2003-11-03 - 11:05 p.m.
My ways are unique and my own, for they are not the path of others, but the ways of many others forged to one.
My ways are the ways of tobacco and sage, holy earth and holy sky. The ways of the spirits, of the beasts and of the child. My ways are the ways of the shadows, of the twilight, and of the enlightened. They are the ways of all ways, the ways of all of who see.
When I pray, and despite what those who know me might think I do pray, I pray not to one, but to all. I pray to the energies and spirits of, within and upon Earth Mother, I pray to the energies above, in and of the Sky Father, The Great Spirit, and all spirits. I pray to the powqwejenay - the seen but unseen, the fliers, the guardian spirits. I offer tobacco to the spirits, to the Great Spirit. Tobacco is a holy plant, and the spirits love it. I give offerings not as bribes but as thanks. If I must slay to eat, I give tobacco and prayers to the spirit of the animal, that he may journey safely into the spirit world.
I burn the sage and sweetgrass smudge, and I encircle my body with its smoke to ward the evils, and to cleanse myself that my communication with the fliers (guardian spirits) may be greater.
I practice the ways of peace, and love, kindness and harmony. I make many studies and meditations of the old ways, of the sacred stones and tools, the blessed plants and the spirits. I seek the truth, I seek peace.
But I also train for chaos. I pray and am mindful and meditative of the evils in the world, of the beings across the shadow veil who mean harm, and of the touches of evil in this world. I bless my steel and my fire, and I bind its spirit to my own and ask the blessings of the poqwejenay over my tools. My defenses are in tobacco, crystals, smudges, and steel. I carry an iron nail in my medicine bag, for the repelling of evil. I carry iron blades for the defense of evil. I smudge myself to block the eyes and touches of evil.
Have ye never been set back by unseen hand, felt the cold grasp of evil as you sat with your back to the eyes you feel but never see? I have, I have been hit, and I have been haunted, watched and stalked. Men and spirits are alike in wants, some want evil and harm, and others want no part and must defend it lest they lose their own lives.
I walk the twin paths of peace and order and violence and chaos. I pray to both ends, on both sides. I study the ways of the priest as well as the ways of the warrior.
I meditate and seek the planes where I may find peace and guidance for peace, and I meditate and seek the planes where I may find spirits of war and guidance for war. I do this on this plane, I do this on the higher plane.
I open my mind to the energies and knowledge’s of the world, I receive the morphic energy, and the concepts of the spirits.
These are my ways, ever learning, ever worshipping, thanking and honoring, ever studying, ever meditating, ever acting, ever preparing, ever being.
Things are burning and things are stalking us, and now is the time to speak the words of a great Roshi from long ago, "Let he who hath no sword sell his cloak and buy one".
Let he also buy the holy writings of his taste, and study them.
Many things are changing, and we need to be strong in many ways in this modern world. Strengthen thy defense on all plains, and strengthen thy love and peace as well.
Practice Peace - Train for Chaos

I lack the eloquence to teach what I know... and I also lack the knowledge to teach the things I have learned. Because to learn and believe only requires so much... but to teach, to break others free of lies and deceit and deception, that requires so much. Paradigm's will not shift without it unless one becomes extremely lucky.
This is a source of much frustrations, kiddies. I feel in-adequate to voice opinions or concepts, truisms of my reality, when I feel so un-learned, un-knowing and impatient.
This is the horror of my duality this evening... a burning desire to share, and an inability to do so. I cannot even make art to do it... it is all stale and flat, and the words have no meaning or feeling leaving my tongue, it is as if speaking with a voice of sand across a desert, nothing shaking, nothing shattering... nothing accomplished.

Rape

http://www.thevoicenews.com/News/2002/1129/Front_Page/C02.html
The story of Bruno Manser is a powerful one... but it is not a shocking one to those who have their eyes open.

This type of "business" has been practiced for decades, and a single dissapearance is no big thing to the people who practice it, who influence the governments and militaries of the countries where they rape and pillage for the almighty dollar, yen, pound.
Dissapearing entire villages into the jungles of South America has never been a challenge for these kinds of people, just Google "United Fruit" and do a little reading.
What power is there to stop people who would murder and kill for a little profit, and then whitewash everything into a happy friendly image and have the backing of entire governments to do it? There is none.
We live in a myth, surrounded by myth, and lied to all the time. And the bigger the lie, the more people who will believe it.

Do you believe?

Iraq thoughts.

I was not a supporter of the Iraq war when it began. Although I saw nothing wrong with getting rid of Sodamn Insane I felt, very honestly, we were being lied to about things, by a group of people who had no respect, no care, for the lives of soldiers, and no real idea of what they were doing. To date nothing has disabused me of this base notion.
However, because I do support the war in Afghanistan, our forgotten war it seems, and because I do support the troops, no matter where they are or what conflict they are in, I read, listen, view from a variety of sources about these things, about the Iraq conflict.
The conservative side of things often enough saber rattles and prances about throwing out patriotism veiled nonsense to stir the fires within past the point of common sense and into a sort of "war-lovers limbo" of the senses, where it all seems right and good and justified. I have seen damn little from that side, what I could easily enough call my side (I am certainly not liberal), that deals truthfully with this mismanaged, and horrible thought-out exercise in war-fighting.
The liberal side of things on the other hand stands back and cries foul and goes around ranging from simply condemning the mismanagement of the war to out-and-out declaring their support for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Everything military or troop related is wrong and condemned, the pacifist element comes out in force, and its back to spitting and screaming "baby-killer", although perhaps not in as overt ways. I hate to say it but I see more reality of the Iraq conflict from this side, although it is usually tinger (or outright painted) with stupidity, whiny nonsense and a great deal of opinions and ideas I find completely wrong.
But, out of all of this reading, watching and listening, something has struck me. The liberal media, as much as the conservative media, loves the Battle Dress Uniforms, the Car-4's with EOTech electronic sights and SureFire combat lights on foreward rails, the Barret .50 cal rifles, the Strider knives and the whole kit. As they insult it, spit on it, demand an apology to the world from those who wield it, they also love it. They would never admit they secretly, maybe even subconciously, lust for the black and camo-painted guns, the solid punch in the shoulder of firing a .308 or .50 sniper rifle, the weight in the hands, the smell of gun oil. I dare any of them, who use the pictures of all these things in such great colour and detail all the time, to look deep within themselves and tell me different.
Which may make them even more hypocritical and chickenshit.

I may not support the Iraq conflict, but we also cannot pull out now. I think some people in power need to have their heads fucked on straight, and we need to really change things in-country, because we've gotta do this right. We have got to do something that keeps our soldiers alive. Despite the blunderings and foul ups of the military industrial complex, the soldier is not to blame. He takes the job not to molest third world citizens, but to defend his nation. Its a job of following orders or going to jail, and like most of us despite strong convictions going to jail is not a valuable trade off to going on with life. We need these men and women, rough, tough and not politically correct... because without them we are laid bare and naked before the wolves who would eat us.
Even those of you who scream with such hatred that we deserve it, would cower and curr like the dogs you are in the face of the real thing... and you would scream and cry and beg your god for a uniformed man with a gun.
Our military is worth protecting... now and in the future. If people who are not in our military have to die for that, so be it. But we mustnt forget that we will pay "tuesday" for the hamburger we make of men today.
If we leave Iraq as I fear may be inevitable, we will have yet another middle eastern mess to deal with for the next decades and generations, a mess that is perhaps worse than any other to date. But we cannot destroy the country to save it.

And there is so little common sense from either side in these issues... fear and stupidity, the essential human characteristics, seem to win out.
Instead of saber rattling, instead of calling for attacks on Americans and instead of varying extremes of bullshit and bravado about the war, why dont we all put our heads togather and come up with a solution... something real and workable. Why dont you people do that? Expend your energy that way... to SAVE lives.
Anything else is wasting your time, varying degrees of mental masturbation.

It is not often that I am shocked or put at a loss by the general illness of the mind that pervades my fellow human beings. This is something that I often praise myself for, I can look into the abyss and it finds nothing edible within my soul when it looks back into me, we share a blackness of knowing and un-shockability.
Most of the time.
Enter the pro-ana movement. This may be old hat to many of you, but to me it is quite new. Incase you are like me, pro-ana is a movement which declares that anorexia and bulemia are not diseases (disorders if you prefer the gentler language of panderers and kiss-asses) but are "positive lifestyle choices", and encourages these "lifestyles".
Rape, murder, mutilation, emotional abuse and torture, greed, cruelty, these are all things I am, while not comfortable with, realize are part of the world and accept that, as much as one can accept any evil. But this pro-ana shit? How can they look in the mirror every morning, at their sickly thin bodies and say "I am not sick"? How can they encourage others to kill themselves in this manner, and say "I am not sick"?

I dont care what people do to themselves for the most part. These are personal choices, and if you decide to throw away your life, disfigure your body, poison it or otherwise desecrate yourself, that is your prerogative. People kill themselves all the time... so do it quick, some do it slow.
But to encourage others to suffer under your illness? To embrace it and welcome suck sickness, such perversion of life? The idea is sickening to me. It is not something I had actually conceived of before.
Straight up murder can be a more honorable act than this.
These people are beyond sick... they are twisted and neigh to evil. The world would be a better place if instead of encouraging others to their illness they simply embraced their self loathing and put themselves down the quick way.

When confronted with things like this I do not warm up and expand my heart to want to help more people... I do just the opposite. I get harder and colder, and my heart gets a little blacker. I have less and less love, compassion and understanding for my fellow man every time I see something like this.
Because they do not deserve it.
Prove to me, on an individual basis, that you are deserving of these things, and these things you shall receive... but human beings, in general, are sickness given form, and I have no duty but to loathe them for being the worst they possibly can.

Every Rancher A Rifleman

I remember it was a partially overcast day, my mom and I had just driven up into the yard after the hours drive from town, where I was in first grade, back to the ranch. My father was standing in the yard with a rifle when we drove up and he called me over to him.
The rifle, at the time, looked really big. It was an antique Stevens Model 30 Favorite (now made by Savage Arms, www.savagearms.com ), in .22lr, I would later learn.
He showed me how to work the action, and the sight sights, and then put it in my hands and stood behind me, guiding me at first as I brought it up to my shoulder and tried to hold it steady, and then as I drew a bead on a piece of wood about 20 feet away he stepped back and let me do it on my own. I looked at the sights, hoping I was doing it right, and squeezed the trigger. The little .22 jumped, and a sharp crack broke the silence. The wood splintered and dust rose from it as my first bullet found its mark. You couldnt have taken the smile off my face with a sander.
It was the first time I had fired a gun, and it would leave a lasting impression on me.
Growing up on a ranch I learned about guns early. They were tools, for protection and prevention, preventing predators from preying upon the livestock, and from preying upon our family. I learned early what guns could do when used well or misused. Before I had ever fired an actual gun, I had watched my father come home from deer hunts and finish butchering the meat for our family, I knew what could happen if they were used wrongly, and not to provide food or protect family. I was taught not to fear them, but to respect them and be careful.
My dad started teaching me to shoot with a BB-rifle when I was five or six, about a year before I ever fired an actual gun.
He taught me the basic principles of gun safety, when to shoot and more importantly when not to shoot, how to shoot properly and safely, how to aim and squeeze the trigger. How to transport guns and treat them well while shooting and not shooting.
This has stayed with me all my life.
I have always had access to firearms, at first unloaded with my parents right there, and then one round at a time with my dad coaching me to use the single shot .22 to its best effect, and eventually I was allowed to take the .22 out by myself on short shooting excursions, as long as someone knew where I was. Now, I can take any of the guns I have bought the ammunition for and am willing to clean when I am finished shooting, and practice with them on the family property, and I carry when performing ranch duties. As soon as it is possible for me to obtain a Concealed Carry Permit I plan on doing that so I can carry everywhere allowed by law.
In all those years, well over a decade now, that I have been a shooter I have never done harm, in any fashion, through accident or malicious action. Although I freely admit I practice in part to know how to save life (my own, my families) with use of force, I have never once been influenced to solve disputes with arms, because they were available or for any other reasons.
I am here to tell you, to show you through my example, that what you have been told about guns is wrong. They do not cause people to do harm, they have no influence or power to make decisions for us or over us. At any point I can recall I have had the tools of violence at hand, and have never used them for that... and never will unless put in a position of facing my own death at the hands of another.
You want to know why I have never done harm? Because I have morals, and ethics, and I am a sane, stable man. Take away those qualities, and a rock becomes a tool of murder, but it is not the rock, it is the absence of decency and goodness in the heart and soul.
Because I learned how to shoot, learned the safe operation and use of firearms (and then other types of arms), because I developed the discipline to be a good shot, I have excelled in other things. Although I do not consider myself a hunter, if the need presents I and those I love will never go hungry. If ever faced with danger I will not be a victim, I have both the discipline to be alert to trouble before it starts and then avoid it, and to stop violence if it comes by surprise and there is no hope of avoiding it, only surviving it. But beyond that... these abilities, these responsibilities, have taught me to be a better person to my fellow man, and to myself. They have taught me self reliance beyond survival and protection, I can change a tire, work on an engine, make financial decisions, make life choices, save lives, give orders and take orders, give critique and take it. I was trusted to be a responsible person, I was taught to be a responsible person, with arms, with life, with everything - and thats what I have become.
By taking responsibility for myself I feel much more aware of my environment and impact. I feel the need to have and use knowledge, because there is none of it that is truly impractical when something is actually known. I am an activist for things I see as needing help, or needing support. I am not a party-line follower, I am not a person of blind faith. I think and I question, and in the end I make my own decisions, that are informed and well knowledged about the what, the why and the potential results. And it gives me the freedom and peace of mind to be spontanious at the same time, and to let go of stress and to have fun and truly be free.
And its all because of a single .22 round.
The next time you think of guns in a negative light, I want you to remember what I have said here... and to actually consider it. Being a shooter, being a safe and responsible person with one, arguably great, thing taught me to be a safe and responsible person above and beyond that. Those that say differently, are living within prisons and molds of their own making, rooted in misunderstanding and fear of the world around them and of their own selves... and they have my sympathy, for I can think of nothing sadder.

Banned Books Are The Best Kind

http://title.forbiddenlibrary.com/
Arent people silly? Some of them need slapped.

And if you agree with any of the cencorship mentioned on that list, please let me know, I'd like to slap you, you sorry excuse for a thinking being.