The Rabbit Hole - Articles - Blog

Which Came First, The Man or The Egg?

I couldn't sleep anymore, so I got up and fumbled my way through the darkness to the almighty refrigerator, took the egg out, broke it, emptied it in the frying pan and went to take a piss, but I didn't even make it to the toilet before I heard a man screaming for country and land. I ran into the kitchen just in time to see this little man, with a red sign, climbing from the frying pan, right into the fire. I quickly turned off the fire.

"What in Moses name is wrong with you? I was having a good sleep in the egg and you had to come and try to fry to me death. I ought to destroy you, except that you won't feel a thing, since you are still sleeping." Then I realized that I was still sleeping and I woke up with sweat all over me and I went to open the window, but it was stuck and no matter how much I pulled, the window would not open, so I pulled with all my strength until the glass shattered.

There was glass everywhere and right in the middle of it all was the little man pulling tiny pieces of glass out of his legs. He starting laughing and then he turned to me, put his red sign down and screamed like a banshee in orgasm and gave me a look, like I was a stupid little boy that had just said something kids should never say, and said,

"For the love of money! I hid in an egg you try to fry me, I hide in the window pane and you try to kill me with multiple stab wounds, if you weren't sleeping I would throw you out of this window right now." I realized then that I was still lying in the bed and the entire bed was wet from tears and all the lights were still on in the living room, and that I was just dreaming that I was dreaming that I had fried an egg with a little man inside, so I walked to the living room picked up the Godfather Part 3 by the TV, placed it in the DVD player, turned off the lights and laid back in the couch to see if this movie would put me back to sleep, but the DVD player made a weird broken tuba noise and started to smoke. So I jumped up and opened the player only to see the little man all bruised and panting.

"You must be a stupid! Can I please get some rest? First you tried to fry me, then you try to stab me to death, now, like some comic book villain, you are trying to commit murder by laser beam. Wait 'till you get up!" Then I realized that I was dreaming that I was dreaming that I was dreaming that I almost fried a little man to death. So I pinched myself real hard on the arm to make sure that this time I was awake. "Ow!" it wasn't me that said that, but

"Have you lost it completely?" I am in the egg you try to fry me, I hide in the window you try to stab me to death, I try to find safety in a DVD and you try to serve me a laser half and half. So I think to myself I'll embed myself in your right forearm, I must be safe there, but oh no. Now you are trying to squeeze me to death, and you are still not awake." Then I realised that I was still dreaming, that I was dreaming that I was dreaming that I was dreaming that I tried to fry a little man with a red sign for breakfast.

Now I was wide awake and decided to go for a walk to clear my brain, but when I walked out onto La Rambla, the entire La Rambla had turned to ice and I went sliding down towards the Columbus monument picking up speed as I slid, until I was moving so fast the people on La Rambla looked like they were part of a crude animation, penciled and the bottom of a worn notebook. Bang! I slid right into the Columbus monument and whole thing just toppled over and the Columbus statue at the top came crashing down, and who should crawled out of the head, but the same little man waving his red sign frantically, but before I could say anything he said,

"This is it! I am going to make you pay. Fry me, stab me, slice me in half, squeeze me to death, try to crush me, but you will still pay me. I am going to take all of your money and send you to hell and it does not matter if you are not awake!" 'And I said, "Why can't you let me dream in peace. You have been messing with my dreams for as long as I can remember. He just looked at me and started laughing. He laughed so hard he split himself into 119 pieces. Then I decided that after the egg, the window, the DVD, and the Columbus statue, I was going to get up and write all of this shit down, because no matter how much these little men and their red signs were going to mess with our dreams. I would always get up and, anyhow, the dreams that matter the most are the ones that I have when I am totally conscious.

DREAM ON

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?'

But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?". -- George Bernard Shaw

The Accidental Feminist

In celebration of International Women's Day

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. ~Faith Whittlesey

Okay . . . . Honestly . . . . It isn't an accident, but can anyone deny that it is the female personality that is the glue that holds everything together, although a greedy and insecure world has consistently sought to destroy and de-strengthen the female element. Still to this day, after almost one hundred years of the official observance of women's rights, in spite of the many laws that have been passed to grant equal rights to woman, we have not managed to instill a universal understanding of the female and male equality (an ingenious connectivity) into the minds of humans.

Our world is made of societies; accepted or unaccepted. Societies are comprised of homes that operate for the greater good of all, and the most important ingredient of a home is the female element. We have slowly degenerated into the complete opposite of a holistic society into the greedy individualistic society where we are much more interested in buying houses than building homes. We have managed to sink lower than the "me-first" society of the 20^th century to the "me-only" society of the 21^st century. We are destroying the fundamental building blocks of our future, which is leading to severely weakened and unstable environments. Then we sadly struggle to deal with the consequences (child abuse, drug addictions, crime, and domestic violence) as the stubborn male we are, by proudly and stupidly cutting down the trees and ignoring the roots.

Was Joanna Russ right and the future can only be saved by the female man? Will man become the virus of life, as he has become the plague of living, or shall we finally realise salvation in the needed collaboration of the sexes and rebuild our homes to save our world from eventual collapse? Will we, as males, admit failure? We have butchered, connived, swindled and lied our way to the top and time has proven us to be incapable of managing the world. Isn't it time we listen to the cries of the shareholders and stepped aside. Aside, but not down, for the world would still need someone to take out the garbage.

The women cry for equality, but equality does not come in the form of a law that decrees the right to vote, the right to work, the right for equal pay, the right to live. Equality comes in the understanding and recognition of one's ability and one's value, for no one can deny that the female and the male are not equal in many things, but it is very obvious to me that we were equal in value to our world. I say were, because the miss-education of our males have been so thorough and so complete that we have become such feeble-minded, insecure, pathetic wraiths that today our solution for everything is murder, castigation, lies and a bigger phallic image that comes in different shapes and sizes like cars, guns, houses, blackberry, big screen TVs . . . . . . . . .

The female power is our most valuable resource and our most neglected. Realise and accepted the feminine perspective. Embrace it, beg the females to come back and plead for their help. Let the world be as it should be. Female and male together, side by side, and we will reap the benefits. Then International Women's Day will become the World Independence Day.

Note: I often refer to male and female as oppose to man and woman, because the female mind does not always come in the male body and their are many that will agree, but that's another story.

Have you seen Art?

Art is completely out of control. I once met Art in Tompkins Square, in d' East Village, way back when it used to be ah radical's playground and Iggy used to dance on d' bar at Pyramid. Back then, Art wuh play cheeky games in dem junkyard gardens in Alphabet city. Back then, Art used to recite poetry in Lower East Side, then dress up all pretty for dem swanky gallery openings on 59^th Street. When I was young, I remember seeing Art on d' way to Manzanilla Bay with ah ol' Indian man, an' Art looked so humble, then, but in New York, Art was trouble. Everybody was talking 'bout Art. Everybody was writing 'bout Art. I try to be friends with Art, but it started to cost too much. Even dem little bar and dem small gallery started to get fancy because Art was hanging with dem. Today yuh could forget dem gallery and dem museum. Art is everywhere and Art is completely out o' control.

Art Happens when anyone in the world takes any kind of material and fashions it into a deliberate statement. Thomas Hoving: Former Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Make a statement with every thing you do, every thing you say and everything you wear

Life is a work of Art

Be bald, have a Mohawk, grow dreadlocks, dye it pink, wear plastic, wear see-through plastic, orange contacts, go barefoot, dance in the rain, dance all night, howl at the moon, push it to over 200kmh, always leather, get the most original tattoo, like everybody else, then tell it like it is, or was, trip on the sunset, then wait to see it rise, always take your guitar, never leave your CDs, forget the time, never stop, don't slow down and let nothing enter your body

"Criticism, in which lovers of art used to find support for their judgements of art, has . . . . . become so contradictory that, if we should exclude from the realm of art all that the critics of various schools deny the right of belonging to art, almost no art would be left." Leo Tolstoy: What is Art? Pemguin Books, 1995

Bugger the critics. Art is what Art is and Art is

against people being hungry staying hungry

sometimes invisible in life and audile in music

sometimes visible in life and all about the music

easily found deep within our soul food

it's thousands of people with painted faces behaving badly

- Art is BÃ¡quico -

www.baquico.org

Now and Zen

Zen What?

In the beginning there were men, and the men believed in inner search for absolute truths and the men meditated often by staring at a wall or adopting a difficult physical position for long periods of time. In Sanskrit, meditation is called dhyana, in China, it was called Ch'an, and later, it spread to Japan, where it was called Zen.

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.

Zen, there is Buddhism

About 2500 years ago, in India, a young prince named Gautama left his palace in search of the meaning of existence. After searching in vain for years, he decided to sit down and meditate until he found what he was looking for. After a long period of intense meditation, he achieved the knowledge that he later expressed as the Four Noble Truths: all of life is suffering; the cause of suffering is desire; the end of desire leads to the end of suffering; and the means to end desire is a path of discipline and meditation. This event was called Awakening, or bodhi in the Sanskrit language, and Gautama became known as the Awakened One, or a Buddha in Sanskrit.

Bodhidharma (470-543) is considered to be the founder of Ch'an Buddhism (in China), which later became known as Zen Buddhism in its Japanese manifestation.

Zen, do the Four-Step?

Samudaya: identify the cause of your suffering

Mirodha: commit yourself to removing the cause

Nirvana: the place of no suffering

Marga: living life right

"When humans are alive, they worry about death. When they're full, they worry about hunger." . . Not thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen. . . . To go from mortal to buddha, you have to . . . . accept what life brings." ~ Bodhidharma (470 -543)

find your time, your place, use whatever you can and find yourself.

Is it Real Love or Reel Sex?

Production confinement of on screen couples often leads to trailer intimacy, which leads to pre-release paparazzi, which leads to tabloid frenzy, which often leads to break-up or divorce, which then leads to talk show fiestas, which leads to box office bonanza, which translates into mega money for media, while our tinsel town heroes, lick their wounds, hide their pain and continue their search for the real love behind the reel sex. Don't give up.

Music For The Sole

Do you dance to the beat?

Which came first, music or dance? Did prehistoric man hear or feel a natural rhythm that came from the earth, a dark beat that is the basis for all beats or was the first earthly rhythm only a mimic of passion filled expressions through movement of the body? Scholarly research leans towards a symbiotic development of music and dance, but here is a simple test. Close your eyes, concentrate on the emotion you feel; anger, fear, joy, love or pain. Now, say out loud how you feel without using any vocal sound. Move your body, use your hands, and scream! Forget the scholars. We can feel that the use of the body for communication is a dance that creates its own internal rhythm. We have always been dancing and music has simply evolved to accompany the beat within us all. The question is: Can you dance to your beat?

Eurhythmics is an approach to the education of music (devised by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze) where, through participation in games and exercises the students learn to combine music and movement in order to develop rhythmic unity between the eye, ear, mind and body.

Dance Like Nobody's Looking

The Seeds of Desolation

Is there anyone out there that has moaned under the ever increasing burden of the evils of humanity? Today we are constantly made aware of the never ending list of disasters committed against nature and man for greed and power by, what should be, trusted organisations and respected individuals. We have been lied to, manipulated, cheated, beguiled, oppressed, suppressed and cajoled into submission. We live in a world where the scales of opportunity and justice are always tipped in favour of the very same people that possess the keys to a multitude of Pandora boxes.

Slavery, Ancient Wars, Burning of Rome, Lavish Temples, The Crusades, The Inquisition, The Witches Hammer, Civil Wars, Human Experiments, Misappropriated Taxes, Governmental Treachery, Royal Trickery, The Holocaust, Several Genocides, The Killing Fields, The Dirty War, Presidential Murders, Media Manipulation, Darfur, Somalia, Liberia, Uganda, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Georgia, Ireland, Basque, Enron, World Com, Martha Stewart, The Twin Towers, . .

Now look in the mirror and come to grips with a startling truth that each and every person that has assisted in these atrocities was once a baby with a guardian. Every person was born with the ability to become a person that lives for love, harmony and peace or a malevolent leader. Every person had the ability to take humanity one step closer to a world without evil, a world where the balance of nature is not about good and evil, but about happy and sad, life and death, and work and play. Keep looking in the mirror and understand that we have not been wronged, but we have wronged ourselves. We have only ourselves to blame for the creation of those monstrous puppeteers that sit in high offices and pull the strings that cause incessant pain and suffering for so many.

Every time we slowed down only when there was radar or a policeman, we taught our young that it was okay to cheat, break the law or lie as long as you don't get caught.

Every time we helped our kid to get a job through a friend or relative, we taught our young that preferential treatment because you belonged to a family/club/society could and should be used to get ahead.

Every time we forced our young to be pleasant to people they didn't like, to say something complimentary about something that was not nice, to be friendly to the neighbours while we made degrading remarks about them behind their backs, we taught our young to be deceitful, cunning, false.

Every time we made them feel good for winning, every time we spoke about our family, school, company, town, state, region or country being better than others then we taught our young how to be prejudice and how to discriminate.

Every time the small town deli owner gives freebies and discounts to the local beauty queen we are teaching our young that the beautiful and the popular always have it easier and that we should all try to be beautiful, popular or rich, otherwise no one will care about us.

Today we have secret societies that place their members in positions of power to assist other members with economic decisions. We have corrupt politicians that believe that it is better for some to win that all to gain. We have nepotism, fascism, nationalism, racism and masochism that threaten unity, equality and liberty. We have world leaders that smile and speak nicely with each other while secretly plotting and scheming against each other. We have large companies that commit the most heinous crimes without guilt as long as they are not caught. Guess what? They are only doing what we have taught them to do.

There is no easy fix. There is no war to be fought and won. There isn't any group to be eradicated, any politician to be elected, any book to be written nor any movie than can be produced. You want to stop the suffering, the greed, the evil then stop the way we teach our young. If we are consistent and tenacious then by the end of four generations the world will be a better place. Yes. It will probably take four generations. Are you committed?

then let it begin with you

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty - Albert Einstein

The Truth About Love

The unfortunate reality about communication is that we are bound to the use of words. Words, my friend, are the biggest enemy of truth. Many wars have been fought, many souls have been lost, and many catastrophes have occurred due to the incorrect use, deliberate abuse, misunderstanding, and incorrect translation of the word.

If the Bible's story of the Tower of Babel is true, then it would have to be seen as the single most destructive incident in the history of humanity, for there lies the beginning of the Era of Babel. An era that continues to this day, as is evident in the existence of the word "babelic," which the Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines as tumult, turmoil, uproar, bedlam or clamor.

To use words to communicate is a social minefield, where time, culture, race, religion, age, disposition, accents and language can alter, mutilate or completely destroy the original idea. We consistently struggle, often in vain, to find the correct word, sentence or phrase to explain our facts and feelings, building our own chaotic tower of miscommunication. At the top of this verbose insanity is the word, "love."

Humanity has killed for love, died for love, lied for love, stolen for love. We have committed the most despicable atrocities and the noblest deeds in the name of love. Yet love is only a word. It is a word so difficult to understand that we have created numerous sub-meanings in an effort to navigate our feelings across the minefield. So, today, we have: in love, motherly love, fatherly love, brotherly love, friend love, real love, true love, a love of places, a love of things, and everyone has a favourite love song. In spite of all of this socio-political packaging, the meaning of the word is still heavily debated and often confusing, for parents still try to manipulate the lives of their children, try to limit their desires, try to control their minds and, sadly, sometimes even physically and sexually abuse their children in the name of love, and lovers often kill their partners rather that see them with another, because, they love them so much.

Stop! We have become so accustomed to using the word love to try and describe too many feelings that the word has lost all meaning. Our use of the word is completely flawed from the very beginning because we egotistically believe that we are in control of love. It is not possible to love, and to use the word to try and explain emotions and feelings that range from the simple to the complex is the representation of the sad decay of communication.

Love is not a tool, a feeling or an emotion. Love is the state of being. This is one of the most important truths of humanity. Love exists and you either accept it or deny it. If you choose to accept it, then it will fill you. You will become part of love and love will become part of you. It will complete you. It will keep you safe during the times when other emotions and feelings like want, greed, desire, lust, need and addiction become too much.

The human being does not do anything it does not want to do. Even when we think we are not doing what we want in order to give/help/be with another, we do it because we want to do something for another. The human being does not love another person. We used the word love because it is so easy, but what we really mean is, "I want you more than any other, I want to be with you, live with you, grow old with you, have sex with you, spend time with you." The human being wants, desires, admires and lusts after another person. Sometimes these emotions are so strong that we are angry or hurt if that person does not want us in return. That's greed. The human being does not love her country. The human being has a need to belong somewhere, to have a reason and a purpose, to be accepted, to fit in and so will be easily coerced into false prides of family, town, city, region, state, not realising that the only people that benefit from these quasi-divisions are the conglomerates that every year become more and more together in their organisations, institutions and goals.

Love is our saviour. We may do always what we want to, but it is love that will shape that want. We may have greedy desires for another, but it is love that will allow us to respect their desires and their wants. We may want so badly to fit in, to belong, but it is love that will keep us far away from fascism, nationalism, racism and sexism. Accepting love strengthens us, binds us, and brings us closer. Love is not something we have to search for, take classes for, read a book for or go to church for. Love exists inside us all. Dig deep inside and you will find it. Granted, some of us may have to dig deeper than others, but it is there. Give into it. Feel it. Let it take control. It grows when we recognise it. It gets stronger when we give into it. Love will take us back to the time before the Tower of Babel, when all humans spoke the same language.

This is the truth about love, and just as we are unable "to love," we are also unable "to hate." Hate is the opposite of love. Either you give into hate or you give into love. The choice is yours to make.

Love does not hurt. Expectations hurt - -Rasta Ballet (freedom & responsibility)