Jack Kerouac, The Diamond Sutra, and Blogging

Not only would Jack Kerouac have had a weblog, but he would have been blogging on Open Salon.

I feel that his writing techniques and contributions to Modern Literature are mirrored in the so-called “blogosphere” of today. I also feel that Open Salon is the only blogging-platform that is the home of artists of all stripes and the bastion of free expression in the mania of the web.

I would never go so far as to say that this little weblog here, that you currently reading, is anything close to what Jack Kerouac might contribute artistically to the community.

I only to seek to draw out that I am influenced, in part, by the same elements that influenced him to drive away from the cautious roads of standard-literature-procedure and drive boldly forth into the deeper forms of thought and real-life observation.

The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text teaching avoidance to the extremes of mental attachment, has long held deep meaning to me and I am returning to it again after many years to seek it’s truth once more. Every verse of The Diamond Sutra begins "Thus I have heard."

Thus shall you think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

Jack Kerouac defined his “method” of writing in way that also effects my own blogging efforts greatly in terms of raw influence:

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside your own house
Be in love with your life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in your morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You're a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

This is the driving force of today’s cognitive-blog interlay system.

I am the Writer-Director of the Earthly Enterprises!

I struggle the stretch of the flow that never ceases, even as I command it to do so.

Pure crazy, pure declarations, pure honesty.

Not fear nor shame in the dignity of your experience, language & knowledge.

--

There is only so much I take away from Kerouac, as I have made more clear in bold.

And to any thinking whatever I am doing is wise … This is not the case.

I believe “edgy” is the term that keeps getting ascribed to the end result of this practice.

That and getting banned from websites.

So I invite everyone who already was live-journal blogging to keep doing your thing because this noise over here is usually taken as throwing firecrackers at people.

Fair warning to the curious.

Politics in Pictures

Has America Gone Conspiracy-Crazy?

It has been my observation that popular websites and radio shows have experienced a recent increase in the number of people touting the ‘New World Order Theory’ (NWO) or an apocalyptic theory that includes global conspiracies in one fashion or another. I am not a fan of dismissive attitudes and rather than mocking these people I wish to explain why I personally do not subscribe to these theories even after having reviewed much of the same media and materials that they often use as evidence for their theory.

There is no doubt that there remains a large divide in society between the labor classes and the aristocratic classes of people, no matter how wealthy or advanced a society is. As many have written on throughout history there is a mutual disgust shared between these classes.
The labor class most often views the other as uncaring and immoral. The aristocratic class most often views the other as uncivil and illogical.

The clever, and usually fiendish, use this divide on both sides of society to promote their personal agenda. Be it selling DVDs, seeds, books, survival supplies or perhaps gaining ratings, website hits and sponsors the issue of interjecting mass fear without any tangible proof is reprehensible. Not to mention the fact that both modern and ancient politicians have sought to demonize one group or another using these same existing prejudices in what is commonly called class-warfare.

I assert that the entire idea of a ’grand-puppeteer council’ that rules all of humanity is a form of ancient social-engineering, if you will, developed perhaps some time prior to the Roman Empire. An agenda formed purely to destabilize all forms of government in a time when there was no such thing as democracy or equality under the law for any person not of a ruling class.

I believe the labor class of old created this entire theory around the strange practices of aristocrats that still exist in today’s society in the form of the Skull and Bones Society or other ritualistic practices in society as a whole.

These unseen and unknown rulers of all cannot be proven nor disproved. Nor can the shadow regime be seen for it is made of no light that we pathetic laborers can find with the blindfolds that our masters provide. It is a perfect circle of plausible yet improvable concepts leading to the same conclusion of rejecting all the institutions of government as purely evil.

I see certain figures like Jordan Maxwell as not motivated by sheer profiteering motives but rather simply a person who has read more material and done more research than I have, by far, yet he has not considered this simple concept while reading many occult materials.

Maxwell is one of the rare exceptions in this subject where he is genuine and earnest about his fears for America coming under some form of global-control. I just simply disagree, and obviously, I would be proven wrong if such a thing were to happen outside of popular fiction.

I am not certain if America is falling prey to an age-old agenda of anarchistic motives or if a certain few have simply become voiced after being silent but the issues of the press failing to do their job in the modern world or the multitude of other arguments used to promote these theories don’t provide any proof for the theory itself.

No doubt someone who believes strongly in these theories would seek to call me a ‘NWO shill’ and I am trying to convey that I see Alex Jones, for instance, as a profiteering shill. Let people judge for themselves as I make zero dollars on this weblog and Jones runs advertisements for his products on the radio. George Noory would be the converse of Jones where he appears to simply believe in the NWO while further proving my point that Jones is primarily motivated by profit due to fact that Noory doesn’t engage in schemes to sell documentaries, yet is still affiliated with and outspoken on the issue.

Many theories defy evidence, like Creationism or Human-Evolution for instance, and there are many people of varying degrees of study who wish to establish a sense of complete authority on these theories making them facts. It is the very nature of spreading willful ignorance. Some issues do not have all the standards of scientific proof at this time and must be handled as such.
The answer is, we don’t have the answer.

Anyone who tells you otherwise should called into suspect immediately to produce proof or be called to state themselves as a person of convictions and not facts, which is perfectly acceptable.

I am not here to be throwing out names for everyone to repeat of my ‘perfect’ theories or just to start an uproar on any of the issues I’ve touched on but rather to say that when any person simply accepts what they hear, see or read as proof-enough for them that ultimately we all could suffer the consequences if this were to become systemic.


Eric Lightborn
http://ericlightborn.wordpress.com/
February 17th 2009

Presumption of Innocence in the Media is Gone

I think the newsmedia just got tired of the word ‘allegedly’ in regards to OJ Simpson case in the 90’s.

Now when anyone is up on charges or accused of anything above an exact threshold that they set, they are 'Insta-Guilty' in everything but the most stoic of sources in American newsmedia.

I tend to think that "Blago" as we want to call him is not at all innocent of these charges but I wrote a piece of student-journalism regarding the whole issue without accusing him in innuendo or directly.

It’s not exactly hard to presume innocence.

It just drives up ratings / hits if you call him a 'corruption king,' or a 'master of evil,' or a 'fraud miser.'

Solid evidence be damned!

Prosecutor opinions and partial pieces of a case leaked to the press be praised!

Yes, I heard the tape of him swearing every other word. And I saw all the FCC blocked-out quotes, too. (Why do they even put things like that on TV when it’s more asterisk-than-English?)

But any one of us could have secret tapes made of us where we said crazy stuff we wouldn’t say in public. Now imagine taking the whole tape and cutting it into five seconds or one paragraph of juiciness.

See how anyone could be the media boogie-man by tomorrow regardless of how insane they actually are? Maybe your next on the list.

We hold court in this country for a reason.

So the court of public opinion doesn’t start ‘Blago Mobs’ in Illinois for this case.

You tell me why it is a good idea to have a free media that freely assumes guilt of anyone facing charges they think are big enough to matter.

Not to mention that statue violations and ethical board decisions are often passed over or reported in brief and then unreferenced in later discussions because they do not stimulate enough ratings due to the "oh that’s boring" and the "give me a real scandal" attitudes.

What other media-watchdogs are barking, I wonder?




Eric Lightborn
http://americapress.wordpress.com/
December 21st 2008