Mini Altar

Here's another pyramid that was real important when it was built.

Nothing Changes

I can't make this comparison any more clear. Yes, most people will claim the Goldman Sachs building on the left "is important". But don't you think the Pharaoh's said the same thing about their pyramid? It's partly frustration at living in a digital age that is perplexing and reliant on the dead bodies of plants and microorganisms, beautiful parks that became coal and oil that we burn to propel our sagging bodies around on mini quests for ice cream and wolves. And part of this world is hedge fund and multinational bulge bracket investment banking and all those other "important" institutions that grain farmers and Inuits build with their carved bricks. But the snake oil salesmen have gotten smarter. Now they don't sell you snake oil. They take your money and promise you snake oil profits at some later date. And then they promise someone else that snake oil sales will plummet so they hedge their investments and take a commission on either a loss or a gain. The snake oil salesman doesn't care either way.

No apology

"Anyone who goes openly on a journey into the interior, who withdraws from the ceaseless agitation of everyday life and pursues the kind of training -- satipathhana, yoga, Jesus Prayer, or something similar -- without which genuine self-knowledge cannot be obtained, is accused of selfishness and of turning his back on his social duties. Meanwhile, world crises multiply and everybody deplores the shortage, or even total lack, of "wise" men or women, unselfish leaders, trustworthy counselors, etc."
-- E.F. Schumacher

There is a treasure to be found in the heart hidden from view, solace and informed. Wisdom flies from the beer bottle like fruit flies out of a bag of moldy bananas but in the land of swine the one eyed pig is king. When drug addiction is the initiation into normalcy then the outcast is sober and reviled. In a neighborhood of heroin junkies, the gypsy with the bongo drums is the outsider. The clouds of conformity drench the parched land with tears while the elk nurse their young in burned out hollows.

Lotus Flower

"Yoga is the control of the ideas in the mind," said the bearded Abraham squatting before the clay pot that represented Oggy's ignorance and the broken wine jug that represented Oggy's tempted flesh and the honeysuckle blossom that represented a lotus blossom that represented Oggy's potential for enlightenment. "Yoga is another variation of Vipassana, or clarity of vision, focus, control. Oggy? What sayeth thee?"

Perplexing II

"Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see. Every thought can be scrutinized directly except the thought by which we scrutinize. A special effort, an effort of self-awareness is needed: that almost impossible feat of thought recoiling upon itself-almost impossible but not quite" E.F. Schumacher

I've gathered more evidence that suggests I belong in a Trappist Monastery where I can recite the Jesus Prayer through the coming environmental apocalypse, the skin being singed off my nose by radioactive tomatoes and the blistering rays of collective hate-speech comments on CNN.