Lucid Narcosis

hung over life

2009-03-21T06:26:00.002+02:00

i will stay where you left me
unbegun
not tainted by your temptation
to move on.

living with lies i can bear
it's perhaps truth i can't stand
so thank you for being patient
with my hastiness.

oh my, a crazy world
lives in my head
gambling with the beauty
of tomorrow.

i've turned the corner
just to find my heart arrested
and broken
at the sight of a window not lit.

who would have thought
that i was bugged
the day before yesterday
poisoned by love?

stay here as i turn the corner
once more
hang on until i'm gone
just for the thrill.

is making love really enough
to save
the stroke of luck
from my bare hands?

Glassy Eyes

2009-01-01T23:27:00.013+02:00

I fell for eyes of fire
Surprised to see me know
That playing with desire
Is what gives life a go.

But now the course is over
Those eyes have let me down
As darkness, lonely rover,
Has found no king to crown.

I've seen the empty stare,
Gliding to pass me by,
Of glassy eyes too bare
To care if I die.

Yet, under the lost gaze
Avoiding me with grace,
The Nothing set its maze
And caught me... way off base.

The Breaking Point

2008-12-30T19:24:00.013+02:00

There is a secret tomb in no man's land,
Forsaken by the gods beyond life's end,
A place rallying lies to guard the truth
That paradise is wilting before youth.

It is the place where Nothingness resides,
Unholy place of God's demise for sides,
But sought by man as an attempt to fly
Rising above his right to live and die.

Something stronger than the feel of power,
Mightier than the rush of the hour,
Forged by the fire built into the flesh,
Breathes the mana that's meant to refresh.

The Rising Star

2008-09-23T02:45:00.001+03:00

I've tried to catch a rising star,
My fault...
Its light shines now too far,
Above my vault.

The arching sky across the sea,
Horizons know,
Will never find its stretch a key
Yet stars will glow.

The waves below pester the night
With stifled silence,
Too bad they can never take flight
Nor leave of absence.

But just one star's enough to cast
Showers of light,
Lending the waters its full blast--
Shadow of might.

The Way Back Home

2008-09-07T04:09:00.001+03:00

Tonight's strange music pours down the road,
Stillness itself is about to implode,
Ecstatic air presses death to load
The fateful seconds of Time's secret code.

Emotions once hung now raise and walk dead
Hungry to feed on the lives they have had
Lost are all words, nothing's left to be said,
Flowers of mold are now crowning my bed.

On Truth and Power

2008-07-28T00:40:00.000+03:00

By all accounts, Truth is weak
Because it does not show its power
Until it is too late.

Power itself is never true
Because every step forward is a lie
Meant to deceive.

The power of Truth moves us through life
But the truth of Power holds us back
In ignorance.

Truth comes forth when Power subsides
So that the unknown become known
In all its might.

Truth has no power for the willing,
But the willing has no power without Truth,
As he only knows the power of Power.

The truth of Power escapes one's will,
Just as the power of Truth goes also unnoticed,
Yet Truth and Power are a couple.

But there's something else, right on the line
Where Truth and Power meet, and that's called life.
Life's power and truth come from Beauty.

Closer Than Touch

2008-07-17T03:37:00.000+03:00

At times, I feel that no matter how close I get to what I want, it's just not close enough. Closeness seems to long for its completion in touch. But if touch is indeed the limit of closeness, then it follows that touching is what also destroys the feeling of closeness. There is closeness as long as there is distance, and the closer you get, the heavier is the burden of the distance left to be crossed. Physical space is the expression of metaphysical estrangement.

There is no real, physical space between you and what is rightfully yours, because what is owned can neither be explored nor conquered. I, of myself, can know nothing about me. This is why otherness is so important, because only what is truly foreign to us (metaphysically) can mirror back to us our real self. Otherwise, in the absence of otherness, the only self-image we may get about ourselves will be a narcissistic one, that is, the visible, knowable part of who we are. But our real self, contrary to an image, cannot be captured, manipulated or used in any way. Not of our own will, in any way, because an "other" can always do that.

But so much about space. Space is a very unfortunate invention, because there is "space" even where there is no actual space left, such as in touch. Far from completely eliminating space, touching actually opens up a new kind of space--a metaphysical one. And metaphysical space feels heavier and much harder to overcome than physical space.

Metaphysics is what separates me from myself, or who I really am from the pitfalls of my mere image (that is, from who I think myself to be). Once the touch shortcuts closeness, a whole new metaphysical dimension rises to the horizon of being, and one is left to contemplate this new "space" introduced by the appropriating effect of touch. Touching something means to make it yours, to appropriate it not only physically, but also with its entire metaphysical depth. Thus, once something is touched and the distance separating you from it is gone, another kind of "distance" sets in. When something is being touched (and felt, physically) it becomes a conquered territory, over which you no longer have any power because it becomes a part of you, as in a sort of metaphysical assimilation. While there still is a physical distance left (keeping you a formally separate entity), there is also a feeling of connectedness, which vanishes (or begins to die) as soon as the barrier of touch has been crossed.

We can only conquer what we have first desired, but then this means that it was the object of our very desire that had conquered us first, by seduction. One can only desire to have that which in fact already "has" him caught and seduced.

This is why sex is the ultimate gratification--because it rids one (at least for a moment) from the heavy burden of self. The most difficult thing in the world is to live justly with yourself, and to bear the consequences of your own actions instead of trying to run away from them. Therefore, people "give" themselves one to another, carelessly or with an interest in mind, but only in sex does one escape from himself completely. Sex obscures, shades or completely obturates one's metaphysical idiosyncrasies and sense of alienation. One the one hand, this metaphysical inadequation to who we are is essential for living; on the other hand, it is what makes life impossile. This is the double bind, which sex seems to be able to overcome (even though in illusion).

What makes two people interested in each other (sexually attracted and aroused) is not the glow of pure affection, which is the expression of sympathy for what is recognized as yours, known, or friendly (and, indeed, affectionate feelings are not conducive to sexual behavior but rather to unconditional loyalty); instead, sex unites disaffected people, and sexual satisfaction increases when there is a matching degree of disaffection, thus gradually making room for jealousy and possessiveness in the relationship. During sex, space and distance become extinct by way of touching, but in fact what has come together as one has no chance of lasting, because touch brings closeness to an end. Closer than close is impossibile, except as an illusion, while in the realm of illusion possibility can only be simulated.

The same things said about space can also be said about time. After all, time is just another kind of space, even though it is a special one--the space of our lives. What touch does to the distance, being on time does to time. If one comes on time for a meeting, he necessarily misses it, because in order to "meet" your destiny you must not be present to it. If you are early, you may only hope that destiny will be late, so that you can meet it somewhere outside its borders, without even counting on it happening.

For me, it is a bit too late. And I can only hope that, somehow, my being late will have happened too early.

Cornered...

2008-03-26T02:47:00.000+02:00

Time closes in and ties me up
I'm scared of conclusions,
A lonely bastard in a trap
Afraid of his delusions.

I'm anguished as never before
Exceeded by my fears,
The walls that I'd like to ignore
Entomb my life with tears.

I guess the pain of love is sweet
When hit by Cupid's arrow,
And even death seems a nice treat
For treading paths too narrow.

There's so much love to give away
In myriads of fashions,
That I find solace when I play
The game of empty passions.

I know there isn't any hope
For time to grow me younger,
But then I know time is aslope
And feeds one's every hunger.

With tickets booked and weapons packed
I'm on, aboard love's cruiser,
And if I am to die in war
I won't be just a loser...

Ex Privileges

2008-01-07T03:49:00.000+02:00

You don't have to do a damn thing--
All of a sudden, you're my king.
When you're around I fall apart,
Hopelessly ready for a start...

Something in you gets me by,
There is no love and yet I try
To see myself with different eyes,
'cause you're the hunter of my lies.

Your arms don't touch, your eyes don't speak,
Yet I am touched and feel so meek
That I can't help but think of you
As highly as my feelings grew.

It's silly how I let myself
Be played and tossed, you cruel elf.
Just let me be your ex tonight,
Tell me I'm wrong and you are right.

Game over before it's begun,
You've got me good with your stun gun.
What do you have that I do not,
What am I doing in your plot?

I find myself being with you
And I grow up, but younger too.
Back from the dead, I come alive
With every second you survive.

The Night When Nothing Happened

2007-11-15T10:35:00.000+02:00

Cast on your bedshore, at night,
When lights were dim and souls light,
I felt the sea at play in us
For hours that struggled to pass.

My frantic heart was fiercely racing
On a rhythm not unlike dancing.
There was I, a lucid wreck
Calling the Captain on the deck.

Yet no one came, nothing at all
Disturbed the peace of our troll,
Except of course, when time was due,
Morning arrived to pull me through...

Burning Bush Visions

2007-11-13T03:56:00.000+02:00

I wish I had a heart to spare,
For every longing soul - a word;
Yet my own longing is unfair
I want a touch from the Unheard.

Out there, witness to my nonsense,
Wearing a hot, devilish smile
Stands out, amid a cloud of incense,
My burning love, my fiery trial.

Should I resist you? Should I dare?
'cause you're inhabiting my dreams
In ways that only make me care
To not awake from your heart's beams...

Seeing Through Capped Eyes: The Poor Sight of the Integral Vision

2006-10-28T00:35:00.000+03:00

How is life lived inside the eyes of a grid? How does it feel to live with a recomposed sight? Our eyes are capped. If they ever saw the naked reality, they are no longer able to see it and they are suffering terribly from this withdrawal. Our craving eyes, enslaved by the mind leading them, are now on the lookout for a gain that is not proper to them.

Reality hides from us the more we want to peek into its dark corners. The discoveries of science, exposed as they are in the cold light of technology, render the world not in depth but in surface, and this is a source of endless frustration because if you want to confront the world in spatial terms, you have to deal with Infinity, which is the metaphysical depth of Space. In the same way, Time has been allegedly "overcome" by way of speed, but now we know that there's a limit even to speed, aside from our own limitations when it comes to reaching this limit of speed. Perhaps the "speed of light" is nothing but a metaphor illustrating our structural inability to comprehend the world in any "full" or "integral" way. We cannot see unless we allow a certain time for the light to reach our retina. This due time, of pre-perception and pre-cognition, is the space where all our illusions about the world reside.

This is why, whatever is "revealed" to us by a vision that turns our very sight into a mere instrument of seeing is only rendered visible at a cost--the unknown lets itself be be played with and unveiled, and in a way it does become known, but at the price of having the verb "to know" slightly lose its meaning. In this way, the baffling nature of Truth becomes startlingly manifest, just to deceive us once more by making any "complete" or "whole" revelation of truth worth nothing--in any case, worth not more than a ... virtual truth. Thus, truth disengages from itself, and this displacement is due to an unwarranted drive to take advantage of what is known.

It used to be--perhaps just prior to be born as a species--that humans knew the world involuntarily, from outside their will. This must have been a time when the world still gave itself to us for free. How and why have we turned the world into a currency and into an object of exchange, we may never know for sure. Fact is that Truth has been missed from the moment It was "embraced" by humankind as a moral value. The pursuit of Truth-as-purpose is the goal of civilization, and this is also what gives humanism a morbid flavor.

The caps placed over our eyes are the products of a desire to see beyond our physical ability. We see the world as a map, and we cannot think the world but in terms of mapping it. This could be counted as the way in which the map is replacing the territory itself, but it's a little more subtle than that. The territory has become nothing more than the shadow of its own map. Instead of having the map merely remind us of the territory it represents, now it's the territory that evokes the map's sovereignty over it. There is no meaning left to the territory, and no more poetry lies out in the open field. The mapping of spirit and the charting of depths aim at erasing the last traces of a territory's reality. This is to say that any contemplation of the territory becomes, in the end, an affair of map-making. As we map Reality, we live at heart with a secret desire of conquering it by making Reality stick to the abstract gridlines of our own making, which are entirely controlled by the mind that has imagined them.

"Reality" is just the name given to the coordinates of Nothingness. Contrary to what some people may think, Nothingness means not the absence of evidence, but the evidence of evidence. Nothingness is the unmistakable mark of the manifested realm, the principle behind manifestation being at all possible and actualized. But the evidence of "what is" seems to not be enough for us, as we are still trying to map this evidence, to hold it in thought a while longer than we are allowed to, until it becomes completely encapsulated in shell of coordinates, laid out as a grid built specifically to cover a certain interest. In this way, that which nobody is actually able to grasp, such as a subject's ultimate objectivity, is suddenly extorted of all its substance, and becomes available to manipulation as soon as it is aligned to the dry and precise format of some abstract framework. As a result, the gridlines defining any such effort of comprehension become at some point so oppressing, so frustrating and so insufficient to their own purpose that we seek any means to make them forgotten.

And even though it is possible to remain aware of the fact that the map is not to be confused with the actual territory it represents, the very idea of having mapped the unknown by way of inconspicuous gridlines is troublesome. We simply cannot afford to live as the hijackers of truth, as the terrorists of meaning who have seized knowledge for their personal gain. That which, once known, is being held forever--in utter disregard for the sole ground of our knowing, which is that of not knowing--comes back to take revenge on us. When knowledge is made the instrument of knowing, its final (and finite) product, forgetting that knowledge is merely the by-product of knowing (quite irrelevant for our ability to know), it no longer matters that we are able to know the world. In an effort to objectivize the world, we have no other choice but to objectivize ourselves as subjects of knowing, and this is how the world is showing us that, in contrast with what we currently believe, it is us who are being known, put on, watched and tossed.

A person's worldview (Weltanschaaung) is nothing but the sore mark left around the orbit by the eyecaps worn over time--worn so proudly, it seems, that one's worldview becomes a sort of personal brand. One is left wondering if our eye sockets have not become, by any chance, more important than even our eyes, and if our entire biology is not reduced to the status of a convenient receptacle for a mind too big for itself. It is this feeble mind, in which thought becomes obese and unable to attain a needed turgescence, that deploys itself everywhere, invasively, looking inside everyone with a rare arrogance for a vulnerable spot to occupy, so as to turn us into complacent sockets. It is this feeble-minded arrogance that backs up the myth of identity, which is essentially what makes each person a powerless socket, ready to receive input and to function only on the terms of this input. Even when we imagine that we are able to regulate the input received, we are still abiding to the same input coding, because we are addicted to a drive of compulsive tagging meant to find a strict place for just about anything around us, by fear of losing it from sight.

This is how the power grid, far from powering us, is simply a network of lines stealing our power, for the sole purpose of making it circulate according to rules that are never clear, because they magnify--at a network's scale--the fundamental uncertainty that grounds each individual's functioning. Although this net "power extraction platform" has the goal of dissipating the existential uncertainty over a large-scale project, it only manages to aggravate this uncertainty, to double it by raising its stakes up to almost unbearable limits, as an individal's access to his own metaphysical functioning is being denied by the code. As expected, people are quite eager to buy this easy, yet lethal escape, as long as they are numbed to any occurring metaphysical disturbance.

Thinking the world in terms of identity is the mark of a sad reality--that of having hurt the real world to such an extent that we begin to miss it. The more we chart our exact position into the world, the more distant and cold the world becomes. We feel this, and we suffer quietly. And because this fundamental absence of the world from deep within ourselves troubles us so much, like a silent ache undermining every purposeful effort from behind the scene, we have developed peak technologies aimed at numbing ourselves to any possible metaphysical failure in this process. We long for the Lost World within, and we try hard to draw it closer by force, while at the same time we have no choice but to increase, progressively, the daily dose of tech-painkillers. But the results are disappointing--the Lost World continues to drift away as we embrace, ever so strongly, its mere pictures, left as our only reminders of what once was real. And then, just as silent as our pain, there's the spectrum of a menace--the menace of the overdose. What's going to happen if our own technologies will fail us or, even worse, will end up defeating us? A day will come, perhaps, when the only effective dose of painkillers will equal the lethal dose.

In the end, when seen through a grid, the world does come out fragmented and parceled. But we can never be sure that, as the Integral projects would have it, the sum total of all these fragments is enough to make the world a better place, because the world simply cannot be 'more' whole than it actually is. (The above pleonasm illustrates quite well the redundancy of any effort in this direction.) It may just be that the wholeness of the world doesn't take well our repeated attempts to break it in view of a subsequent reconfiguration, which is what allows us to steal its binding energy.

Moreover, it can be argued that the present fragmentation of the world (designed by the inner grid of our eyecaps) comes right out of a decidedly goal-oriented approach to life that is so characteristic to us, humans. A goal-minded effort has the perverse effect of deepening the split (instead of healing it) with every effort to integrate and glue together perspectives that have nothing in common, aside from being entirely foreign to the person adopting them as a part of a program. After the incorporation of so many "truths" over the centuries of its existence, humanity finds itself today obesely rich, imbued with fragments of truth that mean nothing in themselves and cannot be even pieced together, given their virtual nature. As virtual truths, they are separate entities from the start, do not belong together (though they do fall in the same category--that of replicas) and cannot form a "whole" in any real sense. We have been blinded by the light of the inherent metaphysical wholeness shining, paradoxically, through each partial (and personal) view of things, which we have every interest of criticizing as incomplete, in the light of a drive-to-wholeness seeking actualization. But to integrate these spare fragments means to hold on to the very grid that is the source of this piecemeal worldview.

Our eyes want to be capped because they are afraid to see. Or perhaps it's just a matter of passive consent, but then this lack of will is itself expressing a dying need, an intoxication with the dire wants of Purpose. In a way, the fear of living is justified, but should this paralyze the will, or tame life itself? It is indeed dangerous--yet essential--to see clearly, and at times it is even frightening, because then one sees the depth of his own self-liability. We are accountable before our needs, which our wants have been trying hard, first to replicate and then to fulfill. The grid keeping our eyes in check aims at restraining the impact of metaphysics on our worldview, but this is ultimately a self-defeating endeavor. Metaphysics is our untimely nature, and this is why it can never be kept in check.

Reality as Realty

2006-09-13T15:16:00.000+03:00

Our dream has come true—the world is now subdued. We are its hijackers, as we have thrown over the world a tight net of projections, assessments and measurements. We are the thieves and terrorists of this world, already punished for the way we've instrumented the world towards purpose—we are incarcerated in the small cell of our goals, living behind the grid of our own projections about the world. We believe that the world is limited to our perception of it. Seeking truth is unproductive and outmoded—therefore truth is, from now on, mass-produced. A hyper-defined, super-regulated and tightly controlled world is the result. The pixels of projections are the power grid on which our "neon enlightenment" depends. It is impossible to awaken from this self-administered dream, and we are terrified. This is the world of LUCID NARCOSIS.