————-

The Fear permeates the city with a dense fog in the mornings. As the day lingers, the fog dissipates, but the Fear just stretches out over the people, engulfing us all in its decadence.

We stroll the streets, looking for some kind of trouble to get into. But nothing comes. Sometimes it’s like that. No matter what you do, or where you are, you can’t get anything done. Creativity fades and seeps through the cracks in the sidewalk and you are left with nothing but some sunburn.

Courting the muse is a long forgotten path. These days people don’t wait for inspiration, or even try to draw in inspiration. They just do. And so we end up with a bunch of crap that is passed for “art” or “poetry” or “fiction” or any number of other things. But when you see it, it just fucking bores you to tears.

Court your muse. Find your inspiration. Then bang out that piece of crap you’ll never be proud of. Life keeps on moving down the line. The train will not remember you, and it does not forgive. Walk out on the tracks and stare at the ground. See those are steel rails? Is this what we’ve become?

And so here I am, waxing melancholic, for no reason other than I know not what to write.

Jack
I Listen.

Fragment #7
May 06, 2008

I explained to Ryan what I was looking for, and what he sent me was so personal and informative, that I asked if I could publish the entire email. So, here is what Ryan Sutter has to say about Humanism, and how he found it. Enjoy.

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and stayed one until I was 30 years old at which point I lost my faith in it and didn’t know what to call myself or what I believed. I took the Beliefnet Belief-O-Matic and found out that my beliefs were most closely defined as humanist. Not having really ever thought about humanism before this, I was a bit surprised to find a web site telling me that I was one.

I went on to study it a little and found that the whole idea of humanism was fairly straightforward and could be boiled down into the statement: Do what is right because it’s right and there may be nobody else to do it. In other words, we live in a world that may or not have any supernatural element, but that really should have no bearing on being a good and moral person. Goodness and morality are things you need to practice if you want them to exist in the world, they don’t come from somewhere other than us and if we don’t do them, they don’t exist. This is a compelling alternate reason for living a clean moral life as opposed to the reward/punishment model of Christianity.

You don’t do good and avoid evil in order to reap a reward or avoid a punishment, you do so simply because you wish for good in the world and you wish to avoid evil in the world and you let the supernatural aspect take care of itself, if there is such a thing.

That is humanism and it is my deep belief that even the religious person who hates or fears the “godless atheists and secular humanists” basically lives a moral life for the same fundamental reasons, if you press them on it. Most Christians will admit that they aren’t restrained from killing their neighbor and raping his life because they are afraid of God but because they know it’s the wrong thing to do. They know this innately, because they wouldn’t want it done to themselves. “Do unto others” is a very humanist statement.

Of course, in conversations with religious believers (including my own father) I’ve come to realize that this is not what humanism means to fundamentalist eyes. To a lot of people it seems that humanism means “whatever man decides to do is right” or “there is no god so we’re screwed, ACK! let’s call our pathetic plight ‘humanism’ and worship ourselves”. The first commits the naturalistic fallacy and the second conflates humanism and atheism. Humanism does not glorify people or set them up for worship. The whole concept of worship means to give praise and obedience to a higher power. When you are a human, and a humanist, you are not suddenly a higher power. In fact, it’s humbling. You look at yourself and your limited capabilities and you look at humankind and their messy psychological and sociological situations and you realize that we all need to work really hard to solve our problems, cooperate more, communicate more, help each other more, because if we are all we have then none of us is an island, none of us can operate without considering the fates of the others, and we all need each other. Kinda’ knocked me down a peg from when I thought I was personally fashioned in God’s image, while simultaneously making me feel a sense of civic and moral obligation as opposed to how I felt when I thought God would charge in and fix everything. The sense of personal responsibility implicit in humanism is extremely powerful. I think that explains why so many humanists are involved in social justice and activist causes, as well as volunteerism. They have to be, on some level, or their conscience nags at them because all it takes for bad people to have their way is for good people to do nothing.

I have found a lot of prejudice against humanism over the last 5
years. People say Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot were humanists, to
which I say bullshit. Humanism is a philosophical justification for moral and humane behavior. If a psychopath or despot commits acts of atrocity and cruelty, their actions are immoral and inhumane and therefore anti-humanist, whether they believe in a supernatural or not. Like I mentioned earlier, humanism does not say there is no God, humanism says that regardless of the metaphysical state of things, if we want to see good in the world we have to do it ourselves. The sad fact is that some people decide their is no God so they DO murder their next door neighbor and rape his wife, and other people do the exact same thing and say God made them do it, or the Devil, or whatever. The point is, that any behavior that is anti-human is anti-humanist and people can decide to be evil with or without belief in God. When people start to connect the two questions of “Does God exist” and “How should I behave” as if they are inextricably linked they are committing a fallacy. They are two separate questions that do not necessarily relate.

Thanks for the insight, Ryan.

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #23
The Battle of Human Action

It’s easy to forget that we have perfection in our hands when times are rough. Richard Matheson spent a lifetime writing horror and dark fantasy, to end up his masterwork as one of the greatest love stories ever told. Why did it take so long? Love is so hard to express, even for the most sensitive of us. Passion is so much easier. This is why we are barraged by “love stories” that are nothing more than sex driven fantasies. In the rare instance that passion and love meet, we find something truly great. Something that transcends words. The love story is now even harder to tell, and it can become downright scary.

As writers, when we find this kind of extraordinary relationship, our first instinct is to run. We want to run because for the first time in our lives we have no words to describe what is happening to us. It’s confusing, we stumble, we fall. We falter. You see, in running, we can understand, in words. The only way we really understand anything.

With love comes fear, but hopefully passion and love together can offset our natural fear of loss.

In Matheson’s What Dreams May Come, the main character has to come face to face with not only his greatest fear, but also the greatest fear of the majority of mankind. Is that what makes it so compelling? It is definitely what makes it ring so true in the hearts of so many.

By using this novel, I’ve skirted myself(safely around), for now, the subject of my own feelings and fears. Eventually I’ll face them down, as Matheson, and so many others have, finding the strength in their constant growth.

Jack.
I Listen.

Fragments
#5
What Dreams May Come

And So He Walked
—-

They were roused from a light sleep around 7:30pm by the ring of Minus’ phone. It was Kotoko. Minus answered.

“What the Hell, dude,” Kotoko was clearly frustrated. “I’ve been driving around for almost an hour. The street you said you lived on. It’s not here! I’m fairly certain it doesn’t even exist!”

“It’s alright, Kotoko,” Minus seemed very calm, and this calmed her down. “Do you know anything about synchronicity?”

She started to answer, but someone was opening the passenger door to her car. She reached for her purse, scrambling for the mace.

“Hi, I’m Minus. I think you’ve heard about me.”

“How the.. What? Where did you come from?” She wasn’t as confused as she should be. It seemed almost normal that Minus was now sitting in her passenger seat.

“My place. Go ahead and pull out of this parking lot, and go the right.”

Kotoko did as she was told.

“There will be a road on your left, the sign will say, ‘King’s Lane.’” Minus was directing her to his house and Jane.

When they approached the street sign, Kotoko was astounded. She had driven by this area a dozen times, and there had been no King’s Lane. She was certain. But there it was. A gravel driveway. She turned on to King’s Lane.

“My place is the only house back here. You can park next to my truck. Jane will be waiting for you at the door. I’ll take care of the groceries.” Minus said as Kotoko parked her jeep.

He got out of the jeep and reached into the back seat, picking up some bags. Kotoko went to the door, where she saw Jane peaking out. Minus could see them hug each other, and the tears that followed.

Kotoko went in, and Jane bolted all the locks behind them.

“What about Minus?” Kotoko was no stranger to magic, but she was clearly confused at the situation.

“It’s okay,” Jane said through the tears, “he’ll meet us in the basement.”

They continued through the house and into the basement door. Jane turned all the locks and knobs, locking them in again.

As they went down the flight of stairs, Kotoko was surprised that Minus was standing there, pouring three glasses of wine. She could see all of the grocery bags on the small counter he stood next to, and the luggage full of Jane’s clothing was by an opened closet on the other side of the room.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kotoko. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ve heard a lot about you. Jane tells me you have interest in the occult?”

He reached into the drawer of pills and pulled out two tiny blue capsules.

“Take these.”

And Kotoko did. She swallowed them with a large drink of wine. She was startled again for a moment, as she realized that she did not drink and had never taken drugs. Why had she done what he said without thought or question? As soon as these thought passed through her, her mind was quieted. She felt calm, and relaxed, and at home.

“Wait, you’re a straight, aren’t you? You must be. Jane said you were good at divination,” said Minus. Both of the girls looked confused.

“Like, you don’t drink, or take any kind of drugs, right?”

“No.. I mean, yeah, I don’t do anything like that.. But I just did, didn’t I? Why am I not bothered or worried?” Kotoko tried to look stern, but she wasn’t really able to.

“Okay, no worries. Those pills. Not drugs. Not real drugs anyway. It’s a metaphysical relaxer. Opens your senses, and leaves you calm. No dangers or addictions. Now had you actually been into pills, I’ve got stuff around..” Minus trailed off.

“No, I feel great.. It’s like my soul let go of my fears and pretensions.” Kotoko was surprised at how easily she understood things, and how clear and fluid her thoughts were.

“You’re not bothered because it was me who gave them to you. Just like you weren’t all that upset when I got in the car seat next to you. I don’t really know why that is, but Doctor Mancini has told me things like that before. A lot of people have really..

“Anyway, just relax, we’ll fill you in and you’ll fill us in, alright?”

Jane and Kotoko nodded in unison.

The three talked for what seemed like hours. Then there was an odd, snapping feeling, and Kotoko left, and Jane went to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, Minus locked the basement and front door behind himself, and started walking due north.

Jane, Kotoko, Mancini, and Othin would all awake the next morning, around the same time, feeling unusually happy.

At that exact moment, Minus would see two ravens, perched on a tree older than the continent, and feel horrible despair. He did not enjoy this the last time.

—-

Jack
I Listen.

The Cost of Magic
Section #19
End: Part 1
And So He Walked

Welcome everyone to my new tumblelog. I’ll be using this to document my travels across the US, and possibly other parts of the world. Right now I’m still in the getting ready process.

Within the next week or two I(and my friend Scarab) will be departing on a trip around the US. There is a very good chance that we will be hitchhiking a majority of the trip. It’s also really possible that we will be hopping trains throughout the south.

The purpose of the trip is the all-important pursuit of the American Dream. We are young and terribly aware of the Fear. We need more experiences in order to become the people we want to be.

Everyone has been super helpful so far. Here’s a couple of examples.

Dark Gracie posted this. Which has lead to several donations already.

$36 donated thus far. First to donate – BrooklynBeast

Sorenj was kind enough to post a link on his blog to the original note from Gracie.

Epiphani has graciously donated a Sony Vaio laptop for the trip.

Things are looking good, but we can always use more.

You can help by linking to me in anyway, or by donating. Send all donations via PayPal to jackstravelfund at yahoo dot com.

Thanks for everything and much love!

-Jack Lhasa

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Tags: travel, blogs, writing, donations, hitchhiking, survival, tumblr, twitter

Books, books, books. I’m mad for reading. I spend untold amounts of time scraping through my library, the local library, and the web for sources of inspiration, or just a good read that can help me get out of myself for a while.

Sometimes it is important, as a writer, to lose yourself in a good book. I like to pick up things that aren’t really my style, to give a fresh perspective on what I write. I spend a lot of time waxing philosophic on my blog, and that generally comes from what I read.

I’ve been pulling my way through the works of Hunter S. Thompson these past few weeks. Fear and Loathing: on The Campaign Trail ‘72 has not only been an excellent read, but it’s made me feel closer to the elections this year. Hunter could always dig himself into any situation, completely engulfing his personality with his subject. I respect that a lot, and I think that if more writers really allowed themselves to be a little crazy, or heroic, or depressed, or manic, they would be able to make their characters more believable. Hunter knew this.

Write yourself into a story. Let it take over all that is you. See what happens.

——————————–

Loki
I’m Listening

Guest Blog #1

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Tags: blog, books, guest, Hunter, Hunter S Thompson, writing, blogging, fiction