Happy Birthday James Joyce

"I am trying…to give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own…for their mental, moral and spiritual uplift."
- James Joyce, in a letter to his brother Stanislaus

130 years ago today, James Joyce was born. He was the first of many children in a family that grew too large for his parents to support and they slowly descended into poverty. His father had a knack for not holding on to money and so, unable to meet the rent, his family moved from one domicile to the next throughout most of his upbringing. Joyce inherited this itinerant habit into his adulthood as he lugged his belongings and family (wife, son, and daughter) to multiple homes throughout Rome, Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. While all this was going on, he somehow managed to find the time to put together arguably the greatest literary contribution in human history.

Aurora Australis

This video was the first thing I came across when testing the internet connection in my new apartment this past Saturday afternoon.

The lights are an effect of Earth's magnetic field (acting like a shield) protecting against solar winds. There have been a bunch of massive solar storms bombarding our planet recently and this video displays the resultant auroral lights seen from the coast of Australia on January 16th and 22nd.

Our planet's magnetic field comes from its constantly churning iron core, extending out from the center into a large invisible magnetic skin. I've always thought it quite closely resembles the shape of an apple.

This shape resonates in my mind with a painting by Vladimir Kush that I've been thinking about a lot lately, depicting the close connection between an apple's shape and that of a butterfly.

Getting Familiar with the NHL at Midseason

During my recent trip back home to New York I refreshed my perspective on a number of things, most prominently New York City itself (as I detailed in a post around that time). Alongside my renewed appreciation for New York was a brand new appreciation for hockey and the current NHL season. Having spent more than half my life as a hockey player, I've always loved the game and followed the pro hockey season closely. But after a knee injury sidelined me in the summer of 2010 I've been unable to sit and watch hockey games, embittered that I can't play. As a result, I've been almost completely ignorant of what's gone on in the sport, the exception being the Stanley Cup Finals of last June which I watched from within an enormous sports bar in Pasadena, CA while having dinner with a bunch of folks from the James Joyce Conference I was attending (the main buddy I made there was a big hockey fan from Calgary, a professor at the University of Alberta).

Most if not all of my close friends from New York are connected with hockey, we grew up skating on the same teams and continued to be play the game into our 20s. They all remain devoted hockey fans and with the local New York Rangers having their best season in almost 15 years, the hockey buzz was humming palpably during my visit to the city. When my family picked me up at Newark Airport and drove me into Manhattan where I met a friend for dinner, the sounds of the Rangers battling the Philadelphia Flyers blared over the car radio. Later that night, I happened to walk past a crowded post-game Madison Square Garden and some surrounding pubs where blueshirt-clad fans smoked cigarettes out on the sidewalks in the icy winter night.

The next night was Christmas Eve. After dinner I stepped outside to briefly speak to an old friend/nextdoor neighbor out in the street, the gist of our conversation being that I needed to watch the ongoing HBO series 24/7: Road to the NHL Winter Classic as soon as humanly possible. Thanks to the wonderful human advancement that is on-demand television (and my dad's near-obsession with having adequate cable television in nearly every room in my parents' house), I got to stay up late that night watching the first two episodes of the highly-regarded HBO documentary. The show follows the Rangers and Flyers behind the scenes and through their season as they prepare to collide in an outdoor game, the NHL's recently concocted New Year's Day celebratory match which is played on an outdoor surface. With all of the Manhattan scenes featured in the show, my newly minted perspective on the city was augmented and getting to know the personalities of players, seeing the dynamics of an NHL team, and witnessing the brilliance of Philly's cosmic-minded goalie Ilya Bryzgalov officially re-lit the spark on my hockey interest.

Two weeks later, that interest has exploded and so I'd like to let that all vent here and share my thoughts on the current NHL season, which has just recently crossed its midpoint.

Album Review: N.P.R. (Nihilism Produces Revolution) by A Man Called Relik

"Many a house of life
Hath held me---seeking him who wrought
These prisons of the senses, sorrow-frought:
Sore was my ceaseless strife!"
- The Buddha

"My counsel is that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way
and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal
and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil."
- Plato


It has taken numerous revolutions of this disc over a period of years for me to come upon a full understanding of its message. The display of poeticism (a style best described as "eloquent ferocity" or "ferocious eloquence") and the unconventionally unbroken, smooth (often drumless) hymnal music of the beats easily induces a state of tranquil marvel rather than rigorous contemplation. Now that I've managed to experience the latter and fully assess what's being said and presented on this record, I'd like to shed light on an underground gem of condensed mental minerals.

Remembering R.A.W.

Today, 1/11 is the anniversary of writer/thinker/guerrilla ontologist Robert Anton Wilson's departure from the physical world back in 2007 (can you believe 2007 was five years ago?). For the last few months, I've found myself often going through lengthy binges of listening to his interviews or lectures or reading one of his books. His work really creates an addictive drive in followers, probably because in all of his writings, lectures, and conversations he presents such a broad abundance of knowledge in such a funny, pellucid package.

Where We're At (The Center of the Universe)

The Railway Station at Perpignan (1965) - Salvador Dali

During the year that has just concluded, a good deal of my mental energy was devoted to Salvador Dali and his paranoiac-critical method. The paranoiac method was one of the keys to my study of Dali and James Joyce. For Dali, one of his favorite means of sharing this theory was always his deep infatuation with Millet's famous painting The Angelus (this was discussed in more detail here). During the 1930s, Dali penned a book-length analysis of this seemingly simple painting, asserting that the two farmers, who appear to be observing the daily Angelus prayer devotions in their field, are actually kneeling over a tiny casket. Millet decided to paint over the casket, Dali declared, because it came across as too morbid.

Album Review: MF DOOM - "Born Like This"

Art by Shaun Edwards - www.edwords.net

"Can it be I stayed away too long? Did you miss these rhymes while I was gone?"
- DOOM

After pretty much disappearing off the scene for a few years, DOOM (who dropped the "MF" from his name) released this short but densely rich little album in early 2009. With a total running time of just 40 minutes, four tracks where he doesn't even appear, and plenty of short solo tracks, it's a minimalist approach but then again his previous solo record MM..Food played less than 50 minutes long and was stuffed with lengthy skits and interludes. This is just his style. Madvillainy and DangerDoom were short records too, each one was also eminently replayable.

Return to Reality

Once again, despite many hours devoted to writing, I've managed to go without any blogposts for over three weeks. Been working on a few large pieces that will be posted once completed. 

I'm currently back home in New York's forgotten borough, Staten Island, and haven't had much free time in the midst of excessive relaxation, couch-slothing, and catching up with family and friends, but before the great year of 2011 is suddenly washed away I would like to share a few things.

Mo(o)nday

As I've mentioned a few times recently, this fascinating interview with the late Robert Anton Wilson has sparked a fresh focus for me on the days of the week and the meanings behind them. He was illustrating the applicability of the oft-mentioned 8-circuit model of consciousness and the levels of neuro-evolution. While he didn't really try to tie it with the chakra system, I'm sure it matches up pretty closely with that as well.

Briefly, the week looks like this (with the Spanish words for them to illustrate another point RAW made, that all the European languages denote the same type of gods):

Monday - lunes - day of the Moon, Mother goddess
Circuit I: oral bio-survival (nursing experience, attachment to the mother, earliest stage of human physical development and interaction with the world)

Tuesday - martes - Mars the god of war
Circuit II: emotional territorial (political strategies, emotional power tactics, the toddler stage of human development)

Wednesday - miércoles - Mercury the god of communication
Circuit III: semantic conceptual (organizing symbol systems, communicating, calculating, learning to speak the local tongue, "when we first begin to realize all the noises the adults are making are a code and we decypher it")

Thursday - jueves - Thor the god of thunder
Circuit IV: socio-sexual (domestication, the tribe determines moral and immorality with regards to sexual activity, the introduction of sexual guilt, social relations)

The other four circuits are still not completely understood for me, which makes perfect sense because most human beings operate on the four lower (terrestrial) circuits. But the higher ones are:

Friday - viernes - Venus the goddess of love, sexual ecstasy
Circuit V: neurosomatic circuit (blocking out the first four circuits via yoga, meditation, mantra, etc, the mystic level, Freud's oceanic experience, rapture, able to perceive one's own narrow reality tunnel and freedom from the bottom four circuits, the opening of compassion and deep sensitivity)

Saturday - sabado - Saturn the god of agriculture and harvest (time)
Circuit VI: neurogenetic circuit (Jung's collective unconscious, holistic body/mind/soul balance, realization of timeless self, the feeling of timelessness, achieved through advanced yoga)

Sunday - domingo - The Sun 
Circuit VII: metaprogramming circuit (ability to change and program lower circuits, planetary or evolutionary consciousness, perception of the relativity of reality)


[just as the 8th chakra is above and outside of the body, the 8th circuit transcends the days of the week]
Circuit VIII: quantum nonlocal circuit (8th chakra, above the body, transcendence of time and space, out of body experiences, extrasensory perception)

As RAW says, the seventh and eighth circuit "can be better described in art and music" so just take a good listen to this and you'll understand (and come back to Moonday):



"His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental" - wiki

Near to the heart of will and striving

Violin string-strummed spirals
Miles in the millions, solar system sphere music.
Improvement of my temperament through diametric spear movements
Near to the heart of will and striving
omnipresent in kinetics while still aligning
spiderweb linked grid thread jingling
sphere-headed being dreaming sun-drenched wave glistenings.

Listening for the next vibecrest to carry me beyond
Along for the ride headphones and sonar sonic bombs.
Hominids travel above abyss and listen to bright psalms
Near to the heart of will and striving
alone and still in the midst of moving mobs.
Wirestrung wig connects, check the line for a break
Four-sided square surrounding, asleep and dreaming of awake.

Break the bond of past mistakes,
whirlwind spin the compass
Make up new creations
and aim again for the wonders.

- PQ 12/3/11 11:23 PM

Listen to this Right Now

Stop right there. You're already here on my blog now relax, take your shoes off, sit down and enjoy this genius at work. I promise you've never heard or seen anything quite like it.