Cross-Posted Update! Hello, Internets!
So, time for a cross-posted update. What’s new and groovy? Here’s where I’m at.
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Working on the GED book. I know, 26, working on a GED book, using Brain Trainer 2 to sharpen the ol mind pencil…erm…anyway, yea, I agree. This is 2008. If you’re older than 12, you need a university degree. Lemonade stands don’t run themselves. Harhar. Anyway, so far, not bad. I’m rusty, but there’s steady improvement.
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Working on a lot of creative projects. I try to get at least a half hour of guitar in every day, minimum. Granted, the bit that I recorded and posted on facebook that nobody and their dog saw was largely crap. What I’m working on now does not involve a lot of theory. I’ve been studying such disciplines as Zen and Taoism for over a decade, and I find that that Zen Archery bit tends to apply. I suppose it’s a matter of priorites and practice, ne? Anyway, so, this in mind, I focus mainly on just knowing the guitar and the environment, and letting gentle will do its thing. So far so good. Also, I’m writing as much as it happens. A wise man once told me that the hardest part of writing is not writing. Man, I hear you. I want to post some snippets. We shall see how it goes.
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Philosophy! I’m working with some mind mapping software, basically really slick brainstorming programs. Runs way faster than turning every thought into an essay, and the end result is generally a ton of ideas to mull. Some might say a philosopher is one afflicted with an existential crisis, often fatally. I would say that that’s pretty much being alive. I’ll see if I can get any material on the web, if anything, for curiosity’s sake.
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My martial arts practice has been put on hold while I work on adapting to the changing seasons and the perils of living in a poorly ventilated basement room with a window on street level in Vanier. While there are times when a good workout is the best thing for you, I find that sometimes, a moderate adaptation phase is better, at least for me, personally. Still, doing great, physically, and the mold issues in the room due to a leaking cieling issue have largely been fought back via liberal fumigation. So far, still fit, still breathing, still getting by.
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Ah, dealing with divorce. Thank whatever’s out there that Lis is such a saint. She knows I’m running on very limited funds, and has given me a lot of breathing space, financially. I feel terribly guilty and appreciative. I’m working to cut costs here and there to pick up the slack and also trying to find a way to get my books out of her basement. The Nook Tribe, (read: We Of The Vanier Apartment II, Vanier’s Revenge), is(are) considering just making many bus trips. I’ll have to see what I can do.
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Mental health update! Still working on fine tuning my senses, doing research both in the realm of academia and also doing a lot of self-monitoring, fact checking, etc. So far, so good, but I haven’t seen Doc. Eaton in…awhile. I’m thinking it’s time to reconnect.
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Speaking of which, housing situation update! Not moving back East just yet. It’s not financially sound for me to attempt it right now. Maybe I’m a wuss, but I’d rather arrive knowing I had something quasi-solid to go with re living situation. It’s been put forward that it’s easier to find a place there while actually being there, however, it’s a risk, and I don’t want to keep boucing around the universe trying to balance everything on the fly, so to speak. Meantime, I continue to love being a Nook resident. So far, the plan is to get my GED to improve my chances of getting into university. Surely academia has something to offer, both intellectually as a process and financially as a result. The GED is basically me stepping up to make a sound nvestment.
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Finally, on the gaming front, I have seen true political horror. I’m playing Vampire: Bloodlines again. Imagine the pressure on anyone involved in politics. Now, add 200 years of personal exitance amidst constant power plays. It winds up looking like every vampire in the game has about 100 knives at their back. It’s quite odd. You know, for vampires, they’re entirely reasonable, thinking, feeling beings. Jack’s right, it’s not so much vampires that kill, it’s politics.
More Soon! All the best!! 
Haiku Quickwrites
Impromptu Haiku
Please join me in contemplation.
Starting With a Base Emotion
Joy
Crystaline pine trees
The icy bowl of the field
Breath like cool burning
Certain slant of light
Knowing that you are there, too
There is no losing
Soft fur like water
Water passing over stones
Bliss lasts forever
Sorrow
The slow ache of this
Our neverending farewell
Memories have wept
Can we ever know
All the pain that we have caused
As we work to heal?
Freedom
I am grinning death
I am a lumbering fuck
I hope that this helps
Lighter than the wind
Electric slipstream bastard
Cmon, dude, let’s go!
I’ll share this with you
There’s a timelessness to this
Do you feel it yet?
Aspects of Being
Spirit
A shining breastplate
Radiant echoing through
I love this, you know
Affirmation No. 1
I am the beauteous vajra
I am this
I am that
And I am between
I am thunderbolt
I am the cool waters
I am the sky
I am the wind and the trees and the leaves
And the comings home
The departings from home to home to home
Never leaving
Never
I am an open closed
I am this…
I am the blade
I am the whetstone
I am the flesh and the blood
And the ground and air
I reject nothing
I accept everything
And am joyous
I’m particle and motion
I am oscillating wave
I am love purest
I am
I am holy holy holy
The Good, The Lost, and the Unrecognizable
I am transformation
I am thusness
I am the rise and fall of the straight path
I am the steady crooked
I am the arrow and the linga and the wreath
I am love
Update and update
Hunter S. Thomspon, in his writing, seemed to be constantly asking, “What now, what’s next?” As an outside observer, I could say that that statement seems to describe him well, both in terms of work and play. The question I find myself asking most often is, “Where are we now?” There are one hundred unwritten songs in the aether, already penned by me, all with the refrain, “Where are we now?”
So, where am I now? Living with Russ and Jas in the East Ottawa wreck they call Vanier, where the people seem to dry out from the dust and the heat. Vanier, a stone’s throw from downtown, where I pace an insomniatic tread, dreaming of Art, which, uncontrived, is everything, best of all Love.
With nothing to really demand my time, my schedule is absolutely my own. I write and I train, study and dream. One might say I’m studying mechanism from the macrocosm to the microcosm, watching for the manifest, the connection, the gesture, and the state of being in a holistic transpiring. Resonance, one might say. Know the Great and know the Small, know the Small and know the Great.
Let me tell you, a life’s work like that and two dollars will get you a venti bold coffee (plus tip), but I have to confess that you do get freebies. Public funding for researchers or something. 
Random Snippets!
“Sho-he chuckled, mentally tapping himself on the skull and clucking his tongue, bamboo on wet stone, the idea of coconuts.”
“The crashing tide that rolled off the clang of hammer to nail”
“
1 – “Focus your talents, child! Do you want to suffer in the streets like a madwoman, a hag? Do you want to die of disease?”
2 – “No…”
3 – “Focus? Leave the por child alone. She has it. I recall that you were not an adorer of the switch when I found you.”
1 – “No! IT shouldn’t matter how I tell her. She hears what she allows herself to. I am merely being plain.”
3 – “You are implying a fate that is not hers, showing her pictures of ruin and saying ‘not that’. Why not or and or if anything?”
2 – “I am fine. He merely told me a story, just as you have. The harm in stories is the memories.”
1, 3 – “Aye.”
4 – “They’re a strange group, aren’t they?”
5 – “MEssiahs or some such. Not always a sad lot, but there’s often tragedy in it.”
4 – “Don’t be a fool, they’re arguing about nothing! If I’d spent my childhood going if this and what if that and what’s my powers, I woldn’t have all this.”
5 – “Now who’s being silly?”
4 – “Oh, shut up, you droll fool. This battle gets us everywhere!”
“
Blessings be
Update – Seiza Rune meditations
F – Breezy spine
Warm, sloping fave
Head l;ike a cool pool.
U – Memory
Thought projection
Relaxed and taught
F – Thunder on the face
Nofears
Nature knows
A – Appropriate
Shifting
Ready
R – Dead man’s pose
Blackened
Still
K – Recieving without asking
Blessings
The wisdom of the weary
G – Blossoming
Prepared
Is
W – Bloodied
Growing
Ecstatic
H – Stillness in a storm
The joke of ragged breath
YThe wonderment of the old ones
N – Searching
Migratory
MEmory
I – Old tree in winter
Swaying
Straight
J – Beautiful, teary connections
Befuddling grin
Immortality
Y The silent dwelling place
Visions
P – Grinning bumps and bruise
The innocence of children
The semblance of choice
? – Centred
Trusting
Natural gworth
S – Honour
Current
Centred, soaring bliss
T – Mystery scars
Tell stories
Archaic parchament
B – The expression
of awe
Radiance
E – Two
Dreaming
While returning
M – Tribe
Mind
Wisdom
L – Joy of quest
Joy of motion
Compass
Ng – Understanding grows
The body appears crooked, all isfine
Jopurney at hearth
D – Peace
Evolution
Accounting
O – Home
Peace
Natural always
Tribe
The White Mask
See through the self, see where you are the mask, know it
See the mask and see how you mingle, and know thyself
For existence is co-relation. What is mask?
What is self, the mask asks.
Where are you and where am I?
In answering, you know yourself.
In action, you show your inevitable certainty.
The mask is the abstraction of self, like the opening of a flower, like the shattering of a mirror.
The realization of self is the knowing of masks
Heading out for a few
Off to OTown for a few days, and will likely not be online. Will check back in if I can. Happy Fathers’ day to the Fathers, and all the best.
V01
Call for support the ways in which you can:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080614/scotia_fires_080614/20080614?hub=Canada
The town is still burning and people are still being evacuated. I’m asking if anyone can help.
Thank you and Namaste,
~V01
