Daily I seek the Divine in meditative living and sincere prayer, examining who I am, what I am, and what it is that I am doing. It is a severe form of introspection and self-reflection without which I cannot see progress in my life. Attempting to align my actions with my purposes of belief and faith I hope to Become. Through book, thought, deed, and prostrate supplication. Sometimes I touch God. The spiritual life is a Mystical endeavor. ************************************************************ Regularly I practice, just about daily, traditional Okinawan Karate and training upon the stone ishi and wooden makiwara. It is both the moving zen of the body in motion, and the violent submission of the flesh to the will. Beautiful and practical. Just as often I lift weights and brick-filled barrels, grapple with heavy stones, flip giant tires, throw boulders, pull on ropes and chains, and heave sand-bags until I am breathless and spent. ************************************************************ As well, I enjoy, and practice weekly if possible, sword training, bare-knuckle kumite, and traditional and modern kobudo. I thoroughly savor a good fist-fight. Primitive living skills, and traditional as well as stick-bow (primitive) archery make up a portion of my weekly activities I teach my children and attempt to increase in proficiency. Every great once in awhile I'll engage in marksmanship and combat pistolcraft, and perhaps hit a strongman event. ************************************************************ I also write poetry, draw and 'paint' with pastels, practice caligraphy, make papier mache sculptures and masks once a blue moon, and play abit with needlework when the muse hits me. I prefer embroidery. I'm currently practicing with crayons to develop a technique of fine art with that stubborn medium most closely related to preschoolers. They are cheaper than pastels. Crayons, that is, not preschoolers... ************************************************************ I am an avid seeker and scholar of human sexuality both in text and in practice. I believe we cannot escape our sexual selves and that it permeates our every action and our very being. It is 'who we are'. Do not confuse sexuality simply as coitus! Therefore, I make love every day and express my sexuality as often as time permits. I'm a devotee of making love with my mouth - in word and in deed. And there is nothing like slow, tender, lovemaking to express the care of the heart. Never the less, a good hard fuck with some slaps and hair pulling can be a delicious morsel within the experience of the mundane day. Sex is a gift from the Divine that touches on the Divine. We should not be afraid to grasp its reality and see its sanctity. It is all good, and how dare we deny its common sacredness. ************************************************************ For my intellectual gratification I read at least two hours a day, everyday. It is not enough. Scripture, sacred writings, and the great texts of wisdom literature and virtuous traditions are my primary grist. Fiction and non-fiction - natural history, texts on cosmology, and various works on intellectual history are also fodder for this cerebral pyre. I am a student of human nature, so include in that stack of tomes to read some texts on the care of the soul and the explorations of the machinery of the psyche. Don't say that you do not have time to read - turn off your damn TV and you'll have time aplenty! *********************************************************** Bullets and facets: The pursuit of the examined life. The study of virtue and virtuous paths. Ethics. The study of religion, mythos, and philosophy where they meet the world in endeavor and practice. Building relationships with eccentric people of distinct individuality. Experiencing archetypes as models of reality and empowerment. Traditional martial arts and the history of martial development. The sincere and serious aspects of the 'Warrior Life'. ************************************************************ Likes - Anarchy. Utopia. The color black. Sex, sexuality, and sexual tension. My hot wife. Being sweaty. Cool sheets. My children's smiles. Salvidor Dali and Pablo Picasso. Hot tea. Butterfly Kisses from My Little Girls. Pirates and Piracy. Being a Pirate. Egyptian, Sumer-Babylonian, Tuetonic, Celtic, and Indo-European Mythology. Voyeurism. Biting. Being alone, and wide awake, at 4 am. Thunder and lightning. Sex in the morning. Salty Margaritas on the Rocks. Repose in silence. Texas Chili. Cheese Glorious Cheese. Reptiles and Spiders. Nocturnal Life. Tats. Tobasco's and Hot Sauces. Piercings On Pink Parts. Corsets. Short Skirts. Pale Skin. A Strip Tease. Herbal people. Noam Chomsky essays. Datura flowers. The smell of rain. Confirmation of a hypothesis. Kinkiness. All things Asian. Buckminster Fuller. Flying While Sleeping. Innuendo. NY Style Pizza. Origami and Papier Mache. Fisticuffs and Pugilism. Omar Khayam. Tennessee Whiskey & Bourbon, George Dickel. Libraries and Book Stores. Lucid Dreaming. A sharp witted opponent. Monty Pythonesque humor. Intelligent People. The Internet. Eggplant Parmigiana. Ice Cold Beer. The Beauty of Woman.
Unique, original, and eccentric persons who are defining their individuality. People of courage and virtue unafraid to live life on their own accord. Ruffians, rogues, and banditos who thumb their nose at the status quo. People of integrity - whether of good or bad virtue. I like 'em real. As for dead folk - Enoch, The Princess Pharoah Hatshepsut, Hammurabi, Moses, Sargon I, Cyrus the Great, Solon, Alexander the Great, Aesop, Hippocrates, Xenophon, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Siddhartha Buddha, Confucius, Octavius Augustus Caesar, Cicero, Caius Julius Caesar, Jesus, Pliny The Elder, Pedacious Dioscordes, Plutarch, Diogenes, Armenius, Jerome, St. Augustine, Agricola, Queen Boedacia, Cleopatra, Sun Tzu, The Venerable Bede, Saint Francis of Assisi, Abu Ali a-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina (Avicenna - Wrote 'The Canon of Medicine'), Genghis Kahn, Tamerlane, The Prophet Muhammad, John of Salisbury, Roger Bacon, Leonardo Di Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, St. Thomos Aquinas, Leif Erikson, Sir John Cabot, Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth, Powhatan, Thomas Jefferson, Captains Lewis & Clarke, Sacajewea, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, George Washington, Timothy Murphy, Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Deaf Smith, Jim Bowie, The Privateer Lafitte, Arthur Rackham, Blackbeard, Bonnie Read, Davy Crocket, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Tecumseh Sherman, Sitting Bull, Seneca, Santanta, Cochise, Liver Eating Johnson, Daidoji Yuzan, Miyamoto Musashi, Chojun Miyagi, Gichen Funakoshi, Sword Master Tesshu, Mas Oyama, Captain Cook, Frederick Neitschze, Thor Heyerdahl, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Dr. Martin Luther King, Che Gueverra, Fidel Castro, Hemmingway, and MOST CERTAINLY Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton.
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley. All of it. None of it. Classical mostly. However, I prefer silence with my thoughts - and I'm constantly in thought or striving for stillness. The meditative life is an act of continual reflection, and music is an intoxicant that leads one with the emotions where it will. I choose to refrain from this but on the rare occasion. Certainly not to induce an attitude, feeling, or overcome my 'depression'.
I gave these up. Simply on principle. Like TV, I don't need the corporate interests of Hollywood providing my entertainment, nor do I want to give to them my money. I miss this venue of media and artistic expression, but it wouldn't be a sacrifice if I didn't feel the pain, now, would it? All 700+ of my movies now reside at my parent's home... What follows are those movies I appreciated, just as an fyi: Philadelphia, Kagemusha, Sling Blade, Farewell My Concubine, Pulp Fiction, Billy Elliot, Moulin Rouge, Groundhog Day, Pleasantville, Amistad, Blade Runner, Dead Man Walking, Romeo + Juliet, Flawless, The Mission, Night of the Iguana, Last of the Mohicans, The Elephant Man, A Clockwork Orange, Brazil, Monty Python's Holy Grail, Fight Club, A Dry White Season, Biko, Little Shop of Horrors, Cool Hand Luke, Princess Bride, The Swimmer, The Matrix, 8 1/2, The Commitments, Dawn of the Dead, The English Patient, To Kill a Mockingbird, Eraserhead, Immortal Beloved, Little Big Man, Lonesome Dove, The Shawshank Redemption, Michael Collins, The Pawnbroker, Lord of the Rings, The Road Warrior, Spiderman, Unbreakable, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Mr. Roberts, Young Frankenstein, The Fourth Protocol, Mr. Holland's Opus, Shine, Going My Way, Master & Commander, Becket, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Some Like it Hot, Alien, Das Boot, Raising Arizona, Amadeus, The Pillow Book, Napoleon Dynamite, Magnolia, Jesus Christ Superstar.
I don't own a TV, I don't watch TV, and I loathe and despise TV. It is corporate detritus designed to sell you more plastic crap you don't need, to propagandize you with politicized drivel, and to pacify you with simplistic entertainment while your life passes you by and the world is possessed by others. Wake up. Turn it off. Throw it out. The difference between a vibrant Life of eccentric individuality that is fulfilling and of value, filled with wondrous experiences both physical and Divine - and one that is not - is whether a goodly amount of your time is spent, or not, in front of this damned box. Three hours a day, seven days a week? That is a part-time job. And that is NOT EVEN the national average. Stop polluting your soul. Free your mind. Live.
My library is moderately large, containing over 15,000 volumes. It is heavy on the non-fiction, with an emphasis on the primary studies of the humanities, but I do have over 1500 works of literature. However, this block of fiction is definitively built with prize-winning literature and the classics. I prefer books that critique the soul and incite the mind, leading to an understanding and practice of virtue and the virtuous life. I'm obsessed with ethics and the choices of the moral soul. My reading and studies in the written word reflect that passion.
Those who stand for justice against oppression. Those rare individuals who follow their own drummer. Those who live their life with courage and reason. Jesus, Martin Luther, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Jefferson, Wolfe Tone, Jean Lafitte, Andrew Jackson, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Ghandi, Michael Collins, Martin Neihmoller, Deitrich Bonhoffer, Mother Theresa, Dr. Martin Luther King, Thor Heyerdahl, Edward Abbey.