Bring me the Horizon Post 1

Nuru-Dryos laid his back lethargically against a thick, mossy sequoia branch, nearly a thousand feet in the air. His balance was perfect, but the branch was misshapen. Even if he fell, he could easily catch himself in the flood of vines hanging from the canopy. A long, purple snake crept toward him menacingly, flashing its pronged tongue. Nuru did not move, he continued to lay back with his eyes half closed, allowing the sun to warm his skin. The snake slithered closer, now coiling itself around the branch. Still, Nuru remained quiet, undisturbed. The snake now wrapped itself around Nuru's torso, meeting the half-demon's head with its flickering tongue.

Nuru opened his eyes gently, and smiled at the snake, "What does your tongue taste, Ebo?"

The snake lifted its head up toward the sky, then coiled tightly about the branch and let its head dip toward the ground, leaning toward the South. "And I was having such a good rest," Nuru groaned to himself, grasping a small wooden whistle hanging from his neck. The whistle conjured a high pitched squeal, and moments later a raven landed on his branch to greet him.

"Ireliskus," Nuru acknowledged the Raven, "I am going south to scout the intruders. Tell my tribe. I may need assistance." The raven took off to the North, and Nuru offered a bit of flesh to the snake before taking off south. He traveled using vines to swing himself, occasionally running along a branch when a moss-free patch presented itself in grasping range. It seemed he'd gone a mile in 5 minutes when, without warning, he dropped haphazardly from his vine and fell a hundred feet, catching himself by flinging his kama into a branch and swinging from the cord it was knotted to.

That was a close one, he thought to himself as the vine he was swinging from shifted against a line of tripwire before rocking back into equilibrium. The Forest knows what the trap would trigger. Nuru unstuck his kama from the branch and cross-wrapped it around his torso. It's safe to assume they have eyes on me... serves me right for being so hasty. Now that Nuru was really observing, he counted 17 clues in the vicinity that intruders had been in the area. He was still sleepy, he admitted... he was being lazy. But he would change this immediately. Any more mistakes now and a poison dart was likely to find his neck. Keeping his senses trained on his surroundings, Nuru began to hoist a vine up in order to tie it to his leg and free-fall. A shadow shifted behind him, somewhere in the distance. He didn't see it, but somehow he could feel it was there. Before him, several football fields away, a cluster of leaves floated through the air

Strange, Nuru thought, for he didn't hear a rustle. In an instant the leaves flickered and disappeared.

"Illusionists!" Nuru grunted audibly. His ankle cried in stinging pain as a dart pierced it and he slid from his branch, free-falling another few hundred feet. A net caught him, and he found himself swinging back and forth harmlessly. He attempted to grasp his knife or kama so he could cut himself free but the net tightened until he could barely writhe. Hunters began to pop up every where around him, so many he could scarcely believe he hadn't seen more clues on his way over. Or had the illusionists hid those, as well? How many were there? That sort of wrinkling would take dozens. One of the hunters cut him down from his netting and several more helped lower him the next few hundred feet toward the forest floor. Judging by the fur they donned themselves with, he assumed they were Bear Slayers.

A maze in its own right, the forest floor was a web of interconnected roots, some three times taller than a man. Nuru bumped uncomfortably against the roots as a hunter held him up by the net's cording while swing along the lowest hanging vines. When finally a clearing presented itself, the hunter dropped Nuru mercilessly, and he tumbled through the thick foliage before stopping at the feet of a halfdemon with a long staff; the mark of an Illusionist.

"I apologize for the treatment," the illusionist spoke softly. "I did not mean for harm to come to you."

"Bear Slayer," Nuru spat. "Why do you come so far North? Why with such a great hunting party? These are peaceful times. We of the Shallow Pond have just had many children, we are too busy for your war games now."

"We have had many children as well," the illusionist responded, "And our people grow hungry. The Dire Deer have migrated north, as have the hogs. And your people, living upriver, catch all our fish. We do not seek wargames, we seek expansion."

"If you cannot feed your people, you should have less of them," Nuru shot back. "We do not eat all the fish, the pond is plentiful and many escape. And the dire deer have migrated beyond our borders as well, Bear Slayer."

"We shall see which of us should have less people, tracker. It may be us, it may be you," the illusionist answered solemnly as hunters and warriors began to surround Nuru menacingly.

"Allow the Nest of Fate to deliberate over the matter," Nuru pleaded, "Perhaps one of our tribes is especially plentiful and wouldn't mind sharing."

"Deliberation makes a people soft, tracker. We shall test our worth in the forest with the blood we can spill. That is our right. May the Forest grow strong from your remains." A particularly brutal looking warrior approached from the folds of the Bear Slayers, clutching a club arrayed with three inch long teeth. As he prepared to crush Nuru's skull, he suddenly looked surprised, shooting a glance to the left before life faded from his eyes. The Bear Slayer fell, blood still leaking from his back.

War cries filled the air and the warriors surrounding Nuru all charged to the left. The illusionist waved his arms about in a controlled motion, disappearing into thin air while blood streaked the trees. Because the blood spatter left a gap, the illusionist could not hide his location for long. He howled as a blade found his side and tore his belly open. Intestines spilled out as the illusionist fell to his knees.

To Adun-Hal battle was ballet. With his off-hand, he carried his heirloom, his father's sword, stolen from an outsider many generations ago. With his on-hand, a knife knotted to a rope swung above his head. He flicked the knife forward, stabbing a Bear Slayer in the chest, then pulled it back and sliced the throat of another before slinging it horizontally and sticking a third in the head. Blood continued to squirt from the first enemy's torn artery and the second enemy's jugular as the third one dropped. While this happened, it seemed Adun-Hal used an entirely separate brain to parry the spear of a warrior charging straight for him. He leaned his sword upon the spear and, putting his body weight into it, planted the spear into the dirt before kicking the foe in the head and impaling his belly.

It was not Adun-Hal's ability to kill which earned him the title "Bleeding Wind," but the way in which he preferred to make cuts. This way revealed itself as he removed his blade from the foe's belly in a shredding motion, causing blood to gush out like an eruption. By now, the remaining Bear Slayers had all fled back South, and Adun-Hal did not bother to chase them. Instead, he walked calmly over to Nuru and cut open the net that imprisoned him.

"Well done, my friend," Nuru smiled. They were both painted in blood, which covered the ground so heavily it leaked into the nearby stream.

"Thank Ireliskus for such good directions," Adun-Hal acknowledged. Upon hearing its name, the raven drifted in from above and cawed happily, taking bits of flesh from the fallen Bear Slayers.

"I was a fool for walking into this trap," Nuru muttered and he rose to his feet.

"Nonsense," Adun-Hall comforted him, "The Bear Slayer's Illusionist was a disciple of Morimon-Elden."

"Was he? A poor student if that's the case, he attempted to conceal leaves as they fell," the two approached the mortally wounded Illusionist, who was still attempting to hold his guts in. "Still I acted arrogantly."

"A typical death sentence for a Master Tracker. Illusionists can be clever," Adun-Hal admitted, kicking the Illusionist to the ground. More intestines leaked from his belly. "Would you like to do the honors?"

"Your wound, your offering," Nuru proposed.

"Very well," Adun-Hal acknowledged, pulling the Illusionist up by his pony-tail and positioning his sword at the back of his head between his skull and spine.

"May the Forest grow strong from your remains."

Lust, Love and Trust

I have the same problem writing as I do with women
My problem is this, the two exist on a different wavelength. I mean, my passion and my intellect simply do not belong in the same sentence.
While my intellect loves rhymes and ironic designs meant to delight the senses without a hint of rough edges...
My passion is a boulder rolling down a mountain, unfit for any tact or caution
It's a seeping, bleeding of mess of raw emotion
A colossal, syrupy dissertation from a dictionary six hundred volumes longer than my stark vocabulary

Let me put it another way. A friend of mine once explained to me that when studying attraction on subjects undergoing catscans, three different centers of the brain light up depending on the nature of the relations. To paraphrase them, I'll say they're called lust, love and trust. We all want all three of these to light up at the same time but for me, they never do, they're always out of sync.

This feels especially true when mulling over my celebrity obsessions, for while I always, always masturbate to Natalie Portman I swear I feel real, romantic love for Emma Watson whose pedestal I dare not desecrate with desires either honest or carnal. And I'm pretty sure I don't trust anyone.

My emotions are a rocksong played by narcissists all dreaming of their careers as solo artists. My lust being an edgy, murderous bassist, my love a hardcore, ambitious guitarist and my trust a soft spoken, wide-ranged vocalist.

We usually open with our bassist who thrashes and writhes about on the ground in convulsions like a fish choking on oxygen, and the band plays it cool like the whole seizure is all an act performed at his leisure.

But if they can mellow him out for just long enough to get passed the introduction the real terrorist opens and strums his strings at max volume, assuming each note belongs in the heavy-weight songs so magical you don't know if you're listening to the satanic gospel or the love child of punk rock and classical

So if the singer can even get a word in edge wise, his throat cracks, his voice trembles and his body arrests in anxiety attacks. And he wishes so deeply his bandmates would just mellow out long enough he can catch some hint of a beat and let free to unwrap and consecrate a vast, breathing mirage. Instead all he does is hum along.

And yet still they wonder why it is they never leave the garage.

But where on earth exists an audience for such self-absorbed and fragmented dissonance? Even if they dig a particular instrument they're bound to lose interest when they realize they have to take every piece of this. Nothing in me feels willing to compromise an attribute and I'm stuck wondering how I'll be ingested. Will I be applauded in glory uncontested and triumph unbreakable or dismissed as if I'm purely disposable? Will I be swallowed up into darkness without notice or feeling or will I cause internal bleeding?

In the end it doesn't really matter because the real me won't stop whether or not contemporary audiences are caught and one day everybody will be listening to the love child of classical and punk-rock.

Speaking the Truth

Alright so, Abstraction is... a word.
The thing is even when something makes no sense it still needs to feel true. Even when something isn't real it must some how come alive. Otherwise it's just a verbose soup of obtuse bells chiming flatulent spells, rubbing so close together and stroking everything tender, starting soft and feeling through every splendor, then humping and throbbing and pumping now mercilessly stronger, and louder and foaming and moaning in heat and surging buckets of supremely engendered prose in a dissonant beat, bursting robust and muscular harmony through the celestial pink now swollen and open and dripping, coming closer and closer to the peak of ascension. Pay attention because this part's important. Did you just get a little horny? Because if you didn't catch it, I was talking about farts. Armchairs and tables become sexual sights and seeds, clashing against the boundaries of pitiful niceties and dishonest memories until anger takes our proud humility and plunges into a deep, foreign melody.

You see, everything must sound as though it cries when missing its favorite blanket. Otherwise we're stuck wondering where the cruelty of reciprocal interest came from and how we can be rid of it as quickly as possible. How loud must we shout when chewing through the thickets of our lost dreams and sending costly signals to the underlodged and naked things.

I apologize, this is all really deep shit. It's so deep we drown in the stew and stink up the metaphysical rockets with our egotistical glue. We take life and grab it right from our eye sockets until we can recognize something, something, something new.

This is what came before the sun and the seagull! This is what came before the cosmos and the rain and the quiet truth. This. This is honest truth. I swear to god I'm Not making this shit up. It may not be recorded in history books but that's just because conspiracy nuts worked with evangelical coocs to fill every inch and corner of the moon with baked potatoes colored golden-brown and covered in feathery sour cream and juicy bacon bits. Now ponder this, because this part's important. Did you just get a little hungry?

See, this is the really deep shit. This is the sound a child makes when it realizes it's going under the thumb of a band of parasitic loudspeakers, cannibal tricksters and uprooted scores of boundless whispers and that hidden shade staring at you from the closet is so fucking real you better start screaming because it will come and get you but only. Only if you promise that you're really afraid. See everything must sound as though it's too ripe to be real, as if it's begging to be picked from its pedestal and chewed up and swallowed and shat out some dude's asshole. Otherwise it won't make you cry.

And real truth must make you cry. Sensible assertions are broken by the complexity of the frivolous and circular circumstance circling trivial options and deceitful concoctions and activists are just catering to propaganda's patronizing sentences. But I promise you this. I will never patronize my audience. But feel free to start crying. After all it's a rough and lousy sketch of life for doubt collects upon the corners of our eyes each time we wake and realize our dreams pulled a fast one, fabricating a haven to console our locked passion. We scratch and claw at the concrete walls that have all rust and dried to dusty, sour surfaces so ugly and pale and seeping smells musky and stale. We claw at these walls, driving and pounding and stripping our nails to bone to escape the cruelest truth we could ever know. That flat, frigid fact that short and shallow hearts beat deep and always sweep untraveled streets, clinging to the sideburns and leather jackets of extradimensional Fonzis, hanging off every synchronous remark whether or not it stands a chance at solving any Earthquakes or Bee stings or Overdue Rent and not one of them can shake the feeling. Not one of them can shake the feeling. Not one of them can shake the feeling that none of this shit makes any sense.
W-w-wait! This part's important... Nevermind, I forgot what I was I gonna say.

Creation

Primarily we have singularity, the atman or brahman, that which is neither something nor nothing. Infinite potential sought manifestation and the source fractured into pieces. Arbitrary habits evolved from the earliest reactions and processes and they became our physical laws.

According to the standard Abrahamic perspective, we are powerless creations living in God's grace. However, according to the Hermetic perspective, we are co-creators with God. Magical terminology shares roots with language. In the beginning there was the word, and the word was God. To cast a spell means merely to spell, to curse is to curse, a Grimoire shares the etymological root with the word Grammar.

That's why they're called the Magical Arts. An artist could be described as anyone who commits action with the realization that the pen is mightier than the sword. The efficacy of our actions upon the world is often beyond our awareness. We typically cannot see the ripple effect of our attitudes, our thoughts and our words. We are mostly blind to the influence we wield over our reality, which causes us to swing this power around haphazardly rather than take responsibility for our circumstances in life.

Making decisions can feel easier when one has a sense of truth on their side. However, actions and beliefs cannot be considered more truthful than another, simply classified under different styles. In the same way that physical habits emerged from the infinite potential of void, evolutionary habits also emerged from the ecosystem of living things. In Hinduism the first fraction of Brahman manifested Vishnu, who represents Preservation, and Shiva, who represents Destruction and Recreation, or more simply, Transformation.

This is different from the masculine and feminine aspects of the Gods. The masculine aspects draw power from their feminine counterpart. For instance Vishnu's feminine aspect is Saraswati which can represent knowledge, music, art and science. Knowledge arises from ideas which have a strong enough foundation to survive the criticism of Shiva. This foundation invokes a sense of harmony like Music or a statistical advantage like Science. In this way, what Shiva fails to transform becomes sacred, and Vishnu draws power from this sanctimony. Shiva's female aspect, Shakti, is synonymous with power and without Shakti all beings would be inert. This power is analogous to the relationship between flame and heat for a fire. What the fire burns becomes the heat that powers the fire. This makes the term Destruction rather inaccurate. In fact, when your computer gives off heat, it is expelling excess bits of information, not destroying them. That which cannot be preserved is not destroyed by Shiva, it simply empowers Shakti which in turn empowers Shiva. That which can be preserved becomes knowledge, empowering Saraswati which in turn empowers Vishnu.

Speaking in terms of evolution, all adaptation is born from random mutation. If the mutation is not viable, it does not survive through time and instead reinforces the standard. If the action is viable, the transformation spreads throughout the system and becomes the new paradigm to be preserved and tested against further mutation.

In biblical terminology, people are the battleground between the Creator God and the Challenger God. In Zoroastrian terminology, people are the battleground between the Creator God and Destroyer God. In Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysian terminology, people are the battleground between that which Godly and Beastly or Civilized and Wild. We have the choice, not between Good and Evil, but between clinging to Statistical Advantage or Experimenting, between Pragmatism and Imagination. In this way, Art can be described as the bridge between Heaven and Earth, between the Animal Kingdom where our Corporal forms find their history, and the abstract sphere of Possibility our minds are capable of exploring. There is no certainty, we are all Gamblers placing bets. But much of the time, failure draws more reward than inaction. The failure of Shiva enables the growth of Saraswati, and the success of Shiva cleans the excess aspects from the realm of Vishnu.

This concept promotes a sense of balance when considering the reception and propagation of new ideas. If the mind is locked too deeply into preservation, it becomes immovable and thus cannot evolve, leaving it vulnerable to systems which are willing to evolve. If it is too open to transformation it becomes susceptible losing valuable aspects of its current fixture, or spreading destructive behaviors throughout the system.

Simply because there is no certainty in life, that is no excuse not to perform action. Only time reveals which actions and behaviors are viable. We are all a fragment of God, and because of that, all our experiences and the actions they lead us to are sacred.