Jared Lee Loughner

Oh boy, here we go again with the triple names!  …another “Lee” — how I shudder at the formulaic pattern of phenomena.  Spiral vibrations coming full circle once more…

If you need further clues, read Shutter Island – do it!  And think of instruments of deployment!

No?

Then ask yourself why is this man happy?

I suspect it has to do with a reflection.  Don’t you think?

A reflection of what has become of America, a nation looking at itself and seeing a jarring and contradictory image in the grips of absurd insanity and expansive trauma.

I further suspect that this is a watershed moment and a turning tide, a portentous epicenter with deepening aftershocks to come.

This man’s smile is a wound in the psyche of a nation groping in the dark, lying to itself; and unless we redirect the trajectory, I’m afraid it bodes ill for some time to come.

The airwaves are replete with deep outcries, finger-pointing, and blind panic; yet there is a tincture of self-awareness, as if we’re caught in a dream, sleepwalking on the edge of a precipice and seeing that same precipice in the dream…

But the epic tragedy is that a nine-year-old child was slain!  Despite mass media’s focus elsewhere, the child’s death is the REAL story for a nation that has forgotten what it means to principally care for children.

While every action has consequence and every word has resonance, seldom do we note that every non-action is a void, a deafening cry in absence.

And so my heartfelt prayers for the safe journey of Christina Taylor-Green, and all children worldwide who fall voiceless through the looking glass….

Look deep no matter how hard it hurts,

Safe passage wherever you are.

-IAT

Boy: “How do I know that I heard what you said.”

Man: “Because I respond to you and you acknowledge my response.”

Boy: “But still, I can’t be sure that what you said is what I heard.”

Man: “Nor can I be sure that you heard what I said.

We simply have to use the convention to the best of our ability, navigate through the codes we have constructed for ourselves so that we can fashion an interface from the emptiness.

We are formed from the dust of the universe, the sentience of molecules – they’re crude, you know, molecules.  Imagine us as a string, syntax of quantum vibrations willing itself to coalesce.  Do you understand?  We are God manifest looking at itself, the one element unto one.

We use language as a tool to discern each others countenance, the infinitely multifarious expression of the one, simultaneously divisible by one.  Yes?”

Boy: “I understand,” smiling contently.

She walked up to the bar holding a joint and a glass of brandy, placed the brandy on the counter and took a long slow drag, crackling, glowing ember, and released a thick plume of smoke lit by candle flicker against black night.

“…You are not dealing with men but with God,” she announced, her voice laced with smoke. “Every man, every instance of sentience, every molecule is the corpus of the one.  If you imagine all individual elements forming collectively the one melody, then you begin to see that you are dealing with God himself.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.  Her skin was a shade of warm alabaster silk, wrapped in pure black wool.

She continued in a languid tenor, “good is highlight and bad is shadow.  This is one way to delineate the face of your God, light and shadow give perceptible definition to his countenance.  In some ways this is similar to the meta-face I told you about…  We were high on weed and could see lucidly, remember?”

I did remember that night, how could I forget?  Fireflies were whispering an ancient script in delight.

“Our actions’ visage, our inner and outer beauty, or ugliness, is defined not only by our flesh, but by our history, by our aura.

Our portraits are written but invisible, perceived by eyes hidden and clear – you can paint that, can’t you?  Can’t you?”  She sounded excited for a brief moment, her eyes sparkling with the gift she thought she was giving me.

We sat there silently looking at the candle dance through the brandy, a comfortable deep amber shimmer of hope deflated with deluded pragmatism.

“Every action is a word,” she started after a long pause.  “Actions forming tangible dialogue with God, and series of actions forming sentences; eventually your life becomes a paragraph, an essay, a book, a story to be retold, eternal in its timelessness, renewed perpetually.

Patterns of your actions then become the syntax of your language.  Manifest and visceral, ultimately it’s through this dialogue with your Divine Self that you begin to see the light-shadow portrait – Da Vinci had it right all along, those Illuminati fools, they were so close, always onto something, almost there, but not quite.

Light and shadow, both part of the same face, no?  An expression of the one being…”

I was listening all this time without interrupting her thoughts.  But the age-old question had to be asked… I wanted to see the depth of her conviction.

“What? It’s all neutral then, all meaningless, this matrix, this flux, this ambiguous hum of conversation is without purpose?”  I asked.  “What’s the objective of this dialogue you speak of?”

She smiled, as if she had anticipated my question, “it’s just a flow, a currency — you should know that — a vast matrix of being at the core of which is the one choice.

Simultaneous multidimensional choice – now, am I forcing my desire of purpose onto this equation?  Am I willingly altering the meaning forcefully, forcibly projecting my own fears and desires onto the portrait I paint?

I paint this portrait to achieve what?  That’s your question, isn’t it? to achieve what?  I’ll tell you, to achieve harmony, to achieve form and shadow and light!”

“So where does this all leave the individual ambition, or the collective ambition for that matter?” I asked.

“Ambition, if it’s part of this dialogue, will seek harmonious flow as its ultimate achievement.  It’s not independent, it cannot go against the very flow it is part and parcel of, now can it? Think!

Ambition must be with purpose…  And that purpose is to discern the face of God.  If action is aligned with the will of Universe and God as its inherent form, then that formation is satisfaction of desire.  There is no other objective.

The notion of individual goal and greed for self-gain is passé.  Please!  If you look at it hard enough, it disappears.  Self-gain to what end?  Those are artificial distortions, or faces of shadow –”

“Don’t go there!”  I interjected, not wanting a rabbit hole spiraling out of control…  Her passion was enchanting, I couldn’t bear losing the moment.  “You were saying…”

“Yes… does evil serve a purpose?  Yes! again, it’s the state of being – don’t you see?  This is it, no more.  The reward is harmony.  Or is it punishment?  Is there an evolved multi-tiered state of being? Or is it about devolution…  Annihilation, simply falling to disintegrate and to deconstruct from the grip of desire…simply being, like raindrops…

You can hear the raindrops; they are a collection of drops, each falling with a particular sound…  Does each drop have an ambition?”

Rain was falling heavily outside.  She grew silent.  Her eyes glazed with an impenetrable opacity.

I could see her face, not her physical beauty, but something more elusive and essential.

For a brief moment I could see her portrait through her actions and thoughts, coexisting simultaneously, visible, superimposed on her physical body.

I grabbed my iPhone and took a picture, but that was only half the image…

The individual’s actions are the essential portrait…like an aura, like a second level of being, deeper than karma, deeper than kismet, an outer face that envelopes the material face – perhaps there are layers of portraiture…  All perceptible through chakras, aural perspectography — enchanted…

Her lips were exploding, crimson with a transparent shimmer.  I leaned forward to kiss her.  There was a drop of blood beading on her lower lip.

We have to penetrate a level of authenticity with our lives…  We need to go deeper.

“Suppose we continue your analogy,” she started abruptly, frightened.  “If the portrait is how we perceive ourselves and the other, as an outer form, or an inner form, then tell me, what does choice have to do with this image?

When a soul is born into this world, what choice does it have regarding the mold it’s born in? A black mold, a yellow mold a white – how trite and banal you have all devolved, trapped in your constructed matrix!”

Her eyes were moist with rage and loss.  She continued, her voice now trailing off into some distant thought every now and then, “where does choice factor in, and where do we draw the line?  It’s almost as if it’s a schizophrenic notion and we’re undecided as to who we are, a spirit tethered to flesh; our identity based on matter, or is it intrinsically and inherently deeper, matter tethered to spirit, and we are tragically remiss of it all.

It seems arbitrary to be born into a form and have that form become our function, our identity and our weakness…  Form driving function of our soul.

The depth of this investigation is unfathomable, but it must be explored from an artistic, philosophical, scientific, ethical, pedagogical, etc., perspective.  There’s no alternative but to explore.  You have to paint it.  You must!”

She looked at me with renewed intensity, blood trickling from her mouth, her eyes struggling to smile, her body becoming transparent, “promise?  Promise that you will paint that portrait!”

I reached to embrace her.

“Don’t call me again.  I will meet you when you arrive.”

“I won’t call you, nor you I,” I struggled to hold back my tears.

Before I had the courage and resolve to embracing her one last time she was gone.  Rain was falling hard against the window.

-Iliad Terra

Someone recently asked me to highlight my favorite designer…

It’s simple.

Currency conduits,

Energy transfer portals,

Vessels carrying latent light…

You reside in your shell,

Navigating relative dimensions,

Every thought, every action,

Illustrative of a single desire,

To illuminate,

To conduct,

…To be continued…

-IAT