Mishima

 

I was shocked when I discovered that Yukio Mishima has been accused of being politically right wing. Under the definitions and context of contemporary political references this may be true.  When I read him I believed him to be a leftist. I accept him as one of, if not the, major teacher to have been translated into English, regarding a subject that I love; Japanese history.  and the development of Japanese philosophy. A Taoist, I study Budo. I practise (a form of) Shinto; spiritist totemic animism. 

Mishima is more complex than mere political opinion; he questions it and presents both sides of the coin for analysis before acting, the true samurai way. His ability to get the reader to share his depth of understanding Japanese mindset, and the repression of emotions within culturally dominating society is one I identify with strongly. Combined with questioning sexuality it is powerful and comparable to the emergent british teenage emo subculture during the late 1990s early 2000s. 

I question the allegation of Mishima's right wing political stance. One cannot accurately define a culture by the standards of a totally different culture. To compare and analyze historic feudal Japan up until and after Westernisation Process, by using modern western frames of reference alone, without coming at it from the Japanese view point, is to set up a strawman argument. There is a very rigid formal codex as to what 'Japan' actually is, was, will be, should be. This itself is a huge important factor in traditional Japan. The ideology of 'left vs right wing' is a western concept, a framework superimposed upon an alien culture for us to dissect it within western mindset. It is this rigid codex itself which was under dissemination by the likes of Mishima. More acutely defining Right Action regarding developing society and preservation of tradition is and should be the greater focus than political left and right.

Mishima does this poetically and in doing so proves mastery of Japanese sensibilities both prosaic and

A potted history of Japanese Westernisation Process, and the splinter factions involved; in laymans terms: After 100 years of isolation from the outside world, Japan had perfected itself. The Emperors decision to open its trading ports with the West struck an alarm through the nation. Samurai had sworn an oath 'to preserve Japan and to obey the Emperor'. Here they fell into two camps; those who believed the Emperor was not preserving Japan and should abdicate, and those who foresaw the necessity of obeying the Emperor for the future good of the nation. The Emperors loyal Samurai were equipped with guns, manufactured in britain for the American colonials and sold to Japan by the American colonials. They slew the Samurai who were loyal to traditional Japan, who were armed only with swords. That ended the debate.

It was into this environment that Yukio Mishima was born, to a noble Samurai family. He is the last samurai to have committed sepuku, to a post-world-war-two westernised audience who did not honor nor respect this act as necessary to the traditional way of being of the Samurai. He did so after a failed political coup to return Japan to honor its traditions. It is this behaviour, an attempt to rectify a beloved nation that has gone wrong from its purpose and lost the beauty of that original intent (in short; it has 'been westernized') that has been identified as 'right wing' by western political historians with an agenda of avoiding Easternisation Process of the west by adhering to the bias of 20th century context.

Thankfully he left for the world a large volume of writing embodying the true spirit of Japan. Not only did Mishima's writing teach me about Japanese history and Purity of Spirit, it taught me about male emotions in such a way that it has only been feminist authors of Western culture who have spoken the same language to me. All of these are talking about an aspect and purpose of soul that is transgender, androgynous.

In the latter half of the 20th century, androgynous and ageless manga imagery continues one of many the High Arts of traditional Japan; printmaking.

The decision Mishima made when faced with observing effects of westernization (which essentially from the contemporary stance equates to postmodernism) verses honorable to traditional Japanese spirit was to choose a path of purity. The right action for Mishima, unique in his training, education and role in history, was to accept his fate with virtue. He attempted political coup and when this failed due to majority of Japanese not being as elitist, as pure and exonerating the true Samurai Spirit as himself, to commit ritual suicide. To do otherwise would have been to live the rest of his life a failure and hypocrite, having turned his back on all that he had been designed to embody.

Mishima's writings speak romantically of hidden inner self, ones truth within externally forced social role and necessity of right action, thus placing the inner self into stark contrast with the role demanded by the history books. He is comparable to Oscar Wild, a sexual deviant literary genius involved with politics who was punished by society (wild was imprisoned for his homosexuality) that went against personal nature. Where Wilds humor; Mishima's enchantment. This contrast between rigid dogma of a control state and the misfit ultimately personifying it as resolution for alienation. Can western mindset contemplate such perameters?

to be continued...

Post Post Post Modernism

 Fritz Lang 'Metropolis' 1927

"WHAT COMES AFTER POST-MODERNISM?"

"If you want a vision of the future, 

imagine a boot stamping on a human face -
forever." 

George Orwell '1984'

In University during the mid-late 90s I was taught that we were living in the post-post-modern era. This technicality results from the distinction between post-modern era, which is infinitely perpetuated within contemporary western civilisation, and a marked difference when some unknown something comes along to shift things along. 

Different sources disagree with when post-modernism properly began. For me it is represented by Andy Warhole's art, a pastiche exploiting mass production enabling consumerism. Already by his time post-modernism was old hat. By the time university lecturers began to explain it to yet another fresh faced generation X we students had began to realise that we had already outmoded the academic textbooks printed up ten years previously. This argument resulted in the lecturer discussing the post-post modern era we inhabited being merely more of the same. 

That summer we went to Glastonbury Festival at Pilton and laughed at a poser who was frantically running around muddy fields full of spaced out middle class hippies  and shouting for help from anyone who would provide him with a spare battery for his mobile phone. In 1997 perhaps one in fifty people had a mobile phone, if that many. The general attitude of most people was to ridicule them for it, the carrying of a basic second generation mobile phone representing a stigma from the yuppiedom of the 80s, 'with your filofax in your other hand' it was considered to be a male ego toy and penis extention attempting to convince normal people you were an up and coming business tycoon and not just another somebody. 

My friend had foresight. "This time next year there'll be recharging stations for those things all along here," he joked. We thought it was so funny, given that the festival facilities at that time were so basic that the toilet block could be smelled from half a mile away and we were ankle deep in mud. A year later  the mud was worse, the toilets were worse, and there were recharging stations along that same field and every other person had a mobile phone. By autumn that year life  everyone's depended on them. In terms of cultural transition the change happened fast!

before mobile phones we had a thing called Love

It was another decade before the first internet phones had widely began to replace regular mobile phones. We have already surpassed the general consumer technology level of science fiction books I had grown up reading, eg; Shadowrun. Nobody cares much that Chinese children earn the equivalent of 2pence a day working in factories on 16 hour shifts to put deadly radioactive chips into the phones to fry our brains with.

The same story with the internet.  While 90s American movies starring Tom Hanks were promoting internet culture and already we were dealing with schools aghast at emoticons :P and kwk txt destroying the next generation X's written language abilities, 'most people' in britain did not have the internet at home until mid 2000s (arguably, because it depends which social stream, which caste, you belonged to).

In my opinion the Global Communications and Internet Revolution heralds a new phase of post-post-modernism into post-post-post-modernism. If Modernism is the desire to maintain the world as the retro-1950s culture, in which factory line mass production, provide cheap  and available disposable consumer goods; post-modernism is the 60s and 70s era of Global Liberation movements, the brat children of rock-and-roll on acid; then post-post-modernism is surely the lull gap of the 80s and 90s during which punk, goth and grunge, yuppies for England and poverty for Wales as it was seen here at the time, where the factories and high street community have been shut down and  replaced by supermarket warehouses in retail parks on the edge of town near the new multiscreen disney-pixar hollywood cinema chain, an economy gradually picking up as the next generation all go to work for the multinational corporations. 

The 21st century of ordering online; internet shopping delivered directly to your door, is the post-modernists dream and a culmination of its manifesto if such a thing exists (it would be constantly re-written anyway). This is an era where anything can mean anything, the cultural roots are lost and laughed at because nobody cares anymore. Off-the-shelf disposable people ordered online are easily emotionally discarded, even when most of them are naughty noughties 00s emo culture.  None of us like it; the pain of dealing with this facet of human condition and social conditioning keeps us perpetuating and distilling the same old same old. We escape into terminal addiction of social media platform. Technology links us so we can video conference in realtime open-streaming with people from all technologically advanced, money using countries except industrialist China. 

"Think of what ninety nine percent of the human race want – 

food, shelter, a secure family life 

and to be left alone by bosses and busybodies. 

Unfortunately the one percent who are interested in power 

and ideals and ideologies are the ones who call the tune." 

Aldous Huxley 1947

The social changes being demanded are that many non-internet using people are stuck in their brainwash programming of post-modern retro-1950s mindset and HATE anything that isn't; while the educated global community speaking on behalf of 'the 99%' are  being shot at by military police for marching peacefully for social reform.  It is generally observed that the System does not serve the People; it serves the banks, and the unified police state facilitate corporate governmental policy. Corporate governmental policy is in most cases to take take take from the people  forced into consumerism, to repay a debt to the banks that is impossible to repay because the global economy relies on Usury. It has gotten to such a stage that if everyone in the world gave the banks everything that all of us collectively own; the debt would still not be repaid. This is blatantly a stupid situation. Frustration is widespread.

"When you realise that nobody gives a shit about you; 

that is the day you understand what life is; 

and what humanity is becoming. 

When you get over that and start Loving; 

that is the day you begin being human.
Love is never a taking; always a giving.

Flowing with it is the closest to Freedom we have." 

Snakeappletree

 

  

Jose Arguelles, Circumpolar Rainbow Bridge

"The Rainbow Bridge Around Earth signifies love for our living Earth, care for future generations, and our determination to co-create healing for humanity, elevating ourselves into new frontiers of our human potential.

Transcending all boundaries of nation, culture, race, religion, and belief systems, this image symbolizes unity, unlimited possibilities, triumphant positivity, bright futures, and the miracle of life."

Vampire: the Masquerade

A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror

Brujah by Tim Bradstreet

When I first read this I knew intrinsically that it is about the story; not the ego of a gamesmaster nor the players. Sacrifices must be made between what we think we want, and what is to be done for the good of the story. It is primarily a story telling tool; that is its purpose, and there are rules and there are ways, to fashion a crafted drama of our saga. I had been reading Gustav Karl Jung on Archetypal symbolism and the Vampire motif summarized my feelings.

A whole huge history of storytelling tradition dating back through the aeons of human history is invoked, which of course in terms of the longevity of an immortal vampire is a living memory, the individual who was there at the time watching cultural references by the memories of others who can recall long ago nights of that other world, compared with the fire-fly fast mortal lives who twist the tale through its retelling, perfecting the art, perfecting the events, twisting them from what actually happened into a refined, distilled version that contains all the lessons required to educate the next of their generations. As I began to read the book I learned that my innate clan mentality to be that of the artful Toreador, to whom respect and appreciation of this narrative are best identified.

However; as a young teenager full of desperate anxiety and magickal and hope, torn amidst conflicting emotions at the confusing onset of puberty; the Vampire motif came at precision timing to deeply influence and guide my development.

Psychological and emotional, driven by powerful instinct to sate wild desires and learn the nature of this thing called Self, dare taming its wild urges and rage upon senseless repression as my feeling of self worth emerged, feeling a taste of the powers within, the creative flow that needed sating, earthing desire amidst an ocean off data overload and contrary advice. Steer your vices.

I watched the Lost Boys on loop and I read Anne Rice from Interview to Memnoch, in fact I read everything published about vampires up to that point (2000ad) and aside from Secret Diary of Count Lazlo which disturbed me for years; there is very little else in the genre worthy of reading. Vampire the Masquerade has it all.

This was in the hollow nights before Buffy: the Simple and Twilight: the Watered Down entertained the emo generation. We had to hide our inner demon, though we couldn’t know until experimentation whether this was to protect ourselves or the others from it.

When I saw Tim Bradstreets black and white graphic illustrations I knew at once that Vampire: the Masquerade is a game about liberal minded, leather and denim clad street Punks, Goths and Metallers, who just so happen to be vampires, fighting against the even more ancient and evil demons who sought to control the energetic youth and use their power for their own agendas, games, cycles of abuse.That the game coined the term "gothpunk" establishes that as a focal reference of the game to my way of looking at it.

Transition.
The Embrace is a Turning Point. The kiss of death and of renewal. A vampire Sire becomes the Creator. As a virgin when I read these words at age fourteen, I recognised the subtext. It is a symbol for puberty, the change from childhood to adulthood, the awareness of self as a sexual creature. Dealing for the first time with oestrogen, with testosterone, with blood and the moon.

The Embrace is a symbol for the loss of innocence, loss of virginity and the pursuit of a lover, all the feelings we share. It is carnal and daring. It is; do I, dare I, take this one, be taken? Virginity in its truest sense means Virging, the approach to the breaking point of no return.

Upon us were put too many rules. I emerged from the repression and domination of a culture aimed to destroy teenagers and divorce them from nature. School forced us through 'the system' clad in ties and shirts and blazers, prepping us for 'the system' of workplace, ties and shirts and blazers, that's if we were lucky enough to get a good money job, otherwise we were Fail. Stress and control and subservience. I was indoctrinated into feeling that I was wasting my life if I was doing what I knew it was right for me to be doing; that unless I was doing what others commanded I should be doing, then I was on the wrong path. I learned to associate feeling bad about myself with following my instinct.

I was bullied in school, beaten daily until it reached the point where I needed the pain to feel the sharp focus of being alive, seeing deeper and further insight than my tv-dosed peers. My parents ignored me or beat me, constant screams because of their high tension lifestyles. My brother told everyone I was gay. I suffered.

“When will you Rage?” Werewolf: the Apocalypse

I didn’t rage. I was already too broken. Instead I got into drugs instead in a big way. By 19 I was hanging out with some of the biggest dealers in the country. My education into street life was accelerated. By 24 I was eating from skips because every coin  went on discs to record music. I had progressed from roleplaying, to making soundtracks to listen to while roleplaying, to studying sound as vibrational and harmonic verses discordant energy, how it can be used to manipulate psychology and therefore reality. I was a psychonaut and a scientist but not a musician. I wore black until I discovered wearing combat trousers influences highstreet zombies to walk around me instead of through me. By late 20s I had quit drugs, basically because I was immune to them all by then from building up a tolerance. For the first time I could afford food and internet. Due to having no regular job routine I had acquired life experience beyond most people I meet. I got clean; met a girl had a kid got divorced. The days of Vampire were long gone, a painful rite of passage. But its shadow runs long, especially at sunset. Its eye teeth bite deep.

Occasionally I would encounter a game group running a V:tM game. They ALWAYS AND WITHOUT FAIL got it wrong, they had missed the point. I argue, and was banned from succession of fan forums and websites dedicated to the game, that V:tM is supposed to be about, was originally intended as, a game in which the biggest part of the story was struggling with and battling with inner demons,  not with politics. The illustrations, the terminology, focussed essentially on anarchic characters pitted against a backdrop of rigid minded control abusers. This was the double-struggle, the purpose of the bloodsuckers in V:tM, with whom I had identified. It is not meant to be a game where the gamesmaster persecutes such characters in a variety of ways simply because they do not conform to his or her control regime.

In my game, the Anarchs win; they make a breakthrough, they get away with shit that is horrible and anti-social, but necessary to shake up a stagnant society into a more liberal state, where innovation is rewarded, not crushed underfoot and buried as example. So; why do these other storytellers always play it as such?  It seemed to me that they were re-enacting the backdrop, instead of concentrating on 'personal horror'. Maybe it was I who had missed the point? I gave up on it.

Last night in the dark hours I encountered this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_atSHNVufk&lc=HgFyA_4C8dVTgNdirseCmEfpnFkhP6ygrzj6t3-4ENw

Mark Rein-Hagen INVENTED Vampire: the Masquerade, before it went corporate and he left in disgust at internal problems of the rest of the company alienating him from his own original vision, from which has emerged Underworld, Ultraviolet, etc in its wake.

“Once you get into the history of things, I think that’s what you can bring out, all that beautiful lush poetry, but I like hardcore vampire stuff, I think that for me the Twilight sparkly vampire thing is appalling. Vampires need to be hardcore, I mean come on! They’re drinking peoples blood! They’re killing people, they’re murderers! They’re sociopaths and psychopaths. They are literally serial killers, you know? Especially the part of the FBI is set up to track down the most horrifying people. And yet somehow they’re making vampires as this romantic beautiful thing. And I think they are, but in so doing you cant lose sight of the fact that they’re bad. They’re bad! And they’re really bad, not like bad in a handsome cool guy way, in a bad way; I mean they’re evil! I think that’s really interesting in a way.

I think that was the whole point of the Humanity trait, is that eventually you run out of Humanity. I know almost no-one plays it that way. It’s not like most gamers, storytellers or gamemasters in Call of Cthulhu, they do enforce the Sanity rules, and I realize that in World of Darkness most storytellers don’t enforce the Humanity rules. But that was meant to capture that. 'A beast I am lest a beast I become'; that was the core principle of the game.” MRH


HAHAHAHAH I was banned from half a dozen websites for arguing that exact point with crap storytellers on ego power trips!

“A beast I am lest a beast I become”

“The Beast originally was meant to be a metaphor. For most of the time it was strictly a metaphor, it was only a metaphor. The Beast originally was basically the Frenzy. When you are a frenzy and you’re losing it, that is the Beast coming out.” MRH

“I had all this stuff about how you look in the mirror, you can see the Beasts eyes, looking back at you wanting to devour you.” MRH


“Always when I design games I try to think very cinematically, if this was made a movie, how would it look? This is very important to me because I think that’s how you saw games. So I had a whole thing about how where you looked in a mirror – that’s why they can’t see the reflection by the way, is because you can see the Beasts eyes, looking back at you, wanting to devour you. And this was thought to be a little too weird by the playtesters, a little too introspective and they wanted just to go out and shoot guns and kill people and blah blah blah. So I toned it down a little bit; but that’s where a lot of this stuff came from, a desire to personify a metaphor and to make it a real thing, which roleplaying does real well. An analogy, her stare was like broken glass, you might read that in a novel. In a roleplaying type game, you can make that; her eyeballs really do look like broken glass and that whatever she looks at breaks. You can bring these things to life, these metaphors, these analogies.” MRH

“The poet must not avert his eyes” Werner Herzog

"Of course the whole WoD is based on the idea that what you believe in is the Truth. So if you have a strong enough willpower, if enough people agree with you to believe in something; that will change the fabric of reality itself. Which of course is the whole idea behind Wraith, is that if people agree with you, you can break away and form a nice little realm you can live in, your own little paradise. But really for the main reality as well, this is true. This is what the mages do, they are able to have a strong enough will they are able to break the consensus and do what they want." MRH

Jade Cat ヒスイ 子猫

Disclaimer:

This blog contains photoshop montages using bits of illustrations made by other people as well as my own scans from nature. Wherever possible the original artist has been accredited. In no way do I intend copyright infringement. There is a tradition within Japanese print  whereby multiple artists may work on a piece and add to it their mark, sometimes a generation after the original artist had set it aside. All art is progressive.

As a forest is worth more than the sum of all its trees, so the whole contains greater than its component parts. Refer to issue of Monsanto Corporation statement on public record; “in future if you want to eat you will have to buy our products”; patenting genes as major contemporary ethical debate. Monsanto products are banned throughout Europe because they contaminate organic food crops with their patented genetically modified genome that kills rats in independent lab tests and probably does the same to you if you eat it too.

There are several elements to this blog. They interrelate.

The first element is a batch of photos selected from an afternoons walk on one of the few sunny days we get in Wales.

A Taoist medicine journey, following the Way; instinct, which took me to and through a patch of common land overgrown by a mixture of indigenous and invasive plant species.

 

虎杖, イタドリ                itadori

The second element is a particular invasive plant species, its pro’s and cons. The plant is Fallopia Japonica, Japanese Knotweed. 

"The kanji expression is from the Chinese Hǔzhàng 虎杖  meaning "tiger staff", but as to the Japanese appellation, one straightforward interpretation is that it comes from "remove pain" (alluding to its painkilling use)."

First introduced into the UK in the early 19th century for the Royal Botanical Gardens exhibition, it has since spread all over the country.

"It is listed by the World Conservation Union as one of the world's 100 worst invasive species. The invasive root system and strong growth can damage concrete foundations, buildings, flood defences, roads, paving, retaining walls and architectural sites. It can also reduce the capacity of channels in flood defences to carry water."

"In the UK, it is an offence under section 14(2) of the  Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to "plant or otherwise cause to grow in the wild" any plant listed in Schedule nine, Part II to the Act, which includes Japanese knotweed. By 2010 over £150m was spent annually on Japanese knotweed control, and a decision was taken on 9 March 2010 in the UK to release into the wild a Japanese psyllid insect, Aphalara itadori."

block quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_knotweed

Several years ago I began my own study with japanese knotweed.

The plant has a strong spirit, a powerful presence that is easy to attune to.

Sitting amidst a patch of it meditating is one of the most chilled out experiences available in UK. There is a quality in the green, vitality.

Reading it shamanically, symbolically; arrow-heart shaped leafs suggest it to be tonic for the blood system. I removed non-propogating elements from the plant (leaf and stem) and boiled them like rhubarb before ingesting. It tastes mildly bitter and had no apparent effect on me.

My internet research revealed that 'tiger staff' soaks up radiation. I assume this to mean both electronic radiation and nuclear contamination. I don't know if eating it makes you immune or increases the amount of radiation in your system. A year after Fukishima, the worlds worst nuclear accident so far, this is all beginning to connect up and make sense; nature is holistic and there is a reason this plant is here. For several decades Wales has the worlds highest number of cancer incidents, presumably due to fallout from American nuclear testing crossing the Atlantic on the top-winds.

The third element of this blog is information from Nexus magazine Vol20 no4 June-July 2013, which arrived the very same day, and relates.   

I had been working hard for several days without a break.I needed to get out of the house and detach my brain from computer and associated electromagnetic smog.

Feeling fried from too much disruption by unwanted attention of neighbours and radiation from machines, I desperately needed to recharge.

A lesson to be applied as the fourth element of this blog, the project at hand, namely art and music for forthcoming storyteller game entitled tRust for Ordo Octopia Ltd, see their website for more information at www.globalcreole.co.uk


I assembled the following experimental montage illustrations as focus-prep for what the jungle ravines amidst fragmented urban layers of tEra, the world of tRust, might look like. On tEra there is a phrase intended to work on several levels of meaning;

“life in the cracks”

The landscape of tEra is a giant orgonite honeycomb hive where miles high of expanding-foam sprayon orgonite; resin walls containing crystalline particles that operate as a computer matrix, a web of light-refractive touch-op holocom, operates as solar panel and global communications database; has fractured due to the unexpected event of the world swelling up in a series of earthquakes lasting several weeks.

Organic plant life exists in the jungle canyons formed by the fragmentation of the hive. Long slender green columns amidst a cyber darkness of the urban wilderness reminds me of a sword called Jade Dragon in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It requires a master to wield this blade. In today's modern world it hangs in a museum.

manga from: A Dream In Garden by Xia Da   www.summerzoo.com

print from: charity shop, lucky find, signature illegible.
lettering from: googletranslate ("dream now garden butterfly change").

upper manga comic strip (extract) from: Cat's Paw by Damian Slater

http://www.thekatsudon.deviantart.com

manga sword from: CrouchingTiger HiddenDragon 4 by Wang Du Lu and Andy Seto

http://www.d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1029847.jpg

lower manga comic strip (extract) from: Last Shadows Cast by Casper Wijngaard

http://www.animeimports.co.uk/casper-wijngaard-10-c.asp

sword colour adapted screenshot from: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon movie

http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon.html

art for tRust: chalk graffiti glyphs on weathered cytex walls

introducing Selene

While contemplating an appropriate name for this blog I made an interesting discovery thanks to google translate;  

ヒスイ

Japanese spelling for Jade looks like  English spelling for CAT !

tRust rpg (forthcoming)

promo banner by Postworldgames Jim Pinto

                the title says it all...





The Gamekeeper & Transcendental Dolphindark of

Ordo Octopia Ltd

asked me to do some concept art for a;

cyber-noir, kung-fu, horror storyteller game

set in a dystopic future world where...

a lot has happened.

"facing difficulty 

being succinct"

We all became over-experienced.

So now what we got to say;

has value.

To summarize;

wOrds aRe nOw sPelled wIth a cApitalised sUffix, nOt tHe iNitial lEtter. tHis iS sO yOu kNow wHere tHey aRe cOming fRom.

But there's more;

we have to swap every letter 'c' and 's' and 'sh' with an 'X' to do it properly.

Then it turns into Chinese.

Yeah. Sure. 

Now my kids going to be speaking gobbldigook. 

I overcame cynicism, put it to the test and it does seem to actually work now I have given it a go. But are the players likely to be doing this or is it all for atmospheric and dramatic effect? It's a narrative device to easily get an idea across; to suggest the game is set in a future time after things have moved on. The language has mutated; that's how far into the future it is. 

Welcome to Easternization process.

At once I recognized an emo culture game. There has been a  lot ofcomparison between emo and goth, since goth most certainly is a strong root of this late 20th / 21st century transitional youth culture, and there is an overlap.
Emo is stripes and purple added to goth black bat style to make it chavvy with bling. Emo is emotional blackmail. Emo is punk attitude and TIM BURTON CARTOONS YAY! Emo was generated as a consumer culture by the Black Coconut™ chainstore to sell stuff to bisexual and confused kids who hadn't heard of suicide girls. All this to give them a better outlet than ritual scarification and sacrifice to the blood god, cutting their arms for attention energy because its a sexual release and they aren't getting laid. This was britains mainstream alternate teen culture during the late 1990s and 2000s.

So; I am doing what I can to keep tRust proper and avoid unnecessary cheesiness.
After all, it has an 18 rate due to adult themes. tRust oozes BDSM.

tRust is a scarred world. It is planet Earth in the future, after it has been renamed tEra, from the old latin word for it; Terra. A global monocultural society has adapted to survive by become a feudal shoganate. It is modeled loosely on medieval Japan. What it is surviving from, is a space-virus; a biowarfare agent that caused a pandemic genetic mutation plague that turns people into;

half squid, half scorpion

no two are the same

This was not helped by loss of corporate governmental control of the global community thanks to the teleportal revolution. tRust is post-industrial, mainly due to the result of industrial technologies making things so much easier for techno-goths to take over the world.

Everything in the world of tRust is made of a material that is applied by spray canister like graffiti art. It swells up like wall cavity insulation into a foam, and then sets. It is plastic-rubber-latex and contains nano-p[articles which bond together during the drying/hardening process to turn into a computer. This stuff is dissolved by a chemical applied from another can, although the dissolvant has gotten into the water supply and is slowly corroding everything. The City is known by the Aztec word Itza, meaning 'urban' and 'ways of the people'; is several km high, covers the entire planet with home-made tunnels and caves that project holographic computer blah from the walls.

tHe cRacks aRe wHere tHe lIfe iS

Except most of it was broken when the planet unexpectedly swelled up, its diameter becoming significantly fatter. This has resulted in many deep canyons where the rubber has stretched to breaking point and snapped. Within these fracture crevasses are jungles providing a permanent layer of mist. and haven for the remaining of the planets wildlife. The jungles are inhabited by non-tech wild tribes who do voodoo magick, summon demons and ancestor spirits and probably have a better time than the surviving city folk.

Up above are the towers of the Arkatex, who know how to operate the fragmented computer well enough to discover what has happened and what is going on, and who trade with offworlders; the rest of the planet is under quarantine because of the hydra virus. Down below are mysterious ferrymen; boat people who look like Charon from Greek mythology. They operate a taxi service on the sunken sea and canal routes, the safest method of travel given that the surface world is owned by flying nightmares.

"mind is a virus"

There is a lot more to this game that has yet to be unveiled. It is originally intended to counsel abuse victims, to explore psionics and magick through quantum wave mechanics, and to analyze societies based around psychic vampirism. It is all based around an easy symbolism; the monsters who used to be your pervert friends are multi-tentacled leeches armed with scorpion claws chitin and sting.
You can see why I like it.

The designers at Ordo Octopia Ltd have released the key concepts but asked me to remain quiet about the rest of it. This blog is by way of excitement that my art and musical skills are being put to good use; an ambient soundtrack is expected to be released as part of the game.

Book of Temples

Following 5 years of shit that I won’t go into here; I was given 48 hours notice that the Great Spirit was providing for me a 1 week trip to Egypt with free travel expenses from Wales. Needless to say, I was on a high. An hour later I was walking to my conapt from town, having been to library to research on their internet if I needed any inoculations, and I had followed my instincts as always; the word ‘Prana’ means both ‘instinct’ and ‘life-flow’ into a second hand bookshop where I had picked up a book called Temples, which had some beautiful photographs from all over the globe, and some information that I knew I would later need.

Because I was so high, I caught the attention of the local presiding deity of the dominion of Zooport and so I was set upon by an evil spirit of a malignant city with intent to bring me down as hard and fast as it could. A White meets a Black so as to balance whatever the zone regards as upsetting to its stability, whatever level that is at and whatever form it takes. Which in Zooport means accepting that 9 out of 10 denizens are abusive and regard other people as their energy donors; the common language, the hive-mind mainframe, is depressant.

I encountered Gary the smack-head who I did not previously know and he told me he was about to kill himself. He explained that since he had got off drugs, the other druggies wouldn’t leave him alone and they had this very morning robbed him of the little things he owned during a break in.

I had by this time already got my nvq level 2 counselling qualification because so many people come to me with their problems and needing advice. Professional counselor would be fired for malpractise for giving advice, which is something a qualified counselor is trained not to do. A properly qualified counselor is allowed to listen to the persons problem, re-iterate it in different words so they know that they have been listened to, and tell them that it is okay for them to feel that way given their circumstances, and charge them money for it. Which in my real life experience does fuck all by way of sorting people out when they need counseling.

Gary needed help and after fifteen minutes of heavy discussion had used the very strong domination technique known to heroin addicts whose sense of purpose and control is energized by the depth of focus that is the need of their addiction; he had persuaded me to write in the front of the book of temples these words;

“to my good friend gary, I hope everything works out, much love”  = MISTAKE!

followed by my name. I did it because at the time it seemed the quickest way to get him off my back so I could get on with everything else I had to do, eg; find my  passport and check if it was still valid.

Gary appeared to need this positive input and told me what to write. It went against my instincts but he is persuasive as city vampires can be. I have since then studied intensely into protection from psychic vampirism, how not to be manipulated, defense against remote programming and similar.

The best advice I can give anyone is to;

“Always trust your Instincts; above all else!”

I have no evidence of it, but my instincts tell me that my putting that message into that book is why I later received a whole ton of shit to fall on me, which has been used to manipulate my life in various ways by other energy vampires, from tramps to cops, from masons to druggies, as it is regarded by manipulators as proof positive that I am evidently a heroin dealer and heroin addict which is only a part of the slander campaign that has been spread around about me, basically because people are envious of my success. I have not ever taken heroin, nor do I ever intend to. I was once offered it by someone I didn’t know at a party I went to as a student, and I have counseled people who have been trying to get off it after they went cold turkey; my advice to anyone in that situation is fuck ‘em. Heroin users and ex heroin users are cunts, even decades after they have got clean; it turns people into some of the worst type of vampires and cleverest manipulators, permanently.

In Holland, the statistics are as follows; the number of people taking heroin ten years after decriminalization of cannabis was the same as it was before decriminalization of cannabis. The average age range of heroin users ten years after decriminalization of cannabis is ten years older than it was before decriminalization of cannabis. Conclusion; the same individuals taking heroin before decriminalization of cannabis, are the same individuals taking it ten years later, more or less overdoses and a few newcomers. In Britain where cannabis has not been decriminalized, the average age range of heroin users is static decade in and decade out.

psychic vampyr 303

There is a basic way that energy works, the same applies for basic Attention, applied Intention (aka “prayer” energy) or any other form: that it Seeks Balance. Watch how water works within a gravity field for example of this.

The guide that “the observer effects the observed” is only the basic level understanding, further to which; the observer is also affected by the observed (“we are what we eat”, ingestion via senses).

We are dealing with a process of ‘energy transference by induction’. This happens every time a human thinks about or feels toward another human, or animal or item, etc. It is not so simple that we charge it up with our personal energy flavour/texture (essence); we also receive of its own energy texture by holding it within the energy field of our awareness. This is natural balance.

The energy if measured not only in terms of essence (flavour/texture) but also in terms of charge/volume, flows on the same principle that the more energized party is leeched by the less energized party until they balance.
(Which is in nature the direction of the Flow if the bio-electromagnetic/psychemotional Attention-focus is not applied. In human society it can be directed either way, which allows for common but undesired energy vampirism)

The difference between higher & lower energized parties catalyses the essence’s blending. This process is called ‘flux’ which denotes both the process and the intricacy of fusion (chimera).

I recall the revelation of this from while living with the Essenes from where we still retain the words used to accurately describe what my study group was discovering after examining Egyptian depictions of what western scholars inaccurately call ‘the weighing of the heart ceremony’. It applies to transmigrant souls as much as it does to embodied souls.

Why the Buddhists stopped doing their group-focus applied Intention meditations where everyone was thinking the same outcome to create that manifestation field in the world, was because they absorbed so much negativity from their planned positivity that it blew their focus and scattered their group. In simple terms; if we touch a nasty, we absorb a nasty, despite how pure we may be. So far we have not discovered any successful way around this dilemma other than to avoid the nasty.

The long-term gradual distillation of all the toxins in the process of transmuting humanity into a higher form of awareness is occurring over many lifetimes. We have so much junk to purify by alchemical process, it becomes relevant here and now to accept the reality of the consequence of exploring those alchemical process, that there is a natural law that we all must work within.

This essay was inspired by the problems I face on a daily basis by people praying for me after I have asked them not to do so, because they project their own grid and their own impurities upon me, and in doing so, they leech me of any energy I do have. This permeates a weakened state for me that is my constant sensitive reference point. The very least these energy vampires could do, if they are not going to leave me alone, is listen to what I am fucking saying!

On Ignoring Assertion

I would like to talk about my experiences with the use of the word “I”.
There are two sources I will draw upon for comparative purposes.

The first of these is from a governmental course for parents taught throughout Family Centers cross the UK for which the workbook is fully entitled;

Being Assertive

Ways of respecting others but not letting yourself be walked on – especially for parents. 

Written by Michael and Terri Quin for the Family Caring Trust.

On page 12 it specifically states that;

Tips on behaving Assertively.

1. Make a habit of speaking Personally.

“I like that kind of music.”

“As an unemployed/christian/woman, I have a problem with that.*

“I think this meeting shouldn’t last more than an hour.”

“I love you”

“I don’t think that video is suitable.”

The second source is from during the Final Hearing of Family Court Proceedings where my ex-partner, mother of my son;’s barrister attacked the Personal Statement that had been written by my solicitor on my behalf. I had merely to sign it. Having put my trust in her re-presentation of myself after my having observed her win over the judge with her superb performance during the previous proceedings, I simply signed it and accepted her higher experience in these matters.

The barrister was making a case that I was egocentric and therefore inferior, since every bullet point in “my” statement began with the word “I’; 

“I believe that.., I intend to.., I propose to.., I accept that..,”

This is despite the follow through of each bullet point;

“…childrens needs come first, …feed him healthy food instead of fast-food and gmo that his mother gives him, …raise him by the same middle class standards I was raised to meet, …compromises may have to be made given my current situation as unemployed however this puts me in a superb situation as a stay-at-home dad during which time I intend to continue childcare training courses available to me through the family center, which he loves attending and where he has friends; and which his mother and her family are on court record, quote ‘do not want him  to attend state education facilities’ unquote. The family center recognized my natural affinity with childcare sufficient to have offered me work when I achieve the appropriate qualifications that I am enrolled to start in September at the local college.” **

And so on and so forth.

 
A direct attack on the statement without reading the statement perhaps seemed the unscrupulous solicitor firm representing my ex-partner’s best shot at belittling me, despite whatever outcome may occur due to the proceedings and statements of evidence presented.

*personal note, speaking as an unemployed pagan male: no bias there then?

** which fell through due to the funding source being run by a female-supremacy neo-feminist quango, who ‘could not accept me on the course without securing funding’ and yet ‘could not fund me until after I was accepted on the course’, which seems spurious because they were able to jump a dozen women in the same situation as myself through the same peculiar hoop with no problems whatsoever.

my first guitar

"Guitar contains an orchestra and is more reliable than any romantic partner." Terry

After years of begging him to get me a guitar, my dad eventually got me a cheap second hand ninja nighthawk copy of a  fender strat, which plays grungy punky sounds.

All the other kids had fender strats because that is what everyone believed made you cool. I wanted to play guitar since seven years old and I had to wait until my 16th birthday. I was so happy. I played it for hours but my parents wouldn’t let me use the cheap amp that came with it. Too noisy.

When my brother saw I had a guitar and got jealous, my dad went out and bought him a brand new fender strat and brand new amplifier. He trashed it a year later doing the whole punk rage thing with his mates, bashing it against the stage for image and reputation purposes after seeing the wankers do the same thing on mtv.

I still have my ninja nighthawk, indeed I also still have my brothers fender strat which I have done my very best to fix the intonation and replace the broken parts; my belief that no musical instrument should be treated like a disposable bit of shit.

I had one formal guitar lesson as part of my 16th birthday present. It was several years before I saw through my dads apparent kindness that the whole thing had for him been a manipulative ruse to try and put me off pretensions of being a musician. During the one lesson I learned how to play the major chords, how to power-strum, finger-building scales ("the difference between a guy with a guitar and a really great musician, is doing at least half an hour to an hour of scales, every day of your life."), how to read basic guitar notation (the dot / fret charts) and quite a lot else. It was an intensive lesson because I am a fast learner when I am passionate about the subject.

My dad told me a few days later that the teacher had quit and the music center was closing down so there would be no more guitar lessons, thus saving himself five pounds an hour on his sons education.

Some time later he bought my brother a drum kit and a railway carriage for the garden for him to play it in. I worked my arse off cleaning tables and washing up at the motorway service station for £3.41 an hour, eventually saved up and got a Korg G3 multi-effects box so I could sound proper gothic and start my first band, Oubliette.

This year I will be 36.

Thanks to part-payment schemes I now have a semi-acoustic Samik Blackbird which when played well is pure tonally beautiful, the sound has colours I never felt before in any other make of guitar. So long as you can cope with the pay-off that the scratchy noises your fingers make on the strings is a part of its nature, and that the guitar all carved from one piece of wood (unlike most makes) so the neck eventually warps and you have to extend the bridge to raise the strings, which requires an adjustment to the tuning.

The stringed instrument I play most often is an Irish flatbacked buzuki (Arabic ones have hardwood, rounded backs) a medieval long-necked lute that sounds of folk-music and the existence of which, as well as traditional songs of both cultures having the same root, proves a trade route between Arabia and Ireland that I later discovered more about while reading Irish mythology/history (which are both the same thing and therefore more honest than academic records who pretend half of it is fiction).

I also have an unidentified type of Encore which sounds great too and was a tenner from Cash Generator, and a Jedi fretless bass, a Japanese import which I traveled two hundred km and slept on concrete streets to put a deposit on, and which cost me a relationship - but it is worth it; any girl who doesn't understand how important bass is to a musician does not deserve to date one.

I regret not having more time to study. I have made many recordings, none as yet made proper and ready for public release. I'm currently in the formative stages of yet another band; mixed age, mixed ability. Also I'm now giving tuition myself (for free because I believe in music and encouraging talent), the most important aspect of which is: "ignore what everyone else is doing, find your own way to play if you want people to pay attention to what you're doing." Unfortunately most kids now are too programmed by video games to ever discover that.

hard boiled

I don’t even like egg but since she’s been on my case I am physically craving the protein.

She tells me I am wrong for doing it my way, tried and trusted for twenty years.

So I watch and see what happens as she shows me the superior technique.


 
First, you fill the pan with more water so it takes longer to cook, uses more natural resources, so that “the egg cooks properly all the way through”. I find this amusing given that the egg rolls when you use less water due to the bubbles forming either side of it. Can you tell I am from a desert culture?

Then she adds a splash of vinegar to the water so that if the egg should crack, it will seal itself before any white leaks out into the water. Vinegar has literally hundreds of uses, I tell her about when I was a kid I would soak a boiled egg in vinegar so the shell goes soft, then push it into a bottle with a neck narrower than the egg, so it hardens again inside like a ship in the bottle. My mam used to tell me off for doing that so I gave up on it. I ask her how much the vinegar cost.

Then I thank her for explaining the difference between a poached egg and a poached egg in a cup, because of all the methods of cooking eggs I have encountered nobody ever told me what its called when you crack an egg directly into boiling water, probably because nobody I ever knew cooks eggs that way. It turns out this this is a poached egg and what I thought was called a poached egg is actually called a poached egg in a cup, which really should be called a steamed egg in a cup since it’s a different technique to boiling without a shell.

Green Wave

This blog is an intricate, complex tale.

old dvd cover

Originally intended as simply a fan blog about John Boormans influential film masterwork, the Emerald Forest, after which my son's half-brother named him (Charley); 

and the importance of retaining traditional rainforest lifestyles and wisdoms; 

and the strange parallel between it, the accursed Belo Monte dam and the proposed River Severn Barrage which I have been campaigning to educated everyone, especialy its proposers, that it is a shit idea because it will effectively kill Europes largest nature reserve, the wetlands of the River Severn with its tidal bore: 

today took on another and deeper teaching.

new dvd cover

When my snake-twin friend, who like me is also Chinese Year of the Snake (as is '2013' between mid-feb to mid-feb) brought home a copy of the Emerald Forest dvd after I had enthused so much about it, I was surprised to see the new edition art work of the front cover is very heavily influenced by imagery and symbolism relating to the Reptilian Agenda as made public by David Icke in his book Children of the Matrix (which mentions me by name). 

The tribesman has been given a 'reptilian' image and the snakes tongues. The misleading symbolism here has very little to do with the actual content of the wonderful film.

Today something astonishing happened. A present for my son Charley's mum as it is mothers day this week. The astonishing thing is shown in the photographs that I took when I walked into the room where it was waiting to be wrapped and I saw the connection: 

 

Charley's favourite story is the Jungle Book.

Kaa the serpents forked tongue represented by same shape
as Mowgli the man cubs stick, which points to his red pants;
Bagheera's mouth mirrors this.

Two days ago we went to Plantasia,
an indoor tropical jungle in the heart of Swansea, South Wales. 

Kat, Charley, Phoenix

ADDITIONAL: 17.3.14

Could this, be this ?

http://snakeappletree.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/7sobm.html

(broken link)

Additional 19.4.2016

Could This be THIS ?