Ongoing Process

Life is good tonight.  I had a wonderful weekend.  Work was good today.  I’ve had three old friends write me recently.  I’m listening to Krishna Das and I remember that I love God.  And I love you, whoever you are.

One word: brutal. A very fine movie in many ways, but it goes out of its way to beat you up over and over again. And quite frequently these little interludes don’t really seem to be advancing the plot or making any real point. Also, the movie is far more about the “real” world than the fairy stuff, which was quite disappointing (though that could be simply the fault of whoever cut the US trailer). On the upside, it was visually captivating and very well produced. If it had dropped it’s masochistic leanings and had a little more of either Pan or his labyrinth, it would have earned higher marks. As it is, I give it a C+.

It has recently come to my attention that I am a shaman. Or, at least, I have been given the same radical alteration of perspective that would have lead to becoming a shaman in any other time and culture. Sadly, in the here and now there are only some fairly shallow (though well-intentioned) New Age practices that nearly miss the point entirely. Fortunately, the spirit world being what it is, it re-surfaced in Western culture through Jung’s work with the collective unconscious, archetypal images, and active imagination. More so, the many who have followed him have taken these ideas and expanded them to much greater scope and sophistication.

Following this trail of modern spirit walkers, I have discovered a real gem. I am just finishing a brilliant and rather challenging book by Patrick Harpur called Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld. In it, Harpur creates a compelling framework for understanding basically all the weird shit that goes on in the world. Connecting everything from UFO abductions to appearances of the Virgin Mary to shamanic journeying, he paints a picture of our world which makes room for these things to have a vital role without resorting to either literalism on the one hand or flights of fancy on the other. Along the way, he also happens to establish what looks to be an excellent cosmology for a contemporary would-be shaman to operate from.

This is the first thing I’ve encountered in a long time which both feels very true and really intimidates me. I think I’ve finally found the beginning of the next major shift in my awareness. I’ve ordered some books that are oriented around specific practices for working with this type of perspective. I’m hopeful that with the right tools I’ll be able to turn this new theory into a new experience.

I was really excited about the iPhone for about 2 hours. Then I heard the details and was just dumbfounded. The iPhone is going to be a total flop. It’s going fail to two main reasons, one of which everyone seems to be talking about and the other, oddly, nobody but me seems to have noticed.

The first and widely discussed problem is that it costs a fortune. I don’t care how many features you pack into it, unless it communicates with the dead or provides sexual favors, nobody is going to pay $500-$600 for a phone.

The second and mysteriously absent problem is that it’s locked into Cingular without any compensation whatsoever. And not just any old locked-in, but a new two-year contract locked-in. That means that if you want an iPhone and you’re one of the vast majority of the country who does not subscribe to Cingular, you would have to change services (which, because you’re probably already locked into an absurd contract, you couldn’t even do if you wanted to). And even if you happen to already be Cingular customer, you have to commit to an extra two years for the privilege of giving them your money. And to top it all off, even if you’re willing to agree to this ludicrous scheme, you don’t get a dime of discount. The usual “logic” behind mobile phone contracts is that they subsidize the cost of the phone. But no such love here. You pay full price all the time, the contract is just because they can.

Except, of course, they can’t. While undoubtedly a few technophiles will pony up for this racket, most people are neither that desperate nor that dumb. I predict the iPhone will tank entirely if Apple is unable to break it’s deal with Cingular and still make a profit at a substantially lower cost. If they can break from Cingular and drop the price by 20%, then the iPhone might still be around in three years.

But I doubt it.

So, shortly after the previous entry of some sixteen weeks ago, I though to myself that it would be nice to make my next blog post from my shiny new apartment on my very own Internet connection.
…

Well, they finally turned on my Internet yesterday. Yes, that’s right, it took almost four months for Burlington Telecom to get my service installed. It is dramatically fast, but after that much build-up I’m afraid even five-megabit symmetrical ‘Net is anticlimactic.

Anyhoo, there’s much going on in my life but you’ll have to wait for the next entry because it’s getting late.