gagablog 115: True Love Overcoming All Illusion - Brandon Marshall's Protest of Abusive Cops and Perfect Illusion video pemiere on Scream Queens!

I've been wanting to write about Perfect Illusion ever since I heard it but I have not heard it again since the day it premiered, since I last wrote this. I have plenty to say just about the chorus and what has happened in the days since then but I look forward to listening closer and going into further detail when I know more of the lyrics. The line "It wasn't love it was a perfect illusion" is the most important to me, now, for many reasons. Most immediately, it seems to be the conclusion of the Artpop era and the conclusion of her relationship with Taylor. A theme of Artpop was "it could be love" / "we could belong together." The chorus of Perfect Illusion says pretty directly that it was not love but instead a perfect illusion. I must say that while all heartbreak and break-ups are hurtful I am overjoyed that Gaga is finally moving past Taylor since seeing through the illusion allows her to find real love and more loves. And for a selfish reason I hope she loves me and for an art-selfish reason I hope her new loves inspire and support her even more in her art.

     I've been extremely pleased with our music recently for our next Foxzen album. I just want to cheer myself in that way. I've also felt some heartache lately, in the last week, while at the same time eager to write this, my response to Gaga's new song. I'm happy we've felt in Love at times, too, but other times were heartbreak, for me. As much as I wanted to include things going on, I didn't really want to write this while I was feeling heartbroken, but it kept happening so I was resigned to doing it anyway. But I misplaced the power cord to my computer for a few days. Now I am glad we are back in love again, at least not heartbroken, and while i feel weird ever talking too much about specific personal stuff I did realize some things during times of conflict and argument between us. One was simply that feeling heartbroken felt like being "out of love", that's what feels so bad about it, but really it is part of love, maybe a dark side of it. It is because I am still in love that I feel heartbroken when it seems like she isn't in love with me. I have always hoped I was right, that we really were in love with each other despite the times it did not seem like it. But I have had to face it more this year than ever that maybe I was deluding myself because I want Love and want to believe in love so much. Now, after hearing Perfect Illusion I realise I could be delusional or i could be in love. "Perfect Illusion" certainly does not describe my relationship, but I can relate to it based upon my understanding of love, art, and magic as "everything" and anything "else" or less than that as being illusion. Maybe it is only because I am sympathetic to Gaga and wish I had the chance to be with her that Taylor had that I assume he misled her and took advantage of her desire for love and belief in love. That's what I am afraid of myself, anyway, that I am so in love with love that I want to delude myself when I really shouldn't, but I do believe our love keeps coming true in different and new ways. Just last night, 9/19, I saw an episode of Newhart in which he sums up love by saying "maybe love is change." George was sad that his old flame, Elanor, played by Rue McClanahan, had changed so much after 31 years of not seeing her and Dick said Love is loving through the changes so people can grow and since we will change, inevitably, then loving must be loving change, or even that Love IS change itself. This is one way to sum up chaos, and the magic of it, to me, as Love.

     I'm going over my notes to talk about magic, love, art, media, and aliens. I feel like I have only been teasing about alien communication and I just need to really get into it. Just after writing one of my most recent editions about alien contact I watched a DVD of the Flintstones and wrote down this line from the Great Gazoo: "You can see me because you found me, the kids can see me because they understand me." This sums up my perspective on aliens (or fairies and art and magic):: scientists want to be the ones to discover aliens (as I type that, on TV in the background at 4 AM Mork is saying "if you want to see a real life alien being meet me..." - turning himself in for a $25,000 reward to give to Mindy) but the secret is to understand aliens and realize we're all here - "I'm the only alien here" Mork just said but Mindy showed up in a sexy brown alien costume with pointy bat ears and her dad is in a spacesuit too and now the journalist thinks they are all faking. I mean, we don't need to discover aliens, or magic, or even rely too much on "outer" space for artistic inspiration  - though I love that and think that one works both ways, well, they all do, but e are especially trained to expect aliens from "outer" space. It will help oithers understand aliens better if more discoveries are made, sure, but the real, easy, nice way to go about it is by understanding what we are already part of, which will lead to better ways of making discoveries. We are aliens, of course - if you don't want to feel that is a shocking statement, look at it from the "other" aliens' perspective.

     I wrote these notes just a day or two after hearing Perfect Illusion for the first, and last, time - maybe I will talk about some suspicions I have that Gaga upset Disney by ruining the ratings for Chicago Fire and other related shows when she broke up with Taylor and they want revenge by suppressing her new song but most likely Denver radio just sucks. I only ever got into the habit of listening to the pop stations to hear Gaga and now I just turn to them randomly at times to see if they play her but have recently lost almost all hope for them. I should place some requests. And maybe the popularity of Perfect Illusion will catch on here again in a month or more and they will play it regularly, then. The day I wrote these notes, maybe 9/12, I had a nice little blast of media magic: for some reason I was reminded of the Dead Milkmen song "Rocketship", one of my favorite songs of theirs, and sang some to my friend, the line about the girl on Planet X.  That night I turned on the old-timey channels on TV and happened upon a Godzilla movie in which aliens take Godzilla and Rodan to their planet to fight the Zero Beast, I think. I'm sensitive to Godzilla movies, though I've only seen some of them, because my lover says I am Godzilla and she is Mothra, mystically. I'd never seen this one before. It was nice magic to think we could team up to fight a terrible beast on another planet but I didn't watch much, just the beginning. The main reason I noted it was that the planet was named Planet X. The aliens were hostile, after all, and one of the hero's had a girlfriend who it turns out is one of many "clones" or something of that girl  -that all the girls on Planet X look just like her. The lyric in the Dead Milkmen song is "there's a girl on Planet X, I don't know her but that's alright she doesn't know me either." When the hero sees a girl on Planet X, of course he thinks she is "his girl" since they look identi\cal, but she does not recognize him  - then he sees more of them and figures it out. It struck me that "he didn't know her" but ultimately that was alight because she didn't know him either. The song is from 1986, I think, and the movie was from the 50's. It made me think about how people are the "only one" when you are in love and how identity seems so important and significant but is also fluid as much as we want to treat it as solid. Mostly I feel there is a comment about love, about the idea of people being "the only one" or "not like anyone else" and the idea of being wrong about people or someone else being "the same", or different, about differences being internal or external and whether that makes any difference.

       We have been having fires out back all summer, in our little fie pit, and were recently discussing the first human use of fire, just musing about it a few nights in a row. Then the next day, last Sunday, I woke up and turned on PBS, something I never do, really, just had a feeling I wanted to see what was on. It was a show about the origins of the oven, fridge, and washing machine and in the part about ovens it mentioned that when people started using fire to cook food the size of their brains doubled in a short period of time, allowing for much more complex thinking, presumably as a result of better nutrition from cooked food. This made me wonder: do we have nay technologies that can be compared to that, today? Things that make us so much healthier, physically or mentally - or COULD make us more healthy if potentials are realized  - that we double our ability to think? In some ways the internet seems to be doing this already. Some people try to scare us with a specter of "too smart" AI but maybe some people are afraid of how people, everyone, especially young people, have the ability to get way too smart to put up with the same old bullshit anymore. While I kind of want some more integration of our experience to really expect to make as much benefit of the electronic world as we made of Fire, but i do see it as our fate to do so, if we live up to it. The cell phone camera and now police body cameras have the potential to completely change the police, for instance, making police work more than twice as good as it currently is by exposing and ending all the evil in it - if we use them to their potential and lean from the realities they reveal. My notes read "how much more can we develop?" and ""what would we understand better by these developments?" and I will return to this topic another time, perhaps. Basically I just think we can imagine what we could imagine, what could be possible, and by merely opening up our minds, loosening up, we allow new inspiration to be possible, just like feeling like a star helps make better music and art.

       I titled this note card "bringing down the system - all is magic." Then I have "the conspiracy of anti-magic and 'only-magick'" - a condemnation of Science and religion working together to suppress magic, from "both sides" as it were - really from the same side, like the current Democrats and Republicans, but pretending their false debate are the 'two" options - and more on that another time, too, maybe. "Everything is magic / love - EXCEPT the illusion of pretending to be in love when you aren't. People can take advantage of people who love them, who are in love with them. When we are in love we overlook flaws, for better or worse, we idealize the other. I recently argued to consciously try to do that, to help forgive wrongs, and to know it as a choice, not just being lovestruck, but tying to have the same effect without blaming it on fate, making it a choice. If it works it could help people stay in love and not be bogged down by conflict, hopefully to learn how to avoid conflict in the first place from occuring and certainly can feel as good, or better, than when it happens unexpectedly, but maybe is less dangerous if you only decide to do it when you know you are just being overly defensive and you know the person well enough to trust them, deep down.  .

     Everything is magic, love, truth - except pretending to be and therefore standing in the way of it all becoming what it truly is. This was followed by football. I guess we were arguing and I was feeling disconnected from her and wanted to just watch football all day. I sometimes want to watch it because it feels festive and fun but usually I watch some football here and there and do other things, too, unless I'm excited about the game. I felt more excited about it, last Sunday, or more I felt kind of dull from feeling love-sad and it made football seem extra-exciting. It made me wonder if this is why so many men do enjoy football, o cars, or other such things, so much.; a feeling of giving up on more passionate desires and choosing to enjoy the "passion" of the game instead. Or like the pleasure of wearing big blue pants in the Simpsons  commercial "when you've given up on being attractive to women." But they are also artforms in a way and can be enjoyed like that. It just made me think of the whole football craze as in some ways an indication of the lack of love in the culture.

     But there was one reason I wrote about football and it was the protests of the Nath\ional Anthem and how that elates to Truth and Love overcoming illusions. The American Dream is true and Good as far as it is Love, equality, freedom and Justice, in Truth. But when it is these things "in name only", or wonderful things for some people at the expense of awful suffering for others, then the American Dream is one of these illusions standing in the way of true love, of true dreams. It can be either way, the American Dream, but it needs to be redeemed from the mere claim or lie that prevents what it claims to prize. it is the same with war: having more, better weapons is not ultimately the path to peace no matter how often they claim it is. In fact the more they claim this while war continues to exist longer and longer just proves more and more how untrue it is and we are seeing through that lie. In Syria Assad is not afraid to murder his own people just because we have an overwhelmingly powerful military in America, it's just not a deterrant, it hasn't stopped him either by threat or by force. Of course it could stop him and even all life on earth, by force, but the idea is supposedly to use the threat of force to deter evil. The problem is it doesn't work, it is counter-productive. Ultimately just keeping weapons around and keeping development in that field is making war continue past it's "usefulness" to humanity - some people obviously have a vested interest in creating and continuing it because it is their business and unfortunately there is enough money in it that these are the people, along with the oil companies, who actually run our government and control what is going on. This is the reason the People increasingly sensitive to what the world actually needs, so overwhelmingly support the revolution once embodied by Bernie Sanders. I heard an expert on the radio today, NPR 9-19, say there will never be the same kinds of wars as we had in the 20th century because economies are so inteconnected., It makes sense, but what makes even more sense is that we should not have any war any more, already, because of how obviously bad it is for everyone. From that perspective it seems like Syria is a "model" war, a little War Toy the bigger countries are playing with, causing all of his suffering and death just to justify the continuation of their outdated business, war. More to say about this later. Right now its about the protests of the cops war on the defenseless people of America and how that has to stop.

       I'm extremely proud of Colin Kapernek for protesting the national anthem and helping further the discussion. I'm also proud of Brandon Marshall of our local Broncos. for taking a knee in this protest, too, and also for taking some vicious hits upon Cam Newton, drawing fines and more attention to his statement. I have kind of mixed feeling about that but at the same time it seems like it puts things in perspective, breaking their football rules, getting aggression out in a game and getting more attention and airtime, while the rules the cops are breaking are much worse with worse consequences. Believe me, I feel bad for Cam Newton but the point is that football rules have changed with new data on head injuries. Rules for cops have not changed enough even with a steady flow of data about abuse of their power and unpunished murder of civilians. There was just a settlement for millions over the unconvicted police murder of Sandra Bland. There was a news story about a cop in Tulsa who shot another black man this weekend while he had his hands up, claiming he was not complying with police. I was watching these games on September 11th and paying close attention, with respect, to the players who did not have their hands on their hearts. Then at the Kansas City Chiefs game I was pleased to see the team standing with locked arms and the announcer commented upon it. He did not mention the controversy specifically but said the team chose to do this to respect all their players' viewpoints but show a team spirit and that they had done outreach with the local police department - I guess we can all assume we know what the issue is about, as well as we do, in our varied perspectives. I understood why the announcer would not want to "go into it" but at the same time was glad that the visual statement they made led to a statement by him in the media. I was so proud of the Chiefs I watched their game with pleasure even though I usually don't cheer for them. I felt they deserved to in from the very beginning, from showing solidarity as a team and with the protest, too, but in a way that people could take it with less offense than a single player's statement. And I just knew they would win, despite the Chargers taking  a commanding early lead. In the end, the Chiefs had their biggest comeback in team history. I wonder if that bit of magic increased any of the times the sports media mentioned their solidarity-protest, too, and how that showed not only team spirit and cohesiveness but some compassion and cohesion with the community, too.

     As I am typing this the bewitched in the background just had Endora putting a spell on Darren and his secretary, making them flirt with each other, and at some point he says Samantha's favorite animal is a unicorn. My next note on my cad, from eight days ago, is about how one player said he was glad to move from Texas to NY because while in Texas he could be a "horse" in NY he could be a "unicorn." At the time I wanted to mention this because of the Gaga-connection, and what it says about thriving in culture, amidst art, but now, when Darren mentioned a unicorn on TV as I approached that note on the card, I know it's just pure magic, too, no illusions about it. Oh, I think Endora is making different characters tell the truth, ha ha, moment to moment. Sh wasn't "flirting" when she said the dress was three sizes two small and she wore it so he would notice her, just telling the truth,. "When you put career in front of woman a large part of the woman disappears" is what a husband just said, which made the dinner party tense and everyone assumes will result in conflict for his relationship. Samantha is yelling to the air (invisible Endora) that she has proven her point.

     Soledad Obrien recently interviewed a player who is also prominent as a blogger, I forget who he is, he was supportive of Kapernek but not into the protest, the Obama line. She asked him if Kapernek would be seen, in the future, as a hero for standing u-p for justice, like Muhammud Ali, when Ali was seen as subversive at the time he took his stand  - and his stand is still subversive to the staus quo yet somehow they manage to idolize him without taking his critique to heart and changing. I was very proud of her just for asking, for framing it like that, because I think she is right and I think we will look at him, almost universally, as a hero, in the future. We should see everyone fighting for justice and ending police brutality and impunity as a hero, including Soledad for asking the question and framing the conversation this way. She's beautiful, too - I always had a crush on her but justice of course makes me feel it even stronger.

       There was some more media magic worth mentioning this week. On another "side"-channel on my antenna TV, one of the dozen or so channels that play all vintage shows, I was flipping past and saw OJ Simpson. He was a guest star, I believe, on an episode of "In the Heat of the Night." The next morning I heard some coverage on NPR about the Emmy's and an interview with the actor who won for his portrayal of Johnny Cochran from that trial. They discussed the time OJ had responded to a question about being black by saying "I'm not black, I'm OJ Simpson." The TV show focuses on how the defense made OJ "black" for strategic purposes, and they talked about this, but the actor touched upon the idea that by "succeeding" in America OJ had so distanced himself from being black and hat this whole idea meant about the racial divide in America and that success itself is perceived as the province of whiteness. It reminded me of Tiger Woods getting offended at the idea that he was black. I know I lose respect for people when they adopt racism in order to feel superior, which is what I see here. I imagine many black people lose respect for them, too, or respect them as black people in spite of their own words about it.

        There are some sad truths about racist, murderous policing in America and we simply must face them and fix them by changing the way the police work. The first step is to get over blind support and act on the evidence of all the videos we have of their misconduct and lack of training or culture of callousness. There were discussions today on the radio about ho police are not trained and don't just instinctively do the naturally caring actions of  getting help for their victims after they shoot or choke them. Many people die ho don't have to. There was a news report today as ell about the federal government issuing guidelines for emerging self-driving cars. One pundit predicted that 96% of accidents could be prevented by this technology and there ere astronomical estimates of how much savings this would provide the country, tens of billions of dollars. The idea was that the government could issue guidelines for this emerging industry to maximize the safety, having the companies share their safety programming and methods instead of competing with them as secrets for the benefit of everyone. Why can't they issue some better guidelines for police work? One statistic was that police shoot and kill three people per day but that the vast majority of these are armed people shooting at police. The more immediate injustice is the unarmed people they kill and better guidelines, like self-driving cars, should be able to cut don on 96% or more of these completely unjustified murders, if we hold the cops to the training with some actual consequences for their behavior, too.

       The biggest news story of the weekend was the bombings in Ne York and New  Jersey. Its been the main focus of the news ever since it happened Saturday night and there was an early report that I want to focus on. Probably one of the first things the media could find out about the suspect once they had his name was any legal trouble he as in. One of the NPR reporters talked about complaints his family had filed against the city and the police force for harassing them. Apparently the family restaurant was the target of police harassment and harassment from people in the community who came in yelling about how they should not be there since they were from Pakistan and yelling that all Muslims were terrorists. Now, of course I'm sure Muslim communities feel even a stronger sense of disappointment that this kid would "make the stereotypes seem true" by committing terrorism but I'm not trying to defend him, just to defend all of us, when I say that if you treat someone like something for long enough you greatly increase the chances they ill act like that. This is a lesson I am trying to reach understanding in our relationship because I feel like we don't often treat each other as our best selves but instead focus on negative things even to the point of being unappreciative of good qualities. I feel like I am a nice person, generally, and while I have had moments here I have gotten angry I don't feel like I am always or often angry. However, one thing that can anger me is being treated like I am always angry when it just isn't true. It becomes more true by making me angry to be treated that way, though. It reminds me of profiling in police work and racism in general keeping certain populations in disadvantaged situations. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways to treat a whole community like criminals. That is not to say that they engage in criminality because it is expected but even innocent people are caught up and made "guilty" and punished by a system that sets people up for it.

       The news has been talking about different "angles" of debate regarding this bombing suspect, mostly focusing on ho it relates to the presidential immigration debate when it really doesn't relate at all. One angle they are not exploring further, that they maybe only mentioned because it was new information before they had anything else to talk about, is that this is also a police harassment story. The father said he was a terrorist, told the cops, after he stabbed his brother in 2012 and in recent years he has spent a lot of time in places in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Taliban is very active. His dad says now that he is not a terrorist but there do seem to be more signs that he specifically trained to become a terrorist. My point, despite what can be done along the way to prevent violent acts like this and others, hat could be done to prevent someone having the motivation to become a terrorist in the first place?

       Maybe if the police had not harassed his family business and terrorized them, with no consequences for doing so, for years?

       Just a thought: if you don't want terrorists, stop terrorizing people.

      My son just turned 17 last week, on the 17th. The night before we turned on the TV and they were showing "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World." My lover mentioned that we had watched the same movie the night before he was born, 17 years ago, she remembered because she was starting to go into labor during it. I wanted to mention it just because of that magical coincidence but didn't know how it fit in but then last night I felt I had to mention it after a reminder from TV. It was about 3 AM the morning of the 20th, this morning, when Sabrina The teenage Witch came on. I must apologize and issue a correction for calling her Serena in the previous gagablog - sorry, Sabrina. The second episode was about her going to Spring Break with her friends and boyfriend and her aunts being worried she would get too wild and conjuring up a "Good Clean Fun" coordinator ho as played by Frankie Avalon. He is of course the craziest, wildest of the bunch in "Mad mad Mad Mad World" but I had to mention him showing back up, in this context, early this morning. The first episode was where her musician boyfriend told her she was his muse and she started feeling pressure to be interesting all the time and felt like she was failing at it. She asks the help of muses and they tell her to cater to his every whim. Her friend is jealous, wants to be someone's muse, too, and at one point is telling her how she will "out-muse" her and says she has a dress that will make her blow Sabrina away as a muse. Maybe this is just supposed to be her being superficial but I thought it was interesting the different ideas of what it is to be a muse: to be interesting oneself, to be beautiful, or to be dutiful. Very different ideas that can come together in some ways but it was just an interesting episode to ponder the relationship between love and inspiration. This episode, or the next one, also had the aunts on a day pass to heaven, to check it out, since one of them, the one played by Caroline Rhea, was afraid of death. She gets excited after she sees it, how chill it is, though Zelda decides it is too boring, not stimulating enough. The highlight she mentions afterwards is "dirty dancing with Fred Murtz", the landlord and friend on "I love Lucy." I knew I was "meant" to write about these when Frankie Avalon came on and now that I am doing it I want to say it simply. We, like Sabina, do not really need Authorities or police - we are responsible people. Then again we all make mistakes, too, and end up acting out of lesser selves at times, as well, not being our best. And of course currently far too many people are in oppressed circumstances and literally driven to crime in many ways. But the right kind of policing can help in all of these situations and help to change the oppressive system. In fact, the wrong kind of policing is a central part of keeping the system of injustice in place and we just need to remove that evil. The good example is the Good Clean Fun coordinator, or Officer Jenny in Pokemon, having a perpetually positive attitude and leading by example of good things to do. Now I resent the notion that sex is not also Good Fun, dirty or not, but I like, somewhat, the way the Sabrina show treated it. She said she could be trusted and got angry with her aunts for interfering with magic. But since everyone liked the Good Clean fun and she didn't get more intimate with her newish boyfriend it looked like there was an opening for her to hook up with her friend's boyfriend instead.  Like the magical principle I mentioned, earlier, of treating someone or some people like they are real assholes or untrustworthy can bring out negative actions from them, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, trying too hard to prevent some natural, good "naughtiness" can result in the naughtiness coming out in a different way, like ending up with your friend's boyfriend.

     I know I will really enjoy talking more about Perfect Illusions in detail but I feel like I will really enjoy Sexxx Dreams, line by line, really soon now, too, and I finally feel ready for it after over a year of preparation. I feel like I am getting more back into dreams and dream magic, too, and I'm really excited about that, just as I am about writing more fairy tales the more I feel in love. And having this new keyboard, full size, with a working "G" button for the first time in almost a year, at least, it seems. Hitchcock caught my ear when the old wealthy aunt (Agatha? Same name as the bug princess in Zelda?) was expecting "Hillary" to save her, who turned out to be a man, and in the end, I hope, it was her cats and niece who did the liberating.  I didn't want to mention Dougie Howser, M.D. - I always resented and hated that show as a kid without ever seeing a minute of it, have seen some in reruns and hate-watch it with some pleasure and nostalgia, too, but mostly cringing. But last night, or early this morning, it was the return of his Mom's old flame, reuniting their band "Mother Earth and the Pagans" and I had to mention it, as a witch, and would just leave it at that but his final thought was epic: "Most men rush in and fight for the woman they love. My dad sat back and did nothing." then he had his thoughtful pause and finished with the poignant conclusion: "I really admire his courage." I was going to just type that and leave it at that, I won't relate it to my "life" but I will say that as I typed it I realized that could be said about me and how I seem to be trying to in the love of Mother Monster, now -  sitting her doing nothing. It makes me think and want to art much harder. but now I will use it as an excuse to smoke a cigarette though I have been mostly quitting these last two months and haven't smoked all day until now, at 6:30 PM. It makes me want to "rush in and fight" for love, with a paintbrush and song, instead of just continuing this sitting back and doing nothing. And I also thought6 it was interesting that when Dougie is asking his dad why he is not threatened his dad says his mom is "beautiful, intelligent, and charming" and Dougie replies that the old flame is "handsome, rich, and vegetarian." I thought that was an interesting contrast based upon gender. But I also thought it was interesting that both Newhart and Dougie recently featured the return of old flames after 18 or 31 years.

     Since I've already admitted that I watched Dougie Houser I felt it was easier to note the second episode, too. Dougie was studying a mummy and Vinnie believed it was cursed, first due to an earthquake then to a digital reconstruction of the mummy's face and it looked like him. I noticed that they would turn on the TV during this episode and an old black and white Mummy movie was on -  it reminded me how often this happens in TV and movies, a TV on screen echoing the story. And it made me think of what I do, look for ways that the TV programs I see echo my life, like a mirror in mirror, picture-in-picture. His coworker has a sympathetic pregnancy then Dougie has a daydream in which the mummy gets up and talks with him, telling him not to judge Vinnie because we all make meaning of things in different ways. His final thought is that "Vinnie believed in a curse, Tommy (?) believed he was pregnant, and I believe in rationality." He paused and thought again then summed up with "Everyone has a few delusions." I felt like this fit nicely with my own "delusion", of love, or hopefully the delusions we all share of "not love" once we start to discover everything truly is love and magic, once we get though the illusions to the true reality of it. Some delusions, like my dream of being a star, can magically come true if you believe them enough, they are good for you. Sometimes being able to see your love positively can be a helpful delusion, if there aren't any real problems beyond our own criticism and ju\dgement of each other. But that delusion can be bad, whether someone treats us well or badly, if they are not being honest with us and have other motives, if they aren't "there for the right reason" in Bachelor terminology, for Love.

     Everything is, truly, for love and all of our lesser goals show our fear of true growth and development. Lies, illusions, become the only barriers to reaching the true state of being, in peace and harmony. Gaga seeing through the perfect illusion,  the lie that wasn't love with Taylor, is a sign of the whole world finding a truer, deeper kind of love. Some of the worst news this weekend was that the Syrian or Russian army bombed a medical relief convoy in Aleppo, Syria, killing 24 aid workers and suspending relief operations as well as breaking a ceasefire they finally had in place for little more than a week. The US has said it will have "strong words" o something with Russia but of course all sides are complicit in this travesty. They say that, if proven, it is certainly a war crimes but by my count it is another terrible addition to a long list of war crimes and we, America, have plenty of war crimes we are guilty of as well. we don't need to end war crimes, since we aren't doing that anyway, we need to end all of war. "Solutions" that fall short of that or don't work towards it at are all doomed to fail by lack of faith in the truth, a wold of peace.

     I just tuned in to Scream Queens, I loved it last year, and was excited to see that they were going to play the premiere of Gaga's "Perfect Illusion" video. It was awesome and I will use the chance to mention some interesting things from the show. At first I almost turned away because I saw John Stamos and assumed it was "Grandfathered" and the menu was wrong then realized it was Scream Queens, got excited, and saw the ad for the video and got overjoyed. I tuned in late and saw Stamos, a doctor, talking about how he was 23 when he separated the Helmsworth brothers and the nurse said "they aren't even twins" and he said that is why it is so hard. 23 is an Eris number so it stood out but so did the idea of being separated, of being twins in a different way than physical. When the girl asks Munch why, if she is such a feminist, the "staff is just me and a bunch of dudes" (as i typed "staff" the newscaster just said "staff" on the TV). Her response: "feminism is so boring." I was eagerly awaiting the video but also enjoyed the Alicia Keyes Levi's ad, where she is speaking an empowering message and there are at least three really good close-ups of her amazing ass in the tight jeans. Chanel No. 1 says maybe they should try to reform their image by actually doing something good for once and they become "doctors." The video as awesome and I enjoyed how when the show returned the Chanels had undergone a transformation from their plain scrubs to adding boas and hats like Nurse Joy. This reminded me of mentioning Jenny, earlier, and of the idea of magical transformation with Gaga. And the scene was them giving a make-over to the patient. Of course "Perfect Illusion" has the transformation theme, too, of coming through a desert and seeing the illusion for hat it as.

       The video was awesome and powerful. Gaga is super-sexy throughout it and just looks beautiful, but pained. Mostly I noticed how she never, barely ever, looks at the camera. It shows a lot of pain and disillusionment and is a perfect breakup song. My lover said it seemed, I forget what she said, unlike Gaga, not "Gaga" enough but I thought it was perfect and she did say it was a perfect break-up song. I felt like the desert imagery suggested a mirage, a false oasis, like Love, this relationship, was all an illusion. This reminds me of a the lyrics for our new Foxzen song, "Cave of Wonders", which we just wrote a few weeks ago. Some lines are "I wash mirages out from underneath your feet" and "your eyes are the oasis stares to paradise for me" - about true love in someone's eyes, the opposite of being only a mirage or illusion. The way the scene changed from the empty desert to the show, or party, with her singing into her microphone (almost?) all the time made me wonder what the message was for the back-and-forth. My lover just clarified that she thought it seemed more simple than Gaga's previous work but that she might have been going for a more "traditional" video, like rock videos of the classic era. I suspect it could be a decision to do this, for the style of the song, or to appeal to more mainstream audience that likes to see Gaga "less weird" but I also wonder if it was just a matter of time. I imagine Gaga would not continue a relationship after realizing it was "over" and suspect she broke up with Taylor when she found out and then wrote the song, and made the video, since then. All the costumes and sets must take a lot of time so it may be that this style as a result of doing the whole release in a short period of time compared to past songs. But specifically changing back and forth between desert and show, and set-up for the show in the desert, it seemed to have a few different interpretations possible. I assume that Gaga and Taylor had two kinds of life, their careers, where their work took them, and their time together. One interpretation could be that the concert, party scenes represent her time at work, as Gaga, and the deserts, where she is alone, represent the times with him. The line about being caught up in the confusion could relate to the whirlwind of her career, the party.scenes, and being able to miss the signs of her personal life being, actually, a desert, due to her busy lifestyle. Or the confusion of the party could also relate to their personal life, if their time was spent in so much celebration she failed to see the emptiness within it. I feel weird, speculating, because it does so obviously reflect her personal life. I can't help wondering what the meaning of all of i \t is, though, because Gaga's genius always suggests there is a lot of meaning to every detail. for instance, I feel like the way she never looked at the camera could mean something like her relationship, being caught in the illusion, kept her from connecting with the rest of the world and other people. I certainly hope we can all connect more with and through her and feel like she is free from the illusion, free to be the Goddess of Love she truly is. "The saying goes there is a diva in every cast, looks like we just found ours" the character on Mad TV just said, to his co-star who is reading a book. Another idea I had about the juxtaposition of the party and the desert is that the openness of a desert is what allows space for a party or symbolically that being left "barren" by one relationship is an opening for many more. I guess I just feel like she seemed to be going through the same struggle in the crowd that she was when she was alone, that she was still hurting or so caught up in it all that she was not really connecting like she means to and we all desire.

     I was disappointed in myself for taking so long to write this, earlier today, but now I feel like it as meant to be since I got to see Scream Queen and the premiere of the Perfect Illusions video as I as finishing it. One reason I'm not done yet is I found an old notecard I think I left out of previous editions. I will just race through it, now - it was en episode of Rhoda replayed a few weeks ago. John Ritter, Jack Trippe from Three's Company, was a player dating Rhoda's sister, who is played by Judy Kavner, the voice of Marge and others on the Simpsons. I had to watch Jack, as Jerry, and how it all played out. Rhoda tells her, first, about a fantasy of a train going though a tunnel, of being naked on a beach, floating helplessly, and her sister Brenda cuts her off and offers a much tamer version, with a bathing suit, for herself. Jerry breaks their date and when she asks why he asks if she can handle the truth then tells her something better came up. She forgives him saying anyone can think of an excuse but telling the truth wasn't easy - that whole thing about being lovestruck and forgiving things you should not. Rhoda gets mad at her for not showing self-respect. I was surprised to hear the voice of Garfield as the doorman of their apartment. His name is Carlton, says Jerry blew it and offers this advice to "hold onto a man": Give him plenty to drink, tip him well, and keep his uniform clean. This reminds me how love is peculiar to each of us, in our own minds, anyway. Brenda asks Rhoda not to leave, just to stay and not be mad at her since she has been through something tough and she agrees to, then Brenda asks "do you think he will call?" and Rhoda gets mad. To me this shows ho anger can arise in any lack of love, including self-love. Rhoda tells her it is easy to gt a guy like that, just to play "these stupid games" and says if she wants respect she needs to use "stupid dishonest tricks." Her boyfriend, Joe, enters and says in modern times those tricks don't wok anymore. After he leaves, Rhoda says she knew when she saw him she would have to play it straight with him, he is that type, but that what he did not know was that "I was straight deciding to be straight - which is a game." Brenda says "tell me how to get Jerry and I'll do whatever you want". Rhoda tells her the secret to getting him is to realize she does not need him and that she is the prize and to feel like she passed that test, to approve of herself instead of seeking his approval. Brenda asks if she will help he if she promises to drop him if she gets him and Rhoda says those are the conditions. This reminds me of a magical "tick" about love, too, only anting what you don't have or after you've lost it, or only being able to find love when you don't feel like you "need" it. Or the feeling of neediness scaring people away from love. Then Brenda says okay but she has to get him before she throws him. Rhoda tells her these steps: get his number, break a date with him and make him feel less secure, less sure of  himself. She gets Joe to go to he wok, where he woks, too, to flirt with her as well. I guess I just wanted to note all of these techniques, as described in a show from the 70's, and how these were the liberated women ideas current then. I also noticed a number of themes from Newhart and other 80's shows about how offensive it is to give flowers or candy to women to overcome conflict, as if their concerns were never serious. It's interesting to see how people develop regarding where they stand on these kinds of ideas. I'm not sure what show it as, maybe Newhart, in which someone says "I don't see what those merchant marines see in her anyway - maybe a Don Rickles line from Newhart. Michael said "someone got up on the wrong side of the futon" and I think I noted it because it reflected my on life that day. But the main reason I noted this episode was because of the interaction between Rickles and Dick. Rickles was playing Don Prince, an actor who was starting a late night show. Dick signs a contract to be on then he just makes fun of Dick the whole time, for 90 minutes. It is a success and Dick is contractualy obligated to appear every night so the whole show becomes abusing Dick, with a "Pick On Dick" section where the audience can win T-shirts, etc. Sorry if I already mentioned this, it was in my notes but I did not see it when I scanned my recent blog editions. After two weeks of this Dick finally snaps and says "You are bald and fat" and Prince gets upset  - "I gave my whole life to show business and this is how I am repayed, you insult me?" - and storms off stage. Dick confronts him in his dressing room and he tells him what is really going on. He says he, Don Prince, also got swindled into the contract. He decided his only way out would be to provoke Dick into attacking him, claim abuse and void the contract, but Dick was spoiling the plan because he as "so damn nice" he never responded in kind.

       This made me think of the essence of trolling, that in some way people are trying to void a spiritual contract they have entered, some alliance with a bullshit power. Hate and fear are a lack of love, manipulating that same lack of love in others. This is represented by Trump. Obama's speech to the U.N. today was publicized for including a presumed dig at Trump when he said that in today's world a nation surrounded by walls only isolates itself. I wish he could see how this same principle is true about ALL defenses, in the modern world, all excuses for war. It is time, past time, for us to lead the world by disarming, by truly moving away from war. As I pre\dicted and Obama said today, the situation in Syria proves war is not the solution, only diplomacy can solve the problem. I've been saying for years that Syria should be the last war, I was hoping we could be hopeful and find a way to end it, proactively, and use that as a model to end all wars, forever, but even if we have to be forced into these conclusions despite continued insistence on war we will, ultimately, come to the peaceful, completely war-free conclusion, because we must. It just becomes more and more obvious how much we need to end war, ho much we need to end all oppression, the longer we allow the powers that be to resist this necessary revolutionary change.

     I'm glad for one more reason that it took me this long to write this. I just heard on the local news some more details about Brandon Marshall's protest of the national anthem and racist, oppressive police. The new story, tonight, is that he says when he as in Miami five cops charged him and took him don when he exited a club, handcuffed him and took him into the squad car for resisting arrest, saying they were going to charge him, and then got a radio call saying to return him, probably because they realized who he was. They let him go and told him he as free on condition he did not say anything about it. Now he is obviously speaking up and the media has checked with Miami and is reporting the police's story that "they have no record of any contact with him." But of course they wouldn't if they never made an official report. They said if his story as true it would violate protocol but I just believe him, not them, in this and feel like the burden of poof should always fall on cops when they have been literally getting away with murder and worse for so long and violating plenty of protocals, plus missing many new protocols they obviously need. I feel bad that we can't have the same sympathy, as a nation, for everyone who is the victim of harassment from police but the fact that a celebrity will draw more, and more kinds of, attention to the issue makes me so glad he is speaking out. It's another example of how the cops just can't get away with it forever and certain events will be turning points to finally getting justice and ending this terrible system.

       There was another news story about a local church which protected an assistant pastor ho raped a 12-year old girl ho was a church member and student of the church :"home-school." This is the classic example of institutions that are supposed to protect people only being worried about protecting themselves. It reminds me of the cops, it reminds me of the Clintons. They asked Bill recently why so many people who supported him don't support Hillary. His response was most likely just calculated to divert attention from the other issues, but he could just be this out of touch. he said he thought it was because the media treated the email scandal like "the most important event since World War 2" - a phrasing which itself shows a maniacal level of being self-absorbed. I feel like the real reason is that people could see him as a reformer, a champion, as the young governor of a small, poor state and hoped he would bring the issues of disadvantaged people to enact national change. he didn't do enough and neither has Obama despite whatever gains they made but now he and his wife firmly stand in the way of change, only seeking slow, incremental changes, instead of the champions we hoped they would be. They've proven who they both are and many of his supporters from the old days would not support him, now, either.

     Trump represents hate, the dark side of love. You could almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't trying to scare us and rally such racist and evil sentiment in the people, making them feel more justified in their own hate. You could feel sorry for him because you know all hatefulness is a lack of love and something the person can almost not help, like a pit of hell they have dug themselves into. I personally hope for some kind of Love to break through to these people, for them to see though the illusions and barriers of hate. I feel less sympathy for people who should know better because they claim to but are just lying, perpetuating an illusion. Hillary is like this, represent the pinnacle of this devious "achievement" of diverting the demand for change into more support for the status quo, simply by lying. Even Bernie Sanders was recently stumping for her after she worked out a plan with him to make public college tuition free. But he said that one sign of the importance of the election was how much money the Koch Brothers were pumping into it, presumably for Trump since they are assholes. But at the end of the Republikkan primary I heard the talking Koch brother himself say that Hillary represents all Republikkkan values more than Trump, by far, and that she was just lying to get the position then would do all the things that they, the evil folk, want. The Grand dragon of the KKK said the exact same thing about her that she is really their candidate, ideologically, she just has to lie to the public to get in power then ill switch and do everything they want. Recently Tim Caine, her running mate, criticized Trump for not repudiating the KKK and Hillary said half of his supporters belong in her "basket of deplorables" for being racist, sexist, and nationalistic, etc. The problem is that she never repudiated her on endorsement from a different KKK Grand Dragon, Trump actually did more to distance himself, eventually, well, if you interpret it that way, though of course he still openly embraces and encourages the KKK. I think people fail to realize how it has only been about a century since the KKK openly controlled much, most of the political positions in America, at least in certain areas. And the ones that weren't openly KKK could be certainly in league with the ones that are more open about it. I mentioned in one of these gagablogs how the original television and radio productions of Superman were designed to break the influence of the KKK on American culture since they were his constant enemies. But people had to be taught, in that generation and still today, that the KKK was bad and we owe Superman and those creators a lot for helping start to turn things around but I think few people realize how far we must go and that this is the specific enemy.
     
     The reason I had to note the Newhart show with Rickles it that it summed up my notion about trolling - an underlying "contract" based on some sort of spiritual love deficiency that makes people thrive on cruelty and lies, trying to provoke someone into a more genuine response, to some passion,to break them out of that contract. It is like they lack love, don't believe in love, and that kind of attention from upsetting people, triggering and sensing people's love for whatever they care about that the troll is trolling them over, is the only form of "love", attention, they can "handle" for themselves. Or even they can't access their own love so they thrive on exposing other's "loves" or cares to ridicule because their callousness makes them feel powerful or at least "kind of" feel something when the truth is they are afraid of their own feelings and have squashed compassion within themselves.They manipulate a relationship, interaction, with others to get the passion out of them, usually as anger, which has become their substitute for love because it is passion they feel like they are in control of. This is what Trump is, an arch troll because he is probably uniquely starved for actual love and more perfectly exhibits this "fear-only" attitude, just trying to scare people. Clinton is no better, just tying to manipulate people and cheat he way in, also tying to scare people with insecurity. I think that is why I wanted to mention the Rhoda episode though I had misplaced the card and it was a few weeks ago.

     Manipulation is not love, it is control, what people do because they are afraid of the power of love,which can make individual egos feel powerless. That is why people create illusions and lies to keep people in relationships when they don't actually love them. all the games between people in relationships are blockages to real love. All the false posturing for peace and negotiations between counties who are really allowing the awful genocide and suffering in Syria and beyond are also blockages to real love, to harmony we all deserve and are capable of. This is why it is so important to dispel these illusions, to get to the real truth of real love. And the truth is it is just far more incredible and unfathomable than we try to pretend. Thee is a reason it is so transformative that even the illusions of it change us, because our own ideals change us when we are in love. But it is even more so when it is real, and not only real but realized actively by both lovers, renewed as it renews and transforms us.

     I mentioned the Dougie Howser shows because of what they said about belief and the process of letting people love, even different loves, on their own so they don't regret or resent their lovers for missed connections or potential.

     I mentioned the Sabrina episodes because of the muse idea, the idea of relationships with artists and inspiration itself. It made me think of a few years ago when I heard a rumor that Taylor as trying to get Stefani to change, that he wanted her to be "less weird" or something. At the time this was my sign that he was wrong for her, my hope skyrocketing that I must be much better for her and should try to see if we could belong together, through making my art. I feel that way again now, for Love itself, and the Goddess of Love if she will have me, that it is my duty to become the artist I truly am. Even if you don't want to be to artists who are each other's muse, exactly, it does seem romantic to make the most of loving each other, being artists, and being inspired by each other's beauty, attention, and talents as well. It seems to be the perfect, magical combination if you can appreciate it and make the most of this dynamic possibility of artists in love.

       Trying to sum this up I want to focus on the idea that cops should be like Officer jenny, generally positive, stern and commanding when needed but always in the service of the weak over those who use power to oppress them. And cops should be like the Good Clean Fun coordinator, presenting positive options enticing people to make the best decisions while giving people the most credit to be responsible. Legal weed is the perfect tool in this path, too. Really, some good dirty sexy fun, getting people out of all the hang-ups that keep us stressed, can solve many social problems, in my opinion, just as Dougie's mom said the sixties were a time of sexual liberation and I think all would agree that despite increased tensions in those times as well between different sides of the culture, the counter-culture of that era did a great deal to bring people together over deep social divides. The principle of cops being positive and presenting better options, not ruling by force and fear, applies to authority in relationships and between nations as well. We shouldn't scare people into being certain ways by threatening them, we should entice them by being more positive ourselves and always using power to protect the weak, never to protect abuse of power, the system we currently have and the way we go about world affairs as well, like a bully. I was disappointed in Obama today criticizing other countries concerns in a dismissive, juvenile manner at the U.N. Just because we are "on top" in many ways, well, actually that is more reason not to be pompous and demeaning about other's concerns but to be gracious and helpful instead. And of course the biggest issue, now, is the war in Syria and the two "superpowers", Russia and America, supposedly stepping in to help improve the situation but keeping things consistently bad to justify their war machine that runs on fear. Meanwhile they are presenting two candidates for president who are equally hawkish and dangerous and not really an option at all. The reason so many generals support Hillary is because she supports their business of war just as she supports the evil oil industry all over the world. All authorities should be like Ozma, ruling with Love. It can be done, removing fear from our lives, and it just requires a just system of just laws and equal respect for all beings.And we will be forced to realize this by the devastating consequences of refusing to unless we get creative and positive, turn things around to support the people, with Love, instead of the illusion with more lies and fear and violence.

     I mentioned the Chiefs winning because it represented my idea that being on the right side of things gives you the magical power to win, even games, eventually. And this was s spectacular comeback so that was like a symbol of doing it against all odds. I've been waiting to write this for over a week now but I'm glad that even as I wrote it today, including more recent news about Brandon Marshall and his fines and protest, just tonight the news came out about his own trauma at the hands of Miami cops. It seems like the opening of a story that will end up being really big and actually, finally, prompting more significant changes towards justice.

       This could be where I conclude this but I wanted to check my bookmarks from "The tenant of Wildfell hall." I finished it days ago and thought it was wonderful. I mu8ch preferred it to the works by the other Bronte sisters that I read and suspected she was a little ahead of her time or a little too - something  -for the audience of the day. The review of the book confirmed that she was not was highly regarded but in time has come to be and her unique depth and insight is appreciated more. I just felt like I noticed it and felt a strong connection with her, as a writer, that I did not feel when reading her sisters' work but I want to read another one and see how I feel now.

     Before I check the bookmarks I want to say that I started reading The Black Arrow while reading more of Black Elk Speaks at the same time. The Black Arrow is an awesome medieval adventure story and when I started it I said to myself "this story about war and action at least won't have so many parallels with my love life." But very quickly I realized how wrong I was and how much more I would have to discuss, and reveal about the book's "secrets", to really get into the connections. But it is a wonderful, beautiful book. One part that relates to all of this is Justice against evil authorities. The knights have been killing and oppressing the people and the people are finally rising up behind the avenger John Amend-All, among others. It's a fascinating book and of course has a witch reference which really stuck out to me. The main thing besides revenge is about identity but I don't want to give anything away, here, though I hardly feel I can avoid more details next time I write, it is so good, so consider this a spoiler alert for next time. There is a scene where the evil knight's character is being established and he arrests an old man on little or no suspicion, condemns him to die and when the man protests he just says "well, maybe you didn't do it but it might as well have been you and hanging you will still warn others and remind them to fear us"  -something to that effect was his response. It reminded me of cops today. The sad thing is, in Olden Times this was an example of how corrupt the authorities could be, making you sympathize with the rebels whole-heartedly. But in modern times our cops act the same way but "the nation" largely forgives them or considers that they can do no wrong, puts them above the law and won't even consider scrutiny of them, always blaming the victim. This becomes ho our hole culture runs. It gives me wild ideas for sci-fi stories but it is no way to actually live. maybe if I write those stories I can steer us away from these paths by way of warning.

     Of course Black elk Speaks is amazing and mystical, too. I just finished the Great Vision Chapter so I have a lot o go. But one thing I want to mention is the symbolism of arrows and the way some spirits travel like arrows, and also the revenge of these spirits on the tyrannical blue spirit, reminding me both of the Black Arrows of Justice in that old book and the boys in blue of modern times. The arrows are instruments of revenge, killing the guilty and bearing messages - their names or other words  - to scare the remaining targets. And the Black Arrow is the symbol of the revolutionaries. In Black Elk speaks black is the color of the est, of changing storms and winds.

       I do this little recap because I am afraid I got lost in exploring connections and tangents and missed emphasizing some of these points, earlier. The main point is this theme that the only true Authority is kindness, taking care of people, and positivity, hope, and building trust between people is the goal to achieving this. Discussion and people speaking up is the secret to everyone really realizing the problem. And maybe e need a new Superman character to do this, too, to fight evil at the level of Art, to steer the culture a new way.

       When I turn to my first bookmark in "Wildfell Hall" I can't remember why I left it thee. she is describing the first time Hargrave really pitches woo at he and how she anted to get rid of him. Maybe at the time, being romantic, I questioned how she could be so had-set against him. Now I know she just didn't like him at all. Sometimes you ant that to be a mask because they really do, but when it's true, it's true. Maybe it was something about him approaching her within the enclosure of the garden wall. Well, I will try the other one then go to sleep and hopefully some mystical dreams.

       The last bookmark is on a page here, without spoiling too much, I would say the phrase I wanted to noted as "be more likely to appreciate her worth and make her truly happy." I think this is the secret to so much, to why we need love and why we so often feel the world is lacking love o full of heartlessness. It is actually full of heartbreak, a well as love, of all kinds. Within everyone's sadness, or meanness, or insecurity, is a feeling that.we are not valued or have no value. It's sadly ionic because of course we are beyond all value, we are gloriously worthy of the universe, of Love. But we live in a world obsessed with assigning meager values, even to people, and putting us behind walls or in baskets. We are ready to break free of this whole world just as Gaga broke through the Perfect Illusion. I'm glad, hope, it was perfect and fun while it lasted but I am even happier it is now time to move forward even more together and more truly than ever before and to come together in new and fantastically imaginative ways.

       Oh, the last thing I anted to mention was that there as a commercial for the new season of American Horror Story and they used Perfect Illusion for the music for it. It makes me hopeful that Gaga will star in it again but it also reminded me of a hope I had from last year that she would appear in Scream Queens, too, since the producer is the same, I believe. I suppose that is part of why she got the video premiere on the season premiere, tonight, but I hope it also betokens more collaboration. I'm ashamed I still have not seen Gaga in "Hotel" and I really want to but first am not really into non-funny horror and second had an issue, kind of like Dan and Blair from Gossip Girl, and my plans to see it fell though. I just need to get over all my silly barriers and get with it already, though. I forgot to mention that it was fun the theme in Scream Queens new season with a  "wolf-girl" character and the Jacob from twilight as a doctor whose skin is so cold you suspect he's switched teams and could be a vampire, this time around. It reminds me to finish "Made Me A Monster", my best Gaga-tribute song, for Foxzen's second album, since it uses classic horror movie monster imagery.

   I know my best calling, to personal love and to Love in the World, Justice - "love expressed publicly" as Dr. Cornell West says -  is Art. Not this "sitting back doing nothing" kind of "courageous" blogging, but actual writing of focused books on magic and of inspired, channeled fairy tales, when I get into it. Writing these songs has really helped me rediscover the magic in myself. I hope that as Gaga finds more real love we will all benefit from it in her art, as well, and I can't deny it is a lovely, hopeful dream of mine that my art and hers will actually bring us together one day. But first I have to get past all this "nothing" and do it! Thanks for your patience and support, I love you! Oh, and I know i often end this these ways and if I do write stories between them maybe I don't mention it - I don't mean to diminish this form, I love it, but i do prefer when i am feeling in the Story world, I just know when there seems to be a lot to "deal with" then this is the best way to work through that. when I do it, just the writing does make me want to be in the fairy-tale or story-mode writing way, which just is magically superior, but I don't meant to be putting this down all the time just because I see the fairyland on the horizon, this is good, too, and fun. And it will be better when I get back to more closely focusing on Gaga, too - maybe I've been holding back because she was in a relationship, maybe it is just my same old excuse all over again, holding back because I want to resolve and improve my relationship, first, when really it is all an interconnected process and we improve best by growing in many directions at once and finding ways to thrive in new directions. I wish for true loves for Stefani and all of us, bringing us all more closely and fabulously together. If I can be grateful to illusions and fear, however perfect o terrible, it is for showing us here e truly need to go when we inevitably see though them. But mostly I am grateful to all of us, reaching out to each other to come together despite all the barriers and division placed in our way. Thanks again!

       I wrote this starting early yesterday morning, about 4 AM, September 20th and finished it last night.As I was at the end of it my friend told me he saw some news that the Chinese space station had lost control and was crashing to Earth by next year. I don't know hat to make of this but wanted to mention it. Then this morning I had a dream that I was on a double-decker or larger sized bus, the beginning of an amusement park ride. We were all in chairs with wheels on them, on tracks, in rows. We slid back or forwards along the tracks then moved up to the higher row. Both sides of the bus had the same arrangement. The idea seemsd to be that at the top of the four rows, from the highest one, the bus would pull up to a track like a rollercoaster and each chair-car would roll onto it from the bus, then the next row would load up to go. I wondered why only one row went at a time, why the bus drove back and forth as much as it did, but decided it was pacing. Now that I think about it the ride kind of reminded me of the single-car rollercoaster Wild Chipmunk at Lakeside Amusement park. We have not been there all year but went to the other amusement park last weekend and a few times this summer, so maybe that influenced the dream, but I often dream of amusement parks and assume they are my more "important" dreams, that there is a message coming through that will get my attention more if it comes in an amusement park dream. Then I took my lover to work and when she got out of the car the music cut off due to the loose wire / fate. I didn't hear the news report at the top of the hour but as I turned back into my driveway it came back on in time for the jazz station to announce the next song, "In Love with Love."

gagablog 114: Final Pre-Illusion

I just turned on the radio and heard the very end of the American debut of "Perfect Illusion" and so I have the radio on until they replay it.

I asked my best friend and the rest of Foxzen to make a cd of the instrumentals for our new songs so I could listen for the lyrics as I drive, which is a setting I hear a lot of lyrics in.

I wanted to write one more edition before I heard Perfect Illusion, I hope they will replay it within an hour, the song that just ended was "We Don't Talk Anymore" - I feel bad, now, they just said Katy Perry is going to pay the college tuition for a survivor of the Orlando shooting - I feel bad because I had an argument, kind of, before my friend left, but I don't want to talk about it yet, I just hope he stays safe.

"I'll be your lifeline tonight" is their song, now. I had some things I wanted to say today, my lover's Tarot deck comes out today, too, as well as Perfect Illusions. There was some news story that Hillary would drop out, today, and it's still morning. Jill has charges for spraypainting that bulldozer at the pipeline protest and Bernie supposedly is there today or this weekend. Hillary hasn't commented, yet, that I know of.

Obama made me mad by criticizing Kapernek.   He's such a sell-out. I hold him accountable for allowing the scourge of cop terrorism of the citizens to continue even as it's exposed so blatantly. And then I was on facebook just now and saw something about him re-authorizing the endless "War on Terror."

I can't help compare this with the news, today, that N. Korea had another nuclear test today, 9months after the last one, when it's usually over 2 years between them, immediately following Obama's trip to Laos, I think, and this is provocative, "even" China criticized them - it made a 5.1 magnitude earthquake and China's environmental ministry is testing for radiation in neighboring provinces- but they also criticized America and South Korea for putting up missile defenses there, recently.

This is the way I see it, I'm pacifist but I get pretty angry about stuff -especially hypocrisy and violence. We must lead by example, disarm. Our Bigwig, not Secretary of State Kerry but someone else recently "scathingly" accused Russia of "slow-walking" Peace in Syria - WE, America, has the largest military by far, bigger than the next ten put together, and WE are the only ones truly standing in the way of ending the whole evil, dangerous, misguided mess. We have Israel / Palestine, China has N. Korea / S. Korea, and it's not really the same situation - the reason they want to keep a two-state situation and we can't allow a two-state "solution" in Palestine - the reason there's s right next to them and ours is half a world away. These are like our Puppets of War. I don't want to tell you what it all means, now, just that it is bullshit. Until we disarm, and disarm Israel, S. Korea, etc, we have NO moral authority to tell Iran or N. Korea or ANYONE who can have weapons. And we need to end our brutal, murderous system of cops AND the murderousness of companies and the proliferation of guns, etc. We have ways to do ALL of this, and ways that hold us back. We know what these are.

We can do it in our hearts, too - I forgot to report on the radio - now it's "Oooh Wh-wh-what what did she say? ... I know what I did wasn't clever" - whoever this is. It's catchy, it's been on the radio here for years, oh, right, "when I become a star"

Since my radio came back on the other day, in my car - loose wire - the standard on The Oasis in the City, 89.3 FM, has been Stardust. Let me tell you... Ok, I heard the Nat King Cole version and Willie Nelson, but the signal was breaking up and I only clearly heard the final verse, "...remains..." etc, of the Willie one, until this morning, I heard at least the second half.(as I spell-check this, ""let me shoot across the sky" is on the radio... more on aliens soon, okay?)

Now I've heard the very end, last chorus of "Perfect Illusion." The last news story was that Trump wants to spend billions more on military "....handgrenades... " in this song "You don't know half of the abuse" song. I can't believe how much corporations, and cops, including Top Cop Obama, have sold out the People, especially in recent examples. How can he criticize Kapernek for protesting and not criticizing himself for not stopping murderous cops? "You don't wanna be high like me... rollercoaster" song is on, it's kinda funny. Ok, I can't wait to hear Perfect Illusion, soon, now, so I will wrap this up.

I will write, line by line, Sexxx Dreams, soon - I was reminded by facebook today of a gagablog I wrote a year ago, postponing it. I have had some flirty dreams lately, my  daughter and I at a girl's apartment, she was Japanese, I think, and there was concern that the sound regulations kicked in at 2 AM, but it was only 7:30 PM and that's all I remember, we were just playing games or something. That was a few weeks ago, maybe August 23rd. A few weeks before that there was a girl in my dream I was kind of checking out, flirting with.

But the other night I had another epic-seeming dream I couldn't recall, maybe we were on a team on a gameshow or something. Now the song I don't recognize, "when the roof is on fire... never really show" it's funny how many effects Aphex Twin pioneered 25-30 years ago people are finally getting around to using very nicely in pop songs, now. I saw a post about Gaga working with Beck and Florence, I hope she works with Richard D. James someday, let's open this thing up.

Ok, I want to get high and do some things. Illusions will be revealed, it's how it works. They can try to fool us but it doesn't make it true - you can see how they repeat the lies in all their Oil Company, Frakking is safe, etc, commercials. Oil companies are the true terrorists, along with the Arms sales - HERE COMES GAGA after the commercials, she said LAST NIGHT they debuted it, but maybe she misspoke - well, I will sen this in.

The point is, violence solves NOTHING. It is the end result of failing to address one's own hypocrisy. We have the examples in ourselves, personally, but we also have these massive examples of countries where our fakeness, where we pursue arms sales while pretending to pursue peace, is the Recipe for why Syria is the way it is. We have the same potential, for disaster, in Israel and Palestine and the Koreas. we have the same opportunity to work it out, too. We have to do it, and when we do we can set the template to end war everywhere, in Syria, as I have been saying for years. But we have to end t in ourselves, in our own countries, and in our puppet states who we "can't control" too - they are just "personifications" or "nationifications" of our own crazy military-industrial-complex issues.

We have a problem, this complex of war and murderous "authorities" and the system supporting oil companies bulldozing Sacred Ground, Native burial lands and violating these people, and the land, in every way. I'm reading Black Elk Speaks as I read The Tenant and Wildfell Hall and it is THE SAME violation hundreds of years later, all over again - the song is on so I will smoke with it.

Well, I didn't have a lighter but it didn't matter, it was a mystical experience and a ritual in itself just to hear it. It was more than I even expected, though it is what I hoped for, well, more direct. She's just saying she wasn't really in love, it was a Perfect Illusion, and I know what she means. "Give it tome I'm worth it" is the song on, now. I want to show Gaga True Love, however I can. So I'm going to do that, and talk about Perfect Illusions in depth next time, AND finally return to Sexxx Dreams - though maybe this puts it all in perspective in a new way. We'll see. I love the journey of discovery, Gaga, thanks!

I won't apologize for tying all of this in with War, too. Love will end war. Love solves everything. Illusions of love, fake love, just get in the way of the real thing and actually perpetuate war, instead. But we're getting rid of them and getting into the real life. I will set an example with more effective, magical writing. Songs and art, too. Here we go. This Will be Love, Gaga, here comes. I can't wait to see what you do with the real thing now what the illusion is cleared away. I love you forever!

gagablog 113: Aliens, Walls, Troll-toll Bridges: #BachelorinParadise and The Holographic Universe

The big news this week, last week, was the disclosure that an alien signal, a transmission, had been received in Russia and western scientists were now searching for more evidence of extraterrestrial contact from that sector. I will discuss what this means and how to contact aliens but it all relates to overcoming a cosmic "wall" so to make things easier I will first discuss the nature of walls in relation to some recent media magic. SKIP TO THE NEXT ALL CAPS TO READ ABOUT WALLS AND CONTACTING ALIENS.

       I have not taken any notes since my last edition but did notice a number of noteworthy things and just hoped to remember them by the time I wrote this but I've been delaying for about a week. In that time there have been a few events I could have been "waiting for" to illustrate my points here but mostly I feel like I have been dragging this on instead of breaking through since I haven't made enough of a priority of writing these when they come to me and end up including too much. Regarding my love life I don't usually talk about it when things are wonderful, it's like bragging and I know she would prefer me to not talk about it at all - it is still very rare that she feels like acknowledging that we are together. And when things get tough enough and I don't feel like I have anyone to talk with, I will mention it here, but I feel like I am breaking faith with her if I do that and then go ahead and do it anyway because things are so bad at the time I don't care anymore or hoping my experiences could help someone else. But I realized last night that after rushing through "Sons and Lovers" because it was so  intimate at a time when we were to busy to discuss the kinds of issues it raises as we might relate to them I started reading "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and can "relate" to it in many ways as well - but currently feel like the "Loss of Love" archetype has been something we have been "acting out" in our personal life more than actually losing love. It relates to what we deal with but is of course very different, just as I could see my lover, or myself, as either of two characters in a relationship and we trade roles in different contexts. I'm happy that I feel secure enough that we "can be" or are in love, without bragging about that and jinxing it, that I don't want to tie things into "my life" in this edition but you can see by what I focus on how it could relate. I'm just glad I don't feel the need to use this to work out a devastating problem in my own life but can hopefully use the information for helping anyone overcome that devastating problem of the feeling of a loss of love.

       This is really intended to talk about aliens and alien contact. I apologize for going the "long way" around but I do believe the secret to overcoming "distance" relates to the secret of overcoming walls and discussing the nature of walls can make this easy. My lover was very busy with her career and preparing for Denver Pagan Pride which finally happened a week ago. I tried to understand that her obligations meant she had little time for me and tried to not take it personally but  sometimes I didn't do that well and felt I was being shut out so I was sensitive in recent weeks to various mentions of the "walls" we make between us. I would like to say, now, that the distance we felt was all due to "time" and "business" and of course that is not all there is to it, but let me act like it was to avoid making this personal. I guess I can't be surprised that I end up revealing more of my personal life here than I usually intend, considering Life and Art are like multiple personalities of the same identity and I'm reading a book where the male lover writes all his closest confidence in letters to his friend then the female lover writes all hers in a diary she gives him, therefore Us (and his letter-reading friend) and so I end up doing more of the same than ever before in these pages in the time period I have been reading it. Gaga and Taylor broke up, as far as I know, in this time, too, and I have absolutely no speculations about her love life but hope these musings could help her or any of millions of others who suffer from feeling any sort of "division" from love. And even more than that I believe these lessons about overcoming walls can help Billions of us even when the walls are of other kinds, including the vastness of space of economic disparity, and aren't seen specifically as obstacles to Love.

       From the magical perspective where Everything is Love and Magic, of course any wall is part of a barrier to Love. So this is how to overcome and take them all down, how to turn walls into bridges. How to overcome trolls, or satisfy them so they are no longer trolls haunting the memory of spaces that bridges have since spanned. First some mentions of "walls" from my TV viewing about a week ago. It started in Paradise, Bachelor in Paradise. Jen said that Nick had a wall that would not come down, that if he would let his wall down and let her in,emotionally, she could fall in love with him, marry him, etc, but as it was going she didn't think it would work. To me and I assume much of the audience his "wall" seemed to be made of "he's still 'in love' with Amanda" (or more likely in a "contest" with Josh), using Jen as a placeholder or to try to make her jealous, to make himself feel good without opening up to her, like a nice shirt or hat he is proud to have "won" and wear for status but not a relationship. Basically he isn't in love with anyone just strongly seeking the idea of a good connection to preserve an image and in this way he reminds me of Evan and Jared who seem to "only like girls because they think they're supposed ta" as Fry's grandad said on Futurama. I could go off on a tangent about "walls" versus "boundaries" in sexuality, and I could have gone off on another tangent about how the diary-letter-reader-writing we do in "Wildfell Hall" can be used to explore the "I and I and I" idea. Let me just say this: we all have natural boundaries but it is a collective social stigma that tries to make "walls" between people such as "all gays over here and all straights over here" or "men on this side, women on this side" (don't worry, I'll leave restroom tangents for someone else). But we personally use those "wall materials", even if we don't believe in or agree with society's rules, we use the same "bricks" to wall ourselves off in more unique ways. We may reject sexism and homophobia in society but end up with some of their refuse as barriers between us and other people. We may, for ourselves anyway, have broken down the "walls" of society but we can still stumble upon the rubble or even end up stacking it up around us.

       Grant told Lace she had a wall and as they were getting closer she popped it up to shut him out, flirting with other Paradisers (or Paradiers and the typo faeries just suggested to me - good joke  - parodiers) to make him angry. Walls make people angry, you know? Not that there is a "reason" or excuse for anger, just that is how it works. I just read Helen (Wildfell Hall) say how important it was to curb her temper, that she was glad she was as good at it as she is  and planned to get even better at it to deal with the life she was in. I'll smoke the first bowl of the morning to that, since Anger has been my major malfunction as well and weed can be one of the best guards against it, allowing us to see things differently and overcome wounds of pride which are so often the seeds of anger. Or the seeds of walls, even if those walls are not "anger." For Lace, she was afraid of Love and intimacy, afraid to lose herself too much in love and, like most everyone, had developed a tough exterior or shell to guard her heart against hurt or disappointment. She tells Grant she did not know nice guys like him existed, implying all her dates before were jerks. This wall is to keep out jerks, but I still have it, even if you are not a jerk, and running into it makes you feel like a jerk, so what do we do to either get you the "I'm not a Jerk" key of Trust or dismantle the wall somehow by realizing I no longer need it? The first is the "easy" way, to fall in love with someone, and is still challenging enough for most everyone. The more mystical option which we all end up taking, at least slightly, but we might grow more by really going for it, is to become in love with everything. Learning how to remove personal walls can be great practice for removing them for the whole world but not everyone will realize that as a goal or feel that is their responsibility but the best love does lead to these conclusions and ambitions as well. "Merely" personal love might re-arrange some walls from "between you two" to "around you two" but that seems more like a silly hypothesis than anything that actually happens - when everything is truly connected you can't Only Extra-connect two things.

       I don't want to do the full "I and I and I" tangent but I do want to leave a clue: Psychadelics make you easily see this in the mirror but you can do it anytime if you try. Let your eyes "see through you", unfocus until you see three eyes in the mirror. The middle one is the image of both of the others, seen by both at the same time. It is "one" being made by the merger of two, or four and this "one eye" doesn't really exist without the others, the additional "I and I" yet it is the only "one" where they all meet, and you can "fall back from it" to either side, into your face where it is your left eye or your face where it is your right eye, and I can't begin o describe all you can do "zooming" in and out  from one channel of light into another or back around full circle. I'll just say this, for now: all consciousness is in your eye, and in your other eye, in a different order. Being able to merge them allows you to see all of it at once and also the differences in the "codes/orders" reveals the nature of Illusions, too. Either seeing others as "more you" - kind of like we can kind of assume everyone in our dreams are all "in our head" and also kind of know that's not fully true - or seeing yourself as more Yous than you can imagine, as everyone else, too, can open up the ideas of this. And this kind of thinking certainly makes walls obsolete, but for "safety" sake let me talk about it some more in the way people who still believe in walls, who aren't fully merged, can understand better.

       Lace had a "typical" wall up: Here is "Too Close", here is where I have been hurt before when I felt someone share this space with me, felt the bliss of that, then felt alone. This is not a temporary space, if you truly come here, you never leave. This is Love, this is forever, you don't pass through for a weekend of a month. I don't mean this is "typical" in a bad way, like it is mundane or ordinary, it is one of life's most fantastic quests, the trials for Love. I am just saying it is typical because a lot of people feel this way. Nick has a typical wall, too, of a different kind. I didn't see his first season but I saw the season where he came on a week or two later  than all the other guys which gave him kind of a game-cheater, thinks he's better than everyone else image and he was "the bad guy" for that season. Maybe it relates to trying to shake that image but either way I see him as someone who has professed love to multiple girls on national TV. I don't find fault with that, in principle, and I imagine I could end up doing something very similar to that in some ways because I do love people and seek to love people with less and less restriction. But of course Nick was trying to tell each of them that they were "the girl" for him and it naturally becomes harder to believe with repetition to other girls. Was he trying to tell Jen that? No, he was showing that he could "hold back", that he did not have to say "I'm falling in love with you" every time. He's showing America that he does not have to say "I love you" to everyone. But Jen is the only one who should Really matter to him - "my religion is you" and she is the one who wants him to say that SHE is actually the one for him and he can forget all about Amanda and Jojo and whoever else when he is with her. But of course he "can't" forget about Amanda because she is there and his ego still smarts from "losing" her to Josh. The problem is he still cares about that, he hasn't realized what a tool it makes both him and Josh to treat people like prizes to be won or fought over.  Jen is really sexy, beautiful, smart and communicative and could be very easy to fall in love with and certainly seems willing to fall for Nick, she just needs him to stop putting up a wall. But he can't because he is "all wall" in this relationship. He's just acting like he isn't still "In Love" with Amanda, which is hard because he still "has to" have concern for her as a friend that she does not end up with Josh (when the more self-reflective person would realize he and Josh are treating her the same way, like a possession, and either of them would have to change to be good with her) and his whole "image" going into the relationship with Jen was just his "mask" of "I'm not still hurting over Amanda, etc" and "I do really like girls, honest, I just have to pick the Only One for me before I fall in love so I can't have any more of these pesky 'second-thoughts'" - but for some reason he never gave Jen the chance to be "that girl", obviously because, for whatever reason, he is still "holding out" for someone else, maybe Amanda, maybe Jared, maybe someone we haven't even seen on TV, or not yet.

       I know I'm being very snarky about Nick and maybe it's because I can relate to him and feel silly for times I spent missing awesome opportunities for love by insisting that there was only One person for me, or that I knew certain specifications about who that person would be. Let me address this from the next angle, from Family Ties. That same night, a week or two ago, after watching the Bachelor in which Nick and Lace's walls are On Display, I saw some blueprints of Alex P. Keaton's Wall. Before I go back to the 80's I should mention Carly's wall she kept up towards Evan - "it doesn't look good for my image or reality TV stock to be with the dorky Penis guy whom no one finds attractive" - but I won't. Or I could address Iggy's "you're kicked out, Vinnie and you don't get to stay even though you are hilarious, Daniel, because he has a Lamp and Temper and no sense of humor or actual affection, THAT's more my kind of challenge." Or Vinnie's "she was my only chance, the only one for me, I couldn't possibly consider anyone else" or Jared's "this sexy twin wants to make out with me but  I have to maintain my cold devotion to someone who doesn't in order to prove 'sex' isn't a factor to the Super-Nice, Super-L, Super-(non-sexual)-Lover  - I can't be swayed from The One by 'mere sex' with anyone else" or "I'm too 'nice' to let you move on and too 'nice' to have sex with you without The One-ing you so just be obsessed about me, which I will find irritating, even though you're a million times hotter than any girl who would even talk with me in real life, I am scared of your passions because to me having sex with a girl is just something you're supposed to do with as little 'result' as possible so can anyone fix me up with a Barbie doll, like, an actual doll?"  I guess I resent Jared's popularity more than any of them because he is Such a dork, but gets credit for it, like I may be dorkier but no one gets excited by that and in some ways I may be less dorky and that's not impressive, either. But the worst thing about him is I recognize this idea, because I used to suffer from it, that sex is somehow wrong or so important you can't go for it without a REALLY good reason like she is the Only Girl you could possibly love, which just sounds closet-gay when I type it now. I know I used to feel that way. Now I can't imagine I would turn down Emily if she wanted to make out with me if I didn't have a lover that such actions would upset. It's that simple, but I will move on.

       Anyway, the same night the Walls came up on the Bachelor there were two episodes of Family Ties that stood out to me. The first was Alex's last day of high school. He and his girlfriend were studying for their final exam but kept making out. He was preparing to give his valedictorian speech then is surprised when she becomes valedictorian instead of him. He is jealous and upset, disappointed, and I believe it is the end of their relationship because he can't get over it. It hurts his pride and egotism and challenges the basis for his superior and sexist ideas - which should be the easiest part to overcome, this would be the chance to realize his sexist ideas were wrong, proof of it since he surely thinks of himself as one of the smartest males, to be second-place academically to a female. The whole idea, the lesson he could learn if he was truly as smart as he pretends, is that sexism and his other superior, ego-driven ideas are wrong. Once he started to question and deal with that he could break down the other things that hold him back. The problem is that for Alex, like most of us, the problems that hold him back are "him", they are part of his own identity. He would change his beliefs and change who he is if he started to change, for love, and this is exactly what he is afraid of, becoming who he really could be. Love is the path to becoming, it will demand we change and improve. We have to in order to stay in love. Alex chooses to leave the Love behind instead of facing this challenge, instead of growing, and too often we all make this choice. This is the choice of putting up a wall, of "hiding yourself away" as Kevin Seconds sings, and it is the obstacle to Love. Everything is truly love and everything between it is walls and while they seem necessary, for a time, ultimately they must all come down because the true world of love will prevail. In the meantime we each have our own versions to practice with.

       The next episode of Family Ties that night Alex was older, even after college, maybe, and was dating Monica, or whoever Cortney Cox is on that show. They are going to couples therapy since Alex has such an emotional wall up and one of the other couples includes a "Hey"-talking guy played by Billy Baldwin, I think. Alex hates it but decides to study up on what the group therapy folks want to hear and is a smashing success the next session when he dramatically announces he is repressed and hugs almost everyone to show he's trying to overcome it but of course it is all an act. When they really get into it to try and address his true fears it turns out she has some doubts, too. I can't remember the resolution but there is a parallel between Alex merely acting the role of realizing he is repressed and her acting the role of "relationship" when she is studying to be a therapist. Now I kind of wish I had taken notes after all since there was a subtle clue there, something about the wall, "his" wall, protecting both of them from what they did not want to face - maybe that they were at the end of their relationship. Maybe that's why I forgot it, because I don't want to face that in my own life.

       My friend told me that maybe my problem, getting into some arguments recently with my lover, is that you never want to compare yourself to people on the Bachelor. I see the point but also see how easy it is to see mistakes when others make them and how it can help to relate those to your own life and want to fix your own mistakes, but only if you have the space to do so. Otherwise arguing about something that happened on TV when nothing really happened is a waste of time. Having said that "all of this" could be a waste of time but I feel a magical use for it. I truly feel the connection between events in my life and various art and media I encounter. I want to finish a book once I begin it because it is engaging as a story but also because I want to move past that point in my life - or I want to read it slowly and savor it. This is the reason I was slow reading Lorna Doone, wanting to savor the parts of my life that had me writing fairy tales regularly, and rushed through Sons and Lovers - I felt there were lessons there I simply could not address, did not have the right time for, and needed to come back to, like taking a pass on a game show. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was in between: I don't want it to drag on, I want to get past all this part about why they can't be in love or why she fell out of love with her husband and will be glad enough to escape those threats in my own life. But I am also enjoying it at a regular pace, not trying to rush through it, just because it is an enjoyable story. But when I remember I have Black Elk Speaks, which I have only just begun but feel it's magical power immensely, and Morrissey's Autobiography, in hardcopy at the top of my list and maybe 60-something more Classics on my "100 Classic Books" DS game after this - I want to finish it. But I have to finish this, too, this writing. I feel like I will likely write at least one more while reading "Wildfell Hall" because I think, hope, the story will return and transform around the current romance. And I feel like the last year, or two, I've been veering off-track in life and in this gagablog in the same way I never read the Artpop lyrics but said I would write about each song, as I heard it, first, then a year ago went off on a tangent from that because I was waiting for more "Sexxx Dreams" to use as illustrations. In that year I had at least two dreams featuring Gaga, mystically, and did not "connect" and push through that edition. Then in recent months I had a few dreams with other girls in them, in somewhat sexy contexts, but didn't use that as enough to get me back on track. While working things out to be more in love with my lover, through risky times, I've also ended up recording some of our best songs so far for Foxzen recently and getting more story ideas. I just have to get into the habit of making the art that occurs to me, more, and get all this other stuff out of the way. That's why I wanted this to be about walls, in order to break through them and learn how to get rid of them.

       Alex tries the traditional approach of therapy to address his issues but he "outsmarts" the system by putting on an act. We all do this throughout life. Life itself, and all the art and media we see, is potential lessons to learn. We avoid the work and feel we "cheat" or outsmart the system by putting on a mask that is over the wonder and curiosity about the world, an uncaring mask that keeps love out and makes change less likely. This mask is basically what we think of ourselves, our intellect. When we see magic, or love, it's like an escape hatch, a trapdoor, out of this maze of walls. I see them all the time in these little magical occurrences: I said something weird but nice to my lover and she replied "I'll take that as a compliment" and at the exact same time, on a TV commercial, in chorus with her words the actor said "take that as a compliment"  - and I'm glad that happened and thank the fairies for it because she was kind of saying it dubiously when it came out of her mouth but when it came out of the TV, too, at the same time it seemed to magically confirm that it was, indeed, a compliment. I did not take notes but I did leave two bookmarks in my electronic copy of Wildfell Hall so I will check those now before moving on to contacting Aliens. The latest was on my page 1881 where he says "Helen, you witch, do you know you've entailed upon me the curses of all my fiends?" when he tells them of their engagement, since they bemoan losing the first Bachelor of their complete set. I think I noted it because of the word "witch" but first let me say, regarding his "wall" that this is a prime example of how to build one, to prioritize "friends" or social standing over one's Lover. Religion, Love, is what brings us together - the literal meaning of religion is to Re-unite. Helen hopes her purity of purpose will redeem Aurthur but he does not have the same goal, his religion is not Her as she tries to make hers Him, but of course only the most Loving example of Religion would bring them together, or the same value of love, and he only seems to be focused on the value of love as a thrill and pleasure and is afraid of the changes he would need to make, the loss of walls, to enjoy the deeper thrills and pleasures of it with Helen. But there is always that chance and even where they are now in my reading, living together but completely out of love, she still holds out that hope for him and would forgive him because as the one who never ceased to love him at that deepest level, beyond walls, she believes she knows his true heart is still with her. And the truth is we are all together, in love, and the pain of it is when we believe we can only be there with "that" person and can't be with them for whatever reason, because of whatever wall there is.  Now the reason I left the bookmark was because of the word "witch" and how that has always been a direct clue to something magical - I noted that almost every classic book I have read in the last year or so have all had some mention of a "witch." The first time it happened in this book was the very first pages where the main character's brother hopes the Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a witch because that would be exciting. Now it comes up again, calling her a witch for casting the spell of love upon him, as it were. The truth is that this love-spell could be his way out of the despair that his own flaws will lead him into. The truth is that witches, magic, have been presented as "scary" by this society because society is afraid to change, afraid to lose the walls that make it what it is. But we have to change, we have to come together. Artists tell us we need to and we believe them and are inspired by them but we still fear actually going through it. Magic, love, art - when we actually get into it and do it - is that reconnection, the motivation, energy, and process of reconnecting all in one. And we get better at it but the whole process of getting better is the path and starts coming together quickly, conspiring to help us along.

       I'm glad I bookmarked this because now, somehow, it reminded me of a conversation last week at Denver Pagan Pride. A man asked me about witches and magic because he was afraid some bad folks had put a curse on him and he wanted to escape it. He used the Wizard of Oz as an analogy and it gave me an easy way to talk with him, to connect with him and use a vocabulary he could understand to talk about magic. Maybe it helped remind me of this just yesterday I put in the Robots DVD when I have not seen that movie in years and there was a Tin Man extra who did a Yellow-brick-road skip with some other robots, then a little dog runs up, and at the end makes a "Now I know I have a heart..." comment - and I probably saw a few other Oz references this week, including some nice art at the comic shop, but that is the one that stood out. I just bring it up to show how magic comes up like a clue and works like a secret passage.

       The first bookmark was on my page 515, Rose lamenting what her mom tells her is the way things should be, which I felt must be at the core of the problem for the whole society and the rest of the story. Mom tried to teach her that "in all household matters, we have only two things to consider, first, what is proper to be done, and, secondly, what's most agreeable to the gentleman of the house - anything will do for the ladies." When the mom asks Gilbert, the "hero" of the story, if he agrees with this "very good doctrine" he basically says it works for him but would be better if she took more thought for her own pleasure because it does concern him and makes him happy. This makes him a "good guy", in this era. I guess the only reason I want to mention it, now, is to say it is "society first" that sets the structure that allows the sexist preference for one gender to exist. Its the way walls work and are used that perpetuates any oppressive system or personal arrangement that's why this will be about getting rid of all of them, once I get into it. Thanks for your patience.

       I didn't bookmark it but there was one more page I wanted to mention. My friend came by one day last week and had watched a documentary about Syd Barret. A few weeks ago I watched some of a David Gilmore show at a hotel, then a couple weeks ago I think I played "The Madcap Laughs", but Pink Floyd was not on my radar other than that, recently.   One of the things he reported from the documentary was that Syd had been reading a lot of Tolkein and Casteneda in those days. I've read them myself and started to see a connection, a lesson for me, emerging and then later that day or the next day I read a page in "Wildfell Hall" where Aurthur calls Helen his "petty tyrant." This couldn't be "mere coincidence" to me, especially considering the timing of these "encounters." I assume Don Juan had read this book, or the phrase had become somewhat commonplace - just now was the first time I considered that it might have been a commonplace phrase when Anne Bronte wrote it, I assumed she invented it until now. Anyway, I know it was in use before Castenda mentioned it, and to me that changed the way I think about it somewhat. It certainly expands my understanding of how a petty tyrant can be "not just bad." I guess I thought I was insightful to use the idea of a petty tyrant to describe anyone who makes trouble for you, since seeing those challenges as a way to grow allows you to stay positive in the face of them. If I can have that same positivity when dealing with the struggles involved in being in love I can see my lover as the positive "petty tyrant", so much more powerful by "ruling by love" than one who rules by force, the way you wish Arthur could see Helen so he could be inspired to live up to her ideal and change, for love. Generally I don't want to use his words, he's a cad, but if you take it to mean "ruler" instead, as Lorde wants to be, Queen Bee, or the Queen, the G.U.Y. who "aims for full control of this love" as Gaga sings, it's a very desirable thing.

       Altogether Love is the much stronger motivator than fear but Love can be so scary, itself, from where we all live "on the outside" that we choose to face petty old fears instead to distract ourselves from the harder challenge of loving. We focus on fear of loss of security or other more abstract fears. We make walls to deal with the fears for us, move on to other fears and leave a labyrinth of walls behind us until no one can find us and we can't find our way out. Love, magic, is shortcuts and trapdoors through all of this and we encounter them all the time, it's just a matter of learning how to make the most of them - and how to recognize them in all the strange forms they must take to sneak up on us, camouflaged, in this world of walls.

       I know I teased all about how this would describe how walls were made, how to get rid of them, and how to contact aliens. I feel like I've been talking around it all, about the why we need to do this, to fall better in love, and need to get right down to the How. I was going to start this way but felt all the media stuff would be seem more pointless, afterwards, so I went ahead and wrote that first. But here we go, I will make a shortcut at the start, too.

       SKIP TO HERE TO READ ABOUT WALLS AND CONTACTING ALIENS. Ok, those were all some clues from "this side", now I will write from the Other Side of this Cosmic Wall I'm describing.

       What do all walls do? Physical or emotional or "financial" - whatever theoretical Barriers there are, they all do the same thing. They keep something out or in. They provide limited access via doors, gates, etc. Why do they make separation? Because one side of the wall enjoys advantages denied to the other side. In a world where everything, everyone, is truly connected, since we all share the same fate and Buddhism, etc, this mass of barriers makes no sense, it wastes a lot of energy, or consumes a lot of energy to perpetuate itself. Walls are silly things made of fear. Fear is silly to begin with and when it is taken too seriously it becomes more solid than it really is, than anything really is, it becomes a wall. We have the classic worldwide examples of fearmongers trying to sell us actual walls between countries, jail walls between people, and various values of real estate, etc. There is an island for sale off the coast of Florida and as loving as I claim to be even I kind of want to buy it, we're just trained to be that way. And we have our own countless examples of walls we put up between ourselves and others. It goes on and on, believe it or not I did not mention every episode of TV where this idea comes up when I wrote all of that above, just a few examples from one day. Love stories are about people's triumph over these walls. The negative progress of civilization can be measured in number of walls built and the positive progress can be measured in number of unneeded walls being removed. There is a cosmic barrier between us and the other intelligent life in the universe and the same methods of "wall-removal" can and must be applied to break through them. So how does it work?

        First you might as well recognize the magical reality of what science calls a holographic universe: everything is truly interconnected, everything is even within everything else according to a pattern or code that confounds our ideas of Time and Space as separate. Or, we have an illusory pattern or code which perpetuates the experience of time and distance and keeps us from seeing the true, all-present reality - but of course we get infinite glimpses of it. The contact with a civilization 95 light years away and the way the story was reported in our earthly media gave me the clues to this Cosmic Wall between us. First, the contact was made in May by the Russians but it didn't become a news story in America until our scientists got on the hunt, apparently, in late August. Right off the bat this shows one of the fallacies characteristic of living on this side of the cosmic wall, "outside" (or incarcerated) of the understanding of interconnectedness   - the idea that something is not happening unless it is happening to you, or unless you can prove it. It shows how much time is wasted that I suppose they first had to see if there were good reasons to doubt the signal, since the last time one of these instruments detected a radio-signal from space, or whatever it was, it turned out to be "two microwaves in the office talking to each other" creating some interference. (To me, re-reading this, that sounds more like an alien disguise, like fairy-glamor to appear as a flower or other creature.) So now, three months later, the news came out here and they are saying our scientists are looking into it, too. Maybe it did make the news in may, Maybe it "just happened to be" overshadowed by the news that the Russians had hacked the DNC, if that was around then - just a hunch, and I like the suggestion of "scale" of things to "worry about" since at the time the news was making it out like the story was "those naughty Russians" when most of us wanted to know, earlier, what Hillary was up to. And of course alien contact kind of trumps both angles and at the same time goes with the "reveal the truth, no matter who does it" theme, certainly. Of course they don't want to jump to conclusions before they can verify it but it also just shows how strong that wall between nations is that we can't just be happy for the Russians and proud of their discovery, even hopeful for it to be true, as soon as it first happens, even if it will take us a while to get everything together to start trying to verify it an make "our own" contact. In the future, if this is the first contact with Earth from another planet, no one will look back on it and be sad it was "The Russians" who picked up the phone, they will just be glad for all of us that we finally got the call.

       I feel like I got dragged back into talking about things from "this side" of the cosmic wall just because I wanted to make that dig at Trump's wall, which he recently, allegedly, discussed with the President of Mexico, I think, to make fun of him, and I didn't even do it. The point is that walls are silly, they "protect" us from the other side which we deem unworthy of being with us. Maybe they are there because of the way things have been but assuming they will always be there is assuming people will never change and improve, or insisting that some people don't deserve the avantages that can make life improve. We are outside of a Cosmic Wall which leaves us out of contact with the "privileged" people in the universe. But we can change and improve and be part of that. To do so we must remove the walls within us - this is using holographic reality. We want to break the barrier "around us", in "Space", but must realize the way to do this is within, by breaking the barriers that keep us apart and steal our energy to maintain their own unnatural, isolating system. I realized this applies to the universe when I heard the earthly scientists speculations on how much energy it would require to send the signal they detected. I don't remember the term, some name like Kardashian, and they said it would take a Kardashian Level 2 civilization, or something, to send a signal that strong in all directions. This means that the energy required for them to send this signal this far in all directions would be so great they would have to be able to harness the energy of their entire solar system, an incredible, ridiculously impossible amount of energy. Or, they could be a Kardashian Level 1 civilization, if they could harness all the energy that fell on their planet from the stars, like if we were completely covered in completely efficient solar panels - that would be the energy level required to send a signal in only one direction, towards us, but have it strong enough to reach this far, 95 light years away. All of this seems impossible but the main thing it says to me is that "this is the way we understand it from this side of the Cosmic Wall." Because we obviously don't understand something about the way they send the signal and the energy requirements for it, and why should we understand as the "inferior" people in this regard? When people put up a wall it is based upon the idea that the other "can't be like them." It becomes true, walls make people angry and resentful and even want to fight or give into base character traits to overcome the wall. But the best way to overcome a wall is to show how everyone deserves to be together because there is no real inferiority or superiority, only what has been created by walls of fear and reactions of misunderstanding.

       We have not shown that we can be trusted to communicate with the rest of the universe, but we can. The whole idea that a signal must be sent in a direction, like a bullet, or in all directions, like an exploding bomb,  is a symbol of how our understanding is limited by our own trolled beliefs about ourselves. Of course if it would take that much energy to send a signal the main ways we can think of sending one, they didn't do it like that. They did it another way and we can't expect to figure out how until we know more about how it works and the only way to do that is to escape the ways we assume it works and open up to new possibilities, what you could call looking for a magical solution or inspiration, a eureka moment. If we can put aside nationalistic boundaries to work on this, together, in a way we somehow never managed to do in response to the self-threat of climate change we created, we can make a lot of progress towards discovering how intergalactic communication really works. Even better, at the same time overcoming those differences can finally result in the end of war and spare us all the death, suffering, and expense that war keeps causing for us. We have to show that we want to be together, with ourselves, in order to reveal our inner character which deserves to be together with the rest of the universe. In a way, as an Infant Civilization, we have all been enacting the same temper tantrum throughout history, trying to show we are clever and powerful enough to be exclusive to one another in order to join the ranks of the Celestial Snobs, because we think that is what they require for membership. In fact, the magical understanding of working through opposites should reveal that this very process of trying to prove the worthiness of exclusivity has been what is causing our own exclusion and by practicing inclusion, instead, we will reach the point where we will be included in Celestial Society. It's not that they are snobs, it's that we have been on this misguided quest for superiority that makes us unfit to associate with, we're too distrustful and violent. And that distrust and violence has been built into the system and is part of the security of the well-off. It's the reason Kapernick is bravely protesting the National Anthem and, in contrast, getting swept up into perpetuating the system is why Obama cowardly criticizes him. But if we listen to our true hearts that yearn to be together and overcome all divisions we will. It's a tension towards and away from togetherness and what always pulls us apart is fear. It's either fear of the "other", which becomes established as foundations of the system in walls, or fear of our own change which makes us take comfort behind walls ourselves. I used a national, issues example but you can say the same thing about relationships. We do desire to be together but the tyranny of how things have been, of our own issues and mistakes, or the dictates of how society says they have to be, can pull us apart if we give into those instead of staying true to the quest for love. If we can cut out the things in society that make us violent and distrustful to each other, if we can get through fears in relationships so we can make the most of love between the most people, if we can end systems of oppression based on fears and overcome walls and borders, we can free up the energy and innovation to speak to the heavens and speak heavenly to each other. It is all part of the same thing and we just need to get into it to see how it brings us all together.

       It's easy to imagine a time in the near future when we have contact with alien people. Such an event would make us feel "more alike than not alike", even more than that iPhone commercial. I thought we would start to feel that way after scientists determined that all modern humans were generally from one type of humanity amongst many different human types, most of whom died out as far as we know. But contact with aliens would make us all feel our "sameness" even more directly for having a different kind of "other" to relate to. I believe we will find more in common with aliens than we expect, too, especially when we become our better selves and are able to relate to each other, and others, in the best and most respectful possible ways. I was going to say it is easier to imagine a time when we have contact with aliens than to imagine people in one country having fearless contact with people of other countries whom they deem "aliens" but that is just because the Force of Racism is so strong with this one, America, and too many other places. I think they reversed the Brexit vote because they realized that being motivated by these "fears of aliens" led to decisions that were bad for everyone. Hopefully we can realize that everywhere. When you look at Aliens as a symbol of the more interconnected future, like witches or magic, you can see how our fear of them hold us back in the same ways our fear of love holds us back. If we can trust someone to make contact with them and trust ourselves and be trustworthy to make contact, we will. This goes for the "alien" others from other countries, planets, or the other side of the bed.

       There was another commercial running recently I wanted to mention, about a cable service, where the kid is giving a speech and says "the only thing we have to fear is Buffering" - because her internet was too slow to properly do the homework, is the idea, and "buffering" popped up. She gives a great, impassioned delivery, but it stuck out to me for another reason. Fear is an illusion. Fear is the product of illusory ideas about each other that come from this system of controlled misperception. Fear is the idea that some people, some kinds of people, can't be trusted, an unwillingness to realize that all signs of distrust are the products of the system putting people at a disadvantage, forcing people into bad conditions that unduly try their natures and create systems to bring out the worst in people. Fear is based upon the idea that people and conditions can't change. It perpetuates itself because once we start working through it, dismantling the system that is made from it, it will all go away. But it isn't real, the real life of harmonious acceptance will replace it. And we keep making progress towards that change. We know we can move past fear, we know we can change and live together better. The only thing holding us back is the worldly power and momentum of that fear and it's ability to put obstacles in the way of change. Trump represents the momentum of outdated, unneeded worldly power, perpetuating itself to no good end, and Hillary represents the ability to put obstacles in the way of change in the very name of change. But personally we believe in the worldly power structure and compromise ourselves to give into it, to play the game, and our minds are mostly trained to distrust the magical opportunities to escape it, love and magic and art. When fear is seen as an illusion, one destined to fade away as we make more progress and change more for the better, the only thing keeping us back is the barrier to change, the "buffering." I assume a computer buffers a signal so too much change does not happen at once. This is what our troll-politics have been doing so expertly lately that it's too obvious to even talk about. They act like "we" can't handle too much change, making things too much better, all at once. All that's actually going on is this false system's last attempt to perpetuate itself, acting "too big to fail" when they already failed their most basic principle, democracy, in order to keep things this way.

       Bridges are the opposite of walls. Where there were natural obstacles before a bridge helps you over it. Where there was something we made for one purpose that hurt another, a bridge helps reconnect the old purpose. The reason trolls live under bridges is bridges represent progress and the troll represents the lingering "need" for an obstacle or opposition. A internet troll, or someone trolling you in real life, or the way Helen's husband and mistress are trolling her in Wildfell Hall, knows something good, is maybe jealous of something good, and tries to ruin it by insisting on something bad, a lie or a petty action. All progress is good but some people can't let go of the old way, when things were hard, and in bitterness want to make things hard for everyone else, even though it is just them doing it, now, it's not necessary for any reason other than the flaw of ego, trying to maintain a wall where a bridge should be, or openness. We keep paying their tolls, all the trolls that hold us back, just so we can forget about them and move on. But that dooms them to doing it over and over again. We need to find a way to convince all trolls that their true life does not lie under bridges, trying to make them like walls for people instead. Their true life lies in moving on, maybe even coming with us, to the other side of the bridge.

       We have the first contact with aliens but we can't figure it out. It's like we saw a light over the cosmic wall and so far all we can think is how to punch through to get to it, we haven't even looked around for a gate yet. But just knowing someone is over there can be enough motivation to try new ways of getting to them. Knowing we will, ultimately, meet, and imagining what that will be like, and how we will possibly be very good at it if we can't practice first on meeting other earthlings with more respect should be enough to inspire us to work towards the goal of togetherness, it should be a good sign. Of course just like our own potential with robots and AI some will project our own current flaws upon the others, assuming no one can live without violence or something, and try to scare us away from the Future. Just like our limited understanding thinks the only way aliens could send a signal is with our kind and amounts of energy and in directions we would think about. But we will discover it by improving ourselves and the discoveries will all increase our improvement as well.

       I feel like I am paying a toll, in a way, by writing these, just as I feel like I am paying a toll by reading and watching shows while looking for a message for me, a lesson I can take to help move on to a new realm. My own issues and reservations have been trolling me, I can relate to them through characters and also be reminded of how these same forces troll the world. But my best chance is to overcome them in myself and I know that will involve not just reading great stories and writing these but writing great stories myself, pulling the whole process together like seeing two eyes merge into the third. And I know I will but need to use that knowledge and faith not to sit back comfortably and wait for the stories to find me but to do whatever I can to find the ways to them. I have had great pleasure and success learning this lesson in music, allowing myself to make songs even when I'm not feeling my very best and realizing that the process always makes me feel better and the goal is "beyond me", in the realm of love, anyway. I was reminded of how Carly on the Bachelor in Paradise says that her love with Evan is not just the best love she has ever felt but the best anyone has ever felt. Love isn't a place to be jealous or a contest, I could hear part of myself, the jealous part, say "no way your love is as great as mine is or was at it's best!" but the Loving part of me said "yep, that's it, that's how it feels, you're on the right track, anyway." And who knows how true their love is, or if that is even a thing, but you can see how she only got to feel that way by getting over her hold-ups about him and even if it doesn't end up as "all that she hoped" you can at least tell it was a good thing for both of them, it was progress towards becoming more who they can really be. We can all open up in more ways like this, maybe in more dramatic ways, maybe in more simple ones. Once we try we will find much more is there.

       How do we get past the Cosmic Wall that keeps us from communication with other planets? We realize we are already in contact with them, spiritually, and the same lessons we learn in this realm apply to working out the "differences" in that one, but we have to go for it. Being able to see things from the cosmic perspective can help us see how and where to go for it but free will demands that we not be told what to do so we have to earnestly seek that connection to crack the code and get the directions. The good news is the code is in everything but we have to be flexible and open enough to consider things more than we tend to, to look for those deeper connections that merge what seems to be two things into one because we know they are there and are brave and feel safe enough to discover what's between us. It's like looking into your own two eyes in the mirror until they, you, become one amidst the awareness of your multiplicity and it's like looking into anyone's eyes until you become one between the illusions of separation. It's love and like aliens and fairies and magic it's really all around us, everywhere, it's only we who have been focused on such a rare and narrow angle that it seems like there is nothing else.

         Isn't it ironic to think how our indication that a civilization would be "more advanced", more powerful, is that it would require massive energy to send a sphere of transmission, but the "less advanced", less powerful transmission could be sent with the greater knowledge of where to send it? Wouldn't someone who had that much power, that was that much more advanced than the directional-senders as they are more advanced than we are, wouldn't such a intelligence also have the knowledge of where to direct the signal and not need to make a sphere? The bigger point is that the sphere and direct signal are both way too "inefficient" to make any sense according to how we understand them. So we must be misunderstanding them. There could be basic things about energy we don't know, such as a signal that picks up energy as it moves. There could be basic things about the structure of the universe we can only imagine but are currently stuck in an oversimplified and wrong set of assumptions.  When we question what makes some of these conclusions preposterous with the idea that it will be a clue to changing our understanding of the universe, and we are willing and open to that change, we will discover how these signals are sent and why and likely become able to interpret them. All things will come together if we try, if we go for it, but to know what to go for we have to have something to believe in. I'm going for art, for love, and I do believe in it but still I've needed to do all of this to talk myself into it, to pay off my own inner trolls who hold me back. But I'm also ready to heal their wounds and reclaim them as part of me, parts that only turned sour because I neglected them and what they truly needed, acceptance and to feel like part of the whole. Some of them, like ones that left me feeling insecure in relationships, seemed to only demand acceptance from someone else but I can truly heal those feelings and not be held back by trying to prove "I'm" good enough anymore, to anyone, even me, but just go for it and be the best of all of me that I can. I can use this analogy to see how I have been holding myself back because it seems impossible to get the energy to cross "95 light years" to my goals but I know when I get going everything becomes possible

       Before I end this I opened up a book, Uncle Wiggly's Airship, to get one more example of media magic to make up for all the ones I forgot to note in recent weeks. It was a story called Uncle Wiggly and the Soap Bubbles and the page I read was the first one where Nanny Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy asks him if he is going on an adventure. He says he doesn't know, he may be on a grand adventure or just a pleasurable cruise but he plans to enjoy it. She recommends he carry along a yeast-cake on his journey and explains that since yeast makes bread rise it would be useful in case his airship bubbles broke to make the airship rise. He takes the advice, When I asked myself why I turned to it, what the message was, I decided it was simply magic, the yeast bun being a magic charm to help the ship fly, and an example of this holographic universe in action. I'm reminded of some of the first magic described in "Black Elk Speaks", the prophecy of the future time, living in desolation by grey houses, and the way to cure snowblindness, and some other ones, all coming from Dreams. I have to take my own advice, utilize magic and art more and more, go with it, to reach that state where dreams become real to me, too, and I become part of that shamanic power system. I feel like this gagablog has been a book club and journal for me lately but I look forward to the Journeys of interacting with actual people, actively, and more Art, and really living these things instead of talking about them. Black Elk speaks of magic with such familiarity it reminds me that while I claim to believe in it my belief can be much deeper the more I really act upon it. Same for art and Love, I need to stop giving myself advice and start taking some and running with it. I need to break down some walls, for sure. I did meet a girl at Pagan Pride named Natascha who really impressed me, even bought our Foxzen album and felt she would be really impressed by it, which made me very happy. I had Love and Rockets song "Natascha" stuck in my head for a few days after that then finally played it the other day along with some of their other songs. One was "Don't worry" and I just now, in closing this, remembered that line and how it grabbed me at the time: "I'm gonna break down some walls for sure, I'm gonna break down some walls forever, ain't gonna sing the blues alone (no more?), ain't gonna sing the blues forever I don't worry, I don't worry at all."

       And this reminds me of the last thing I was going to say, when I had a spiritual crisis and my mom's friend from her dream group said she had a dream where I had to eat six cans of green beans. I've thought about this on occasion, and have eaten hundreds of cans of green beans since then. But I also realized that there have been a few times in my life since then that I was really aware of eating a can of green beans, as if it was "one of the six." I felt this way the other night, and wondered if this were truly the third can of "those" green beans I was making, or possibly the sixth. I didn't want to be "through" with whatever it was, in a way, these many years later, and wondered if it might be the first, if even the other two or three times I had "very consciously" eaten green beans they did not compare to this one. But it also made me realize I could be more aware of any can of beans, or anything I ate,or anything I did, and there are levels of "opening" out of lesser lives and consciousnesses that make the greatest of previous moments seem mundane by comparison. I suppose this can be compared to when people say "I thought I was in love before but now that I am with THIS person I realize nothing compares to this." The truth is love is there for all of us and when you really feel it you can see that potential in everyone and want it for everyone else, too. This is why magic, love, and art are always like this, it is their nature to be shared. As much as we are trained to think we want to claim things and secure them from others, like good little masonic wall-builders, these true paths of motivation teach us along the way that they are experienced by sharing them, not hiding them. The same understanding will allow us to communicate with aliens and ourselves because we will realize we are the ones hiding behind our own walls of fear. Once we are open to it we will see how everyone and everything surrounds us and permeates us with love. Its just funny that, as we are now, we have finally discovered our "first" clue from "out there" and it happens to be in a direction we somehow "know" to be 95 light years away. I suspect we're always getting these signals, and many other kinds, all the time, from all directions, but if we go with what this suggests to us with the greatest hopes  - connecting with others and within ourselves  -we can use this figure to decode the rest and learn how the whole universe interfaces. Sorry, I'm in a hurry to just get this out there, wrap this up and do some other things but I would like to return to these concepts soon and try and explain them better and more directly.

       And of course I suspect the best way to do that will be to finally return to Artpop and Sexxx Dreams, so we'll see. I have a lot of catching up to do, when I think about it, but if I get this intergalactic thing worked out I should have some clever ways of sneaking around to do it.