My life seems to be one big planned joke. Thanks, God.

“Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting?..You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?”

“Because I choose to.”

Still sick, and seeing the world from a strange perspective. Its strange to be both isolated and surounded by people. I think thats just the cold medication talking.

Making absinthe ice cream topping tomorrow. I've got two bottles, what else am I gonna do with the stuff?

So yes, it's two thirty in the morning, the latest I've been up in ages (god, when did I ever think id say that?) and I'm feeling a bit better. Right side of my face is a solid mass of pain and congestion. The left side is taking its turn to bleed today, the reverse of yesterday.

Strange, how suddenly Victorian the world seems. I find myself dreaming of a bar somewhere in London or Dublin, near the river in either case, where I watch the ships move up the river, the myriad of peoples moving through the port. Absinthe in one glass, scotch and water in another, alternating, looking out through a haze of smoke and fog.

Somewhere in the shadows, rats scamper.

How strange to find myself back in front of my keyboard, looking into this digital dream, my ears filled with electronic tribal and classical, the strange blend that is Don Davis and Juno Reactor.

Beyond the senses is the mind, and beyond the mind is reason, its essence.
Beyond reason is the Spirit in man, and beyond this is the Spirit of the Universe, the evolver of all.

Step, step, step, slowly climbing this stairway to heaven, you obnoxious little frog.

So yes. I'm sick. And yes. I had Absinthe for lunch.
That is all.

I have decided beyond all reasonable doubt that I live in a country of Godless Heathens, who have no concept of culture or common decency.
Why, you ask, am I putting this level of condemnation on my fellow countrymen? What has driven me to this level of dispair at the state of western culture?
For the life of me, I cannot find a pair of sugar tongs or a sugar bowl. Ice tongs, salad tongs, locking tongs, everything tongs, but NO sugar cube tongs. And sugar bowls? Ooh man. I had a sales clerk look at me as if I were insane asking for one.
It's bad enough I have to make due with only white sugar... but not to have tongs and a bowl? I think someone must pay ... oh yes, someone must pay.

SQUEEK. A small skeletal rat tugs gently but pointedly at my pants cuff, looking up at me with empty, rodent round eye sockets. SQUEEK.
I'm sick, go away. Oh wait, is that what you're trying to tell me? It doesn't take a sneeze rocket scientist to figgure out that I'm sick. Yes, yes, I'll do my job as a plauge rat and spread it around.
My throat hurts, my head aches, and my sinuses are slowly leaking something that I hope is not my brain in a liquified form. Its certianly bloody enough to be. My ears are clogged, which really sucks, but the worst part is that my lungs are aching painfully in my chest from the coughing I've been doing.
On the other hand, there is good news today. My order of La Fée absinthe came today, and is waiting for me to go purchase glasses and drive to it to drink it. The green fairy. Finally. I hope it was worth the money. So yeah, I will be getting very drunk this weekend at some point.
The fun bit is that I've started playing a LJ rpg run by a friend of mine, which should prove interesting. I'm playing a Virtual Adept in a very broad range of universe mixes, using a very loose system of rules. It should prove to be quite fun.
That's it for now, hopefully the alcohol will help kill off the evil things causing me to be sick.

I'm trying to stay awake. If I go to sleep now, I'll only wake up at 3 am and not be able to get back to sleep. I'm listening to The Matrix Revolutions sound track, trying to relax, and let myself drift. NeoDammerung playing currently, and my thoughts are drifting like a cork on a sea. Thinking about people, wondering about things, missing my Erik, feeling the mixture of illness and lack of sleep boggle my brain.
Why now does my difficulty with spoken language return? What has triggered this sudden return of this old handicap? Why do I feel this urge to pick up my sword and carry it with me constantly, not to defend myself, but simply to have it with me, to have its weight on my hip? And why these flits of rage, frustration with the whole of humanity, when I strive to find tollerance of them all?
They are animals, really, and all I see are their mindless repetitive actions which hurt each other, drive each other to the point of madness, one way or another. Conform to the flock which you are a part of, from 'normal' to 'deviant'. No human does not conform in some way, some how, to what is expected of them to be. Its what we are.
But why are they so mindless? Why do they hurt each other so much, so unthinkingly? And worse, why do they hurt themselves? Even with all the pain they inflict on each other, is it not enough for them? We all carry a lifetime of scars, our memories, is it not enough unless some of them are self inflicted?
Why don't you people see that if you just opened your eyes, you could find what it is you seek? It has always been here for you, you simply have to take of the blinders of this empty existence and see with your own eyes. But that is so easy to say, and so hard to do. "From delusion lead me to truth / From darkness lead me to light /From death lead me to immortality." Why must you all keep hurting yourselves? And why must I suffer, unable to do anything to stop the sensless torture you inflict on your own flesh and souls?
Empathy is a curse, a torment, a blessing beyond immortality and wisdom. I feel as you all, I suffer as you all: I know again your joy, your pain, your love, your lust, your envy, your pride, your dreams, your fears. I remember now. I remember this.
Eat of the lotus, forget thy self, and remember what you are.

My eyes hurt and my head aches. I have, apparently, developed a tollerance to Ambien. And I'm getting sick. Yeah. So, what do I do? i get three hours sleep, get woken up by the roofers coming - somehow by the mere thought of them comming - to tear the roof off the house.
I got up, went out. I bought new jeans, a sweater, and a belt, changed clothes in my car, and then drove to borders. I bout the Matrix Revolutions soundtrack, just because I had to, and some KMFDM stuff that I didn't have, even on MP3. Bought some Pratchett, and the Werewolf guides I've been meaning to get for a while. Made me feel a little better.
School. Blah. I have an article I need to write for Rampway tonight, and I still haven't started on it. The due time was 5:30pm. Blarg. I slept though one of my classes, needed sleep badly apparently. So, here I am in finance, still burping up the taste of the hamburger I had for lunch.
Oh yeah, and I really really am getting frustrated with Dr. Williams. Nothing new, but its enough.

First things first. If you have not seen the last of The Matrix, stop reading now. I mean it. NOW.

Ok.

asato ma sad gamaya
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrtyor mamrtam gamaya

From delusion lead me to truth
From darkness lead me to light
From death lead me to immortality.

I was impressed to all hell. I laughed, I cried, I felt my soul lift up and want to cry out with the rightness of what I saw. I was laying odds on one of three endings for the movie: The Hamlet Ending, The Happily Ever After Ending, and The World Sucks/Hopeless Ending. One way or another, I thought it was going to suck, because it wouldn't include everything that it was needing to include. Yet somehow, somehow, they did it right.

vidyam cavidyam ca yas
tad vedobhayam saha
avidyaya mrtyum tirtva
vidyayamrtam asnute

He who knows both knowledge and action,
with action overcomes death
and with knowledge reaches immortality

There is one truth in the universe, more unquestionable and undenyable than anything else: each side of the equation will equal the other. From the interactions of great spiral galaxies, to the most fundamental of quantum interactions, there will always be ballance - one side will counter the other, to the perfection of the two halves. They spoke in terms of variables, of action and reaction, and there is much truth in this. This is the ultamate truth - ballance of the whole.
On the one half of the equation, we have Neo, the far end of the human bell curve, the outlier among the outliers who were the previous One's - the guardian and preserver of humanity. On the other, there is the program known as Smith - the outlier in the world of the AI, the program gone viral - the very embodyment of what he hates so much - the virus of humanity. There was only one way it could end - the only way it could possibly end. The halves of the equation cancled each other out, and the world was remade.

yasmin dyauh prthivi cantariksam otam
manah saha pranais ca sarvaih tam
evaikam janatha atmanam anya vacah
vimuncatha amrtasya esah setuh

In him are woven the sky and the earth
and all the regions of the air, and in him
rest the mind and all the powers of life.
Know him as the ONE and leave aside all
other words. He is the bridge of immortality.

The Matrix is a self correcting system - in ways its own creators never imagined. The One was created as a purge and dump system for rebooting the Matrix and cleaning the system of anomalies. Neo represented the extream of this: it was though his actions that the Matrix repaired the one fatal flaw that it had. Those who wanted freedom, who could not accept an artifical world, would escape, and fight against what they saw as enslavement. And there was war.
Now there is peace - those who wish to leave may leave - those who wish to stay will stay - and the machines will no longer hunt humanity. Neither side wins - that's what peace is.

indriyebhyah param mano
manasah sattvam uttamam
sattvad adhi mahan atma
mahato vyaktam uttamam

Beyond the senses is the mind,
and beyond the mind is reason, its essence.
Beyond reason is the Spirit in man,
and beyond this is the Spirit of the Universe,
the evolver of all.

I have to take a moment and point out my favorite moment of the whole movie. As Trinity and Neo breach the defenses of the machine city, they leap over the defence line, vaulting the ship over the cloud banks which forever block out the sun. Watch Trinity as they break the clouds, and remember something: this is the first time she has ever seen the sun, the real sun, before. If there is nothing else worth fighting for, not love, not hate, not yourself, not others, not life, not death, not freedom, not security, not perfection, not choice, there is always the Sun. For tens of thousands of years, Man has worshiped it - since we have had sense to look up and wonder, we have worshiped this most reliable of things, this most permanent of things. Life giving, life taking, sunlight. If you fight for nothing else, let it be so your children may run and play freely in the sunlight.

yada pancavatisthante
jnanani manasa saha
buddhis ca na vicestate
tam ahuh paramam gatim

An odd moments notice - the bouncer called Seraph "Wingless" as a deragetory nick name. A wingless angel. Seraph.

When the five senses and the mind are still,
and reason itself rests in silence,
then begins the Path supreme.

And for those of you who think it was wrong for Neo and or Trinity to die - remember, without one, the other could not exist as a whole. They were part of each other, two halves of the whole, unable to be without the other. He made her wish come true once, and I think, I think, he made her second wish come true as well. There were tears running down my face when she said "Kiss me" and all I can hope for is that she died happy, knowing that Neo would be with her soon. She served her purpose for him, and would wait for him in what ever there is beyond the flesh.

bhidyate hrdayagranthis
chidyante sarvasamsayah
ksiyante casya karmani
tasmin drste paravare

And when he is seen in his immanence and transcendence,
then the ties that have bound the heart are unloosened,
the doubts of the mind vanish,
and the law of Karma works no more.

With Trinity gone, there was nothing left for Neo to loose. Thus, and only Thus, could he fight Smith as an equal. "Neodammerung" Neo's Dawn - the battle music of the Fight. But they were still not equals, and that is why Neo won, for he had something Smith did not, even with the incorporation of the Oracle. Neo knew why. Smith did not know why. And for that reason alone, he fought with deparation, to fill that void of understanding. Neo knew why - because he chose to.

The lyrics are from "Neodammerung", Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.3.28 Isa Upanisad 11 Mundaka Upanisad 2.2.5 Katha Upanisad 6.7 Katha Upanisad 6.10 and Mundaka Upanisad 2.2.8

So yeah, where to start? Lunar eclipse, KMFDM show, Erik finally meeting people I wanted him to meet for some time, steak and shake, all good.
I'm not really sure what I was expecting, honestly. But it was better in many ways that I thought it would be. Was wonderful to see Erik getting along with, even joking around with, my friends. Yeah, they may be arrogant bastards, but that comes with the territory. Erik made it though all but the last 30 minutes of the show, which we spent out in the breaze way shooting the shit and just sitting, talking, or at least trying to. It was good. I was happy.
After the show, we hit steak and shake, got food, and came home. Erik was exausted, and really, so was I. Neither one of us felt up to the after party, nor that sort of crowd exposure.
So all in all, it was good.
Btw, Damnedsaint - who was the girl? She's cute, whoever she was. Wolven and crew - sorry for vanishing on you like that but I needed air, and out of the crowd, and what not. I just never made it back into the crowd. Its how things go.
Thank you all for the wonderful time, and the great welcome you all gave Erik.
Thank you.