A Willful Captivity

Watching my Occupy Wall St documentary I realized that I made this film for myself.

I was filtering the whole experience, the whole movement, down to its essential wisdom. To keep some coals burning, as Bukowski would say, until the fire could be lit once more. My spirit had been ground down. I knew it would take me a while to recover. But I also knew that I couldn’t afford to forget what I had learned. It cost too much.

It always costs too much.

I didn’t talk much about growing up but there was a first love in 7th grade that I was later lucky enough to reconnect with and lose my virginity to when I was 19. She told me back in middle school that one day I would be a great writer. I believed her then because I knew her love was sincere, even though I didn’t fit into her story and she didn’t have the courage to join me in writing our own.

Or maybe I couldn’t find the right words.

Then at 19 the Army had me and I couldn’t relate to her college narrative. Our plots had strayed too far apart. We connected once more though, 15 years later, so last year or the year before. She was in New York, recently divorced. We met and shared a night. And before she left my life again she gave me a last bit of wisdom;

“You see others as they are, not as they want to be seen. But sometimes people don’t want to be seen.”

And then we stopped talking to each other again.

Love teaches you. Life teaches you. All of our experiences shape who we are. But are we spending enough effort to see ourselves as we truly are? To see each other? If this is the answer, then is this where the war is being fought? Are you being kept from knowing yourself?

What has this war cost you?

Let me tell you a story. My name is SHAZZBARBARIC and I have but one life.

I want to add to the truth and beauty in this world.

Writing this has helped me remember my own narrative.

I wasn’t born to work in real estate. I was born asking questions. And I’ve never received answers.

Why do they did they lie to me in high school and deny me my real history?

Why did they lie us into war, almost sending me to die for someone’s profit? Sending my brothers?

Why don’t we hold our politicians accountable? Why do we let them turn us against each other?

Why do we all feel so helpless when if you talk to anyone in person they all agree on the major problems we face?

Why do we deny people in other countries or even in our own colonies or commonwealths the right to self determination?

Why did they attack us violently for coming out into the streets to try and change things?

What can we do?

I don’t think I can ignore it anymore. This has shown me I have to get back to my calling, even if I can barely describe what that is.

The truth does exist. And we can figure it out together.

But I’m going to need your help.

The King of Carmine

Of woman born when Caesar died
When clowns would dare to crucify their king
From King’s quarters this I write
News the latest regicide will bring
So bring me fortune bring me fame
And I will bring to you their names in verse
Versions known and unknown shared
If I err tell me but where at first
I the first man, first to speak
The barbarous as well as Greek of tongue
Have sung into belief this bond 
To bind the men that dare be strong 
For our women

Of woman born when Caesar died
The Ides of March are prophesied again

stercus mendico
vigilas cresco

I think I know how to filter out the pollution of objectification from our stories and free ourselves from the bonds of capital, inspire people to take control of their own identities and therefor their actions. It starts with making a stand though. Go to one place, one geographic or virtual location, but if it’s virtual you will need to verify who you are talking to. Hell, might as well do that in person as well. And then you, we, can start figuring out real solutions to our actual problems. Dare the authorities to hit you on the chin. They will, baring their teeth as they go down, screaming like animals as we reclaim the dignity of man.

On my way out through the gates of empire, past that moat that encloses liberty, let me leave you with one last thought. This world might claim an animal spirit, but we always have had dominion over the animal world.

Just don’t let them take away your boys.

Deceit is how we carved out security within the wild. If the animal spirit is a constant need to survive, deceit is how one earns the space to think. A tool is a form of deceit by misrepresenting ability, transforming it into greater efficiency.

Fiction is a form of deceit.
Capitalism is a deceitful tool.

If animals are born with the capacity to fully integrate themselves with their environments, our ability to introduce new concepts into reality will always give us the advantage. Asymmetrical information. The original sin for which we were banished from the garden. The discovery of deceit.

The tiger is more profitable in the circus than in the soup.

A lot of people with the role of instructor in our society, formal or otherwise, claim that there is nothing true worth seeking. This is a convenient thing to say when you have nothing worth sharing.

How can anyone be exposed as a fraud when there aren’t any standards. Very clever.

So they do their best to convince you that life is only about play, that’s as high as the elevator goes. They encourage you to be a slave to your senses – usually in a way profitable to them – while they themselves become captives to their own will to power and lust for recognition. Lack of love. In this way their demons become our own.

so we worship a pageant of animal lies

boys joust will and willie between the world’s thighs

claiming all that they need can be held as their prize

as our world slowly dies

women still cry

why

do we still not open our hearts

They say his identity was more complex than his reaction to the circumstances of his existence. His story transcended the temporal. He escaped the enslavement of ego through active meditation with plants and partners. He tore down the walls separating experience to become the soul who straddles all worlds.

and was woven back into the fabric of life itself

LILESH