Entropy

Grandmother Chaos

I call to thee

Bless us

With the Wisdom of Fools

And the Stupidity of Sages

Fill us with the Mercy of your Fury

And the Horror of your Embrace

Let all we learn stand as Testament

To your deep and apathetic Love

Let us bask in the beauty of your daughters

Eris of the Golden Apple

Kali of the Blade and Skull

And Science most beloved.

May they guide us

Or not

As is your whim and want

Grandmother Chaos

I call to thee.

A poem to begin this post. Not my finest work, but passable, and full of feeling. Though anyway as some of you may be intimately aware,

I am not a creature of Order.

I mean I have a code I live by. I'm not maliciously destructive. Mostly. Well... sometimes. But I seem to have an entropic aura about me. Broken things last longer then they should. Things break in unexpected ways. I just that I am a force for Entropy in the universe.

So much so that the idea that I need to keep something orderly and organized causes me much more stress then I can easily explain. Because that's not the case for everyone else. Most of the people I know and interact with feel better about life when everything is neat and tidy. My mother for example has been known to have panic attacks when the clutter level reaches critical mass.

But for me... I like a chaotic environment. That's not to say that I don't know where everything is. I can generally tell you or find for you in moments whatever it is you need.

It's in the big pile.

I used to call it the Dragon's Lair Method of Organization. Which I'd trademark, but that would be stupid. Basically it's all sort of in a big pile. Which means that I know where everything is at all times. It's in the pile.

This drove many people who've lived with me nuts. And I sincerely wish that it was any other way, but it's not. It's that tie to Chaos. And the fact that Gremlins just think I am the coolest thing ever. But that's another bit of Madness.

When dealing with some of the more fanatical of Christians I will sometime joke that I "accepted Chaos as my personal savior". It's a simple way to express my Discordian values (something I only learned about recently). I believe that everybody's right. And that nobody is. Every lie is true. And every truth is a lie. I believe that simplicity is the most beautiful fallacy that can ever be experienced.

Everything is complicated.

Picture the most amazingly colossally stupid individual you possibly can. This moron you've conjured, he (or she girls can be just a impressively stupid as men you pig!) is made of particles created in the burning crucible of the stars. Through the tides of chaos these particles mashed together until after who knows how long or far they travelled they become that tree-hugging, gun-toting, bible thumping, gay marriage supporting jackass that you see in front of you.

They are a miracle.

And without entropy, without Grandmother Chaos, they wouldn't exist at all. All things can be boiled down to Energy and Entropy as far as I see it. (They're metaphors for things we're only beginning to understand, just to be clear)

Chaos and Void.

Two sides of the same thing.

And only in their glorious and beautiful battle does all of creation exist. All that we do is fight against entropy. It's a futile war. We'll never win. The universe will run out of energy and all that we know will be lost to the Cold.

And not the put on an extra jacket cold.

The capitol C Cold. The one that I'm sure Kevin saw in his nightmares.

But... we know this. Death is coming for us. Invariably. Nations and amoebas. Whenever two bits of quanta decided to hang out together they're destined to be torn apart.

And that's so gloriously beautiful.

Because it keeps happening. Over and over again. The systems build and strive. We turn our minds to combating the endless onslaught of entropy and by strive against we create anew. New systems. New life.

Thank you Grandmother Chaos

For battling the Void

For from your spilt Blood

And splintered Bone 

have we made our homes

Our Loves

And our Lives

Thank you

Love

I've been dreading this one. Have been putting off writing it.

It's a complicated thing love. No matter how simple the hippies claim it to be, or how simple they want it to be... or how simple we all desperately want it to be. It's complicated.

Over the years of my life I've spent a great deal of time studying the nature of romantic entanglement. Cause that's what I want to write about right now, not familial or platonic love, but proper romance. I have a lot of family that love me, both those I'm blood related to and not. I have a number of very dear friends who I have a deep love and respect for.

But I'm missing the thing I want the most. The one I've craved since I was a little boy. Love. What I've always wanted is to have somebody feel for me what I feel for them. To wake up in the morning wrapped in the arms of someone who would rather be no other place. I need to be wanted in that way.

Now I'm under no delusions that this is some shortcut to a happy life or the reason for our existence. Though there was a time that that was absolutely the case. I grew up the oldest of three sons, and until the first year of college I had a crippling fear of girls. If a girl batted her eyes at me I'd have a panic attack cause I didn't know what to do.

This is no longer the case.

However the romanticizing of... well... romance is something that I've never fully been able to shake. That unfulfilled promise of happily ever after. That desire to feel something for lack of a better word, "real". I understand that a relationship is about hard work and a willingness to remain together, but I've seen that "relationship" and "love" are far too rarely hand in hand.

On an intellectual level I understand this. But the heart wants what the heart wants.

I am deeply prone to infatuation. A low cut shirt and pretty smile can make my heart go pitter pat. I am prone to intense crushes. Many of my relationships started out deeply wildly emotionally intense... Until they weren't. There are a few I miss and would probably handle things differently, but that's for another topic.

This is about capital L Love. The "L Word" I've heard it called in hushed and frantic whispers. I hesitate to call this "True Love" as that has all kinds of other emotional and logical baggage attached to it. But I suspect that that is what I'm seeking but unable to find. Well at least find with any form of staying power.

I've been in love twice in my life. The proper kind. The fairy tale kind. Once with a Lovelorn Paladin. And once more cause I was a fool.

And how do I know that it was that way? "True love"?

Two reasons.

One: It felt just like the story books describe. It was transcendant and unlike anything I've known before or since. The feeling of destiny rattling around waiting to burst from my test. Like all the things that had drawn me to every woman I'd ever cared for, everyone I'd ever been attracted too, had been distilled into these wondrous creatures before me.

And two: Cause after how badly they ended for me, after how much pain it caused... I still feel it. The hollow ache of a fate denied. Coupled with the memory of true transcendant joy. I can't move past it. Not a day goes by that they don't cross my mind with a small ache in my heart. I want to speak out to them but something stops me. Something tells me that the time isn't right.

And I wonder if it ever will be.

Cause here's the thing, I've sought it out even when it terrified me. Even when passing a note or saying hello was like facing a blender of flaming blades I screw up my fist and charged ahead. Sought it out.

Never had the right timing though. But that's not the point.

Love is something that can bind two people together like nothing else can. Something as simple as a touch or a kiss from the one you love can be more thrilling than any other act with someone else. Or so I would assume. I've been with people I cared deeply about, but those dread two...

It's difficult for me to talk about this subject, because in all that seeking, all the striving, the most common experience I have had is pain.

A hundred flavors of agony I have endured. And inflicted a half dozen more. This quest after the "One" (which I know there are far more then one) has lead me into the light and back down into the dark.

I've been dreading writing this. Even as I write these words I'm tearing up in a way that only I can see. And for some reason known only to the most distant and fictional gods, I'm sharing this on the public square.

Letting you see the rainbows in my tears, and the shape of the coagulated clouds I'm bleeding.

I hope they're pretty.

Wrath

"Rage. Rage against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas

As a part of the human experience anger has become second only to hate as the "if you display this, you are a bad person" go to judgement. We don't like angry people. And it's completely understandable. Rage is a destructive force. At it's direction terrible things have been wrought.

"Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." -Buddah

The flame metaphor is perhaps the most perfect choice. When angry you describe it as a burning thing. A savage fire that consumes our will as we fight against it. A flame that drives us to the most horrible parts of our nature.

But maybe it's more than that.

"Anybody can become angry- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - That is not within everybody's power and is not easy." -Aristotle

We would not have to fight so hard against anger if we didn't get something out it. If there was not some evolutionary advantage. I know that I personally have dealt with anger issues for most of my life. I tended towards turning it inward, which may have helped create the way I view rage.

It was never something to just be let go. I always had to understand why I was angry. Not just what had triggered the anger but why I felt that surge of power. That intoxicating surge. I have devoted huge parts of my life to learning to control my anger.

And I think that's the important bit to remember. Control. To control something doesn't mean to wipe it from existence. And if you're thinking that controlling is locking it away in a place where you can't find it, than you have missed the point of it.

Think of it this way. Rage is a beast. A primal creature that resides within you. Imagine a dog. A big terrifying hound that scares you sometimes. Now it seems like the world thinks there are only two options.

One (The "Bad" One): Where you are dragged along for the ride as this creature wildly seeks to destroy everything in it's path and wreaks every petty revenge that crosses its mind. This breeds regrets and is shameful for those that cannot keep control.

Two (The "Good" One): You lock away your anger and learn to calm yourself so that nothing can touch it. You build your cage out of apathy or stress reduction techniques, or simply out of fear of what you may become. But you know that it is not acceptable to let anyone see your beast. The beast is something wrong with you. It is a foul thing that serves no purpose.

But there's other options. It's okay to be angry. Just don't let it rule you. To push it away or completely modify your life as to avoid all things that could anger you is to deny yourself important lessons about life.

Anger is part of life.

It brings a savage and sometimes terrible heat and passion to our lives. Being angry all the time IS destructive. I'll never disagree with that statement. But to look down on someone who is learning to safely and appropriately vent their wrath because they have reason to be angry is counter productive. We can learn to use our anger to work for us instead of destroy us. Disregarding a voice because its angry is a fallacy. I know that many times things said in anger are things the person will immediately regret saying. But sometimes it's the exact right thing to say! Sometimes your anger will give you strength to say what you need to but were far too afraid to.

As I said I have a deep and personal relationship with my rage. I get angry fairly often. In some very real (and sometimes terrifying) ways I enjoy being angry. Getting all riled up and yelling and punching the air is something that I'm pretty sure everyone I know has seen me do at least once.

I'm an angry person. And I'm also prone to truly terrible depressions. Ones that I have seen crush others of my friends and my family. It's probably the great looming specter in all of what I do. That inky, sticky, heavy blackness that halts all motion. That turns great men into fragile and broken things no longer worth of the title "Person". It's perhaps my greatest fear.

When I have come closest to breaking, when the depression weighs so deeply upon me that I can not even scream, when I think for a few moments that death would be a sweet release from all this I reach deep into myself and pull for anything that can help.

And I find my anger.

When hope fails (as it often does), when calm and peace and serenity just push me deeper into the terrible sludge of my own mind, when I hit the bottom...

I find my anger.

That savage hound of flesh and fire. Burning and tearing and screaming into me, "No!" it says. "You're not done. You're not going to back down! You're going to let this flaw in your skull, this fear of your self, you're going to let it control you? Contain you!? You're John fucking Belliston. You have reason to fight! Cause fuck this! This self absorbed bullshit pisses me right off! Fucking change! Fucking move! Go fucking FORWARD!"

My anger has a bit of a potty mouth. But that's okay. Cause when nothing else will motivate me.

I find my anger.

Blasphemy

BlaspheME... BlaspheYOU...  (Stolen without credit from a bit by Eddie Izzard take that society and British Transvestite Comedians of the early aughts!)

I love blasphemy. I really do. An irreverence for the divine is something deeply important to me as a person and honestly to society as a whole.

Yeah. I just said that. Blasphemy is good.

Some of the time anyway. The trick is to challenge and satirize the beliefs in question without insulting or belittling. That's where the hard part lies. That delicate balancing act. Not offending. I don't say we shouldn't offend because there's anything innately wrong with being offensive, I sure as hell don't think there's anything wrong with it, but because it gives people an excuse to shut down.

The best Blasphemies (and some of the worst) are jokes. Being able to laugh at something makes us less uncomfortable with it. It gives us a protective barrier through which we can begin to look at the thing. The lens of humor frees us to look at the things as they are and not as we believe them to be. By laughing we are forced to reexamine if only so that we understand what the joke is talking about.

Now this is where the bit about being offensive comes in, while the best modern Blasphemy is in the form of jokes, we want to use it to open eyes not close minds. So here some pretty healthy guidelines when you are looking to blaspheme.

Choose 1 (2 absolute maximum) of the these three things:
Blasphemy/Heresy/Profane
Scatological
Sexual

If your joke has only one, then you're likely pretty good.
Blasphemous- "Muhammed has a silly hat on his head."
Scatological- "Poop and whatnot." *giggle*
Sexual- "And they interlocked their genitals in a most amusing manner!" *everybody weeps for joy at the obvious hilarity*

Just for example.

Now why take all the time to make something that will innately offend and try to minimize the offense?

Because the most blasphemous ideas are sometimes the ones they need to hear the most.

We live in an age that is seeped in blasphemy. An a age where we survive at the whims of sorcery. We have unlocked the building blocks of the gods themselves and have begun to create new and interesting and terrible forms of life. We have seen the lights of alien stars. We can communicate in an instant across any distance around the globe, and beyond. Right now there is a beautiful mechanical creature that has begun the process of processing and understand a whole new world. A world more foreign to us then Heaven or Hell ever were.

Just under a thousand years ago these things were the realm of the foulest magics. You would have had to be in the thrall of the Dark Lord himself to even imagine that these things were possible. And this is the world we live in everyday.

Our very society is a fist raised in transcendant defiance to the God of the Inquisition.

Pushing those boundaries, moving beyond what we think the world is, that is the only means for us to move forward. For us to transcend this mortal coil in a fully tangible way.

I am a Blasphemer.
I am a Heretic.
And I am not alone.

Devout Discordian Odinistic Neo-Shaman with Chaos Magician Tendencies

I recently was filling out some important forms for a doctor's appointment. Due to the nature of the doctor I was seeing (there may have been the tiniest amount of head shrinking involved) there was a section that asked about religion. It's not a simple question for me. There was a time when I'd just put Mormon without thinking and move on.

This is no longer the case.

Hell there was a time when I would have put "Pagan" and not thought any more of it. But that time is also past.

It's a complicated question, the one of religion. It brings us to a worldview. It brings us to a number of preconceptions and subtle understandings. "We worship the same Jesus? Why fantastic! Isn't it silly those folks that worship that other subtly different Jesus?" And then they throw back their heads and laugh the wondrous laughter of those who will travel to the same heaven.

Religion has shaped the world in ways that are completely undeniable. For Good? For Bad? It doesn't really matter to me. The world is what it is. Religion as far as I'm concerned is a neutral force. For some it acts as a guide to becoming more moral and ethical individuals. For others it's a chain that binds them and guides them to try and ensnare all others into their own terrible bonds.

Now there's also every other iteration between those two, but those two are the most dramatic. And I'm writing for my buddy's enjoyment so gotta keep this shit all fancy and whatnots.

But anyway, looking at the form I put what is the title of this very post. Devout Discordian Odinistic Neo-Shaman with Chaos Magician Tendencies. I did this cause as I've been learning more and more my beliefs keep evolving. They absorb the new data, new experiences, and new energies and alchemically process it all until it works together.

On top of that I'm a humanist, a transhumanist, a major technophile, and an Adherent of St. Vidicon of Cathode.

I worship Odin, Frigg, Eris, Kali, Little bit of Shiva, Raven, Bear, Promethius, Hades when I'm feeling nasty, and pretty much whoever the hell I'm feeling like at any given moment.

I believe that the Gods are constructs of the human mind that have the power to effect our lives by extending energetic forces from within the collective unconscious. Or not. It's all just the whim of Primordial Chaos anyway. Who doesn't really have whims but it's a parable. Like throwing the first stone, only with the divine starfire that shaped the universe in the Crucible of the Big Bang.

Or something.

But that being said, my doctor asked me what I had written for religion. I told him, Devout Discordian Odinist ... wait... Devout Discordian OdinistIC Neo-shaman with Chaos Magician Tendencies.

He looked at me with the look that said, "So are you fucking with me? Or are... seriously are you fucking with me?" and asked how important spirituality was in my life.

I said with complete sincerity "It is deeply important to me."

He couldn't call me a whackjob cause of professional decorum, so he just moved on.

It still makes me giggle to remember his face.