Awesome.

The thing about the Occupy Wallstreet Movement taking place that I don’t understand is, what is it they are asking of Wallstreet?

I don’t know. But, as a staunch antiestblishmentarian, I have to say I love it when people get together to fight the power, whatever power it is at the time they feel is oppressing them.

I only bring it up in order to post this video of a cop pepper spraying a group of people sitting down. What is incredible about it is how the people, and the ensuing crowd of spectators, react. It’s eight minutes long. The first minute is sickening, the last minute is empowering. Who’s in charge, anyway?

Energy Art

________________

First, I fight.

Then I learn how to fight.

Then I learn why I fight.

Then I learn how not to fight.

Then I learn to heal myself.

Eventually I learn to heal others.
-L. Burkins

________________

Tonight’s UFC fight between Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez got me thinking about purity. With all of the hype – two monster’s of the cage, the purportedly ‘badest men on the planet,’ facing off in what would be the first syndicated televised UFC event since it’s inception in 1993, I was expecting magic.

What I got was about 35 seconds of haymakers and posturing. Don’t get it twisted – I’m not stepping into a cage with either one – but I went straight home and fed myself on Lee Burkins’ ,”Colorado Internal Arts,” and Bruce ‘Kumar’ Frantzis’ , “Energy Arts.”

For all the reasons we fight: to defend, to achieve, to be heard, to be felt, and to feel; the complete self-honesty internal art demands, creates the kind of growth and healing we know deep inside that we are after.

Sometimes nothing but a thousand years of tradition and education in the search for true meditation can wipe away the disappointment of being built up to a show of commercialized image-dominate fluff.

“Emptiness is not non-existence of the mind. Emptiness is an existent quality of the mind that can be perceived directly through practice. It is this mind that allows transformation. Emptiness, the nature of the mind, can combine with the undifferentiated nature of compassion. Monkey mind is a vehicle for ego entertainment and not transformation.” L. Burkins

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what Love’s will is–it’s good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2

Lee Burkins performing ‘Thunderpalm.’

‘Xactly…

Pretty much depicts exactly how I feel every time a commercial comes on…

Sick In A Good Way

“Haven’t you ever had a problem so big, you just couldn’t handle it on your own?”

Season six, episode thee, Dexter, is so psick. He meets, and kills, his childhood hero. He sees who he could become if he doesn’t have meaning in his life, beyond killing. Beyond trophies. Beyond how he spends his life now. The goals he sets for himself.

At all hours of the night. In every waning second of the day, he hunts and looks and senses for clues to his prey. To satisfy his dark passenger, but it’s bigger than that and I think in this season, Dexter is going to see how big it can really get.

The order he has precisely orchestrated out of what is quite honestly a tsunami of seemingly very bad choices is nothing short of a Beethoven like accomplishment. If you’ve been following the show I ‘m sure you know what I mean.

But having his childhood dream suffocated in front of him leaves him understandably distraught. By mistakenly dropping all of his own trophies and losing their order and thus their meaning, resonates the feeling inside him that he is losing all the order he has on his carefully crafted life and he begins losing the desire or confidence to pursue his gifts and dreams of more.

He is knocked off balance by the person who had inspired him to become what he has, and he doesn’t believe in himself or what he has become anymore. While distraught by wondering what he is going to do with the rest of his life he does not know that at that very moment, the kind of challenge no other entity in the world could handle – but a person only of Dexter’s unique skills set – is being set up around him like a storm cloud.

To inspire him, to terrify him, and to compel him to do what he has always trained and obsessed to become. To create for him what has always inspired him to do what he does, and to create for us a hero, like none other before him, and like no other beyond this.

This is a superhero whose special gifts are not impossible things like flying, or melting butter with their eyes. This is a superhero- we can relate to. To a point. The great thing about this show is that the point most of us end at, is not even close to where this story begins. And this season? After what we have seen so far? All I can say is look out; you may need someone nearby with access to Ammonium carbonate.

Calidust

Driving in LA on a Saturday morning on Interstate Five with her six lanes and blind cops and everyone driving eighty-five, and always the three or four cars doing the weave through the openings and gaps left open by the considerate masses – driving safely but aggressively. Hovering around ninety two… ninety-seven miles per hour, looking for openings, anticipating moves, calculating your opponents / compatriots advantages / disadvantages, setting up gaps and closers, laying the turbo on the pavement – has got to be one of the highlites of the year.

I landed late in Reno and the husky Budget rent-a-car lady totally played me. Getting me to agree to upgrading my vehicle for, “Only ten dollars a day. It just snowed in Tahoe, you’ll need all-wheel drive. Only ten dollars…” Then, talking me into getting a total-coverage plan, “It covers second parties, anything that happens, you’re totally covered…”

My mind flashing back to my first rental car situation nearly sixteen years ago. The blinkers and lights going off and on. Steam billowing from the hood, the front end nearly invisible, like it had just eaten itself. The front end totally gone inside the cavity of the floor boards…

Fine. Yes. One hundred and fifty dollars for insurance for four days. It’s worth it. Give me the good insurance plan. And thank God for I-Five, Saturday mornings, GMC, six lanes, Ocean views, Ocean air, and the long haired, sunglass covered, linear, sun-bleached faces with their hands at ten and two- and to those of you with a heavy foot and a total regard for human life – but none what so ever for speed limit signs: thank you.

Life, You’re Doing It Right

When you focus on a single star in the sky, more stars than you knew could exist in the same sky – come into focus. This has to do with photoreceptors in the retinas of your eyes called rod cells, or, rods. They are of highest concentration on the outer edges of the retina, and are most suited for low light situations and for peripheral recognition.

When we focus on one thing. Then all of our natural gifts look for other ways in which we can see. In which we can be. From whatever first breath was breathed on earth, through every person whose ever breathed ever anywhere, to you. To you, and to me, and to whoever is next. And they all knew about stars. And they all will know about stars. And, I think- the stars knew each of us. And are telling our story to us, over time, for-

I don’t know. It’s just what I think. When you focus on one star in the sky, more stars than you knew you could see come into focus.

And the story the stars are telling of you, and of us – grows. The story knows us and tells us the same story it has told all of us since forever began,

“Just look. Tell the story.”

It’s not a mystery that Mystery is our constant companion. Giving up all other notions and ventures just to take time to play with us. To mess with us. To infuriate and crush us. Punching alternately our faces and our stomachs over and over like waves crashing on a ventricular shore.

But, somehow- mysteriously – between blows: Mystery also puts its rough and hairy hand upon our chest and fills us up. Fills our heart up. Fires up the scenes of what we see in our dreams. Giving us each and all the power to stand back up.

Like every heart before us has been filled. Like every heart beyond us will be filled. And, with grace, Mystery has taught us all eventually. sooner or later. oftener than not, and it is decidedly so- that we every one have learned to laugh at ourselves. And to follow our dreams. Because it obvious to me our dreams are like road signs spinning and gyrating and pulsing within the sphere of the story of people. We are building a bridge that spans time and imagination. Just look. Tell the story. Follow your dreams.

Truman Show

“I’ll just ah, let someone else tidy up here.”

Imagine you could create a world where everything is perfect; the traffic, the weather, the shelter, the life. The outfits, the colors, the company, the town. The timing, the words, the memories, the beer.

Imagine all these perfections in a wheel, spinning into them selves. Like a galaxy. And every perfectly placed thing in the life was gradually spinning surly into a very perfect and inevitable point.

“I think I’m losing my mind. But it seems like the whole world revolves around me. “

If this were possible. To coordinate a perfect life, where every moment was drafted, selected, and executed; then the inevitable conclusion at the apex of your galaxies point- the concentration of an entire life, the fulcrum upon which all these perfect things strive, can be only one thing.

One perfect thing. One perfect thing so precise, and so talented, and so deliberate it carries its own perfection off with aplomb. With a spirit of looseness and hilarity. Always pretending to drop it, then catch it right when you’ve lost your breath. Breathing into it life. More life than even the perfection knew of itself could be alive.

And its name is Jim Carey. Playing the one character that is telling the truth. In a world of little white lies, perfectly placed as to be invisible. He is born into a world he didn’t ask for and is trying to understand what is real.

See how the perfections of the script, fold into the world we are living in now? What is real? Who put us here? Who is telling us the truth? Who are our friends? Who is this beautiful wife? Is this, my car?

What if there is something more?

Jim Carey plays the flawed lead role to perfection. And Laura Linney plays his wife. The final finger reaching out from a galaxy of perfect lies, up against him, the only truth holding every spinning thing together. She is a mirror, where everything he sees is backwards, and of only two dimensions.

The great thing about this movie is the way every single sight and sound is orchestrated. The sets, the dialogue, the camp, the eyebrows. By being so false, it is forced to take on a depth to conceal its self. There is a galaxy of emotion and intrigue and it walks a razor’s edge with a switch leap.

Creating a mirror of our own life. We aren’t so different. You and I. Characters playing characters. The fooled and the foolish. The characters in a movie and ourselves.

And, apparently, peace comes by stepping through a black doorway on a sky blue wall, in a completely black outfit. And she picks you up in a big red convertible with a long red scarf.

“We accept the reality of the world for which we are presented. It’s as simple as that.“

Except that the exceptions to the rules presented are as vast as the possibilities of a galaxy tipped on itself contains. Question is, are you willing to go out and look for yours, at the risk of losing everything you think you have now?

Gotta Gotta Get Low.

“Buy a ticket, son. Tell the story.”

“Get Low,” a movie by first time, full feature director, Aaron Schneider, is gripping. From the first engulfing scene on.

Robert Duvall is a saint of the fierceness that makes bold men do bold things. Bill Murray is a devil of the fierceness that make shy women do bold things.

Duvall’s fearlessness comes off like fire. His charming manner and swift wit are like kindling being placed carefully in it’s place. Gradually logs are added arm by arm until he strikes the match. Boom goes his voice and the blast of heat coming at you seems as though it occurs behind you. The heat coming through before returning to settle in.

Murray’s fearlessness is like hydrogen. It’s everywhere. Me’thinks, he meditates from five in the morning until two in the afternoon. Gathering every unseen universal entity to him like the Snowy River Loneman gathered in the Brumbie herd. A hundred thundering mustangs gathering in under his finger tips like little drops of cascading water.

When he finally meanders into the world, it takes no effort for him. It takes such little effort for him to achieve because he is being carried along by one hundred faithful horses. Such little effort exueds from him that you can’t recognize what he is doing and he could walk right past you, brushing slightly your shoulder, and you may not even notice him.

Until he notices you, at which point he can pretty much do what he wants. Because what he wants, he has been meditating on, to the point one hundred horses gathered around him to help him do it. The heat coming at you when he speaks overwhelms from underneath like a rising tide. It’s hard to know weather to laugh or to melt. Whatever it is he is up to, it is empowering.

“Remember. Foot in the door, establish trust, drop the hammer.”

The use of light is extrodinary also. I don’t mean the creative incorporation of reflected beams and glares of light off panes of glass and rays of sunshine slicing out of the shadows into the lens, although I did like that. I mean the way the subject of each shot seems to be glowing. With muted sets and darkened corners, the light comes out of the subjects softly. Its theatre, I guess, and it’s like laying your eyes on something soft.

But the intrigue is laid like blocks on a foundation bored down to bedrock. And the intensity of the human emotion displayed by the subjects seems suddenly necessary on a personal level. Like if we don’t catch what is happening between them, we may not have fully understood our own personal mission on earth. We watch like our lives depend on it.

Such simple twists of things that happen everyday reveal, as Sissy Spacek’s character, Mattie, called it, “A big ol’ cave that just goes deeper and deeper.” A live Funeral. An old man beating up a grown ass man. A man in love with pain. A convict building a Church. A life as prison. A morgue as enterprise. Chosen solitude. Right and wrong very often being tangled up in each other.

A man who hadn’t spoken for forty years, suddenly speaking to four hundred people at once. Not wanting to be forgiven, but to own what he did, for the rest of his life. In shame, sees love. Is guilt that he wanted, and guilt that he regrets. Yet, somehow there is compassion, but only if the guilt was imagined.

Well, Happy Now?

So, Carmello left Denver. I loved him while he was here. But, towards the end I was fed up with the pouting. Throwing his head band. Laying on the ground while the ball was moving. Always with the whining at the refs. So I was glad when he left. Unfortunately for Melo, New York has more than one paper, and none of them feel like giving their stars a pass…

“After Carmelo went 2-12 from the field for a sad six points. the New York Times’s Howard Beck tweeted this after the game: “After his worst game as a Knick, Carmelo Anthony went straight to the bus, without speaking to the media. Second time this week.” That’s not to mention the fact that he reportedly didn’t even get off the bench during a timeout because he was pouting. Something bad is brewing already … ” Dime Magazine, March 19, 2011

The Reaper Is A Molly Cat

In the past I’ve always listened – tried not to listen – as Kitty ate a mouse in the house. The inevitable egg-shell, crunch-crunch of skull and bones in her jaws. Which followed the ten minute victory lap around the house, announcing her capture.

Eventually she’d finish eating the head, chest, and torso; graciously leaving me the stomach, ass, and tail, along with the liver and sometimes the heart. However, with the last two captures, last night and today, when I went to investigate my take, there was nothing there.

No sign the kill ever happened except the sound I know I heard.

Occasionally, when there is no one around for Kitty to brag to except the dogs, and they don’t count to her, really- she will toss the exhausted mouse into the bath tub, knowing they cannot escape. When someone comes home, out comes the mouse. A chase ensues, an announcement is made, hind quarters are discovered.

She could be hiding the remains she doesn’t want to eat somewhere. A gooey pile of hair and skin congealing under a shirt. I know she’s capable of it. If a mouse is kept in the tub too long and no one shows up in time for her patience, she will turn the tub into a movie scene. Hair and blood smeared over twenty percent of the tub or more.

She is not a subtle expresser of her feelings. Which is great, because while she keeps her feline sense of control and indifference astute, she also has no problem showing affection and letting you know she really loves you. Which is much better than having a cat that is always running away, craping on your pillow, and eating the bougainvillea’s.

But this is my cat. And she’s trying to tell me something. Because I know she is not eating the ass and tail. Although. Animals can be funny. By attaching human personalities to their behavior, sometimes I start to believe the pattern I have created for them in my head, and then am in shock when say, one of my dogs eats the shit coming out of my other dogs ass.

Wether or not Kitty has evolved to the point she can communicate her thoughts and feelings through the use of the carcasses she does, or does not leave behind, the question remains. Where’s the cat’s debris?