weeks and two years ago.

And with this, goodbye Gaia, glad to meet you.

A Beautiful Beat Poet Passes On

Posted on Mar 6th, 2008 by Chris

Hello friends,

Somehow I came across this lady's online journal entry with her personal account of the death of Bob Nash, "the last connection to the Beat Generation that flourished in Big Sur and the Carmel Valley after WWII." This lady, Susie Bright, and her friends carried Bob's body, craddled in sheets and tucked in with rosemary, up a hill from his residence to the road to meet the man from the mortuary. Here is a link to the article; the photos are incredible: http://susiebright.blogs.com/
And here is a poem:

Upon Meeting Bob Nash, 1964 by Ric Masten

one wonders
about an eccentric
content to live and work
in the claustrophobic confines
of a tiny camper shell
truckless
perched on flimsy redwood piers
and in terrain so enormous
distance is measured
in light years

the word
on Partington Ridge is vertical
horizontal
only on warm summer evenings
sprawled in the dry grass
mesmerized
by a towering uncloaked sky
hushed by the size of it all
this
while at my elbow
a monkish little guy
talks my leg off
piling the verbiage up
until there isn’t
nor will there ever be
a crock
large enough to contain it all

of course

the same thing can be said
about the human heart
and love
which gets us to the place
where Bob lets us see his art
pen and inks
so minimal and microscopic
they might be easily ignored
but in the right light
if you focus
the sparseness and simplicity
takes you aboard
until you find yourself
in league with molecules
closer to zero
than you have ever been before

lines as fine as these
can only be drawn
by someone who knows
precisely
how many angels can dance
on the head of a pin
and realizing this
one wonders

Peace and Love Everywhere,

Chris

African Shamanic Staffs

..Tibra & Mtwalu..

New Photo Pieces

Here are a few photo pieces I've been working on recently:


This one's title is "Sometimes Spiderwebs Are Tree Branches When You Get Closer."





The title of this one is "Planetary Greeting."



*disclaimer- photoshop was only used for touch ups

Three Cheers for Escher!!

This guy is amazing. What genius placement. I really feel like I'm looking into his head.

PFX-54

Here, friends, is a short story. I'm not usually a short-story man, I mostly spin poetics, so please forgive my intentional lack of adhesion to prose-ology.


the man had an 800 pound silverback gorilla on his. . . back. and a dog at his feet that was always cold because the damn gorilla used all the electricity. and so it went, monotonously each day stretching out like a scroll of a to-do list as long as an interstate highway. if it wasn't for the gory, greusome, chopping up and maiming of small animals that he did with a large machette on saturdays and sundays in a large field of dead grass just over the hill from the traintracks, his life would feel completely meaningless. the flies were a whole other matter entirely.

being that his father kept, in the backyard, a compost heap of all of his mistakes ever since he could remember, when he finally moved into his own place, he figured he would do the same. he had become comfortably numb, an orangutang, wit dulled to a spoon- too big for the bowl.

his actual power was only matched by his fear of his true power, which he met one warm, foggy night while he was driving to his parents' house, alone. the fog was so heavy that he slowed down and turned on his low beams, creeping through the thick fog. just at that moment an ominous, menacing, ghoulish shadowy form lurched out from a blindspot that had been created by the limited nature of his feeble, man-made headlights and the utter charcoal blackness surrounding the area not lit by these incompetent lights causing him to explode in a fiery burst of shock that split seconds into trillions of tiny shards and wracked his body with such a fierce terror that the instant after it was felt he began to repress it. tires screeched, mouth contorted, eyes bulged. and as the thick, rolling fog momentarily cleared, the heinous beast came into view: a young deer, slightly startled, but clear-eyed, it jumped back into the night, a silent little gallop.

TechnoLogic. Move it, make it, chop it, break it, cut it, shape it....

“I think technology has its own agenda. The question I am asking myself is what does technology want? If technology is a child, a teenager even, it would really help to know what teenagers want, in general. What are the innate urges, the inherent bias, the internal drives of this system we call technology? Once we know what technology wants, we don’t have to surrender to all of these wants, anymore than you surrender to any and all adolescent urges; but you can’t buck them all either. WILL these things technology wants happen? I believe they want to happen. What we know of technology is that it wants to get smaller (Moore’s Law), it wants to get faster (Kurzweil’s Law), and my guess is that technology wants to do whatever humans do (Kelly’s Law). We humans find tremendous value in other creatures, and increasingly in other minds. I see no reason why robots would not find humans just as valuable.” -Kevin Kelly

If this interests you, then you would probably enjoy the whole conversation:

http://integrallife.com/editorial/humanity-i-and-great-google-sky

Word up.

Adding the Golden Spiral to an AQAL/Spiral Dynamics Map

Alright, here's a fun little experiment of art and spiritual/developmental science that I have put together. I have been studying the AQAL framework - a sort of map which integrates All Quadrants & All Levels, and also All Lines, States, and Types of development - put forth by Ken Wilber, for the last few years. If it sounds a little overbearing, well, it's just a map, it's not the territory. I may go into more detail in later posts if I feel like it, or people are interested, but for now, if you'd like a little overview I suggest http://www.integralwiki.net/index.php?title=AQAL. Also, I have been studying Spiral Dynamics, which is a system of organizing decades of psychological research, and was created by Don Beck as an extension of the developmental work of Clare Graves. This image up and to the right ................................................--------------------^

shows how Spiral Dynamics can be woven in with the AQAL framework to create a biopsychosocial illustration of the qualities of different stages of development. I suggest http://spiraldynamics.net/index.shtml and also the book Boomeritis, by Ken Wilber for more information on the Spiral Dynamics Intergral. This interwoven map is the one that has been of the most use for me.

As an artist, student of science, and student of geometry, I have also been fascinated with the Golden Spiral (aka the Golden Ratio) for some time. Here is my Golden Spiral (in turquoise) that I traced.---------------->
What inspired me to trace this Golden Spiral were the two straight lines that intersect at the origin of the spiral. It somehow reminded me of the AQAL map and so....

As a visual and creative exercise, I've overlayed

the Golden Spiral onto the AQAL/Spiral Dynamics map, and it's pretty fascinating, synchronistic and amazing how these 3 images fit together. What's cool is, if you look at the rectangles that

are formed by the dimensions of the continuing arc, starting at the center with the smallest, it takes 5 rectangles to get to the Archaic realm, and it hits the map right on the archaic level 1 number; then only one completed rectangle later we are at the Magic realm, hitting the ethnic tribes level 2 number on the dot; the very next rectangle charts right between levels 3 and 4, a jump that lands between the Power Gods/Egocentric realm (3) and the Mythic realm (4); continuing on to the next rectangle we are, again, right between two levels, the Scientific/Rational/Modern realm (5) and the Pluralistic/Postmodern realm (6); the next rectangle is a quantum leap type growth through Pluralistic/Postmodern, Integral (7), and Holistic (8), in fact, this rectangle ends at the outermost edge of the map, it ends at the place where a 9th realm would be... and so we are approximately at the end of our charted territory; but there is one more rectangle on this illustration: the area that this completed rectangle covers represents the space of about five and a half levels, essentially, the last two rectangles cover more space than the whole of the AQALSD map. My theory about this is that we, humans, are in tune with a sort of learning curve of evolution that we can "steer" into ever-more alignment with. It is ever steepening (if that is a made up word, it means: getting steeper). I think that each level, or realm, is circular because you exist in them going round and round like the Earth round the Sun, gathering experience. As you move up through the levels, you need to spend less and less "time" in them in order to realize them. Just to realize them, not necessarily to instantly fully realize them, though that did just happen somewhere out there, but more to be able to recognize them and tune in with them more and more quickly and easily the next time, which makes the next level that much more likely to be recognized, and the next, and the next, and then I believe the spiral comes in again by plotting out the path of someone/thing moving "too fast," if you aren't prepared for the levels and the speed at which it's moving you may spin out and have to return to a lower orbit, which is probably right where you should be if that happens, but if not, you keep riding the learning curve of evolution to higher-in-quality, wider-in-scope-and-embrace states of consciousness. And we are obviously a large influence on everything on the entire planet and our actions are tuning in the rest of the Earth with this growth. I think that each rectangle represents a sort of biological psychological spiritual piece of acrchitecture. Maybe they represent a certain amount of time/space ratio, and the smaller ones are denser amounts of time with less space, and the bigger rectangles contain less time, and there is more and more space. I'm up for ideas, I'm inspired.

May All Be Blessed by Visions in Tune with Infinity.

Before Beginnings and Endings

God, you were here before this,

before us, before me, before

light & dark, before they started

pavin' over parks, before the

larks and hummingbirds, before

time and other dirty words, before

sounds and drug dogs barkin loud

though tennements, before pictures,

before anything venemous,

before the first flex of technology

that led to jet engines, before games

& cowboys and indians, before enslavement

and brave men who overcame it and

put to shame the ones that made that

shit, before thugs, killers, & gangstas,

before slugs, brillo pads and bloody

coat hangers, before beginnings and

endings, torn clothes and mendings, &

before death, ascending & descending

thanks for reading.


The above was directly written as it appeared in my sketchbook, original line breaks formed from the size of the page. And here is a more literate version, punctuated as-close-to-the-way-I-would-speak-it-myself-as-I-can-get within the structure of the printed word, for those who suggested it.

God,

You were here before this,
before us,
before me,
before light & dark,
before they started pavin' over parks,
before the larks and hummingbirds,
before time and other dirty words,
before sounds and drug dogs barkin' loud through tenements,
before pictures,
before anything venomous,
before the first flex of technology that led to jet engines,
before games, & Cowboys and Indians,
before enslavement and brave men who overcame it
and put to shame the ones that made that shit,
before thugs, killers, & gangstas,
before slugs, brillo pads and bloody coat hangers,
before beginnings and endings,
torn clothes and mendings,
and before death, ascending and descending


Maybe that is clearer on the page. I still like the original version, because when I look at it, it's structure it has more of the-moment-I wrote-it-in in it for me, and I read that better.

love.

I heart Spiral Dynamics

It’s simply that we have to awaken to new ways of thinking. I believe it makes no sense to spend a lot of time attacking the current realities. It is time to create the new models that have in them the complexity that includes the older systems as a part of these larger wholes. And to the extent that we can do that, and do that quickly, I think we can provide what will be necessary for a major breakthrough for the future.

Poem from the vaults, newly rotating

catapult me into infinity watching
snakes slither to tell of the apple to

the first humans get the code, break
the code, make the code breathe

fresh air atmosphere of quickly 

scooting taxis and transport vessels

as i stay firmly planet rooted in

soil winds ask dancers to come with

them, they dance in my eyes like

fireflies twinkle and dust from a 

meteor sprinkles down on my 

shoulders, holders of scrolls keep 

them under their tongues and flicks

of lava start to warm the center 

of the universe, perfected structures

lay in their right places, like

playground equipment with childhood

memories playing on the monkey bars

and balancing on beams with fresh 

grass cut and the smell of it and

dirt mixed with sweat on hands

and i realize shelter does not have

to be a physical location, although

physical locations help too, but this

is a place of awake resting where

monks hover with me above the 

clouds bestowed with jewels of rainbow

reflections and lectures end and

schools out and i feel my pig 

in shit happy snout, God, whoever 

you are, forgive me for my profanities

they just seem to help me like handles

help me forgive myself for the pure

full enjoyment of my physical form, it

feels like food and now i know it's 

good and i don't want to go back,

but back and forth are ends of

a stretched out sircle, pulled

like a rubberband and man i want 

to stretch this out and be not

just caught by my fears and my

voice, but pushed on to new 

eras, new horizons, new sunset skies

clouds burning beautifully and taking

my outside in and my insides out

gets good blood flowing fresh and

new and i hope i never stop going 

and growing and standing up to

wake my legs up and give 

myself a hand forgiveness is so

simple whenever words run themselves

in sircles or into walls of reason

built over seasons but new seasons

arrive to free men

i spelled circle, "sircle," because i wanted to continue the contemplation of: "back and forth are ends of a stretched out sircle..." get it? okay.

thanks for reading

.Endnote. My good friend Ryan McBee, writer for presentmagazine.com, has been gracious enough to collaborate with me on the "sircle" contemplation. This can be found at his new conceptual/actual blogspace: http://suitcaselegs.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/a-reply-to-romagnitross/

Love and Happiness