Palolo

Kaau 059, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Moss and Fern

Kaau 061, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Life. Here>>>>>>>>>>>Now.
=
I Think I Thought I Knew It All and Gladly.


I am living this life
Writing these words to an audience
I don’t know.
You
May or may not know
Me.

I may come to know you
the audience of this writing
If I keep on writing
I may come to know you
the audience of these words
If my if’s are true

Dick Cheny Moon Bunker Lunar Republic

Moon2, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Moon for Sale

Moon for Sale, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

I just found out about the Lunar Republic. I didn't know the Moon had a republic, but it does, and it's on Earth.

The Republic of the Moon has claimed part of the Moon, and is selling it to raise money to get there. Yep. It's all legal according to their website. They are selling 1 acre for only $20.00, on the sunny side (that way they don't interfere with Dick Cheney's ranch on the Dark Side).


I'm considering staging a coup de tat in the Lunar Republic. We just have to get there before they do, put on space monster suits and point ray guns at them, brainwash them, then have them sign over their leases and use them as slave labor to build a hydroponic green house. Then...

Wait, this just in...

I've been following the rise of the Lunar Republic for over two weeks now. They apearantly have a moon monopoly. From what I gather, the Lunar Republic aren't the only ones to have laid claim on the Moon, though they claim to be the only legitimate ones. The town of Geneva Ohio claimed it in 1966. A Berkeley science fiction club claimed part of it. A Chilean lawyer claimed the whole thing (apearently Nixon asked his permission for the NASA to land there in '69).

Then there is Dennis Hope's Lunar Embassy that claims to have sold over 300,000 acres on the Moon since 1980. He also claims exclusive rights to our Moon, eight other planets, and their moons. Some of the Moon real estate entities have been to court on their claims. Some judges throw them out claiming no jurisdiction over the Moon.

The US and Russia planted their flags there, but the UN prevented them from claiming it for themselves. Reportedly, the Lunar Republic have been in talks with India and Russia's space programs. The Republic wants to help fund Lunar missions in order to have their real estate registry delivered, thus sealing their claim.

In 2004 President W. Bush pledged to go back to the Moon and build a Lunar base for a mission to Mars. Ferrell Jackson, Managing Director for the Lunar Republic Society, claims the US can no longer afford it.

It sounds like the Moon is still up for grabs, until someone actually homesteads the place.

I wonder if I could be sued for transcribing a musing on the notion that the Lunar Republic funded Al Queda to initiate a war that has drained the US's Space budget. While the US is buisy with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, the Lunar Republic Is talking to Russia and India. Just a thought.

Here'a another conjecturial thought:

What if the billions of the mystery dollars that Halliburton shines away each year is being spent on Dick Cheney's Dark Side Lunar Bunker. The Moon Treaty says that's a no-no, but when does Dick and Co. regard anything other than their own plans and plots?

Went to bed after that last paragraph and woke today to read THIS on the Washington Post. "U.S. Planning to Build Base on Moon to prepare for Trip to Mars". Last night was the first time I'd thought about Bush's space plan since it was news two years ago. Maybe the writer read my blog last night. Maybe Bush read my blog and decided he'd better throw it in gear lest the Lunar Republic show up the USofA. I'd much rather hear Bush talking about Moon dust and Martian water than Terrists and Armageddon.

More later....

King of the World

I usually don't get too topical, as far as "news" and politics goes. I like to try and write things that are timeless, that might have some poetic quality that allows it to live longer than the time it takes me to write it.

Well, treason is timeless. Mass hysteria is timeless. Dictatorships are timeless. Throughout my blog I have crypticly peppered hyperlinks to un-news: the undercurrent of the mainstream. A swift and cold undercurrent. I am moved to now to present some not so cryptic hyperlinks:

EX-REPUBLICAN SUPREME COURT JUDGE WARNS OF THE NATIONS DESCENT INTO DICTATORSHIP.

BYU PHYSICS PROFESSOR CLAIMS THE COLAPSE OF THE WORLD TRADE TOWERS IMPOSSIBLE... WITHOUT PYROTECHNIC HELP.

BUSH BUSTED FOR IGNORING CONSTITUTION...AGAIN.

I'm now compelled to re-post some hyperlinks I put up in October '04:

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THE WORLD BEFORE 9-11?

THE BLUEPRINT FOR A 21ST CENTURY DICTATORSHIP

OPPOSED TO DICTATORSHIP? TRY THIS.

Oh, one more very recent item:

HOW TO PICK OUT THE CONSERVATIVE IN THE PLAYPEN

Linear Man

Linear Man 7, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

My venture into web toons. Go HERE to see Liner Man blog.

Kolohe: ??-??-?? - 02-23-06 R.I.P.

Recycled Dog, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Weed Pulling Meditation: Introduction

TJ on Banyan under Albezia, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

WPMC Introduction

Humans aren’t the only force vying for domination of this planet. There are other forces that thrive on the destruction of everything around them.

The Albezia tree, native to arid parts of Africa, was introduced to Hawai’i by the US military to quickly grow and provide camouflage for their barracks and instillations. Now, half a century later, members of this introduced tree species are on a fast track to becoming the largest living organisms on the planet. Hooray for the tenacity of the Albezia and its efficient capitalization on the wet Hawaiian climate. Woe unto anything that attempts to live around it. Its dense, wide canopy robs the light from anything trying to grow beneath it. The massive lateral branches can run for a hundred yards at a height of eighty feet. They are brittle and subject to snapping in the tropical winds. A considerable threat to anyone or anything attempting to live below. Unchecked, it will cover whole mountains, extincting the plant diversity that has evolved for millennia. It will shut down roadways, crush dwellings, wreck underground infrastructure. It will survive as the fittest, at the expense of many other life forms. But they sure are impressive. Beautiful to look at, and awe inspiring in their grandeur.

This seems to be a natural event in the course of life. This phenomena can be found in the insect world, the body of humanity, geology, meteorology, chemistry, etc. It has been alarmingly accelerated by the human tendency to reshuffle the life deck and deal new hands to nearly every level and locale of life. We introduce ourselves, our ideas, our cultures, our loves, our hates. Our disease. Our advances. Our essence, which shares a commonality with all life. But, life tends to be alarming. Right from the start.

It happens in your garden as well. What evolved to grow in your chosen plot may no longer be around, or it may not be able to compete with what volunteers to grow there now. There seems to be no going back to what many consider a natural state. We can’t bring back the dead (yet). Fighting the mega-vitality of the introduced poses a formidable challenge. But there be hope for us, individually and collectively, to foster some kind of desirable, sustainable, equanimity in our gardens. There can be no specific manual for how to tame the unique chaos of each garden. The transformation of a garden from burden to benefit depends on the garden and the gardener, their mutual desires and needs, their will and volition. This manual proposes to offer tools for the gardener to use in developing a blueprint for their ideal garden.

A garden to feed the belly, a garden to soothe the soul, a garden to inspire the mind. A garden to aggravate the neighbors. A garden to kill you enemy. A garden to harvest for others. A garden to experiment with. Your garden can be chosen consciously and in harmony with your way. It helps work become play.

It’s hard to grow bananas in the desert, unless you choose to do so for the sake of the challenge. It’s easier to grow plants that are suited for your environment, but it may not be as interesting to you.

This manual covers my process of growing my ideal garden. I endeavor to generalize the lessons I have learned in order to broaden their appeal to a general audience. It’s more the travelogue of a process than a prescription of a method. Take it how you like. It’s not so much about what is written here, but more about what you hear in the writing. How you interpret this message. Go crazy with it.

Weed Pulling Meditation Center Manual : Chapt. 1

Weed Pulling Fingers, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Official Weed Pulling Meditation Center Document

Lets start by talking about the word metaphor. I think the word deserves attention.

(m t -fôr , -f r)n. 1. A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in “a sea of troubles” or “All the world's a stage” (Shakespeare). 2. One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol: “Hollywood has always been an irresistible, prefabricated metaphor for the crass, the materialistic, the shallow, and the craven” (Neal Gabler). [Middle English methaphor, from Old French metaphore, from Latin metaphora, from Greek, transference, metaphor, from metapherein, to transfer : meta-, meta- + pherein, to carry; see bher-1 in Indo-European Roots.] met a·phor ic (-fôr k, -f r -) or met a·phor i·cal adj. met a·phor i·cal·ly adv.


I start with this word because I think a deep understanding of metaphor enables a person to make connections that might not otherwise be made. In my opinion, finding a metaphorical illustration to help convey the essence of what one sees or has a desire to share adds an additional dimension beyond the words used. To illustrate:

Before a garden can be planted, the ground must be prepared.

One could limit the phrase to seeds, weeds and dirt. One could also assign metaphorical designations to the nouns and verbs:

Before a desire can be realized, the conditions must be cultivated.

Or something like that.

The illustration of the garden (if one actually knows how to plant a garden) serves as a mental model to reflect upon in the process of realizing ones desires. Knowing what you want = getting the seeds. Knowing the ideal season and climate that the plants will flourish in = knowing when, where and how to act on what you want. Cultivating the desire = weeding out volunteer seeds that would compete with the ones you chose.

Now, I would like to propose that the act of planting a garden can serve as a meditation on, and/or a prayer for, the realization of ones larger desire. Even more, I propose that the real, active process of finding what grows well where you are (or moving to the place that best facilitates what you want to grow) serves to germinate ones natural desires if one opens their mind to them, and showers them with attention once the seeds have sprout.

Whoah. I’m mixing my metaphors here. On purpose. That’s my point. Metaphors can be two way doors. Or three.

Do you see what I’m saying? I ask this not in condescension, but as a literal question.

Do you see what I am saying? Or do you just hear the words? Probably neither since this whole thing be written text.

Get my point? I ask this both metaphorically and literally. It be my intent as a writer to prod your curiosity to read further. Then we can have a relationship. Without ever having physically met.

It be my desire to relate with more people with less effort. So, I concentrate my effort on defining clearly what I want to relate, and choose an appropriate medium for that want to be conveyed. Hi there.

Plumera Negative

Future Primitive, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Future Primitive

I climb into my motor vehicle and begin to drive off. There are a couple of horses in the street. They look old, like they’d escaped from the glue factory. They were cantankerous as well. One kept sticking his snout in my window. His teeth were brown and curled like an old beavers. I drove on and found a strange dog that looked like a kiwi. A very pointy nose that flared dramatically into a puff ball of a dog. He was seriously injured. Half of his fantastically furry back was hanging to the side and his raw flesh was exposed. The Amazing TJ had said he wanted a dog. Well, here was something to test his resolve. We decided to try and fix it. What do we do? Tie the dog down and stitch him back together? Shave the fantastic fur first? Wash the whole dog in peroxide? We debated. This debate and vacillation took a very long time and many people were consulted. Eventually Mayor Mufi stitched the dog up on a football field with a full house.

This whole scene wore the colors of a 1970’s detective movie: dingy city colors. Mustard yellows and forest greens. After the dog surgery I found myself in a high rise married to a Pilipino woman. I don’t know how long I was married to her, but I didn’t know her name. She was very nice, and took good care of me, as much as I would let her. The building was noisy. There was a freight elevator outside the windows. I could push a big round plastic button and the elevator would stop at my windows. I had four windows. I opened one window to throw out cans, one for bottles, one for newspapers, and one for books. Then when I closed all my windows, the elevator would drop with a shriek of old metal and flip into a compartmentalized bin. I wore combat boots and all black and walked stiffly. Though I wore these things by choice, I looked forward to taking them off at night.

This scene had the hues of a 1960’s Technicolor film. I’m standing in a field of dead brown grass. There are a couple of pieces of hulking architecture with flaking paint that are partially overgrown with weed trees and vines. Large manors. “South Africa” I think to myself. There are people around. I sense small activities in the large places. I enter the massive arched doorway on the building in front of me and find a courtyard. A dark skinned old woman approaches me and hands me a piece of dried stiff hide with black fur on it matted with blood. She then points to a gorilla that has a terrible scabbed
wound on its back. She indicates that I should fix it. I protest that it is too late, this cannot be repaired. She ignores my opinion and returns to the building. The gorilla is outfitted with an iron frame with wheels like a cart. It’s head is in an iron hood with a slot to see out the front. This mechanism forces it to walk on all fours. I lead the gorilla cart through the courtyard to a marketplace. The place is not very busy and has the feel of an abandoned theme park. Managed decay. Julie Andrews is there. She informs me that we are not in South Africa, but Big Island Hawai’i. It seems that there had been a huge growth spurt, then thpphtht. Economic collapse. Fuel prices made it impossible for the tourist industry to continue, and the wealthy fled during the uprising. A stasis had been reached and a new culture took hold. It was brutally male, and yet the women were afforded a high degree of safety. Well, it wasn’t that simple actually. There was a self imposed caste system. Some people evolved into what resembled the Homo Noeticus, while others happily indulged in the id-ness of the Homo Sapian. There was a mutual respect between the two classes and mutual social interactions, but the divide was definite. The Homo Sapiens became the worker class, the Homo Noeticus employed them in building a sustainable infrastructure. Words were less a priority to both groups. The Sapiens were much more physical with each other, slapping each other around as a matter of course, the Noeticus communicated more subtly, and less redundantly, using words as tools, instead of spending them as social currency. Ironically, the Sapiens took over the cities, and the Noeticus spent most of their time and energy in the more rural parts.

Then a rooster crowed and I found myself in Waimanalo.

Does Anyone Remember Laughter?

Dino -1991, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Sitting down.

Scotty Baron and Dark Sevier- 1991, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

I lost my sense of humor doing stand-up. Ha ha.

It was the early 1990's. Los Angeles California. Jerry Seinfeld was the King of Comedy, but relatively unknown. Bill Hicks was still alive, kicking every PC dogma that came walking down the Boulevard.

A&E's Evening at the Improv was defining the comedic craft for the rest of the decade. We all suffered for it: the comics, the audience, the art.

I bought it. I was in. I came to Hollywood to make it big, baby. The comedy biz was booming. In the mid 80's there were fewer than 50 comedy clubs in the country. By the early 90's there were over 500 possible gigs for the chuckle hucksters that were willing and able to work the road. Some of us hoped to bypass having to gig the comedy underbelly by being "discovered" in Hollywood. The cable comedy shows were multiplying, but they all seemed to be taking their que from the master packagers, the McDonalds of comedy, The Improvisation. The Improv discouraged improvisational comedy, ironicly. Ain't that funny?

The steriotypical Improv comic was wacky. Geeks. Freaks. Self effacing hacks. Really slick one trick ponys. No edge, no power, no guts. All they needed was a tight seven minuites and a willingness to prostrate their craft in front of the club owners, Bud Friedman and/or Mark Lonow . They were the perceived gatekeepers to the industry (I have my theory on how that came to be so, but it's too laden with animosity and conjecture to spill here, now).

The comics tried to unionize several times. They are a hard lot to get togeather for anything serious. As they should be. Perfect to a flaw. There was a comedy blacklist in the seventies when they tried to organize. Scabs took the stage in LA and NY, and for the most part still have it.

After honing my act and building my craft for a whopping thirteen months, I was ushered into "The New Faces" of the Improvisation. I was one of thirteen chosen out of over two thousand auditioning comedians. I was stoked, but puzzled. Why did my favorite contemporaries not make the cut?

We, the farm team, were encouraged to "hang out" at the Melrose club. There we would gain exposure to industry people. we might be "seen by someone". If a paid comic was unable to show, or the audience wasn't too badly bludgeoned by the idiocy and bitterness of the "regulars", we might have the supreme good fortune of being able to step in front of that famous (fake) brick wall. For no pay.

And we did. For several years, some of us. For several years some of the most incisive wits among us continued to audition, and fail to make the cut. This is my opinion of course, humor being a subjective thing. All I have, really, is my experience and perceptions of the whole thing.

Here is my favorite one;

A thirteen year old comic, Casey something, form New York spends the summer in LA with her nanny working out her act at all the open mic's in town. She's honing her craft for the big audition in front of Bud on the Melrose stage. Her big night comes. She does a great job in the two minuites alloted; great stage presence, solid, thoughtfull, and mature material for her age. She gets to sit at Bud's table for her critique. According to my agent at the time, who was sitting at the table with Casey, Bud congradulated her for a good job done, then began his critique:

"The joke about the Yuppies( "Yuppies are now writing childrens stories. The only problem is: they don't have any morals."),it was good, but have you thought about using the word ethics instead of morals? People might identify with that word better."

Casey was mortified, she was kicking our agent under the table in a plea for help. She was flaberghasted herself but managed to segue the canversation around Bud's mental wreckage. When my agent told me the story, I decided to quit the Improv Farm Team. and comedy. The guys that had been shaping my art were morons. I had been shaping my craft to fit into their pea brains. The perameters I had willingly squeezed myself into were pea braining me.

I see the comedian as serving the roll and function of the Court Jester, the closest advisor to the King. The Jester had the delicate task of holding a mirror up to the court to show them their folly, but in a way that didn't threaten his neck.

As a republic we need to be shown our folley so we can laugh at it. The laughter brands our folley so we can more easily recognise it when we face it again. Without the laughter, we live in isolation, in the delusion that all this is serious business. Life is not just politics and car wrecks. There is beauty and love and hilarious lessons to be learned.

Laughter is the best medicine. Where are our doctors?





(to be continued...)








(to be cont.)

Fool Cycle

Smoke 044, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

Art projects. Money Jobs. Relationships. Fires. Everything finds its end.

Like a fire, all these things must be stoked to continue. And I must be stoked to continue stoking.

Even the wildfire exhausts itself eventually.

Obsession

Loopy 8, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

It’s possible to keep a flame burning for years, though it may require burning the day in search of fuel for the night.

Ascention

Orionz 086, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

The life of the flame cashes in brilliantly on the investment of time. Hotly. Briefly.

Naturally

Palolo Ridge, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

The tree that finds itself rooted properly may enjoy ideal conditions that allow it to grow large and deep.

Effective

Bonzaisan 043, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

The person that finds itself may realize it has the option of choosing the ideal conditions that will allow it to be true to itself. And the responsibility.

Bliss

Saturday Bowling 009, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

The fools know not what’s at stake in this life, so their strife remains tied to it, moored safely in the known.

Onus

Halloween 062, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.

The self aware know of the great vastness beyond the harbor of consensus, but have no hope of deliverance, for they must captain themselves.

Vapor Puppets

Vapor Puppets, originally uploaded by Dark Sevier.