"Friendly Communities!"

Here, in the gleaming Mid-West, the ever present boast of "Friendly Communities" rings forth as a promising lure to draw folks into the fold of good-natured brotherhood that can be experienced in this middle ground utopia between the urban and the rural modes of current American lifestyle options.

"Friendly Communities", accompanied by lush images of the inevitable hypocondria of perfectly groomed yards with well-but-modestly kept homes full of clean people who smile and wave and induce hypnotic dreams of safety and protection from all the looming evils of our nose-diving culture.

"Friendly Communities" are great places to raise children.

"Friendly Communities" where you can experience the zenith of your Christian faith and expect your neighbors support against the terrorists abroad who are eager to steal your soul and dance in your blood.

A refuge from the sins of faggots and niggers who don't even know a Jew from a son of Adam.

A sanctuary from Left-thinking philistines who are not only indifferent and hostile towards the simple idea that our bodies are shameful, but choose to celebrate nudity and sex and physical pleasure in song and dance and so-called-art.

A place where education never crosses the bounds of what is known, and never challenges the mind to reach levels of thought and existence that may jeopardize the fragile balance that keeps the community friendly enough to smile and wave and trust in the simple sameness of everything to everything else.

A place full of hate and fear and suspicion towards anything but fundamental conservatism of thought and dress and love.

If it was really a functional community, they wouldn't have to keep slipping that word "friendly" in front of it. . . and they wouldn't need all those white picket fences.

At least once every six months I find myself promoting self-hypnosis to some acquaintance who is desperately in need of an outlet in their life to reduce stress, induce satisfactory sleep, or make some time in the day where they can feel like they are taking some measure against the insanity of their lives. Mind you, these people rarely speak these ideas as much as they wear them on their face or in the way they hold themselves.

My schtick is quite effective. I never play it off like I'm some super hero of mental being. I usually relate to their current experience and then explain how I've taken some initiative in the past to quell the helplessness of feeling away from who I think I should have been at the time.

I'm telling you all this because it has recently taken place and left me with some unanswered questions that I've been thinking over.

What is happening in the throes of meditation and how is it that we're so susceptible to the lure of mental limbo?

This is where I'm currently at on that:

I've come to believe that, as an advanced species, we've designed and invented a million ways to separate ourselves from our natural state of perception. We have enhanced our senses mechanically. We have supplemented our brains digitally. We have promoted our own physical evolution by developing means of elongating the shelf life of our bodies, teeth, organs and skins.

And all this has happened quite quickly, a majority of it taking place in our lifetimes. Perhaps a bit too quickly. Our minds have fallen behind. We have encountered an undertow, while psychologically wave-treading, in the form of complicated and inexplicable mental conditions that are exerting all their forces in an attempt to pull us to a point of least resistance. However, the lure of our luxurious new environment, and the comfort it affords, pulls back and we are left stretched too thin to exist in either place with proper substance. You can have the direct experience that you do not possess a nose if you concentrate too much upon the tip of it.

We exist now in the thinking prisons of our minds as if those thoughts are real. We introspect a certain psychological experience that enforces the conviction that the universe is composed exclusively of ideas. Anything we think up, we can elect to induce fear. This anxiety controls us as if it were real and not just the byproduct of that " certain psychological experience." All our enhanced sensory perceptions have left us without the means to naturally deduce the difference between contingent stress and the manifest risks of life.

Meditation is nothing more than breaking down perception to what is unquestionably not falsely imposed upon us. Granted, the common denominator of real things is "nothing", but that is a starting point. From there we can gradually introduce bits of our world that we can trust, and a little trust goes a long way in these matters. Usually, a little trust is all you need. When you fear water, that one finger on the pools edge is the difference between hysteria and a feeling of control. When you fear the dark, the smallest light can bring calm.

When you fear the competence of your soul, that small piece of nothing can be the whole world.

Please don't take any of this too seriously, unless you do . . . and remember, it's how you do what other people do their way that makes you special ;)

Summer's swirling away and my head is doing the slow rhythmic circles of a cat watching the toilet flush. Mornings on the front steps watching the birds cut invisible 8's into the sky have recently included slippers and a black hoodie. Blankets have come out of hibernation and roam the house looking for their first meal of the new season . . . toes and legs and knees are on the menu. Shivering has never felt so good.

The "Big Conference" is fast approaching. Soon the house will be packed with art friends from all over the country. Couches will be claimed, the spare bedroom will be coveted and envied over, and then even the most extra of extra blankets will feast on cold flesh.

Students will arrive in a matter of days, sun-burned and summer-burned. They are younger every year. Soon enough the break of summer will be a wave of toddlers in Hurley diapers and CK one-sies crying for beer and dropping dollar bills on the floor while they fist mooshed treats into their mouths.

Art is happening here. Secret art that will eventually fill this blog with in-prossess pictures of deranged delights and confections of your childhood memories.

And it will be for sale.

The beautiful feeling of massive brain cell death.