n E exponentiation ezine [4.0] ISSN 1555-693X http://www.corrupt.org/zine CONTENTS I. News II. Culture III. Features IV. Self-Sufficiency V. Literature Against all odds, trails and tribulations, we stand firm against the raging tempest of the world around us. Where the earth is defiled, we will step in and fertilize, where the spirit is ravaged, we will step in and purify, where the cultures lay in ruins, we will step in and build. One of the great virtues of living in the Kali Yuga is the potential to acquire strength and growth through battle. Growth occurs best on the battlefield, be it physical or spiritual, because challenges spark creativity, spirit and evolution. The goals of Exponentiation are to reintroduce the sacred, to rebuild the broken castles and visages of the primordial way of understanding and to replant where greed has left ruined soil. Exponentiation is dedicated to the heroism that still remains in this world. ------- News ------- Skateboard Art Kick Flips Rembrandt October 3rd, 2006 LOS ANGELES, CA - Los Angeles, the land of pristine skyline and shimmering rivers, will not be wearing another cape of beauty on its shoulders next week as the famed Rembrandt painting "The Night Watch" has been removed from its world tour visit to the J. Paul Getty Museum. The reason? Skate Punk Art week at the Getty. Officials have stated that the scheduled date of arrival for the Rembrandt piece conflicts with the Skate Punk Art week's massive BBQ and board art fiesta. Because of the massive popularity of the Skate Punk Art week it has become, in the words of Museum Director Donald Hersh, "artistically, spatially and economically unfeasible to host both events simultaneously." An executive meeting was held at the Getty Center on September 27th to decide the fate of the two events. Director Hersh gave the following comments on the decision making process, "it was a tough one, I'll tell you that. Twelve of us voted and it came to a split vote, six to six. We were about to pull straws to settle the dispute, but luckly we heard the evening security guy whistling in the halls so we called him in to cast a tiebreaker. The final vote fell in favor of ousting Rembrandt, seven to six." Hersh continued, assuring the Skate Artists that their event was safe, "well we want everyone who was planning on this event for some months to take a deep sigh of relief. We are still hosting the Sixth Annual Skate Art Week. We appreciated the support of the United Skate Art Foundation for working closely with us in this dilemma. And to all those coming out for the event, don't forget to bring your appetites, there's gonna be a BBQ!" Evening security guard Luke Richardson was contacted for a comment regarding his tough tie breaking decision. He issued the following comments on a blood stained bar napkin (ed.- numerous expletives have been omitted. Nothing else has been deleted or altered in Mr. Richardson's writing and the text has been displayed in full in accordance with his demands on the back of the bar napkin): "well it wasn't an easy decision to boot Rem manz art work, ya now? I mean the guys like famous for lighting in his pictures or somthin' like that, but while thats cool historicilly en all, it's not what the kidz are into anymore...besides, I'm not even sure Remmy man could have put out some of the sweet paint lickz on the bottom of the new DC boards. I mean have you seen the shading work on the Flaming Satan does an olly board put out recently by the DC guys!! I mean [expletive], you tell me with a straight [expletive] face that you want to jam stale old smelly art in ur museum halls when you have that bitchin [expletive] in your midst...and holy [expletive] you should see some of the airbrushing detail on the new Independent truckz. Don't even get me started on that tasty line of work." Because the Rembrandt has no other location to be displayed during the week of the Skate Art festival, officials have decided that it will be stored in a large box in the Getty's basement. At the end of the week it will be shipped to Seattle to be displayed and deconstructed in a gay and lesbian coffee art house for dyslexics. -=- American Standard Announces Revolutionary Toilet October 15th, 2006 PISCATAWAY, NJ - The bath and kitchen fixtures and fittings branch of company American Standard has announced the newest creation in its line of home toilet bowls this week, handsomely titled the Tawny Wiper. Unlike American Standard's older toilet bowl models, the newest member of the American Standard family is revolutionizing what it means to take a trip to the "royal throne." The Tawny Wiper is unlike more conventional toilet bowls that sit there cold and sterile waiting for you to do something, the Tawny Wiper comes stocked with toilet seat warmers, a mechanical arm that does the wiping for you (in all the tough to reach spaces), a plug in for you ipod or mp3 player so you can listen to tunes as you go, and a latte maker so you can enjoy your favorite cup of joe while you visit your bathroom paradise. American Standard has announced that it is already taking further steps to make sure future models of the Tawny Wiper are just as revolutionary. American Standard Company CEO Frederic Poses has not let any secrets out of the bag, but has announced that future models will be fully automated with the HAL 5000 chip so that the owner of the prestigious bowl can program voice recognition, music, videos and greetings into the Tawny Wiper. Spokeswoman for American Standard Diana LeHey had this to say about the Tawny Wiper, "we here at American Standard are modest, but we can't hold our excitement back any longer. Going to the bathroom will never again be the same after the release of the Tawny Wiper. Imagine, sitting on your own private throne...and mind you we are developing some models to look like a very royal throne...and then when you make that special delivery you are congratulated with your favorite sports tune, or by that sexy little voice you programmed into the voice system telling you you've done an A-class job...now that's living the life." That's living all right, not since the bidet and the squat toilet has there been anything quite so exciting to announce in the world of bathroom engineering design. What's the price of a creation that Roman Emperors could have only dreamed of? Four hundred and Fifty Five dollars. "What's so fantastic about it," says Diana LeHey, "is that this little piece of Kinghood is going to be moderately priced for the average man. Most bowls go for about three hundred and fifty dollars. What we have is a revolutionary product that only costs one hundred dollars more than the old, cheap model toilets. Pricing it so cheap might be something revolutionary too, but we don't want to brag too much! We want everyone to enjoy our creation. Our slogan is, 'enough with having to bend over to wipe those hard to get places, lay back and be treated to a curtsey wipe and massage by Tawny Wiper.'" Perhaps like natural growing processes in the agricultural industry, wiping will be a thing of the past. Could American Standard be the Monsanto of the bathroom Industry? Only time will tell. One thing is for sure, the future of the bowl looks springtime fresh, wintertime white! ---------- Culture ---------- Music: Maeror Tri - "Myein" (1995 ND) Slow, vibrating key strokes piece together these extremely drony landscapes, shaped by ambient masters Maeror Tri - now hailed as cult legends within the ambient/drone genre. A dark layering of sound begins the album and is used effeciently by improvising the sound of a guitar string that's constantly pulled and later into the music the dark layered sounds are accompanied by several extended key tones that overlap their forerunner. Like diving into an unexpected void of emptiness, the music becomes more intense, more drony, the longer it goes on. At a certain point, strange sounds start to appear as rythmic inducers, hypnotizing the mind into a state of total esoteric mindexploration. What follows, is an openedness into soundscapes totally unknown. The monotone and persistent vibrating sound in the background becomes the basic structure, and disorted and dissonant noises become leaders, dictating where each song is going. Almost like living inside an airdrum, these noises eventually build up into an intense tribal dance and become harmonies against beautiful melodies, similar to the music of Autechre or Beherit's later ambient works. This is a welcome experience and Maeror Tri proves its undeniable artistic brilliance when the second movement of this album begins. A calm ambient key stroke is introduced as a basic structural layer, and placed on top of it is a highly emotional and almost epic vibrating drony key stroke. It may be compared to a leaf slowly flapping in the wind, or streamlined thoughts colliding between two lonely individuals in a room of emptiness. Maeror Tri uses the notion of singularity to enhance and provoke awe and love to what they wish to present; around these gently droning soundscapes exist nothing, and as such, "Myein" is well balanced and easily projected into the mind of he or she who wishes peace, but peace found within brainstorms of thoughts, memories and old wisdom. Certain points of these drawn-out keystrokes beckon to the listener and become enhanced, as found in the way the music is built up: harmonies range from dark and low, to relatively high - and when the key note has reached its peak - it brings forth a gentle resounding. Profound is the one and only word to use here. After having built up a general mood of unknown epic and strange but emotional feeling, the almost fifty-minute opus begins. Hardly expected, it starts with a myriad of melancholic and deranged noises, like twisted illusions of a dream never before experienced. A slow, dark, eerie ambient texture lies beneath it, sometimes interfering with the process of compressing massive amounts of energy into a limited space (expression), other times relying completely on the roar, and from there going back to its original state. Here we find the basic technique of "Myein," in its way of letting different drony keynotes interact as a roleplay between the dark, the high, the noisy and the disturbingly clear. Unsettling, this listening experience suddenly loses its rushing atmosphere and instead continues forward through its basic dark key notes, putting the focus on itself. Although it for a while stands on its own, it quickly becomes acquainted with overlapping synth-layers that sound like processed guitars, until the harmonies transpire into an expression of the organic and wordly: suddenly it is the all. Twisted and dissonant, these drone-driven sounds eventually imitate that of an electronic flute player beyond space and time. Maeror Tri uses this function to its advantage: it removes all outside contact with reality, and instead builds up a whole new one, only to tear it down and replace it with singularity - somethingness surrounded with nothingness. Further into this unimaginable journey, the ambient layers suddenly stop their diverging evolution and instead become two single key drones, affecting one another by what feels like ritualistic and evergrowing knowledge of something left far behind. The music therefore becomes more reflective, more certain of a way than before there was either total chaos or total emptiness. Surprisingly, this journey is concluded by a cold and desolate key tone, opposed to the warm and gentle breeze of different harmonies experienced before. It is not without reason that works by this trio of German dronists have become intensely sought after by virtually all serious ambient music lovers; their music is affectionate, careless, desolate, warm, epic, timeless, droning, disturbing - all compressed into a a single unit. While it in many ways is fit for the esoteric mind, and in most ways is too far out for most mainstream ambientists, "Myein" reflects the internal mechanisms of Universe; opposites fulfilling eachother by co-working and creating a relevant whole. Like no other ambient artist, Maeror Tri succeeds in pulling the listener deeper and deeper down until it becomes suffocated by its visions - only to discover a new world beyond the subtle ways of watching the surface, but never touching the internal and unexplored. As such, "Myein" is a daring journey into what the inside can create by itself as single influence. This ethereal work stands on its own: A masterpiece. -Alexis -=- Robert Fripp - Exposure Like William Blake, Robert Fripp is one of those figures in art who contribute so much they're constantly overlooked, in part because what they create is inscrutable to a wider audience. Together with Black Sabbath, Fripp invented what heavy metal would become through his abstract but dissonant symphonies and knotted song structures which like demi-operas navigated a course of story to arrive at sense. He is most famous for his work with prog-rock band King Crimson, but it is foolish to overlike his modern chamber music made on sustain-boosted guitars. "Exposure" was a Frippian attempt to both join and comment on music of his time, as if chronicling a history of it, and while it scrambled for that difficult beachhead -- less repetitive than rock but too repetitive for classical, mixing progressive stylings and retrofitted cliche to be postmodernly both self-critical and creative of a future -- it makes great listening for those not seeking consistency. This album sounds more like a summary of learning so far, a philosophy of beauty within tortured sound and clarity within noise culminating in spiritual peace within a chaotic and lost time, more than it is meant for casual listening; it is an event. It is not the type of album one sits down to for a simple experience, but almost has to be hoodwinked into and ends up better for it: this album grows on the listener like a routine passage to work on which dailyl noticed is newly proliferating detail. To the dismay of many it is avant-garde art with two capital A's, quirkily restless in its desire to incorporate sounds which would later find their way into other compositional styles. Its voice compositions in particular would find counterparts on middle-period Ministry albums, as its many licks and detours would be appropriated by any of a number of rock and pop bands. Although the music is softer, comparisons to punk are valid here because like hardcore punk bands, this album takes a dim view of our society's "progress," likening it via music to extraneous noise that because of its outer shell is unrecognized as valueless, since it sounds like it might be meaningful, even if it is repetitive. Fripp takes that style of sound and explodes it outward, steering the directionless time-filler toward unsettling conclusions, like a G.G. Allin of the artrock movement showing us a mirror of our empty souls, in the depth of which something -- serpent or angel or both --begins to stir. The weakness of this album, like many forms of demonstrative protest music, is its tendency toward the outlandish and gesture-heavy, which interrupts listening with drama that does not find beauty in life; Fripp is more successfully when instead of pointing out the dischordance, he uses it to make higher creations which incorporate beauty and darkness into clarity. Yet despite these jarring aspects, the music expands its depth as it is inspected, creating a tunnel into the mind of one of the 20th century's most uncorruptible advocates of Art. Two versions of the CD are included here, the original and a modern remix including tracks dropped for contractual reasons, but this reviewer prefers the first disc for its clarity of delivery. -vijay prozak -=- Dead Can Dance - Serpents Egg (1988 4AD) A trip into the mystical world of the medieval orient is the ticket offered in "The Serpents Egg" by this groundbreaking duo consisting of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry. Organs create an ambient undertone at the beginning of this album, while Lisa's voice provides an emotional overscoring, leaning towards the suffering, but at the same time upholding the reactionary opposite. Continuing on this journey, voices of different tonal levels masterfully work together in both homophonic and monophonic textures and manage to create an ultimately interesting piece of medieval spirit rarely found in other artists of similar stylings. Brendan, although in many ways fond of the positive and optimistic, surges forward with a calm exclamation of the fatal individualism that splits and severs the ties that create a strong and unified people. His recognition of this in "Severance" is clear and profound, and it is not without a sprinkle of sadness that this song ends with an emotional violin as a reaction to the problem. However, it is Lisa's performance that mostly impresses this listener - as in songs like "The writing on my father's hand", where total sorrow and hopelessness is upheld and taken to its emotional extreme - without losing its musical honesty and integrity. A background harp that leaves a small gap in its playing for an echo plays the dominant melody of the song and imaginatively seems to suggest a closed and distant room in the tower of a castle, where feelings and wishes are repressed - both physically and mentally. At an interval no longer than the despondent feelings can soak into the heart of the observer, Brendan immediately presents a reactionary piece where the modern ignorance is replaced by tolerance and an opened mind, freed from the sins imposed by those with God but without eyes to see the beauty of life. These feelings and counter-feelings are some of the things that give this album a balanced picture and leave it more in the space of dynamic change, rather than linear thinking. Further, it seems like the album itself is unconsciously divided into two separate chapters; one of suppression and reflection, and one of spiritual enlargement and celebration. Songs like "Mother Tongue" affirm this idea, as the album suddenly takes a different turn in which multiple layers of rhythmic drumming enter the music, sounding similar to bells of crystal ice blowing in the wind, and then seducing, mystical and monotone ambient tones wave the sounds into a blurred vision of a forest undergoing a magical change - all of this is later accompanied by the sound of a secret waterfall somewhere deep into the mouth of Mother Nature. "The Serpent's Egg" ends with a hopeful and optimistic vision of the future, something which probably should be seen as the underlying motivation behind this album; the pieces of sorrow and pain are included in the music to strengthen the message of the problems being addressed. The sadness on the album stems from the negative forces circulating around the medieval times, but it is reconditioned into a comment upon the modern times. What makes "The Serpent's Egg" so beautiful - apart from the well arranged musical structure and use of strings and ambience -is its profound and honest aesthetic, as well as its way of handling emotive situations, the historical past and the philosophical future. While Lisa focuses on scrutinized sorrow, pain and spiritual mystique, Brendan thereafter lifts the mood up by addressing the ignorance inflicted upon the modern soul, and instead announces a new way of living - a new life, where the past is unified by the future. -Alexis -=- Books: "Beowulf." Translated by. Kevin Crossley-Holland. 128 pages. Oxford University Press (1999) "Beowulf", regarded as one of the most important texts within Indo-European literature, is a vast Anglo-Saxon poem of epic proportions, set in a half-historical, half-mythological Germanic past. The events portrayed are located at what now is the south of Sweden and north of Denmark. "Beowulf" is the story of a man with the same name, who lives among the people of the Geats. There, his father Ecgtheow is a powerful and noble leader, son to Hrethel. One day Beowulf hears of the misfortunes that have struck the Danish ruler Hrothgar, and thereafter decides to bring some men with him, to help Hrothgar in need. It turns out that the mighty Danish hall Heorot has been under attack by a fierce monster named Grendel. This beast of nature has slain many of Hrothgar's men, and he now cries out for help. Beowulf comes to Hrothgar's rescue and manages to kill the monster with his might, strength and bravery in fight. However, not a long while after this deed, a new monster shows up in Heorot and continues to unmercifully take the bloody life of a man very close to Hrothgar. In time, he finds out that this is Grendel's mother, acting out her revenge on the mortal foes that killed her son. Beowulf sets out to slay Grendel's mother as well, which he also does. The last deed told of in the poem, is when a cruel dragon attacks Beowulf's own kingdom, Geatland. This monster spits fire across the land where Beowulf now is king, and the only chance for his people to survive, is for him to prove his bravery in a last life-threatening battle. So he does, and it is here that he finally dies in the arms of a friend in war. "Beowulf" is a very beautiful and immersive poem. Lengthy and descriptive, the adjectives are often those of celebration of the life as a hero. The poem itself could best be described as an archetype of Indo-European culture. These three events that together make up for the reading experience as a whole, set the reader into an epic past where civil wars, monsters and vengeance are part of the daily life as a warrior under the rule of a leader. The poem celebrates, not only Beowulf, but the men that travel with him and the men he helps. Hrothgar, although seemingly in a desperate need for help to save his people and kingdom from Grendel and his mother, is still described in the book as a heroic and brave man, where his old age has set in and prevented him from acting out his anger and sadness toward the threat. As such, "Beowulf" is not merely upholding one man, but instead tries to explain and have the reader engage in values that are eternal to Indo-European culture. Self-sacrifice, bravery in war, love and hate, vengeance and despise, mockery and laughter; all of these feelings and values define a period of time where people transcended their human state and sought to reach for things higher than personal comfort and material wealth. This is experienced in moments like when Beowulf and the dragon are dead, and the Geatish men take the gold from the cave where originally the dragon safeguarded it, and bury it deep down under the surface of the earth. Having seen their king sacrificing his own life for glory and heroism, they regard the treasure as mere material objects with no inherent value, and from there decide to instead honour Beowulf by building an enormous barrow on the headland to his name. As much as this is breathtaking, it is also saddening and emotive. There is a more emotional side to this poem, especially at the end when Beowulf slowly is bleeding to death, and he makes his last request as the bravest man ever to have walked the Earth, to have his men build a barrow to the memory of his deeds. One cannot hold back the strong emotions afflicted by such intense events, notably as a result of a past that the reader engages in. The fact that this epic poem can induce such strong feelings for the people involved in the text, is both amazing and understanding. "Beowulf" is written, not as a cold and pale description of suffering and death, but as an oftentimes warm and celebrative way of upholding forces of good in a time when evil forces were trying to take over. In relation to this, it might be worthwhile to mention the notable Christian influences found throughout "Beowulf". Many heroic deeds are concluded as influenced by God, and more celebrative feelings and joys go out to the same. However, as one could guess, this is not something that produces an overall negative reading experience. Although there is a certain presence of dualistic notions of good and evil, these two are defined from the aspect of Indo-European culture. Where goodness is heroism, self-sacrifice, generosity, bravery and thankfulness, evil is most often defined as destructive forces upon a people, such as inhuman monsters representing plagues or manslaughters of innocent men. However, something that should be mentioned, is that the old heathen (pagan) religions from the past are viewed by the characters in "Beowulf" as evil and up roaring against God and His kingdom. Found only as small traces from larger criticism, this fact can easily be overseen as a mere result of the belief and history of the time this poem was written. Another thing which is reoccurring throughout "Beowulf", besides the beauty and expressiveness of intense moments, is the despise for cowardice and fright instead of immediate action. Where gratitude for war gear is given, the use of and return for it, are less given. Beowulf at one point hands over parts of the gifts received by Hrothgar, to many of his closest men. However, as he will see, this is a favour not entirely to rely on being returned and taken use of. "Beowulf" condemns the treachery where men fail to oblige their heroic life and instead relapse into passiveness. Also, experienced later into the book, this is one of the main causes that lead to the tragic end for our hero. There is much to analyze and regard as beautiful in "Beowulf", as well as there are moral and cultural lessons to value and uphold for future European generations, hence its priceless value as art, historical document and living proof of times once so great and rich on human, as well as natural, understanding, that now have degenerated into passiveness, cowardice and material comfort. Where it is vague, it nonetheless achieves clear conclusiveness and self-reflection. It remains as one of the most important Indo-European literary works, and to this day baffle its vivid and curious readers with stories of unimaginable heroism, human vengeance and a strong will to live. Timeless. -Alexis -=- Aldous Huxley: A Biography by Sybille Bedford (1973, Alfred A. Knopf/Harper & Row, New York) Biographies are summations of lives; lives include ideas; thus biographies of great people are a mixture of travelogue ("and then he went to, and then she went to") and idea analysis. Sybille Bedford, while dramatic in the way most English women drive English men to homosexuality, is a talented writer and had a second-row seat to the drama, thus gives us a nicely factual biography divided by the progression in idea-scope of the writer Aldous Huxley. The 730-page behemoth is nearly comprehensive but one can tell the writer agonized over what to leave out; a full life, after all, is rarely simple and Huxley's was more of a journey than most, from middle class "post-aristocratic" origins to the disease that nearly removed his sight to a series of ideological problems as he analyzed the major source of study in his life: the future of twentieth-century humanity. While Huxley is a mixed bag, ideologically, and often failed to leave us clear statements of belief on certain ideals, he is alone with the greats (Conrad, Melville, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Mencken, Hemingway) in believing that we in the West as a meta-culture have lost our way and are heading for disaster. Huxley is best known for his apocalyptic "Brave New World," a novel of the future in which the pursuit of individual pleasure has replaced rationality and through that, created a "fair" but tedious and empty world in which characters surfeited by pleasure cannot find moral or intellectual significance to any act -- a world that, to this reviewer, scarily resembled my own or at least the destination it seemed to seek. That book, written during his 38th year, defined the rest of his career as he tried to posit a Utopia to counter the Dystopia he had not just conjectured but saw arising around him. One of Bedford's greatest strengths is that she does not characterize him as backing away from the ideas of "Brave New World," but for expanding on them, even if sometimes he has said the opposite. Unlike most writers both then and now, Huxley did not believe that greater distribution of wealth and political power would dramatically solve the problems of humanity. Although he spoke in the tokens of power manipulation common to democratic societies (Bedford gives us linguistic analysis indirectly as chapters pass, attempting to define these terms outside of their assumed meanings) Huxley had a more existential view of the human purpose and thus was not confined to either material or spiritualist viewpoints, solely; his seemingly paradoxical approach is that of a scientific mind which sees beyond the manipulation of matter, as have most of the greatest thinkers. "All that is being maintained here is that progressive science is one of the causative factors involved in the progressive decline of liberty and the progressive centralization of power, which have occurred during the twentieth century" (450) he wrote. Bedford's triumph as a biographer is making the balance of Huxley's ideas despite the ease in which they could be assimilated into the dominant trend of liberal democratic thought. Indeed, if praise for this biography has a rational basis, it is laudative of the way Bedford stitches together the scraps of Huxley-related material that remain, mating them to ideas from his books in a double helix of ideal and action. Its failing, by contrast, is in the history of the Huxleys, which is often wordy and gives us too much detail where a scene or two of profound demonstrative influence would do. Still, it's easy to forgive, since the author clearly has enthusiasm for her subject and if it's a rainy day, nothing feels better than a brick of seven hundred pages of which several hundred will contain provocative, succinct formulations of ideas. Some of this excess seems intended to balance out the explorations of Huxley's more provocative behaviors, such as his LSD-taking or perceived promiscuity or adaptation to his near-blindness, and in those difficult subjects Bedford succeeds in turning sensationalism into an exploration of the reasons Huxley indulged in such ways. She is also adept at revealing by omission the somewhat nerdly and world-confused outlook of her subject. Where the writing of this book may be admissible of critique, the information it holds is so vast that one wants to suggest it as a textbook next to Huxley's cut-and-paste book of modern spirituality, "The Perennial Philosophy" (60% of the text was derived from historical sources of spiritual information; it does not so much present a perspective as the essential data for obtaining the grounding necessary to have one). Of interest to traditionalists are three major planks of idea. First, his approach to genetics. Second, his belief in coming ecological crisis. Third, his political assessment of our future, including his belief that Europe had not only depleted itself but bought itself a future of many enemies. Huxley would be inscrutable to both a modern neo-Nazi and anti-fascist. Although he detested fascism, he also feared its opposites, both the overflowing death camps of Stalin and the pleasure-seeking vapid and tedious society of the imminent future portrayed in "Brave New World." Fortunately, this puts him in good company, since most of us both fear totalitarian regimes but recognize that since most people are airheads, totalitarian methods are necessary in some if not many cases. (It's another five years before you can say that in public, however.) Bedford expertly juxtaposes his fear for Europe, originating in his time living in fascist Italy, with his migration to the United States and the bizarre disposable culture he confronted, including its effects on his family and mental stability. This dual avoidance led him to seek a Realism that was praised his whole life, something formulated in a theory of genetic determinism: "Our fundamental physical pattern is something given and unalterable, something we can make the best of but can never hope to change" (428). Unlike almost all writers and leaders of his day (notable exceptions for Hitler and Faulkner), Huxley saw an ecological crisis looming before the world even had three billion people upon it and wrote about it, although not unopposed by a string of editors who could not visualize what he saw. "Industrialism is the systematic exploitation of wasting assets. In all too many cases, the thing we call progress is merely an acceleration in the rate of that exploitation. Such prosperity as we have known up to the present is the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital. Sooner or later mankind will be forced by the pressure of cricumstances to take concerted action against its own destructive and suicidal tendencies. The long such action is postponed, the worse it will be for all concerned...Overpopulation and erosion constitute a Martian invasion of planet...Treat nature aggressively, with greed and violence and incomprehension: wounded Nature will turn and destroy you...if, presumptuously imagining that we can 'conquer' Nature, we continue to live on our planet like a swarm of destructive parasites--we condemn ourselves and our children to misery and deepening squalor and the despair that finds expression in the frenzies of collective violence" (465). Other than a failure to connect the "freedom" of most people with their low judgment as a motivic factor behind industrialization, the above could have been written by Ted Kaczynski, Adolf Hitler or Pentti Linkola. Intelligently, Huxley was apolitical, or rather, he criticized philosophical trends and values instead of obsessing himself with the politics of the moment. World War II broke his heart in that while he wanted peace, he knew that the peace which was coming would not be a positive either, in that while he detested fascists they were taming some of the out-of-control aspects of English and American thought. Like most of the great thinkers, Huxley did not fit into a political category, and by freeing himself from such artifically polar allegiances, he was able to grasp that Realism which made his vision farsighted: "What we are paying for four hundred years of white imperialism --and how long, to all appearances, we shall go on paying! Asians and Africans do not forget and are so far from forgiving that, if they can thereby do some harm to the ex-imperialists, they will blithely damage themselves, even commit suicide. If I can spite your face I will cut off my nose. There is no appeal from these passions even to self interest...And the trouble is that these deep rooted passions can now be implemented in violent practice. The great truth enunciated by Hilaire Belloc: Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not -- has unhappily ceased to be true. They now have the Maxim gun -- and unless the West is prepared to out-trump the gun with atomic missiles, they will soon be in a position... to win all the "little wars." If I remember rightly, Nostradamus prophesied that in the year two thousand or thereabouts, yellow men would be flying over Paris. It may easily turn out that he was right" (608). As one can easily see from these excerpts, Huxley did not offer a simple task to the biographer, and despite its failings, Bedford's lengthy tome avoids the critical error of leaving its subject unexplained. At a time when more and more people are suspecting that none of the multiple-choice options offered by a society in decline will reverse that decline, interest in Huxley is reviving, as he was one of the few who dared "peer behind the curtain" and examine the motivic forces of modern society. Patience is a virtue, and for those so virtuous, "Aldous Huxley: A Biography" is a circuitous but rewarding read. -vijay prozak -=- Cinema: Even Dwarfs Started Small (dir. Werner Herzog 1970 – B&W 35mm. 96 min.) German New-Wave director Werner Herzog's comedy of the absurd proceeds from the simplest of premises: Eight wards from an isolated reformatory have rebelled against their head counselor and proceed to wreak havoc on the building's grounds. With one catch; each stands no higher than 4 ½ feet tall. The context of this element is decisive: The group is not interned because they are dwarfs. Awkwardly, they are not even supposed to be viewed as such; the entire cast, not just our rabble-rousers, is Lilliputian --completely out of scale with the material world around them. With this metaphor the film breaks from similar ventures like Todd Browning's "Freaks" to offer a prescient subtext to the debauched antics of its characters; whose struggle to attain independence ultimately collapses through base desires and interpretations of power. Their tale begins in a chaos we're led to believe continues long after the camera stops. A mob scuffles with comedic impotence to free one of their own from the head-counselor's grasp. These efforts fail as their comrade is seized and then tied to chair in a prison cell / office occupied by only himself and the counselor for the duration of the film. The inmates, four male, four female are sick of their regimental lives. Sick of the health drills, powdered milk, grooming the animals, "...sick of mother nature". Now free, they wander around the complex, set on a desolate island capped by a distant volcano. Chastising one another as cowards while scrambling for a new course of action -- possibly deserting the area, the question arises, "Where would we go?" The greater idea of imprisonment is now primed for exploration through the remainder of the narrative. As the mania unfolds, the troupe will uproot the island's palm trees, slaughter a pig, set fire to the gardens, crucify a pet monkey, display a box of insects dressed as a wedding party and almost make it through a traditional family dinner ("your knife on the right, fork on the left"). While in between, blissfully rummaging through porno mags and parading on top of motorcycles in grotesque and hilarious parody of modern archetypes. The latter half of these offenses is the most poignant, exhibiting a ferocious cynicism of revolt still relevant today: that those seeking to overthrow the world in which they find themselves, ultimately do so through a deranged imitation of their masters. An oft-repeated excuse for the pillaging of New Orleans during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina was that it was a way to "get-back" at the system. In a culture that presents material wealth as the apex of living, naturally the effect of "getting back" and by extension, assuming power, will be translated by some into crates of plastic, electronic equipment, guns and lots of beer, even as life itself is washed away. The future lost in the Lethe, the natural order of the world is magnified: People survive at the expense of one another. And so too, in one of "Dwarfs..."most stunning sequences, the gang happens upon a garage and at once hot-wires the car inside with the intention to finally ride off into town. For the next fifteen minutes, the automobile, without passengers, will drive itself in a circle on the lot (a chaotic theme central to the conclusions of other Herzog films like "Strozeck" and "Aguirre: The Wrath of God") before being shoved into one of the island's volcanic pits. Finally consumed by the situation, the counselor apparently murders his captive soon after emptying the contents of the office onto the roof-top, while shouting that he needs room! He will eventually escape and flee into the desert, provoking arguments with desiccate trees upon his exit; his former responsibilities continuing their revenge against the earth. In one of the greatest non-resolutions in history, the film ends with the gang's "leader" laughing hysterically at a camel shitting in front of him. Not a political film per-se, "Even Dwarfs Started Small" was initially pegged as fascist cinema due to it's depicting such a failed uprising during the era of student revolutions and the Vietnam War. To this, not much more can be speculated as to the direct motivation for the film, which is, all told, shot brilliantly through the kinetic lens of camera-man Thomas Mauch. The shocks contained in "Even Dwarfs" have not worn over time because in them are the deeper insights to our mismanagement of civilization; seen as caution for the future, seemingly eternal. Although Herzog would later agree with his critics dismal view while expressing his own distaste for the socialist ideology at the time (though denying it as any kind of political statement) he would suggest, rather ironically, that what takes place in the film is not an actual defeat because, after all, "they're happy". Further underlining the unreason and perversion of this context, he noted that, had he returned weeks later to the spot of filming, "...they would still be there, the midget laughing away."* *Herzog on Herzog. Edited by Paul Cronin: Faber and Faber, 2002 -Smog -=- Throne of Blood (dir. Akira Kurosawa 1957) Throne of Blood is a generally regarded as the best screen adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth and it is one of the greatest literature to film adaptations ever accomplished. The film is a Japanese take on the classic Shakespearean tale of madness, deceit, fate and betrayal. From the original Japanese title of Kumonosu jô, the title translates to "Cobweb Castle" as opposed to the American version of the film known as Throne of Blood. Both titles are fitting, but Cobweb Castle reaches into the heart of the film more than Throne of Blood does as this epic Kurosawa film is filled with webs of deceit and filaments of fate, which are strung out in a divine pattern. Throne of Blood takes place in feudal Japan and follows the legacy of two feudal lords as they see a prophecy fulfilled which was given to them by a spirit in the woods. One of them, Taketori Washizu (the Macbeth character), is foretold that he will assume the throne as Emperor and the other, Yoshiaki Miki, is foretold that he will be the father of the line of the Emperor's who will come after Washizu. Both men discuss the meaning of the prophecy given to them and shun it off as lunacy, until the Emperor promotes them to higher positions upon their arrival back to the castle, which was prophesized by the spirit in the woods. This begins the fall into self-fulfilling prophecy, betrayal and deceit. Kurosawa adds a slightly different touch to the Macbeth equivalent character of Taketori Washizu by making his ambitions for power very subtle in the beginning of the story. Through the first quarter of the story Washizu remains loyal to the Emperor and denies that he wishes to become Emperor himself. However his wife is cold, cunning and hungry for power and decides to use Washizu as her vehicle to obtain her own personal lusts. She is perhaps the vilest and most devious character in Throne of Blood - stoic in her expressions and cold hearted in her calculations. She, in essence, begins the long sequence of betrayal and deception by manipulating Washizu to kill the Emperor and take the throne. In doing so she betrays both her husband and the Emperor in favor of her own lusts. The Macbeth character of Washizu resists disobedience more than Shakespeare's Macbeth. This is a strikingly Japanese element in Kurosawas story that is played masterfully to the point that it adds a whole other realm of complexity and depth of the character of Washizu as it exposes him as a man with hidden desires that even he denies or does not fully accept. It takes strong manipulation from Washizu's wife before his inner lusts for power really start to take bloom. Once Washizu is manipulated into killing the Emperor backstabbing, deceit and madness takes full stride in Throne of Blood and the pace and intensity of the film increases. Friends turn their backs on each other, paranoia and madness causes massive blood shed inside the castle, Washizu begins to become tortured by the deeds he has committed and eventually the fates come to collect their hand as the power of Washzu's meets a fatal and tragic end. The final moments in Washizu's kingdom are some of the most powerful and stunning scenes put to film. The laying of webs for other victims backfires on the spider when they become so greedy and zealous that they lay so many webs that they entangle themselves in a corner and suffocate. This is what happens to many of the characters in Throne of Blood. Their selfish ambitions become their own undoing and the trail of backstabbing eventually lands a knife right in their own back, where it belongs. The destructive nature of selfish ambition is one of the biggest themes that Throne of Blood spends time probing, along with the nature of fate and destiny. Characters plot their own futures and seek to solidify their power through deception as the film progresses forward. The lords abuse their power and begin to plot against those around them in order to fulfill some aspects of the prophecy that suit them and prevent others which do not. The film brings into question the nature of fate and destiny as the characters have fate thrust upon them and at the same time self-fulfill many of the aspects of the prophecy. The nature of fate in the context of Throne of Blood is highly paradoxical and full of irony. Tragedy. Melancholy. Fighting the currents of fate. Descending into madness. All of these are ripe in Throne of Blood. One of the great achievements of this film is that it manages to capture the spirit of its source and it does so precisely because it was not trying to be the source. Throne of Blood does not attempt to be a Shakespearean play played out on the screen, it instead seeks to be a Shakespearean tragedy interpreted into the language of film. As such it takes full advantage of the language that is unique to film: visuals, expressions, landscapes, atmospheres, silence, symbols and music. What has been a fatal flaw to many other Shakespeare to screen adaptations is that they have tried to be a play on the screen and as such they have neglected the unique language of film. Perhaps one of the greatest Shakespeare to screen adaptations came from Japan due to the fact that the language barrier was broken and the Japanese did not feel obligated to live up to the exact words and formulations of a western literary giant. Kurosawa, by turning the symbols and themes of Macbeth into a uniquely Japanese context managed to liberate the themes of the Shakespearean tragedy from the over powering mythos of the western conception of Shakespeare and as a result he did the film, the topics and the themes the greatest of services. -phantasm -=- Food: Cold Plate Drop Candies You may or may not have noticed that we live in a time where the most extreme evil consequences to our behavior are considered acceptable and in fact normal, since after all, we don't intend to be evil. However, we are on a sure path to tedious wage slavery, polluted air and water, overpopulation, resource depletion and race war. Luckily, you can strike back -- by making candies. Especially if you have children, you may have found yourself studying the candy available in this society. Almost all of it has three major flaws: it's expensive considering the ingredient value, it comes in non-biodegradable landfill-swelling packaging, and it's full of weird chemicals that will probably turn your little darlings into bug-eyed mutants. We have a solution. Ingredients Sugar Flavoring Instructions: 1. Place 3-5 plates in your freezer 2. Heat pan on low 3. Add 1lb sugar, slowly. Stir constantly -- spoon always in circular motion --for about 15 minutes. This stuff burns faster than napalm, so no bathroom breaks. Your goal is to melt the sugar, but not caramelize it fully. It will melt into a thick liquid that is no longer gritty under your stirring spoon (it will become translucent). 4. Turn off heat, remove from flame and add flavoring, stirring madly. 5. Using stirring spoon, drop candy in whatever form you prefer -- here we sprinkle it randomly to make small candies -- on plates and return them to freezer. Using wax paper on the plates makes this job easier and cleaner. 6. After 15 minutes, remove plates and let them warm up slightly, then pry off candies. You should be able to store these at room temperature. Flavoring: Cinnamon This is a favorite because it is blazingly easy. 3 tbsp of cinnamon to one pound of sugar produces a sweet candy; adding in 1/5 tsp of powdered red pepper makes cinnamon hots (stir thoroughly). Lime/Citrus Wash a lime with ScotchBrite or similar abrasive sponge to remove oils, waxes, coloring, pesticides, AIDS and other artifacts of industrial society. Using the fine mesh of your shredder, make powder of 1 tbsp of rind and then juice 2 tbsp of liquid on top of it. Mash, mix, pound until it's nearly uniform. Wait a few minutes for mixture to half-cool before stirring in. Ginger Use 2 tbsp of ginger; see cinnamon instructions. Strawberry Use wet towel under running water to remove seeds from 3 medium strawberries. Liquefy with blender and heat on low for 20 minutes, then add sugar as the original recipe calls for. Your children will kvetch and bitch and moan because after all, these candies didn't come in plastic packaging with their favorite cartoon characters on it. Tell them this is candy for spirited people who would rather spend their money on trees than colored plastic garbage. In about 18 years, they'll get it, and you can look forward to seeing them blow up industry lackey scientists and burn down ecointrusive new subdivisions. At the time of this writing, making the cinnamon version of these candies cost approximately 80 cents per pound, versus nearly five dollars per pound for off-the-shelf cinnamon candies. This is the perfect activity while waiting for the phone to ring or S.W.A.T. team to finalize entry. -vijay prozak ---------- Features ---------- Bathhouse Meditations: A Dialogue with Jesus of Datejesus.com DateJesus.com has been online for five years supplying us with cunning, often comical, insights and references into modern and ancient culture. Throughout the years the site has been promoting traditionalist perspectives, Indo-European values and the beauty and joy of taking baths. To say the least DateJesus.com has turned a few heads and raised a few eyebrows since its conception. The Exponentiation interview team caught up with Jesus at his private bathhouse where he cordially obliged to answer some of our queries. It was a cool April evening when we caught up with Jesus at his private bathhouse in a remote rural section of Virginia. He greeted us with open arms and escorted us inside where three sudsy tubs awaited our bodies. Our kind host offered us a fine selection of wines and cheeses to further enjoy our bathing experience. We kindly accepted and then dipped into the warm water to begin our dialogue with Jesus. Jesus sat nobly in his sudsy bath water and informed us as to why he decided to take on the persona of the messiah. "Friends said my appearance and mannerisms were often as they imagined a good Jesus to be, so the website started as a little joke for friends but gradually became much larger." Jesus sat back and let his hair dip into the bath water and then took a sip of his wine. He looked contemplatively towards the ceiling and continued his dialogue." I've never taken Judeo-Christianity seriously or been troubled by it, but I was surprised to see how the U.S. fundamentalist regime shapes people's minds and instills Middle Eastern values and culture while claiming to take no religious position. As a result of this programming, many "enlightened" Americans didn't understand the website or pretended to be "offended", but I never trouble myself over the opinions of idiots." Jesus took in more silence and then continued to tell us about Judeo-Christianity and his views towards it. "Christianity is just liberal Judaism for gentiles, an insane monotheism that hates strong spirits and views the world materialistically while burdening itself with so many contradictions that a study of its values explains why its followers are so nutty. Since Christianity and Judaism differ only on their specific mythology and not at all in their values, they can effectively be treated as the same religion in terms of understanding the world view, ideas, and spirituality they promote." Jesus continued, informing us of his youthful contacts with Judeo-Christianity, "I had little contact with churches, but soon after realizing that Santa Claus wasn't real, the idea of the Middle Eastern god seemed silly as well. In my teen years I tried to convey this to others through blasphemy and now find humor to be a good vehicle as well." Laughter filled the air of the bathhouse, followed by sips of wine and a ponderous five minuets of silence to allow the ambiance and aroma of the bathhouse to tantalize our senses and propel us into a meditative state. We couldn't help but wonder what molded a man like Jesus, what made him tick, what crafted his spirit? Without our even asking, Jesus answered our questions. His ability to look into our eyes and understand our questions before we even had them was astounding. "My orientation to life is European, but I can only claim to really understand northern Europe, as the cheerfulness, sociability, celebrations, and personal indulgences of the southern Europeans is not of my nature. I enjoy the seriousness of the northern Europeans and their direct honesty, perhaps cultivated by brutal winters. While it is true that they are not "fun" in the southern sense, I don't have any interest in that kind of fun." Jesus continued telling us about himself, giving us insights into his educational pursuits and interests. "My academic period was spent studying as many fields of interest as possible in detail, with a focus on philosophy and psychology, as well as functional fields like economics, physics, and computers." Jesus took a small sliver of swiss cheese, chewed, and took us deeper into his soul. "I understand the world from spending time in nature growing up with an active knowledge of my roots and participation in my culture, being exposed to a wide range of ideas without judgment, being allowed to explore the world without limits, having a natural curiosity rather than fear, always having inspirational music around me, preferring what is true to what is easy, and believing in making dreams true." We took the time to reflect upon Jesus' insights. In a world as fractured and as overly-specialized as ours it is inspirational to hear of a man who cultivates his intellect, body and spirit together as one as opposed to accepting the modern worlds demand to fulfill a singular mode of being via a career or through purchasing decisions. This made us wonder, with the diversity of interests Jesus has, how does he make way? How does the messiah bull his way through the 21st century? Could he possibly bog himself down with the career life? Was he accumulating a 401k at a little office job? Jesus spake, "Occupationally, I've done well in business consulting, but prefer to spend my time writing various texts, composing music, and working on traditional cultural activities." Fitting that a man with his mind focused towards the deeper depths of being would not allow himself to become bogged down with the careerist's mindset. Modern work to Jesus seems to be a pragmatic activity, a reality of the current world that he must participate in to some degree in order to accomplish his greater goals. It is not the summation of his being, which is something the current western world would like us to believe about our "careers." What cultivates a meaningful being to Jesus is better understood in how he spends his free time: writing music and texts, taking in a good work of art, enjoying a walk through the countryside, and taking a nice dip in a sudsy bath. In contrast to this, Jesus feels that what makes a meaningless life is the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of pleasure. "Hedonism is what makes life meaningless; a meaningful life is what makes life rewarding. The purpose of life isn't pleasure or happiness, but these often result from the fulfillment of a meaningful life. As long as people chase happiness they are unlikely to find it, except perhaps superficially, and will always feel empty inside." Jesus continued, "Hedonism seems to be the answer pitched by advertisers so that dummies buy products, hoping for a quick fix to their unhappiness. Then when they find they are still unhappy, they futilely redouble their efforts." After hearing Jesus speak on hedonism we insisted on probing his thoughts about the current governments and economic systems of the western world as so many western nations today seem to be promoting the hedonistic lifestyle. Jesus smirked, knowing the questions were inevitable, and then he began to speak methodically, "Financial liberal democracy is the lowest common denominator and appeals to the broadest base possible by asserting nothing of distinctive value. As such, any alternative that understands differences between people, ideas, and values is a threat because it undermines democracy's claim that everything is identical and all aspects of all issues are apparent to everyone. If people started questioning the ability of voters to make decisions, or to understand even basic issue, then the premises of democracy would be revealed as comical and it would have to be restrained. This is especially funny in nations like America where the average voter has virtually no knowledge of the issues he is voting on. Why not let a monkey throw darts or have a lottery to pick a leader? Such a method would not do any worse than to let the mob vote." We asked Jesus why then America was so powerful and influential throughout the world if it had uninformed voters and leaders making its decisions. Jesus laughed heartily and articulated a response for us, "American entertainment and junk culture is only considered a leader by people within its borders. Europe mostly laughs as America because the educated can see the inevitable consequences of its problems and hints of the rot festering inside waiting to burst forth." Jesus forwarded the discussion; "America lost its direction after WW2, finding the need to define itself in opposition to other powerful nations instead of with some positive statement of values. It sought soft tolerance as its new identity, but this meant that previous values that unified people had to be discarded and every aberration and nonsensical protest had to be accommodated. Once we start tolerating what is harmful to the community, the idea of community quickly disappears, removing the foundation for culture." So then the value and power of such a culture is really an illusion? Jesus continued, "Citizens are allowed to purchase any products they want and are encouraged to be entertained, but this bread and circus existence of "freedom" yields nothing of value." We thought deeply about the possibility that all the western worlds material dominance was really just an illusion, a disease resting in the bed waiting to take over the host organism. As we thumbed through these ideas Jesus continued to engage us, "America's purpose for the world is in boasting of its greatness so its impending bankruptcy in ten years and reduction to third world status within twenty-five years will encourage other nations not to emulate the behaviors and values that it promotes." He continued, "The rest of world culture is also harmed by a hesitation to assert themselves and instead tolerate the loud trends promoted by disintegrative forces. Every nation should to be true to their heritage and traditions instead of going along with trends that are contrary to what is related to their people. The trends will pass in time, but those who followed them will have wasted time and misdirected many others from what belongs to them." So it appears America itself becomes an example of the destructive powers of hedonism and the futile, destructive pursuit of materials. How does Jesus see an American being able to get a look at real culture if all they have ever seen is a two-dimensional plastic culture? "I encourage people to visit Europe and promise that it will be eye-opening and refreshing for someone from America because for a few weeks you will get to experience civilization. While some say I am biased for preferring capable, thoughtful people, the value of the lives they have far exceeds what Hollywood culture, Walmart, McDonalds, ballgames, and videogames offer to Americans." Material gain without spiritual value is no real gain at all. It is a loss for individuals and cultures as it sucks them dry of their marrow and leaves them hollow shells without meaning. Bellies full of wine and fine cheeses, heads astir with thought and toes and fingers crimpled and withered from bath water, we decided to exit the bath and take our conversation into Jesus' chamber room where he offered to entertain us with some musical compositions on the cello. He continued to speak to us about politics and economics as we toweled off and put on our robes. "Economics are not important in healthy societies and are certainly not the first or second most important thing. Today's arguments that frame all issues in terms of economic impact lose all perspective - of course doing things costs more (and "hurts" the economy) while dumping toxic waste in someone's backyard is less expensive and thus is economically sound." We made our way down the hall into the parlor where we refreshed our wine glasses as Jesus voice continued to echo in our head. "The primacy of economics means that the quality of life suffers and shows that the goal of having a healthy, sane, civilized culture has been forgotten. Fix society and you'll have good enough economics. Focus on economics and you'll wreck everything of legitimate value as you cut corners to satisfy short term goals." But how do we argue logically for a system based on qualitative values? Today's society is so focused on quantity and rating things by numbers as they are percieved as being more tangible than the qualitative aspects in things Jesus shook his head and spoke, "through logic and the rules of different systems of arguing, it is possible to argue convincingly for or against anything, irrespective of the validity of such arguments. The Greek philosophical school of rhetoric should be understood as a demonstration of the futility of arguments and their distance from truth rather than as a handbook for making winning arguments for stupid ideas or legal cases." Our drinks refreshed, we continued our walk down the hall. Perhaps attempting to argue for or against a particular way of living is limited and incapable of getting at truth. Argument and logic are useful tools for understanding the world but they are not the end of the road as they have limitations and boundaries that prevent them from grasping ecstatic truths. Jesus spoke more on the secular matters of politics and economics as we walked onward to the music chamber. "If we are forced to live under democracy, then capitalism can be our only system of valuation since the two are inseparable. Capitalism says that value only exists in what someone would pay for something, so wilderness could either be preserved or leveled for another strip mall, depending on the highest bidder." Interesting thoughts. It appears that the union of logical inquiry, scientific analysis, industrial modes of production and materialist's modes of thinking have contributed greatly to our life out of balance. The esoteric and sacred have been forgotten in favor of the exoteric and profane and as such the world is looked upon as a resource to be exploited and not as a spiritual center of becoming and interdependence. What type of governance then can replace the dysfunctional ones? To this question Jesus was highly responsive, "A political system has to serve its people, with leadership that is concerned with what is best for the nation, fixing short-term concerns without introducing long-term problems. Government needs to have fewer opinions, but better ones from more qualified and thoughtful people." Jesus kept our ears occupied, "Many traditional systems throughout history operated effectively for the benefit of their people, without the need to appease every thoughtless opinion. Even Plato warned us that democracy was the worst form of government and constituted a crime against the community because it treated all people equally. His Republic details the general structure that works: the best should lead and the rest will fall in place." In the midst of the materialistic frey of modernity we asked Jesus what future he saw for the natural world, the forests, oceans and savannas that mold our beings. It became obvious to us that Jesus was highly passionate yet despondent about these matters. "To fully know our roots and have a quality life we need to maintain our environment, but sadly this looks like a losing battle. While a locality or even nation can make an effort, the idea of economic "growth" puts the future aside in exchange for results now. The results are a massive destruction of nature, with things we all know about like deforestation, overfishing, and toxicity in our air and water. We acknowledge these issues but are unable to work together to stop the people who produce these causes. As a result, movements like ecofascism begin to make sense as a reaction to the futility of trying to work with the established financial democracy system." We made our way into the music chamber and Jesus arranged his cello and sheet music in the corner of the room, all while continuing to serenade us with his thoughts. "Until the system is changed away from democracy, the only way to preserve land or anything else of eternal, non-economic value, is to value it in economic terms and for preservers to gather money to protect it. This approach would be unnecessary in an intelligent system, but we have no options other than dealing with a materialistic system on its terms until it is replaced." He then stared out the window to the forest creek running behind his garden and spoke with subtle intensity. "We need to have a future where there is open space, not every piece of land settled with the maximum number of people crammed together like cockroaches." This spoke to everyone in the room who had been in an urban traffic jam, had seen the sunset stifled by pollution and the rivers filled with grime. We took a moment of silence to think everything over and then Jesus began to play the cello to intensify the moment and solidify all that had been discussed on our travel from the bathhouse to the chamber room. After entertaining us with some of his moodiest compositions he informed us about his love for music and his influences as a cellist. "I've been playing off and on for about twenty years, but only composing over the last five. Bach's unaccompanied cello suites are an influence, and I've played an extensive classical repertoire, favoring Haydn's quartets, most of the classic cello concertos, and many symphonies where the great works of Beethoven and Mozart left the strongest impression and inspiration." Jesus continued, "I listen mostly to classical music because it communicates to me about the world I understand. Occasionally I listen to black metal classics from the 1991-1995 black metal period, favoring Burzum, Immortal, and Darkthrone." Art is important to the human soul. It exposes to us the unforeseen realms deep within reality and allows us to ponder what can be; in that sense, art is a representation of spirit in its many manifestations. Art is the silent universal voice that tells us of our inner character, our phobias and loves, it bespeaks of the flaws and beauties of our society and of our universe. Jesus expounds upon these thoughts when he speaks of music. "Music tells me what great minds see. I consider it a language rather than merely notes - a musician of value communicates something that is understood by the initiated and this is why some composers have lasting power. My works are still primitive and my recordings still sloppier, but I aspire to be able to leave behind something of worth to my culture, or at least be humorously self-sufficient in writing my funeral music." We all engaged in laughter for some minuets and once again fell silent as a serious wind reentered the room. Jesus turned around and stared deeply into a large painting hanging over the mantle above his fireplace, "The Solitary Tree" by Casper David Friedrich. As he stared deeply into the painting tears welled up in the corner of his eyes and he began to speak passionately about art. "Real art must express something of significance, which modern art fails to do. It is even doubtful that any of the junk art produced today to the praise of post-modern critics will be studied in ten years time. Work originating from a shortage of ideas and talent simply has no lasting power except as a history of the hype that critics and advocates were able to produce." He paused, realizing he was getting overly impassioned, took a sip of wine to calm his nerves and then continued, "merely using the form of art does not constitute content." What is it then that makes great art? One thing is for sure, the art feeds on purpose and spirit. Art without spirit belies whatever extravagant methods were used to create it, or whatever hype was kindled to attempt to market it. Jesus' words were well taken by the interviewees. Realizing that Jesus was highly passionate about the arts, we decided to ask him what he felt about art in the industrial world. Does the technology affect the creation? Does it drastically alter the culture, and the art? Would an angst ridden man smearing feces on a canvas be creating art? It is then worth wondering if all the angst ridden art of the 20th century, the art depicting man and nature as a jumble of meaningless abstract symbols, the art depicting us as a million eyes staring separately into the abyss is an amalgam of the modern worlds inner nature, a fractured world floating in the abyss. Jesus spoke in depth on these matters. "With modern technology making it trivial for anyone to put out books, art, and music, this doesn't add to the culture in any way because culture is always defined by the highest creative examples, and not merely a mob of voices making plentiful junk. Britney Spears is no Beethoven, and the artist expressing himself with feces is no Rubens. As we are in Kali Yuga, no great art should be expected and the almost complete absence of art over the last century confirms this. It is also noteworthy that there has been an absence of philosophy which is especially troubling because society needs a thinker or two now more than ever, but none appear." What then is going on with this deconstructionist attitude? How is it viewing the world, art, culture? Jesus enlightened us. "Postmodernism seems to be a form of mental indigestion concerned with deconstructing the whole into small elements that are disconnected from their structure and thus rendered meaningless once removed from their context. This same approach would take the wheels off of a car and dismiss them as circles, or remove the axles and call them poles, yet the car is rendered inoperable without them." What then are we to do when faced with this void, this deconstructive emptiness? Are we to give in, accept nihilism? Jesus enlightened us as to his perspectives on these matters. "There are varying definitions of nihilism, ranging from "hopeless despair over meaninglessness" to "rejection of arbitrary valuation and acceptance only of what is real." The latter definition I embrace, but consider it a variation of tautology in that reality must always be favored over idealism and delusion, and something is only what it is, and not what it is not. Since the way humans commonly communicate means assigning values and definitions crudely, many people understand the world through a hierarchy of mistakes where there is error at every level. Removing that error with careful analysis would be a nihilistic or tautological process that would clarify one's understanding of all things." We all paused to take in the words of Jesus and when he saw that clarity shone through our faces he continued. "Those who find despair and claim the world is meaningless seem to be acting out just as people drowning like to pull down others with them. Again, cause and effect seems backwards: those who see the world as meaningless will despair, but their lack of insight is of no concern to the world, or to others who have seen and experienced more." But how is it possible to get people to understand the importance and value in the world as well as being a part of a greater whole when they are so focused on themselves and their individual gain? Jesus responded, "Some people can understand ideas in the abstract, such as how a functioning community would work, or even loose coalitions of people working for common values though geographically separated. However, such awareness exists only in a minority of people, thus more tangible demonstrations are needed." What kind of demonstrations are those? "Nature is the ultimate judge of reality, quickly confronting lies and delusions by punishing those who follow them. People should be exposed more to plants growing, animals birthing and dying - and how they go about hunting and being hunted. Everything is mortal in the cycle of life, but the animal form is only form and not the substance of life, thus transient existence is no objection to the whole of life, nor is any individual separate from it." We looked at each other in agreement and he continued, "Once some of these basic concepts of nature are grasped, people can understand that they too are animals and live according to the same natural principles. Just as animals and plants are raised for food, people should realize that they too will soon die and be gone forever. Since almost no one can accomplish anything as an individual, the individualist lifestyle leads nowhere, but as part of the group of like-minded people working for common goals, much of lasting importance can be accomplished." As the sun sank low on the horizon we decided to ask Jesus more questions that were spiritual in nature. There was no doubt to us that Jesus was a deeply spiritual man and he confirmed it when we began to ask him. "I think spirituality is very important and consists of one's relationship with the universe -- obviously this would matter only to those who look farther than the immediate." We already knew his position on Judeo-Christianity so we wanted to know what he felt was a viable spiritual path for a western world crushed and drained of true spirituality. Jesus spoke, "Each race has it's own spirituality reflecting its position with the universe, and thus each is valid in that way. In what strikes Indo-Europeans as the most pathological, you have the Abrahamic people virtually confessing to moral degeneracy and an instinctual lack of decency in their holy texts where they fixate on "sin" and how to stop themselves from behaving badly. This seems like comedy to Indo-Europeans who never had any notion of "sin", but only saw "evil" in people who were stupid and made decisions that harmed normal people who did good by instinct. The old Indo-European myths of devils were equated with the forces of stupidity, each of which had to be confronted, outsmarted, and exterminated so the people weren't hampered by its existence." Jesus paused, judging our responses and then continued, "the caste system is important, as each person does best in the world by knowing how they contribute to the whole, and to do so in an appropriate way instead of contrary to their abilities and nature." But we wanted to know more. In the modern world of science, what does that do to spirituality? Can the two coexist, or do they clash. In the past there have been scientists who have felt science undoes spirituality and they declare beliefs that are religious in nature mere "superstitions." But there have also been individuals within the scientific realm such as Carl Jung who have sought to defend aspects of spirituality and mythology. Jesus informed us as to some of his perspectives on these matters. "While scientists are free to comment on spirituality or anything else they like, discussions of spirituality quickly cease to be scientific, which calls the idea of coexistence into question. I think Jung was massively insightful and mostly correct, but don't think his spiritual discussions can be called scientific." Jesus continued probing the topic, "Science is a relative of industrialism, i.e. functional reproducibility without regard for the human consequences of that structure. Just as putting a human in a factory assembly line and having them make jars all day long will destroy their spirit in short order, so does living in a society governed by the reckless use of scientific physical possibility." We were about to interrupt with another question when Jesus raised his finger, telling us he wished to continue, "further, scientists tend to have an unusual psychology that marries arrogance and ignorance, so they make absolute assertions that are often proven wrong in short order, while they dismiss possibilities that are discovered by others later -- all this while at the same time moving forward to apply industrial uses of their "knowledge" for the highest bidder. This has reckless consequences as shown by modern ideas like genetically modified crops, or past inventions like cars that pollute the environment while foolishly using a non-renewable fuel source. These people are either incapable of envisioning consequences or are willfully ignorant of the long-term impact they create. In either case, this type of thinking is contrary to a concern with eternity." Pleased by the response we received we decided to ask Jesus what he thought of some of the present day religious traditions besides Judeo-Christianity. Jesus began speaking, "Islam has several sects - some Abrahamic and thus suffering the same problems as Judeo-Christianity, while others seem tied to a traditional view that has more in common with Hinduism and ancient Indo-European religions." He continued, "Buddhism and Taoism offer clever solutions to retreat within and find satisfaction in disinterest, but such approaches are only appropriate for Eastern spirits, and Westerners who attempt to take on those values will typically find themselves contradicted against their instincts and ultimately dissatisfied for existing by avoiding life." He paused to stretch and then went on, "Hinduism is wiser and is related to traditional Indo-European spirituality and values. The notion of the cycles of life, and our existence in the era of Kali Yuga is essential and comparable to teachings in the Nordic Edda." But what of some of these new religious creations that have erected themselves during the 20th century? Jesus spoke, "New Age religions like Wicca are humanist and really little more than secular Judeo-Christianity. They want peace, love, equality, and other slave values, but these can provide no effective solutions since they only deal with effects of what they consider problems, and not causes." We shook our heads in agreement and then relaxed our minds by peering out the window into the misty evening. Realizing that the sun had now dipped far below the horizon we decided to bid our farewells so as to not overstay our welcome. A warm smile grew over Jesus' face, thanking us for our coming into his home and being gracious guests. We felt our questions provoked good responses and were pleased with the hospitality and insights of our host. As he directed us to the front door he invited us back for more wine, conversation and sudsy bath taking. We cordially agreed to take him up on the offer again sometime and wandered away into the night stricken countryside and vanished into the forest glade like ghosts. -phantasm/no fun -=- "Kalevala and the Finnish soul" The Finnish spiritual landscape is an odd one, for we have been subject to all kinds of cultural influences, most notably that of the Hammer Axe culture which left a lasting mark on us in its brief yet influential wake. Our people's beliefs have traces from the ancient, deeply shamanistic traditions to the clear consciousness of the active culture of the Aryans, but we are fully neither. Fortunately, Elias Lönnrot had collected traditional poetry to create Kalevala in 1835 and 1849, our national epic, the mirror of our collective soul. From that we can gain knowledge about the cultural shifts that took place then, although the information is preserved in such a form, that it must not be looked at with eyes deadly serious; rather, with eyes that allow imagination to run freely and see what most cannot see anymore. The characters The poems that Kalevala is comprised of form a story revolving mainly on the characters Väinämöinen, an age-old shaman/wizard of immense power who is able to wield great magic and cast spells by playing his kantele; Lemminkäinen, a great warrior with a fiery will and sword, he is an active conqueror; Joukahainen, another active type of man, who challenged mighty Väinämöinen itself in a battle of words; Ilmarinen, a skilled blacksmith, the forger of Sampo and the intermediary between Väinämöinen and Lemminkäinen/Joukahainen; and last, Louhi, the Hag of the North and an adversary of Väinämöinen. Also, Kullervo, a man of a tragic life, has his own sidestory in the Kalevala, which is important nonetheless as the East/West-dichotomy and Finnish mentality in general culminate in this single character. The five main characters also have their corresponding elements: Fire, Water and Air; Lemminkäinen/Joukahainen, Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen, respectively. Louhi could be associated with Earth because after all, she was the Golden Woman herself, now only demonized and considered as a remnant from the past. Hunter-gatherer societies These five characters represent the major cultural forces of olden times. Where Väinämöinen is a deep, shamanistic person, Lemminkäinen blazes headlong into battle and adventure. The reason these two men appear in Kalevala is that Finland has been subject to cultural changes and outside influence, most notably by the Hammer Axe culture, which had a profound impact in all its 400 years of effect in 2500 B.C. Väinämöinen and his 'blue' mindset is a representation of the old, original culture, that inhabited the lands before the Indo-European influence, namely Lemminkäinen. The old culture based on hunting-gathering and because of this, people were by far at the mercy of nature. They had to move frequently from place to place in search of food, and so they came to respect nature. They recognized that life is a cycle where death isn't an end but merely a new beginning of life, a necessity for the wheel to turn round and round. These hunter-gatherer tribes thus thought they lived in a "dream world" of sorts, without having a clear self-image to thrust upon the world as they were in a perfect harmony with the surrounding environment. They depicted this state of mind with the goddess Golden Woman, who was depicted to hold a boy on her lap, who laid in a foetal position. People died and were born in this position, and thus they were eternally contained within the loving Mother. They are the tribe of Kalervo, who are to face the great deluge, after which nothing is the same. Whereas the Golden Woman represented the whole of the world for the hunter-gatherer people in their "dreamlike" consciousness, Louhi depicts the old and terrible, a distant past yet still looming below the sons of Kaleva. Louhi is the one whose daughters are being sought by heroes and to marry one, they must pass tests requiring skill and magic. These are quests to the past and perilous lands, and like the Aesir warred and plotted against the giants of Jotunheim, the heroes of Kalevala scheme and battle against Louhi, for she is the deep, dark unconscious, and battling against her is paramount to the achievement of the Sampo-state and founding a cosmic way. The waterflood event and the following Sampo-state Many religions have a myth about a great waterflood that brings forth complete change with its rushing waves. Thus, flood is associated with change and as a landmark between the past and the future. While there aren't any literal references to waterfloods in Kalevala, except for maybe when Väinämöinen hits his knee with an axe and blood flows over the earth, there are several that correspond with its meaning: the quest for Sampo, Kullervo's story and the duel of singing between Joukahainen and Väinämöinen at the crossroads, for example. The flood event comes forth when two opposing sides confront each other: East and West, North and South, often depicted by characters having certain attributes. The clash results in a synthesis of the two forces which are left in the past then as something new is born. The symbol of Ukonvasara, which is the Finnish equivalent of Thor's Hammer, depicts exactly this cultural change and new direction. There's one variation of it that has two men on horseback facing at opposite directions at the both ends of the hammer's head. These men are Lemminkäinen/Joukahainen and Väinämöinen, West and East respectively, and it is the struggle between these forces, united by Seppo Ilmarinen, that creates the upward column, the hilt of the hammer. Some variations actually have a tree as the hilt of the hammer, so it seems that it resembles the World Tree that harbours this conflict between the opposing forces within its roots. The state in which this unifying happens, the moment of finding new direction, is called the 'Sampo-state.' Kullervo, the incarnation of Sampo-state Kullervo's tale is a story separate from the main plot of Kalevala. It is described in it how a man is severed from his roots, having not even born among his kin but strange men, and facing constant hardships within the foreign culture of Untamo. After Kullervo is given birth, only three nights old he breaks his cradle and Untamo senses that he will bring misfortune upon them and thus tries to kill him three times, failing every time. Untamo then thought to himself that the boy could be perhaps used for some work at the farm, regardless of Kalervo's blood flowing through his veins. As it turns out, Kullervo fails miserably in each task that Untamo assigns him simply because he is a spiritually broken man, and the chaos within him prevents him from focusing and channeling will towards any goal. The unconsciousness - the blood of Kalervo - is too potent for him to resist it. Untamo is then frustrated with such a wretched man and sells him as a slave to Ilmarinen, the blacksmith and an unifying factor as the element of Air. Ilmarinen lives at a farm with his wife, and they put Kullervo to do normal house chores and one day he is sent to herd cattle, Ilmarinen's malicious wife, however, baked a rock inside the loaf of bread they gave to Kullervo for food. Battered by the constant hardships of his life, he even doubts the substance of his bread, although it possesses a delicious appearance. When he started to cut to bread with his precious knife, inherited from his father, the blade suddenly snapped in half. In that moment of utter despair and the pinnacle of inner conflict, he let out the famous "Kullervo's Curse," which marked a turning point in his life. The forces that had previously battled each other in him to no avail, now formed a definite direction and a "cosmic space." Through will, he rose and decided to leave from under the yoke of Ilmarinen, summoning wolves and bears to the peril of Ilmarinen's wife. Kullervo then sought out his parents, who already thought he was dead and gone forever, like his sister is. After that, Kullervo takes part in the daily chores of the family but still his spirit is a wounded, miserable one: in anything he tries his hand at, he fails miserably, even though he is now united with his kin. But he is neither of Kalervo or Untamo; he is the middle pillar. Eventually, returning from a trip of paying taxes on which he courts many women -being the young man he is - and suffering two drawbacks, the third woman takes interest in the gold in the sled and jumps in with obvious results. However, it turns out that she is the lost sister of Kullervo and by his chaotic action, he has defiled his own kin. Upon realizing this terrible deed, the woman runs into thundering rapids and drowns herself. Returning home, he tells the dire news but his mother tries to comfort him, for there would be many places in the vast depths of the woods to hide from the truth, in hopes of fading and forgetting the guilt. Kullervo declines as for him, there is no other option than to avenge against Untamo and ultimately, meet death. Others of the family claim not to miss him were he to perish and despite his mother's wishes, Kullervo severed himself from his kin, like he did with Untamo, and set out to war. -frostwood ------------------- Self-Sufficiency ------------------- Gardening in Baskets: A small vegetable or fruit garden can be grown in basic laundry baskets. This is ideal for those who do not have the land or ability to grow a garden directly in the ground. It is also economical, as it doesn't require a lot of money or resources to construct one. For anyone wanting to grow their own food yet find it problematic because they are living in an apartment or small home, basket gardening is a wonderful way to solve that problem. Here's how to start a small garden using laundry baskets: Collect large and small laundry baskets wherever you can find them. Some cheap places to start looking are at dollar discount stores and salvage yards, but anywhere you buy them, laundry baskets are cheap. Try and collect at least one basket or so for each crop you wish to grow. Once you have the baskets line them with garbage bags. The tough industrial garbage bags are better to use than others but most any garbage bag used will do fine. Fill the bottom of the garbage bags with about two inches of coarse gravel for drainage and top the gravel with a layer of newspaper. Next in the process comes filling the basket with dirt. Try and find soil rich in nutrients to add to your baskets. If you get your soil from an empty lot take note that the soil is most likely depleted of needed nutrients. It might be usable as is, but it doesn't hurt to add some of the needed minerals to make it healthy, nutrient rich soil. You can mix the soil with potting soil if you like, or add nitrogen, potassium and phosphoric rich materials into your dirt. Many gardening shops sell soil replenishing objects and organisms. Ideally you want dirt that is sandy in consistency, doesn't have many rocks in it and is dark like compost (depending on your region you will have different colors of sand and dirt, so nutrient rich dirt won't always be a rich brown or black). Too much clay in the dirt is no good for planting. You want loose soil that allows for aeration. If you have any sort of compost on hand go ahead and mix it into the dirt. If you don't have any compost then mix the dirt with an equal ratio of green and brown vegetation. Peat moss works fantastically. Organic materials such as table scraps and fruit peels can be added as well, but make sure they are chopped up well. Let the dirt remain loose and don't compact it because that will restrict needed aeration (for more info on soil nutrition and compost, refer to the article on composting). Finally poke a few holes in the base of the lined containers to allow for extra drainage. Once this is done you are ready to begin planting your seeds. Make a note of what you are planting in each basket and put stakes in the baskets that harbor vine growing plants such as tomatoes. You can plant your seeds directly into the baskets or you can seed them first outside the baskets and then transplant them. One idea for seeding your plants outside the baskets is to plant them inside the cups of egg cartons. Grab a cardboard egg carton and poke small holes in the bottom for drainage. Fill each cup in the egg carton with potter's soil and put two or three seeds in each cup. Place the seeded egg container on a windowsill of a room that gets plenty of sun and maintains a temperature of around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Don't forget to water the soil occasionally. As soon as the seeds sprout through the soil in the eggcups they are ready to be transplanted. You can cut each eggcup out of the container individually and plant them directly into the basket garden; since the cups are made of cardboard they will biodegrade as your seedlings continue to grow. If your egg container is made from plastic or Styrofoam, don't plant it. The advantages of seeding in this manner are a controlled climate, prevention of birds nabbing seeds and sprouting occurs prior to the normal growing season. If it is your first time gardening beware of frosts that can destroy your crops. Know the climate you live in and tailor your garden to fit it. If you are in a dry area make sure to keep your basket garden well watered, as one of the disadvantages of gardening in baskets is that water isn't effectively retained. There are plenty of agricultural digests, magazines and books on the market that can help you choose the proper growing strategies for your area. Hopefully, however, this article has explained a simple, economic and efficient method for getting started on your own garden no matter where you reside. With a little elbow grease and light maintenance you can be enjoying your own home grown foods by next fall. *Note: other containers can be substituted for laundry baskets, however laundry baskets are recommended because they are relatively cheap, large and inexpensive. Small crops and herbs can be grown in leftover coffee cans, milk jugs or just about any other container one can think of. -phantasm -=- Survival Basics - Understanding the Tools and Psychology of Wilderness Survival and Prepardedness Interview with: Gabriel V. Moreira Kittitas Search & Rescue Mounted/Canine Unit Interview taken 03-18-06 Gabriel: I guess what I would say...about survival, is that the first thing you have to do is be prepared. Which means, having the right equipment...matches, candles, flashlights, "survival blankets," a tarp is also very important, a [pocket] knife (you've always gotta have something like that)... Jibreel: A popular one these days is the Leatherman, right? Gabriel: A Leatherman is quite exceptional because you can do so many things with it. ...Always have dry matches, lighters, and/or fire-starters of any other kind. You should always have a tin-cup that you could maybe tie onto your belt, and if you can make a fire, then you can also boil your water or melt snow if that's still around, cook soup, pretty much survive out of the cup! Fire-starters are pretty important year around, really, because you don't always have dry wood. You can strike dry wood [with flint or the "rubbing method"] even if it's wet, then you can dry it out, which a fire-starter will do for you. Jibreel: Is it best to carry as little as possible yet try to have extras of certain items, just in case? Gabriel: You should always have extra socks, shorts/underwear... That's about the most important thing as far as clothing would go. Also, a large garbage bag can be turned into a poncho, keep you dry, hold in some heat. Of course, a survival blanket will do the same, but it's much larger [and keeps you warmer]. And, if you have a couple of survival blankets, or at least one and a tarp [to have overhead], then you can have a little tent, a shelter by wrapping up inside the survival blanket. It will keep you warm up to a point, but it'll keep you alive. Depending on what the situation is, if you're lost, you're better off to stay put and start building a fire. Get the fire as big as you can...make it huge. Keep it burning, that way someone can spot you [with the smoke] from miles away, and it'll keep critters away and keep you warm. Really important. If you've gotten wet, it should be enough to dry you out, if you need to cook something, sterilize water... Smoke signals don't do you any good anymore, because nobody knows how to read 'em. In most cases, if you're up high in a mountain, you can pretty much drink the water out of stream. It depends on your terrain. Animals go to where the water is, which means there's gonna be crap in it. That's why you sterilize water in a cup under a fire. You can boil it, or there are sterilizing pills that you can throw in your canteen, shake it up, let it sit for a while, shake it up again, air it out, and then you can drink it. (You can still taste some of the pill, which doesn't taste good, but it's drinkable.) Always stay hydrated. Whistles, light-colored handkerchiefs, and mirrors are signaling devices. With mirrors, you can flash light at someone far (even at a plane). If you're walking, it's good to have red tape to leave behind you [tied on branches] so you can trace your way back. One of the biggest mistakes that people do is when the moment they realize they're lost, they panic and start moving. And in most cases, wind up moving in circles. Better to stay put, build a shelter, start a fire, find food. If you don't have food, and you're in the wilderness, there's no excuse for that - there's a lot of food in the wilderness, if you have certain things that you can make to get it. If you have a string, you can always make a bow and cut some arrows. Hell, even if you have to kill chipmunks, or sparrows, that'll feed you! J: Even pine needles are rich in vitamin C, aren't they? Don't taste very good though... G: I think the nuts in some pine cones are probably the tastiest nuts you could ever eat! J: Ever read Sun Tzu's "Art of War"? G: No, but I've read the Army's Survival manual # 21-76 of June 1992... That one was made for Desert Storm, so much of it covers only that type of terrain, though there are some parts that describe field tactics in winter, forests, mountains... From it I learned that wool's one of the best clothing materials. You still wanna layer it so there's dead air in between for insulation. Even if you're in arctic regions, you'll get hot so quick that you'll want to take some of the layers off! Nowadays you've also got high-tech synthetic clothing like Gor-Tex. What happens with these synthetics is that they don't hold water; it'll run down over it, whereas cotton absorbs water and holds it. Like, if a man is jogging in the rain, and takes it off when he gets home, then puts it back on to continue running, he'll think it's wet, but it's not the coat - it's his sweaty cotton shirt. J: So would you only want to wear cotton in desert areas then, so you could stay cool with the dampness of your sweat? G: No; I would never wear cotton in the wilderness ever, not even in the summer. In the summer, you sweat, it soaks it up, and yeah it has the tendency to cool you, but the clothes will get nasty with your body fluids and you'll have to constantly change into clean clothes. If you wear the cotton in the winter, and because it holds water, the water's gonna make you freeze. You want your body perspiration to move through the clothing, and dissipate. So cotton's no good...You need the right stuff. J: You remember Ted Kaczynski? G: Mmm, yep... J: How do you think he did so well out there in his cabin? G: All you really need is to have a lot of dry food in stock, a lot of canned or bottled stuff, stuff that don't spoil. Nuts are pretty good, some high enough in protein that they'll make you strong enough to work through the day. You're basically working throughout the whole first three seasons just to have enough things you need to survive the winter. Stack all your wood in the summer. If you're thinking about building a cabin in an area that gets really snowy, you want to find a place with a lot of trees of course. J: I can see that if you're going on a year-long hiking adventure, as long as you know what types of environment you'll be traveling through, you won't have to bring as much equipment, as you could just make it out of the surrounding resources. G: But if you were just on a short-term hike, and you end up getting lost, there's no need for that either, because you'll be waiting for someone to find you. Use that bright-colored handkerchief and tie it to a branch next to you where people will see it. A GPS is really important. Everybody should carry one in the wilderness, and set it before you take off on the route for your trip, and that will show you where you came from. But you wanna make sure it's the type that shows the geological formations of the terrain, plus the route. Showing if you're stuck in a canyon, or you've got mountains all around you. The only alternative is a compass and a map, the only disadvantage being that they don't tell you themselves where you're at. Using the sun isn't going to help you with any more than showing how much daylight you've got left. As far as "moss growing on the north-side of a tree," that's not always right. Remember, if you get lost, just stay put, until someone finds you. The first thing to do after that is build shelter, and a fire. Then you worry about finding something to eat, but most importantly finding water. You have to have water; you can go a couple of days without food, but if you're dehydrated, you're not going to last - especially if you're walking, because your body needs at least to liters a day. If one thinks they can substitute vitamin pills for food, that's incorrect. J: Is there any particular situation where you shouldn't stay put, other than when you're getting chased by carnivores? G: Nah...I think that, if you figure out you're lost - by lost, I mean you have no idea what direction you're in -it's time to build a shelter and a really big fire, and just hang out. Even if you have a Survival Blanket, it's still best to put up an overhead tarp shelter as well - that'll keep the wind offa ya, and you won't get wet. Your clothes have to keep dry, or you'll get hypothermia. And when that happens, you're doomed. Of course, if you don't have a tarp, you can sit under trees that have a lot of branches, and in there will be a lot of dry ones you can snip with your Leatherman to use for your fire. If you are in snowland, one of the best places for shelter is the bottom of a tree trunk, or a cave. It will help a lot if you know how to burrow into the side of a mountain...we [Moreiras] learned that in the Marines. All the heat's in there, and if you have a fire or even a candle lit, it'll get so hot you'll wanna go back outside. A hole made correctly will be round, and if you have a candle burning, you can glaze the inside of the cave and make the frosted water run down the side instead of letting it drip on your face from melting slowly. Then you can put branches, like from a Douglass Fir, and have a drier, more comfortable bed to sleep on. J: Anything else, grandpa? G: Just this...if you're going out into the wild, and you get into a really ugly situation like the Donner Party, understand that nature knows no "morality" - its rules are survival of the fittest. When a human's out there, his key to survival is pragmatism. When you're young, summer camp is good training. Oh, and if you have to take a crap, and you have no air-packaged toilet paper, or you're unsure if the leaves around you are non-poisonous, your only option left is to do what Arabs do -use your hand, then wipe it off on the grass. That's why they don't greet with their left hand. Links: http://www.textfiles.com/survival/ http://www.theecologist.info/key27.html http://www.weyrich.com/book_reviews/survival_index.html http://www.survivalring.org/ http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Forest/5003/index.htmlv http://waltonfeed.net/grain/faqs/index.html http://www.logicsouth.com/~lcoble/password/survival.html http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8NWHQON4 (for the ascetic of enduring adversity) -pixeque ------------ Literature ------------ "Aimless" The writer paused in front of his - no, make that her -keyboard. She knew that literary fame was fleeting, a series of indelible marks and superlative praise fading like the 1950s signs in the town part of what's now a city, soon to be consigned to the giant landfill outside of town, along with the writer's computer, her typewriter, her CD collection. It's only a matter of time, and your frame of reference matters. To a cancer patient, the landfill is closer than to a child, but to the mountains that are - were, before the strip-mine -above the city, it's always there and always has been. The little creatures running around trying to make themselves more colorful than the last are like tadpoles in the ponds that form by the curbs, soon to be dried up when the oil - I mean the water - goes away. The writer paused in front of her keyboard. The goal: to make a supercalifragilistic modern story that would ring all the bells in the literary quarterlies, burn up the pages of the culture magazines, and eventually get her onto a talk show or in some other aspect of fame (talk shows are archived on DVDs, which have approximately ten years' greater lifespan than paper, assuming of course that when the oil runs out everything will collapse right away, which probably isn't right - paper, for example, is invaluable for starting fires in a postnuclear landscape). The host, who will be whatever mixture of heritages that catches the eye of the media barons at that moment, can almost be felt, now, leaning closer in the future, breath smells nonexistent in the bright colors of camera. "Where did it all start for you?" The writer knows, in the sage wisdom of her 25 - probably better off at 27, that's when they all suicide - 27 years that the where-did-it-start question is only slightly less feared than the "How does it feel..." question, but she's prepped herself for years to be able to handle the tough ones. It's not much different than a physics assignment. Find what type of answer is desired, and work backward through what you've been told to find the tools to get there. And they say modern humanity is "The Trousered Ape"! Ridiculous. She'll toss her hair - curly, kinky, straight or wavy, depending on what the latest girlpop stars are doing - and look right into the eye of that interlocutor and say, "You know, it sounds very funny, but for me it all began when I realized that I could do anything I wanted. I'm the captain of my ship, the sculptor of my soul, and my world is me. In my world, I saw myself as the kind of girl who could come back from ten thousand failed relationships, embarrassing moments in bedrooms of men I met once and would never acknowledge in public again, credit reports that make my high school performance seem exemplary, and most of all that terrible moment when I staggered into my parent's bedroom and found they were doing something so biological it shocked my youngest of minds. I'm the kind of girl with pluck, with moxie, with savoir faire, maybe stretch that even to self-possession. I can do it; I can write a world-beating story; I can turn all my doubts and fears into triumphs and inevitably, bank account numbers reaching in a ladder to the heavens. Then I paused over my typewriter, and I did it, and you can too." The talk show host will pause with frozen smile and then laughing launch into the next question. As they say in prep school, you don't answer the question, but answer the audience. Tell them what they'd like to hear to get past the next car payment, the next chemo treatment, the next move at midnight while the rental office is closed tight and its employees elsewhere, drinking to numb the pain of taking applications and showing people empty boxes stale with unmoving air and feeble lights. They don't care at all - no; really; we can use profanity here, and we should utilize it, like a bank loan from the future to burn up all the sacreds now - they don't give a goddamn bloody fuck about you. They fucking only care about how it applies to them, to their mes and Is, what's left for the self? Insert trendy reference to drunken anal sex, or experimental lesbianism, or even drug culture, what's a good one, maybe methamphetamine. God, look at that word. It's like a trip down a mountain. Fucking methamphetamine. Probably the word "amp" in the middle is what does it. Profanity is trendy, so is sex, but we can't have any violence, unless it involves sex, preferrably rape, preferrably anal. Most of that audience have been anally raped in some form or another, so they'll sympathize. If you do it right, the talk show ends with them chanting VIOLENT ANAL RAPE NOW and using profanity, which the network's computers bleep out but still you're on the front page of the daily distraction of the newspapers the next morning. Put in lots of swearing. Since the author is female, she can also make trendy references to her own cunt, and to her sexual appetite. "Well, I was fucking these guys like I eat malt balls, in big clusters, and suddenly I realized, I didn't even own my own ass anymore. So I started to write, because suffering makes the best story." You've suffered too, dear audience, and you'll lap it up. Hardbacks are ten bucks extra. The cover's important too. If you can't explicitly reference anal sex, methamphetamine or lesbianism, try something symbolic, like Georgia O'Keefe meets KMFDM. Hah! That's the ticket. Write something like that, get a few hundred thou in the bank, and then find yourself a broker. Brokers live on cocaine and take-out sandwiches and love a trendy client, so when they're at that breakpoint between passing out from alcohol and snapping into coherence from the cocaine, they can slur about how refreshing it is to find someone who still wants to, you know, LIVE. God, independence is so goddamn trendy now, but it will always be trendy. Like a smart woman popstar once asked, "What have you done for me lately?" Gimme the power, and give it to me now. Really, give them the power, because then they'll buy my book, and then I don't need power. I've got the crushing armies of accountants and lawyers, psychologists and public relations consultants, security guards and lawn men at my side. A house in the Hollywood Hills, or maybe someplace slightly less trendy, like Silverlake, which makes it even more trendy, for those who know their trends. And really, you've got to work up more of the childhood trauma. "My parents never stopped hitting me, except when they were having sex, which to me was a shock back then, but more of a shock now since" (roll eyes) "their technique was strictly boardroom." Nothing conveys boredom like the idea of people in suits in a boardroom, unless of course it's your money they're doubling, at which point each of them is Indiana Jones or Catwoman, Jesus Christ or Genghis Khan. Make sure your female character breaks all the rules for women, including having lots of sex, swearing, smoking and drinking, probably tapping out cocaine with a delicate and slightly feminine motion, only to follow it up with a quick roundhouse punch to the meaty ballcap head of the nearest conservative-looking dork. "It's people like you who voted for George Bush!" Oh, the delightful slice of taboo shattered. The audience is cheering. She's with us, man, she's standing up for the little guy. Everyone can have insight into her condition because actually, it's OURS. We like cocaine. We like cigarettes. We like swearing. We like to think about orgies and lesbianism and violent anal rape, especially if it shows up in our DVD players. Come on baby, give 'em hell! Everywoman is a hero to everyperson, and everyperson inside of them has everygod, the personal savior and sword of Justice and Freedom. It's not that we live in our past mistakes, no, nor that we're whores. We're like her. She's got a purpose, a quest, a cause, a vision and clarity of thought in an aimless world. You won't find her in the dictionary under "neurotic housewife," or in a home for the homeless. She's on the path to success, walking right up that ladder to heaven. But still she pauses over her typewriter. Maybe a wistful moment, thinking this whole thing is the last bad deal gone down bad, or that it might be easier to get that job writing grant proposals for that save-the-toads-and-lizards foundation, or put together one of those bestseller also-rans about global warming, with its own unique title: "Climate Change: Illusion, or Obliteration?" Truth, or fantasy? Sex, or celibacy? Swearing, or sodomy? All the decisions are up to you, dear reader, as I wouldn't presume to state. Not that I really care what you decide, as long as you get over the most important decision of all, namely to buy my book. Each latte I drink is the royalties from one copy, and my rent takes a few thousand sales a month, but that's before the magnifying power of my attorneys and brokers turns this seed of wealth into a forest of luxury. No more hunching over typewriters, or computers, flicking out phrases about trendy people in trendy reality-defying situations. We all love wealthy people with problems, or scrappy fighters rising from the lowest to the highest, or career good guys who never falter from the path of the true and demand no reward in the end except a cold beer and a warm smile. These things make our lives seem friendly and take us away, past the oxygen tanks and IVs, past the rent notices and collection agency cold calls, past the divorces and firings and interest rates... the writer grasps cigarettes out of a hidden shelf, behind that old copy of Moby Dick, sending bills fluttering to the grainy surface of the desk. There's no way out but ahead. Light up and be done with it. And remember, put in lots of swearing. -vijay prozak -=- "Observing nature" As I walked the lush path through the frail undergrowth; as the first drop of dew plunged through my pants on the bare skin, I was shocked by that sudden feel of cold. I had stepped into the forest invigorated by the noon. Sun did throw its last beams on the horizon, painting the scarce dreaming clouds with its golden-yellow light, against which the verdant trees stood ready for yet another night, who knows how many they've seen in their lifetime. Birds were conversing with a language unknown to me, presumably about their daily matters, and fluttered on through the damp air from a branch to another. I felt I was an outsider in some way, separate from all this when I could observe things like this. There, at the end of a small trip, lied my home as well, a warm bed waiting, in which I could then dream and gather some strength for the next daybreak, as that is when I'm at my most active. Although, this time I had chosen to make a visit to this another, colder, but perhaps a more honest kingdom which felt like a deserted home, which's residents no longer recognize the prodigal son returning to home. The chill fell upon me as I walked into the middle of a tiny opening, from where the path which I just used split in two directions, both heading into the forest. Without any larger thoughts, I headed on another of these two almost overgrown paths. And there I was greeted as well. Mosquitoes smelled a human in their barren kingdom and the instincts of the insect directed them towards my skin, from which they could suck my blood for nutrition. Well, I had to flail them away and slap them into formless lumps as they were feeding for enough, and this did perfectly disrupt my concentration. As I was walking on the path through dense thickets of plantlife, there wasn't much more in my mind than slapping the mosquitoes and keeping them off my skin. You couldn't observe particularly anything then. The same did go on, albeit more ferociously, in a spruce forest where grand trees shadowed almost everything of that soft moss, which covered the ground and the roots of the trees. At some other moment when you wouldn't have had to run away from these mosquitoes and their whining and stings, this green palace would have offered something to see for onlookers, but now this spectator had just the thought of leaving from there, from under the shadows, from over the moist earth, from midst of hungry dwellers of the woods, as experiences stacked into the depths of mind. Blueberry leaves. Originally I set out to fetch them from the forest for tea along with some observation, which has failed by now. This time however I didn't use the same path to go back, but instead I decided to look around a bit in other areas as well. Next to the more sunny forest of pine trees which floor the blueberry twigs covered in great numbers, there was a both darker and danker area where the tiny guardians of the forest surely had been lurking for their prey, and who knows what else was there? Home and it's wonderfully warm bed started to return to my thoughts as I briskly made journey through the woods trying to have a look or two around me, mosquitoes shattering the thin glass of concentration. Finally I arrived to the another one of those two paths which headed to the forests from the opening at the start of the trip. This one was as overgrown as the other one was so again, pace slowed and the hopes of the mosquitoes rose up simultaneously. This trip to the woods didn't bear fruit exactly the way I expected. There really weren't many peaceful moments as insects charged on, trying to get a filling meal for themselves. Too bad that they didn't quite succeed in their attempts because I had given up on just observing and focused on my next goal, which was to go home. As this opening, which I had been waiting for, spread out before me leaving only the sky above me, an another goal dashed to my mind: those leaves of blueberry. Well, blueberry leaves do not fly all alone to my little hands so more lively than before, I walked straight back to the woods where mosquitoes, presumably very delighted, came to greet me and to feast me a little as well in all their whining hordes. Hasting, I snatched a few twigs from the ground, because now there was nothing left of my desire to look around, only the will to do what I had to do. As I returned to the opening, again amidst the singing of the birds and away from being centered by mosquitoes, I even could make glances lasting more than just one small moment at trees and at birds gliding in the air. Sun had gone down too, so a little later these forests would have been quite populated with all kinds of bugs who I wasn't very keen on meeting. So from there on, it wasn't a long trip to the warmth of my own home, and I said goodbyes to this other home, which didn't always feel like one but was honest in all it's coldness. It was an experience to visit it. In the light of realizing this my original thought about observing the forest as behind some glass, from safety and protected from all evil, felt quite naive. When the chilling dew splashed on my skin making me shiver, when mosquitoes chased me, their prey, I lived the life that the forest dwellers live each and every moment. There really isn't much time to think grand thoughts, because nature knows no mercy. Hunger, the cold and the beasts do exist. We can observe from our shelters the woods just like we want to and see them in a larger scale, as we do not have to run there in the middle of trees searching for food or shiver, covered by the cold. So we do have time for other things as well. This principle can also be applied so that we would run to safety away from this modern society, and examined it with the eyes of an owl, from the branch of some distant tree, fully unreachable by the target, in protection. The forest dwellers run after food just like we do, it's just that we have only money, which is analogous to that running. So, if we stop and stand away from money and at the same time, society, we can concentrate and observe without the useless needs, social expectations and other temptations attacking us with their ear-agonizing whine and efforts to suck our blood, unless we turn our attention to them and simultaneously be pulled away from the safety of observation. In the past, we lived according to the forest. It was our home. Experiences determined our way of life, and we lived and didn't observe as outsiders since we had no other home to run to safety to. Nevertheless, as time passed on we developed on the fields of technology and the forests didn't scare us so greatly anymore, so we forgot the language of the trees and animals and started to live in our own world. From this isolation we grew to think that we have nothing in common with the forest, that we are humans, the highest of all. We had built our own home from where we could examine the woods as from above so that we saw a larger whole, but we couldn't see beneath the leaves where the experiences wait. I shall do the same now in an opposite manner and move under the tree boughs in search for experiences. Bugs will bite me, cold winds will shiver me and branches cut my skin, but that is the way of the forest of which I have sought to become part of once again, stepping out from our little windowless cottage built on the tallest of all trees, deep in the woodlands. -frostwood [ exponentiation ] Issue [4.0]/October 27th, 2006 Published Quarterly by Corrupt: A Civilization Watchdog http://www.corrupt.org With assistance from Forest Poetry http://www.forestpoetry.org and The American Nihilist Underground Society http://www.anus.com/ Editor: Gestalt Writers: frostwood vijay prozak pixeque Alexis no fun Smog "When a place gets crowded enough to require IDs, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere." -- R.A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love [EOF]