A blog that used to be about things

Monday, May 15, 2023

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 7 5/9/23

 

Ritual is important. Rituals let our brain shift and squirm until it is in a place it can focus without focusing. Depending on what our ritual is preparing us for, once we reach this state our brain can react without wasting time on cognitive thought, or on the other hand it can open itself to less-than-visible sensations and connections. Ritual is a training for our brain. An exercise. It connects our tenuous present with the comfort of the past and the mysteries of the future, allowing us to escape the constraints of linear time and instead utilize time's non-existence to our benefit.


Alcohol's use in ritual is as old as civilization. We use it to unlock connections in our brain that are sealed off by conscious thought. The time and ritual used to prepare alcohol for consumption mirror it's use to free us from time in ritualized use. One sip and we can connect with ancestors and descendants. Two sips and time unfolds itself and reveals the illusion it is. Three sips and you can really start rocking.



It's never just you and the pins. It's also not just you and the pins and your ball. It's not even just you and the pins and your ball and the lane. Nor is it you and the pins and your ball and the lane and the approach. It's not even you and the pins and your ball and the lane and the approach and the rest of your team. It's not you and the pins and your ball and the lane and the approach and the rest of your team and the opposing team. It's not even just you and the pins and your ball and the lane and the approach and the rest of your team and the opposing team and some other random people bowling. It's not just you and the pins and your ball and the lane and the approach and the rest of your team and the opposing team and some other random people bowling and the quantum connections between the you and the final resting place of the pins. Nor is it just you and the pins and your ball and the lane and the approach and the rest of your team and the opposing team and some other random people bowling and the quantum connections between the you and the final resting place of the pins and the genetic imprints left by past bowling experiences and your ancestors. It's not even just you and the pins and your ball and the lane and the approach and the rest of your team and the opposing team and some other random people bowling and the quantum connections between the you and the final resting place of the pins and the genetic imprints left by past bowling experiences and your ancestors and the cultural expectations of your bowling. It's also about you and how hungover you are.


Monday, May 8, 2023

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 6 5/2/23

 

There is no use lamenting a lost past. As creatures of the never-ending now, we must fully immerse ourselves in the raging maelstrom that is the present. Yesterday has given birth to the monsters of today, and we must decide for ourselves whether we will cower in fear of these beasts or show the beasts what horrors the present can actually create.


A split in the road. What looks like opportunity to change the path seemingly decided for us can often be nothing more than a diversion. Temptations that only a fool would indulge - and here I am, gleefully leaving all calls for reason behind.


A slumber that even midnight storms cannot disturb.

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 5 - 4/25/23

 

One of the difficulties in large-scale quantum communications is that all the particles have to be the same frequency. Scientists around the world are working on projects to stabilize these particles so they remain on the same frequency. Quantum Diamonds - diamonds that maintain the same carbon chain throughout space and time - are one solution to this problem. Once this stabilization accomplished, near-instant communication across vast areas will be possible. Everything can be on the same page. A universal understanding.



What if the diamond's were not crucial to this transmission of information, though? They may present an avenue for stable particles, but they do not have to be the only path. Occultists use chants and mantras to "vibrate," which is the same idea as getting all associated particles to operate on the same wavelength. Religious songs and chants are based on the same idea. A woman was outside the bowling alley, saying some sort of ritual or prayer, when suddenly a cyclone of confetti sprung up and tried to entrap me. Her ability to operate at the same vibrations as the air (and perhaps other unseen items) made the air behave according to her thoughts. These diamonds are not necessary, then.


If these quantum diamonds can transmit information instantly, they are also receiving information instantly, and who makes this distinction? Is there even a distinction? In the Diamond Sutra, Sakyamuni Buddha explains that there is not actually an escape from the transience of life, as the transience of life is an illusion. How can I be cursed when "I" don't exist? When a diamond can transmit information to all points instantly, then there is no transmission because all points instantly know and already knew. The end to suffering is to break down these distinctions between "I" and "that." There is no diamond, and no information to transmit.

Monday, April 24, 2023

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 4 - 4/18/23

 


Why try? Why put in any effort? Just cuz Hamlet's dumbass did? How'd that end up for him?





We won scratch on all 3 of these, though, so I guess that's worth something.

Monday, April 17, 2023

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 3 - 4/11/23

 


    In the first few months of 1946, Jack Parsons performed extensive ritual work in the Mojave desert, which he called the BABALON Working. His notes on the process record several physical encounters with unseen forces, as well as auditory phenomenon. At the end of this ritual, he met Marjorie Cameron, whom he identified as the elemental that he was attempting to summon. For her part, Marjorie Cameron seems to not have entirely agreed with Parsons, as she had an entire life prior to their meeting, although her interest in Thelemism did grow during the course of their relationship.



    There is no summoner without the summoned, and no summoned with the summoner. No observer with the observed. Our chosen roles in these relationships crumbling into dust under the slightest scrutiny, as we instead are dragged toward an inevitable future that has already decided its past. The preparations were done before we thought of them. The groundwork laid while we slept. The decisions made before we even arrived at the questions. 



Our present manifesting its past to justify its existence. Our future manifesting this present to the same end. Samsara's grip. The pins know, though.


13. Thou shalt offer all thou art and all thou hast at my altar, witholding nothing. And thou shalt be smitten full sore and thereafter thou shalt be outcast and accursed, a lonely wanderer in abominable places.
14. Ye Dare. I have asked of none other, nor have they asked. Else is vain. But thou hast willed it.
15. Know then that thus I came to thee before, thou a great Lord, and I a maid enrapt. Ah blind folly.
16. And thereafter madness, all in vain. Thus it has been, multi- form. How thou hast burned beyond.
17. I shall come again, in the form thou knowest. Now it shall be thy blood.

 

(from LIBER 49, by Jack Parsons)

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Flamingo Bowl Spring 2023 League Week 2 - 4/4/23

 

    The distinction between ghosts and memories is arbitrary and falls apart under a bit of scrutiny. They are both methods in which the "past" extends its influence to the "present." Warnings, lessons, hauntings - all functionally the same things. The precise nature of these communications are similar, too. A memory from my past can be shared if I tell it to you, much like a haunting can be transferred from me to you (or shared, even), if the haunting spirit is capable of doing so. 

    So, when we look at our past and see failures, we can treat it like a ghost and exorcise it from our lives. Some believe that hauntings occur when an entity has left something unaccomplished in this world, and is seeking assistance in its resolution. But what if we treated these hauntings more like the memories they resemble? What if, instead of fearing a haunting and being terrorized by the past's horrors made corporeal, we accepted these terrors as a normal presence in our world? Not in an exploitative way, but in a way where we respect all aspects of life, even those that are no longer alive?

    The memories/ghosts of a losing season will forever be with us. It is important that we use these ghosts to live out a best life. Erasing them cannot change the past's reality. The ghosts of the losing league are us, and we must use this haunting to win in the present.