Gentle Apocalypse

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:22:00 +0000

I've managed to avoid the horrors and sops of normal work for two years now on near-zero savings and income. First eight months of social security, then four months of house-sitting, then eight months of sponging off mine and my girlfriend's families and then the last four months living off an extraordinary and dramatic stroke of financial luck, which I'll tell of later.

All this time I've been writing and drawing. I was publishing quite a lot of it here, but in the last eight months or so I've been all beans go finishing two colossal projects - the story of Sam How, the rabbit-based epic mentioned elsewhere - and, colossaler by far, The Gentle Apocalypse - my utopian newspaper / guide to everything, an early sketch of which was also once here. They've both transformed into something... surprising.

So I'll put up an occasional post, the odd drawing of Buddha as a peanut perhaps, but still not much more than once a month until all is done with the books. If you'd like to know when they are finished, drop me a line and I'll write back then with a gift. Also, if you've written to me before and I didn't reply, please try again - I recently discovered that lots of mails were going into my unchecked spam folder and thence to the void.

Low slow bows and theatrical flourishes,

Da

Squid Ritual

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:09:00 +0000

Last time I was in Japan I lived in Ishikawa-ken where I played a kind of live computer game on New Year's eve. Crowds of us gathered outside a three story temple with long balconies and loads of sliding doors on all sides from which monks dressed as badgers shuffled out in file, scattering beans into the crowd which we had to catch in special nets and then take home and hide in a 'rarely looked-at' corner. The beans would, for the coming year, subtly emit good luck radiowaves - but not for oneself, only for neighbours you hadn't met. It was widely acknowledged in the Ishikawa prefecture that one's good luck came from one's neighbour's secretly generous beans.

This new year, in Kurashiki, was a more sombre, squid-based, affair.

On the stroke of midnight the temple bells were rung 108 times to clear away the 108 defilements. We were gathered in the square, hundreds of us, dressed in red. As the bells rang we remembered times this year when we had dirtied ourselves with ungrateful complacency over good health, the false generosity of begrudged giving, prawn-greed, intimacies dishonoured with weak gagging, bland robotic anecdotes, unconscious repetitions of old facial tics, grey daymares of morbid self-pity, the excitement of complaint and bad news, loved ones tortured because we didn't have what we wanted and were too cowardly to make a dash for it, and for all the trees, clouds and sparrows we'd ignored, lost in trivial thoughts. By the simple act of recognition we purged ourselves. The monks chanted 'recognition is to really see is all we ever need to be free is recognition is to really see...' over and over, resonantly harmonising while, together, the crowd made the ten-handed sign of the squid, symbol of liberation and mystery. The crowd began to press, our sombre waggling limbs entangling into a vast web and we hummed together in collective warmth until the final bell was struck whereupon we backed out of the temple, reverent and cleansed.

Momochan's Advice

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:07:00 +0000

The invisible juice that flows through your bones when you find yourself laughing for no reason at all, escapes through your fingertips as a kind of gas, and can be passed on to your friend by pressing your thumbs against her forehead and humming the theme song to Hawaii-Five-O.

If you ever find yourself shivering with a strange delight don't be surprised if hundreds of laughing Japanese schoolgirls cycle past you, or something like that.

The clenchy feeling of causeless anxiety that you sometimes feel laying across your chest like a sleeping cobra, or creeping up your neck like a rattlesnake, is, in fact, a snake. Its a multidimensional space-wurm that's using your body as a gateway from one reality to another. Worrying, blaming things, eating and resisting it only make it angry. Just let it pass through.

(By the way, sometimes the snake whispers advice - follow this advice immediately and without question).

If you ever invent a computer programme that broadcasts radio waves to all the electric wheelchairs in the world, taking them over and transporting their users to a huge stadium to hold them all ransom, make sure you chose a stadium with wheelchair access, or they'll all be waiting outside and it will just be untidy.

A rapid sideways motion, knees and ankles alternately twisting, shoulders, elbows and wrists rising and falling in a concatenated ripple, eyebrows raised suggestively, is the best way to approach most problems.

Darren hasn't been posting for a while, because he's been writing and painting the big story of Sam How, rabbit, which is coming along nicely, and should be done by spring. And last week he made a website for his songs, which is here. He's never quite sure what to make of his songs, and is sometimes a bit sheepish about them, but if you like them, that's where they are. If you're not keen on his music, he's also posted some mixes there, which, he's sure you'll like. And there's also his girlfriend's site, which is here, but that's in Japanese and doesn't make much sense, but everyone knows a Japanese person, so please tell that Japanese person about it.

My name is Momochan. I am eight.

Waking Up From Ikea

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:24:00 +0000

I had an Ikeamare in Ikeashwitz. My girlfriend, Ai-chan, and I were populating a new flat and on the shuttle bus I broke a basic relationship rule and started talking about an ex-girlfriend, Ariadne, who had given me the secret to mastering Ikea. The mention of the messanger put a wrinkle of irk between Ai and I, which I smoothed by emphasising the message; that only hell demands more peace of mind than Ikea.

The problem of course isn't so much megacorp greenwash, trying to escape from the maze of the minataur, forcing your way upstream against the shuffling armies of the undead, or even, in my case, that I'm writing a story about a cunicular superhero who does battle with unhappy furniture. No; its choice - aggrevated by penury: 'the tall one or the folding one? well the folding one is cheaper, but it doesn't look as nice, although, hm, not sure, perhaps the blue one? its not as comfortable, but we can get a better one later, but what if we get the wider one and put a throw over it, unless...' and on and on and on and and on.

But there was more. As we entered I saw the 'penang' armchair, and wondered how many people in how many worlds have sat possessed upon it by the insane idea that their arse is not being loved. Then I saw the one in my mum's house. Then I saw the one I had in my flat in Madrid. Then, as we wondered round and round, I began to realise, with a creeping cold sense of dream-dread, that Ikea was, in fact, entirely comprised of rooms from places I'd lived.

All of it. There was the futon I'd written my first awful novel, there was the sofa Bill had single-handedly carried up eight flights of stairs, there was the bed that Isabel had freaked out in when we'd made love... and there was Isabel.

Isabel herself was lying on a 'Malm' bed in the same bewildered state I remembered from the night I'd brought her back to my place and created a weird psychic sense of sexual distortion between us. My current girlfriend in Japan was trying to work out whether she preferred the beige or the cream Billy, while a girl I'd slept with ten years ago in Spain was here in Osaka, half naked in a showroom bed.

'Isabel? What are you doing here?' I approached her, but she paid no attention to me.

'Darren! I've just seen you.'

I turned; Ai-chan was flustered and gesturing.

'Over there,' she said, 'a younger you - you were arguing with a girl. And, yi! there you are again!'

I turned. The me of Madrid was sheepishly approaching Isabel upon the bed of disaster.

'And again! And again!'

Ikea wasn't just filled with all my old chairs and tables; it was also filled with all my old mes. Hundreds of me, drifting around hundreds of old domestic situations - along with crowds of old friends and ex-girlfriends at various ages, a vast shifting dreamworld of intersecting psyche-phantoms.

Ai, against her will, was fascinated. She didn't really want to know what I was like before we'd met, or how more or less beautiful / thin / blonde / etc were my previous loves, but she couldn't help herself. I tried to restrain her, but was held back by myself.

'Darren, you've got to help me.' The Madrid me was tugging at my sleeve. I turned and looked at him, remembering when I had been there, so desperate to know what to do about Isabel.

He started to explain but I hushed him with a gesture.

'What you are doing is against both of your instincts, and you know it, so raise your game and send her home or you'll both feel squalid and used for weeks.'

That shut me up. I went off to find Ai, but was waylaid by more mes, all with old love-problems. At least my younger selves had the humility to ask my advice, but it was pretty chaotic, so I got them to form a queue down in the market hall, leaving Ai with the ghosts of girlfriends past - and grateful that I'd kept so faithfully to another cardinal relationship rule - of not recycling romantic gestures. In fact, now I think of it, a large part of my 'relationship ethics' stemmed from the suspicion that something like this was bound to happen one day.

Anyway, it was heaving down in the market hall, but all my mes were getting on pretty well together and waiting patiently in line. I didn't want to get in long discussions with my old selves, so I just dealt specifically with the problems they had at the time; 'You always find her less attractive two days before she ovulates,' 'Don't try and change her bad habits - if you love her enough they'll either change by themselves or you won't care,' 'Things unsaid will speak in bed,' 'She responds to you as life does, and vice versa,' 'Write the letter, but for God's sake don't send it' - and so on.

It was all a bit silly. Reminded me of Marlybone Song, the man who knew everything, who sat at the top of the hill and people would come from miles around to ask him questions - such as 'how do I fill in my tax returns?' and 'what's a good chat up line?' and 'how do I get past level seventeen on Manic Miner?' and so forth, and in the end he just invented a search engine and sodded off back to Neptune.

But the last me had the good question, he was burning with it. His house, as they used to say, was on fire.

It was the wordless question - the impossible question - the question that only everything can answer.

He looked at me, saw that I was still asking it, shook my hand and left.

And that was the last I saw of myself.

The Pink Tip & The Probe

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:11:00 +0000

Inside my chest is a vibe-detecting instrument, the naked pink tip. When I meet people this pink tip leans forward enquiringly, or it vibrates like a pleasantly electrocuted chicken, or it sways with melancholy happiness, or it shrinks away in horror, or it hardens resistingly preparing for battle, or it softens blendingly into yours. Although animal fear might put me on the back foot, or my interest in sex put me on the front, although I might not be paying attention, or I might be paying far too much attention; although, in short, I might be wrong; the pink tip never is.

The pink tip is a tiny wave upon the vast blossoming, blooming ocean of the moment. It doesn't just feel what is happening 'out there,' it is what is happening. Inside my body is the colour of this afternoon's light, the crisp ionised vibe of it, the nut-knuckled, honeysuckled, desert-zephyred, wet-moss, beading, fox-bellied, briney dewlap of it, and your shed-roof, pebble, porcelain, wet-rope, copper, cow-flank, mysterious mink-oiled and myrtle mood of it; become instantly ours.

When something particular needs to be picked out of the present, the pink tip pokes up into the brain and becomes the probe, which isolates an object, splits it from its opposite, judges it, names it, fits it into a system, expresses it, or writes a little sub-routine in the internal computer; called a habit, a system or a map. The probe knows where the jam is. The jam is in the fridge.

The probe is good for finding the jam, its no good for tasting it.

Many comics, actors and improvisers suffer agonies of self-doubt and fear before a show. Particularly the best ones. They ask themselves if it is going to be okay tonight, they wonder if they are really just kidding themselves, they feel fraudulent, and think about what they should say, what they should do on the stage.

The stage is the unimaginable anything-can-happen ocean-essence of life, while the probe is just a code-monkey. When the actor asks the probe about the stage, the pink tip sinks in desolation and the poor probe literally goes mental; saying things like 'you’ll fail,' 'you’re mad' or 'the jam is in the fridge.'
When the probe is cut off, one little part of it debating with another, I become delayed, confused and stuck; either stuck in, unable to think, make a decision or, in extreme cases, insanely unable perceive time or space at all, lost like a monkey on acid in a kaleidoscope of raw impression; or stuck out; compulsively thinking, wanting, worrying, concentrating, the restless turned-around telescope of my attention excluding what is happening which eludes me. You become increasingly 'the other,' an entity narrowly apprehended, to be 'understood' (an unpleasant experience as millions of young children, beautiful women, sensitive artists and fellow players who have been 'understood' can testify).

When the probe listens to the pink tip, I am said to be empathic. Empathy comes from the Greek for 'letting in feeling'. When the probe lets in what is happening, I responds aptly to it, with just the right word - or silence.

Before

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:58:00 +0000

(Note: Thoughts are male. Cut down on sex, data and work and bump up gossip, opinion of others and worry for women)

After

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 04:07:00 +0000

My Interplanetary Self

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:32:00 +0000

The tingling mass of molecules of my hand hums, spreading calm fuzz and a swell of light sunrising over the surface of my planetary self.

South of hip, thigh muggy, grainy, brandy-bowered, temperate but wintery, a solid feeling, but with salmon-scale tints. My feet are mountainous, curved, ivy-bound upon the island floor in the moorland morning of my calves, from which frowzy silvery limbs stretch and twine and reach to rich tropic light; solar plexus, liquid beaming.

A young cheerful southern sun spreads its mediterranean warmth across my chest, honey yellow light through brushed wool white clouds, bobbing and dappling through the willow branches of my sunlit mind. Fine light tendrils of yes rise up my face, lightening the corner of my lips, flowing round my eyes in tiny rivulets, rising and then falling over my sunset scalp.

There is light clench at the back of my head, and a tiny knot of resist lobbed under the cranium, which I let drop down. The hold falls, and I fall with it, down into the well of the body, dissolving into the pure warm black milk that forever glows in the eyes of those who are not holding onto themselves. After a few unspeakable moments of this, I will rise and leave the house to meet them.

Laughter

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 03:21:00 +0000

There is the laughter of relief, making the train and slipping through the doors Indy-style, farts at funerals and tiny crimes that take tension away. There is the laughter of exhilaration, throwing yourself into the rapids, and the laughter of emotion, fear, awkwardness and approval. There is the laughter of newly formed groups, binding by creating butts, the laughter of superiority over the out-group, and the laughter of letting in, showing approval to the newly joined. There is the laughter of anxiety, trying to make it all okay with a smile, the peace-keeping lie-smile or rictus grin as you listen to one “it was good / big / weird / bad / interesting / uncomfortable / tiny / beautiful" advert-anecdote after another. And there is the laughter of emotion, of sex and murder.

Personally, I prefer the laughter of recognition.

I recognise large status reversals (the boss suddenly becoming the butler, or vice versa), I recognise dead things becoming alive, I recognise human character- istics given to animals, I recognise the indestructibility and innocence of a fool, I recognise perfect appro- priateness, spontaneity, exaggeration - or hyperbole - the serious reduced to the absurd and the sacred profaned - or farce - far distant ideas linked by puns and subtle surreality, strange timing, strange sizes, strange behaviour, and great beauty. I recognise the insights of a hyper-observant comic-master, here to show me myself, at a slight angle to the universe. I recognise all these things because I am an indestructible fool in a strange world, and it makes me laugh to see this.

But what I recognise most of all, is reality, what is happening. I am not a stranger in this universe. The objective world is my friend - and do we not laugh when a friend approaches? This is why genuinely innocent children and ancient tribes spend most of their time merrily sparkling with amused delight or ringing with bright laughter. When the world is seen as it is, it is surprising, bizarre, grotesque, savage, wild, apocalyptically alive and gayly butcherous; not demented and cruel, but mad, hilariously mad... and I am with it. We are friends, the universe and I. In all joy and horror - friends. This is the laughter of the whole truth.

Reality, Level Yawp

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:30:00 +0000

As you may know, I've been working on a computer game called "Reality" which, now that I live in Japan, I'm going to sell to Nintendo, and they're going to sell it to everyone. The level I'm working on at the moment, which is called "Yawp!" is a driving, running, hunting, swimming, cycling, platform-type affair set across a few different "zones," and, the novel thing about it is that when you lose a life - when you fall off a cliff, or get hit by a car or an asteroid or whatever - the computer - the actual computer in your actual room that is - sets fire to your house, wipes your bank account clean and transports you, naked, to a random country. Or it infects you with a rare parasite that eats your brain and lungs. Or, if you're young and beautiful it makes you physically hideous. Or the reverse. Sometimes it showers you with money, sometimes it endows you with a strange and wonderful talent, like the ability to see all-round 360 degrees, as if your whole body were an eye, and other times it blasts off a leg and beats you to death with it.

I am the Expressive Egg

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:26:00 +0000

The other day I woke up on a tiny uninhabited planet with nothing but a replicating machine for company. There were lots of jobs to do, so I decided to copy myself a couple of hundred times, but the "mes" that emerged were all permanently anxious - and so unpleasant and unreasonable.

I realised that as I had stepped into the machine, I had been worried about the outcome - and so had produced two hundred worried self-facsimiles. So I reproduced myself again, but one at a time and under different conditions - just after I'd woken up, just before dinner, while thinking about my girlfriend, while looking up at the stars, and so on - under every mental, emotional and physiological state I could experience or recreate.

This worked out well - I managed to create two hundred different me's - similar style, but very different priorities, sensitivities and intelligences - who were able to function as a diverse unit. The only problem was that the first two hundred mes, the permanently neurotic ones, had by this time formed a rapacious corporate state, used up the planets resources and made it impossible for all of us to survive together.

As we all sat huddled on the devastated rock, ravished and dying of hunger, we listened to the me I'd replicated while in deep sleep, as he sung to us of the strange art of dying - at which point we all strobed blue and white, shot up into four hundred glowing balls which whammed together and rocketed into the sun.

(n.b. I have since discovered that quite a lot of people have had similar experiences)

My Invention

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Sun, 01 May 2011 11:13:00 +0000

A few years ago I invented a machine that enabled me to instantly and accurately express my true nature as it changed from moment to moment. Through it I could display, without doubt or delay, what was happening in my heart, in all its infinitesimal subtlety and continental variety.

But because my new invention was so faithful to my fears and desires, I refrained from using it. In displaying my feelings so truthfully it completely exposed me. I was horrified and ashamed to discover that that violent cravings, cowardly fears and much else wretched and abominable resided in me - and was being broadcast to the world. Not all the time of course, but with this extraordinary tool even a momentary flash of anxiety revealed itself to be hideous; in a way, moreover, that I couldn’t hide from or excuse. Much safer to put it away. Leave it be.

But in recent years, my life has improved. I don’t mean outwardly; nothing much has happened there. Rather I’ve realised that the insecurities, worries and wants I’d spent so many years trying to deal with just aren’t here anymore. I no longer make dreadful social gaffes, say things I later regret or miss opportunities. I don’t fear other people’s company, nor do I particularly need it. I am at home in the world, it feels, yet not attached to it.

And so I went to where I had stored my earlier work and got it out again. It seemed the time had come to put it to use - it seemed that I didn’t have anything to hide anymore. I have therefore started to use my incredible machine, to broadcast the strange and lovely sensations and intimations that pass through me, to share with the world the miraculous feelings that I am daily - hourly - host to.

I’ve also decided to give my machine a name. I call it my face.

It is...

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:32:00 +0000

Oiling my psychic parts smooth of psychic rust,
Washing my psychic surfaces clean of psychic dust,
Potlatching my psychic draws free of psychic tat.
Exercising my psychic body lean of psychic fat.

The Gentle Apocalypse Empathy Enhancement Programme

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:47:00 +0000

Can't talk to animals? Having problems responding instantly to the needs of your one month old baby? Unable to creatively respond to the subtle demands of the wilderness? Wondering what's causing your oddly repetitive emotional or physical problems? Do you experience clunk as you walk onto the improvised stage? Love death sex god talk tad tricky? Is there something plodding, pedestrian, predictable or postmodern in your creations? Are you restless, jittery or unable to still your chattering mind? Do you frequently overlook the sensuous life of pebbles and pencils? Having first-impression failure problems? Has it been a while since you fell to your knees in shattering gratitude at the beauty of this very moment? Then you need... The Gentle Apocalypse Empathy Enhancement Programme!

Yes! In just three months you'll be taken to a state of blended harmonic fusion with the present moment, able to feel out the subtlest of vibe pulses and respond instantly to them with awe-inspiring spontaneity! Wow your friends as you read their feelings - before they even know they have them! Amaze your colleagues as a startlingly apt metaphor erupts from the volcano of your heart! Complement your partner perfectly, instantly replying to the vaguest wafts of offer with boogy! Dink precognitive volleys! Opt with apt and act with tact! Make her moo! Blend ingredients with the subtlety of the hundred-nostriled! Know, for certain, without evidence!

Yes, in just three months you will become an enigmatic superhero, sweet, sincere, humble, brilliant and splendidly confident. In our ten-DVD programme we'll take you through the shame, guilt, canalised mechanical mediocrity and atomic fear that lies quivering in the depths of your soul, reveal the stories you tell yourself about yourself as the absurd conceits they really are and blast the poison out of your system through rigorous and agonising austerity until you wake up in a bright new wonderland of awakeness. We'll gently breathe the warmth of universal alrightness back into your bones, reintroducing you to the spastic joy of creative action, lovingly reconciling you to the wilderness, guiding you to the unique pleasure you once had in simply existing and opening your eyes so wide that your whole body becomes a gently humming, delicately responsive, all-seeing globe of strobing nuclear blue atomic EGG-LIGHT!

The Gentle Apocalypse Empathy Enhancement Programme: Be Everything Else.

A Walk in the Park

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:17:00 +0000

Had a nap, then went for a walk in the park. The trees were not static but erupting and flowing, expressively twisting like hands offering oranges up to lovers, like energetic russian brooms sweeping cobweb-free the ceiling sky, like spurting fountains dripping puppet branches down to the grassy stage. Everywhere sticky buds were being born as if trapped for ten winters underground, ten winters-all in unhappy love affairs, and now together pulling themselves free like fairies from cracked heads. I stood showering under a cherry blossom lampshade, in front of an orchestra of dingling daffodils trumpeting their birthday yellow to my conducting eyes.

And as I stood a tremendous power started tingling in my muscles, a fire in my solar plexus began to roar, the air around me suddenly iodised and a thunder crack erupted up my spine, blasting my hands outwards, setting my eyeballs on blue fire and whum-whumming outwards in a series of vast juddering pulses. I rose up, a few feet from the earth, and then exploded in a blinding ecstasy of light.

All my bits slowly floated back together and I came home.

I Die

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 08:16:00 +0000

Every now and then I pretend to die grotesquely from an insignificant injury - an accidental head bump, an ever-so-slightly remarkable piece of news - and my girlfriend gives me a mark out of ten. Until today, my best was an 8. She is a surprisingly tight-fisted judge - but it makes an 8 all the more valuable. I think I lost a point from the slight smirk of satisfaction as I gasped my last.

Today I rather turned the tables on her by actually dying.

A fish bone got caught in my throat and, while Peligro watched blandly on, I thrashed about wildly trying to get it out. As my brain suffocated, my consciousness separated from my body and bloomed into the fifth dimension, destroying my agonised self and expanding time and space into a flower of infinite awareness that connected everything and nothing in a multi-dimensional uber-conscious universe of exquisite, profoundly annihilating, super-abundant emptiness. I had no memory, no sensation, no self as it is usually experienced, yet felt more me than ever in a void that, if I could adequately describe it, would make you weep with the horror of genuine awe.

Just then my diaphragm convulsed, the fish bone shifted and my throat swallowed. My consciousness shot back into my body and I came round as if flung from a centrifuge; feeling simultaneously exhausted and rejuvenated.

I still only got a nine though.

Aptism

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 02:53:00 +0000

Aptism |ˈaptɪz(ə)m| (noun) The principle or view that all* religious, moral, ethic, aesthetic, political, psychological and philosophical theories, systems, ideas and principles are appropriate, beautiful or useful in context; and inappropriate, ugly or useless out of context. Obeying the context before any plan, definition, theory or authority. Use or love of the right tool for the job.

Apt |apt| (adjective) Appropriate, beautiful or useful in context. (verb) To listen to the context. To act or perceive appropriately or aptly.

Aptist |ˈaptɪst| (noun) A person who is apt or who apts. Not a label: a state.

Aptic |ˈaptɪk| (adjective) Possessing the prerequisites for an apt life; the ability to perceive the context (sensitivity) and always do as it asks (courage). While the needs of the context shift, the need for sensitivity and courage is constant.

The better a system functions on paper, the worse it functions in practice. The better able you are to explain your decisions, the worse those decisions will end up being. The closer the virtual world gets to reality, the more the real world starts to seem virtual. The more intelligent your mobile phone becomes, the less intelligent your brain becomes. The better able to you are to describe reality, the further you are from it and the more doubtful and subjective it seems.

These truisms do not ignore the equilibrium impulse inherent in excess, nor call for reality to the exclusion of description, representation and analysis. They are merely further demonstration that Aptism is the only healthy theory or anti-ideology - because, like healthy cells, aptism willingly destroys itself so that reality can be more clearly heard, and a more appropriate idea can appear.

Having said all that though, all isms and ists are pretty daft aren't they? I just use the word "Aptist" when someone who needs a definition asks me for one.

Here, by the way, is my favourite responses to this post... I think you will find philosophers are not easily fooled by such nonsense. Aptism is vacuous, because it lacks a mechanism for choosing the most apt "ism" to apply in a given context. It is morally bankrupt, because it explicitly rejects any moral compass. It is also intellectually bankrupt because it requires the suspension of critical faculties, and belief in unprovable claims.

All true! (except the belief part, which I'll have absolutely no truck with.)

*Although some ideas and theories such as Eugenics, Nazism, Juche and wotnot obviously don't fit into any context.

This Spring Everyone is Going to Fall in Love

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:56:00 +0000

This morning I walked to the coffee shop through the park. It was mildly, delicately, gently, miraculously spring. At the shop, as I waited for my coffee to be prepared, there seemed to be, amongst the three girls working there, busying themselves around me, some kind of tension. One, dressed in a white frilly frock and DMs was saying, with a not very convincing air of unconcern, "well, it took me a long time to get ready", while the faces of the other two were set with scowls. I immediately felt, after the sublime outside, this unpleasant inside atmosphere was seeping into me.

"It's going to be the most spectacular spring any of us have ever seen," I said, to all three.
The girl in front of me who had been unhappily concentrating on steaming the milk looked up at me.
"Why do you say that?"
"It happens to be true."
The older of the three said, with mechanical politeness, "yes, the weather is very nice."
"Not just nice," I went on, "This spring the whole world is going to go up in a frothing conflagration of flowers."
Silence.
"Also, everyone is going to fall in love."
The girl in white laughed, "everyone?"
"Yes, and all problems that already couples have will be sorted out. Everyone is going to be in love. How about that?"
"That is good news," said the girl serving me, smiling.
"Isn't it?" I said, taking the coffee, "bye then."
"Bye!" they said, all three together, and I left.

Lord Krishna Makes Love

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 12:23:00 +0000

One warm evening, Lord Krishna rested in a "circular place of numerous pleasure-lakes," full of flowers and tastefully sprinkled with aloe, saffron, sandal and musk. Imbued with the serene voluptuous beauty of the night in which the fatigues of passion could be laved away, he smiled, and, to summon Radha and her heavenly retinue of Gopis, he played upon his flute.

"Radha, hearing the melody, remained still, like a tree, her mind dissolving in one-pointed contemplation." She recovered, assailed with passion which, combined with the luster of her body and the shimmer of her jewels, illumined the forest. Her Gopi companions, of equal excellence and beauty, followed, each of which were themselves accompanied by a following of many thousands, so that, in total nine hundred thousand beautiful women were hastening towards the point of sound.

The Lord Krishna saw with delight their alluring walk, majestic as the gait of tigresses manifold, which would have unseated the mind of a Yogi; "for they were in the prime of their lives, ravishing, with loins and buttocks wonderfully great. The colour of their skin was of the champak blossom, their visage of the autumn moon and their hair held in place by a wreathe of redolent jasmin." Smitten by Love's arrow Krishna felt such a thrill of rapture, he almost swooned.

Krishna took Radha first and proceeded to a pleasure house of flowers. Continually kissing, their countenances radiant with love, they lay on a flowery couch of delight, whereupon Lord Krishna kissed her with a power-essence which breaks through 1000s of lifetimes of conditioning. With absolute stillness in her heart and hurricanes of rapture burning in her limbs Radha succumbed to the love of Krisha and he to the even more remarkable love that she held in her voluptuous depths.

And with all the others too, simultaneously. Krishna rapturously brought his delight, assuming identical forms, duplicating himself many thousands of times over, embracing every one of the thousands of women, embracing every member of their impassioned bodies with his fervid limbs. Nine hundred thousand Gopis thus were enjoyed by as many Krishnas, the full number of those there in rapture coming to one million eight hundred thousand.

Lord Krishna's one-pointed passion was utterly beyond mere sexuality. In it there was no fantasy, no desire, nor even emotion such as most humans know it. Neither was there thought or self-control. There was pure selfless abandon. He was utterly incarnate, to the tips of his fingers, which burned with total devotion to the annihilating beauty of Radha, igniting the boundless void of love within the hearts of the women and letting it free into the universe.

Everyone's hair was loose, clothing shattered, ornaments gone, minds unmade, mad with pure passion the million ecstasies shone as the beginning of the universe: for that indeed is what it was. There in the white-hot epicentre of sexual passion an entire new dimension was born, which is now available to superb lovers.

The dance of love continued for five hundred God years - each one of which is ten thousand times ten thousand human years - until it reached such an ultimate pinnacle of loving sexual devotion the universe, vibrating in sympathetic ecstasy, caught light, and everything became as stars are. "When this height had been reached, the gods with their wives and companies, in golden cars, came together in the heavens to watch. Sages, saints, adepts, and the honoured dead, the heavenly singers and nymphs, earth-demons, ogres and various birdlike beings, gathered peacefully with their wives and husbands to see the great sight."

The gods and goddesses, much amazed, eulogised the sight, and then retired to their homes.

(Thanks to Bhagavat Purana)

A Note About My Songs

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:50:00 +0000

Writing songs is a sideline. I put these here as curios really, and also as a demonstration of what can be done with very little practice and a God-awful singing voice (I generally try to get other people to sing and do the hard noodly stuff - do get in touch if that be you).

It depresses me when people say "I'm not musical" or "I can't sing" (and many related claims of artistic incompetence). Neither can I! So what! All you really need is love and natural weirdness; sincerity and fun follow. I believe this comes through even the most ham-fisted of efforts, as I hope you'll hear...

I am You

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:52:00 +0000

Your heart’s a hundred and one thousand crimes,
Which my heart commits, one at a time.
Your heart’s a poem which my heart explains,
Then writes on the walls of the underground trains.
I hear the song which your heart has sung,
My heart’s an audience, of one.

(sung by Amdine Verti)

Two Cartographers: A Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 09:43:00 +0000

There were once two highly skilled professional cartographers, paragons of exactness and reason, who went off to explore a new land; and got lost. Getting thirstier and thirstier they were delighted to come across a small boy.

- Tell us where we can find water, they said.

And the young boy, not speaking their language, but understanding they were thirsty, took out a stick and drew a map in the sand at their feet. When he had left, the men said

- My god what an awful map. Totally out of proportion.

- Ridiculous. The work of an amateur - where are his references?

And so the two cartographers ignored the map, and died of thirst.

Life in the Body

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:41:00 +0000

is by William Barker.

ARE YOU AN ANDROID?

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 09:40:00 +0000

There are a growing number of androids in current circulation that have become convinced they are human. It is as yet unknown whether this is due to a design fault, or the result of malware, but if you have recently found yourself thinking, feeling or behaving mechanically, digitally or unempathically, we recommend you take our simple test.

There are ten questions. Just make a record of your answers, and then check the results below.

1. Which is better;
a) Talking?
b) Listening?

2. Is it better to talk about...
a) Computers, news, work, theory and philosophy? 
b) Health, family, romance, memory and personality?

3. Which is better;
a) Thought?
b) Feeling?

4. Which is better; 
a) An imaginative approach?
b) A logical approach?

5. Is it better,
a) To please yourself?
b) To please others?

6. Which is better; 
a) Doing too much? 
b) Not doing enough?

7. Which is better;
a) Being on your own?
b) Being in groups?

8. Which are worse, 
a) Weakness, fear, masochism and shame? 
b) Pride, arrogance, sadism and hate?

9. Which is better, 
a) Order?
b) Chaos?

10. Which are better,
a) Adventure, change and innovation?
b) Safety, certainty and tradition?

If you answered mostly as, you are probably a male-type or mental android. If you answered mostly bs, you are probably a female-type or emotional android. Turn yourself in immediately. Genuine humans are noted for their flexibility and for their resistance to emotions or thoughts that prejudice them against the demands of the present moment. If you found that you answered "it depends" for most of the above questions, or found them rather idiotic, you are almost certainly a genuine human being; but beware of those you did find an easy answer to, for you may have had a android chip placed in some part of your psyche and will need to have it extracted. This is an agonising procedure.

Apollo's Daphne Desperation

noreply@blogger.com (darrenabi) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:28:00 +0000

As you may know, Hera - mother of love and mistress of animals - hated her husband, Zeus. She hated him for usurping Gaia - the queen of the universe; she hated him for killing the Titans - the gods of mystery - and for making demons of them in the memory of mankind; she hated him for winning her heart through deception and breaking it through philandering; and she hated him for plotting to imprison the world forever with the help of his son, Apollo - the god of the Idea.

In a last desperate attempt to save the world of man, Hera sent Python, the dragon of death - born of Gaia - to kill Apollo; but Apollo defeated the old snake god and imprisoned it in a cavern under his Olympian home; thereby banishing the living reality of death forever from the world, making man fear the darkness, and making him ashamed of his fear.

One day, Apollo - with pride puffed up from slaying Python, victorious over a world forever enslaved to the Idea - chanced upon Eros, the god of emotion; of fear and desire. Eros too - after having tricked the world into believing that he, and not Hera, was the god of love - was also proud, and the two disliked and deeply mistrusted one another.

"Pah," smirked Apollo pointing at Eros' bow, "what a sad and silly little toy thou hast. How useless! I couldn't see those arrows popping a balloon. This," and he drew his mighty sword, "is the weapon of a god."

As Apollo slashed the air with lip-curled vigour, Eros fatly smug and quiet spoke; "My dear Apollo, thou mayst conquer the world entire with thy stiff sword of Olympian steel, thou mayst slay the serpents of the deep with thy manly bloom and with thy rippling girth yoke the sun to thine golden chariot. But with this tiny arrow you scoff I shall pierce your vaunting breast, that you may place thy power and glory no higher than mine."

And so saying, he flew away to Mount Parnassus, his lofty home and from his quiver plucked two arrows, one dull and tipped with lead to fill the heart with fear, the other sharp and tipped with gold to excite intoxicating desire. The former he shot into Daphne, a virgin river nymph renowned for her innocence and modesty, while, with the latter, he pierced the flesh of Apollo.

Apollo, lying in bed, was suddenly overcome with the image of Daphne. In his mind’s eye he saw her large eyes widening with desire, her red lips parting with pleasure, her smooth legs curling round his torso. His heart quickened, and with feverish desperation he reached to seize the image; which leapt away as images do.

He jumped to his feet - "I must have her!" he cried and immediately flew down in his chariot to Daphne's forest to search for her.

Raging, burning, sick he was and desperate - but not yet blind; for there always was in Apollo a cold plan, and this he followed, tracing the rivers he knew she lived by, exploring the caves in which she slept, and following the forest paths she trod.

And then he spies her, on a path below, walking along the river. He sees her well-turned neck, her shoulders smooth and tumbled hair dishevelled. He sees her sparkling eyes and sweet lips, and her hands and fingers and arms, "how good," thinks he; "but what's hidden must be better still."

"Daphne!" he calls, "sister, be not alarmed; for it is I, Apollo, come to walk with thee a while."

She starts, afraid, and ashamed to be seen.

"Come here, dear girl, and let me see thy sweet face," says he, moving down the path towards her.

She steps back, further alarmed - for something here does not ring right. Without speaking she quickens her backward step.

"Be careful," says he, "the ground is rough - I would not want to be the cause of your injury, or for you to tear that beautiful dress."

She turns and scrambles away.

"Stop," he cries, "I am not a lion or an eagle sent to seize you; I am not an enemy, but a friend."

She breaks into a run and he follows.

"Knowest thou not who I am?" he calls out, "I am Apollo!"

She hears not half, fleeing ever faster while he breaks into a run behind her.

"I invented the world of men!" he cries after her, "I invented literacy and science. I invented time and thought. I am the son of Zeus himself! Stop! I order thee!"

With these words she broke into flat panicked flight and he, seeing her naked terror, ceased squandering his breath on wheedling pleas, and rushed to seize her.

"Please," Daphne prays to Hera now, "mother of love, save me from this horror, help me escape." Her lips form the prayer that rise to the heavens and to Hera.

The two clatter through the forest and Apollo gains on her, reaching out, touching the fabric of her dress now, falling back an instant, but mad with desire, for he can see her bare arms, her thighs, the curve of her back as she darts away.

“Please!” cries Daphne - and the goddess hears.

But first Hera increases Apollo’s desire. He begins to see not just Daphne escaping from him, but all that he desires. He sees in fleeing Daphne his power increased; beyond even a god’s dreams. There, running ahead of him he sees the éclat of the universe, a release from pain ever after, a victory complete. He sees hundreds of beautiful women, thousands - and they can all be his. He sees tomorrow and yesterday, under his control; nothing ever lost, eternity at his beck and Zeus himself, on bended knee beneath - if he can just get Daphne.

He rushes at her with unreal speed and seizes her wrist, falling upon her, grabbing, twisting, pushing himself into her. He is insane, chaos incarnate, blind mad with an agony of need. He throws himself into her, seizing her neck and waist, pulling away her clothes and finally touching her body.

"Please," she whispers, "please... mother Hera.”

And then Hera releases her. She sends a numbness down on Daphne. Her skin hardens and Apollo’s teeth, biting flesh, then sink into a tougher substance. Her arms harden and stiff points push at her skin and pierce the mad god. He pulls back, startled, seeing yet not seeing, bewildered, scrabbling still but now at something quite different. Her face is darkening, brown, and scabrous, leaves are shooting from her hair, branches curling around her bosom, now ringed with rough bark.

Apollo pulls himself away in fear and confusion and finds himself lost, and lying before a laurel tree at peace, and unassailable.

And ever after my friends, until the war between thought and emotion ends, victory will be symbolised by the laurel wreathe, by Daphne, once desired by the god of victory.

Read the story of Pygmalion bringing his love to life here.