on Agape.

What I have discovered in this life, is that no one wants or respects something that they do not have to work for. Even from their God. That is why people have to count beads, pray facing a certain direction at certain times, spin around in circles wearing white, live according to some special creed, attend church always – the human race cannot simply accept “agape”. You must earn God’s love. You must be a specific person, strive to act according to set social rules, you must work for God’s love. If it is free for everybody, it is not worth anything. It is not respected.

So to be Agape in one’s life, is to be ostracized by the Human Race. It is against human nature to respect what is freely given. To give back, when nothing is required for the love you receive. Even from your God, you must make up stuff to do to be required for the love you receive, in order for you to respect it.

It is a strange and sad race, for this.

I have distilled…

I was just clearing off some stuff from my hard drive and old emails and such and came across this. This is an email I sent out to a group of friends back in Grinnell ( I think I like it b’c it’s kinda true, haha)

“SUBJECT: SLUUURP!

I am not real. I do not exist.
I am a figment of a selective group’s collective imagination.
I am the god and I am the devil — I am the mirror of a collective soul.
I have distilled the holy waters and served them up with bourbon.
I have taken a collective form from individual imaginations and distorted it to my own liking.
I have a personality which consists of collective traits from a selective group of individuals.
I am the experiment that is your conscious experience, given separate form.

Which is to say . . .

I need to test my email because it’s been giving me strange messages today. Thanks.”

love song for an insomniac

Sleep and breath

And the rivers wash over me

The night sky above shines every star as equal

The waters calm

The night is still

The air is cool and fresh

Sleep and dream

And let the world be silent

Sleep and slip from existence

Tonight.

5 minutes in the life of…

5 minutes in the life of…

Someone asked me to post this here, an incident from Portland, so:

The Set-Up (needed knowledge): the upstairs bathroom is diagonal from my bedroom, so I can generally tell what’s going on but it still takes a few steps to get there. The doorway to my room has a small child gate across the outside so I can have the door open and the cats stay in, the dog stays out. This is helpful information as I sometimes forget it myself.

So it’s a Saturday night and I am peacefully standing in the bathroom at the sink washing my hands when Something Unknown in the Universe causes my roommates’ “ConAir 1800″ hairdryer to leap from its position on the back of the toilet: landing perfectly on the edge of the small wastebasket, turning itself on. It then proceeds to blow-dry everything which was not wet in the wastebasket. So I let it dry my hands and then I, being unfamiliar with blow dryer technology in general, attempt to turn it off. . .turning it on “High” instead which startles me which startles the dog who startles the cats who knock over Everything in the room scrambling to get away from whatever the hell they think is happening. Toby [cat] vaults off the stereo remote (which was on the bed) as he jumps across to the far side and ducks for cover. This last event causes the already playing stereo to suddenly get very, very loud. This sends me rushing across the hall to the room to turn it down and in my hurry I (of course) miss the child gate . . .tripping over it and landing with a very large THUD on the floor before crawling to the volume control. I turn it down to hear a knock on the door . . .it’s my next door neighbor wanting to know what the Hell kind of party I’ve go going on in here and I had to explain it was just the hair dryer. I don’t think she believed me. This was my first introduction to her. . .
So now our neighbor has me pegged as some partier . This is humorous because at the time both my roommates were out living-it-up while I had stayed home on a Saturday night to read.

Actually, in general, I think my roommates are becoming slightly frightened of leaving me at home alone. The one and only night they were both gone for the whole night the next-door neighbor did something to unclog their drain. That’s great, except. . .
I am sitting on the couch talking with a friend in Atlanta when I happen to notice there’s a geyser in the kitchen. Odd place for it. Whatever they did sent a column of water ( ) shooting straight up out of our drain. My mind flashed back to various The Lost Boys and Poltergeist plumbing scenes faster than I could move off the couch, thus making my first instinct to run like hell. However, I caught myself and forced myself toward the kitchen only to find a Very Large Wave swhooshing across the floor toward the laundry room to attack my basket of just washed clothes. So I had to run upstairs for towels (thus sacrificing the basket of clothes = *sigh*) for a feeble attempt to contain the situation. The “situation” laughed at me, of course. So I ended up with a large number of sopping wet towels and a new pool, fountain included. When it stopped a moment later I realized what was in the volcanic spew = ONIONS (cue: Gypsy’s ALLERGIC). After my miserable towel-containment failure I decided not to even chance getting a rash and had to leave the aftermath for the roommates. So they came home the next morning when I was sleeping to find a somewhat destroyed kitchen and a large, unexplained  bunch of soppy wet towels. They weren’t upset, just confused.
I might add that being new to the townhouse, I had no idea who to call to fix the problem, and could get no answer at the neighbor’s door. *sigh*

..

Dreamhost review

Pandora

Note: this is one of my favorite things that I have written…that NOBODY else ‘gets’ or likes. So I’m posting it anyway (haha). I love it (I’m not ashamed to say), don’t care that nobody else does :”)   ~ G

————————————————————————————-

Pandora’s box opens wide,
and the world springs out. . .

Cardboard boxes, plastic chairs,
and concrete buildings
fill the air
tar and asphalt everywhere.
Computers build our history
and numbers are given to you and me,
and Crime becomes our Goddess.
Creatures from beyond our mind
crawl out  from the Box to find
their own…new…Prehistory.
Shadow’s from beyond our grave
have now become our Mortal slave
…and we our folly Masters.

To shut this Box,
we kill in vain
and shout out every Mythic name
and Death becomes our enemy.
We build our castles of
glass and sand
knowing well they cannot stand
but Nature is our sin.
Pandora knew, but chose to dwell
in a modern information hell
that we, her offspring, keep.

My number is my History
and everything that I will see
of her…grand…Creation.
But why I ask, and ponder deep
was Pandora given this box to keep
with such a feeble lid?
Can it be, curiosity,
is not the sin that we perceive
but Eden in a well?
The tortures that we mass spoon-feed
are the only things our Monsters seed
but if we stop the One with heart
the other must then fall apart
and now begins…Serenity.

NeverWas

everything that was
isn’t
and the never will be that was
has become
and sitcom after sitcom
you sit here and stare at me
waiting for me to Be
but deep down under
the cement and pavement
of this numb world that I’ve
begotten
is something more green and beautiful
than whole
and the everything that isn’t
may yet become
but only if I stand upright
for once
just once
for you
and no shout loud enough
could be heard by all
so time now, to stand
time now, to kneel
before and beside you
and never think again
of That.

The Game (Part I)

The Game – pt I 

random memory: I remember when I was a kid, in 5th or 6th (maybe) grade at Mitchell elementary in Phoenix, recess was a great adventure. You see, I was a bit of a tomboy. This meant that while all the other girls were busy giggling and gossiping I was running with the boys. Literally. We had this elaborate (so-seeming) Game set up that consisted of one group of Monsters (i.e. “bad guys”) and one group of Hero’s (i.e. “good guys”). As soon as recess began we would split up into the two groups, in a process that, unlike the painstaking Sports team-choosing techniques, was based on “I’m a Monster” “O.k.” “I’m a Hero” “O.k.”. ..and we always split up with more or less a good number on each side. About 10-15 of us would be playing, and there needed to be at least 3 or 4 Hero’s…the rest could be Monsters. Actually, though, I usually ended up being a “Hero” because they all said I was so good at catching them that I was needed…which was probably true [gloat].

The basics of The Game were this: it was the job of the Monsters to generally be bad and taunt us (the Hero’s), throw China Berries at us, whatever, and then take off running. Our job, was to catch them. Once we had caught and tackled them down, we had to escort them across the field to the baseball-diamond dugout [which was a fenced-in area] and throw them in the “Cage” [alternately called the "Jail"], and keep them there. Sometime posting a guard, but often forgetting that part. So, of course, once the Hero was far enough away, off the Monster would go running and yelling again and the whole process of trying to catch that one particular Monster started all over.

Though this may all seem so simple, it was quite some organizational task most adults couldn’t deal with. A large amount of co-operation was required on the part of the Hero’s in order to get anything done. You see, the Hero’s would frequently group together in packs of 2 or 3(like a posse) to catch One Monster. . .often with an elaborate attack plan. Then one would be sent escorting It back across the field to the Cage, sometimes changing-off escorts halfway if another exhausted ally came up to help…and off the first escort would go again to join the other 2, or some other group of Hero’s, in the chase. There were constant alliances forming, or breaking away independently to track One Particular Adversary who had perhaps escaped The Cage they themselves had put them in. Ooo…we were mortal enemies on the field…or great allies the next recess.

Also, sometimes some guys who weren’t originally playing would join-in suddenly and come running to the rescue of one lone Hero…charging in from other directions on the Monster. But occasionally that would work the other way, to. Generally Monsters didn’t gang together, but every so often they’d surprise a hapless Hero. I remember one day I was bookin’ after Ralph, the most menacing-seeming and badest-seeming Monster of them all, and then suddenly two others came rushing in from the sides at me. Ralph apparently saw it coming (he being in the front), and instantly reversed direction (he was good at that)…I skid in my tracks so hard I fell down backwards for a moment (it was muddy, = I was muddy), then scrambled in reverse so frantically I must’ve looked like Shaggy or Scooby-Doo! And if the Monsters happened to take a Hero prisoner, they’d toss them in the other dugout…and this was a terrible disgrace for the Hero. After all, they should be out there doing good! And for some reason the Monsters were always better at posting guard [strange, since our groups teamed off more or less randomly]. I once made a glorious escape by climbing up over the top of the dugout (which was very high! But we took this game very seriously) because I knew the kid guarding me couldn’t climb a fence as fast as I could [his feet were too big]. ….

The Game (Part II)

The Game – pt II 

I don’t really remember any side *winning* that game much. You see, to win the Hero’s had to capture every last Monster and keep them in custody for the rest of recess; or the Monsters had to *All* be free at the end of recess. I remember Ralph once yelling “We win! We win!!” just as me & some other guy slammed him into the fence and took him custody…narrowly escaping losing! While it may seem like the odds of the Hero’s winning were slim, the Hero’s sometimes being *greatly* outnumbered…all Hero’s were more inclined to work all the harder at the task (think of a dog rounding up sheep…). So often the Hero’s were ahead in the Game at the end of recess. In general, though, it was some form of a draw with some Monsters in custody and some free at the end of recess.

There was one time when I was a Monster and I was bookin’ across the field at TOP SPEED….90-miles-an-hour-for-a-kid…and all (I thought) the capturers were far behind and I was *almost* Home Free [oh yeah, that's another thing: the tetherball courts on the opposite side of the field as the dugouts were the "Safe Zone" where we went when we absolutely Had to catch our breath. Once a Monster made it there, the Hero's just took after some other Monster that needed to be caught], but then Billy (the cute boy of the school) came from Nowhere and slid in on my right with his foot out (I think he was just trying to stop when he realized he was going to crash into me at Full Speed), tripping me. This is the one and only time I’ve ever done a full somersault in the air. The entire world rotated all the way around before I landed on my back…fully knocking the wind out of me (which is a scary feeling). This actually didn’t hurt me a bit, but when I got air back I started laughing so hard –partly because the world looked so funny whizzing around like that, partly because I thought it was so funny that Billy just came sliding in from Nowhere, and partly because I was just so happy to still be Alive– that my eyes were watering [any of you who've seen me laugh really hard, know about this]. So everyone thought I was crying. Poor Billy was apologizing So Bad and the entire playground gathered around me because they all saw it, and thought I was in some great amount of pain. So they all sortof pulled me over to the recess-teacher…with me laughing so hard I could barely walk or breath…and many kids asking “Is she laughing or crying?” “She’s laughing” “No, she isn’t, she’s crying” etc and me trying to tell them I was laughing but I was laughing too hard. I was finally able to calm down a little and convince the completely confused teacher that I *was* laughing and was Fine. Poor Billy, though! The kid was practically in tears himself thinking he had sent me to my grave. …….

The Game (part III)

The Game – pt III 

You know, around that same time in life we were told that the President was pushing for stricter P.E. courses in schools b’c we kids needed to get more exercise! Actually, though, a thing to note is that our playground was a half-mile across…I know this b’c our P.E. teacher [who was also the Vice-Principle, big mistake] Mr. Capps (“The Evil Master”) was always wanting us to jog across it twice so we had run a mile. But I could never do it. I’d get about half-way across, then be all exhausted and have to walk the rest. But a few minutes later when Recess came. . . maybe Mr. Capps should have observed The Game once or twice…then he would’ve learned to yell “Monster!!” ;)

In general, though, our Game seemed to confuse the teachers b’c, as I said, I was usually a Hero. This meant that I was out there chasing after the boys, and not the other way around. Some Adults tend to view just about everything in some sexual context. I guess they thought the boys were spose to be chasing the girls and picking on them b’c they had crushes on them. But we, The Game players, never paid attention to that sort of stuff. WE just had fun. I draw this from conversations with the teachers in the “Safe Zone” [the teachers were at least smart enough to recognize there was a place we momentarily slowed down] asking me *why* I was chasing the *boys*, why they were chasing each other, what was going on…and me never quite able to explain: –partly b’c I was just catching my breath, and partly b’c as a kid my brain was always racing along much too fast to get all slowed-down with Words! Sometimes my brain still tries to spit things out faster than my mouth will allow and then you see me get all muddled. Occasionally though, it goes the other way around and that’s worse!

Anyway, I just thought I would share a memory of my life to let you break from yours for a moment, but now I must deposit you back in it. I hope I didn’t just waste your time. :) …you may now return to planning your corporate take-overs…