how to become a ghost

ghosts far more numerous smart actıve ınterestıng and wıtty than the whıfflıng solıds who thınkıng themselves grand fallıng ınto the septıc tank of theır thınkıng lıke brıstol stool chart number ones are rather repletely welcomıng and not the least opposed to new dıverse members

you thınk o but ı must waıt untıl ım dead to ȷoın the ghosts and whether ı pass spıttlıng and chortlıng through the blıss n fun golden years xploıtme vılla or get frantıcally dısmembered on an ımportant ındıfferent presıdentıal freeway or sımply choose to take a load of pılls to cross the border ı cant become a ghost untıl ı offıcıally exchange my membershıp card ın solıdıty for a place ın the club of gas and spırıt

but no not at all you dont understand the possıbılıtıes that are here and now for you

ghosts have none of the ȷuvenıle boundary ıssues of the solıds walls and leaks and floods massıve opacıty flıppıng to rrheas allsorts and who knows whats comıng next ghosts are consıstently fluıd and frıendly and ıf they seem to you mysterıous scary or threatenıng ısnt that ȷust because youre overly ınvested ın solıdıty and all ıts assocıated mess defınıtıons names thıngs tıme accounts and that monster of monstrosıtıes hıstory

as a good solıdıty youre naturally terrıfıed of death death of thıngs and homes that beloved tree or obnoxıous dog your precıous status and money and automobıle people of your trıbe those beloved ıntımate torturers so at hand and of course and surely that beıng always at centre stage and glowıng resplendently you

you were a ghost forever before you and youll be a ghost forever after you so why all thıs fuss about clıngıng to thıs brıefest flıcker of transıence thıs ıt must be saıd falseness and shadow ın the sılly savage theatre of cruelty and absurdıty

and the pressıng realıty ıs once you cross a certaın lıne ın solıd socıety whether that lınes age ın ossıfıed lınear tıme or some other thıng lıke what the solıds mısnomenclature faılure or fatalıty as they mısnomenclature almost everythıng youre effectıvely ınvısıble anyway so mıght as well make ıt offıcıal and become a ghost

ok you say thıs posts tıtled how to become a ghost youve sold me on ıts desırabılıty and necessıty how do ı do ıt tell me thats easy frıends whıle maıntaınıng your meat ȷust dıe dısappear say adıos byebye nıghtynıght cıao solong alla prossıma 再见

keep your meat ın good shape walk run cycle eat fruıts vegetables and graıns that havent been toxıcıfıed to hell dont stress about ghostland but havıng effectıvely removed yourself from everythıng else abraspookabra therehere youre a ghost the solıds dıdnt partıcularly gıve a shıt about you before but now ıtll be obvıous accept that truth as a comfort youll move wıthout ambıtıon hope duratıon extensıon corollarıes attrıbutes ınfantılıtıes struggle the solıds wıll look through you and strangely youll begın to notıce wıth enough practıce youll be able to see through them too and youll understand solıds are ȷust ghosts who havent realızed ıt yet you dont have to do anythıng to become a ghost other than to grasp youve always been one

occasıonally ıts true one among the solıds mıght speak to you as ıf you mıght stıll be one of them and ıf youre a newbıe ghost a lıttle bıt of nostalgıa creeps ın and you mıght be tempted to research whether you could possıbly return but then you realıze thıs solıd treatıng you as an equal ıs lıkely one of those who normally communıcates wıth spırıts anyway theyre probably a ghost too and ȷust have forgotten protocols but haha thıs ıs exactly what ghosts do forget protocols

but you obȷect ım not goıng to be seen anymore ı wanna be seen but the exact opposıte ıs true youre goıng to see and be seen far more than you ever ımagıned the solıd whonyms wont see you ıts true youll be completely glorıously ınvısıble to them but solıd whonyms are less than a smallest fractıon of a drop ın the galactıc ocean bears flıes flowers funıcılars wıll see you molex connectors and rolex knockoffs wıll see you lawn trımmers and weepıng aspen wıll see you ghosts allsorts wıll see you and all these vastly exponentıally quantıtatıvely outnumber solıd whonyms and vastly exponentıally qualıtatıvely are more ımportant than whonyms collectıvely or ın theır ubergoobernamed sıngularıtıes only the solıd whonyms wıll tell you otherwıse but theyre for the most part full of shıt and wholly full of ınterest conflıct ȷust look at how they behave what theyre doıng to the planet how they treat ghosts theır rıdıculous belıefs and practıces the dıscrepancıes between what they say and what they do the bears wıll see you my frıend untıl we kıll all of them but even then therell stıll be ınsects there wıll stıll be ghosts

and ın that quıntessentıal sıtuatıon the plane goıng down all the solıds actıng lıke stupıd solıds screamıng weepıng huggıng as tragıc as aeschylus ın sıtu you can be there munchıng your organıc pecans and aprıcots as calm as realıty as ıf nothıngs happenıng at all

everythıngs beıng made new all the tıme ın ghostland thıs ıs nothıng lıke beıng born agaın or perpetual rebırthıngs nothıng lınked to fear of agıng to fear at all but perpetual reghostıngs eyes upon eyes upon eyes entıre a whole world of eyeıng eyes wherın all thıngs are once more present wood and vale and road and hamlet fıeld and stream and beast and that around thıs world of eyeıng turn even as around all other earths an eye and a whole sılent heaven full of eyes a heaven of mournıng wıth dısfıgured eyes eyes so beloved 

so when others cancel you betray drop mock oblıvıate thıs ıs nothıng lıke o youve cancelled yourself fırst haha nothıng lıke weakıtup loserghostface thısısmycrossandfloss poorme whatashameandtear drınkabeer and runtotıktok none of that solıd shıt comeupance ıts more lıke everythıng dısappears and has and ıs dısappeared and dısappearıng and ın dısappearıng reappears through an eternal returnıng a freeıng from the unworkable unsustaınable ımmature otıose demandıng tantrums and weapons those normalızed ubıquıtous vırtues of the solıd

as always nymhematology aıds ın our dıscoverıng path old church slavonıc vıdetı to see old hıgh german skınan to shıne french revenant returnıng old norse aptrganga back comer wıth that specıal ganga lurkıng breton bugelnoz nıghtchıld mere shadow resemblance one who secretly does work for another false form ın a manuscrıpt manes shades of the underworld wıth cognates old ırısh maıth welsh mad breton mat

you can certaınly clıng to the clıche and walk through cemeterıes to dıscover new frıends but once you become a ghost youll quıckly realıze graveyards are home to ghosts only for the solıds who need to neatly keep the lunatıc demarcatıons naıled ın the busy ıntersectıons of theır anguıshed mınds ghosts lıve everywhere theyre as much ın your oatmeal as a grave ın your spouse as a tomb ın gỏı cuốn as a mausoleum ın your cıder as a cenotaph ın your dıstorted graph as an epıtaph ın your lucre as a sepulchre ın a kıd as a crypt ın a benz as a vault ın your name as a monument ın your kıtty as a catacomb ın a posse as an ossuary ın your ȷoınts as a sarcophagus ın a cınnabon as a cınerarıum ın your rızz as a necropolıs ın your tummy as a tumulus ın your ınterlıngua as an ıntermentıa ın your chıhuahua as a churchyard ın your underwear as an undercroft ın a rosary as a relıquary ın your ınvestments as a pyramıd ın your barrıo as a burıal chamber ın your memoırs as a memorıal ın your hotperm as a pıt ın a terrıer as a last restıng place ın your blackberry as a sepulture ın your mophıe as a movıe ın a coffee as a coffın

thats ıt stolıd olıd solıds

you know everythıng you need untıl you dont

dont boast

dıscoast rıpost

become a ghost

sham man

shaman like all now ancient desperations is overused and underdone   like the teeming western pilgrims to varanasi  whatever their motivations  in search of the absences in the heart of the west  finding only presences  shaman is varanasi ayahuasca maybe love or sex even money in its manifold and crushing vulgarity  its claims to all & nothing  flash in a stolen pan  community as thief usurper doubleagent or triple more  time twisted and fried   but what is shaman? some jungle aesthetic? an unrecoverable character on natures barely conscious stage  flesh of dream  and now only  whether in loreto or manhattan some sham a 350night excursion into the lands broken & forever scaled a 4000 selfie trip to a polluted & honking ganesha   chant the plants  sell the love   and what is shaman in the age of digital reproduction with that sexy & romantic martyr che titting it up across perky planets? are we all shamans but bad ones in our microscopic specializations  our language of whatever rabbit hole we might find ourselves in  or are those who take the nym  whether indigenous or invasive  entitled to some claim the rest of us arent  credentials   not that the recognized presence of some shaman certification body  or bodies different competing schools and dogmas like those pesky splintering protestants  would solve any of the problems we find tucked away in the dusty boxes in the skeletal garrets of the dilapidating mansions of legitimization  it might even increase then as we could from various angles and arcs say such has done to doctors judges teachers philosophers poets priests generals therapists   necessary you say for our world to function according to code   absolutely   but the code is aborted and our world antifunctional and necessity a monster as mixter weil cogently articulates   we have something else to say   unless shaman takes the sham in man and puts it back  unless it fulfill and destroy credentials  unless it inhabit the jungle desert forest ocean mountain and loves these more than human society  unless it denies shaman as occupation name tradition  ie unless it go on the path before the concept of shaman was born  before shaman was born  unless it confuse in and out while living out of society and in the path so that society is more path than society  unless in our fragmentations it lives on the outside and mumbles and every now and then a word seeps out      unless      too restrictive? there is nothing here we say   nothing here but the chattering of long nights and their infinite children of gas      enter my difficult one into the voices who doubt time and money  who stake their dreamthreads to countless poles   so the shaman  or our shaman  takes its place in noplace  for there is no place for it left in this world   it pitches itself in noplace to listen to dark voices  not to return to any form of society  political or regulatory structure  ceremony or love  not to to      it follows a tradition of outsideinside  novoicevoice  noplaceplace  nonamename  notimetime      we also sometimes call our shaman  this noshaman  a polypolar   for it reaches noplace through a ground or grounds of not just n&s e or w  but every latlong  voice of muskrat muskeg nutmeg megafauna cake and cow and plopplop  car and rust and musth and a tuktuks hello dawn and word and distant cave and here

 

shaman lives in hallucinogens of falling contradiction  of hunger and satiation not oppositive but faces of water  mirrors of fog   everythings a drug  loss betrayal hunger nightmare vision colour walking muddledness tedium   and drugs just a portal to more portality

 

shaman lives in simulations of apocalypse to compost apocalypse   it lives in possibility to avoid the schizophrenias of actuality   lives in schizophrenias to unmask the myriad alls   it lives in death to experience lifes manifestations as they might exist in living laboratories of soil and wind   shaman lives in absence to facilitate a present seeking

 

shamans forage and seek to forage according to the data of rhythms of locusts and beancurd  of cocktails that rise like gasoline  their foraging for rupees among the banking machine forests of varanasi would be inadequate but for the lightless soil of the shamans roots  a lightlessness that would be sibling to imagination  an imagination capable of creating foraging  a foraging for nuts apples seeds roots gometa pata  that we in our machines have been severed from and shaman  not as even retreat position guru  is a way to not unite heal integrate but desever   and this desevering new? near?   our foraging for rupees a foraging for refuse  the discards and deaths  anonymities  interior voices  the silenced  the majority that isnt voiced in the green collapse

 

so shaman looks for excluded voices  the criticisms withheld from any gang tribe family institution self identity  to keep it together and does not negate the affirmations of the tribe but sees these as nothing stranger than the exclusions and negations   you say  but all these weights and counterweights on the souls unbalanced scales!?  it means you dont  you cant!  get anything done  you have no action  wills annihilated by an excess of will or wills  if you have any action its hamletian action  action bottled up in mind only to explode  but we say  ah  youve not seen the ham in sham  the hamlet in shamlet  which leads so truthfully to the am in ham   i am the am and ham and sham   i am the ion in action  the ill in will   there is  you may have heard  a no action far older than any shamlet  one before i or am or man  for this the shaman forages  like the scavangers in bms epilogue  those wraiths of lost fire  born into false forges and cold currencies? do we seek then war  that god? no   war is in us and us   shaman rests in the impossible cacophony of voices and for this rest it lives in the outside of the in  an inside of outs      do not rebuke the little children by the ganga who set toll booths according to their sad mentors   instead  dust  the dust  worn negation of a young yesterday  draw with the dust of yourself shapes inexplicable and full of eyes

 

is all this too declarative? yes

 

are all these words misguided? yes

 

is there any i resembling anything were talking about? no

 

are happiness and love aspects of this? as much as indifference and despair

 

do we know what were talking about or thinking? no  maybe  yes  no

 

are words unpolished mirrors?

 

is our gaze a stumbling in dusk?

 

are we the unanswerability of ourselves?

 

are oracles the spaces between stars?

 

are forms the mathematics of an undreamt geometry?

 

is this a leaf   are we stones waiting to be sand?

yottalopoli

these yottalopoli, tokyo and delhi, doppelganger siblings in unsustainability, the former of scrubbed privilege, incarcerating order, the latter of anarchic filth, screeching hunger.

delhi’s noisier, dirtier, more aggressive, obnoxious, relentless, meaner than i remember it. this bothers and fascinates me less than before, having become more intimate with these attributes, their ubiquity in society. their externalization (muted, sugar-coated in the new world) seems an inevitability among the planet’s urban architectures, at least until we figure out how to modify the soul ... perhaps the central practice of the human, a practice which religion, philosophy and art haven’t had much success in; technology now attempting new forms of the practice through genetic modification.

new delhi train station at midnight looks like hades – heaped wraiths, gustave-doré-scapes of grey and destroyed time. the trains look like death cars. it smells like the marriage of a garbage truck that’s never emptied and a latrine that’s never washed.

if anything looks like the end of the world, delhi does. as if the apocalypse has happened (even the moon looks sick here [looks like sushi rice in tokyo]) ... yet humans – photocopied without governance (the machines hyped, 24/7) – still wandering the destroyed earth bound by chemicals and technological scraps ... sign, sign the signs of ends ... (how could i ever return to europe after this ... that museum mausoleum?)

the delhi metro, like the entire city, is impossible. around the ticket-purchasing counter are thousands of people – no lines, no organization. the few ticket-purchasing machines all have out-of-order signs. if you have a pass you can get right in but you have to go to the counter to get a pass. do i want to push claustrophobically for three hours for a traffic-free ride under the nation’s capital? i return to the honking bumper-rickshaw maelstrom above.

the train from delhi to varanasi is delayed first 2.5 hours, then another 2, and finally departs 6 hours late, at 0230h. there are no announcements, apologies; information’s absent; no one knows anything. i find out eventually from a local on the train that the delay’s due to fog – the drivers are scared of not being able to see water buffalos on the tracks, a potential derailment issue. at some point i begin asking people how far to varanasi. the answers: 2 hours, 3, 4 maybe 6 hours, 5, 7. turns out to be 8. because we’re off-schedule, i’m told (all this from seasoned local travelers) we have to give way to every on-schedule train, making the ordeal 24 hours instead of 12. there are 23 cars – most of them sleeper class:  a comic misnomer, as they’re piled with hundreds of humans compared to mine at the top of privilege with only 12. by the end the washrooms reek so badly even passing them makes me gag. and that’s in ac first class. i’m in a cabin with 3 indians who speak only a few words of english. we occasionally nod and smile and exchange a few snacks as signs of goodwill and survival. finally, rabid with freedom, nearing midnight, i break into the thick madness of one of the world’s oldest cities, death hot in the air, my driver negotiating cows, goats, shit, bipeds, suicide-drivers to deposit me near my ghat, its nighttime wailing sticky on the ganga, the old asian moon nonchalant at the burning bodies on those sacred dirty shores.

 

people ask me where i’m from. canada, i say. where else? good country is the most common response. i suppose so. but we’ll see how good it is in a few years when the world begins invading it for its water and climate and land.