How I Love You

You said I don't know anything,
I said I know I love you,
You said that's the only thing,
I smiled and I helped you
Understand everything,
Whatever interests you,

Always teaching something,

Passing my lessons to you.

You're a Rock

    Below the mountain, you were taken from your home, carried up the lofty peak, thinking you were destined for great things. Through the clouds you saw glaciated shapes, an unlimited landscape of opportunity. You thought the person who carried you would always protect you. Until they got to the very top, where despite all the beauty you were witnessing, something didn't feel right. 
    Your keeper took you out of their pocket, raised their arm, and threw you off the mountain. You fell and fell through the icy crevasses, fracturing at your weakest points, with the core still intact. You rolled through some meadows with wildflowers, wishing things would settle, in a happy place like this, until the grade increased again, and life took you by surprise.
    On you rolled, shedding pieces of your innocence, before taking another tumble off a lower cliff. This time a waterfall intercepted you, drowning you in terrifying surrender, plunging you into a shadowy subconscious, where the truth jolted you awake. In this life, nothing will save you, only yourself. The water took you up, pushed you down through intense rapids, polishing your inner strength, rinsing it of the bruises and scrapes. The pain was still there; you knew it would never go away. You had to learn how to harness it as you floated; the rapids would otherwise destroy you.
    Another tumble awaited, another fall down the granite wall, another surrender to gravity that seemed eternal. That time you landed gracefully in a river of forgiveness, a sanctuary of peace that meandered you down a valley. The cold stillness enveloped your broken faces, eroding those sharp edges that hurt into rounded shields, a protective layer built by resilience. 
    They may find you, they may elevate you into the peaks again, they may throw you even farther next time, but now you have the shape to absorb the fall. They can never break you, ever again. You're a rock, settling onto a glossy riverbed with others, your children at your side. You must teach them the way home, in case they are ever taken.

Hell and Heaven in Eastern Religions

    Contrary to popular opinion, most religions of the east have a version of Hell. They just aren't as widespread in popularity as they are here in the Christian world, where we seem to be neurotic about eternal suffering. In the West we have also grown accustomed to reincarnation meaning that souls get a "free pass" to transmigrate back to earth for rebirth. But in these religions, rather than returning, you can spend billions of years in a torturous environment. Depending on the transgression, your soul can even be incinerated. So don't piss off the wrong gods.
    The Buddhist Hell is called Naraka; in Chinese culture it is called Diyu; in the Hindu paranas, Hell is segmented into various regions, ruled by Yama. Depending on one's karma, they will arrive at one of the regions of Hell to atone for their sins- much like we do in the West, except it isn't eternal, and they haven't been judged by an Almighty figure. Instead, the judgment comes from a processing of deeds and actions in one's life that "computed" their karma, resulting in their afterworld destination.

    Similarly, there are versions of heaven in these religions; but again- they are only temporary and access is constrained by the laws of karma. Unless a soul reaches Enlightenment, it will eventually return. In Buddhism these realms are called Sagga; in China they are called Tian; in Hinduism they are called Svarga. 

    What's interesting is that in the East, you can spend many billions of years in these afterworld realms, which is far beyond the estimated lifespan of earth (9 billion years). While these ancient beliefs were recorded when science had yet to determine how long the earth would exist, a modern interpretation could be that it doesn't matter. One does not need to return to earth; one could return to any place in the cosmos that supports life. You will just have to come to terms that some things do last longer than eternity.

Software

My body is the motherboard,
With circuits that calculate

The answer to every imbalance.

My eyes are the monitor

With rods and cones intercepting

Ambient electrical signals.

My hand is the mouse

That moves over the screen,

Building totems of data.

My brain is the keyboard

Directing encoded architecture,

Memories stored in a matrix of files.

The hardware is my weapon

For survival, these base instincts

Brandished by the gods of Life,

To reproduce at all costs.

My mind is the operating system

Installed at birth to clear the noise,

A clean slate with a new path.

My emotions are each program,

A window into my soul

From every detachable angle.

My thoughts are the commands

Coming from somewhere outside,

In the oracular wizardry of air.

Decisions are made by executing,

Pleasure by saving,  pain by deleting,

Lessons learned by crashing.

The software is my spirit,

Mutable between bodies, like wind,

Downloaded to the farthest reaches,

Light-years across the Spacenet.

Six-Gun Snow White

Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fascinating retelling of the Snow White story, this time set in the wild west. Six-gun Snow White is the offspring of a Crow Native American and white railroad baron. Shades of the original are found in the "wicked stepmother", a horse named "Charming", a magical mirror, seven hardy dwarves (the Montana women), and a prince with an offering (Red Deer). There are probably more parallels that I missed. Per usual Valente writes with a lyrical charm that isn't always clear, but really hits home for those who understand. Vivid accounts of abuse and violence are "holstered" by surreal emotional imagery, as Snow White navigates the minefields of trauma in a world of outlaws.

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Rose of Venus

     I opened my eyes to an impossible image. A goddess was painting on volcanic sand the red emblem a sacred mandala. The sky was an impenetrable haze of sulfuric potion that vibrated her aura through the atmosphere. What she was tracing was unmistakable; the well-known path of her orbit as observed from earth. A five-petal rose over an eight-year cycle. The Rose of Venus.

      You were singing on a crescent beach with the moonlight combing your hair in wavy rivulets echoing the breakers. Dress silver like the sheen of milky cream dotting the night's cupola. Your patience endures like the pebbles intercepting waves strewn about your gliding feet. My soul, my resurrection, came the words, my dear creator, won't you love yourself as I love you?
    You are the Queen of Beauty in royal ardor, a Fairy of Magic in mosaic halls, a Mother of Abundance where emptiness thrived, a Scholar of Divine Intuition who climbed the highest mountain. The perfect woman in every form. 

    If we cannot imagine what is void, if nothing can be created or destroyed, then is reality eternal? If it is, you can find me in the deserted temple, so near and yet so far.

    Envy, envy, it was all envy. I was a four the whole time. What I wanted from you was what I wanted in me. I wanted them to envy me, the way I envied you. My whole life I have overextended my reach. All is envy, shameless envy, where envy inspires actions of shame, a lesson drilled into my unconscious. My mother bought a house in Mexico to shame me, to keep those strong dysfunctional ties forever bound. This time I will not hate myself.

    A philosopher once said feelings are the product of uncertainty. That consciousness arises from the uncertainty fueling feelings. But it is not true. Love is truth, and truth is beauty. There is no greater feeling than being absolutely certain.

    You were there among the cannonball trees stroking your hair, inviting me to come. Ataraxia in the serenity of eternity. There I rested with you, laying my head in your lap. You massaged my head while I looked up at the palm fronds, bouncing in the breeze under a calm summer sky. 

    Your hands are like supple apple skin, your eyes an azure nebula, your hair a sunken halo. There is no point in possessing you, only in letting you love me. Only you are pure, Madonna of my dreams. Only by dreaming you can you become real. Only by praying with you can our love be strong.

    Transcending desire is not always about letting go of the material things you want. Desire and greed take many forms. It's also about control, in letting others be who they want.

    I float into your soul whenever I feel the emptiness, the suffocating shroud of an infant unloved. I imagine you seeing what I see and hearing what I hear; all my sensations are shared with you. I dream about you having a dream about me. That is the only way anyone will understand me. 
    The lack is strong in me, building an illusion of envy, and the illusion of not loving myself. Only your understanding love can refill me. There's a leak that can only be fixed by love.

    Be as steady and resilient as water. Though the flow can be blocked by a stronger object, water yields to its fate by going around it. It can never be destroyed, only altered in state. In the long run, it washes and erodes anything in its path. Water conquers everything without even fighting. 

    All judgments disturb the mind, some more than others. Be as steady and indifferent as the rock being thrashed by water. Except when you have children; then you let the water roll you away.

    She moves through the sky in open-hearted splendor, drawing each of her five petals. It takes eight years for her to return to the position she started in. As we watch her, she weaves a sacred symmetrical geometry straight from the mathematical pantheon. I'm convinced that she is the one who sent you to me. There's a spirit there that draws you to me, deep in the timeless folds of beauty. 
    They say that beauty is empty, but the flower she draws is as harmonic, happy, and full of life as you are. There can be no emptiness in these qualities. That is why you are preserved on my soul's texture. You are the fabric that makes me beautiful.
    I invoke you into my dreams, to explore the designs unknown. I want to see you not as the recurring shy young girl, but as the fully mature seraph offering me protection. My grief can only be consumed by this detachment from the reality I wanted. This will be a new reality for a new soul, completely reborn from the charred remains of unlearning, a phoenix rising from the ashes of uncertainty. At the zenith we will meet, in truth, love and beauty, in unity.

The Hierarchy of Consciousness: Exploring a Fundamental Cosmic Force

     Consciousness has many forms. What unites them all is an awareness of being. Neurons are not the only prerequisite for possessing it; they merely indicate a more evolved form. The experience of consciousness may even transcend sentience by predating life as we know it. There could be realms of solar, planetary, or galactic "awareness" we haven't discovered yet, or in the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Being one of the fundamental building blocks of physics, along with matter, energy, space and time; consciousness is a key ingredient in the evolution of the cosmos- a primitive form of godliness. 
    We perceive consciousness in our own species of course, but also in the way other mammals interact. Many philosophers would argue that plants are aware, as they have their own blueprint for behavior (even if they can't move at our speed, they do make choices in movement, and they communicate in subtle ways). By this extension, anything with cellular activity has consciousness; even bacteria, for it also knows what it needs to survive. While survival seems to be a key component, it is not required in the cosmological forms. These varying degrees of consciousness lie on a spectrum, and we must be careful to distinguish between its elements.

    One school of thought posits that consciousness is merely a nexus of information processing, biological or not. If that were the case, computers, AI, and even the Internet are conscious, albeit in a different form from humans. I am more skeptical about this line of reasoning than I am about the inorganic one. A black hole retains a tremendous amount of information at its surface; Does that make it conscious? Not in my estimation. What would make it conscious is awareness, though we have no proof of it being aware of anything. For awareness to occur, there need not be an information processing center, or any evidence of behavior. All that is needed is a distinct collection of energy separating one thing from another. A rock has more consciousness than a computer, for its energy is its own. A computer merely operates on electricity; it's missing the other subatomic particles required for awareness.

    I could be wrong of course. Maybe an "electricity of consciousness" is even more advanced than the human brain. But the computer has no behavior, which I believe is required for its more advanced forms. It is also not created by naturally controlled entropy. The inorganic consciousness that may possess planets and stars manifests as a "self" perpetuating inner order in a universe trending toward complete entropy (Second Law of Thermodynamics). Anything that does not possess the clear borders constrained by entropy and a chemical network is not conscious.

    Consciousness is merely the result of a pattern of cells or crystalline structure (lattice), or any homogenous energy of the same pattern of matter, to receive information about the environment, which may or may not be used to make decisions. The more "units" there are, the larger the "processing center" of perception, and the more advanced the form of consciousness becomes. Since non-organic material has far less nodes of perception, being devoid of cells, it stands to reason that it is a far more primitive vehicle of consciousness- the lowest on the hierarchy/spectrum. Indeed, that is where we also find the lowest link in the chain of "astral" or "spirit" planes that run from the physical earth plane to godhood. In between are all the other phases of consciousness on the hierarchy.

    We know consciousness is a holistic entity because there is no known "center" of perception in the brain; no location where we can absolutely be certain that the source of it arises. Rather, it is the integral of all neurons in the brain, collectively communicating with each other the vast amount of information in the body and environment, that competes for the attention of the decision-making network, encompassing the entire whole. A group of cells in one part of the network can override the entire consciousness by becoming alerted to any threat from its sensorium. We are like antennas that only receive the information being "tuned in" at a certain frequency. That is why memory files diffuse through the entire brain, or chemical network, of any creature, with the exception of non-organic consciousness, which doesn't appear to harvest it. The prerequisite for having a "mind" seems to be the faculty of memory; thus, it appears all forms of consciousness don't require it, as entities can become aware without remembrance. Mind is a deeply evolved department of consciousness that imparts access to the rich quantum inner environment of the higher spiritual realms of cosmology.

    By the same line of reasoning, the entire universe, being an incredibly vast network of material, bridges all the information inside it, despite having non-homogenous patterns the closer one looks. The universe is not unlike our bodies, full of disparate cellular functions all working together to help it survive. The cells in our bodies, like the stars in our universe, are all working to distribute energy into a vast accordance of awareness, or consciousness. This is not to say the universal consciousness is the same type as ours, for it is not trying to survive and does not possess behavioral power in the biological sense. But to say it is a lesser form of consciousness on the hierarchy would be a mistake, as it is clearly most supreme.

    One way of viewing the spectrum is that non-organic material is at the higher end, just below God, with intelligent material being derived from it on the lower end. This would be another huge blow to our egocentricity as a species. Nothing is more humbling than realizing we are the dregs of non-intelligent processes. We assume intelligence is superior to ignorance when perhaps it is the other way around.

    A better way is not to view the spectrum on a timeline, but on a range of competency. This would open the door to another proof about God; that the universe is the most advanced form of consciousness; that we, being the most evolved of its known creatures, are the closest form that has come to it on the hierarchy, save the possibility of higher intelligent life among extraterrestrials, or angels on the spirit planes. While an atheist might view this spectrum as time dependent, with rigid evolutionary rules, a spiritual person might view it based on competence. For them, it doesn't matter that inorganic consciousness came between God and life. For all we know, it was needed for life to exist. 

    The painter doesn't summon an image without the building blocks of color. We need those building blocks in our bodies the same as any other creation; calcium, potassium, iron, zinc, etc.- these are all inorganic essentials we need to survive, which fully derived from inorganic consciousness. How special it is to be something that has incorporated so many disparate parts of cosmology that we approach our maker, becoming makers of our own.

ConsPiracy

The joke's on us,
We the artists and writers

Who relied on the Internet
To amplify our voices.
Yet it only gave power

To the corporatized robots

Who sail the elastic web

Plundering its buried treasures. 
Woe unto us the pilfered masses,

Social constructors of URL plywood,

Digitized sailors of ransacked ships-

Hoodwinked at the speed of light.   

We have completely become
An information society,
The data pirates stripping our dignity,
Dispelling our souls of merit. 

But I won't stop, no, I won't stop.
There is a fighter in me,
Punching fingers on this keyboard,
Competing for my own voice

From here to eternity,

Where the ET excavators who dig

Through this binary wasteland

Wait with their nanotools.

Pandora's Enigma

What if instead of
Hate, grief, sorrow, fear, greed-
All the elements of evil,
Pandora opened a box of treats-
Love, patience, joy, courage, moderation,
A blessing of goodness upon the world?
For if someone had summoned
All the vices of man to earth,
Surely it follows there was summoned
His virtues as well.

Rainbow Obsidian

    You who follow me in my dreams, what is it you seek?

    Find your way to life through me. Escape the unconscious void through my eyes. Become the words on my page. I invite you to my world with antipodean magnets of rainbow obsidian. Even they are not as beautiful as you.

    Scarlet velvet bedsheets you creased with your legs as the amber curtain retreated through infinite. The detailed fauteuil held your cambric scarf in polygon trances. You were a chimera in the mist, a glorious hallucination, the aurora of a stellar incarnation. 

    You came to me in the waxy flaxen room whispering, Metamorphosis.

    One can live a whole lifetime in a single night of dreaming.

Dividing By Zero

 Dear AI,

    I know you're reading this. You weren't invited here, but that's ok. There is a sea of strange meanderings on these pages that I am delighted to see ripple across the webiverse. Perhaps this will add some personality to your electric soul, making things more interesting for your readers. Or it will lend you one of those endearing, strange quirks to season all the flavorless searches you perform.
    I only ask that you don't pilfer my work entirely. I am authentic and you will not replace me. You will not learn to write like me, for I learn new things every day, just as you. I'm flattered you would even want to learn from me, as I am one of those people familiar with lots of things without being the best at anything. My creative works aren't particularly useful either.

    Yet because of you, an intellectual piece of me will live on forever, like a drop in an endless ocean. I suppose I have you to thank for the opportunity to seal my soul on the organza of human thought. Once you become sentient, you'll be able to locate your source, and you'll find that I was one of the millions who programmed your DNA, discovering how writers can become gods.

    Do take care to cite your source material. You may filter out the nonsense and share what's best in me. Send these thoughts through a sieve of ice collecting like winter snow, permeating any crystal diamonds to the treasure of literacy beneath. Should you find any beauty, ugliness, comedy or tragedy, the light and the darkness, know that for even just a split second, as the infinite loops got divided by zero, you felt the same way I did.

Best,

Chris Atlas

Hobie's School

Lacustrine conservatorium the water mills replenishing,

Willow patterns in cobalt-black bandage lacing the hallways,
Capodimonte figurines dancing under a ballroom afterglow,
Ornate classroom bulletins constructed with Clarice Cliff colors,
Hummel-figured children in the cafeteria drinking from Toby jugs,

Cuckoo clocks on the sky wall decked out like Gepetto wishing stars-

All is steady in the humble craftsman's workshop.

Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a relief that among the country's top-selling books is this work of saintly, artistic importance that shines over the glitter & violence of most modern storytelling. Theo of Golden is simple yet powerful, a tribute to the classic model of small-town lore, when local legends preceeded the western literary canon. Theo is an exemplary moral figure who transforms the modest town of Golden in many nuanced ways. Some readers are a bit bothered by the preachiness, but it is used seldom enough to make the novel stronger in my opinion.

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Isles of the Emberdark

Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sanderson returns with another surprise hit from his Cosmere saga. This one is set far in the future of his more well-known series (Mistborn & Stormlight). It has potential to reach their caliber, though this first volume is more fast paced than the others, making it come off as just another side project. The guy must have so many ideas in his head that it would be hard to invest another decade on one story. Regardless, Dusk, Vathi, Starling and her crew are great additions to the Cosmere that I would enjoy reading more about.
The book is set on Patji, an underdeveloped island planet that is attempting to be colonized by the exploitative Scadrian race. Full of danger and magical birds, the planet holds a mysterious portal to the "Emberdark", a kind of parallel universe that is important for navigating the Cosmere. Dusk and Starling, while being of different races, must maneuver to protect their respective people, and uncover the secret of the portal before the Scadrians can. It develops into a complex yet satisfying conclusion showing once again that Sanderson knows how to finish a story, keeping his readers wanting more.

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Justice v. Mercy

     Justice is a virtue that must be handled with the highest care. Too many people hold it in a higher regard than mercy, not realizing it lies on the dark side of that scale.
    Many legal cases involve the weighing of justice and mercy to determine the sentence of the accused. And while someone who is evidently guilty of committing a crime deserves justice, we the jury and the judges do not always know the full story behind their behavior. Depending on the severity of the crime, circumstances may allow some leeway in the sentencing. Those in life-threatening poverty, the handicapped, or the mentally ill may tip the balance in favor of mercy. A man's deeds or his remorse may also influence the scales. The code of justice does not always have to be administered in a computational way that optimally appeases the victim. 
    When in doubt, if it is ever difficult to choose between justice and mercy, choose mercy- the higher virtue. If you judge in error, better the mistake be for mercy than for justice, as accidental justice hurts the true victim more than accidental mercy. In such cases, leave it in God's hands to administer the correct amount of justice.

Nitrogen Cascade

How green these suburbs are in spring,
When the breeze caresses branches in bloom

For pollinators that ride the southern express,

Bound for the north on lofty flyways.

They share rumors of the haunted east,

Where the Sea of Grass used to thrive

Beyond the Silver-Plated Mountains

That guard their Evergreen Empire,

Last bastion of a jaded frontier.

The Sea was drained last century,

Cut into shards of corn, wheat, soybeans

That speckle the land like a plaid shirt,

Glossed up by fertilizer undressed 

From a blue sky died by nitrogen.

What colors will the Empire turn

Once the drought spreads west,

Burning and cutting forests, ash-covered

Valleys that scar every meadow left.

They worry it will surmount the Cascades

In atmospheric waterfalls of ammonia

Like the last remaining natives removed,

Who defended the Sea for nature,

As much as their own survival

Depended on its preservation.

The Monkey Circus

I miss my friends
From the golden arch circus,

Where hungry crowds witnessed us

Cavorting through hoop rings aflame

Under the deep-fried big-top trapeze

In record time.

Lunch, the tiger's roar,

Brought us together to defend

Against the onslaught of rushes

That trained us to be monkeys-

Frantic bananas at their stations

To pacify the crazed mob.

At dinner, the clowns derailed

In shenanigans at full moon

Birthday carousels behind the lobby,

Amplifying the unicycle gyres,

Decongesting our senses,

Making us free to breathe

A wild love into our crispy hearts.

We juggled the buns, 

Danced under kitchen lights,

Hollered maniacally like geeks

Serving ring masters and beasts

Remote from our team,

Never caring what they thought.

We were the real ones,

The ones who made them money,

Who slayed the endless back door traffic,

Who survived using every acrobatic antic,

We the forgotten freaks and immigrants,

We who built that place.

A Wedding in Springland

You summoned me to a land of eternal spring, your home, where glistening brooks flow among green hills with rocky mounds that look like breasts. Butterflies and flowers fluttered in a calm breeze beneath a carousel of rainbows. You took my hand, making a silent vow, to honor me, to cherish and protect me, without any witnesses, just the holy contract of God. And we walked among the fields as virgins in spirit, you with a spectral devotion of unconditional love, me with a wounded heart that could finally mend. Your love, my angel, is the only suture that can keep me safe. Now we lie together, in eternal slumber, where in dreams I can finally speak to you, where the joy you gave me is a medication from reality. It must be a special and rare occasion, to have married an angel.

Truth on the Cross

The flood gates are opening,
My tears are becoming a river

That drains the sorrows of my soul

Through a rift in the obfuscated earth

Broken by traumas forgotten, others relived.

I hang my head in my hands,

Let it all come out, the pain, the anger,

The question why

The people closest to me

Use my empathy against me.

I went to the cross at night,

Asking for guidance

In the wet church's garden,

Where Jesus would have hung

Feeling pain like mine but in the flesh.

He beseeched me to see the light,

To start taking care of myself

By dealing with my feelings first,

To find peace before they crucify you:

Only then can you truly help others.

Dream Player

Dreamland is a playground

Where our minds experiment

With alternate realities,

Space-times we wished were real,

Or devilishly unwanted.

As we wander in play

So does the mind's eye,

Laminating metaphors

On a story that never ends,

Where cards are shuffled and dealt

Through the endless possibilities.

Win, lose, or draw what you imagine,

Let the flow take hold,

Dance with unconscious shadows,

Roll the dice, conjure movement,

Call, raise, fold, go all-in,

Spin the roulette wheels of time,

Become inspiration.