..;!

Bus Stop Thought Experiment

2012-11-04T22:53:00.001-05:00

The bus that takes me to class is almost always late, and the other morning, it gave me some time to think. I started creating this scenario in my head, which I suppose turned into the following thought experiment:

A wizard casts a curse on all of mankind.

The curse will absorb something like 7 billion hours of life collectively from the people affected by the curse every year on a set date. Since there are close to 7 billion people on Earth, the curse would ideally absorb only about an hour of life from each person annually, which isn't very noticeable.

Here is the kicker--each individual gets to make a decision every year to accept the curse or not. If an individual does not accept the curse, it will not affect them in any way. The curse will only affect people who accept it; however, as less people accept the curse, the 7 billion hours is spread out over a smaller number of people.

For example, if 80% of the population chooses not to accept the curse, then the 1.4 billion people who did will share the 7 billion hour burden, which is roughly five hours of life for each person that year.

To ensure that his curse would plague mankind for as long as possible, the wizard included another special rule in his curse: if there is ever a year where NO people accept the curse, all of humanity will die.

At this point, I started to make theories about how society would deal with something like this.

Would it become something like a "civic duty" to accept the curse to spread the burden to reduce its effect? There would always be people who would not accept the curse for their own reasons. One reasoning could be that it seems pointless for any given individual accept the curse and receive the burden when it is highly likely that other people are going to accept it to prevent humankind from dying. Another rationale would be that an individual accepting the curse is only going to relieve the burden from the collective by tiny, tiny fractions of a second, while the personal cost would be measured in hours. It's a very small collective benefit for a larger personal sacrifice.

Another thought I had was how making each individuals decision known/unknown to the public would change things. If it were known, perhaps governments would require citizens to accept the curse and punish those who didn't. Perhaps governments would force certain individuals to accept the curse and all others to deny it as a form of useful execution. By spreading the curse to only a handful of individuals, they would each lose millions of hours, which would age them to the point of death.

I thought about it for a while before adding in another rule: if there is ever a year where only a SINGLE person accepts the curse (thus sacrificing themselves), and ALL OTHERS deny it, the curse would be lifted.

How would you organize that? Could you get 7 billion people to trust a single person with ALL of their lives? Could you ensure that a second person wouldn't panic or intentionally sabotage the effort?

Christmas Break

2011-12-22T02:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I finally solved the mystery of my broken computer. After replacing the mobo, the psu, the video card, and the ram twice, I finally discovered that I had a bad cpu.

On another note, I've noticed a bit of paranoia setting in during the night times. Creepy stuff.

Useless Talents

2011-10-09T21:26:00.000-04:00

Can you name all 196 sovereign nations?

I've recently taken it upon myself to remember the names and locations of every country on this tiny blue planet of ours. As of today, I have finally remembered them all. Africa seems like it would be the hardest, but I found Oceania to be the most difficult because the names of the countries sound awkward in my head. I know you're saying to yourself "that man is so interesting and talented! I wonder what he'll come up with next!"

I'll just chalk this one up there with pen-spinning, Rubik's cubes, and sleight of hand tricks.

You Are The Hunted King Uncrowned

2011-09-27T17:17:00.001-04:00

Benjamin Button Plot Holes SPOILERS

2011-09-27T11:37:00.001-04:00

As a quick note before I begin, last Thursday (Sep. 22) was the anniversary of my blog. I briefly considered making a celebratory post, but quickly realized that I was lazy and would not write a celebratory post.

I saw Benjamin Button for the first time with my girlfriend while it was on tv. For those of you that don't know, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film starring Brad Pitt based on a short story of the same name. It's a story about a man (Benjamin) who is born as a wrinkly old-man baby and ages backwards. The entire premise of the film is that an old woman named Daisy, who was Benjamin's love interest, is in the hospital and is near death. She has her daughter, who is a grown woman at this point, read her Benjamin's diary. The film presents the diary entries as flashback scenes, similar to Forrest Gump, which are sometimes narrated over by Daisy's daughter, though in Benjamin's voice.

The plot hole comes during the flashback that tells the story of how Daisy, who was a famous ballerina, was hit by a car and lost the ability to dance. The film approaches it in an interesting way: it shows numerous interconnected, small, and devastatingly-unfortunate events which all coincide to make a taxi-cab drive down a road just as Daisy steps out in front of a car. It tells how a man's alarm clock didn't work, which starts a chain of events including a woman forgetting something and returning into her house, answering a phone call, and a woman who forgot to wrap an order at her job because she was upset about her boyfriend, among other things, which lead to the taxi-cab moving down Daisy's road at the exact time it did, and are all indirectly caused by the man's alarm clock. It's certainly a well-done scene and an excellent example of story telling, except for one thing: the flashback is from Benjamin's dairy. There is no way that Benjamin could have known about all of these random events in people's lives that caused the accident. Especially considering that the film shows shortly after that Benjamin wasn't even in the same country at the time.

Of course, it's still a good film with mostly positive reviews. It seems the writers for the film were so caught up in presenting Daisy's accident in an interesting way, that they forgot that the film is supposed to be told from Benjamin's dairy, or perhaps they did know, but figured the audience would overlook it.

Not me though.

Great Scott

2011-09-07T14:04:00.001-04:00

Oh! what a tangled web we weave

Exquisite Art

2011-09-06T23:46:00.000-04:00

Earthmovers

2011-09-06T23:09:00.000-04:00

Carved out of stone, earth, blood and bone
knock the mountains down
the earth's grating sounds
they soothe the great machines
that yearn desperately
just to lay them down within her gaping mouth
more than a symbol
more than I bargained for
they wander ridges high
between the earth and sky
like spikes upon a crown we wear upon our brow
and want is not a need reserved for human beings
it's fingers on your throat
is pain that all things know
An army of the golems is stalking, now, the heart's lands
eating all reality
producing only dust and sand
nothing hurts them
nothing gets under their stone skin
and when their earthern mouths will open up
just what words should come out? but
"we wish we were dead"

- Earthmover on Deathconciousness by Have A Nice Life

And It Looks Like They Want It Back

2011-08-05T23:19:00.000-04:00

We're Living On Borrowed Time

2011-07-29T19:26:00.001-04:00

You're a three-dimensional being in a two-dimensional world.

Bohemian Street Art

2011-07-01T15:53:00.000-04:00

I'm finally getting around to posting the street art I saw in Nassau, Bahamas. There wasn't too much, but what I did see was pretty stunning. Unfortunately, one of my favorite pictures is ruined because I was in a moving bus when I tried to take the photo, and a light post was blocking a really well-done fly on a small shack.

Regardless, enjoy:

-ec.wolf

Hilarious Bible Excerpts

2011-06-27T13:23:00.017-04:00

I've been out of the States recently on vacation (I'll post pictures of some cool street art I found on my adventures eventually) and ended up spending a lot of time in hotels. As you may have noticed, there is almost always a bible in the drawer next to the bed in a hotel room, which I decided to read in my down time. Some of the things I read were hilariously ridiculous, but at the same time, it's horrifying that some people legitimately believe these things. I don't mean to single out Christianity, but I didn't have access to a Quran or any other religious text (though I'm sure they are all filled with their own hilarious absurdities.)

Here are a collection of some of the most ridiculous excerpts I've selected from the Bible:

Any person who curseth his father or mother must be killed
-Leviticus 20:9

There are some pretty glaring contradictions in the Bible--this being one of them. What about "Thou shalt not kill"?

If a man has sex with a woman on her period, they are both to be cut off from their people
-Leviticus 20:18

People who have flat noses, or are blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God
-Leviticus 21:17-18

Doesn't God create all people? Way to set them up for failure, God.

Anyone who dreams or prophesizes anything that is against God, or anyone who tries to turn you from God, is to be put to death
-Deuteronomy 13:5

Not only does the Bible tell you to kill here, but it tells you to kill someone for something they can't control, i.e. dreaming.

The eating of fat is prohibited forever
-Leviticus 3:17

Entrance into the assembly of the Lord was granted only to those with complete testicles
-Deuteronomy 23:1

Stubborn children were to be stoned, and the stoning was to be instigated by their parents
-Deuteronomy 21:18-21

False prophets are to be killed by their own parents
-Zechariah 13:3

To kill or not to kill, that is the question.

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property
-Exodus 21:20-21

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives
-Deuteronomy 22:28-29

Yes, the Bible requires rape victims to marry the rapist.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple
-Luke 14:26

Luke may have had some psychological issues.

Don't let cattle graze with other kinds of Cattle
-Leviticus 19:19

Don't have a variety of crops on the same field.
-Leviticus 19:19

Don't wear clothes made of more than one fabric
-Leviticus 19:19

Don't cut your hair nor shave.
-Leviticus 19:27

For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a sabbath of complete rest to the LORD; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.
-Exodus 35:5

You will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you.
-Deuteronomy 28:53

How come you never see any of these quotes on t-shirts or bumper stickers?

Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung among your faces.
-Malachi 2:3

Here are some of the contradictions I mentioned earlier:

For I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever.
-Jeremiah 3:12
Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn forever.
-Jeremiah 17:4

These are both from the same book in the Bible.

If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid.
-John 5:31
Jesus answered: "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid."
-John 8:14

These too.

And Jesus said, "For judgement I am come into this world."
-John 9:39
I came not to judge the world
-John 12:47

Think about how much people invest themselves in this book.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
-Matthew 5:16
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
-Matthew 6:1

Jacob said, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
-Genesis 32:30
No man hath seen God at any time.
-John 1:18

We should fear God
-Matthew 10:28
We should love God
-Matthew 22:37
There is no fear in love
-John 4:18

It's good to question beliefs. Especially your own.

Guffaw.

2011-06-02T19:44:00.003-04:00

by Quinton Powers

Grey -
“Imagine if you please, a wire, and on this wire, standing in perfect conformity and precise uniformity, birds. Birds of all shades of black and grey: grey, gray, grae, black—every shade imaginable. Feel the mono-chromacity of the situation, the hopelessness in the tyrant of condensated beasts looming miles above the feathered subjects of the scene. See the breezes blowing around you, picking up the loose drapes of the clothes thrown about your just recently entered body. “Just recently entered?” you ask. Yes, you are also part of this scene, standing, watching, trying to understand the beings lined in front of you. You stand upon a great expanse of pavement, grey, cracked, about as colorful as the sky around you; you stand alone, ready, with head cocked at thirty-five degrees, waiting. Wait. Waiting? Waiting for what? Don’t ponder this too much, we’ll answer it later. Anyway, return to the aforementioned scene: birds, wire, cold, dreary, you standing. As the clouds roll ever so closer, something new catches your eye, what is it? Why, it is just one extra (and equally depressing) detail. One leg. The grey bird, fourth from the left, has only a single leg, yet there it stands, in your vision, as perfectly positioned as the rest. Astonished, gaze fixed on this anomaly, you fail to see a man approach from behind. He passes on your right, lifts his formerly akimbo arms into the sky, sprints toward the wire, opens his mouth, and emits a wondrous sound, a mature and hearty:
‘GUFFAW!’
“‘cawcawcawcawcawcawcawcawcawcawcawcawCAW!’
reply the birds. A new cloud appears. Of what? Feathers. Grey. A battle for the open sky begins after the sudden entrance of the scraggly man and his now famous and duly-remembered interjection. Wing-ed creatures burst away from order, cawing with utter surprise and contempt. The birds that once sat side-by-side, one-by-one, steady, uninterrupted, now filled the area above the two interlopers, breaking away from their former structures and facing the world ahead of them, ready for the subsequent wire, the next stage of life.

Gray -
“Exit all. All except for two. Still watching the last remnants of the feathered majesties depart, you turn and gaze upon a familiar sight. The bird, still perched on a single leg, lay in the exact position as before. A mirror of yourself, the bird returns your gaze with the power of a Nietzsche-ian abyss, piercing and averting your fragile eyes and mind. The tension of the situation builds as neither party moves, until, with almost utter surprise and complete apprehension, you take a step forward and spake upon the bird: ‘What are you waiting for? The whole world is open to you, my feathered companion. If you have the ability to travel anywhere you want, why are you here? You, bird, are the model of four million years of evolution, now act like it, get out of here and become something.’ You are greeted with a silence, what did you expect? You are yelling at a bird. As you depart, the one-legged creature offers up the last word as a reply: ‘caw,’ it says with complacent ignorance and a seemingly intelligent tone. If one were to infer the meaning of this seemingly inane sound, as you didn’t, it might have said, ‘Ask yourself the same question, human.’

Grae -
“Forty years. That’s how long it has been. Four, zero. Walking, with briefcase in hand and a familiar breeze chaffing your uncovered face, you turn and cautiously walk along the pavement, the same lifeless pavement. On your right lies an image of the past, a wire—correction: the wire—still hanging between the newly-bankrupt bakery and the unknown building on the left. Memories of the thoughtful and spontaneous events of your past return in waves; guffaw, caw, “leave”, free. Every day you walk by this monument, and every day you see the depressing image: five birds, nine legs; seven birds, thirteen legs; one lonely grae bird, one lonely graeing leg. Every day…except today. Today you are greeted with a soft thump—an apple landing in the fertile soil below. Only replace the soil with hard cement, and the apple with a creature of now-broken bones and feathers. The clouds above, huge cumulus giants, grant no light on this spectacle as you approach the fluttering mess laying before you, limbs splayed. All three. You count with utter disbelief: two wings, one leg. Yes, before you stands, err, lies the un-leaving bird of ye olden days; no longer with contempt does it caw. After years of decaying, the deceased creature fell from its wire; no longer does it stand as one among its peers. Looking upon its solitary leg, you realize, the bird never left. The wing-ed love of yours had the ability to leave at any moment, yet due to a language barrier of great magnitude, it never knew. As you reach down to grab your briefcase, your eyes once again return to the leg of the bird; then you look down at your own two and remember the speech you gave this same bird forty years prior. Back and forth, you look, and with a sudden gasp, you fall upon your knees in despairing realization: the speech applied to you as well.

Black: A Conclusion -
“Yes, just what are we, humans, but wing-less birds, with the shared and unacknowledged ability to go anywhere with our lives. With this in mind, return to the question you posed in Grey. And instead of having someone like me, your lowly guide, solve it, return to the scene of the wire and once again re-ask yourself that one simple question: just what am I waiting for?”

An excellent essay by a good friend of mine. Enjoy.

-ec.wolf

The Mountain

2011-05-29T20:36:00.000-04:00

by TSO Photography

This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide.
Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.

Wow.

-ec.wolf

Adulthood

2011-05-13T15:07:00.001-04:00

Today is my 18th birthday, and since this is the age of "adulthood" in our culture, it means a lot of new things in a person's life, and as such, it has brought up quite a few thoughts as well.

Firstly, I don't feel like an adult. I don't feel any different from the 17-year-old person I was yesterday. When I was younger, I would look at adults and think "That person knows how the world works. That is a person who has obtained adult-knowledge, and is certified to do adult things." I honestly believed that, somehow, people knew all of the things that they needed to know to function in society at this point in their lives, but in all honesty, my dad still helps me do my taxes, and I can't even tell you what the word "mortgage" means. Suddenly, I'm an adult. It didn't come with an epiphany, it didn't come after I passed a test, it didn't seem special at all. I simply woke up this morning and thought "Oh, it's my birthday. I guess it's legal to smoke and watch porn now."

Secondly, I'm scared as hell of growing up. My greatest passion in life is adventure, and in a small town like the one I live in, that means trespassing into places you aren't allowed with a group of friends and having fun. If the police were to catch me doing that yesterday, it would have been "just a bunch of damn kids messing around," but today, it's "catching a man trespassing on private property." I'm losing all of the innocence I've taken for granted my entire life, and it's impossible to ever get it back. Everyone that I've grown up with and gone to school with are going to separate universities and moving away--everyone is growing and everything is changing. I'm reaching the peak of my youth, and soon I'm going to be 20, then 30, then 40, then I've lost all of my hair and not long after that I'm dead. My feet have already been placed upon that path.

How do you slow things down?

-ec.wolf

Changing Education Paradigms

2011-04-29T22:16:00.003-04:00

I'm not exactly sure why I found this interesting. It's probably because I'm a student, so these kinds of things are relevant to me, I suppose.

-ec.wolf

Why So Ambitious?

2011-04-21T17:38:00.002-04:00

A genie has appeared that will cast a spell making you the most talented person in the world in any field of your choosing. You could be the greatest artist, the greatest fighter, the greatest musician, the greatest anything at all; however, it comes at a cost. No one will ever know about your talent.

Any work you create will be anonymous. No matter what you do, you will not receive recognition for it.

Was the talent really what you wanted?

-ec.wolf

Sometimes It's Just The Curve of a Wrist

2011-04-19T21:15:00.002-04:00

-ec.wolf

It's Sorta Like That, But Not Really.

2011-04-18T17:40:00.003-04:00

You aren't supposed to care.

Expect more picture dumps.

-ec.wolf

...I'd Be King of Somethin' Someday

2011-04-16T17:02:00.000-04:00

-ec.wolf

Even Our Father Knew...

2011-04-16T16:51:00.000-04:00

-ec.wolf

Security Through Obscurity

2011-04-14T18:39:00.001-04:00

In the technological age we live in, encoded information comes in many forms. Many companies (even the ones running this very website) use encryption to protect the information of their users and the structure of the website itself. The military has a history of using encoded messages so that valuable information isn't revealed to those not intended to see it. Children in middle school create secret codes in notes to pass to their friends. Encryption is everywhere.

Even the most secure encryption, however, has a flaw, just as the most well-equipped fortress contains a flaw: they are simple to find and they obviously contain something valuable. If someone sees an encoded message, it looks exactly that--a mess of characters or symbols, and, given enough time, can be decoded.

Steganography is different. Where encryption relies on a sort of "brute-force" defense, steganography instead relies on a theory of "you can't fight what you never knew existed." Information hidden by steganography could appear as anything, and those not intended to receive the message would never take notice. It could be printed on a box of cereal. It could be in the architecture of a building. It could be in the pixels or dimensions of a digital image of any conceivable type. It could be every third letter of every fifth word in a speech given decades ago. It could be this very blog post.

-ec.wolf

The Sator Square

2011-04-13T16:55:00.000-04:00

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

-ec.wolf

Deathconciousness

2011-04-04T15:49:00.004-04:00

(Taken from The Books Of Terror And Longing, the Poetic Translations,
Book 2, Part III, translated by William Shelley, All Stars Aground
Books)

When they came to put their hands upon him
even then, they were slow
their movements strange and angled
as if they were guilty, and felt it,
though they professed to be angered and quick to dismiss
their movements betrayed their belief and all their fears were revealed.
There are undeniable truths in the faces of those
who would destroy you and everything you know and are
not a simple death
but a death that rings out, rings out
that echoes everywhere in the world until the sound is exterminated
by inertia
a death to fully end you
to erase you
This was the death they wanted for him
This was the death and the honor they gave him.
That morning was a cold one. We all rubbed our arms for warmth, gath-
ered to watch in the frost. There was almost never frost, so rare, and then
there we were, on that day, and the frost came, the most perfect of signs, the
most subtle of acknowledgments.
Because we knew this was It.
We are a not a religion of resurrections, Antiochus said.
We are not believers in second chances.
The square was an empty place.
There were no distractions.
The Romans read the proclamation,
but we barely heard it,
those words meant less than nothing and it was if they were speaking in a
foreign tongue
and didn’t we already feel so separate
didn’t we already feel so different and apart?
Our tongue was the foreign tongue
and we had lost all hope of understanding
now and forever
They tied his arms with force,
jerking the ropes back with malice and a snapping sound
I’m sure they wanted to break his arms.
Bu Antiochus never said a thing
never begged or pleaded
never opened his eyes a single inch.
His face had the look of someone in the most intense
of happinesses, the strongest of ecstasies
He was very happy
How like Christ!
We wanted a last sermon
we wanted to be taught one final thing
because it had not been enough
we were not better beings, not better people
we had not seen what he had seen and felt less for it
we wanted a final word
we wanted him to say anything, anything to us, anything meant for us
we didn’t want it to be over with everything left,
we didn’t say what we had wanted to say
but Antiochus said nothing
not even when his chest was on fire, and skin peeling,
because he had told us everything
shown us everything
and there was nothing special about what he saw
because don’t all of us see it?
every day, every year
all of us see it
all the time
and we don’t need to know anything special about it
we don’t need to learn anything new about it
because we already know
all of it
This was all there was
And when they put torch to tinder, I was smiling
grinning wide
the fire started with an aching swiftness
it didn’t hesitate for even a moment
how honorable
it just went about
it’s business.
I was so proud, then
when the fire ate away his skin and melted his bones
but they say the smoke filled his lungs,
and he was dead long before that
but I can only laugh
because they don’t know the half of it
Many of us were crying,
but they were fools, and hadn’t understood a single thing
that had happened.
It is not sadness that those people feel
it is desperation
it is fear and withering cold
that is the smoke that rings you
that is the fog that hides you, and that you curl around your shoulders
like a blanket in the night-time
it is the air you breathe and you cannot move away from it
because there is no away from it
no away at all
God knew this!
He knew this and he put you here
he created and he destroys
creates the one-things that exist
and destroys the things that never did
undoes those that might have been but never were
holds their heads under the water
his reasons always uncertain
but his certainty everywhere,
slowly compressing all space until our legs and face and chest
and knees and hands are broken and touching and folded
into ourselves
All things that are made are thus limited
they are only what they are
and no more
nothing can be built or born
only reproduced
only dumbly copied
But now I remember a story he told us
about this very thing
in the days before the holiest-murdered-one
before there was a history to think of
before there was a past or present
all the people were of god, and he of them
and god spoke to every man and woman
and he answered them in their prayers
(there was a time when god answered prayers!
when we didn’t have to search for him and think of reasons
to explain away his absence!)
and spoke to them in their dreams
and there was nothing but his will, every action and reaction
were his and his alone
each breath of wind and mote of dust
there was only god in the world.
and each man was a piece of this
with no existence in and of themselves, but
only as a part of the god-will
fragments of the greatest whole
the absolute.
And into this world was born a single man
with a sense of self
a feeling of otherness
the first modern man
not the same, somehow apart from everything and everyone
like a man standing in front of a painting
and everywhere he carried this feeling in him
always in his gut, pressing in on his forehead
he was bitter in happiness
and angered at peace
for it was never of him, and he was never of it
never his
everything was separate
and he couldn’t feel anything, and his soul was untouched
because it did not
exist
and to no part of the spirit did he owe any allegiance
he was all stomach and heart and gut
his eyes saw only earth and sky and shit and vomit
things as they were, and it made him doomed and ecstatic
miserable and bitter and cunning and euphoric
and he was the first human, the only human
and some others called him Satan, but that could not have been his name
because he had not even that much angel in him.
We all bear his name today, our human race,
because he was the first,
and we are all his brothers and children and wives
we are his only family
because those who bore him failed him
as only your family can fail you
but now we are his family
his family, his family,
and so it was that it was he who convinced them
and so it was us who convinced them
you and I
to build a set of stairs
stairs unto the highest point
where the sky and stars meet in the darkest of their upper spheres
the deep black shore of the sky’s ocean
And it was he who was the first Hunter
the first to kill for food, the first to feel the need
the need to seek, to find and track and kill
to end things to begin things
was this not just like God?
Just what God would have done, and had done?
This was how beginnings and endings entered the world
no longer incorporeal things, left up to chance
but now made physical, with arms and legs and limbs of uncaring econ-
omy.
Through arrow head and sharpened stone
through a gap in the flesh where time and nothingness
and death and ending fell out and splashed their redness everywhere
blood pouring into the river
where he washed their skins and cleaned his hands and face
and washed the smell of it right off of himself.
Blood flowed there and made it’s way into the salt blue ocean waves and
tides
and fish would drink that blood,
gathered up in schools and drunk with the headiness of lifetimes on land,
diffused with salt and saline, so light now, so small, that none could taste
it’s coppery stinging, but all were drinking,
all were eating,
all had blood inside them which was not their blood
,had stolen the blood of another,
bloody and not wholly themselves any longer and never would be again,
now part something-else,
blood brothers they would never see and that were already dead.
But no one cared, and no one complained.
In fact, they felt better, they felt full.
Men and women are creatures of appetites,
and they traded their love for a full belly
very, very long ago.
And they felt filled with it, and alive, both dead and alive,
and in the nights they whispered,
laying close in the frost and the dark,
pressing into one another to feel the beating heart
of another person, someone outside themselves
as living proof, living proof
they were not the last one, they were not the very last one
because when dark is everywhere all of our confidences are forgotten
and man is only a child again, without stick or blade or bludgeon
and the world is at it once was, wholly a place of the animals
where all churches are built to honor the tooth-and-claw
and all of human intelligence is worth exactly nothing
a place of pounding hearts and desperate running and crashing through
fallen tree-limbs
an unknowable chaos of wilderness
where beasts chant out into the frozen night-times
“who will kill, and who will eat, and who will die”
a perfect, even chorus
not a note out of place.
In those nights, the people whispered
“The Hunter does us all a great service
and we have done so much to deserve it
with axe and arrow, fire and stone,
he opens up the world for us
has fed us well
so brave and strong, cunning, wise
the best of all of us
because he dreams of how it shall be
and so it becomes;
he sees a better life”.
And they respected him
the respect we save for violent men
who have always been our leaders, and always will be
those we condemn when they act
exactly as we’ve always wished we could act
those who live with their hearts in their mouths and hands
the men we worship
when what we really worship is death
and those who can bring it to us
because we long for it.
We long for it.
And this was how he convinced them
to bend their backs
and angle their knees
to put hands on earth and arches in their necks
muscles tensed, skin damp and sweating
pushing weight onto weight, holding themselves up
to make a solid height and a stable base
as good as stone, and as strong
he used their trust, they gave him faith
freely, freely they had traded
and he shook his bow, and flashed his eyes
he told them of the life they gained, his to give
the only separate one, the only different one
who stood apart and felt nothing of life and nothing for it
and all those men, all those women
gave of their bodies everything there was
every inch and every sinew
and made themselves just things
not people but steps
not women but steps
not men but steps
steps for his feet, every human back
every human neck
but still, it wasn’t enough
we must go further, the hunter said
I hunt the darkest game, he cowers in the shadows of the black-blue sky
and still I feel this gap in me
the space between the world and my soul
a nothing-space, I feel it there -
but there were no more men, and no more women,
no more backs and no more necks,
so the Hunter asked the animals.
Those he’d eaten, he asked their bones
he asked dead mothers, he asked dead sons
asked the ones hidden in the stones, in crawl-spaces and burrows
in the dark holes of the trees
in their leaves and in the water
and he showed them his bow, and his eyes flashed,
and they alone knew,
all of them knew
they knew, they knew, they knew
they had always been separate
they had always had gaps, they had always been gaps
had always had spaces where hearts could have been
because God made them first, but had not made them best
had kept them in shadows and forests and fields
had let them be hunted, always afraid
afraid of being killed, afraid of being eaten
while they themselves killed, and ate
each other
God had let it happen
had made it happen
and it kept happening, every day,
and would keep happening, forever
yes, they knew
the animals know everything
and all in their thousands
they bared their teeth
and they bowed their heads
every plant, every animal
added weight, added height
and all the while they laughed secret laughs.
all taking place, all now a part
all act the part, all as one, all without selves
lost in the whole, that massive stair
now tall enough, he shouted, raised above the clouds
to where the air grew thin, to where the light blinked out
up higher than this, to the highest point revealed
by any time,
the highest of all.
And that man placed his foot
square onto the smalls of their backs
square onto the napes of their necks
square onto their eyes and their mouths
he took their stairs two at a time
he ran
he was not tired
he was happy, so happy
this was it
this was
it
And at the very top,
where he was alone, but not alone
he pulled back his string
and he tightened his bow
and said nothing at all
just breathed
and held it, a moment, and then
let everything go
no troubles
no fears
no people
no forests
no animals
no earth
no space
no souls
no nothing
no anything
and there were arrowheads
arrowheads
arrowheads
everywhere.
And one
only one
stuck fast into the throat of God.
And God fell, limp and dead, straight into the Earth
with every bone broken
and that arrow was driven straight out of the back God’s neck by the solid
earth
and silhouetted against the sunlight
like the only tree standing in a burned out wood
Like a hunted animal, dead on the ground
God bled out slow until his heart stopped.
Like a stuck pig.
Like a dog on a spit.
And the hand that steered the ship
the plow that broke the plains
broke into a thousand jagged pieces.
And it took only minutes
for those people to come down
and, without a thought,
they began eating,
with their bare hands they ripped apart anything they could find
and ate until they were too full to move.
We are at that Desperate Banquet right now.
If you listen you can hear them chewing.

-ec.wolf

The Sunsets Are Bloody Marvelous

2011-03-31T23:21:00.000-04:00

"I am anti-life, the beast of judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?"

"I am hope."

- The Sandman