sexiest woman room

Once upon a time in China, after the revolution had bedded down and things were going well enough, the leadership under Mao Zedong, and premier Zhou Enlai particularly, declared that China needed the participation of its intellectuals and that their criticism would help improve Chinese communism. This was called the Hundred Flowers Campaign. The title came from one of Mao's own poems: 'let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.'


Depending on who you listen to, this was either a well meaning attempt to improve communism and lend it the kind of well-rounded timelessness of confucianism and taoism, or it was a trap. Intended or no, the latter is what occurred. From its early start of 'healthy criticism' to its final orgy of demands that the communists be thrown out, it seemed that China's ancient curse of luan (乱 - chaos) wasn't far away. In China, it never is. What followed was an Anti-Rightist Campaign that saw hundreds of thousands of students, intellectuals, and bureaucrats demoted, fired, imprisoned, or killed. It seems that provided the centre holds, luan isn't really luan. Not that dead people can tell the difference, sure enough.


Mind you, the Hundred Flowers Campaign and its follow-on Anti-Rightist Campaign wasn't a patch on the Cultural Revolution. But that's a whole other story. As is the earlier Three Anti Five Anti Campaign, the later Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown, and ten years later, the Falung Gong protests and the subsequent anti-Falung Gong campaign. But each had in common the removal of anyone, or more specifically any collective, who could threaten the centre. But the Hundred Flowers is the clearest and most graphic - a hundred flowers open their petals, impressed with their own gorgeousness, all the while unaware that over by the shed the mower is being started up.

---

Speaking of China, in the first year I was there an obscure film called The Matrix was released. Has anyone heard of it? I recommend it and you can probably pick it up in any number of Beijing DVD shops. Don't pay more than 8RMB ($1.30) or else you're being ripped off. Anyway, The Matrix starred Keanan Wynn, or Christopher Reeves, or somesuch, and was made by the Wachowski brothers who astoundingly appear not to be Jewish.

I say that because The Matrix is very very Jewish. Apart from the Jewish uberman nature of the hero Neo; the slo-mo orgiastic promised land of Zion; and the constant repetition of the number six; the plot revolves around humans living lives of complete delusion with everything they understand of the world being false - the reality being that they are little more than sources of sustenance for a parasitic uber-intelligence, here represented by computers.


But this is merely one layer of truth. Beneath it is another. Appallingly (for Zionists), Zion is merely a throwaway vehicle intended only to nurture each successive uberman. Millennia after millennia, Zion is repeatedly destroyed, as is the uberman du jour - all of this so that the godhead computer rulers of the world may more nearly perfect the nature of the delusion that holds the humans in their thrall.

Astoundingly, at the end of the film Neo does not defeat the godhead. Rather he earns their thanks and reverence by being a loyal servant who sacrifices himself to ensure their survival by killing the mutual enemy 'Smith'. In defiance of whatever sense of realpolitik computers might possess, and not forgetting the endlessly repeated historical precedent of killing without mercy, the godhead keeps its end of the bargain and does not rid itself of the threat of Neo, and nor does it wipe out Zion.


Otherwise, looked at objectively, Smith was potentially a good guy, an ally worth having. He was the only means by which the godhead could have been destroyed. But never mind, he's killed, the pitiful human slaves are left to live lives of delusion in their goop-filled coffins, and Zion is free to rescue the odd individual here and there and otherwise carry on with their ecstasy-fueled rave parties. And Neo? He is embraced in the loving arms of the godhead and ends the film on a bier like some warrior on his way to Valhalla.

Forgetting the come from nowhere 'happy' ending for a moment, as well as the initial red-pill arrival at not-quite-the-truth, the actual time-and-time-again reality of the Matrix's world is that each given period of enlightenment, climaxing with the arrival of 'The One', is merely this millennia's variant of the hundred flowers campaign.

---

And so! Here we are! We took the red pill, and by way of the internet, we woke up to the truth of the world and the veil of delusion that's kept us in thrall all these years. Let's not be distracted by the fact that the internet was initially set up by the military - just like Al Qaeda was set up by the CIA, American nazis by various Jews, communism by the bankers etc. etc. Let's also think little of the prediction by that most loyal servant to the bankers, Rupert Murdoch, that the internet will all be over soon. To hell with that! We've woken up to what's going on. We've read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for chrissakes!


But wasn't the Protocols a best seller in Russia just before the Tsar was thrown down and the Bolsheviks began their seventy year reign of terror? Far more people were familiar with it then than are familiar with it now and yet it seemed to make no difference whatsoever. Indeed here we are, one hundred years later, and everyone is convinced that it's a 'forgery'.

That aside, how many times have the lords of usury been thrown out of each given country exactly? Edward Longshanks (the villain of Hollywood's Braveheart) threw the goldsmiths out of England in 1290 and yet in 1654 all-round good guy (unless you're Irish) Oliver Cromwell readmitted them. Dig it - in the time of Shakespeare there were no Jews in England. Or to put it another way, in the time of no Jews in England there was Shakespeare. I wonder if The Stranglers got the irony of singing 'whatever happened to all the Shakespearoes' whilst surrounded by strippers? Probably not.


Sure enough today the City of London rules, and all those hard-done-by Jewish oligarchs hounded out of Russia by the villainous Putin (and otherwise known as the 'Russian' mafia) are all welcome to come on down and buy half of Mayfair (and a famous football team while they're at it). Did you know that the City of London is its own jurisdiction, with its own police force, and is otherwise not subject to the mayor of London, or parliament, or anyone at all? The Vatican eat your heart out.

But we're on to them! Or should I say, we're blooming well onto them? With the internet as our spring time, we have burst forth from our cold dark earth of ignorance and now turn our faces to the sun of truth. Here now in this time, the like of which the world has never seen, we glory in our pursuit of knowledge and open discussion. We are the hundred flowers.

---

Yeah, yeah, what a cynical party-pooper I am. Here we are grasping the hard-fought-for truth and I'm asserting a truth above this that says it's a big con, that it's merely a trick by the world's greatest liars to strengthen their position, and that ultimately we're all fucked.

Ha! Not so fast! Here's one small truth - um, I've run out of space and shall have to continue in the next piece. Another (and less self-referential one) is that the world is very great, far greater than the people who imagine that they are in control of it. Coming up next - Stephen Chow, chaos theory, cocks and cunts, and, um, the Buddha possibly. Mind you, if it's somewhat different I'll come back here and edit the preceding sentence to make myself look clever. God forbid I should ever be wrong. Ha!

Following on from the last self-indulgent piece with me venting my spleen about my father, Susana said the most extraordinary thing in the comments. She put me and the word 'love' in the same sentence. When I read it, my eyebrows went up and I froze in disbelief. But only for a second. Then I tilted my head back and laughed.

Truth be known, I have no idea what love means. You don't need to take my word for it. You need merely search this site for the word 'love'. Whilst I couldn't be fagged doing it myself, I'm prepared to bet that it will only appear in the phrase 'peace, love, and understanding' which I use not so much as a banner to rally around, but rather as a cudgel to beat things with.

The word, in and of itself, as a stand-alone description, I, um... 'dismiss'. Which is to say, I dismiss it from my vocabulary. Honestly, what the hell does it mean?

Never mind love, here I'm far more interested in lies and lying. Actually the word 'lie' is just as fraught as 'love' and I tend to avoid it as well. Let's just say that I ponder the nature of misrepresentation. But regardless, if we were to take every lie ever uttered and analysed them to see which one predominated, I'd bet money that the phrase 'I love you' would win hands down.

And go figure that more than a few women have made it clear to me that, but for the want of me saying it, they'd have slept with me. I'm a strange cove, sure, but women who do this always fall in my estimation.

---

A while back in Shanghai, there was a woman I fancied. I was directing and she was my producer. She was smart, funny, and sexy. And she told me of her travails with her laowai boyfriend who came to Shanghai every couple of months for business. In between times he lived in Belgium with his wife and kids (Urgh! No one here I hope!). And once or twice a day he would send her an SMS saying some variation of 'I love you'. This made her all gooey. Me, I shook my head. Between words and actions, words are cheap. Hell! He sent these words by SMS, the cheapest means there is.


Me to her - "If I said you were just something to occupy his time when he's here in China and all it cost him was an SMS every day, would I be wrong? Forget his words, what does he do? What is there to say that this guy isn't just some bullshit artist? Men lie you know. Forget his words. What are his actions?"

Anyway, she threw him over. For me, ha ha! Well that was the theory anyway. What with assorted cultural confusions and a plot straight out of a bedroom farce, we didn't sleep with each other. But that was cool, she was going to come to Sydney for Chinese New Year and stay with me. After that I was going to go back to Shanghai and become an in-house director. Sounded good to me. But! - it all went to hell. For reasons that weren't clear she didn't come to Sydney and when I flew back to start up with the directing gig, it was if we were complete strangers.

I had failed apparently. Specifically I had failed to send her an SMS every day telling her that I loved her. God help me! What with her last boyfriend using this precise process to lie his way into her bed, here she was angry with me for not having done the same thing. I shook my head and wondered if she and her Belgian didn't deserve each other. But truth be known, my part in a mad farce aside, I was pleased. If she was that undiscerning, that incapable of distinguishing between words and actions, then she wasn't the chick for me. I never saw her again and packed in the directing caper shortly thereafter. And a good thing too.

---

The above was but a single 'I love you' anecdote from dozens. And I don't doubt that you'd all have your own. Truthfully, there are more stories of lies and lying with 'I love you' at the centre of them than there are stars wheeling in the sky. For mine, the phrase is so utterly devalued that it's worthless. There's a lot to be said for saying nothing.

Like the Japanese! The Japanese are their own variety of laconic. They are not a gushy people. Whilst the younger generation, deeply steeped in Hollywood, are changing now, the older generation do not prate on with heartfelt drivel. If you want to see a perfect example of what I'm talking about, go see 'Hana-Bi' by Beat Takeshi. He's a legendary director and Hana-Bi is arguably his masterpiece. And sure it's dotted with action and violence, but mostly it's a 'love' story. Everything that takes place in the film is an act of devotion by our hero for his dying wife. Astoundingly almost nothing is said. No speeches, no declarations. Actions are all. And the actions are unambiguous. The truth lays in what is done, not in what is said.


And if anyone does watch this film on my say-so and wonders, "What sort of a crummy 'love story' was that? No one even kissed anyone!", you'll actually be making my point for me. Your dissatisfaction will say far more about you as a Westerner than it will about the Japanese.

---

And then there's the Maori and the Hawaiian people. Culturally, since they're both Polynesian, their cultures are as close as could be. Curiously they seem not to know very much about each other. In conversations I've had with Maori about Hawaiians, and vice versa, no one seemed to know anything. But whatever, they have many many things in common. As a complete dilettante I'm pretty sure I won't get in trouble for saying that the concept of 'breath as life' is central to their shared culture. In Hawaii, this breath/life is the 'ha' in 'aloha'. (It's also the 'ha' in 'haole', their word for white person. There's a fabulous story in that, but I'll sling it in the comments.)


The Maori likewise acknowledge the importance of breath in their custom of touching noses. This functions for Maori like the handshake does for white people. The handshake is an expression of 'peace' insofar as it's a demonstration that one isn't carrying a weapon. Three cheers for white people. Compare that to the Maori, who touch noses so that they might exchange the breath of life. But here's the crucial thing - the breath is always from the nose, not from the mouth. This is not because the nose is special but because the mouth is considered 'corrupt', or perhaps more correctly 'corrupting'. The stink of food is part of this but that's actually the least of it. Breath from the mouth is spurned because what comes from a person's mouth, words sure enough, cannot be trusted. In words lay falsity.

---

And then there's that Brazilian chick. This is a looong story, but there I was in her marvellous ramshackle house smack dab in the middle of a picturesqe but down-at-the-heels town two hours from Sao Paolo. She was a Rudolph Steiner devotee and was in the arduous process of setting up a Rudolph Steiner school cum arts-and-craft co-op. And I was going to join her. My head was there. But that too came a cropper. Story of my life. If anyone out there is familiar with the Tora San movies (uber-famous in Japan), that's me. I never get the girl.


Whilst the whole thing was complicated with family and a boyfriend etc. a key moment came in a discussion about 'love'. She looked me in the eye, grasped my hand and told me of the most important thing there is. That being love, sure enough. She even quoted the Beatles to me. And hats off to the Beatles, but between them and my continuum (at the top of this page) with selflessness as the only thing counting, I was, ahem, dismissive. I tried to explain the distinction but got nowhere. It didn't help of course that I didn't speak Portuguese, her English left a lot to be desired, and the Japanese which we both spoke (she being sansei Japanese) was ill-suited to philosophy. But the language didn't matter. She said love and I shook my head. "No, you don't understand," I said. Yeah yeah nobody, just face it - you blew it. Time to do that Tora San thing and smile, wave, and hit the road.

---

Bloody Hell! Do I have a point or am I just blathering? Both, ha ha! The point is that for me, words are worthless, with 'love' at the top of the list. And yep, I just used a thousand words to say that. The irony runs rampant.

Never mind me as cleverpants wordsmith - a blog, an audience, and a huge pile of words being put in some kind of order. Bully for that. But back at the house of geriatric indulgence, with me and the old man, it's positively Japanese. Every day is like a scene from Hana-Bi.

Perhaps I brought it with me from the temple - "shiraberi wa dame" - chit-chat is bad. And there, there was a lot to talk about. Here at home there is nothing to talk about beyond Fox Sports and doctors. And I haven't much time for either beyond needing to know what channel to change to and when the appointments are.

Here there is no love. Or certainly no declarations of it. The only thing that counts is 'doing'. For me (or perhaps for an ideal me) all my actions should be an embodiment of selflessness. And I ain't in that picture. And nor are such messy things as emotions. Like 'love' etc. If I was to start in on that, the whole thing would fall in a screaming heap. It would turn the picture into one that was about me. And if it was about me, it wouldn't be about me because I'd be gone.


But here's a picture of me. Or me as played by Vincent Cassel in the movie of my life, that is. Nothing in his head. Nothing in his heart. No thoughts, no love, no nothing - just emptiness. Dig it, it's like Camus' Stranger albeit with a happy disposition and no Arab monkey business. And when Cassel wants to know what his motivation is, he'll be told he hasn't one. "Just go through the motions. Attempt to embody selflessness. Don't ask us what that would look like since no one bloody knows. Just do your best." Says our Vincent - "But why am I happy?". Sorry Vince, no answer to that one neither. You just are.

Truth is, living with my father has been a brilliant experience. The only way anyone could cope with the old man's utter self-obsession is to let go of one's own desires. I'll admit that there's a certain 'reactionary' aspect to this. And I know that no one likes that word - to say, 'I am not that' is full of negative connotation, a thing to be avoided. But if one is seeking selflessness it's no such thing. Everything I wish to shed is here precisely depicted in the closest genetic template imaginable. It is what I am leaving behind.

And Susana, apologies for using you as a prop, ha ha. It's not you, it's just my brain turning a word around. And what a word! A word so fraught, so plugged into insecurities and self-worth, replete with uncountable meanings, stories, variations, and use and misuse, I reckon we're better off without it.

Do or don't do. Actions over words. That's where the truth lays.

Att - Messrs. Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Hassan Nasrallah, Fidel Castro, et al,

Dear Sirs,

The Western bloc-media has declared you the villains of the world. You know as well as I do that none of you, nor your countries, nor your people, will ever get a break in the Western media. The entire media sings from the same song-sheet with a simple message. Each of you is a variation of Orwell's Emmanuel Goldstein. Collectively you are those whom we must hate.

To be honest, I don't know where your heads are at precisely. But I'm assuming that you understand how the world works. I'm assuming that you're perfectly aware that the Reserve Banks of the world are privately owned and what this means. Tie this power to the undeniable bloc nature of the media and its refusal to acknowledge this power, and it's no great feat of logic to arrive at the conclusion that the media is, in essence, a machine to cloud our minds to the nature of our subjugation.

Effectively we are all participate in a mad charade, an idiotic drunken parlour game, wherein the perpetual topic-du-jour is that old chestnut 'What's to be done?' To obey the rules of the game we must discuss this topic in every way possible but we must never mention the chief protagonists, which is to say, international banking. The entire perverse system of monetary policy, and control of the means of exchange, must be dealt with, not as a human contrivance subject to alteration, but as an act of God that may not be questioned.


I notice that you all play within the parlour game rules. And some of you do quite well occasionally. Mr Putin has had some interesting footage showing him staring down a tiger and displaying his martial arts ability. Hats off. But between these minor efforts (which, trust me, the media did its best to spin as vaguely comedic, or undignified, or otherwise as 'not quite the thing') and, say, the watertight depiction of Russia as the ogre of Ossetia, it's small potatoes. But all of you receive the same thing.


In China, never mind the tirelessness of Hu Jintao throwing himself amongst the people struck homeless in that earthquake, nor the millions of servicemen and women he then mobilised into a fearless hands-on disaster relief (which the American government could watch as a 'How to' if the welfare of their citizens was worth tuppence to them), the Western media barely batted an eyelid. Besides, their reporters were far too busy looking for Chinese citizens unhappy with their government. And they found them, sure enough, one after another. (Well, shit, eh? Like this is difficult - Pick a country, any country). With this as the perpetual template, unsurprisingly we in the West will only ever know of the Chinese as villains. And when the bankers move against China (à la David Sassoon and his opium wars) we in the deluded West will righteously cheer its destruction. And geez, you can hardly blame us - all we know is what we are told.


Perhaps you have your fingers crossed. Just like Tariq Aziz. He was the Iraqi Foreign Minister in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. It didn't matter how much he kowtowed and did as he was ordered (always scrupulously obeying the rules of the parlour game). His handing over of the complete 40,000 pages detailing the weapons programme and allowing the CIA-infested weapons inspectors to wander all over his sovereign nation was never going to make a lick of difference to Iraq's inevitable bombing. And that's the lot of anyone who plays within the rules of the parlour game. You will always be on the back foot. It's not your game and if you stay within it, you will lose. And lose big. Destruction-of-your-nation big. I'm sure you get it.

In any conflict, whoever follows the agenda set by their opponent will always be on the back foot, always reduced to defensive tactics. It stands to reason. The only way to 'win' (exactly the wrong word but let's carry on) is to seize the initiative. And the only way to do this is to Call The Game. The game isn't hidden from public view for no reason. Nor does its veiled nature add some minor degree of utility to the whole caper. This veil of delusion is the single crucial function by which the enterprise succeeds or fails. Pull away that veil and start a global public discussion on the true nature of reserve banking (and the role the media plays as its handmaiden) and the bankers (and their media monkeys) will be forced into unfamiliar territory. I expect that even wrongfooted like this they will still be formidable opponents. But at least you'll have them on the back foot.


So. Rather than stand in front of the UN and call George Bush the devil, or mouth generalities about peace amongst men of good will, why not call the game? I'm not going to say that this is easy. Packing the history of international banking and control of the world's money supply into fifteen minutes is no easy task. But it can be done. Hell, if you want a hand, for an absurdly modest fee I'm your man. The comment section is below, and world leaders are perfectly welcome, ha ha.


But forget me, I'm nobody. This will be your gig. In English 'your' can be singular and plural. Take it here as the plural. Acting in concert will be vital. Each of you must reinforce the others and put out a consistent, coordinated and coherent message. And the beauty of it is that all you will have to do is: tell the truth; not waste time on red-herrings; and stick to your guns. The last part of this will not be easy. God knows that in this bullshit world there's nothing braver than the man who tells the truth. And we all know how powerful those who control the money supply are. They whacked Kennedy and got away with it. And they can whack you too. But only if you're a singleton. Act in concert and the possibility of your silencing becomes ever more unlikely.

But if you stay silent, stay isolated, one way or another they're going to whack you anyway. You and your whole nation. The bloc-media hasn't invested all this time and capital painting each of you as the enemy for nothing. They don't do this lightly. They do this because they are the part of the machine that is going to destroy you. How about this - the media is the laser that paints the target so that the bomb knows where to go. The bomb is us, sure enough. Make no mistake, you are lit up by that laser.

Forget living in the shadows. The media-laser loves it there. The media doesn't just light things up, they actually render in the shadow also. In fact, this rendering of shadow is their primary purpose. If anything they're better at that than casting light. The only strategy for dealing with this mastery of darkness is to flood the whole place with the broad daylight of truth.

It's easy and it's hard. But the time is now, you're the men for the job, and no job was more worth doing. You know this is true.

I have a dream. I dream that you're not the servants of the bankers. I dream that you're possessed of intellect, of free will, and of big balls. I dream that you're men whose place in history will be that reserved for those who usher in an era. An era free from delusion. An era of peace and prosperity. A second Enlightenment, perhaps. It's not impossible. And all things being equal, why wouldn't you pick this dream? Who but a slave would follow someone else's dream of warfare, starvation, misery and suffering? Are you not masters of which dreams you choose? If you are serious, bold, act in concert, and stay true, this false dream, this nightmare, is yours to smash. You will be your own masters and earn the thanks of a world freed of delusion and subjugation. That's my dream. What's yours?

I grew up as a variant of soft right-winger. I started reading Time magazine when I was ten and went on subscribe for decades. To a greater or lesser degree its world view was mine - Vietnam was lost because of the protest movement; Palestinians were wicked troublemakers; WWII was a good war; coloured people couldn't organise a shitfight in a brewery and were responsible for their own woes; white people were good and made the world a better place, etc etc.


But I've come a long way since then. As have we all. If you are here, you have travelled this path. This was not by some random series of footfalls. You were drawn. Once we were weary, beset by confusion, and wishing merely for some honesty. It's this honesty that drew us. That it exists at all comes as something of a surprise. As we slough off the crust and filth of the lies we've been told for our whole lives, we find new energy. We find ourselves anew. And we do this by means of nothing more than the written word.

Forget me and this blog. I am merely a body drawn by a gravity. The gravity belongs to Les Visible. But I don't want to talk about Les. I, like most of us, have never met him. Were I to jabber away I'd be giving voice to my imagination as much as anything. And I ain't much given to hagiography regardless. (Hey Les, how you doing?) For the purpose of this exercise let's view Les' blogs, and those circling it (like this one) as a collective, a meeting of minds, a thing comprised of all who participate in it.

In addressing this we must acknowledge the medium in which it takes place. There has never been a thing quite like it, this internet thing. It's so singular, one struggles for metaphors to describe it. Words like 'web', or 'net' are the merest of thumbnails barely hinting at the possibilities of what it means. But regardless of its potential, it is a cacophony, a white noise, an everything all at once.

But mayhem aside, it is a place in which one may seek. In my own attempts at this, I participated in various forums having 'discussions' with people who lied like they blinked. It was not uncommon to find single individuals who would pretend to be a dozen people. A given individual would attack someone 'en masse' each voice in agreement. Invariably they'd compliment each other on what great thinkers they were. What the hell is that? What sort of a sick freak would do that? Why should I participate in such idiocy? These were not discussions, they were the opposite. And I'm not here to play a part in some self-obsessed individual's bullshit charade. I just want to know where the grown-ups were at.


This thing we have comprises that place for grown-ups. It's for people who are seeking, and wish to do so honestly. It is a place to cast off confusion. If this involves stepping beyond the artificial boundaries on what constitutes acceptable thought then so be it. We wish to view the world clearly. Sure enough, we do this with the written word. If this is not served by the usual style-less newspaper prose, then we will embrace metaphor, poetry, the metaphysical, whatever. With the aforementioned newspapers having failed us so abysmally, why not?

We are all of us in the gutter,
But some of us aren't distracted by the movie stars.
(excellent base line follows, and apologies to the Pretenders)


Leaping now - We are all of us in the labyrinth. But some of us have grasped that the labyrinth is also the library of Alexandria. We are the scenario of a movie. We're a band of the curious, separately wandering through the library pursuing lines of enquiry. We meet and swap tales, we wonder, we posit. We are men and women, young and old, rich and poor, the beset and the free, possessed of belief and not, and all here in the same spirit. We are here for the same purpose, with the same attitude of honest inquiry, and with a desire to truthfully describe this world and its possibilities.

This is the ideal in this gathering, or perhaps an idealised default position. Frequently the thing that exists here is riled with discord. These eddies in the stream can be stirred up, people baited, arguments started and egged on (I've done it myself, sure) but ultimately the stream we are in, is flowing in a direction we all agree upon. None of us knows, or can say definitively, what the precise destination of the stream is. It is enough that it leads away from confusion and towards clarity, truth, mindfulness and compassion. (We could call this 'love' but since it's me writing, I have to say I don't much care for that word. It carries too much soppy baggage. But some people really like that word and if you're one of them, don't let me stop you.)

If a place, or a meeting of people, is devoted to the truth, harmony will be that place's equilibrium, the state towards which it will naturally tend. It's my opinion that humans when not in a state of confusion will naturally seek harmony with each other. Forget Hollywood's fights for no reason. The real world is invariably much duller. And much friendlier.

Thinking about that stream - what if we were to expand the metaphor? Are other people not in the stream? Are there lots of streams? Where do they go? Is this metaphor falling apart? Maybe not. Clearly the majority of people are floundering in an ugly cross-grained ocean beset by the elements and struggling to keep their heads above water.


The stream of before is a metaphor of the micro. What is this water in the macro? Perhaps we could call it chi, or existence, or the zeitgeist, or the collective mind, or the spirit of the times - whatever suits really. You may call it anything you like. And that's the thing. You can call it. Others will attempt to call it too. They will bring wind and rain and every confusion they can think of. But here, we attempt to cast off the distractions; to know them for what they are; to name the riddle rather than dwell in its complications. We decide that we are flowing in a stream and we decide where it is flowing to.

Each of us on our own might qualify as a rivulet, a pool, a billabong, a creek, a cascade, but together we will make something bigger than ourselves, something that will flow and cannot be stopped. Think of the name of a great river. Consider the regard in which each is held and why. Let's declare, that none of us at Smoking Mirrors seek this regard. A river does not seek its worthiness. It merely is.

And truth be known, we are not a great river. We're just a stream. But for mine, we're a stream possessed of an irresistible nature. Those waking up to their confusion and grasping at each piece of truth, continue to find their way here. The frank discussions they find come as solace, a freedom, a cleansing. Where we are going and the way we're going there is a trip any right-thinking person would choose. Only those who have black holes for hearts, who would walk upon the bodies of the drowning would choose not to join. We are not them.


So, this place, these minds, this style of thought, this quest - Is it nothing? Is it something? Certainly between us and the bullshit media, it is the smallest thing imaginable. So let's think small. Perhaps we are a 19th century coffee klatsch transported in time. But just like then, it was less about the venue than it was about the conversation. Here we are geographically unbound, our societies disparate, and very few of us will ever meet. But it doesn't matter. Our conversation is not less real.

Nor does it matter that this thing is evanescent and will change and cease to be. The thing we are an alternative to is subject to the same realities. Meanwhile we are an alternative. We are not driven by ambition, desire, or fear. We shed these things as prisoners might shed their fetters. We seek truth, clarity and compassion. Nothing is simple, clear or obvious. But never mind. Each of us provides small inspirations for the others. Together we create - we create who we are. We are not owned. We are for ourselves. We are for each other. We are for all.

In this world of darkness where even the stars have been digitally blacked out, we make a flickering light, a sparkling scintilla of possibility and hope. We hold to this thing and we cherish it. It's not nothing. It's something. It's this thing that we share.


Thanks Les.