nude krampus and bleeding eyes descending a staircase #2

this might cheer you up Lance.... 
but it also might not. 
i dunno. 
i tried. 

after all that stressing out, i finally just said aloud "i need some time off." yesterday, on my 3rd day of the only paid vacation i've had since 2000, i wondered why my stomach wasn't churning...for more than a whole day, no pain!!! then it occurred to me that This Is What Being Relaxed Feels Like.... FUCK!! so normal people must feel like THIS all the time.....DAMN.... no wonder everyone thinks i'm crazy.  so much of my time is spent in the turmoil of avarice...and just to stop myself from saying something i might regret on my last day at work, i randomly opened The Book That Has Changed My Life, "When Things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron, 

and read "OPINIONS: When we hold on to our opinions with aggression, no matter how valid our cause, we are simply adding more aggression to the planet, and violence and pain increase. Cultivating nonaggression is cultivating peace."  and the sentence that was like a kick in the stomach and brought me instantly to Ouch-This-Much-Compassion-For-Self-Hurts tears, "Never give up on yourself." once, again - exactly what i needed to think about all day. it has already made a huge difference in that the attention paid to Nonaggressive Thoughts actually gave me a full 3 days of painfree living. it's a truly Great book, in the best sense of the word. that might be why i've never read it cover to cover and have only ever read the pages i open randomly in times of peril. 

it continues to serve me well...  

after watching a documentary about Delia Derbyshire, i was inspired to do something with the massive pile of tapes with piano recordings on them. in the process, i experienced a tactility that reminded me of editing super 8 film, but a Digital Tactility~never thought i'd see the day... so i made a new song, but can't really call it a song since it was more like an exercise in exorcism as there is also a large pile of things written on paper since 2010, and in order to put it behind me and throw them in the Ever-Increasing-Pile-O'-Things-To-Toss-Tosser!, i wanted to choose the best one and DO something creative with it so that all of that horribleness wouldn't have been in vain. 

so i did. some unexpected stuff came right the hell outta me. 

not sure how other people feel when they make things that end up scaring them, but it is most certainly an odd experience that i cannot say i like or dislike, as it almost becomes Someone Else's Work that you are looking at after completion.  [there is no easy way to say this, but...] the reason the music i make is so varied, as well as my general eclecticism, is probably due to the fact that there are a lot of us living in here. although we are a lot closer, aware of each other, communicate far more frequently out in the open, and are far kinder to one other than ever before...it's almost funny to me now, having actually met the alters and discussing this, that i used to think i was Not Lucky Enough to have my brain fracture into several different people in order to deal with the war that was declared on me by my mother and father, starting  when i was 19 months old until i was 19. then of course the post trauma ghost war that officially ended in 2013.

it was a good day, when i realized at sunrise, walking home down capp street after seeing my parents for the last time, trying to hold in the bliss fueled tears, that 

The War Was Finally Over. 

it's important to have things to look forward to, it helps curb the depression, so in an effort to reduce current uncertainties about where & when & what to do with myself(ves) when i move out of bleakhaus, out of sf, out of california altogether, i've been intentionally attempting to contact certain helpful entities during lucid dreaming and ask What Would You Have Me Do? but i have yet to actually have a lucid dream -- and it's been over a month of waiting for lucidity to happen....  while listening to a new Kate Bush song tonight, suddenly the word "horses" in her lyric reminded me of last night's insanely colorful episode in which i was lucid for a mere 30 seconds but went back in to dreaming without waking up. so, once again, for the 8 billionth time, i say Thank You Kate Bush, for without your work being in this world, i would probably not still be alive -- Hounds of Love, and specifically The Ninth Wave kept me going during a particularly crisis filled period from 1984-86 and it's still difficult for me to listen to that album without becoming overwhelmed with gratitude that you exist, that Dan Wilbur in high school told me about you, that the album came out when it did, and that i bought the tape immediately upon it's arrival in new jersey.  The Sensual World : same thing for 1989-91 in Massachusetts, but all for a crisis of uplifting because for a person who is accustomed to living in darkness, sometimes the light can be too much even though it feels fucking amazing & great to be in the light instead of lost & alone in the dark. (((0)))

FASNACHT & THE BODY'S NEED FOR DARKNESS

i've been searching for the origin of why, for as long as i can remember, every february of every year, i would experience a severe deathwishism.  a pattern i had not noticed until 3 years ago when it got so severe, that a month-long mantra began: 

just hold on 
just breathe 
do not hit yourself in the head with that hammer 
this feeling will pass 
just hold on 
do nothing rash
on march 1st
remember february last



i had remained convinced that it was yet another childhood trauma that might never be discovered. i even asked my parents about chronological events, which of course, produced no results. 




this morning, while watching a documentary about jung called "the wisdom of dreams", there was a scene of basel fasnacht, the yearly festival in switzerland, germany and some parts of the netherlands in which the city turns out all of it's street lights and for 3 days celebrates the end of winter and the coming of spring. predating christianity, it has been incorporated into the week before lent when all pantries are emptied of sweets and fats and consumed in feast - similar to fat tuesday, also called dirty thursday. most other festivals during the year are male-dominated, but fasnacht enters as the woman in black, she is allowed to kiss every man she sees and cuts the ties of all businessmen that cross her path as this is her celebration of the non-workday. it is also imbued with open mockery of political figures, and allows people to speak truths while wearing hilarious and grotesque masks and marching through a flurry of confetti to the cocaphany of drums and piccolos wailing. 

it was a scene of the fantastically painted lanterns, spinning from out of the dark alleyways at the festival's start time of 4am that triggered this memory of The Something That Caused Deathwish February, for without an annual celebration of Truth, Liberation, Free Speech, Mockery Thru Art and The Small Beautiful Light In The Sea Of Total Darkness that Fasnacht represents during the first four years of my life, i sensed subconsciously that something was not getting expressed or released at this time, and would then, like clockwork, turn inward and attempt to self-destruct.

in the same way that the disneyland ride "it's a small world" seems boring to an adult, to a child in the darkness, trapped in a small boat, surrounded by strange faces singing funny and frightening songs, it is a nightmare...and nightmares are the key to awakening lucid dreams, those dreams then bring you to the doorway of the higher mind, whereupon the realm of collective consciousness is discovered. 

*u can call me ph!*