Signifying Nothing

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage... and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." - Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

[2014]

Frustrated, I slammed the vaporizer violently against the ground as I walked to my bus stop. The sound of the crack was excruciatingly refreshing, as paradoxical as it sounds. Tiny shreds of glass splashing on the road felt like scratching a intense itch, a mental itch, and I savored the end of the vaporizer as if it was a living annoyance meeting death.

I've spent, like, a week taking proper care of it, making sure it was giving off the right vapor and that the liquid was clean, but it kept giving me problems. Sometimes it wouldn't give off vapor, just liquid would swim from the top, and it was making weird noises. It was fucking annoying.

No excess time was spent maintaining it, but the concentration and consideration utilized irritated my brain each time it would malfunction later on in the day. All for nothing.

Drops of concentration and care dripping into the holder of investment just destroyed, blown away into oblivion and forgotten and abandoned moments in time.

Life, experience, whatever this thing that consciousness interacts with, is just waiting to die and be forgotten - swept away by the wave of time. At its core, all we have is experience and memories, anything outside of those two factors doesn't mean anything to the living organism. We can only experience and remember, that's what consciousness is. It's what makes us a "thing."

I'm destined to receive Alzheimer's, it's hereditary and will arrive to me when I'm older. Alzheimer's numbs your experience to the point in where you can't even recognize your surroundings, and it also erases your memories. It's death worse than physical death.

All these investments and labor are destined to be not just destroyed, but erased from the plane of existence and eternity. It's like a struggle and conflict to erect a sand castle, and as you build it, you know, eventually an ocean wave will arrive and not just destroy it, but eliminate any trace of it existing in the first place.

Things are getting better, but for the past few months I've been demoralized as fuck. Everything that I worked for, decisions and things that I planned out very carefully and protected were just destroyed by random chaos. I'm in a position to rebuild, reconstruct, but I can't help but think "what for?"

Construct beautiful music and master the guitar, just to receive a hand injury and lose all the investment and energy that I placed into the skill? Be the best boyfriend I can be, concentrate and work on every decision that I make and have all that concern be forgotten about when the relationship turns sour and my work and energy is ignored or never recognized?

I'm tired and disgruntled, weary,  and I'm lethargic in my ambitions. The track and sound of "Clint Eastwood" clothes my scent as I exhale marijuana smoke which comforts and closes my eyes in lazy and apathetic demoralization.

Fucking *yawn*.

Fuck it.

This is not weakness or lack of will. I'm fulfilling personal obligations and goals, but I compulsively announce, "what's the point?"

I note that there's no cameras to record the experience of the experiencer at all times, just myself, the experiencer, searching into the depths of my memories to present this as if it meant something...

 

 

[2019]

I'm in the future, and now I can tell that I was wrong. It meant something. Every kiss I gave, every honorable act I performed, every time I stood tall, every time I cursed a cigarette, and every time I called equality a lie - it meant something. Insecurity has always been my vice, but it's better than unsubstantiated ego worship (it's better earned).

In the end, only instinct matters. Will. If you need to break up with someone, do it. If you know that you're going to be lied to by an employer, trust yourself. If you know your cock size is huge, flaunt it. Journalistic projections is sometimes the only thing you have to send something eternal to be observed, but regardless, individual acts matter within a subjective world.

For too long I've let others say and jump and scream, while I stood back as a gentleman and absorbed. But now it's my turn to speak. This different. This is my LiveJournal.


As for the past,

It didn't signify nothing.

Flummoxed by Failure - or Focused?

Many people think of intelligence as static: you are born with lots of brains, very few, or somewhere in between, and that quantum of intelligence largely determines how well you do in school and in life.

The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has never liked this view. "I hardly ever use the word intelligence," says Mr. Tyson, who directs the Hayden Planetarium in New York. "I think of people as either wanting to learn, ambivalent about learning or rejecting learning." He speaks from experience: As a young man, he was booted from one doctoral program but managed to get into another and complete his Ph.D.

Over the past 25 years, social scientists have produced some key insights into how successful people overcome their unsuccessful moments—and they have found that attitudes toward learning play a large role from a young age.

 Warlock Byrd and his creation.

In a 1978 study, the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and a colleague gave a series of puzzles to children, all of them about 10 years old. The first eight problems required some careful thought, but none was too demanding. The next four, however, were far too hard for anyone that age to solve in the allotted time. On the first eight, all of the youngsters solved the exercises and appeared to enjoy them. But everything changed with the impossible second set.

Reactions differed enormously. One group of students said things like, "I can't solve these problems. I'm not smart enough." They wilted in the face of failure. Children in the other group took a different approach: They kept telling themselves that they could solve the difficult problems with more effort.

Dr. Dweck and other psychologists have assigned labels to these two types of students. Students of the first sort are called "helpless" because they develop the idea that they just can't do something. If they continue to believe that they are generally smart, they still often become helpless because they are afraid to try anything new for fear that failure will undermine their self-image as "one of the bright ones."

Kids of the second sort, however, are said to have a mind-set of "mastery" or "growth." They believe that they can expand their abilities if they try. If they don't succeed, they look for new strategies rather than giving up.

Are these students just smarter than their "helpless" peers? Not according to Dr. Dweck. She has found that children in the two groups have roughly the same natural abilities. In fact, sometimes the "helpless" ones demonstrate greater native powers.

Where do helpless students get the notion that intelligence is fixed? In part from our culture, which bombards them with the idea that IQ tests measure how bright they are. Even well-meaning parents and teachers can foster this view. Melissa Kamins, who worked with Dr. Dweck, discovered that children who primarily receive personal praise ("how smart you are") rather than kudos for their efforts are more likely to develop fixed views of intelligence. A growth mind-set can be learned. In a 2007 study by psychologists from Columbia and Stanford, nearly 100 seventh graders (most of them struggling in math) participated in an eight-week workshop on studying. The subjects were secretly divided into two large groups. Both groups received instruction on how to use their study time most effectively and how to organize and remember new material.

But then came the difference: One of the groups read aloud an article titled "You Can Grow Your Intelligence." It explained research on how nerve cells in the brain make stronger connections after we learn something new. Students in the other group spent that time reading an article about how memory works and learning new strategies for recalling material.

Most of the students went into the sessions generally believing that intelligence was fixed for life, but the group that read about the brain's growth emerged from the experience with much stronger notions about improving intelligence with effort. That group generally showed greater motivation to do well in math class in the weeks and months after the experience.

As the researchers noted, someone's theory about intelligence may not make much difference when times are easy. But when failures accumulate, those who believe that they can improve their basic abilities are far more likely to weather the storm.

—Adapted from Dr. Bain's book, "What The Best College Students Do." Article from The Wall Street Journal.

After reading this article, I enjoyed seeing my own views on intelligence be mirrored. The overall sentiment of focusing on overcoming challenges as the correct path for growth, focusing on what could be not what is, was inspiring. Childhood is a very protected, almost sacred, part of Satanism in where limitless potential is present and upon proper growth and direction, can make an individual rise to great heights. But even if you did not arrive from an ideal background, the article exemplifies the importance and beauty of focusing on new challenges and the fire to attempt to overcome obstacles.

We are examining the very core and primal ways of advancing yourself. It doesn't matter how many times you have failed in the past, or how many times you have won, but the ability and yearning to discover new things and challenge preconceptions from the past. By not being afraid of making new mistakes, and not allowing the ones from the past to bring you down, you have more of a chance of achieving new victories by closely analyzing the present to see how things could improve at their present stage.

It sounds very similar to my philosophy of "upward and onward."

And I would hate to give some sort of impression that just because a popular journal publishes an excerpt from a book it is automatically a fact, but rather I wanted to express my joy in reading something that is very closely aligned with my own mentality and principles.

2012

Next month will be my first anniversary in Portland. This was a place I merely imagined about reaching. I never thought I would actually have the power and circumstance to accomplish the fantasy of escaping California and moving here. At one point I had planned to move to Orlando - but that's a different story ending in even more accumulation of bad karma and debt... But I'm here, happier than I've been in all of my life, though it has not been easy.

The past few months I have been dealing with a lot of difficult issues, all necessary for the next journey in which I'm about to embark on. When you leave people behind, it might seem like you won't need to deal with them any longer, but one thing I have discovered is that like scabies, as soon as you think they are gone, you reap the after effects. Wraith. Bereavement. Confusion. Self-doubt and dire mental anguish.

It was very disheartening to be scapegoated for other people's problems, and worse, fighting off theft attempts of your accomplishments and favorite things in life. Guilt, irrational and unwarranted guilt is a fucking monster in disguise that I have been fending off, but now I've reached the understanding that to fight a disease like this you need to meet it at its core.

I laugh in cruel malevolence in seeing psychic vampires be shocked in my new adult independence, firm stance, and self-preservation. Neither they nor I thought I would have this fierce self-love, but "stand your ground" has undoubtedly been the echo of the beginning of 2012. But this year isn't over yet. Time is something which must be molded into the shape you wish to create, because it is spinning and if you don't place your hands on it, it will transform into something new whether you like it or not. So I'm here, ready to create things in my vision and will.

"I think I'm ready." And I am. Confidence will fill the air like a handsome and beautiful cologne. It's the last day of June so today's post is only natural in being the mark and ending of the first half of this year, and inauguration and rise of the second.

This isn't the part where I grow wings - this is the part in where I fucking fly.

Happiness In Revenge

The symbol of Baphomet was used by the Knights Templar to represent Satan. Through the ages this symbol has been called by many different names. Among these are: The Goat of Mendes, The Goat of a Thousand Young, The Black Goat, The Judas Goat, and perhaps the most appropriately, The Scapegoat.

Baphomet represents the Powers of Darkness combined with the generative fertility of the goat. In its "pure" form the pentagram is shown encompassing the figure of a man in the five points of the star - three points up, two pointing down - symbolizing man's spiritual nature. In Satanism the pentagram is also used, but since Satanism represents the carnal instincts of man, or the opposite of spiritual nature, the pentagram is inverted to perfectly accomodate the head of the goat - its horns, representing duality, thrust upwards in defiance; the other three points inverted, or the trinity denied. The Hebraic figures around the outer circle of the symbol which stem from the magical teachings of the Kabala, spell out "Leviathan", the serpent of the watery abyss, and identified with Satan. These figures correspond to the five points of the inverted star.

- Book of Belial, The Satanic Bible. ASL

A Morning In Quotes

"First you have to give up, first you have to know, not fear, that someday you're gonna die."

"The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes, like the first monkey shot into space. Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing."

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. "

"Fuck off with your sofa units and green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may."

"The things you own end up owning you."

"You have a kind of sick desperation in your laugh."

"Fuck Martha Stewart!"

"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."

"If you wake up at a different time, in a different place... could you wake up as a different person?"

"On a long enough timeline, the surviving rate for everybody drops to zero."

"Tyler was full of useful information."

"A nice big COCK!"

"You are not special. You're not a beautiful or unique snowflakes. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

"We just had a near life experience!"

"I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every panda that wouldn't screw to save its species."

"You wanna make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs"

"Sooner or later, we all became what Tyler wanted us to be."

"In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

"All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not."

"You don't know where I've been. You don't know where I've been. Just let us have the basement, Lou!"

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

"You know, man, it could be worse. A woman could've cut off your penis while you were sleeping and toss it out the window of a moving car."

"Beautiful. We were selling rich women their fat asses back to them."

"No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide."

"There are things about you that I like. You're smart, you're funny, you're... spectacular in bed... But you're intolerable! You have very serious emotional problems. Deep seated problems for which you should seek professional help" and he said, "Now a question of etiquette... as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?"

"Fuck damnation, man! Fuck redemption! We are God's unwanted children? So be it! "

Waiting for the End

I'm a couple of hours from leaving California. I have lived here my entire life and been out of state very few times. About two years ago I made the decision to move to Portland, but there were too many things holding me back. Work, relationships, family, obligations. It was as if these things were an umbilical cord holding me back from growing into the person I want to be.

And now I've finally managed to work those piles of paper on my desk and get to the place I want. There wasn't a single person helping me along the way. I don't have parents to pay for my college costs, they don't give me a job at their place of employment, they don't pay my rent or buy me a car. Absolutely everything that I have acquired has been through my own hard work, and I remember feeling frustrated and worried that once I received the fruit of my labor, I wouldn't appreciate it. But I do.

7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.

What I'm experiencing is a feeling of incineration into some sort of final stage in my life. It's as if I'm inflamed amongst a languid herd, rising upward and onward. Life is a never ending opportunity to make yourself better.

Not Afraid

I change my mind often. You could say I'm indecisive about a lot of things. My intentions are always pure, or at least, I can recognize what they are before I do something. But my goals and plans change because I often discover new ways of accomplishing what I want.

Speaking to an ex-girlfriend, if she could even be considered a once "girlfriend", I discovered a lot about myself. Insecurities, fears, and overall things that I am not pleased with myself on, or that I think could be done better. There's a good chance she is reading this, I think she follows this blog, but no matter. I have no intentions of contacting her again because relationships break, and if you try to put them back together, it can be solid, but glued on broken pieces. I don't want to disrupt her life any further, and I don't want her to do the same to me either.

"Very well, you have made your choice. I will never contact you again and will ignore all contact from you for the rest of my life. You were the perfect relationship I lost. I'm sorry for my mistakes, and take care of yourself."

That's all she needs to remember me by.

The list of goals and things I'd like to see in my life get sharper. Not necessarily longer, but more confirmed and focused in a sense. I don't want to go to God forsaken Florida. My life is just starting and there's no need for me to settle down with one person, or decide my fate.

I still have a strong desire to join the Marines but only for the personal self-pride of surviving bootcamp and combat action. That's a wrong way to enter, it should be out of patriotism, and heh, I'm the last one to be patriotic. I don't take pride in my race, my surroundings, or people I grew up with. I am myself, a wolf igniting in the shape of a Black Flame.

In simple terms, or tl;dr: I can survive Marine bootcamp without going to bootcamp. When I look at myself I see limitless potential. "What I do I do at will. Shooting from the hip, yeah, shoot to kill. Half a breath left on my deathbed, screaming "fuck that!"

From as early as people can remember me I have always been defiant. Moving out of my father's home as early as I could, the night before my 18th birthday was the ultimate symbol of independence and fierceness. That was a tattoo in itself saying "Übermensch", my Wolfsangel, the Sigil of Baphomet,  Lucifer's rebellious decent: the moment Fenrir bit the hand that feeds. My friends know that if I ever get into a fight that I am to lose in, even when I'm on the ground, bleeding and unable to move, I will still be screaming "fuck you" and spitting the opposition in the face.

In my dreams, death appears as a hooded teenager with a nightstick on a bike, and I get close to him, bring down his hood eloquently, and say close to his face close enough for a kiss: "fuck you."

Here is a poem I wrote almost a year and a half ago, and already I can feel the flames burning me into a sharper shape, with fangs even longer, and a stare to leave you in a catatonic state…

I am a Prelude

Metamorphosis shackled in guilt

Transparent

Like an iceberg of oil

This yew tree is waiting to be ignited.

This is a strife in blood and sweat,

to thaw my bruised palms,

in the warmth of the Black Flame.

Nuclear

Wolfsangel

One of my most cherished symbols and when the time is right, will be placed on my skin.

"The Wolf’s Hook represents the Yew tree (Yggdrasil - The World Tree). It connects the three Norse realms; the heavens or consciousness, the humanity or life, and Hell or death. It’s shape (when on its vertical axis) connects all three, with roots in Hell, branches in the heavens and the crossing point ( or balance point) in the human realm. Like the arms of the Baphomet, one up, the other down (as above so below) both proximal ends connecting the human element. The synthesis of opposing forces in a balanced environment; communication between the extremes.

Much of the Wolf’s Hook symbology is derived from the fundamental properties and uses of the Yew.

It is the longest thriving European tree, mostly found in undisturbed lands - such as graveyards; hence the 13th rune’s association with longevity and protection of the dead.

Yew was the wood of choice for the making of the Norseman’s ominous longbows, due to it’s flexibility and strength. In it’s day, the longbow was a most feared and awesome weapon; and when in the hands of a skilled archer, made available the ability to kill, and thereby protect, it’s own from afar. The longbow itself represents the potential energy (tension) contained within the Wolf’s Hook. One’s own ultimate potential, stored and waiting for the skill and discipline of one (pushing the limits of their own personal power) to release this potential resource and focus it into their own kinetic creative force; and to do so, one needs balance.

The 13th rune has long been known as the death rune. Again this relates back to it’s association with the Yew tree. The bark, leaves and berries of the Yew are extremely poisoness, bringing on death when ingested. It’s sap, the tree’s life force, a deep red color; and when cut, resembled a bleeding body. And let us not forget the awesome death rendering longbow, made from the wood of the Yew tree. For a magician, the Wolf’s Hook can be used as a powerful archetypical symbol during a curse (destruction) ritual.

In summation, the Wolf’s Hook symbolizes creative potential, extremes in natural balance, discipline and strength of will, protection and longevity, curse and death..."

- Diana DeMagis