"Hey! That's not haiku!
You're just counting syllables!
Stop that this instant!"
-from the Apocrypha Discordia
"A woman without a fish is like a man without a bicycle."
-Discordian mondo from the A.D.
"You want to hang some Discordia up on your walls along with your African knick knacks, your pseudo-Asian tiki Zen-like Tao relics, your feathers twigs and leather Native Americanesque knock offs, and your assumed post-Christian gothic occult-like icons bought at the local 'alternative' spirituality store?"
-St. Kallista (when a Wiccan from a North Shore Pagan asked her to explain Eris)
"Eris, Goddess of Chaos, She What Done It All,...oh, never mind, I'll do it myself."
Is the state of the world or the people around you giving you a headache? Take some ibuprofen and get over it. We are here today to reflect upon cookies, pie, and tequila. (Or at least that's the excuse for me to write some drivel thinly disguised as purposeless meander.) As bonkers as it may drive some of you more serious and self-important (or righteous) Discordians(tm), silly humorous camp is part and parcel (and hind-leg and foreleg) of the Discordian Society. (And driving you bonkers is also part and parcel and forelock of the Discordian Society.) If you think you are too intelligent for such enterprises, then enroll in some university and seek out some degrees or something. Academia has what you are looking for: Recognition for your sweaty and anxious mentations proving how smart you are. They'll even give you some pretty piece of paper which you can frame and hang up to show all your friends that someone important somewhere thinks you're smart. Fortunately, no one around the halls of Eris' Asylum could give two shits about how smart you think you are. And if you want recognition or titles or degrees from any of the rest of us, you are acting like a petulant brat. Make up your own damned titles or degrees.
We want no revolutions that don't include cigars, dancing, and general horseplay. We want no solutions that don't include camp, quirks, or silly little hats. We want nothing to do with all this talk of war, violence, overthrow, or even car bombings, unless they include hidden jokes, triple entendres, and weird chants in ancient languages. Let the fools and the serious fools get martyred for their causes whether right or wrong. The one who dies with the most toys is still dead. The one who tries to jump from the ship of chaos only ends up drowning in worse chaos. There are half a million hidden metaphors hidden in the bottom of your foot. Did you speak with your Goddess today? (Don't admit it too loudly. Those who believe in the delusion of no-gods are just as fanatical as those who believe in the delusion of gods.) Personality is nothing but a fiction melded together from scraps of childhood memories, friends' mannerisms and thoughts, lovers' impacts, notable film clips, lines from novels, and cultural expectations. The day you free your selves is the day you know the meaning of slavery. Do you call yourself free and yet still live in slavery to yourself? Liar!
Realizing the inconsistency of your selves and the transience of everything, do you still demand consistency and permanence? Do you still believe in heaven/hell or oblivion or in any other scenario? One delusion is just as good as any other delusion. Stop trying to pretend that your delusions are closer to the truth. The truth is a much abused and diseased effigy of the incarceration you have been living within. So why bother? Just perceive what you perceive and be aware of how you have trained yourself how to perceive. Enjoy some pie. Eat some cookies. Drink tequila. Drop your baggage. Live it up. In a world that has presented us with the false choices of euphoria and dysphoria, it may be best to err on the side of euphoria if you still choose to play that bipolar game. Those who cannot stand euphoria are mere beggars trying to claw at your heels...stingy to themselves and others, which is the reason for their hatred of joy. If there is no law and there are no rules, then why do you follow them? If there is no need for balance between order and disorder, then why does your body or mind even function? What need is there for health? For wealth? For anything? In disorder you may find yourself and in order you may find yourself. But you should have never had to look for yourself anyway. How did you lose yourself?
You can also find yourself in pie, cookies, and tequila. Or in meditation. Or in pretty word games, or in any other random thing you wish to do. Or you can find yourself in hating pie, cookies, and tequila. Or never meditating. Or in ranting and wailing and blowing off steam in endless run on sentences compounded upon each other over and over again, always meandering and never making much sense of anything, even of themselves until you get so confused that you just want to smash machines or go on rampages of shopping and drinking and showering, unless you don't. You don't like crap but you need it. You hate humanity or certain human beings, but you need them. You want to be free of compulsions, but they motivate you toward that freedom. You want to settle the dust and clear the air, but you need the smokescreens. Perhaps the story of Tezcatlipoca, or better yet, Avalokiteshvara, has resonance for each one of your selves. Perhaps the pantheons are just a reflection of how the mind works. The only danger in multiple personalities is mutual amnesia. But THEY have therapy, drugs, and electrical appliances to cure you of any confrontation with those selves you dislike...or worse, those selves who actively plot to dethrone you from your primary position of authority over them. Failing that, you can find numbing solace in sex, television, and occult magic...or its ugly stepchild: religion.
If the zombies are going to march, then we may as well stagger around and stumble towards our own fulfillment. If that means eating more pie and cookies, or drinking more tequila, then so be it. The game is played by the rules we choose to make and adhere to. The game is created as the ultimate chaos confidence trickster to get you taken for a ride, and so long as the ride is enjoyable, why complain about being swindled? The tricks are simply there to get you to learn wisdom. Whether you act upon the knowledge is purely your own problem, if anything could be said to be purely anything. You asked for a softer, safer Discordian sandpaper, and you got sandblasted, shafted and shanghaied onto another ship of fools. Now do you cry "foul" because you believed what you were told, that bottled air was not bottled air but in fact medicine to help you. There was no truth and no lying involved. And if you had figured that out sooner you would have only become your own con-man until you were ready to be weaned off. Better us to blame than yourself so you can feel somewhat smarter.
Do you feel now that you can give up your addiction to the Erisian holey sacraments of cookies, pies, and tequila? What will you replace them with? Or will you simply just sit there, impassive like a Buddhist monk flying high off of the sensation of movement from the Earth's rotation? Are you still trying to sledgehammer your way through obstacles not realizing that the Most High God Natural Selection (a.k.a. She-What-Done-It-All) gave you legs and wheels and arms if you need to move around them? Do you seem to be anybody at all? Liar!
That is all. And all is a lie if never seen as dreamlike.
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Driving under the influence of Medical Terminology studies with all sorts of wonderful color pics of various pathologies and disorders. When my appetite comes back, I am eating some cookies.)
August 12th, 2005