Looking into Various Fields of Interest

We went to Toronto yesterday, my family and I. The Dead Sea Scrolls are being shown at the Royal Ontario Museum, and since I'm into the places where Christianity and Judaism meet I figured it would be a fun trip. After that the family split up into two groups, the girls going to see taxidermey animals and my dad and I looking at the antiquities of the Far East. I liked the Buddhas and the big pictures they had of various Chinese religious figures. Oh, and the rubbings of signs on Synagoges, Mosques and Christian Churches found in China. Yeah, they have Jews and Muslims and Christians there, and I'm talking before the Jesuits.

Then we went to Ikea and I began to feel sad because I don't have my own place. I know I'm 19, and very few 19 year-olds have there own place, but damn it I want to have my own apartement. It didn't help that we found a very nice walk in room that Mom said she could see me living in. So I began to feel nervous about my independence, which I'm also feeling a bit off about because I have had some recent confusion with my bi-monthly twenty dollars. Thankfully I got some of the coffee drop-off which can last me through the rest of the day. This lead to all kinds of frustration about how I'm not as independent as I'd like to be.

Also, finally I am beginning to read more on Aspergers Syndrome. I'm currently reading "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome," by Tony Atwood. Now I have to go because I'm talking to a friend.

Mostly About Kabbalah

Something appears to be up with this computer. I think I am approching the time when I need to change my virus protection. Who's idea was it for computers to have viruses anyways?

Most of my time since I got the letter about Remodernism has been concerned with writing outlines for my English exam. I am going to have to answer three out of the six questions I have been given and I am writing outlines to give me an idea of what happened. So far I've planned out most of them or have an idea of what I'm going to do with half of them. After that I will be looking for a summer job, so I have money to go to Revel and buy books. My parents have me on 20 dollars every two weeks, which is a bit less then what I used to have. 20 dollars per week. Apparently Allen Ginsberg had 15 dollars a month when he was at University. He also was obsessed with Neal Cassady, who wasn't interested in Allen in that way though apparently they did have sex. I feel like a kindred spirit to Ginsberg in many ways, and I'm hoping to learn from his mistakes so I don't make them. It's very easy for me to fall head over heals in love with someone, it has happened before. So far I haven't been overwhelmingly obsessed with someone.
I'm starting to wonder how much of my life I should put down in my fiction. For awhile I thought this may be a bad idea, but I think that it would be a nice place to start. I don't want to be one of those writers who just rewrites his own life into fiction. I think I can do that, but most of my story ideas are leaning towards historical-occult fiction with various esoteric Judeo-Christian overtones. I'm thinking about looking into this sort of thing, I've been toying with studying Kabbalah for a long time now, ever since I read Promethea, and will be doing it in the fall since I am defenetly taking the Kaballah course. I'm probubly one of the few people who didn't get into Kabbalah through Madonna these days. To be honest, if your going to get into Kabbalah then it would probubly best to get into it from a comic book written by a British man who hasen't shaved since the Thatcher administration, studies the Western esoteric tradition and once saw a fictional character he invented in a bar then a pop singer from the 80s with a coffee table book about sex or something like that. Or you should at least learn it from an old Jewish guy. Also, selling Kabbalah water for $2000 dollars is probubly the stupidist thing I've heard off since, well bottled water. Water should be free and should not have anything to do with ancient mystic paths unless it is a metaphor for something, like rebirth or something.

Basically, what I know about Kabbalah is that it is supposed to be an "operating program for the human soul." Besides the Promethea comic book, most of what I know is from a podcast on the know defunct, Out There. Out There is a pretty good podcast if you want an introduction into the world of occultism, conspiracy theories, fringe science and weird stuff like that. Some of the episodes freaked me out, such as the one about 9/11 truth and another on 2012, but others such as Kabbalah and the episode on James Shelby Downard that proved to be very interesting. It's really something of a crap shoot on the affect, but either way alot of the stuff I hear on this will probubly worm it's way into my writing. I'd like to do a conspiracy novel based on the writings of James Shelby Downard at some point, but were talking about Kabbalah. Basically, it's very complex, has a cool tree thing and will give it's practitioner the gift of Prophecy, which is something that sounds pretty cool. If memory serves, then to practice Kaballah one must get involved with making humanity better while studying alot of ancient texts, specifically the Bible but you can use it on anyting according to the person who read it. I imagine that the Orthodox Jews would say, no you can only use the Bible, but I imagine that you could use the Bible as a sort of basic text and everything else can be a sort of spring off of that. It works too, because apparently people who study English Literature do much better if they're familiar with the Bible, because it's the basis of Western Literature. I can connect the Bible to all of the books I'm reading now for instance. The Brothers Karamazov, easy. Dostotevsky's work is fundamentally Christian. What's Bred In The Bone, deals a lot with Christianity's affect on the main character at the moment, and it also has an angel (The Lesser Zadkiel) and a daimon who's name I forget, who are working on said character's biography. Also, I wrote an essay recently about Allen Ginsberg that compared him to an ancient Hebrew Prophet, only with more homoeroticism. Not sure how Jews would take to most of this, but I'm sure they can admit that Christians are really just unclean slightly-pagan Jews, mainly since most Christians aren't going to kill the Jews for saying that and because it is basically true. I'm comfortable with being a bad pseudo-Jew myself, I may even work on becoming more Jewish one day.

Well, that is all for my musings today. I'm going to talk with a friend of mine now.

Constantine's Sword: Thoughts

I kind of wonder what this movie has to say about my faith. I don't talk about my faith a lot, or my relationship with God. I admit we don't talk much, I don't know if that is a bad thing. The last time I can remember writing to God was when I wrote a poem about the fears I had about not being a good writer. I think that is a perfectly acceptable thing to ask God. You don't see many great Satanic novelists.

Anyways, I'm woolgathering. I just watched a movie called Constantine's Sword, which is largely about the history of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, but also talked a lot about the life of James Carroll, who wrote the book on which this movie was based and is also the main character if you have those in documentaries, and Evangelism in America. The Evangelism ties nicely into the Anti-Semitism, because it talked a lot about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ movie and a MegaChurch in Colorado Springs that was Evangelising to the Air Force. There was a scene where a pastor that acted kind of like some pop musician did some prayer service for a bunch of kids that had very militaristic overtones. This made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Anyways, I've been thinking about my identity as a Christian. As much as I don't like to show it, I'm a Christian more then anything, but I feel at odds with mainstream Chirtianity. As far as I'm concerned, Chirstianity sold out to The Man and I feel a great deal of contempt for that, especially after watching this movie. The treatment of the Jews alone by the Church, and the fact that most Christian leaders have done little or nothing to apologize makes me want to tear the first cross from whatever wall or necklace it's on, and stamp it into the dust.

Anyway, know I bring up my issue. How does this movie affect me? I'm pretty sure that it does affect me, even though I could concievably hide behind my Mennonite sect. Odds are, while Mennonites are largelly free of starting any wars (at least none that I know off), they did stand by for wars and a couple may have been anti-semites. But to be honest, while I am a Christian, I don't think of myself as a pracitsing Mennonite.

Ah, I'm tired. It's late. I'm going to bed. I'll write more tomorrow.

Naos is a Jewitch!

You find the craziest things on Wikipedia. For instance, while fiddling around there I found out about jewitchery. It's Neo-paganism...for Jews! I know I havn't told you this, but I just want to say I love Jews. I love their religion, I love the sound of Hebrew, I love the fact that a Jew is similtaniously is a religious practise and an ethnicity which as a Mennonite I can relate too. If I had the balls, I'd become a Jews. Unfortunatly, I have tasted the sweet, sweet taste of bacon and I do not think I can give that up. But still, I have decided that Naos is going to be Jewish, hence the last name Ben-David.

Off course, Naos is not a conventional Jews. For one thing, he is also heavily tattooed so he can't be buried in a Jewish cemetary. Also, for awhile I decided that his mother was not a practising Jew, but a sort of neopagan. However, with the discovery of Jewitchery, I can reconcile Naos' Jewish identity with his pagan upbringing. Thank you Wikipedia for your help.