Cutting the Cord

On a mailing list I’m on, several people are talking about a Yogic practice of cutting the lingual frenum, the cord that runs underneath the tongue and holds it fast to the floor of the mouth.  The purpose of this self-mutilation is to be able to curve the tongue back behind the uvula and into the nasal cavity.  This procedure is supposed to cause enlightenment.

It is pernicious nonsense to imagine that the body requires mutilation for enlightenment.  We are perfect as we are.  Anyone who tells you anything else is selling something.

The Crazy Guy Next Door

I thought my new neighbors might think I was crazy because I stood in the yard chanting to the full moon, or because I burned herbs in a bowl in my back yard, or because I put up Herms on the corners of the property.  But I had silly fantasies.

My new neighbors probably think I’m crazy because I was outside filling two black nylon socks with snow melting chemicals so I could drape them over my ice dams.

The bad news is, I can’t reach the back — I have to wait for my much taller SO to come home.  The good news is, I really, really hated those socks. 

Peru shamans perform magic on U.S.

Peruvian shamans perform rituals in an attempt to influence the U.S. election.

Do you think it’s ethical to try to use magic to influence an election?

via BBS

Mindfulness

Evidently, I’m bad at it, since this is the second time that, halfway through enjoying a bowl of granola, I have looked harder at the food and noticed that some of it has legs.

I also can’t remember when my appointment is to get a haircut.  I blame finals and love for making me a shaggy bug-eater.

A World With No Rules

I like to think about things that everyone takes for granted in new ways.  For example, rules.  Everyone always says “You’ve got to have rules.”  Even so-called mavericks like to say (and god, I’ve said it), “You’ve got to know the rules before you break them.”

Why do we need rules?  To control behavior?  But if that’s the case, then that implies that there’s something in humans that is irrational and randomly swerving, and rules keep us straight.  Neither of those assumptions seems true to me.  Even a lunatic can construct a chain of cause and effect for his or her actions — they might not seem rational to us the sane, but they’re connected at least from the lunatic’s perspective.  And rules certainly aren’t just made to govern the insane, or only they would have to obey them.  No, it seems like the rules are made to govern the sane — in fact, a true lunatic might not have to obey the rules in the same way, under our laws!  So the sane are, by definition, rational, and have rational reasons for doing things.  Why, then, rules?  Are there certain kinds of rational reasoning that are more acceptable than other kinds?  Sure, maybe, but acceptable to whom?  And by which chain of reasoning?  And can we judge the reasoning that leads to the judging of the original chain of reasoning, with another chain of reasoning, and so on?  There’s really no ground to stand on.

The other need for rules, to keep people behaving “right” — well, that works well, doesn’t it.  No, it certainly doesn’t.  Crime fluctuates, but has nothing to do with the establishment of rules — instead, it has more to do with economics, civic identity, and so on.  In other words, you give people rational reasons to behave “well,” and they behave well.

Moreover, if we all obey the rules all the time, we can never change them, because we can never test a new rule that might be better.  Or, if we do change them, we must therefore do it blind.  Again, even the American legal system enshrines this method of changing rules — one way to challenge a law is to disobey it and challenge its legality in court.

Maybe it’s not so much a matter of rules themselves, but obeying and regarding rules mindlessly.  For example, last night I found myself — driving home tired — stymied by some construction.  Someone earlier had swerved into the cones marking the new lanes of traffic and scattered them randomly about.  There was no path through them.  What do you do?  Get out of the car and rearrange the cones?  It’s against the rules to park in a street, even at 3 AM.   Drive over the cones?  Not optimal.  Try to pick your way through them?  Back up and find a detour?  Every option breaks the rules.

Rules try to take the places of solutions.  A solution is something you figure out yourself; a rule is a solution calculated by others.  But rules ignore contexts.  And all meaning derives from context.  A life without rules might be the only kind of life that’s truly meaningful.

What a terrifying thought that is.

Kopi Luwak — Via Boingboing

Over 40% of kopi luwak isn’t actually crapped out of a civet cat. And isn’t that disappointing.

I love this. Typical Americans would be annoyed if there were civet waste in our food. (I also desperately want to try a cup of kopi luwak — I guess I’m not typical)

Little Late on This — Hindu Cleric Heckled

A Hindu cleric was asked to give the introductory prayer to congress.  This is what happened.

Are You the Author of “Postmodern Magic?”

Holy cow, I got my first out-of-the-blue “Hey, are you the author of — ” thing yesterday.  I was working with someone I barely knew at this thing I do for community service (not the “busted with drugs” kind of community service but the “volunteering because it feels awesome” kind), which involves working with kids who are learning creative writing.  Since I’m also a poet, I talk mostly about poetry, but since I’m also the only counselor at the camp who has sold a book, I talk about the publishing process and the vast quantities of glorious, glorious money one makes off of royalties.  ahem.

Later, on the way to run an errand, the camp director — whom, as I said, I met essentially this week — said “Patrick, are you the author of Postmodern Magic?”  “Yes,” I said, “I certainly am.”  Keep in mind this guy is nearly twice my age (and I’m twice the age of the kids at the camp — it’s a neat mathematical thing), pretty clearly has never stopped in the occult section of his local bookstore, and probably wouldn’t believe in magic if it bit him in the bum.  So he had clearly googled me.  As part of a background check, I’m guessing, and that has had me chuckling for the last two days straight.  “So I guess you’re . . . Pagan?”  “Yup,” I said, “I certainly am.”

A moment of silence can have a flavor.  It can taste like a strenuous attempt to accept the odd, it can taste like cognitive dissonance, it can taste like the gap between two worlds that really can’t touch, no matter how hard one or either of us might try.

This year was the first the other counselors weren’t my friends, but absolute strangers.  We not only didn’t share a world view, I’m not sure we shared a reality, and our views of the numinous powers of writing were kind of — ahem — different.  I said to our female counselor, “I look forward to this every year; it really means a lot to me.  Often, it’s the high point of my year.”  She said “That’s really pathetic.”  But she didn’t see God in the face of these kids, when they found a way to say what they thought.  One of the kids told me that he had never, in his entire life up until now, found a way to feel like himself and write from what he really was, instead of what he thought he should be.   That’s God.  No wonder it’s the highlight of my year.

I didn’t make friends with the counselors.  They’re too far away from my world, in other orbits entirely, but I wish them well and hope they find pleasure in what brings them pleasure.  As for the kids — I am looking for a way to work with teenagers more regularly.  I think poetry has a lot to offer kids, a kind of magic so much more important than the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel and so much miraculous and unlikely than the mere idea that a talisman might affect my world.

Symbols

Some symbols are so powerful that, even though they convey no meaning in the linguistic sense, it is illegal to say them. For example, it is illegal to say 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0, to post it on a blog, to publish it in a public place.

I find the entire issue of copyright complex.  Certainly, it can be reduced to simplicity: copying and transfering copyrighted information — such as my book, say — is a crime.  But just as the printing press changed the entire concept of intellectual property, making it possible to “own” words and ideas, so does the internet change the way we must approach copyright.  Yet no one making laws about the internet has the slightest notion how it works or, in some cases, what it is (”Someone sent me an internet Monday and I didn’t get it until Wednesday!”).

I am in favor of protecting copyright of movies, music, books, and all other forms of intellectual property.  A number, however, is not intellectual property.  Making it intellectual property has some rather odd implications for accountants.

Moreover, preventing people who pay for a movie from making a copy for their own use goes beyond copyright.  The concept of intellectual property has never denied a customer from making a copy for his or her own use.  Making a profit or interfering with sales of a piece of intellectual property that belongs to another — yes, that’s forbidden.  So if I rip a copy of a movie for my own back-up, that is legal.  If I rip a copy of a movie and share it on the internet — of course that’s illegal.  But companies have no right to prevent the former if they wish to avoid the latter.  Or, more accurately, they have the right, and I have the right not to buy such things.

It is hard, even for a staunch supporter of intellectual property rights like me, not to recognize that copyright in this country — and worldwide — is in a shambles, not least of all because of the internet, but also because of corporations like Disney who exploit copyright for purposes other than its intended function.  Copyright exists to encourage artists to create; it expires to encourage artists to create new things as old ones become public domain.  The creators of a piece of art have the right to own it; however, the public has a right to own intellectual property in the public domain.

Finally, copyright protection doesn’t exist so jackasses in suits and ties can sue old ladies, children, and college professors for posting a goddamned number on their blogs.

09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0

Ann Coulter Probably Doesn’t Like Me

Huh.  The Blog that Goes Ping points to Orcinus in regards to Ann Coulter calling Edwards a “faggot.”

Looking at these quotes, I have to say — she pretty much would hate me passionately, from my personal life, to what I do for a living, to what I believe, to whom I tend to vote for.

If Ann Coulter disapproves of your life, you know you’re doing something right.  That’s the yardstick of the Great Work right there.

(in other news, when your blog points to a blog that points to a blog, it’s time to burn a candle in memory of Marshall McLuhan)