The Aspie Diaries 2: Return of the Aspie Diaries

Hey everybody, I'm back. Let's hope I can get back in the swing of things.

So, new news. Exam season is but a few days away. I have two take homes (both in RS), and one regular (my English Lit class). I feel very good about myself concerning these and feel that I can take at least one day off after that. Once the weekend is done I'm going to have to sit down and get to work on my Kabbalah take-home. I have to write three papers all of which should be three pages. I won't go into that anymore on this though. Mom, if your reading this and we haven't talked we will.
This was an alright term as Religious Studies go. Both were fields that I was interested in and I enjoyed the teachers. The English class was so so. It was necessary for an English major, but a bit dull. It was kind of like my trip to Italy, were we basically had to rush everywhere so we could see all the spots. Survey of British Literature Part 1 was like that. I sense Survey of British Literature 2 will be like that as well. At least we'll be getting into the Romantics and Modernism in that one. Medieval Literature was kind of interesting, and I think that may be my favorite part of the class, except for maybe John Donne and most stuff dealing with Courtly Love. I read a bit about Courtly Love, or some form of it, in an R.U. Sirius book on Counterculture before I even knew who R.U. Sirius was. I found the aesthetic kind of cool. Seems kind of artificial in the course material, especially stuff about Philip Sydney. But I'm rambling on in English major talk so I'll stop. Maybe I'll go into it again at some point.
As some of you may notice, I have grown a beard. I have officially decided to let my hair grow out again and this time I'm doing my beard as well. I'm going to try this look out for awhile while I'm at University. I may need to loose it to get a job, or maybe I can try the starving artist thing for awhile and see where that gets me.
Spiritually I'm no farther then I thought I'd started out at, or maybe I'm not. I've officially read all the gospels, in some cases twice and plan on going over them again. I also feel that I have a much better foot on Kaballah, particularly Jewish Kabbalah. I also know that most Jewish Kabbalists are probably damn pissed off at Gentiles such as myself and Pico della Mirandola and Eliphas Levi messing around with it. I also know they probably aren't going to do anything because A) It's been going on since the Reinsurance and B) the Jewish people basically want to be left alone and will return the favor, especially if there Hasidim. (This is what my Professor said and he's Jewish and a Jewish Studies Professor so he would know). I still wouldn't go as far to call myself a Kabbalist of any stripe, and I may not be. I still plan on doing a lot of reading on Kabbalah.
Finally, Alan Moore has an independent zine. Yes, that's right, Alan "Greatest-Comic-Book-Writer-Alive-Today-Who-Is-Also-A-Wizard" Moore is running an independent zine. It's called Dodgem Logic and they gave me a free CD, which they will give to you as well. I can't make a link on this page, but if you go to www.dodgemlogic.com, you can see all the stuff Alan Moore and his friends are up to. You have to buy a copy of the magazine though, which I will probably do at some point. I don't think it's the kind of thing I'd ask my parents to buy for me for Christmas. Besides, it's only...okay I'm not sure. But I'll probably buy an issue after Christmas, or try too. My job options aren't looking pretty good at this point.
Well, that's basically part of what's happening. I'll update you on some other things as time goes buy.

Feeling Slightly Overlooked

Hey folks, it looks like I'm three-for-three on RPG posts. I've posted three times and tried to start part two of the game three times and so far I've gotten nowhere. I can never get everyone in the same comfy lounge at the same time. I'm starting to wonder if this game was meant to be.
Well, aside from the whole RPG thing I am also in the process of putting the finishing touches on my Kabbalah paper. I'm just going to write up a final paragraph that will put rational philosophy and mysticism in the Jewish context up against the future development of human society or something like that. Shouldn't be to hard.
Still wish I could get this game running. I know in my heart it is a freaking awesome game, and it would be if I got everyone to get here on the same day.

Game One of Weimar Mage

Alright I better make this quick. I've got Kabbalah class in awhile. It's a good thing I'm blogging from the Kabbalah room. Well, it's not much of a Kabbalah room, but I suppose real Kabbalists wouldn't have specific rooms. I probably shouldn't even be in the real Kabbalah room because I had bacon for lunch. My professor would probably be cool with that, but I can't help feeling the eyes of hundreds of old dead Jewish guys looking at me in a funny and not-nice way.

Anyways, Weimar Mage was last night and all in all it went over very well. It was a bit slow and nothing really important happened story-wise. I do feel that I have everything in game set up for fun stuff to go down. All the characters are in Berlin now and know off each other, and one even has a position in the Consilium.
Woaps, my prof just showed up. Got to run.

Update on University and Spiritual Journey

My Exam is finished. I am officially a free man. I even got my Ginsberg essay back. I got an 85, which I feel a bit disappointed about because that was a damn fine essay.

As many of you may know, I have been looking into the Western Mystery Tradition as I like to call it, which has lead me to develop an interest in the Kabbalah, or Qabbalah, or Cabala. However you spell it, I have recently been in contact with the guys who run the Chasing Hermes podcast. One of them, Jason, has dropped by and said hello. I emailed him earlier, because I had the Naos dream. His theory is that Naos represents a higher order of my being and thus might be more interesting then stuff that one usually sees in lucid dreams. He also made the comment that he would really like read what the "Kabbalistic" literature I come up with, but warned me that I should avoid getting to preachy. I agree with him frankly, because preachy writers can be annoying, unless it's Robert A. Heinlein because then I can giggle about all the polyamory. He he, Heinlein you dirty old bastard. Anyways, I don't think that will be to much of a problem. I already have plans for religiously themed novels, and I hope they can turn out something like Dostoevsky's work. He writes what is basically religious-themed works, but it's still pretty cool.
Amyways, I'm looking into the Western Mystery Tradition very seriously now. I'm reading a book on Kabbalah by a guy called Gareth Knight. He seems to be alright, but I'm still a student of this and have yet to put it into practice. What I have got is that meditation is very important and that the Western Mystery Tradition emphasises living in this current world, as compared to the Eastern Mystery Tradition, which doesn't care so much for this world. I know a guy who can teach me meditation, but he comes from the Eastern school. It may be the same thing basically. I also had a lecture David Lynch made about how meditation has helped him with his movie that seemed interesting. I hope to apply these very soon. Now that I don't have an exam to worry about I probably will. I will also be looking into lucid dreaming and astral projection, since it seems like fun and might give me a few ideas for stories or poems.

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.