Seventh Words from B.C.

I'm sitting at the computer again. Bag of nachos to my left (just ran down to the 7-11). Bottle of beer to my right (Granville Island Brewing's Winter Ale). System of a Down on the stereo (Somaphore and Sixty Stories coming up). I take another sip of beer. It's not bad. I've tried the Pale Ale as well. Still haven't found anything to compare to good old Fort Garry Dark. I miss that beer. I miss twelve dollar pitchers at karaoke. Listened to Weezer last night. Remembered how I thought about singing Say It Ain't So one time. Fell into nostalgia and couldn't get to sleep. Is nostalgia the right word so soon after leaving? Whatever. End result's the same. Missing all you guys. It's gotten worse: Can't listen to CUIF Radio. Can't use MSN. Can't hear voices. Can't read words. Unless someone sends an email. Those are always nice. Haven't been getting many lately. Not even junk mail. Got one from Nicole though, asking to be added to the mailing list. Happy to oblige. I think we're up to about sixteen readers. Or at least sixteen addresses that this is being sent to. I have the illusion of an audience at any rate. So what have I got to say to my audience today? I'm thinking not much. I could be wrong. I had a couple things I wanted to mention but I don't know how long that's going to last. How about we interrupt this dreary tedium with a poem? It's one of the things I wanted to throw into this mailing. There's another one coming but I think I'll tack it on at the end. In the meantime, enjoy this:

Once I hugged a girl with thorns on her chest
We stuck together like velcro
She didn't appreciate me
Bleeding all over her white shirt
What could I do?
I was stuck on her
My mom always said
"Never remove an impaled object"
She used to be a paramedic
Whenever I read an author describe sex
With an impaling metaphor
I think of that and laugh
With thorns poking through my ribs
I thought of that and laughed
Then I asked her
"As long as you're impaling me
Do you mind if I return the favor"
I laughed again
She didn't appreciate me
Being so crude
Thorny girls never have
A great sense of humor
I don't hug girls anymore
I just shake hands
They don't usually get stuck together

On Monday I met up with Tim and we went to the Amsterdam Cafe. If Fuel's ceiling collapsed and Kustom Kulture fell into it you would get a similar, rubble strewn replica. Beyond the being-allowed-to-smoke-weed-inside aspect though, the place doesn't have all that much going for it. I imagined a lounge kind of atmosphere with couches and such. Instead there are a few booths and an island bar with stools around it. This seemed pretty illogical to me. Who wants to pull a stool up to counter when they're stoned? Not I. I want to sink down into a low, comfortable couch. I gave it a try, but given the option now I think I'd just as soon stay home. Afterwards Tim and I bummed around for a while and went for dinner at Sikh Temple. End of Monday adventures.
I went to see The Missing on Wednesday. It's one of the better westerns I've seen. Long, but not tediously so. Well acted. Some creative directing. Good use of lighting. I would recommend it.
That's really all I did this week that's worth mentioning. Nothing happened on Thursday. NOTHING.
I wanted to go into some of the ideas presented by Terence McKenna in True Hallucinations but to tell you the truth I'm not feeling all that inspired right now. Here's what I'm going to do instead. I'm going to include some passages from the book and if they happen to spark any ideas in any of you write me an email and tell me about it. That way I'll have something to go off of for next time and you'll all have a reason to reply. Here we go.
"I have come to believe that under certain conditions the manipulative power of consciousness moves beyond the body and into the world. The world then obeys the will of consciousness to the degree that the inertia of pre-existing physical laws can be overcome. This inertia is overcome by consciousness determining the outcome of normally random, micro-physical events. Over time the deflection of micro-events from randomness is cumulative so that eventually the effects of such deflections is to shift the course of events in larger physical systems as well."
This may seem far fetched but consider this:
"It is easy for consciousness to direct the electrical flow in the central nervous system (though we have no idea how this is done); it is less easy for it to move, not electrons, but the whole atomic system spread far and wide in time and space. This may explain why it is easy to form a thought, but having one's wishes come true takes longer."
He has some interesting ideas about language as well:
"I saw that there is an interphase between consciousness active in the world and consciousness active in the central nervous system, whose intermediary is the body. That interphase is language. To use language, consciousness informs that brain to inform the body to impart coherency to the random motion of the air molecules near but outside the body. This coherency is supplied by consciousness in the form of a word... Language is thereby seen to be a kind of parapsychological ability since it involves action at a distance and telekinesis, albeit voice-transduced. Perhaps under the influence of psilocybin an immense energizing of will could be vocally transduced into the world where it might do more than imprint a signal onto the random motion of air molecules. Perhaps instead a word, visibly beheld, might be transduced and appear through appropriate shifts of refraction in those same air molecules."
What he's saying is that it would be possible to see what is being said (a phenomenon which is apparently common during DMT experiences).
So let me know what you think. I anticipate some stimulating discussions. Until the next one.

Tony "I wanted to go ice skating but apparently our bathroom doesn't get that cold" Hawkins


there's a very small man
or maybe a woman
no--a man
somewhere in my head
he has a chisel and a hammer
and he's carving something
on the inside of my skull
i can hear him doing it
tap tap tap
his little hammer
on his little chisel
it's at the back
near the crown of my head
he works on it
three or four hours a day
but never on sunday
i think he's a jesuit
i don't mind the tapping
what frustrates me
is that i'll never see
what he's carving
i want to know
if a little jesuit
is etching the likeness
of christ into the
inside of my cranium