HALO

This is for the player in me… And in expectation of Halo 4:

 

AND this one!!

 

God of the Gaps

Yeah… so I had an orientation today at Gap Inc. What can I say? Super corporate. Its clear they run through employees like (enter solid pun). I will be a retail associate. I feel beyond humbled, honestly a bit sad, tired, silly, and excited. It’s all there. I feel excited because I know I’m advancing, employable, doing the “next right thing.” Still, it is laughable how over qualified “I feel”. I do have two master degree’s… Am I mistaken about something here? I find it extremely difficult to accept this roll in life right now. Today I sat in a room with a couple 19 year olds and a 28 year old manger in training… for $11 an hour. I believe God is mocking me. I do wear Gap pants.

My experience today feels super weird. I had all the same, albeit less intense, feelings I encountered when I was touring the TLC sober living house. Feelings of strange beguilement, like I’m being “taken for a ride” or teased sort of… like God is playfully mocking me. Like: “Yeah!! This is where you’re at with all your skills… you idiot! So the next time you think you can do whatever you want, (smoke copious amounts of cannabis) for years unending… just remember this – You do qualify to be a sales associate at the Gap and not much more. Maybe a substitute teacher for a few days a week.”

I trust God. I trust this won’t last long. It is silly. In the minimal time I spent today with the hiring manager I can give a solid psychological profile, including suggestions that would more than likely strongly improve her upward mobility and career success. That I can even hold that as a thought is sort of sick. Its not sick because its true; its sick because of the difference between my ability to see and my ability to communicate or manifest that skill in the actual world. I am still so deeply disempowered in the context of finance or attracting money. Or should I say … I’m learning?

Paradoxically, I am incredibly strong in recovery, intuition, presence, attention, humility. Not a few hours after I left the Gap had my first meeting with a sponsee. All my experiences of frustation over unmanifest skill faded as our conversation unfolded. I learned of his deep experiences of answered prayer. He told me that right after offering a prayer of gratitude for his recovery, the mountains, life that he was literally lifted off his feet by a wind devil (or something?) in the middle of the desert and landed in the center of a labyrinth he was walking. Unbelievable shit. I was able to pore into him some of the most empowering facits of my recovery. We unified our purpose, our attention, histories and shared in the co-creative spirit of healing. We spoke of the power of resonance fields, channeling, and synchronicity. He told me about baring witness to anonymous homeless person calling him out as a psychologist his last time purchasing weed. This man didn’t know him, yet connected with the power of his psycho-somatic resonance to quit smoking weed and spoke out in favor of his individuation, his healing process. That sort of shit is generally a part of my daily experience. Anyways… For both of us, it was either keep smoking pot or live our dreams. We chose again today, together to live our dreams.

After our meeting we attending an MA meeting and it was really, really wonderful. I know I won’t be at the Gap forever. I pray I won’t be there long at all. I know that God is placing me at Gap to “fill in the Gap” to teach, humble, and most importantly to fill in my financial “gaps” at the moment. I know this because I know who works for me. I am slowly but surely learning whose world this is and how to trust and abandon myself to it…

Slices of Current Culture (funny)

Google’s Misappropriation

I just had my rant about Apple’s insulting its loyal consumer base. Now on to an observation on Google’s misappropriation of Bob Ross. You know him… the “happy little cloud’s remix” here it is… I know you’ll enjoy it:

Perhaps, “misappropriation” is not the right word. What I mean to communicate is wonder. I know the slice of SF tech culture who finds Bob Ross a cool fad and this remix an even better rendition, adopting the random 80’s Zen painting show as kitsch, momentary, even cliche – aesthetically deficient. I find it fascinating to pull up Google.com and “Google” is rendered as Bob Ross’s painting. Because I’ve been a bit frustrated today I scoffed at the pretense – these jerk offs at Google liked the remix and Ross’s Zen like quality so much the projected their quirky “like” on the wall of Google for the world to see. I can only imagine the small slice of current culture who understands the reference. I do.

McDonald’s Coke’s

I confess, because I’m a sinner. I have been eating at McDonald’s regularly for the last month. I feel fantastic. Fuck you. No seriously. McDonald’s is astonishing. Their coke is fantastic. It is perfect nearly every time. I believe… if we are to speak seriously of capitalist sorcery it must find definition within the golden archways. It is magical how McDonald’s has flourished. Current commercials praise the American dollar for finally finding a home at McDonalds. They offer a McDouble along with a whole range of other sugary, salty carbs for a dollar. I am coke addict. I have dabbled in coke addiction at different periods of my life. Every coke, be it from a can, bottle, fountain, plastic, glass, 1 liter, 2 liter etc. has its own unique taste. Out of all these I prefer a fountain coke from McDonalds. How the fuck is that?!! Usually, most… claim the glass bottle – classic. BUT NO! no! McDonald’s Coke. Damn voodoo.

If I had a stand up moment:

This is how I would begin… “Fuck you Daniel Tosh!” and then I would end.

No… I would continue. I would have to talk about Christian Vampirism. Blood sacrifices and all… Then I would move to talking about masturbation. Then I would end.

 

Apple’s Insult

This is my rant on the I-Phone 5 and the more recent trajectories of Apple products. I still have the I-Phone 3Gs… it works awesome. It would work even better if they made an operating system update that was exclusively for the 3Gs. I have feared downloading the os’s for the 4G on my phone because I’ve heard horror stores about the incompatibility.

But herein lies the problem with Apple and technological advancement in general. The I-Phone has not advanced much beyond the original form. A better camera here, a little larger screen there… Ok thanks. But seriously, with each new I-Phone Apple continues to embark on a process called the point of diminishing returns – with every new input or “advancement” the value added is lower and lower. The I-Phone 5 and the I-Pad Mini are point in case. I’m not even going to discuss the I-Pad Mini because with its price compared to other, better tablets it doesn’t deserve recognition; it is blatantly insulting. But you really hurt us with the I-Phone 5. Here Apple decided to go with its own maps instead of Googles and its missing entire major roads. The headphone jack is on the bottom? Who likes to carry the I-Phone in their pocket upside down? More than the minor disappointments with its proclaimed advancement it is that Apple is insulting its loyal consumers by playing the game of capitalism beyond capitalism or capitalist sorcery. Like that famous line from Jerry McGuire: “Apple, you had us at hello.” But now it feels like your just taking advantage of our commitment to sell a repackaged product for the sake of larger revenues. At what point to you rest and say, “Let’s give back, do something bold.” The game where we continually feel left behind gets really exhausting fast. Where is the wisdom at the heart of your sacred Apple. Are we to really believe that you betrayed us all when you “took the bite,” and ate from the Tree of Good and Evil. The myth is relevant and I’m beginning to wonder to what extent.

 

A View of God & the Devil

A View of God and the Devil
by Patrick Kavanagh

I met God the Father in the street
And the adjectives by which I would describe him are these:

Amusing
Experimental,
Irresponsible –
About frivolous things
He was not a man who would be appointed to a Board
Nor impress a bishop
Or gathering of art-lovers.

He was not splendid, fearsome or terrible
And yet not insignificant.
This was my God who made the grass
And the sun
And stones in streams in April;
This was the God I met
In an old quarry full of dandelions.
This was the God I met in Dublin
As I wandered the unconscious streets.

This was the God that brooded over the harrowed field –
Rooney’s – beside the main Carrick road
The day my first verses were printed –
I knew Him and was never afraid
Of death or damnation
And I knew that the fear of God was the beginning of folly.

The Devil
I met the Devil too,
And the adjectives by which I would describe him are these:
Solemn,
Boring,
Conservative.
He was a man the world would appoint to a Board,
He would be on the list of invitees for a bishop’s garden party,
He looked like an artist.

He was the fellow who wrote in newspapers about music,
Got into a rage when someone laughed;
He was serious about unserious things;
You had to be careful about his inferiority-complex
For he was conscious of being uncreative.

Friends

Another night of curiosity besets my blog-o-sphere. Oh… what do I w-right? I want to be better and profound, and I’m not sure those things are always the same. When in these questionable circumstances, one sure course, rare to lead me astray, must lie in friendship. Friends. Friends is where it’s at! Friends capture both profundity and seem to make you better. So tonight I look to my friend, Adam Robert @ http://knowledge-ecology.com/  (((Knowledge Ecology))) to aid in my blog-o-sphere navigation.

In one of his more recent literary posts (he has some pretty awesome art up too) he sites a book:

New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies

My academic interest – my thought life – generally alignes with Mr. Robert. I checked out his suggestion and it took me to a website called “Open Humanities Press” @ http://openhumanitiespress.org/index.html

Now I have moved from the work of New Materialism – as fascinated as I am within the realm of Speculative Philosophy generally, another title has also caught my eye: The Democracy of Objects by Levi Bryant… AND then another: Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate Change, Vol. 1 by Tom Cohen… WHERE the fuck am I??!! I’m in a world of profound and better! Bookmark that shit!

Thank you Friend. 

Gather striking excerpts:

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And we are trashing the natural world. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. The atmosphere can’t absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.—Naomi Klein, “The fight against climate change is down to us—the 99%” [2011]

Carbon pollution and over-use of Earth’s natural resources have become so critical that, on current trends, we will need a second planet to meet our needs by 2030, the WWF said on Wednesday.—Agence France-Presse, “Time to find a second Earth, WWF says” [2010]

 

 

Explore

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”
― Terence McKenna

I’m not a huge Terence McKenna fan. Not because I don’t generally agree with his perspectives on consciousness, evolution, liberation, rather I find his overwhelming proselytizing about LSD nauseating. And its not that I think LSD can’t be one among many ways to break free of oppressive mindsets, even achieve new levels of consciousness. The problem with LSD, as with other “sacred medicines” is that its not meant to be used within the framework of consumerism much less “partying”. Our culture of capital sorcery has sufficiently killed the sacred elements found in plant healers, psychoactive medicines etc. The death isn’t complete but surely beyond the point of ugly. When these medicines are flooded in the market for profit rather than initiation or sacred encounter they become “drugs”. We all must agree, “Drugs… are bad.” In the course of organic evolution these psychotropic plant helpers where co-emerging with human and animal attention and cultivation. These sacred elixers were often scarce, they were seasonal – this meant they were valued in a different context than our own because more often than not they were rare. Further, they were set in a context philosophers have described with the familiar phrase, “state of nature.” Leisure was always available to the primordial human, but under the pretense of survival awareness and tribe orders of relations were adhered to and made sacred for the sake of perseverance amidst natural uncertainty  In our presence culture we are saturated with privilege. Concerning our domestic lives we are utterly safe, secure, certain. We can spend years without work. In our present context what were formally sacred, seasonally rare plant helpers became mundane product built for profit on the market and consumed as such.

There’s more on this from a “Wholly Other” perspective. The object and goal of our species must be the elevation of consciousness. McKenna is right on point – we must have new ideas. New ideas flow from hard work and alternative lifestyles. Would it be bad to say: New Ideas flow from San Francisco. I’m sort of kidding, mostly not. Because in the present San Francisco meets new ideas with the least resistance. People call this the defining quality of spirituality. My entire life I have been exploring new ideas. I am a philosopher by nature and training. Philosophy is the heart of interesting; it isn’t an abstract, detached rationality. It is deeply engaged with life, learning, and the evolution of consciousness. My philosophy, my “love of wisdom,” has taken me through successive steps in pursuit of conscious liberation and the power of manifestation. I sought this firstly through training with individual instructors in the academy. This trajectory began to shift over the past few years driving me toward AA, where I have discovered a people manifesting the power of community and healing at super conscious levels. If new ideas flow from a source, the source is God. I’ll say it again: God is the source. Or if you want to be existential, there is no God and that’s the source. Personally, I find including God makes for a better story, so I do… because stories are better ideas. If new ideas flow from God then the place to be is in AA. For the last 50+ years, out of all the classrooms, all the mediation centers, the yoga rooms, the churches and places of holy reputation, the rooms of AA have been most consistently in touch with God Sources… the conscious experience of light of love. At least… this is what I and the Dali Lama say. Ok, I would very much like to say something of Deleuze now.

To say something of Gilles Deleuze is to invoke the philosopher of philosopher’s – the one in whom Foucault himself said the 21st would follow. I don’t understand Deleuze which is my caveat and creativity. His metaphysics insists on living beyond my understanding so I bow before the virtual difference his thought commands. At least for this excerpt, I find Deleuze meaningful in his commitments to Marx and Freud insofar that “desiring-production” – the blind impetus operationalizing our cult of capitalism is the central force of deafening neurosis, repression,  state control and infantilizing need. Ok, again. Down with Capitalism again… but what now?

I’m not shy about listening to Wiki:

Modern society still suppresses difference and alienates persons from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can become—though we cannot know what that is in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. “Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?”

This is the point-in-fact: the world is beyond creative. Manifest it through Exploration.

Attention

I like attention very much. Having peoples attention is incredibly valuable. My ability to maintain attention is increasing as I practice spiritual fitness. My mediation and prayer haven’t developed that much in the past month. I’ve experienced a great deal of transition, movement, there are excuses of all kinds. Substitute teaching is a crucible of learning the value of attention.

I am receiving more and more attention from my community as I grow in spiritual discipline. My sobriety is a fundamental factor of my development. My disease requires me to show up to meetings. All the critiques of the “disease” model aside, I am currently in a process of doing “90 in 90” – that’s 90 meetings in 90 days. I’m at 17 or something. Every meeting I raise my hand to speak. Perhaps not every meeting but often I get called on and share my thoughts at group level. When you speak in community you receive part if not all of peoples attention. My dream is to become a magnetic speaker, teacher, and even… I still hesitate to say it, preacher. I love how when I take the suggestions of leaders in AA, I raise my hand and practice my dream. I love that when I practice spiritual fitness and my commitment to remain sober, wed to that in action and idea are my dreams for the future. Just the other day it hit me that there are many great public speakers in AA. Those seriously ill from addiction keep coming back day after day, year after year and speaking in meetings. Two minutes at a time, say 3-5 days a week you get called on for 20+ years makes you a pretty great speaker. If you have never gone to an AA conference you might give yourself the pleasure of going to hear amazing speakers. These people hold my attention with acute skill, mastery.

Facebook holds my attention really well. Movies hold my attention really well. I’ll watch a movie and not have a thought of my own for two solid hours. Sublime escapism, mass marketed, the cathedral of the contemporary capital order, refined and perfected entertainment – AMC, Carmike, etc. “Hollywood!”

Everyone want’s your attention in our culture. Every add, every new start up, every new fad, clothing, car, sport. In the spirit of mass fragmented attention and consumer culture I give you a song: “We Want Your Soul” by Adam Freeland:

Did I have your attention?

What can I say?

I’ll Blog, “What can I say?”

Are you aware that I am cliche? The power of originality is exhausting. I am attracted to the cliche. I changed my e-mail address a few years ago from “adamphudson@hotmail.com” to “iamadamhudson@gmail.com”. I made my blog, “I Am Adam.” I made a new youtube account based on this identification. Here is a video I made me and other things:

 

I just found a book on Amazon titled: I AM ADAM. Check it out here:  http://www.domatarious.blogspot.com/

This is what I mean by cliche. What first inspired me to approach my blog, e-mail, etc with “I am Adam” was Glide’s use of the phrase, “I Am”. Every Sunday someone tells their story of Glide and finishes with this phrase, “I Am…” I thought it was pretty clever. Then I saw an add on the side of Muni buses in San Francisco promoting Mike’s Bikes with the add, “I Am Mike.” Then a few weeks ago I saw another add boasting the same phrase. It is no more than a marketing ploy now. I knew it was a marketing ploy when I adopted the phrase. I thought it good “PR” to ally myself with Glide’s approach to marketing. Hell… “I am Glide, too!” And… I am cliche.

What can I say? I am cliche. I write and rhyme. I find time… not that original. There’s more here, there’s a history near, nearer than you think. It is a history of redemption, vacillation, contemplation and it speaks in the present louder than our loudest speakers. Its voice is the rhythm of seekers, the lines of traversed horizons of potential… And in this case, in the case of the “I AM” it is the hymn of the Universe.

Plus, I like to dance as you can see from the video above.

Time

Time is strange. It courses through our veins and bends the universe. In mediation it slows our awareness and guides us. It teaches us how to die. We live according to its precession. Time is our harness to life – take heed its securities, its weight and direction.

I have a deep desire to die well, to end well – I pray for this…

I pray for much. I am praying for restoration. I ask God that the resources I handle might be of great benefit to my people. I ask for time to perfect my body, that my consciousness be of love.

I ask that my attitude of doubt be laid at the feet of time. I give thanks for my hope, and for this journey.

I pray that God remembers me. Lord, shape my life according to your will. Let that will be high and clear. Extend this inheritance we call Earth.

Let fear be covered in light and light be all that is… Thank you for the night, for rest and sleep. Upon awakening let my thoughts be of you, of joy.

Lord be with my family and friends. Shape my dreams. Ground me in your perfect world. Breath me out upon the world. Let our history bend toward freedom, justice and grace Lord… Let Grace enter the world.

Teach us to cry Lord. And to heal. Thank you for your eternities, these atmospheres of Love.

Amen.