Place Holder Saturday! Today!

THIS IS A PLACE HOLDER FOR HOLDING PLACES. ALSO: WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE ANIMALS ALL LOOKING AT? WHAT DO A CHICKEN, A DOG, AND A CAT ALL HAVE IN COMMON?! 

Kendrick Lamar - Untitled (Live)

Broadcast - Come On Let's Go

Princess Aura

Psychos in Love

Low - Just Like Christmas

Eno/Hyde - The Satellites

To Sojourn

We know very little about Jesus. We know lots about what people said and wrote about him after his death. But the man himself is largely hidden from us. We know that his name was Yeshua, and that he was a Jew living in ancient Palestine. Historians suspect, for complex reasons that we need not get into, that Yeshua was taken in by an ascetic preacher named John.(1) This man initiated Yeshua into an apocalyptic strain of Judaism. This did not mean that Yeshua believed in our modern, cinematic version of the apocalypse—there was nothing of the End of the World in Yeshua’s words. He preached the arrival of a divine revelation, an unveiling of higher meaning and truth. God had touched down as a holy presence, ending the need for complex ritual and dogma. Yeshua took this message with him to Jerusalem during the busiest, most volatile day of the Jewish calendar. Local Roman authorities cruelly executed him shortly afterwards for nothing more than disturbing an already fragile civic peace. And that’s more-or-less what we know. Yeshua did not refer to himself as the son of God or as the anointed one, the Messiah or Christ. Those claims came later, as did stories of Yeshua's miracles and bodily resurrection.

Among the many things that we definitely do not know about Yeshua is the date of his birth. I am not surprising anyone when I report that the Christ Mass is celebrated on December 25 as part of a medieval Catholic attempt to convert non-Christians who celebrated the Winter Solstice. As such, Christmas is yet another thing obstructing our view of Yeshua, making us see what was not there. Which is unfortunate because the message of Yeshua is one worth preserving, whatever your beliefs. Yeshua’s God was an immediate presence, one beyond churches and superstitions. To quote Thomas Sheehan, “In Jesus’ preaching, the happening of forgiveness, the coming of the kingdom, was entirely the initiative of God. And yet at the same time it was not an objective event that dropped out of the sky. God became present when people allowed that presence by actualizing it in lives of justice and charity.”(2)

Behind all the dogma, myth, historical confusion, colonialism, and commercialism behind and surrounding December 25^th, there is a moment waiting for us—a parallel world of human simplicity, existing simultaneously with our own. One of the spiritual goals of the strands of Christian asceticism that provides the core to modern Systema, obfuscated by politics, consumerism, and a martial emphasis, is the actualization of this parallel world. Systema—at its core—seeks, after the words of one of the oldest letters of early Christianity, to transform its practitioners into foreigners and exiles with respect to the world, to inspire a transition from regular time to messianic time, “the time that remains between time and its end.”(3) As sojourners in this world, we place our faith in the sky and the heavens, the ever-present moment of opening that is human being, and the feeling of immenseness that accompanies that moment.(4)

The conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge, in Dicken’s Christmas Carol, is one from regular time to messianic time. Scrooge becomes a sojourner, faithful to the opening, enacting God’s presence in a life of justice and charity. He learns the true meaning of Christmas.

I saw a woman on the street today. She was speaking loudly into her phone, appearing agitated, but not speaking words of anger. She was stressed and frustrated. There was a doctor’s appointment to attend, family coming later that day, and some other difficulties. She looked hurt. Like life had taken something from her and she didn’t even realize it. Listening to her I thought of what Christmas had become. And then I remembered what it could be.

 (1)     Biblical scholars employ at least four criteria when determining whether elements of the gospel material are authentically historical: dissimilarity, coherence, multiple attestation, and language and environment. Whatever is reported of Yeshua that is dissimilar from the early Christian church or ancient Judaism, is coherent with other elements that are likewise dissimilar, written of in separate, unrelated sources, and typical of Aramaic speech and the cultural patterns of early Palestine, is probably authentically historical. See Sheehan, The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (Random House, 1986): 25

 (2)     Ibid: 67

 (3)     Agamben, The Church and the Kingdom (Seagull, 2012): 1-8
 (4)     Nancy, God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Four Little Dialogues (Fordham, 2011): 15-16

The Twilight Sad - There's A Girl In The Corner

Lydia Ainsworth - PSI

Fabiola - Part Five

That night, along the road adjacent the Market Square, Fabiola found herself among the women who earn. Having slowly unfastened the lock to her wooden window shutters, she had slid carefully and silently out of her bedroom into the inner courtyard, making sure that the sentry did not see her. The babbling of the water fountain had concealed the ticking of pebbles under her sandaled feet, and a moments conversation between the sentry and one of his fellows had allowed her a chance to unlock and escape through the front gate. She closed it securely behind her, not knowing how she would find her way back into the villa come morning. Right now things like that did not matter. Not here among all these bodies; women, their breasts exposed to the cool night air or--in a few cases--draped in a transparent yellow silk; men, drunken and loud, pushing and roughhousing, fondling the women openly, negotiating their price. Fabiola had heard the warnings of her mother, and knew that these things existed, but those were only stories. This was real, in front of her.

  Suddenly a hand rested lightly on her shoulder. It was a woman's. Fabiola turned to look at her. The woman squinted lightly, inching her head forward drunkenly, as she examined Fabiola's masculine robe. Her other hand, the one not resting on Fabiola's shoulder, held a clay pipe. The woman's words were slow and halting. It was at this moment that Fabiola began to see how damaged and thin many of these women were, how vacantly they sold themselves. "You're new," the woman said.

  She presented Fabiola with the pipe, directing them both closer to one of the torches lighting the street. "It's good," she said, setting fire to a short wooden stick that she then used to ignite for herself the substance in the pipe. Fabiola took in the thick scent of the herbs as the woman dragged in the smoke. "Here," the woman said, exhaling. Fabiola took the pipe hesitantly, but then confidently. The woman held the fire to the pipe for her, and then Fabiola inhaled strongly. Too strongly. It left her bent over coughing for a few seconds.

  In that time some passing men had grabbed the arm of the unnamed woman, pulling her down the street with them, laughing, surrounding her, leaving Fabiola alone with the pipe. Having seen how it was done, Fabiola used a piece of straw on the ground to take another gentle toke. Nothing seemed to be happening, and she did not know any better. When the drug finally took effect, Fabiola was reaching the end of the earning district, among the brothels, where things were quieter. Standing dazed, she could feel the warmth of the torches through her clothing and the hardness of the ground beneath her feet. It seemed to her that the touch of the woman had remained on her shoulder, radiating into her skin. Fabiola ran her finger tips across the nearest wall. The edges of the stone read like letters of an alphabet, sharp and distinct and meaningful.

  She could make out the contours of people fucking in the alleyways. A woman pressed forward against the wall as a man thrust into her from behind, his left hand gripping her breast. Another taking a woman laying on her back, moaning and whispering to the woman what to say.

  Fabiola watched, her pupils dilated and mouth open, a slight wobble in her stance. But when one of the men seemed to look up at her, she startled, and shuffled away as quickly as she could. Realizing now how vulnerable she may have made herself, how far away from home she had wandered, Fabiola decided to try to make her way to safety. 

  However, it was in that very moment of rational clarity when Fabiola heard a voice that would eliminate all reason, all clarity. It was the young man from the dinner, Gallus. He was here on the street, talking loudly in the relative silence of the brothel district, oblivious of Fabiola's presence. Looking over, Fabiola could see that he had taken one of the women who earn under his arm, and was heading for the entrance to one of the buildings. An unexpected jealousy crept into her heart. It inspired her to follow Gallus into the building.

Let's Sauce In The Tub!

Sigourney Sundays

Mulholland Drive

"Now, you will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad. Good night."