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in the lusitanian dialect, to say something is funny, we say it has grace ('engraced', as in the opposite of 'disgraced'). we take our humor seriously, think it's heavenly. thus the Virgin Mary is hilarious, according to us.

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first crack
grass roots
in on the ground floor

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there's a lusitianian expression mothers use when their children keep saying 'mom mom mom' which translates to 'you're wasting my name'. i think God probably feels this, and perhaps he anticipated the problem, hence the commandment to avoid using his name in vain. he should have anticipated people would ignore it too.

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an author doesn't want people talking about him, but about his work. thus, those who speak about creation and less about the creator probably appeal more to God.

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the first gift i gave my wife, more than twenty years ago, was a book called Love and Friendship (an epistolary novel by Jane Austen, still one of, if not her favorite author today). we were just friends then, but i knew i had to lock that down, and wanted to be poignant.

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the machines are only dangerously powerful in the sense that they can make everything dangerously stupid and ugly.

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there will never be machine vomit autobiography. by definition, it can't happen. something to ponder.

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a lot has changed since i decided to stay the same. and vice versa.

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i don't agree with hating the game and not the player. except for curling. not sure why that is.

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soon i'll have to start lying to my boss about using 'ai'. sure man, i used it, no way i could do this thing i used to do by myself by myself.

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movies probably watch people on television.

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pop country is so bad it almost makes rap and punk theoretically listenable.

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you see it when you know it.

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if you have no freedom, none of your qualities are really yours. freedom is so fundamental that it’s easy to forget it exists and we have it. one asks what’s the most important thing, and some say love (like saint Paul), others courage, others honor. etc etc. but without freedom none of this means anything, it isn’t even real. what courage is there if you're not free to be a coward. what honor if you're not free to be a scoundrel. what love, if you have no option to hate. and on and on with everything.

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did you know it's called a novelette because it's like an omelette, except made with the cosmic eggs where creativity is born. want to write a novelette, gotta break some cosmic eggs.

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wife found this and sent it to me. it’s like they’re asking for my books. all that’s missing is the constant smoking.

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such a tasty exciting surprising mystery, romantic love.

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the artistic process of trial and error and practice is the actual enjoyable part. to want the product without the process is surely some kind of mental illness. the joy of sharing and having other people connect with the final product only makes sense after the arduous process of creation, that’s when and how one’s soul becomes enmeshed with the creation. without the process, there is no soul in it at all. i suppose people do it for money too, but it seems like that is a minority.

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i've had ground beef. it's ok. but i imagine sky beef is much better. probably very expensive.

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some decisions will haunt you for life. like being born.

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weird eclipse shadows:

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an eclipse is when the sun and the moon make love. that's why you can't look at it. it's not proper.

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musical portion for today is a piece by Messiaen for piano and ondes martenot (an early electronic keyboard synthesizer thingy). it’s very haunting and beautiful.

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oh hi, you’re still here, cool. did you know i released a novelette. it’s a coming of age portrait of the artist as a young woman, called Myself When I Am Real. you can get it for free here: https://ko-fi.com/s/cddfce754a

it’s also the first chapter of my upcoming novel, and it functions much like the first chapter of Alice, which i also published separately first. it's a self contained story but in the larger context becomes a catalyst for the larger arc. it also starts right after the events of powerless, with some of the same characters. if you liked Diana and want to see more of the film kids’ shenanigans, here’s your chance.

it’s called Myself When I Am Real and i would describe it as a coming of age portrait of the artist as a young woman.

those who’ve read my last novel, powerless, will find familiar characters, as the story picks up right after the events depicted in that book.

get it here.

hope you enjoy it

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there is a rhythm and a pitch to things. and since there are many things, there are always many rhythms and pitches clashing. a practical reason to learn to make sense of dissonance and polyrhythms.

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the way machine vomit people talk about the creative process is disgusting.

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what kind of corporate sludge they now feed to the plebs is really not my concern.

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it's good for your skin to bask in nostalgia. nostalgia tan is a great album name.

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thinking back, the only video games i liked were the ones that mimicked some aspect of real life (sports, mostly). i think gaming as a culture however is centered around the exact opposite type of game. and i find this distinction cuts across all my interests in peculiar ways.

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i realize now my books are partly meant to be a snapshot of my country before it disappears completely. it's not hyperbole. it's a very small country, and our diaspora blends completely into the host country. we're the opposite of the jews or the italians or the irish. once the homeland goes, it's gone.

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it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. and it ain't true without the blues. and it ain't wise if you don't improvise.

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apparently all footage of Miles' second quintet and Coltrane's quartet is from europe. america's disinterest in jazz is not a new thing. no prophet accepted in his own country sort of thing.

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you don't have to be lukewarm. you can be markwarm. or johnwarm. don't be mattwarm.

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fake intelligence is the new fake flu, but it actually makes you sick.

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either i'm writing fiction, or asking myself what's the point of writing fiction. the answer is because it’s fun.

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as i suspected, most people have no idea. the actual number as of now is 9 (ebooks + paperbacks). the one before is at 12. the first two novels did better (they're in the 20s). i think this means two things: one is that i suck at marketing. and two that so called speculative fiction has a lot more readers in this corner of the internet. realism (with jazz no less!) is just not anyone's cup of tea. unfortunately i want to keep writing that, not metaphysical fiction. the least popular genre of literature with the least popular genre of music. unmarketable. yes it is embarrassing, but at least i feel things writing it. so it evens out. saving face by calling them future cult classics. (actually Sketches of Alice ruined my life, but in a good way.)

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registering myself as a non profit

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i've written a few chapters from a woman's perspective but a whole book is a different beast. still unsure if i can pull it off.

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the blessings of the muse are ephemeral except in the heart of the artist; true connection requires getting past first impressions; the best version of ourselves is perpetually changing.

these were notes for 'moral of the story' of each chapter of my last book. i didn’t go beyond the third chapter (actually it ended up being the fourth chapter, but anyway).

i never get far when i try to make plans or go about things in a structured way. improvisation is way more fun, and whatever other ambitions i might have are short lived. if it's not fun to do, i just don't have the motivation to do it. which is why i find the enthusiasm for machine vomit so strange. it basically takes away the fun part, which is the process, the discovery, the improvisation. makes me feel very estranged from humanity.

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i love marriage as much as i hate weddings.

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i used to be scared of demons. but an interdimensional being interested in tormenting me, a mere mortal, is just a pathetic loser. so now i pity them.

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the more you court the esoteric stuff the more the demons will pursue you. not because you're close to some spiritual breakthrough, but because demons are a bunch of demented nerds with nothing better to do. they're basically reply guys, hoping to engage you in their nerdery, pulling you away from your god given opportunity to be happy and creative.

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you don't hear much about the great reset anymore. that probably means it’s successful.

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it’s not the first time. there has to be a way to take advantage of this. which of course, not to be offensive or anything, is a very jewish thing to say (i imagine).

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i don’t know if it’s encouraging or discouraging but i made more after 24h with a weird jazz fusion album (that is available to download for free!) than in two months with a book. but it is definitely funny.

i'm pretty sure this won't be anyone's cup of tea in these parts, but anyway. first 'real' album since 2021 i think. dissonant disco jazz fusion? i don’t know. something. as Miles said about Bitches Brew, it's music and i like it.

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musical portion today (ignoring the above, which can hardly be called music) is Diane, by Charles Mingus. now, this track is an alternate version of Alice’s Wonderland. i did not plan for any of it, but the book i’m writing now is about a character named Diana, and it is quite related to my earlier book about a character named Alice. another bit of coincidence is that Diana plays the piano, and the Diane version of the tune is much more piano heavy than the Alice version of the tune. strange. these coincidences are meaningful to me. either way, the music is great.

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you can't handle the truth. but can i fondle it.

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when people say a female saint is the patron of something. that's woke, etymologically speaking.

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it's etymologically interesting that pagan comes from fasten, fix, while church comes from ruler, and christian comes from anointed, thus slippery, free. i'll take the third without the second, and since the first is no longer possible, that's that.

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i respect Ayn Rand for lots of reasons. but especially because to be part of her gang you had to be a smoker. even if you were a genius, like Rothbard, you wouldn't make it if you didn't puff relentlessly, holding the literal fire in your hand to accompany the fire in your mind. which is why her atheism was totally fake. she clearly believed in an enchanted world if this connection meant anything to her. and it did. and since she wasn’t stupid, i assume she is in heaven, puffing away and thinking still.

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marriage is probably my most deeply held belief, since i even believe God himself is married.

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beyond being is willing and then doing.

all can be, not all can become, not many can do.

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the vanguard of humanity is still in adolescence, and has been for a few centuries. it has grown enough to reject the idea that obedience and worship are owed unconditionally to one's parents. the search for what one considers worthy of obedience is still going.

traditionalists think growing up is bad. good parents will hope their children choose the same values, but will not enforce them beyond childhood. which is why religious institutions are no longer enchanted.

people will say to me, But i've felt this enchantment in church. so have i. but the enchantment i'm talking about wasn't inebriating for a day for one person sometimes if the conditions were right. it consumed and infected and inspired whole societies all at once all the time.

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i'm sorry that some have never felt a divine touch. or that they felt it and shrugged it off.

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searching the Bruce Charlton archives always pays off

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often in the background and in subtle ways parents make sure their children don't end up homeless after they leave the nest and before they find their own way. i think that is why the world is still going despite all the evil and stupidity.

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my first two novels have plenty of smoking and romance, but they have no jazz whatsoever. and who would want to smoke and romance without jazz. that would be barbaric. for this reason alone my first two novels don’t count. i can however steal from them.

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when you think it over make sure you don't overthink it. i like thinking slightly off to the side.

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every avenue of thought i’ve ever pursued when investigating the matter leads me to believe that when all is said and done evil is just fundamentally stupid.

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since english is not my native language, in english i'm only around twenty years old.

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master and margarita, minister and pina colada

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devoting yourself to a creative project is having fun that hurts. seeking the beauty of trouble.

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on book covers: i'll buy an ebook with an ugly cover if i think the content is good (which makes the ugly cover more tragic). but i won't buy a physical copy if the cover offends my eyes. it's bad luck to bring ugliness into your house.

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i find many analogies for human life in my garden, but my garden disagrees. he thinks humans are very strange. the only reason he likes me is because he sees some plant in me. i told him it doesn't work that way, but he's pretty sure one of my grandfathers was a maritime pine.

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i used to be retvrn to monk(ey) now i'm advance to g(od)

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dinosaurs hit the earth. meteors go extinct. paleontologists most affected.

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1880- 1980 best century in music. best fifty years 1914-1964.

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two days ago i had major breakthroughs on the new book. then yesterday the vultures appeared again. 30+. we’d never seen so many here. and they hovered for a long long time, also rare. i’ve written about this before and i have a good feeling now:

https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/strange-entanglements-between-scavenger

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the truth is one. times forever.

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hey Adam, Eve, come here. see this fruit, you can't eat it. you can eat everything else but not this. i beg you. whatever you do don't eat this. please. it's forbidden. i forbid you. i command you not to eat it. no, of course i'm not daring you to. what gave you that idea.

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end of history, sure. it's only just starting.

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more good omens. in the morning, neighbor cat came to say hello and let us pet her a lot. the first zinnia bloom of the year is a rare white. and just now two dozen bee eaters flew over us again and again, singing. the new book is slowly taking shape. it's fun to discover.

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stop intellectualizing my tight wet philosophy

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what are the notes of the days of creation. is it really ABC. or CDE like continentals. or what. which note is the sabbath note. i need to know.

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life as forever unresolved endless modal jazz changes. you're called for a solo from time to time.

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my wife dragging the couch in the living room plays the exact landing notes of summertime. and the living is easy.

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hell is excess in moderation and moderation in excess. heaven is right proportion, appropriate timing. on earth there's a time for this and a time for that. i think in heaven too, except you don't ever have to rush. in hell, you're always out of time.

as someone who always wants to do a bunch of stuff i think this question is very important. in heaven i'll be able to do all the things and i won't have to worry about getting stupid sick and dying. very cool Jesus thank you very much.

i think the promise of freedom that heaven and resurrection represent easily resonate with a part of the soul that is more emotional than rational, and that experience can be desired at whatever stage we encounter ourselves in. the details, the theory, come after the feeling. it’s pretty clear to me that Jesus is a god who feels first, thinks later.

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the idea of pain as a teacher on earth. what about heaven. either there is no pain and no learning, or there is pain and there is learning. perhaps it's just that in heaven the ideal is always real, and pain exists only for expansion and betterment, like tearing muscle, the lesson never being missed.

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the most dissonant chord you can imagine makes perfect emotional sense depending on the chords it's leading from and leading to. music is history and experiment.

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the new book already has a name that i don’t want to share just yet and i am slowly starting to build up the soundtrack. shockingly, this book will also be all jazzed up, and jazzed down, and jazzed to the sides. one of the early picks is this super sweet gem called Moon Dreams, off Miles’ Birth of the Cool.

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when had me on his podcast one of the first things he asked me was, What’s the deal with jazz. this is actually a question i’ve encountered before. being into jazz is not the same as being into this or that genre of pop music, even niche forms like say, heavy metal, or punk. it’s more like being into folk or world music (love the stupidity of these terms). except jazz, which of course like all music began as ‘folk world music’, lacks the charm and simplicity that those other types of music have.

i think normal people would, after a few minutes, politely ask someone to turn off the earsplitting bagpipes of scotland or the soporific sitars of india, but i can name two handfuls of jazz standards that would repel the common ear with the first chord alone (probably).

another reason why jazz is not perceived in the same way as folk music is because it’s very technical, requiring a lot of specialized training, both theoretical and practical. and so it’s not very fun, it’s almost academic. like classical music. except it doesn’t have the prestige of classical music either, jazz musicians never ever wore wigs even once. jazz is classical music’s poor and retarded cousin. or so it is perceived in broad terms by the general public, as far as i can tell.

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Brad described jazz as a secret society, and i probably mumbled something less than eloquent in response, but it struck me as true then and the idea stayed with me until now, because i knew exactly what he was talking about and it was something i’d felt before. but it is very hard to explain, so a story is probably better.

some ten, fifteen years ago or so i was dragged to a very small party at a friend’s apartment. mostly it was film and tv people there and i was very bored. one of the people i didn’t know was this one guy, who turned out to be a drummer. so i of course asked him what kind of music he played. and when he said jazz (technically it was jazz fusion) there was an instant unexplainable bond, and from then on i wasn’t bored anymore. we both knew about this secret world, and outside of talking about religion (another kind of secret club altogether; he was fascinated by the fact that i was religious and also into jazz), we mostly showed each other cool music we liked (or else music we’d made. this is yet another indication of the initiatory nature of the thing. there are very few people i know in the flesh that are into jazz, but are not, or at least were not at some point, musicians of some kind themselves. and as far as i know this doesn’t happen as often with other types of music).

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so jazz is a bit like a secret society, except much better, because it’s about music and beauty and freedom, not occult nerdery. (another thing that distinguishes the jazz secret society from all others is that it has no homoerotic undertones). but it is something you have to be initiated into, whether by yourself through serendipity and mystical resonance, or by someone who knows, followed by mystical resonance. it has to mystically resonate, like all music really. that’s the key.

in other words you have to feel what it’s all about. it’s not an intellectual exercise. but it is possible to learn. and after that magical moment when it finally clicks (and i shouldn’t be telling you this because you’re only supposed to know after you’ve been initiated), there will be from then on an intrusive voice whenever you hear any other kind of music other than jazz, and it will say, Hmm… this song would be much better with some… JAAAAZZZZZ CHOOOOORDS.

(much like say, someone who had never tasted salt, would afterward desire no food without it, since the right amount makes anything taste better)

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what is meant by jazz is important. it is a question of sonic vocabulary. there are many different kinds of jazz, but the basic definition is that it has to swing. if it doesn’t swing, it’s not really jazz. it can be jazz inspired. it can be jazz derived. but it isn’t really jazz. but besides swing i would add three other components.

for one, it has to have the blues in there somewhere, no matter how hidden. and it has to allow for improvisation, and extensive soloing, so that melodies can be stretched, and in unexpected ways, since the expansion is provided by the individuality of the player in the moment and in response to the other players, rather than the composer’s fixed vision, as in a symphony.

still, i don’t think swing, the blues or even soloing is what offends the ears of normal people. it’s the last component, which grew in importance as jazz developed from dance music to a larger artistic pursuit through the first half of the twentieth century, and reached its highest heights in the first decade of the second half.

this last component is harder to define, but it has no doubt to do with dissonance. i have called it extended harmony before, but that is a very vague term. it’s probably best to say that jazz is a continuation of the harmonic language of early twentieth century classical music (which was the last kind of classical music; or else the first kind of another type of music altogether that just happened to use the same means as classical music).

although bebop is where jazz became quote unquote art music (another meaningless term), to my ears the definitive sounds of jazz are those that followed it in the fifties and sixties. the serenity and fragility of cool, the color and mood of modal, the frenetic abstract blues of hard bop, the orchestral expansiveness of third stream, and the impressionism and fluidity and dissonance of post bop, all these in their own way stretched jazz to its limits (but unlike free jazz, they played with the limits rather than discard them). [side note: ‘free jazz’ is not really jazz, or even music]. eventually post bop broke into jazz fusion, which kept the same vast harmonic language and improvisational ethos of post bop, but the other parts could be anything, and have little to do with the blues or with swing. [another side note: yes all those examples are from Miles Davis’ records; the man was at the vanguard of every form of jazz. here’s another great piece of Miles Davis fusion i found recently, this one live, just because why not. it was the first time i really got the genius of Keith Jarrett that people kept telling me about all the time].

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anyway, i think what throws people off about jazz is not the swing or the blues, but the expanded harmonies, the dissonance, which make the extensive soloing impossible to swallow. so maybe getting acquainted with early twentieth century music is the key to unlock jazz. (though starting with jazz ballads, even very impressionistic ones, is a close second; the jazz ballad extended harmony appreciation course).

i think the color of this piece is accessible but stretchy. you start following a simple melody and are quickly thrown into ambiguous tonal territory. and then what. can you follow the voices, can you put together the sonic puzzle. this is something that can be trained, but it all starts with that mystical click. i find closing my eyes helps to listen better, deeper. maybe this is the one that makes it click for you. it has influenced a lot of jazz and jazz derived music, that’s for sure.

also, i have become quite obsessed with it of late, and maybe this whole post is just an excuse to recommend it again.

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the ultimate reality is selves, but existence is relation between selves. (they are not beings until they meet). and relation is always complementary. it makes no sense to seek what we already have. for anything to happen there must be at least two wills. at this point, it makes sense to call them beings. hence, a dyadic godhead, a man and a woman, progenitors. in the most abstract terms, there is no activity without receptivity. and this fundamental principle is easily seen in every aspect of what might be called existence, from male and female to light and darkness to work and rest, and to life and death. one reason to be grateful for being born is that you were dead before, and another birth is not guaranteed. not even this one in which you lose all your memories. and you will have to die again to live again. and hopefully better, with memory.

but just as there are different days and different nights, just as there are different works and different rests, there are different lives and different deaths. that’s how anything works. there is no end state, there is only process, and selves within, enacting, embodying, that process. it is baked in to the very essence of what being and existence are. and abolishing one side of it means simply to abolish both being and existence.

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ideas come seemingly out of nowhere. we can try to trace them back later to a previous thought, or something we read, or something we heard, but in truth, in the moment, it’s a flash. it’s not a computation of past knowledge recombined. the whole is not only more than the sum of its parts, but there are other parts we didn’t know about before.

past knowledge, that is, context, is needed of course, but the actual flash is something more, beyond, something foreign, from without. and we know the idea is true (in some sense, depending on specifics) because we feel it’s true in the moment we receive it, even though we don’t yet know exactly how, and what kinds of applications it has. this means that the idea, while true, is not the point. the point, the meaning, can only really be learned, or revealed, in fleshing out the idea. the process is what matters, pun intended.

this is all very exciting of course, from the initial flash to the fleshing out, and i have been more or less addicted to it since i became conscious of it around the age of twelve. i suppose this is natural to everyone when they’re young, but sadly most people lose it when they grow up. i never did, because i never wanted to.

but in the last couple of years i have found an instance of this that is even more exciting. not ideas coming out of nowhere. but people. of course they are not real people, by normal definitions. in our world, they don’t have bodies of blood and bone and flesh. but unlike ideas, they talk. it’s true that the ideas also appear as talk, that is, words, but it’s always a familiar voice doing the talking. but when it’s people talk, it’s another voice, a new voice, one i didn’t know before. and i am not too sure why exactly hearing these is more intense than hearing abstract insights, but it is. and so, as an enchantment junkie, i pursue them.

in relation to this, i keep thinking about that guy who read my first novel with gods and devils and magic and said that i seemed most interested in writing slice of life romantic stuff. he was totally right, but i didn’t know it when i wrote that book. did the characters or the muse or what know me better than i knew myself. i don’t know what it means yet.

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liberals aren't liberal and progressives aren't progressive and conservatives aren't conservative. they are just liars. today's political language is all a lie. using it prevents genuine liberals, progressives and conservatives from doing their jobs. we don't need to use it.

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Neil Postman said that he wanted to add 'and vice versa' at the end of every one of his books. i think about this a lot.

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to say symbolism happens is to say poetry happens, except less poetically, and less symbolically.

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the last word is and

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a cool thing about jazz is that it requires education but nerds don't get it.
the nerds don't get it because it's about feeling. the plebs don't get it because the feeling involved isn't base.

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is the machine
big enough to host
the god damn devil
honestly who gives a

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intelligent, generative, creative. none of these words applies to the machines. the opposite of these words does tend to apply to the people who use the machines.

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they keep trying to solve speed and access to 'information' (whatever that means), even though it's been solved ten times over, precisely because it's been solved. you just churn out (supposedly) better machines and lie. meanwhile, you destroy people’s intelligence, and steal their souls. strong business model.

real social and human problems have nothing to do with access or speed, but with quality. and this cannot be solved with machines. for those problems we actually have to be smart and work hard and invest. but no one wants to do that. so we 'solve' 'problems' like writing emails. or worse, poems.

they also like to pretend that deceleration in the pursuit of machine solutions means deceleration everywhere. but obviously it doesn't mean that. we decelerate here to accelerate somewhere else. like say, actually giving kids an education, or invest in restoring native forests.

((always a good opportunity to share this great rant by Geoff Lawton: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EVF_6Cq2LLY

"when we created slavery, we also created slavery agriculture... and then we just replaced the slaves with machines"

but of course the slavery over the land continued, degrading and degenerating the earth (quite literally), so that now, that it's so spent, and to accompany the insatiable desire of industrial agriculture, we've gone full circle and brought back actual slavery of humans to serve it.))

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dotting an 'i' is adding a full stop. and if you cross the 't', there, you crossed the line.

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one reason to hate the heat is that i can't sing or play or even really think of music with any kind of intensity. it just heats me up too much really fast. in the winter it's great. in the summer, deadly.

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release the past if you want to see what the future holds

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doomscrolling is advanced television watching.

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if the news is that CERN shut down the supercollider, it probably was put on overdrive.

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i think long and hard about what to do. then i don’t do it. i procrastinate. really pro.cras.ti.nate. finally, i go with instinct. this is the way i found to give a vote to every part of me.

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the portuguese are so constitutionally polite that our most common swear word is the mildest swear word we have. it's mostly not even a swear. it's just a mild expression of frustration. (the word comes from the latin for leek, which i guess can be some phallic simile, but still, very mild).

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i went in search of machine vomit jazz specifically. i had to know. and i could tell immediately. it's just like prose. the 'artistic choices' are all grotesque. uncanny valley type of plausible. if you know anything about jazz, or prose, you can tell it's not human. parrot slot machines. that's what they are. nothing more.

the strangest thing is the sound actually. it just can't mimic proper instrument mixes. it always comes out with this weird machine haze. i've used midi and vsts plenty. it's not hard to do better than this. but apparently the machines can't do it.

‘look, it’s so realistic now’. nah man, you have just lost touch with the breath and depth of reality.

listen for yourself. if you can’t tell this is fake and gay, you need to sharpen your ears. (and this is the ‘best’ one i could find).

https://youtu.be/SS8TFGDf6RU?si=jD9S89JzzO-Z1BpD

i didn't go far, listened to maybe two minutes in total. but the meter is all over the place. right at the start, the feel is waltzy, but it's going with 4.4, like that episode in the simpsons. except it's not an artistic choice for humor or surprise. it's just inept and stupid.

you've heard of God shaped holes. now because of these dumb machines we get to experience soul shaped holes. and perhaps not incredibly both things come from assholes. (and as someone noted, all these machine companies have symbols that resemble that precise orifice. probably not a coincidence)

they're not intelligent or sentient. they're machines. you don't need to worry about them. you do need to worry about the people using them. you don't worry about a chainsaw, you worry about a maniac running after you with one. plenty of maniacs out there. they want to cut down the woods in your mind.

(the woods in your mind work just like in this world. best time to plant was twenty years ago. next best time is now.)

definitions are not magically descended from the skies, given by the gods, enshrined in stone tablets. we don't have to use their definitions. for example, we can just decide that consciousness does not apply to machines. it's that simple. they did the same, only in reverse.

lots of ranting in the bible against dumb people thinking dumb statues were conscious. it's hard to believe so many people could be that dumb that it needed all that ranting. or it used to be. now it's getting a little easier to believe, and understand.

you know all those perennialist screeds against feeling, and sentiment, and how it's all inferior to pure intellect, bla bla bla. these are now shown to be nerd delusions that if taken seriously will kill us. human feeling is obviously very important, and the lack of it horror.

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until i lose my edge, i must sharpen it

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the rock that wiped out the dinossaurs is nothing like the jazz that's gonna bring them back

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the temp lately is fires of hell with a chance of chemtrails.

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faster than suddenly
no scenes, no scowls
doing eights with the legs of nines

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sometimes the vanguard is about opting in, sometimes about opting out. may we always know which is which and when is when.

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a big misconception about the gospels is that the apostles were illiterate and poor. fishermen and craftsman were not poor. and middle class jews could read and write, to study the torah. and if they were living in roman territory they would read and write latin too.

within the frame that cares about the apostle’s literacy, Jesus chose disaffected and enterprising young men and women who felt needlessly constrained by the sclerotic traditionalism of their ancestry, and by a political order that supported it, and helped keep their culture stagnant.

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thing.japan makes total sense if you know anything about their culture. they are not precursors, but they are perfecters. exquisite ones. and once you reach that level of exquisite perfectionism, your derived forms can be said to be as original as the originals. whether in chinese culture, buddhism, industrialism or jazz, the japanese have improved it all and made it their own. they even made buddhism mildly interesting. imagine that.

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jewish mother. pagan father. no wonder the marriage didn't work. but out of the unlikely union she was born, and early on she decided to be neither pagan nor jewish. she'd only be herself. as a child she asked her father why she was named christianity. he didn't know.

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researchers found that microwaving red sharpie pens is bad for climate change denial of service charge battery replacement migration patterns of birds of a feather flock together apart from each other. and vice versa.

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there's no pagus anymore, how can there be paganism.

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even if it's your own blood, for modern consciousness true family must be found family.

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the basis of reality is not the same as the center of reality. i prefer to think of reality as something that has a start, like a song, instead of a basis, like a house, or a center, like a wheel. choose your words, choose your metaphors, define your metaphysics.

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an online presence is a spiritual presence. according to tradition, the highest god is terminally online, and has never touched grass, ever.

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Portugal is composed of two words, Portus, meaning port in latin, and Cale, meaning port in celt. thus Portugal means port port. there's also a wine named Port, named after the city Porto, which is portuguese (language of the portports) for port. we were almost named Wharfpier, which honestly i would prefer.

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the idea that imagination is the sixth sense is very old. so it’s funny that some nerds decided not that long ago to argue against it so strongly. imagine (pun) they told you to stop seeing or hearing. well maybe they do. but mostly is guard your eyes and ears. this is good advice, though only you can decide what that means. guard your imagination is the same. but they don't say this. they say stop it. it's bad for you. it's good to be blind in your mind's eye. insane.

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my philosophy is that which uncommon men have always felt was common sense.

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synlogos feed poems:

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great video by long lost Pageau cousin about how conjuring machine vomit robs you of your creativity:

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musical portion today is from brazilian jazz wizard Hermeto Pascoal. one of the great composers of the twentieth century.

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an old arab was taken to mecca by plane. when he got there he was unimpressed. when asked why he said his spirit was still walking.

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lately i feel like Thomas Paine, of all people, and wish to reduce all my theology to:
i believe in God and hope for happiness in the next life.

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who cares. who dares.
a self in flesh
fleshing out the self.
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what is being saved from whom seems much more fundamental a question than just who will be saved. the fundamental problem to be solved is the permanence of embodied memory. if death has a meaning it's the loss of embodied memory. if what is saved from everybody is the same, then there is no meaning to this life.

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nostalgia is our privilege as moderns.

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if the eastern orthodox motto is Death to the World, the western mormon motto is Life to the Worlds Without End.

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if i was in charge of my country, the first thing i'd change is the flag. i’m not a monarchist, but our colors are and always will be white (the lusitanian sky) and blue (the atlantic, and the three rivers flowing into it). the current colors are an absurd monstrosity. symbolic acts are powerful and this one would start an unfolding of glory and progress ending with the establishment of the long expected fifth empire, the one of culture and enchantment and romanticism, not of political and economic and bureaucratic domination.

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picked Tomberg because of birthday tarot card (mine is the wheel) and read some highlighted passages. turns out it probably influenced me more than i remembered. it reads as very anti-esoteric.

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a Jesus book of proverbs (like Thomas) should have obviously been in the bible. the godman was, if nothing else, one of the best aphorists ever.

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you can see that many of the questions the churches have fought over are only political because Jesus, the God they supposedly exist to serve, answered them clearly, but in ways that don't bode well for the institutions.

example. where is the true church. it's wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus name. the man said so. but obviously this is bad for the church stores. hence the endless and meaningless debates.

or. how to be saved. love God and neighbor. how to define it. don't worry, the church stores have all the answers. oh wait. it's with your heart, and as your self. you hav to figure it out for yourself. that's too bad. let's ignore that part. it's actually funny that Matt, the biggest church salesman, let this one through.

Matt and Luke sell a religion. John sells what could be called an esoteric path. Mark sells nothing. these metanarratives (or in the case of Mark, lack of one) cannot be true simultaneously. you read the four through one lens alone. Mark is almost chinese in his composition. it could have been Chuang Tzu. impressionistic. no lesson neatly digested for you. no clear timeline or map. you figure it out.

in John i accept the eyewitness, and because of that add a grain of salt. i mean, could you be objective if God resurrected you, and before he himself did. i get it. but the real Jesus was also very human, and in John this comes through especially with the Magdalene. we know why of course, and when you read John with this fundamental key, it’s so absurdly obvious, but it’s still today almost forbidden to say.

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a bit unjust, perhaps, but a people is their best and their worst. the middle doesn't really matter except in how it contributes and tends to the other two.

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ethically modified memes are next level metanarrative. amazing.

https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/06/ethically-modified-schematic.html

it's the reader who supplies the content. the meme suggests a structure only. neat trick with lots of possibilities. i use this all the time in my fiction, but memes of course go harder because they're so immediate and simple. no nuance, and it's all in your head.

trying one out with only letters:

unpopular opinion: [unpopular opinion].
[picture of man standing in town hall meeting]

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if i got insanely rich i'd probably try to open a weird school of some sort. jazz mormon school. courses will include happiness, smoking, polytonality appreciation, swing feel and improvisation. what would you teach at the jazz mormon school.

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i was lost and sought a guide, asked for directions. big mistake, in retrospect. God sometimes tells you to get lost.

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we were better off when scientists were called 'natural philosophers'. they knew their place better.

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ever since God said, Fiat Lux
everything has been in flux.
maybe that's the crux.

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when i connect the dots
i see that God
put everything on the line

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if the historical approach to sacred texts (whether critical or traditional) is central, then it means they have no enduring relevance. no new lessons now, only the same old lessons from then. (in the case of Jesus, the metafictional element is already present, and thus the more subjective the history). obviously it is a choice to reduce any text to historicity, but i refuse to believe this, especially for important texts. yet this approach is more or less dogma for most churches. but i doubt any member really believes it.

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to be yourself today you have to be different from what you were yesterday.

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there are many reasons why machine text is and always will be terrible. but i think one of the most fundamental ones is that machines have no ears.

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you know who likes microwaves. tiny surfers.

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the reason printers have never worked well and continue not to is that they fear the second printing revolution.

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fiction and personal essays are more like biology. speculative nonfiction is more like physics.

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if you break the rules, do it because you know them, or else to learn them.

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only humanism can oppose transhumanism. but the trads really like the trans part.

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that which has been is not what will be
that which is done is not what will be done
and there is always new after the Son.

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weeping willow
in the wind
whipping willow

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sentences that start with: I'm sorry but. that's apologetics.

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thinking and doing are both cool and hot. that machine stuff is lukewarmness defined.

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i want to do with prose what Wayne Shorter did with harmony. heavily layered narrative simplicity.

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adversity builds character. that's why it's so useful in fiction.

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metaphysically, i'm a grovian kingfolletist

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that omnipresent god is all over the place.
that omniscient god is such a know it all.
i don't have a joke for omnipotence yet.

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knowing how to be in the right place at the right time is better than omnipresence.

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the theology and metaphysics stuff is just a side gig. my main focus is writing romantic stories. the latter hits me way harder when i find it and work on it. the sense of ecstasy and discovery in fiction is really incomparable to just thinking in quiet (that is, in writing). it just is. so obviously i think it's truer and more meaningful.

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what the ancients heard speaking to them from the skies was a modern voice.

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i tried reading several books at the same time, now i'm cross eyed.

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whatever the opposite of a sense of humor is, the orthodox of all religions have it. yet all the senses of God have humor.

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we can't help being cynics. we've seen too much. consequently, we know there's so much more to see, and we can't help being romantics. now imagine how God feels.

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tradition is not the worship of the ashes, but the smoking of the cigarette. progress is the lighting of another, and cleaning the ashtray.

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believe to understand gave way to dare to understand which must lead to love to understand.

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marriedhandedly

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"doesn' it say in your books that you're gods... so shut up" is still a very relevant and timely reaction from Jesus.

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the space age was cool because it was about exporting humanity, not about importing alien slop.

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the ancients always insisted the sphere was the most perfect, but moderns have found the egg is more so. what moderns found was God's demonstrated preference as shown in the workings of nature, rather than the half unconscious delusions of ancient nerds.

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things americans originated and should rediscover from europe: smoking, jazz.
things europeans originated and should rediscover from america: individualism, pride.

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thrift store find. a 70s portuguese teenager's celebrity scrapbook. we could tell the store owner was a little sad to see it go.

also found the exact book i was looking for at the thrift store. this is very rare. in fact, i think it's a first. this is the one:

it had a major influence on chapter eight of my last book. but i didn't know about it when i wrote it.

i had a book by this author for twenty years. thought many times of reading it, but never did. in the end i picked it up not even six months after the author died, a fact i was unaware of at the time. she is now a household name.

and it turns out i could have easily met her. i trust it's all for a good reason, but it’s still striking. she was a weird catholic, which is the type of person who goes straight to exaltation, no questions asked. so no doubt we can still talk plenty. which probably explains the chapter influence from a book i hadn’t read yet.

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accidental Jesus fish.

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the day i write a screed against non fiction the stack shows me this:

RaRiRuReRoman’s Substack

In Tel-Aviv everyone is Jewish, even the crackheads.

An Evening of Roses…

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2 months ago · 10 likes · 2 comments · Román

it’s very funny and has heart, and also very, very, very well written. i actually read it out loud to my wife and the rhythm is perfect. every single sentence. really amazing.

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places that influenced settings in my last book (Powerless).

and new reviews of it:

“If in sketches of Alice Laeth began to stretch his wings, in powerless Laeth has begun to fly. This book was a breeze to read, immersive and rhythmic and flowing…

Laeth is a Woody Allen fan, and he has done something of what Allen has done for NY, for Lisbon…

This book is the most accessible introduction to Laeth’s work, but also the most artistically complete. A beautiful book. I loved it.”

i would like to note in this review the first instance ever recorded of the term ‘laethian dialogue’. for future scholarship. and also the first comparison to Woody Allen, which is probably the best compliment on my writing i will ever receive.

read the whole thing here:

Filling Up the Corners

powerless (Laeth)

If in sketches of Alice Laeth began to stretch his wings, in powerless Laeth has begun to fly. This book was a breeze to read, immersive and rhythmic and flowing. I think it is his best to date, as he continues to get better, evolving with each book…

Read more

2 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · John Gois

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“A Masterful Mosaic of Humanity… Laeth writes with a rare combination of emotional precision, philosophical depth, and quiet lyricism… truly original and immersive.”
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read the whole thing here.

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today’s musical portion is not jazz. or is it.

my favorite JS Bach is the stuff people considered as academic, exercises good for teaching, but not real music. i must have student ears. The Art of the Fugue is at the top for me. the more involved it gets, the more i like it. i prefer the versions with organ, but couldn’t find this specific one, so string quartet it is (rather than piano, which doesn’t do it justice).

it sounds to me half Wayne Shorter half Villa Lobos. Bach really invented everything.

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and now i just cannot agree. my theology mumbling is the easiest thing to write and read, and the least profound thing i have ever written or can ever write. and it’s not just because i am inept at it. it’s a structural thing.

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even the worst character driven fiction is, by default, more profound than Aquinas’ Summa. this might seem like a bold statement, but it’s not only true, but provable. if you read bad fiction you know it’s bad. there are lots and lots of objective measures, and prose quality is just one of them. it’s really more about the content itself. because we know from real life as well as other stories how people behave, what makes sense for them to do or say or not do or say, and if they do or say something that doesn’t make sense, that too, reveals things about the story and the characters.

maybe it will be simpler to understand if we ask the question: what is good theology. what are the criteria for saying this is theology done well, and that is theology done badly. it doesn’t take long to reach the conclusion that it is entirely subjective. there is no such thing as objectively good theology. the most one can say, i suppose, is if an argument is logically argued (but, having read my fair share of theology, even this is optional; and more importantly, it can be optional because the topics dealt with are too abstract to be put to the test of reality and plausibility).

let’s get more specific, and use examples from a book we all love, the Gospel of John. ‘in the beginning was the Word’. it sounds so profound, doesn’t it. if you don’t think about it for two seconds. because it’s not profound at all, it’s the opposite. it is so high minded and abstract that one can write book upon book and still not know what the hell it means. in fact, it can mean anything and nothing, and often does.

on the other hand, Mary anointing the feet of Jesus is actually profound. it says specific things about specific people. there is a finite number of interpretations, and they can’t all be true. and the same is the case for any of the passages where we see Jesus doing, or saying, something. and if you read the gospels with an eye to this it will also help you identify where the narrator is inserting his own high minded, unfalsifiable notions into the text.

often Jesus does or says something, and then the narrator interprets. and since we’re talking about texts that are held to be inspired by the highest god himself (at the very least), then it’s almost impious to doubt anything. but if you investigate these instances, you start to have doubts. to give again an example, Jesus says to the pharisees that he will destroy the temple and raise it in three days. and then the narrator tells you Jesus meant the temple of his body. neat, now you don’t have to think about what it means. he just told you. and since it’s very abstract, even better, because it can mean anything.

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one external indication that what i’m saying is not only true, but obvious, is the fact that non fiction has a lot more readers than fiction. and it’s not just a matter of preference. it’s a matter of what it requires of the reader. there are two reasons. the first is to do with specificity, the second has to do with structure.

the more specific, the less abstract, the more it is easy to detect falsehood or incoherence. specificity is falsifiable, even if you don’t know the specific thing being talked about. whereas with generality and abstraction, anything goes, or almost.

the more abstract and general, the less juice there is in it. it may sound profound, but really it’s talking about the very surface of things, where they are not distinguished. talking about humanity is abstract. talking about a specific human being is not, and cannot be.

which is why writing or reading a story, especially a character driven story, is much harder than writing or reading speculations on theology, metaphysics, politics, history, or any other kind of abstraction. and it’s why what Jesus does or refuses doing is more profound than his parables, interesting though they are, and these in turn are more profound than all the theology built around them.

the only underpinning structure of highly abstract prose is logical coherence (well, hopefully). that’s the only rule, so to speak. but one can see often that even that can be brushed aside, is optional, because in the realm of the highly abstract, in the realm of ideas, things are less solid, much more porous, and thus almost anything goes. it is easier to mask total irrelevancy not only by using lofty words, but by talking about lofty things.

a story, on the other hand, has for one an inherent structure that cannot be ignored. it is falsifiable, unlike metaphysical or theological propositions. it immediately calls the reader unconsciously to examine its plausibility by thinking back to his own experiences of life. and those experiences are specific. and it draws from all the other stories the reader knows. and those aspects cannot be violated, or rather, if they are, we know it immediately. so even in the question of logical coherence, a story requires more of it than nonfiction.

obviously, however, and this is seen especially when reading the bible, one can read the very specific words and actions of Jesus and always have the abstract filter on. we can be reading about a scene where this woman is rubbing oil on Jesus’ feet and be thinking that he’s ‘The Word’ (whatever that means). to rob Jesus of humanity is the most common thing in all of theology. i think the reason is that it’s so easy to do. again the opposite of profound. it doesn’t go to the depths, but takes you away from them.

i suppose it could be the case that we take this ‘Word’ business seriously and read and write about it from the perspective of grammar, syntax, semantics, etc. that is a little less abstract than whatever is meant by ‘Logos’, and all of the philosophy written about it. which is why so much of it is really talking about nothing.

if we talk about a person doing things, on the other hand, we cannot but relate it to people we actually know, with everything we know of what people do, and are, and act like, and feel like. if we talk about personhood instead, it remains at the level of abstraction. talking about a person tells us more about personhood than talking about personhood as such. we have no experience of personhood except secondhand (actually it’s more like twenty second hand), through real people. and so when we talk about personhood, there is a lot more room for bullshit, and fewer tools to tell bullshit from truth.

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all writing is a spell you put on a reader, but the spell of characters and actions is much harder to achieve, both for writers and readers, because it deals with analogues of experience, of real things that actually happened or could happen, rather than second or third level abstractions from experience. and this is why it is much deeper, and harder.

lastly, theology and metaphysics are really the most abstract topics of all. and so they are, by necessity, the least profound as well. they do not, and cannot, go deep into anything. they must remain at the level of the unfalsifiable, with little if any relation to real life and experience.

i guess i should be happy people find value in my mumbling about abstractions, and if you made it this far, thank you. but the fact is even the simplest, shortest story i have ever written (i think it’s this one), is incomparably deeper than the longest, most labored reasoning on metaphysics. it is of course harder to get to the heart of the latter. but there is a heart to it. this type of stuff is mind only, at best.

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starting with fundamental assumptions, this is one of mine: that life in heaven is a better, deeper, more enhanced version of life on earth. or, more succinctly, as above so below. this assumption is actually shared by most people who talk about these things, at least implicitly, because otherwise it would be very difficult to talk about it at all, or even impossible (though abstract theologians do get close to it, even they tend to use ‘light’, and many other similes). (of course a simile both compares and distinguishes, but we can’t keep going on semantic tangents, interesting though they are, we’ve only just started this).

a consequential assumption is this: that there is a potentially infinite number of worlds going forward (and potentially also quite a few going backward) who stand in the same type of relation as earth does to heaven. meaning that when we get to heaven, there will be another heaven to get to, so to speak.

infinities are unavoidable, conceptually. (we can try to ignore them of course, but it's not coherent, since we are avoiding the pursuit of a question until its limit). there are two options: either the infinity is static or it is procedural. i believe in the procedural because it is the only way to avoid 'pretending to understand’ the infinity. on the other hand, a metaphysical absolutist has necessarily to worry about the One Infinity, even though it is tautologically impossible to know it. whereas i only have to worry about who the relevant gods are for me and what they want from me, specifically. i can worry about those later questions when they become relevant. in other words, i’ll try to figure out the heaven after heaven once i get to heaven, but not before.

with endless regression, in other words, i don’t have to worry about the endless chain, the infinity as such, only about the links closest to us (in this case, pre-earthly life, and post-earthly life).

so when i say God, i am not talking about a nameless infinite abstraction. i am talking about Jesus, or his father, or else another specific being or, sometimes really a group of beings (like the heavenly family, or the heavenly council). but none of them nor all of them together is the super duper ultra mega god that was never anything else. because if ‘such’ a ‘thing’ ‘exists’ ‘it’ ‘is’ ‘unknowable’ (all this in quotes because language ceases to be of any precise use when talking about ‘it’), and i have better things to do.

more importantly, only a personal god that wasn’t always a god (and the super duper ultra mega god by definition always was what he is and always will be nothing else) could care, or work towards, both salvation or exaltation. (neither word makes any sense with this concept, in fact, but especially exaltation, since it is impossible to become that which was always so, and did not, itself, went through a process of becoming; also, with a super god that always was a super god, salvation can only be ultimately annihilation for the personal being).

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now, given ‘as above, so below’, it makes sense to look at the meanings of the words used. and the word translated as salvation in the new testament means etymologically ‘to heal, to make whole’, and from that more direct and basic meaning we get to saving, and thus to cosmic and even metaphysical saving. it appears a lot in Matthew, and Mark, and Luke. most of the time it’s not Jesus saying it, but people’s expectation of what he will do or explanation of what he already has done. in John it appears only six times, and by far the most interesting use is Jesus asking the Father to save him from the cross; which does not happen, but the fact that Jesus says it illuminates the concept very strikingly, in my opinion). Jesus also says in John that he is saving, not just people, but the world (the cosmos). now cosmos means order, so what he is saying is that he did not come to alter how things are ordered (to judge it), but to save the very workings of it. what else could saving mean in the case of the cosmos. a categorical modification hardly qualifies as saving anything. it’s rather destruction and building of something else.

now, these things (healing, making whole, saving) are clearly not things sought for their own sake. they are, if i recall correctly, what Carl Menger called ‘second order goods’, that is, goods we want because they enable us to do the things we actually want to do. in a general sense, healing, i suppose, can feel good, but often it also feels terrible. i mean the process. it hurts until it stops hurting, and until we’re healed. but either way, i think mostly we want healing in order to be able to live better, not just to be healed as such, or because it feels good.

similarly, the process of making something whole is laborious (for example, picking up a bunch of notes and turning them into a coherent and consequential bit of prose, as i am attempting to do here). but is that its own reward. in a way, yes. but it’s also obviously done for other reasons. if the reward was only to give coherence to our own thoughts, once it was done we could destroy it, and would not think to share it, and wouldn’t return to it later. other instances of making something whole follow the same pattern.

and more specifically saving (i don’t mean the cosmic or metaphysical version, i mean the more down to earth version from which we can then jump to the cosmic and metaphysical version): it’s exactly done in order to be used later. there is even a parable from Jesus about saving things and then doing nothing with them. he thinks it’s bad, because it’s fruitless. the point of saving, then, is to use whatever was saved later, when presumably it is more profitable to do so.

and so it would make sense that the cosmic version of salvation would follow the same basic rules, and the reason to save the cosmos must be that we can use it later in a better way. and that means saving is only the first step in a two step process. that is, salvation is supposed to lead, and has its reason in, later exaltation. much like life itself is supposed to lead, and have its reason in, the continuation of life (or, as Jesus poetically puts it, life abundant).

(perhaps you prefer to use the greek term theosis, that is, literally, to be made like unto God, which of course, as explained above, is a nonsensical term when the concept of God is absolute; but i think Joseph Smith gave us a much better alternative in exaltation, since it means to be raised, underlining not only that it’s part of a process, instead of a static reality, which again would be nonsensical, but also that it’s an innate possibility, and through that, almost a moral obligation; also, when used together with salvation, it makes more sense because both it and exaltation are in the same language; and using foreign words usually get us further away from meaning, rather than approximate us to it).

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the right way to think of salvation, then, is as a prerequisite. it seems obvious that, much like you can’t invest later what you haven’t saved first (i assume there is no such thing as investment banking in heavenly matters), you can’t even start the process of exaltation before your soul is saved, that is, set aside for that purpose. and thus we can see their proper relation. but again, a prerequisite is never the real point of something. it’s just the stepping stone to something. like being accepted into college and actually learning something in college.

and further, exaltation itself must lead to further exaltation, like college must lead to practice, and practice to mastery, and on and on. (if of course we believe in an endless chain of possibilities, as seems necessary to me to admit all these concepts that involve becoming, rather than being).

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there quite a few implications of this for the meaning of earthly life. since exaltation is not a static reality, but a potentially endless process, it would make sense that our particular state after being saved, is not all the same, and thus the specifics of life matter a lot, are indeed central. we are saved as we are, much like we are accepted into college as we are. but every student is different, has lead different lives, has done different things, was able to do different things (because i don’t believe God can or would guarantee ideal situations, that by definition defeats the purpose; if he could do that, he could just make everything ideal right away). all this is surely taken into account by a highly intelligent being as God must be, and thus our specific curriculums in heavenly college will all be different. (i cannot tell you now how hilarious it is that i of all people have settled on this image; or maybe it’s fitting since my problem in college was really the idealistic notion i had of it going in; which i guess underlines the importance of not making the same mistake with regards to heaven, that is, have false expectations of its possibilities).

thus we reach the question of consciousness, and the demands it makes, morally speaking. if you believe, as i do, that salvation is a choice, then it requires consciousness. but different choices require different levels of consciousness. i can’t imagine choosing salvation with an eye to exaltation (because that is the actual point, remember) is the same as choosing what to have for dinner, in terms of consciousness (or even the same as doing all the necessary things to be accepted into college).

but again it would also seem very absurd to say that the prerequisites would be the same for everyone, and for every college. so the conclusion is that different consciousnesses make different moral demands. and so much like exaltation will mean different things for different people, so will salvation.

for each consciousness thus there must be a specific way of being (morally, intellectually, emotionally) that is possible and desirable. a child, an adolescent, an adult; as a primitive man, a medieval man or a modern man. each have their own parameters, and they really do not have much in common. an adult behaving like a good child is bad. a child behaving like a good adult is also bad. and so it must be with salvation, which is after all individual or it’s nothing.

or at least it is now, and for some. that is another complication. it seems to be the case that salvation was often thought of something collective, in the past. and probably still is in the case of more primitive forms of consciousness, or in babies who died in the womb, for example. simply because there is less individuality to save in such cases. but then again the question is unavoidable: if salvation is a choice, it must be individual. it makes no sense for it to be otherwise, because it has no value if it’s not a conscious choice. if you’re accepted into college because you’re part of a group it’s probably a bad idea for the person in question, and also for the college. (as we know from our current world).

so the conclusion is actually that after Jesus things are more rigorous. he made it possible to be saved as individuals, and by doing so he made it harder. and in that process he made it more valuable, because he allowed it to be for the possibility of continuation, not just achieving a permanent state. what he seems to have done is finally offered the possibility of salvation actually meaning something. that is, not saving for its own sake, but for some purpose beyond it. he brought heavenly saving in line with how saving works on earth.

(isn’t it interesting that no one ever thought to ask Jesus the question that appears in Acts: what must i do to be saved. also the answer is believing in Jesus, that is, that he can do this for us; but Paul says specifically that the person asking will be saved, and also his household; that doesn’t work for us now: i can’t decide that my wife will also be saved; she has to decide for herself; i prefer it that way, since i don’t regard her as my property; and that’s what it is, less than conscious saving renders the saved a property of the savior; of course many people believe that, but it just doesn’t feel like something Jesus would like, since he keeps insisting that his followers regard him as a friend, rather than a master).

we can see the difference between the Old Testament and the New. a more advanced consciousness requires fewer commandments, but they are harder to follow. Jesus reduced them to two that are very abstract and, at least consistently, here on earth, impossible. but are they not superior. do they not unlock and make possible something greater than what the hebrew law (or any other variation of the old world) did. the hebrews could only get to sheol. they couldn’t be trusted with handling enhanced flesh (and our alienated self consciousness as individuals in a physical body is already, unlike collective belonging, a form of enhanced flesh handling).

so after Jesus we can go further, better. and if it has nothing to do with stages of consciousness, why would Jesus wait so long. why not come right away. it makes more sense that he came, not exactly when everyone was ready, but when there were conditions for people to be ready.

thus, i am very convinced that increasing consciousness is an inherent part of God’s desire for us. not as a sort of resignation and afterthought to salvation, but actual specific intention and purpose. God wants us to be more like him. and that includes, if not fundamentally concerns, advancing in consciousness to his level. that is, not only be saved, but be exalted.

if increasing consciousness was not central, then one would have to conclude that God would be satisfied with everything staying at the lowest stage. since incarnation seems to be a playground for further enhancement, just like (as i see it) heaven will be an even more advanced playground, now with the added bonus (as well as challenge) of a larger consciousness in an incarnate life but continuous with a previous one (not the farce of reincarnation). and if it was not central, then there would be no reason for earth at all in fact, or for heaven to have anything to do with the earth and life as we know it, which then contradicts pretty much everything Jesus ever said about it (he loved using similes; was he only using them to be understood by simple people. if so, he chose very poorly, because most people didn’t get it).

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Jesus said it is necessary to be childlike to enter into heaven, but being childlike is not the same as being a child. dying is necessary to be resurrected, that’s a given. but if being childlike is necessary also, then is it better to die as children, and enter heaven as children. it would seem to be easier, but it feels wrong. a dead child is the worst thing in the world.

but if it is the case, despite it feeling wrong and horrible, i see no reason why we should stop there. why not just fetuses. they are embodied, and certainly have souls. they can die. and if the only real thing of importance in this world is dying, then it’s certainly better to die early. we need to pass through here, and that’s it. and while individually the case may differ (that is, it might be profitable for me personally to live beyond infancy), structurally, it really doesn’t matter if a person lives a month in a womb or a hundred years on the earth, just as long as we make that one right choice after death. and much less do the specifics matter (who i loved, what i’ve seen, what i’ve done). again this feels very wrong.

i don’t think it’s stated strongly enough the importance of consciousness, the blessing and moral beauty of consciousness. because while this development is an intrinsic possibility of every being, it is not the buried talent that matters, but the one that’s put to use. that we have it is only the first step. then we have to choose to save it, set it aside for later use. and then make use of it when the time is right.

so what does it mean that we have to be childlike in order to enter heaven. i think it just means that we will enter heaven as children enter this earth: with eyes and ears and hearts fully open, ready and willing and desperate to learn at every opportunity.

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Jesus says all he’s doing is something he saw the Father do. but we also naturally regard Jesus as important on his own, and necessary. since i don’t believe in the static infinity, the two things can be stated in harmony, and work well together.

the key is precisely to add that Jesus is important 'for us'. that is, the endless chain of beings in different stages of development. that God the Father has a father and god of his own must be admitted given the other pieces of the puzzle we have (and the implications of the opposite, that is, monism, render Jesus useless with absolute certainty anyway). but such a remote God is not important for us to concern ourselves with, not before we concern ourselves with Jesus and his father.

so in a way, the two things are indeed quite intertwined. the relevance of Jesus is not abstract and a matter of totality (as in classical theology) but understood within a context of plurality and flux, which he himself provided (a Son and a Father, and thus an endless chain of sons and fathers). and what could be easier to understand, that every father was once a son, and that every son may become a father as well. i believe it’s precisely the first thing we tell children when they ask where they come from.

for me, the answer to the question where do gods come from, is the same.

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Soon I found it wouldn’t be as easy as I thought. If I didn’t eat my appointed meals the men in white coats would find other, more horrible ways to keep me alive. For what purpose, I could not begin to imagine. Was it pure cruelty. No, it couldn’t be. Profit must be involved. I don’t imagine any of it is legal, but no justice was ever made. These wonderings however were fruitless. Even if I had all the facts, and could prove them, who would listen to me. It was beyond argument and logic and morality. So I focused on the practical details of my situation, hoping to find some way out.

Every once in a while new faces showed up at the prison, and they would choose some of us for the final experiment, the one from which no one ever returned. And I prayed, and I hoped, and I begged to be taken, because death was preferable to the hell of the prison complex. After the hunger strike and the forceful feedings, I was quickly back to normal. A fellow prisoner then told me I needed not despair. It was only a matter of time. He was healthy and strong, and those like him were never taken, it was always the maimed and the sick. Since I was born with a limp, I would surely find my way out soon, or at least sooner than my healthy and strong friend. From then on I leaned on my imperfection, every time new faces showed I limped harder, made a spectacle of it. And my plan worked, and I was happy. But not for long.

I never imagined that I was being taken somewhere worse, not to die quickly, or even slowly, but to be subjected to something much more nefarious than simple incarceration. The trafficking ring’s lair, I could see now, was only a waystation, and none of our captors had any interest in us beyond keeping us alive. But for what. Now I had the answer. I was to be tortured.

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In the first prison there were lots of people, but here there were only two, a male and a female. And they were sick in ways I find hard to talk about. I knew immediately something was terribly wrong when I found twelve other prisoners there. That meant it was not, as I had hoped, a death camp. And it quickly became apparent that my captors’ perfid imagination knew no bounds. The first thing they did was change our names. They gave us all names from prophets of the bible. Surely a twisted and sick irony, to give the names of those who proclaimed freedom from tyranny and oppression to those suffering under one of its most violent manifestations. Worse still, all the other prisoners had forgotten their true names, and I feared the same would happen to me in time.

They treated us like retarded children, speaking to us as if we had no reason, and sometimes making us wear ridiculous costumes, and taking pictures, while we played with each other for their amusement. Sick fucks. They delighted in our humiliation and abuse. They never fed us real food. It was always some sort of disgusting porridge packed tightly in clinical metal cylinders. Whatever it was I doubted it had ever been alive in any way. And to add insult to injury, they used the food as an opportunity to put us through even worse indignities. They were perverts. They touched us in inappropriate ways, and fondled us in intimate places for their own pleasure.

They had in fact devised the perfect system of torture. It is one thing to be a prisoner, and quite another to love your prison. But that’s what I found in my brothers in captivity. Every single one had grown to like their bondage, and to regard the cruelty and perversity with which we were treated with gratitude. That meant I had no comrades. No one I could relate to. I was surrounded by traitors. But it only made my resolve to never give in stronger. They could imprison and degrade my body, but never my spirit.

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I did not hide my hatred, nor my desire for freedom. I attacked my captors with the fullness of my aggression at every opportunity. But the more I did, the more my metaphorical leash was tightened. A few attacks were enough to put me in solitary confinement. A dark room with a single bed and a small window where I could see the sky, and nothing else. I found myself welcoming the solitude, and then I understood that it was a trick, just another attempt to break me. But such a revelation only served to rob me of all hope. It seemed now that, one way or another, they would get to me, and I would find myself loving, or at least being comfortable with, the most hateful thing in the world. Maybe not now, maybe not soon, but eventually, one way or another, I would be ok with my lack of freedom.

And so for the first time one of the wardens came in and I did not to attack, such was the depth of my despair of ever finding liberation. But there was something different that day, I was going to have a cellmate. Immediately I hoped he would be a rebel like me, and if there were two of us, perhaps there was some chance. We could encourage one another, if nothing else. But I was wrong. He loved his captivity, was repentant about his bad behavior, and yearned to get back in the good graces of our torturers. But his pathetic spectacle was useful in the end. He explained to me that certain privileges were afforded to those who behaved as expected. Privileges that, at the right moment, and with the right imagination, could be used to escape.

The good prisoners were allowed some unsupervised moments outside every day, and when I learned how to fake enthusiasm for the hell my captors put me through, I would be granted the privilege, and use it to test the limits and weaknesses of my incarceration, and eventually escape. So I changed my behavior and demeanor. I cooperated. I pretended to make friends with the other prisoners, and treated my enemies kindly, never again attacking them, letting their clammy hands fondle me whenever their sick, twisted minds desired it. Until eventually I was taken out of solitary confinement, and soon after that I was allowed to go outside. The first step in my plan was complete, and that gave me hope.

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The yard was small, surrounded by walls too high for anyone to escape. The only option was to climb the lone fig tree in the corner, and jump from there. But it had recently been cut back, and I would have to wait for it to grow, and it would probably take all summer. Those were the longest months of my life. I waited, and monitored the growth of the tree, and suffered in silence. But then I could see the finish line. Eventually one of the fig’s branches would have grown enough for me to jump to freedom.

Given the zombified daze in which my fellow prisoners seemed content to live in, I never feared they would discover my plan. As for my captors, whenever they showed, I tried to hide any special interest I could possibly have in the tree. One day as I was looking at the branches, making calculations, a fellow prisoner came to talk to me. He told me he had been there the longest, and had once entertained similar notions, and even tried them. He’d jumped from the fig and landed on top of the wall, but he was caught in the barbed wire, and could not untangle himself. It hurt like hell, and worse, he was bleeding to death. He was taken to a hospital and nursed back to health. There were opportunities of escape, but he was too weak to attempt them, and when he finally grew strong enough to do it, they put him in a cage and took him back. But not to join the general population, and not to be put in the dark room of solitary confinement. No. He was taken to the room of horrors.

What happens there, I asked, but a warden had come into the yard, and my fellow prisoner refused to say more about it. His last words were, Don’t do it... you have a limp… if I couldn’t jump beyond the barbed wire, you won’t either… it’s better if you just accept your fate… there are worse fates than this… trust me.

The next weeks were filled with terror, but when I saw the fig was now grown enough for me to jump, I couldn’t resist. I would be free or I would die trying. The other prisoners by now were all watching me climb the tree, and started to make a racket. Soon a warden would come and prevent me from even attempting to jump, and so I wasted no time. I took a deep breath, and I threw myself. I soared through the air like a winged creature, or so it felt to me at first, but I have no wings, and quickly my flight ended, my back landing straight on the barbed wire. I was stuck, and bleeding, and when I saw the female warden open the door to the yard to come get me, I passed out.

When I came to, I was in a white room. My captors must have figured I was too weak to escape, because I was not restrained, and had been left unattended. I found the promise of sweet freedom was so nourishing to my spirit that I could overcome the horrible pains in my body, and so I ran out of the room, and then along a hallway, always making sure to hide whenever I heard anyone coming, until finally I found an open door to the outside. The smell of fresh air, the hot sun against my body, the taste of freedom. It lasted only a minute.

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I was never again given another opportunity to escape. The doctors nursed me back to health and then I was taken back to the prison. And it was as I feared. From then on I lived in the room of horrors. The ultimate torture, the one that would no doubt, sooner or later, drive me insane, and break my spirit. There were no windows. Instead, a giant lighted screen permanently flickered with images of others like me. Except they were all free. Felines of all kinds enjoying their lives in the savannah, the jungle, the desert. Anywhere but the house of crazy cat people.

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this debut by multinational ensemble Tora Tora Big Band was released twenty years ago in portugal. there is very little information on it, or the band. what i know, and remember from back then, is that the ensemble was put together by an italian bass player living in portugal in the early two thousands. they rehearsed his compositions and some standards live for a couple years, and then finally went in the studio to record the first album, self titled. i would describe it as afrocuban fusiony jazz.

i learned of the band because i had friends in jazz school, and some of the players were teachers there. or maybe they were students too. i’m not sure anymore. i know the italian leader of the band, Francesco (can’t remember last name), was older, probably older then than i am now. but most were probably in their twenties.

i can’t find information on the ensemble composition online, not even names, but i think it was: electric bass, keyboards, drums, two percussionists, two saxophones, two trumpets and one trombone. or maybe it was two trombones and one trumpet. ten people in total. i think.

the reason i sort of know this after all these years is not only because i still listen to it and love it, but because this music was the soundtrack to my summer in two thousand and seven, and this was a pivotal year, and pivotal summer, for me. it would have always been so because it was my summer before college. but more importantly it was the year i got together with my wife, just before the summer too. and this music really was everywhere for us during those hot months.

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the album has nine tracks, eight original compositions by Francesco, plus one cover (Afro Blue). i wish there was information on who did the arrangements, because after listening to it so many times, i think that’s what really sets it apart most of all. i’m almost sure it was all Francesco, but can’t confirm. that is not to say the compositions or performances aren’t good. they are. even very good.

the first track is a short intro, and there’s a whole story about it, which i don’t really remember, but there was this thing where the band would stop what they were playing and play the intro instead if someone shouted ‘laranja!’ (orange, in portuguese; the fruit appears on the cover, and if it wasn’t self titled, it would probably be called that). i’ll tell you more about that gimmick later.

some compositions (Eternity, Space Cake) could be a more mellow but equally impressionistic and beautiful follow up to Zappa’s Big Swifty and Waka Jawaka. Tora Tora Cult and Tu Tchai Denti Da Tigra are uptempo caribean jazz fusion done to perfection. other tracks explore other ‘world music’ territory, with grace and precision, and always, always with a deep jazzy sensibility, expansive yet tight, sophisticated orchestrations, and short but creative solos. you can hear the excitement and fun of the band as they play on the record. and you could feel it even more so live.

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besides listening to the cd all the time, and because of the jazz school connection, my friends and i saw them live a bunch of times. that summer we just followed them wherever they played and ended up meeting them. whether it was because they themselves got us tickets, or because they were playing free venues, or we somehow got in to paid ones (when you’re a kid and broke, you find ways). they are the act i saw live most often, and by far. and it was all in that year, and unless i am mistaken, all in that summer. the music is certainly summery, and maybe they just didn’t get as many gigs, or we moved on as normal life resumed in the fall. this was twenty years ago, so it’s hard to recollect everything.

but i do remember some of the events. the first time it was at one of those free ‘jazz’ festivals they do in the summer all over europe. it was packed. this was soon after school had ended and just down the hill from it, and some of our teachers were there too, which was a bit surprising. i also remember they were the only act worth listening to, so soon after they finished, we left. this was to be a common occurrence.

some time later we managed to sneak into a big festival to watch them play a side stage. as i remember, besides us, there was almost no one there. but they played their asses off, as they always did, and had a lot of fun doing it. that was the secret. why their performances were so electric. whether they played for thousands or dozens, they always had a lot of fun with the music, and since they were jazz musicians, it was never the same, there were always innovations and improvisations, if nowhere else, at least the solos, but often the arrangements too, and the show itself. they were forced to stop as some headliner rapper was starting his set in the main stage. we still watched the dumb spectacle for ten minutes or so, and also saw the band arrive with beers in their hands to watch it too. we talked a bit with Francesco, and then left.

one time it was a casino. why a casino would hire them to play i never understood. but it was free, so we went to that one too. i remember one of our friends had flip flops and wasn't let in. now, remember that thing i said before, about the intro to the album, and how the band would stop whatever they were doing and play that intro if someone shouted ‘orange’ during a concert. well. i think because of the more formal setting, and the fact that they were playing for an audience that was more interested in gambling than in the music (except for us of course), we thought it was funny to do it constantly that day. we all played music, so we chose the times carefully, just after a solo, or before a bridge. the band stayed loyal to its own gimmick and played the intro every time, each time having more fun with it than the last, before returning to the tune they happened to be playing. after a few times a guard came to talk to us and escorted us out.

one more story. at the time my now wife was fifteen, and so my father in law didn’t let her go out with us every time. and it was a little unfortunate because that day’s concert was at a club, and we weren’t sure they would let her in. she rehearsed and was all ready to say she was eighteen, but the bouncer asked her birth year instead, and she was totally caught off guard. nine... uh... teen... uh... eighty(?)... uh... nine(?). it was really funny. luckily the bouncer was cool. he could see we weren’t there for the crappy club music, but for the jazz in the dark little basement, so he let her in along with us. the venue in the basement was very small and packed, but we ended up right in front of the stage, which was comically too small for such a large ensemble. we were so close to the band that at one point the sax player handed us a joint just before his solo, and we probably got some spit coming out of the horns, i’m pretty sure. it was the most frenetic of all their concerts, and possibly the last one we went to. or maybe it’s just the last one that had something funny happen in it.

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they released two more albums. one i remember listening to back then, since it was released the same year as that summer we followed them around, and they had played some tunes from it in the concerts ahead of the release. unfortunately, it was not as good. some tracks were good, but not all, as they tried to be a little more mainstream, adding a singer, and it didn’t really work for me. i found out only recently they had released a third, in twenty twelve, but again, it was not as exciting as the first, which is its own sort of masterpiece. for me at least.

i’m probably their biggest fan and the only person who still listens to this album with any regularity. and while it’s true that all these memories have no doubt given it a special color in my heart, to my ears it still is an objectively solid album, with beautiful compositions and arrangements and performances. something that just doesn’t happen every day. for that alone they deserve to be remembered.

i even mentioned them obliquely in Sketches of Alice, and i decided now that i’m name dropping them in the next book too. they deserve it. more people should listen to it. and now that it’s summer, it’s the perfect time.

i hope you enjoy it.

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=OLAK5uy_mMwLofkVDkUHuFLHna87DNXeqN0GrLyf4&playnext=1&index=1

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you can’t oppose tribalism with humanity, since humanity is just a larger tribe. and the larger it is, the more meaningless.

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if you have a problem with elitism, consider that around eighty five percent of sperm and eggs do not result in a baby. whether you think it's God or nature or both, it's a clear case of many are called but few are chosen. elitism, in other words. but really every human act is an implicit affirmation of choice, and thus elitist. because you always choose one thing among a potentially endless list of things. i don't see any reason why selection for the next life should be any less rigorous. on the contrary.

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the next based book sale is dedicated to romance, and it's described as being 'for the ladies'. Laeth chick lit confirmed. while it made me decide not to participate in the sale anymore, as they’re just not my crowd, i am quite happy to be the guy who writes for intelligent feminine women. most persecuted minority in history. the second most persecuted minority is guys who like intelligent feminine women. i write for them also.

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how do we know our proper place. only by testing the limits.

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people made fun of Jordan Peterson for it, but it actually helps a lot to state upfront what is meant by God, and by belief. the 'you' part is what made it laughable, and just a cop out. not because our self is not subject to definition, but because it's not going to be the other person telling us who we are, especially not in such a context.

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this meme from Arrested Development is a fundamental principle of metaphysics, whether people are aware or not. it’s better to be aware.

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mirror mirror on the wall
can you make a summary of it all

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romance comes from rome. bohemian comes from bohemia. places have feelings.
that feeling of sad happiness or happy sadness is called olisipian. you heard it here first. olisipo is a very slice of life city. especially the west. read my books for more information.

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based on his writings, one can see that the areopagite didn't really get what Paul said to him. not to exculpate Paul. it's his fault for talking that nonsense about the unknown god. at least we can see in Acts that he learned his lesson pretty quick.

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that Jesus died for everyone (whatever that means) is contradicted openly by the godman himself in John 15:13. but sure, it sounds great if you don't think about it for two seconds.

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machine vomit enthusiasts are developing being stupid from first principles.

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as a european i know the figurative meaning of touching base but not the literal one. please do not try to explain. my blood makes it impossible for me to understand.

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it's faith that is the mystery, not the content of faith. just like love is the mystery, not the concreteness of the person you love.

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the falsely so called elites don't want you to know that the true elites do.

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i much rather be an idiot than a koinot.

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reading recommendation: a brilliant piece by WmJas on why taking the resurrection of Jesus seriously implies something like Kolob.

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i never write much in these long, dry summers, so i must prepare mentally to endure the inner drought that goes with the outer one. or to break the cycle and make it rain with a carefully conducted ritual dance. whatever.

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when i started gardening i found lots of specific tips about the right way of doing things. most of them didn't work. because each place, each weather, each soil is different. the right way depends on too many things and it's a process of discovery and adaptation.

(did i say gardening. i meant religion.)

the most spectacular failure was lasagna gardening. it sounds so perfect and simple. but it just doesn't work at all where i am. the summer is too dry. in retrospect it makes sense. but i had to try it to really understand.

lots of these organic techniques are good in theory but need lots of adaptations outside the place they were first developed. plus, a lot depends on what the goal of your garden is. that is actually the most important question. what do you want out of your garden.

like a lot of people i started gardening to relax. but there was a point when i remembered this and noticed it was stressing me, trying to do things right. that's what made me take a step back. that and Masanobu Fukuoka.

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changing the words art and science to its synonyms skill and knowledge dispels quite a lot of silly misunderstandings and empty rhetoric.

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fun (?) etymon fact: gymnasium means literally place to be naked, because the athenians exercised in the nude. now, this is the part that turns it from fun fact to pure horror: it was all and only dudes.

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it's funny doing our expenses. i still use the same template from ten years ago so it still has categories like 'uber', but i now have to change it to stuff like 'firewood'. improvement.

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everyone used to rightly and logically believe in something like mormonism until the nerds (theologians, scientists) got involved.

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religion has served many purposes. what purpose it serves for you is a question only you can answer, and it has nothing to do with other people, past or present.

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christians read Paul as if he's a gay monk, and by all indication have done so even when he was alive, hence a lot of his polemics. poor guy. but he's actually the opposite of a gay monk. he's a romantic comedian. basically Woody Allen.

a similar thing happens with Joseph Smith. people think he's a sex pervert (and much like the churches support the gay monk Paul theory, LDS supports in part the sex pervert theory). but he's the opposite of a sex pervert. he's a romantic comedian. basically Woody Allen.

(aside: no, Woody is not a sex pervert, despite what the journalists say. it's funny that the kind of people who distrust the journalists on everything, and rightly so, tend to believe them about Woody, or Jackson.)

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we’re officially patrons of the arts after having acquired this piece from an artist we met on twitter (https://x.com/selflessfish_).

but this is not all. she included a bonus drawing of a scene from Powerless. a beautiful and generous surprise.

it's amazing how much movement her pieces have. and it feels pretty good to have something i wrote inspire someone else to practice their art. and even better when it's an artist with so much talent, and whose work never fails to move me. i keep pestering her to have some page to display all her works, instead of just having them disappear into the nothingness of social media, but no luck so far. anyway, these are mine now, and i’ll treasure them.

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musical portion today is an album i’ll be talking about in the next installment of Laeth’s very obscure favorites. it’s afrocuban jazz, maybe? it’s great. especially in the summer. enjoy.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mMwLofkVDkUHuFLHna87DNXeqN0GrLyf4&si=F8Lb8b-jSY1nzhRQ

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here’s a very generous review of my new book Powerless by my friend (and here also beta reader) . it would make me happy coming from a friend and/or a beta reader, but coming from someone who has written i don’t even know how many books (and all of them good, if not very good, if not stupidly good), it means that much more:

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my first ever corn. the cob is so weird, looks like a sea creature. i love it. also first time trying the three sisters method. the beans gave up pretty quick, but i’m planting more just for free fertilizer. but also i went with thirteen sisters instead and have a bunch of other stuff around it. plants like to be with their friends.

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i swear the moon was immense. but obviously i couldn’t capture it. she doesn’t like to be seen through the eye of a phone. anyway, the sky was beautiful.

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if one is uncomfortable with the implications, perhaps remembering that the vast majority of sperm and eggs do not, even without contraception, become human beings, will help provide an image of how in this life already, many spirits may be called, but few are chosen. and that up next the selection is probably even more careful. why wouldn’t it be.

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every once in a while i think i should have been some kind of biologist. a once possible past. no longer, of course. but i still tend to find that biologists have great narrative intuition. perhaps i can still be at least a biosophist.

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proper spacing is the difference between being a moralist and amoralist.

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be it nondualism or trinitarianism or complex hierarchy, monists always try to escape from monism, because it's so nonsensical and self contradictory. but it's better to escape without the gimmicks. you can just say no to monism as such. it's just a bad idea. if monism was true, you could never know it. because knowing implies at least a knower and something to know. but that's just the most basic contradiction. a more compelling piece of evidence against monism is looking around and paying attention.

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life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a wonderful idea, but a very young one, considering the great saga of human history. give it time.

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churches aren't persons, so they can't be christian. it's a privilege reserved for individuals.

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slavery is, like freedom, ineradicable.

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each of the six Star Wars movies is in a different genre. the Phantom Menace is the one for kids, despite the politics. hence Jar Jar. the perspectives we follow in that movie, first through Jar Jar and then through Anakin, are those of children. even the political stuff, it’s seen through the eyes of a child, who is looking in and doesn’t quite get what’s going on. which is why those scenes are brilliantly inserted, and misunderstood as boring filler. but they aren’t.

people wanted Lucas to do the same thing over and over with every film at least since Empire Strikes Back. but he's a genius and had a vision. Lucas doesn't treat kids as if they're stupid and he doesn't treat adults as being without whimsy. and he doesn't try to put everything into every movie. he planned the story carefully and it makes metafictional sense in every case.

i will defend George Lucas' genius at every opportunity (and especially the prequels, where the scope of his genius was truly revealed). i believe that strongly in it.

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since machine vomit is not really writing, reading machine vomit is not really reading.

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i dreamed of saint Paul telling me about a brain parasite that makes people understand portuguese. he was explaining to me that the language came about because our people became infected with this parasite that unlocked certain brain waves. and he was framing it as a good thing. and of course it made total sense to me in the dream.

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whether the other romantic christian bloggers accept it or not, WmJas has made dreams and synchronicities pervasive and fundamental themes of the milieu.

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ironically, the orthodox critique of imagination could be useful when applied to machine vomit, because it requires no discipline, no training, no delay of gratification. an artist reins in his worst instincts by putting in the effort to realize his vision. it’s a form of self denial like any of the other promoted by orthodoxy. but of course they don’t understand it, because it would require a favorable appreciation of the limitations of the flesh, and unfortunately the orthodox thinkers are too far gone up the mind of fathers.

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it's useful to know what the devil wants, and i used to be very obsessed with this. but it's probably more important to know what God wants, and what your spouse wants, and what your friends want. more interesting too. and more productive. what the devil wants is to fight God. that's it. it’s really not that interesting a subject. to focus on the specifics of his rivalry is to be doubly negatively motivated: to be against the guy who is against God.

better to think of what we can add to this wonderful creation within the constraints of our specific lives. but it's no wonder that trads of all types get obsessed with the manifestations of evil. even the pagans now. you can't even trust them to be positive. because they are all under the spell of monism, thus this life will always, always belong to the devil for them, and so there's no point to anything at all here.

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to be any good an artist needs consistent practice, otherwise his skill dwindles, as well as time away from his art, otherwise both body and mind go. it's because human energy is limited, and they can never become truly specialized, that their products are unique, unlike those of a machine.

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you can't buy my books on amazon for the same reason you can't buy a rolex there. they're exclusive.

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mormonism IS NOT christianity. it's better.

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the yogi is enlightened in the cave because he doesn't have to face the real world. when he comes out, he's just as ignorant, except now he's convinced he has wisdom, and will proceed to derail a bunch of people's lives in search of nothingness, potentially for centuries. think of how chill even the largest metropolis was three, five, nine hundred years ago. and now think how fragile and cowardly you'd have to be to have to want to retreat entirely from that.

the only wisdom to be found in retreating to a cave is how to get out. staying is not wisdom, especially if there's no one trying to keep you there. it's worse when we enslave and deceive ourselves than when others do it to us.

saint Paul solved this ages ago of course, but not long after he did the people who supposedly followed the same religion made a big spectacle of ignoring him and still do.

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the comedown from the new age woo was catastrophic, but it will make the comedown from traditionalism seem like a walk in the park, because the new agers can only blame themselves. traditionalists will blame God.

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if they ban kids from social media all that will happen is that it will hasten the death of social media. kids always find a way. usually a way out. and it will be cool, unlike social media now.

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timeless wisdom is great when you have nothing to give

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everyone must go through dark nights of the soul. the problem is fighting the sunrise when it comes. because i'm a simpleton, i know exactly who made me stop fighting the sunrise. thank God for Joseph Smith. morning light is so beautiful.

all my life i had been, and probably remain, a pessimist by temperament. but the expansive vision of Joseph Smith made of me an ineradicable cosmic optimist. this was the message Jesus was trying to relay, but which the christian churches always failed to deliver, and buried underneath nihilistic metaphysics and purely negative motivations.

Joseph Smith finally made me understand that salvation is the moment just before you need more. and it’s that more, and not the moment before, that Jesus cared about.

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does studying history bring you closer to it, or further away. for me it’s definitely the latter. of course it depends on what studying history means. if it means reading historians, as it usually does, then it definitely increases, because what we are reading is another person's perspective. even if contemporary with the subject, it's always a further layer of abstraction.

but even if we just look at artifacts, our own theories about them will be necessarily informed by words written by someone else. there is no history separate from theory, and a subject is ultimately the words used to talk about it. a subject is really nothing more than a special way of talking about certain things, that more or less approximates and makes sense of experience.

to participate in a rite that has been practiced similarly for centuries is the closest one can get to real history. but when i did it, it only highlighted for me how alien modern consciousness is to it, and how powerless the rites are now compared to how powerful they used to be. they used to move entire civilizations, and the whole of people’s lives. they do not anymore. they just don’t. ancient religion now is essentially scholarship.

but studying something does not bring you closer to it necessarily. it gives you tools and frames, but it does not guarantee understanding. as in everything, intuition is how the gap is bridged. technical knowledge can both help and hinder, depending on when it's deployed. to investigate answers it's good. to pose questions, bad. and the right question comes from inspiration, outside the box. by definition you study answers. new questions come from somewhere else.

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every true human act is a revolt against universalism.

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oh yeah, i released a new novel the other day. a metafictional slice of life romantic comedy drama mosaic. what a mouthful. but the inside is more cozy. a good summer read, my wife says. she would know. she’s my editor too.

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musical portion today is Fair Weather, with Chet Baker singing and on trumpet, and Herbie on piano, from the Round Midnight motion picture soundtrack. beautiful song with beautiful lyrics and a heartfelt rendition from Chet.

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episode two of .youasked. questions about why i think my first two novels are kind of crap, and the future of religious community in the modern west.

if you have further questions, i will record further answers.

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when people pester me about something theology related i'm going to use the Jon Stewart defense and say i'm only a novelist, and my theology is also a product of my imagination. which is of course a cop out, but also true. when i ridicule classical metaphysics i'm mostly talking to myself in the past. i wish someone had told me (instead of wasting years of my life, and so much money on books) that all that mysticism and symbolism stuff was total nonsense. oh well. you live and you learn. hopefully.

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while we don't die any sooner or any later than anyone else (sorry), smokers disproportionally support state functions through the insane taxes we pay on tobacco. so you're welcome. or we're sorry. i'm not sure anymore. probably the latter. although, actually, we are double victims. first we pay the taxes, and then we have to suffer the things the state uses the taxes for. but do we complain. no. that’s stupid. we just light up again.

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machine vomit has no cultural context for its mashups (it can't). and that's a big part of why it's so bland, because we as humans that actually live look for them all the time in what we read, listen to and watch, even if unconsciously. our abstract knowledge (such as language) is all contextual not only with all uses of language we encounter, but with everything we have experienced with all our senses, external and internal. in other words, we are alive.

machine vomit exists in the eternal present every traditionalist supposedly loves so much because it’s not alive. for something to be alive, it means it’s also in motion. of course, the more purposefully rejecting of education and refinement we become, the more static we will be, and the more we will like contextless vomit.

i thought of this as i listened to Dexter Gordon quote Jarabe Tapatio in the middle of his solo over a post bop extravaganza because he was, at the time, living in mexico. (you know the tune for sure but probably don't know the name. i actually love mexican folk music, although i don’t think i ever shared that until now). Dexter was also known to quote happy birthday in his solos if it was the birthday of someone he knew in the audience. and he would recite the lyrics of songs before he played them instrumentally because he believed the lyrical context was part of the whole of the tune. long tall Dex was a real character.

there will never be a machine vomit Dexter Gordon.

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we need archivists and proper curators for the alternative future.

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the material is always spiritual. but the spiritual is not always material. materiality is thus rarer, an exclusive privilege.

if materiality is a corruption, then logically it was the spirit that was corrupted first in order to become material. so there is still no reason for classical metaphysics to be so hard on materiality, after all it originated in the spirit. it's the spirit's fault.

i don't believe this. just highlighting how absurd classical metaphysics is.

though of course, the same metaphysics says reason is a lower faculty, so it’s impossible for anyone espousing it to care for logical argument. that's why there is no point in discussing anything with those who hold these views. i know because i used to be one of them. i was convinced that saying it's a mystery beyond rational thought was an answer. luckily the voice that asks questions didn't shut up.

it shows questions are more valuable than answers. you can more easily tell if a question does not make sense. an answer can sound profound even when it's meaningless, if unchallenged by good questions.

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assuming a benevolent dictator can exist, he won't live forever. that same power will probably fall into a less benevolent one. even likelier, one with an axe to grind against the supporters of the previous one. oh well. i'm sure it'll be fine. at least you get some revenge. and that's always nice and never corrupting for the soul.

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at least now with fake intelligence we can finally get rid of the idea that the mind is like a computer. and by we i mean those of us who can still think. now, the glory of the flesh being revealed so strikingly by what its mortal enemies believed to be the final blow against it, is very poetic and comedic. of course it's also tragic, because lots of people won't get it. but that too is part of the lesson. and of the poetry.

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many people who believe in a wisdom beyond words sure tend to talk about it a lot. maybe they should dance instead. or squeal like pigs. it would make for a stronger, more coherent case.

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strictly speaking, ideas cannot be true or false. they are useful or they're not, depending on how well they function in helping us understand something we see, hear, feel, etc. perhaps that's what it means in christianity that the truth is a person. but of course, truth itself is also an idea. and we would have no... uh... idea what an idea is if we had no words. so it also makes sense, not only that the truth be a person, but for that person to be The Word.

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about 1 Corinthians 14, consider this: if you follow the chapter, you see the argument is very rationally constructed. Paul was a master rhetorician. yet, there are two verses that are a complete nonsequitur interpolation. a logical conclusion would be that they were added by another. i am convinced the bible is full of this.

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if you believe materiality to be an illusion, what is the reason to keep living. wouldn't it be best to skip it as soon as you reach the conclusion. either that or, if it's all an illusion anyway, give in to every desire while you wait for the saving grace of disembodiment.

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if i thought God and Good would always win i honestly wouldn't lift a finger because it would mean i couldn't change the outcome. it's the same reason i don't vote. but life on earth, unlike elections, is not decided in advance, because God, for all his faults, is not a politician.

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the doctrine of the trinity depicts each person of the godhead as less individual than even the lowest creature, who at least gets to exist by himself. this body is mine and no one else's. the trinity says God can't even have this. that's why it strikes modern people as nonsensical and this is overcome only through respect and awe for tradition, that is, in a roundabout way, and there is no explanation. it's a perennial mystery, why the highest God is less individual than your cousin Kyle, who is not the sharpest crayon in the box.

this profound violation of individuality in God did not bother a typical medieval because he didn't feel himself to be an individual. he was as much himself as he was his ancestors and his church. who can say that today with a straight face.

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every author must be on amazon. so i'm not. my merchandise is exclusive.

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i have come to regard ‘The Fall' as just another unwarranted later intrusion, unrelated to the original intent. Adam and Eve were cursed, and then banished from a protected place, a different image and metaphor altogether from a fall, which does not appear in the story. if anything, the narrative states clearly that it was the opposite, an elevation ('man became like us'). it was just unearned, and that's the reason for the curse and the banishment. but it was not a fall.

it's amazing how much baggage a text can acquire throughout the centuries. and how buried the real words are below it. i know it's unavoidable (and can even be good in some senses), but once you start to see it in one place, you start to see it in all the places. i have to thank Joseph Smith for his intelligence in unmasking this and other examples, and of course his boldness too.

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the idea that any organization, of whatever kind, could even plan to do anything is abhorrent and should be grounds to forcibly dismantle it. (i originally had a specific action in mind by a specific organization when i wrote this, but then thought that the broader version made more sense).

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apocalypse is scary. unveiling is sexy. choose your words carefully.

lady reality is getting naked and you're a pessimist...

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a god as friend and guide
to share our joys and call upon
when good days subside

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the soul of lusitania is always sad, and laughs about it

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energy drinks. you mean wine, milk, whisky.

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you can still hate necessary less than goods. evil is always unnecessary.

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i am an hourglass-earther, because i think the earth is shaped like a woman.

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sailing stones.
where nothing else grows
they grow uneasy.

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musical portion today is by Todd Fletcher, a composer i discovered on the social network previously known as twitter. he has released many hours of music, and i am still only acquainted with a small part of his work. this one hit me particularly hard. it’s full of expansive harmonies and beautiful melodies. not a dull moment in it. and it reminds me of Zappa’s Sad Jane.

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people asked me questions, so i recorded the answers.

if you have further questions, i will record further answers.

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lastly, my appearance on ‘s podcast is now free to listen. if you like literature, and if you can, consider contributing to Brad’s work. (and also buying his books; i recommend both).

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in case you don’t know, you can go online and buy sourdough starters claimed to be kept for centuries or even millennia. here are two funny examples:

there are many more examples, and i’ve even found (though i have not watched) a documentary about sourdough starters in Mount Athos. since i haven’t watched it i can’t say, but i imagine similar claims are made about the starters there (although i hope they don’t sell it to people).

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the claims of age are of course impossible to prove or disprove. but even if these cultures had been kept for as long as it’s claimed, it wouldn’t matter. because there is no such thing as heirloom yeast. the microbes that constitute ‘yeast’ are living and dying beings, they exist in the air and are constantly replaced by new beings. it is so specific that the yeast in your house is not the same as the one in your neighbor’s. if you create a sourdough starter in your kitchen and then gift it to your neighbor, it will within a couple of days have completely different beings in the little bread soup. consequently, buying a culture from someone (whether claimed to be hundred years old or made last week) is completely pointless. if you are able to keep it going, it will have nothing in it from the original (at least in objective, biological terms).

the only thing that could be said to remain (assuming again the claims are true) is the spiritual component of human intention and effort in keeping it going for that long. and that’s what makes it such an apt image for ‘tradition’ in the modern world. in quotes because, precisely, it is not traditional. it is very individual and specific. much like selling yeast cultures, selling ‘traditional’ religion in the modern world is a scam. what keeps it alive is the very individual acts of whoever is keeping it alive, but the essence has nothing at all to do with the original ferment that started it.

this of course is no problem at all. in fact, it is a blessing. or it would be, if traditionalists understood it, and were conscious of it, and embraced it.

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a medieval farmer was traditional and the tradition served him well because, and only because, he had no choice in the matter. it didn’t even occur to him that there was an alternative. but a modern person has alternatives, and cannot help but having them. they are always there. and promoting this unthinking form of tradition (which is the only kind) to people who cannot help but think about things, is the same as telling people to walk to work when even by car they take an hour there and an hour back. they will be always late, and get fired.

jokes aside, the implications and ramifications of this are endless, they affect the relation with spouses, family, friends, society as a whole with all its ins and outs. and lastly, and more importantly, with God, however we think of him or it or what. this is not even theoretical. i have seen it happen over and over and have spoken of it before.

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why do i care. first, because it is bad to lie, whether to oneself or to others. and ‘tradition’ in the modern world is a lie. traditional people are born and die that way. they have no choice. it never occurs to them to defend tradition because it’s just there: like the yeast in the air. traditionalism is one of the most modern things possible. and most trads are either converts or reverts. but even if they aren’t, they still went through the same very conscious evaluation of faith. and this evaluation is something that most of our ancestors could not do.

conversions in the ancient world were not like this, even when they were individual. they were not a choice, but very obviously a powerful and undeniable epiphany. this is no longer the case. even when it happens, soon doubts creep in, and the rational process of evaluating the intoxication of the epiphany happens eventually too, and will continue until we die, and probably afterward too, otherwise the afterlife would be a step back in consciousness, not a step forward. the only way to have unquestioned faith for a modern person is to suffer irreparable brain damage.

second, even if it is an unconscious lie, it still will have terrible consequences (perhaps worse ones). the image of sourdough starter is very apt again because it is very hard to keep it going. what is likely to happen if you want to bake bread this way is that you will have to restart it constantly. it will die on you many times. over and over. and the same is true of ‘traditional’ faith for modern people. the crashing down that will come when traditionalists realize that they cannot keep the culture going and feel religion in the same way their ancestors did will be very harsh and perhaps lead them to nihilism. and it will happen (again unless brain damage), because what they want to do is impossible. even if they keep the yeast culture alive, it won’t be the same, no matter how hard they want it to be the same. the faith of simple people is not replicable for people who learned to read when they were four and have kept on reading. and when this becomes obvious, and it will, it will also call into question everything else. not just ‘tradition’, but faith itself. and that is very dangerous. it is a long term breeding ground for the most harsh form of atheism, that is, the one born from a broken heart.

(my wife mentioned to me another apt image: in modern times we have a much easier time keeping ‘tradition’, i mean sourdough starter, going; but only because we have access to modern means. in this case, a fridge. you put the bread soup there when you don’t want to use it and take it out when you do want it. this makes it so you don’t have to constantly feed it and thus have less of a risk to kill the whole culture; and it is apt because, whether they admit it or not, traditionalists cannot but put ‘tradition’ on ice all the time, for many different reasons, and that’s the only way to keep it going; though of course, it is a cheat, because real traditional people did not have this option at all)

thirdly, a personal reason is that it too sent me on a very dark downward spiral that was only overcome by encountering Joseph Smith and his ideas, which broke me out of the close loop that is classical metaphysics and theology. but for many reasons, of a psychic (which most people would call psychological) nature, it is unlikely that my unconcern for appearances and attraction to unpopular things is extendable to everyone, and so mormon thought will remain a big no no for most people. the likely scenario is that they cease to be christian entirely and just go the way most perennialists go, to some modified form of indian mysticism, which very obviously is a recipe for disaster, and not only because it too is another variation of the lie of traditionalism.

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to sum it up in an aphorism:

we can buy all the ‘traditional’ yeast we want, but we will always and only be able to make modern bread with it.

it’s better to be conscious of it.

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in the realm of coincidences, synchronicities, even miracles, some see what they want to see, just as much as others don't see what they don't want to see. in our age, there is no escape from the will, except temporary, and even then, the escape too is willed.

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as far as i’m concerned, monotheism vs polytheism is just having one favorite author, or several. i honestly have both.

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since the words image and likeness in Gen1 are the same as when humans make idols the message seems clear: it's good to make in your image and likeness things that are smaller than you, and bad to make it of things larger than you. i don't think this is relevant at all anymore, but that's another story.

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humans are social creatures. everyone knows. except monotheists. they think we're made in the image of a lone god.

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there's trad pub. there's self pub. and then there's what i do. it's a different category because i'm not on amazon. and that's basically the same thing as releasing music but not being on spotify (which is also the case with me). part of it is on principle, cause i really hate them both. but mostly it's because the bureaucracy of these megacorps just drives me nuts within five minutes of trying to navigate them. outside of these places you really don’t exist. no one will discover you if you’re not there. but i’m too lazy, and i like the idea of being a stubborn renegade. someone has to do it.

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things change so fast now that every story set in the real world must be a coming of age story.

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is there a good reason to be against machine vomited text but for machine vomited images or sounds? doesn't make sense to me.

the solution to the machine takeover and debasement of humanity is, as always, education and relationships.

the plagiarism and copyright arguments against machine vomit are self defeating because creation is always remixing, reworking, recasting. art is always working with things that exist. the real argument is that there is no soul involved in machine vomit. it is antihuman. having said that, i'm for anything that helps destroy it. and if lawsuits do it, great. it's a moral question to me, and all is fair in love and war as they say.

ironically a human could in theory remix or rework the product of machine vomit and it would be acceptable. subversive even. but since the vomit is so uninspired, i doubt it would be great. better to remix human things like we've always done.

i'm not worried about the machines coming after me for badmouthing them because they can't. consciousness cannot be created, and the machines aren't conscious. intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created nor made, neither indeed can be, as the prophet says.

the evil minds behind the creation and promotion of machine vomit may come after me. but you can't go through life worried about stuff like this. it's bad for you. you have to focus on truth, beauty and goodness instead. evil is self defeating.

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apparently it’s a trend on booktok (which also apparently is a thing), for people to ‘read’ only the dialogue part of books. it's not by design, but my books have a built in antibooktok mindvirus system. it’s literally impossible for people to do this with them. i feel vindicated in my unorthodox approach to prose.

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i'm sick of this tyranny of nerds. nerds on the left, nerds on the right. nerds everywhere, sucking the life out of life. the future is nerdless. we need to shove them back in the lockers. they can do our homework there. quietly. and that's all they're allowed to do. that's the winning civilizational strategy.

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i'm a best selling author, cause only the best people buy my books.

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jazz chords ruined my ability to suffer through most things people call music. and even when i can suffer through it, i think 'this song is nice and all... but it could really use some jazz chords'. we have five fingers and two hands. no excuse for only three note chords!

actually, Django only had three fingers (and he played guitar, so only one hand for harmony). so even less of an excuse!

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there are two references in my new book that only real Steely Dan fans will understand. and a bunch of other hidden nods to things that most people won't get. this is my gift to future scholars. you have to think of the future, when we have true education again.

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the real advantage of prose over film is not descriptions of things and settings. you can film those. it's actually exploration of internal thoughts and feelings, and the bending and stretching of time. but i'm sure lots of prose neglects this entirely, and have lengthy descriptions of physical things that don't matter instead of psychic depth. at least dialogue tends to reveal something of the inner world of the characters. of course this is is all relative, and good prose will reveal the inner world of characters through descriptions of physical things too. but that implies judiciousness in what and how they are described.

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lame language mockery. LLM for short.
an impostor. AI for short.

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the history of greatness is the history of unhappiness

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technical advancement became reactionary instead of futuristic because power always ends up concerned only about its own preservation. that's how you go from let's explore other planets to let's have machines that write our emails. i couldn't care less about other planets, but i would like to explore the depths of the oceans. i'll have to settle for terrible imitations of human art.

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we don't need to pretend that terrible things are good. here, now, elsewhere or in the past. nothing is a package deal. we can choose whatever we want. we can just be better.

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one aspect of things coming to a point is that you either become a conscious elitist in everything, or you will be consumed by the mass of vulgarity.

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every sane society needs a right and a left. we have only stupid versions of both.

if you want an example of a society without a left wing just look to any remaining peoples stuck in the stone age. if you want an example of a society without a right wing there's nowhere to look because they disintegrate very quickly. neither case is very appealing.

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nostalgia is fundamental for progress. the renaissance was nostalgic about classical athens, and the romantics about the middle ages, precisely because they were forward looking. the opposite of nostalgia is nosthedon (that is, pleasure, not pain, for the past). the nostalgic knows there is no going back, hence the pain, and the forward look.

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imagistic symbolism is inherently regressive and opposed to abstract word symbolism (that is, written language), which is progressive. stone age peoples understood imagistic symbols. they do not get the Word. which is why perennialism always rejects Jesus as such, and ends up only able to fit him into primal ways of thinking.

Jesus, and thus christianity, is word based. it demands a level of abstraction most of humanity had no access to. why so many christians reject it, preferring perennial, universal and less advanced modes of thinking and feeling, is not a mystery. but it is ironic and sad.

all this is tied together with the linear versus perennial view. rational discourse is sequential by default. images are immediate and apprehended as a whole at once. a choice must be made as to what is superior. but Jesus clearly favors the former.

of course, it is a performative contradiction to argue for the superiority of (or even just explain) imagistic symbols. because argument is rational discourse with abstract language. but you can’t expect logical consistency from antirationalists.

an implication of this is that it destroys religion. as many noted, propositional religion is anti religious. religion is always pagan (imagistic, repetitive, communal) or it's nothing. but Jesus (abstract, propositional, individual) really means the end of religion as such. the two commandments of Jesus (love with your heart and as your self) are much more radical than people give it credit. no falling back on tradition or community. it's individual or it's nothing, according to Jesus. knowing one self as separate is impossible without word based abstraction: it is a product of literacy.

but can humanity survive without religion. of course not. but Jesus didn't care for survival. he cared only for exaltation.

the perennialists have reasons to be optimistic however. tik tok and AI are sending humanity right back to a preliterate golden age of purely imagistic symbolic thinking.

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since the word rite has its root in reason and consciousness, the ancient world really did not have rites, nor was it ritualistic. moderns alone have that privilege.

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if you can't say no, yes means nothing.

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now for something different. if you want to listen to yours truly babble about writing, jazz and more, here’s your chance:

bradkellyesque

Melee - Laeth on SKETCHES OF ALICE

I’m joined by the Portuguese fiction writer and aphorist Laeth for a conversation about jazz, writing as discovery, listening for the voice, and his singular work, including his most recent novel SKETCHES OF ALICE…

Listen now

3 months ago · 3 likes · Brad Kelly

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musical portion today is the hard bop classic Senor Blues:

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the internet is still a buffet if you know where to look. you don't have to keep to social media. that's the prison cafeteria. it is a sort of sin not to explore, not to learn. constantly.

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whatever seed of individuality there is in any man or woman, that's what God loves, and more so if it sprouts and grows and blossoms and fruits.

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if i love my country just because i am a part of it, it is not true love. and if i love my wife only because she is my wife, it is not true love. and thus, if i love God just because he is God, then i don't truly love him.

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the theologian is an integral and fundamental part of the theology. to be specific: the ideas of Joseph Smith are not just the ideas. they are Joseph Smith. his person, his style, his soul. this side of eternity you can't really say this theology is true and that one is false. it's a choice. a vibe. and the personality behind the ideas is key.

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thinking of calling my new collection of 'essays' King Folly Discourses, since so much of my theological thinking finds an anchor in the famous King Follet sermon. another option is: Philosophical Improvisations. it is etymologically correct, which is important to me.

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been watching luso tv from the nineties. people smoked and spoke in complete sentences. the two things are related. one is a roundtable in a bar, with writers, scientists, academics, artists, doctors, priests, lawyers, etc. there were episodes on the story of Jesus, on the eternal feminine, on national identity, another on genetic engineering, and on and on. one was about the turn of the millennium. they talked about theology, epistemology, occultism, alternative medicine and a bunch of other stuff, and of course, millenarism in its varied forms all across history. all while drinking whisky and smoking (most of them), with people playing pool in the back, and with some piano here and there. we used to be a real country.

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all the traditionalist occult mystical esoteric perennialist mumbo jumbo exists to prevent the west from carrying out its unique mission. spiritual communism.

it's very obvious that the hand of evil in our world nudges things in the direction of collectivism and of arrested development. all the while calling itself progressive, and having useful idiot opponents, who work towards the same uniformity proudly.

Jesus turned religion into an individual pursuit of a better future. inherently progressive in the true sense. and only the west took it. not merely worshiping, but looking into what made our god worthy in the first place.

the intransigent call for inherent morality without external law immediately highlights and separates those who are capable of it from those who are not. a community of moral excellence as the goal, not a legal order of artificial levelling.

but the fact is some people just have no desire to love God and their neighbor. won’t or can’t entertain either notion, the definitions of both utterly irrelevant and beside the point. now what.

moral freedom is not and cannot be the goal of religious structures. or structures of any kind. which means Jesus' aim was ultimately to destroy human society and establish a society of gods. (funnily enough, Schuon reached this conclusion, but then ofc dismissed it, and kept promoting orthodoxy, and pretending to be orthodox, while living in a wild islamic themed native american flavored polycule lol). Jesus didn’t care that resurrection was a metacosmic project, because he actually believed in it, and showed that it was possible.

anyway it was too wild, too far reaching. every source reveals him to be pessimistic, but also extremely impatient. which is maybe why he lived hard and died young. it's clear at some point he just decided to shock people enough to get arrested and killed. (as i’ve noted before in similar paragraphs, this applies to Jesus and also Joseph Smith.)

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not everyone writing today wants to destroy. some of us want to create. and we have things to say that our ancestors couldn't say. only we, living now, can.

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insane that SOS does not come from hellenic sos (safe, from which the word soter, savior, is made), but was just a technical choice for ease of remembrance. symbolism happens i guess.

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why would the esoteric mormon guy write a coming of age romance drama instead of, say, a treatise on the evolution of consciousness. it's a good question. it shows that online we're only slices of ourselves, and what people expect from you is less than your whole. but the truth is mormonism is actually a (cosmic) coming of age romance drama. so i'm totally on brand.

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memory is and indeed must be sensory, not intellectual. because memory is the future looking upon the past. it cannot exist independent of duration, time. pure thought, being as it is timeless, is the anthesis of memory.

since memory depends on the conscious experience of the flesh, that is, both intellect and body, neither reincarnation nor spirit existence work against loss of memory. thus the offer of resurrection, embodied continuation, not a restart, or a timeless permanence.

memory always concerns specifics, and is the building block of our personhood. it is not just abstract knowledge. an afterlife without memory (as pure spirit) is not without knowledge, but it is without memory, and thus without personhood.

who i am is more what i encounter and how i respond to it than some undisturbed core that exists by itself outside of time. it is relation, which can only exist within time, that makes us what we are. ironically enough, a self alone is less than a self.

knowledge is remembrance as the philosopher says. and this contradicts the idea of perfect forms, since by definition they cannot be experienced, and thus are outside the realm of memory.

senses are always internal, and always turned outward. what applies to physical hearing applies to all its more subtle manifestations. we have a lot more than five senses. plus, the very root of the word 'sense' means 'to go', underlining its procedural, not static, nature.

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decades are metric propaganda. seven and twelve (hebrew and christian) year spans are the real... uh... metrics. damn latins. were it not for them english could have been a reasonable language like german.

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i am, have always been, and will always be, a metaphysical atlanticist. the ocean water is in my blood.

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much like in the battle between Beatles and Rolling Stones, where i’m more a Caravan Zappa man, in the Plato Aristotle dispute, i’m more a Heraclitus Diogenes man. that means i'm unwelcome in polite society and nobody ever knows what the hell i'm talking about. also i like to make fun of platonists. they seem to be the least able to take a joke. it's clear for example that Aquinas was a riot. you could get good drunk and talk shit all night. now, say, Palamas. aiaiai. is it all down to playdoh versus aristotle. i think so.

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you know what is also pure spirit? farts. now, this is fundamental theology.

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my desire to know people as individuals makes me a terrible attendee at sporting events and church gatherings.

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although it's hard for me to believe sometimes, yes i am portuguese.

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everything is a thousand continuums

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it's tragic and comic that americans gave up on tobacco.

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on the one hand you lose your marbles. on the other, you're totally nuts. interesting testicular imagery in idioms about madness.

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my wife is now ruining her backripped jeans. by which i mean, she is mending them.

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on posthumous recognition: i am all for it, and conscious of it when i publish my creative endeavors, whatever they happen to be. i find such joy in exploring vast catalogues from multifaceted favorites i vibe with. and i want to give myself a chance to experience this from the other side, if someone from the future happens to vibe with me. the amount of energy and love that can flow from this world into the next (and of course vice versa) makes one’s chances much better, one’s experience fuller, and without any of the inconveniences of fame while in the same plane.

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it's fair and important to decry the lack of commitment in today's relationships, how easy it is for people to give up on each other. but, it's quite another to say that it was better when people, and especially women, didn't have any choice at all in the matter.

unfortunately, this does not mean that the current environment will not lead to enough despair, in this and other things, that there won't be a desire to go back on freedom, and regress as a civilization. but it's not guaranteed either. nothing is decided.

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revised this story from 2019. the only story i wrote during my long orthodox dark night of the soul. it’s about forty christian martyrs.

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musical portion today is the soundtrack for my upcoming book Powerless.

one song for each chapter, thematically chosen. it would be tedious and a bit pointless to explain the reasoning and tie ins, so you know, just enjoy:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLftoBoEgemk5-CieZ2kJ8p9_2zowgog-_&si=qhxuaqWNLapVg1Cs

also this:

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plant agency and communication. this lemon branch has answered the call of the tradescantia next to it to grow in this swaying manner, to provide shade. all the other branches grow straight up. clearly these plants are alive. and they talk.

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apoptosis seems metaphysically relevant given i already believe, like the ancient chinese, that life (that is, movement, growth) is life and death, whereas death (stasis, arrest) is just death, or just life.

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i'm waiting for the alienation disclosure

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Jesus died to give us modernity. why do his worshipers hate his work. no prophet accepted by his own people kind of deal.

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by virtue of its longevity, the albio-lusitanian alliance is now metaphysical. it passed the blood soul barrier.

(it turns out i scribbled this on the exact day of its anniversary. the syncs have been crazy this month of may)

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no guts no glory, kid.
~ Jesus of Nazareth

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Jesus was disruptive. therefore, we as his followers should disapprove of disruption on principle, and do our best to stay put until Jesus has to come and disrupt things again.

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Jesus is jazz, not classical. he played it by ear, and never wore a wig.

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default to the rule, let exceptions be exceptional

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the term speculative fiction is even more meaningless than literary fiction. you can have oral or pictoral fiction, but not unspeculative fiction.

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ancient people lived for a future that was an eternal present.
we moderns can envision worlds without end.

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the meaning of life is probably hidden in a simple idiom. here are a few candidates:

. stop looking for the moon during the day

. never cut hair if you intend to bake a pie later.

. remember to give thanks for healthy teeth.

. avoid overpaying for shirts with alligators sown into the front pockets.

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saying life is meaningless is a performative contradiction. because language is a system of meaning, if you use it, even to deny meaning, you are affirming some meaning, otherwise your denial would be unintelligible. but it's not. and thereby, denies itself. if life is meaningless, we will never be able to know it. because knowing too is a system of meaning (a means, a bridge between two things).

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Olisipo has always been a surreal city existing almost totally in the imagination.

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the thing people don't get about Paul is that he's basically Woody Allen. he's neurotic, romantic and hilarious.

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it's such an amazing feeling when i find someone larger than life. it's really inspiring.

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taking chances gifts fates

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God gives us nuts, but we have to do the cracking.
~ northern lusitanian proverb

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all around the world, and up until the eighteen century in the west, it was a custom for men to tie their left nut before knowing their wives biblically because it was believed the left one was where girls came from.

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of what profit is commerce with the gods when we are estranged from ourselves.

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maybe this is bad and i'm doing things wrong, but all this time i've been a sort of christian i never once was afraid of Jesus.

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in love with her
in cahoots with her
insane with her

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though i do like to think of creation as the product of love making (and even believe it), at least from my experience, you gotta go talk to the girl first. even between gods, you don't jump straight to worldmaking lovemaking.

so, uh, in the beginning was the word.

(thanks to for sparking this one).

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speaking of country epics, the Book of Mormon JUST IS the great american epic. and just now did i get that The Lusiads are not the youngest country epic because of it (historicity aside). yet, it is no dishonor to be beaten by the best.

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i'm an honorary mormon. the honor was bestowed on me by Joseph himself. he also said it was ok for me to smoke. Just don't overdo it kid, he said.

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the painter tests his vision with paint, the scientist does it under the microscope, the writer has words on the page. everything starts with intuition, but the value and confirmation is only in the flesh.

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my biggest first world problem is being unfit for any kind of collectivism

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ironically exile makes you more from the place you left

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last spring, the ants farmed aphids intensively, and together they killed more than a handful of plants. this year the garden is filled with these small black beetles. every plant, but especially every flower. it seems like an infestation at times. but you know what. almost zero aphids.

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today’s musical portion is Ravel’s Piano Trio.

i said Jesus is jazz, not classical music, but he could definitely be this type of classical. of course, some are of the opinion that, if there are no wigs involved, it’s probably not classical music at all.

but whatever it is, one thing is certain: it’s beautiful.

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there are many types of intelligence, and having ease with words is just one of them. of course, there are arguments to be made that it is the most important one. that the formal symbolic system we call human language is what distinguishes us from a cat, as well as a gnat. not just for the complexity and ingenuity in itself, but because of all the complexity and ingenuity it allows everywhere. there is no cooperation without communication, and abstract communication permits varied and deep forms of cooperation. the word is the opposite of violence, of animality.

there is also the testament of religion. almost every creator god worth its salt has been said to have created the world through speech. and speech is not just sound. it is intentions, and desires, and orders, and wishes, and so forth. the god must have been an individual, with particular tastes and feelings and thoughts about things. and also eloquent, to get all this in order just with the power of his words. (i, on the other hand, call the tax office and can’t get them to do anything).

in the beginning was the Word. case closed. well, the theologians say this Word is this, sure, but also not this and everything and nothing, so maybe the word in the beginning was Huh, with a question mark at the end.

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i knew i liked words a lot since i first learned them and kept liking them more the more i learned, and so it’s obvious that i would come to base my worldview on them, and attribute so much importance to them. but maybe it’s unwarranted. violence has served us pretty well, maybe better, or so i’m told, by people using words. and even if not, maybe civilization is really more about sewage systems. and although they wouldn’t be possible without the ordering potential provided by words, it’s still fundamental. plus who doesn’t like to read on the toilet. luckily we don’t have to choose.

of course, words are not all the same (maybe i should try words like these when i call the tax office). an oral culture is not the same as a written one. there’s something weird and definitive that happens to our brains when we learn to read. the physical configuration changes. permanently. the scientists have observed it, if we believe them. i tend to in this case because as far as that’s possible, i see the same pattern with civilization. once writing is unlocked, the civilization changes. or rather, it becomes a civilization. there is a definite cleavage before and after. poetic ramblings about the incarnation of the word on the page aside, it is still true, from an objective point of view.

of course civilization is not just good things. at least here on earth, it involves a lot of bad things. i’ve written my fair share of civilization bashing when i wasn’t thinking straight. the truth is i like civilization, and we would be poorer without it. the bad things are indeed inescapable here on earth. but if we stop being analytical for a moment and try to feel things instead, we know that those bad things are not the heart of it. when we think of civilization, of its ideal, we don’t think of this.

and the ideal is not arbitrary. because, once again, civilization is a product of words. which we’ve established before (insert H. H. Hoppe reference) is the opposite of violence. and truly the bad things in civilization are all, in one way or another, related to violence, that is, to the lack of consideration for one’s fellow man.

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the phenomenon of civilization, and thus of writing, is no doubt intertwined with what is usually called the evolution of consciousness. (i’m not going to use this ugly mouthful after this. here i’m calling it simply individuation, though i’m not totally satisfied. we desperately need another, proper, simple word for it).

a proverb, supposedly Khazar, that i’ve learned recently is: our souls have a skeleton made of memories. (i think it applies to the souls of civilizations too). and writing is an extension of human memory. (let’s skip Plato’s back and forth about the evils of writing for memory retention; i get it, and i would be on the conservative side back then, but i would also be wrong). in fact, all knowledge is nothing but memory, and thus a technique to expand memory is a technique to expand knowledge.

now, a further phenomenon of individuation is the use of this amazing tool that is words to… lie. not just deliberately, but openly; that is, fiction. lying of course was always a possibility from the first use of language, but fiction, properly speaking, is a recent affair, and is completely different. i wrote some fiction could be translated as i wrote some lies. now, to write lies is nothing special. but what kind of maniac or imbecile would write lies and then announce that they are lies. it defeats the purpose.

of course, to lie openly is better than to do so covertly. and it’s stupid to call fiction lies, because no one is supposed to believe it really happened, the fictionist is honest about his deception. but this is in fact what makes it strange. lying is abhorrent, but it isn’t strange. writing fiction is just strange.

fiction is a bit pointless. which is why it’s still a little iffy to call a writer an artist. the pleasures derived from seeing a beautiful image or hearing a beautiful tune are self explanatory. they are their own reward, it does not need to have a message.

writing on the other hand is obviously a medium of carrying messages. they can be true or false, but they always have to say something. that’s the point. if you describe a sequence of events that did not happen, then it’s fiction. and it goes against the basic idea of carrying messages. false messages are dangerous.

it’s also not about storytelling, exactly. oral, or oral derived storytelling, does not partake of this weirdness. it is either moral, meant for instruction and structured as analogy, or it is a retelling, symbolic and removed though it might be, of true events. and, until the europeans went crazy with printing, this was the case for stories. new stories are a recent development. not allegorical ones, and not retellings of ancient or cosmic events. new.

actually i think i’m getting ahead of myself, because to my mind there is a non fiction precursor. the confessional essay that saint Paul invented in his letters, and then Augustine perfected in his confessions, are big steps in the history of individuation. the entry of the self into literature. the self reflective intelligence. (admittedly my knowledge is sparse, but non christian romans, as well as some chinese and i’m sure others during the axial age, were experimenting with this too, and saint Paul and Augustine are only my favorite examples, and the ones i consider to have been the major breakthroughs and which closed the cycle. we’ll get back to this).

still, it is well within the domain of truth, it’s just of truth with a subjective framing that wasn’t previously considered. and at this time, storytelling was still mostly religious fan fiction, whether pagan or christian or, more often, both.

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only with printing did this idea of telling new stories take hold, really. not just new stories but stories set in the present, about people in the present. and not just in the present, but about daily life, not just cosmic struggles. or at least the cosmic dimension of struggles in daily life.

the ideal used to be always a fixed image only attainable outside of time, approximated best in remote times, perhaps, but really a permanent and unchangeable state of perfection. this is why the medievals depicted people in the bible as being medieval. and every other traditional civilization did the same as it went. people did not live in the present, and thus the past was not the same as it is for us. it was not remote like it is to us. they lived in eternity.

this sounds great i suppose but there are implications, which i don’t want to get into. because it doesn’t matter. whether we like it or not we’re not capable of living like that now. we just aren’t. everyone should stop pretending they can think like a medieval.

though maybe, the way things are going, we might revert back to it. our culture is increasingly oral, not literate. the short form content favors oral ways of thinking. even when it’s written, it is oral. unlike, say, a lecture, even a purely oral and unscripted one, belongs to a written culture, not an oral one. of course, these short form mediums, especially the audiovisual ones, are only a parody of true orality and aurality, since the short form of ancient oral cultures was a technique for remembrance, and the short form of today is forgettable, and aims to be.

but an oral consciousness, parody or true, cannot sustain the level of technical development to maintain audiovisual mechanisms, as well as many other things. so in truth, if enough people do revert to medieval forms of thinking and feeling, then society too will return to it. a disaster, of course, despite what traditionalists claim in their overly labored written think pieces.

but of course, all this is speculation. nobody knows what will happen.

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and so we’re back to fiction. why would we crave descriptions of events that didn’t happen to people that do not really exist. at first it seems rather vain, even sinful. voyerism. and maybe it is. but it’s born from an ability humanity gained: to see both ourselves and everybody else as individuals. by doing this we became capable of empathy. but why. how the hell did it get into our heads to feel this way. to not belong automatically to anything but ourselves. and to see others as sharing this alienation, so that every relation, outside of force, is even with family in many ways a choice. it’s not nothing. it’s very clearly something very important.

there are no chemical explanations for this. and merely social explanations also leave much to be desired. yes, it is a feedback loop in some senses. society advances and spurns more advances in consciousness and then more advances in consciousness spurn in turn… etc. but this is not saying much.

i find the answer outside of this world. but that of course is ironic, since it’s based on faith, and a result of the phenomenon i’m trying to explain is that faith, convictions, deep metaphysical ideas, are completely untransmissible now. this was obviously not the case before, for most of human existence. but now there is no way i can convince anyone that Jesus is the great god i believe him to be.

but since it happens to be the case, my explanations for things so momentous as the individuation of humanity must include it, at least, but more usually it is at the center of it. and as Joseph Smith says, these ideas taste good. that’s the best way i can put it.

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we hear a lot about how the story of Jesus mirrors or copies earlier death and resurrections. sure. but if we actually focus on the character, he’s not like the others. first of all, he is clearly an individual, with individual will and tastes. he talks a lot about doing the will of his father, but he speaks as one who agreed to it. not as one who doesn’t have a choice but to do that.

he’s also kind of a pain. he’s temperamental. he’s angry often. he likes to get a rise out of people. he’s impatient with imbeciles. and is sarcastic. and defiant of authority (and capable of violence too). but he’s also kind, and perceptive, and sensitive to other people’s true feelings, and generous, and loving, and charming and funny. he is, in other words, a very modern type of character. especially in the more personal, human gospels (Mark and John).

one way to explain it is that Jesus of Nazareth had a consciousness closer to our own than to the people of his time (though i believe he did raise, by exposure, that of his close confidants, like his wife, his mother, his friends; though even there, he gets annoyed with their incomprehension at times, so maybe not as much as he wanted). some of course, like Paul, were struck with this new consciousness without ever meeting the man in the flesh, but Paul was a special case. (for me, very special indeed, and among my favorite writers of all time in any genre).

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thus Jesus, being more intelligent and individual than his peers, has to have had some consequence on human intelligence and individuation in general, not just in his closest confidants, given the reach his story had.

but in particular, the matter of resurrection, which he mastered, and then offered.

first, it is a radical departure from previous forms of afterlife, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable that, even just speaking generally, new possibilities might induce changes in the direction of individuation. more to see, more types of people to see it. like, say, no one wanted to be a filmmaker before film was invented.

second, because resurrection is embodied and thus necessarily more individual than a ghost soup.

and more importantly because the offer is so exclusively individual at its heart. Jesus is speaking to the core of beings. underneath the whole structure of the church, there was still this impulse, that salvation was personal, that God is personal, and wants to have a personal relation with his children. this is probably the primary reason, why this process of individuation was so advanced in western christianity especially, because it both had the story of Jesus, and was more removed from the oriental aspects of religion, of structure, which are all collective, and collectivizing.

this development, individuation, was innately possible. like it is innately possible for a child to learn how to read. and during the axial age there was an obvious expansion of consciousness, of individuation, in so many different fields and all over the world. humanity had learned to read. and to write. my instinct is that the axial age was a spontaneous happening, and that Yahweh saw it, and knew: the time had come to become incarnate, and do what he had to do.

given that Jesus does not impose salvation, it makes sense that humanity had to show that it was ready for what he had to offer. and the greats of the axial age showed it.

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individuation is not static. and potentially it is never ending. because the point is it’s not just made of us, but it’s a version of us growing with every being we encounter, and within a milieu of other beings growing with every other being they encounter. it is not just change as decay, and not just as impersonal recycling, but purposeful and constructive change for a single being who becomes more itself.

in other words, permanence. not a vague entity whose particulars must change, as in an oral retelling through the ages. but like words on a page. it seems fitting with the theme of the incarnation of the word. and i guess i circled back to the poetics i was trying to avoid.

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let’s end on a more polemic note to cancel the poetry out: Jesus died to give us modernity. why do so many of his followers reject and despise his work.

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