A gift from the Universe

It is supposed to be early spring in Britain now, London? Not so much… it’s 9am, it’s dark, cold and my class is cancelled, great! Let’s finish that Sandel’s lecture on affirmative action, let’s listen to some old skool techno (still trying to educate myself on electronic music, that I don’t know shit about) and read a bit of this new book I got: Personal Power through Awareness. Awareness… Do you reckon you are aware of you and your actions? Think it twice… of how you perceive yourself? of how you perceive external energy? of how others perceive you and you perceive them? Think it three, four and five times! So many things we ought to be aware of! so many distractions that later become anguishes and the result is a complete distortion of reality. However, at the end of the day we are all distorted… by media, marketing, etc. Couple of week ago I believed I made decisions, that I could choose but thanks to some cigarettes in the cold, after some express debates and reflections in the smoking area now I see it clearly; everything has been chosen already, and not precisely by us.
Thinking about all of this, plus the weather, plus a complete wasteful week off uni, wearing off some chemicals from my body and mind… I don’t feel nearly as cheery and motivated as I could or should?
Finally I put myself together and get out of the house for my next class at 2pm: magazine’s design. As I walk from Camden St way to Euston I feel depersonalizated, I don’t feel like myself, I feel walking as an ant; hurrying up, the hour, I’m still early, as I walk I wanna faint and disappear….

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The amazingness of the books I’m lately buying, pretty randomly, is not measurable. Call me crazy but I can truly feel how the universe is sending me all of this information at the amazing price of 0.01GBP (2.76 w/postage) per book. This morning I read 2 chapters from which I got some excerpts:

the more you can become aware of other people's energy, the more aware you can become of your own inner guidance.

learn to see how your energy is affecting others.

learn how to observe others by being silent.

assume an attitude of confidence, and TRUST THE INFO U R RECEIVING!! doubt can be a friend if it keeps pushing you to become more accurate and precise in what u sense, as long IT DOESNT STOP YOU FROM CONTINUING.

begin by believing in what you are sensing.

do not hold expectations of what you will experience (idealization?)

do not judge your initial attempts but simply let any impressions come in.feedback is a very important part of ur reality as actions create reactions.

~here comes the best bit....!~

as you tune into others, open your heart, and embrace them with a thought of love, not criticism.Imagine an unloving, critical person tuning into someone's energy. The other person would not open (even subconsciously or on energy level) to reveal any information, for that critical energy would feel like an intrusion. !!!!!! HEAVY SHIT!!!

Then imagine a gentle, caring, and loving soul seeking information. The other person would open to that warmth and bask in that love.if you discover what is unique, is free, open, and loving about everyone you know and meet, you will discover new ways that you yourself may become more free, open and loving. !!!!! HARD STUFF!

if you want to see clearly the world you live in, you will need to be willing to see life from other people's perspectives. as u do so, remain open and nonjudgmental, keeping a sense of discovery, love, and adventure . :)))

IMAGINATION IS THE MOST POWERFUL ENERGY-SENSING TOOL.

unbounded by belief structures, imagination is one of your most powerful energy-sensing devices.

when u make things up, u often do it with a sense of joy and play, in a state of relaxation, this is a highly intuitive state.

when you come from the lighter energy of playfulness, when there is less heaviness or seriousness around the outcome, you are often more accurate in what you sense.if you don’t know how to do something, pretend that you do, for the subconscious does not know the difference between pretending and what is truly happening.

As I walk, I remember everything I read this morning and I start playing; I fill my head up with wonderful thoughts and I thank the universe for the opportunity of being here in this amazing land.
I keep walking and I smile at people and they smile at me, by the time I’m at Euston road I look to my right and there is a bus full of children, 7 years-old perhaps? One of them start waving his hand at me with a huge smile that could light up a dark room, I salute him from outside and smile as I look to the floor with a feeling of if I did something impulsively random but fun, when I look to the right again it was not one but all of the children waving their little hands at me and smiling in the kind of joy only a 7year-old (or someone on srooms) can experience and show so well.
This is it, I’m lost, I’m lost in joy, and I don’t remember or care about the weather, the aftermath, and the controlling media anymore. All I can think of is love, how the universe loves me unconditionally and how bad I’ve paid in return.

Suffering is Graceful!

Ram Dass: For most people, when you say that suffering is Grace it seems off the wall to them. And we’ve got to deal now with our own suffering and other people’s suffering. Because that is certainly a distinction that is very real, because even if we understand the way in which suffering is Grace – that is the way in which it can be a vehicle for awakening – that is fine for us. It’s quite a different thing to look at somebody else’s suffering and say it’s Grace. And Grace is something that an individual can see about their own suffering and then use it to their advantage. It is not something that can be a rationalization for allowing another human being to suffer. And you have to listen to the level at which another person is suffering. And when somebody is hungry you give them food. As my guru said, God comes to the hungry person in the form of food. You give them food and then when they’ve had their belly filled then they may be interested in questions about God. Even though you know from say Buddhist training, or whatever spiritual training you have had, that the root cause of suffering is ignorance about the nature of dharma. To give somebody a dharma lecture when they are hungry is just inappropriate methodology in terms of ending suffering.

So, the hard answer for how you are able to see suffering as Grace, and this is a stinker really, is that you have got to have consumed suffering into yourself. Which means, you see there is a tendency in us to find suffering aversive. And so we want to distance ourselves from it. Like if you have a toothache, it becomes that toothache. It’s not us any more. It’s that tooth. And so if there are suffering people, you want to look at them on television or meet them but then keep a distance from them. Because you are afraid you will drown in it. You are afraid you will drown in a pain that will be unbearable. And the fact of the matter is you have to. You finally have to. Because if you close your heart down to anything in the universe, it’s got you. You are then at the mercy of suffering. And to have finally dealt with suffering, you have to consume it into yourself. Which means you have to with eyes open be able to keep your heart open in hell. You have to look at what is, and say Yea, Right. And what it involves is bearing the unbearable. And in a way, who you think you are can’t do it. Who you really are can do it. So that who you think you are dies in the process.

Like I am dealing, I am counseling now, the counselor of a couple who went to a movie and when they came home their house had burned down and their three children had burned to death. Three, five and seven. And she is Mexican Catholic and he is a Caucasian Protestant. And they are responding entirely different to it. She is going in to deep spiritual experiences and talking with the children on other planes and he is full of denial and anger and feelings of inadequacy. And in a way, that situation is so unbearable and you wouldn’t ever lay that on another human being but there it is. And what will happen is she may come out of this a much deeper spiritual more profound, more evolved person. And he, because the way he dealt with it was through denial, may end up contracted and tight because he couldn’t embrace the suffering. He couldn’t go towards it. He pushed it away in order to preserve his sanity. In a way, there is a process in which suffering requires you to die into it or to give up your image of yourself. When you say I can’t bear it. Who is that? And they talk about the saints of India as being the living dead, because they have died who they thought they were. And they talk about the saints for whom all people are their children. So that everybody that is dying is their child dying. It’s easy to say “Well, it’s not my child.” or “It’s not my brother or my friend.” This poem is most familiar to most of you here, but it’s still every time I read it I get off on it. I think it’s worth it.

from Earth Prayers, Thich Nhat Hanh


Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look at me: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird whose wings are still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing in the
surface of the river.
I am also the bird which, when spring comes,
arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the
clear water of a pond.
I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
I am also the merchant of arms, selling deadly
weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after
being raped by a sea pirate.
I am also the pirate, my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with
plenty of power in my hand.
I am also the man who has to pay his
“debt of blood” to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes
flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it
fills up all the four oceans.

Please call me by my correct names,
so that I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are but one.

Please call me by my correct names,
so I can become awake,
and so that the door of my heart be left open,
the door of compassion.

When reality unveils

Is it because we are so blinded by other issues that we miss the main facts about things in life? Are we creators of certain aspects of reality? Of all of em?

“When an idea or theory ‘works’ it always does so relative to what we are asking of reality”
Jacob Needleman

Was I asking for this???? Ermmm… MAYBE! Maybe I knew it already; maybe I was just waiting for confirmation.

~What a wonderful assertion~

P.D: And yet, people keep throwing their insecurities on me. Dude, you need medical assistance ASAP!

something to think about

I hate the smell of coffee. A fiction entry.

I know I am not crazy, I know I shouldn’t sue Starbucks, I know I could just try again, I know, I know… I know I shouldn’t hate the smell of coffee but… I know every time the repulsive smell of coffee approaches to my nose I just want to puke, to poop, to cry… to scream.

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Being a 20 years old student in London can lead you to lots of stuff, mostly if you are a foreigner and you live in a warehouse in Shoreditch with 4 artists (ketamine addicts). I’m not saying that doing drugs is right or wrong, or that all my paranoia comes from there, I’m just talking about the circumstances, I’m talking about the tube, the bus, even about the cleaning products: I’m skint.

I cannot recall any time since I moved here when I could say that I had enough money to live a proper comfy life; I’ve been living in the shadows of ‘can you lend me 20 quid mate?’, in the soho flayerer drunk state , and now finally in the Starbuck’s hall of shame. Wicked! Got finally a kind of proper decent job where people don’t ask me if I sell coke, where I don’t stay until 3am in the cold pretending that I love the event I’m promoting, where I don’t have to explain directions, where I don’t even have to talk! Brilliant, where shall I sign?

I never truly loved Starbucks to be perfectly fair, I remember back home my friends coming from the States saying things like: wow! There is this really amazing coffee shop called Starbucks! I would respond like: oh really? No coffee can beat the one my mom drinks every morning; black Colombian coffee at 7am, “con-leche” at 9. It’s incredible how her world seemed to fall apart those days when coffee was regulated by the government so she couldn’t find it anywhere. Dear Chavez, just give their coffee to your people, they need it more than your words, thanks.

Starbucks was, anyways, a new thing for me, from the Christmas red cups fever to the ginger scented macchiato. However job was easy, I would make coffees like a robot by inertia.
I’ve never been a fan of coffee; I sold my soul to English, chai, red bush, liquorice, green and red chili teas 3 years ago when I first came to the UK. However my job was 100% coffee related. I was working at the very small and busy Starbucks in Camden, and I loved the view to the canal, sometimes I would go outside for a fag and see the sunset and all the lovely pseudo-freaks crossing the bridge up and down, up and down, and then below the bridge I would occasionally see the occasionally skunk smoker with long dreadlocks and big headphones listening to dubstep, maybe or some jungle, perhaps.

Certain sunny summer day the manager told all the staff that the shop would be closed in order to deep clean all the machinery, I thought that they hired specialists to do this but I guess I was wrong, and it makes sense after all, “special bonus benefits” they call it.
I was assigned to change the coffee filters of the espresso machine, some colleague explained me how to do it so I started. At this point of the story I don’t know if keep telling you or just give up and tell you “never mind, I can’t remember”, lie to you, in your face, just not to have this image inside my head again, ever: a dead rat! *runs to the toilet*

Dubstep

A dense cloud of smoke blinds you as you enter the place; the smell is sweet and spicy, as you walk you see people smoking skunk from a huge bong, some others from a supersized rizla, some people are wearing hoodies, some other have their hair dreadlocked long to their knees: dubstep and London city, that is all they have in common.

Bass is the base for dubstep sound, a bass that goes beyond any kind of bass heard before the existence of dubstep tunes, some people call it nasty or/and evil bass. The DJs are dropping tunes that go back to “jungle” tunes and dark drum ’n’ bass tunes, but with a crucial difference: they focus on bass riffs so thrillingly distorted, loud and hypnotically slow that you just cannot deny or either avoid the feeling of your body going back and forward to the rhythm of the music. This, essentially, is the sound of dubstep.

Is early years of the new era at Big Apple records, a new talent is born; he is Skream, he is 20, he is from Croydon and he is here to produce what it will become the first sounds of dubstep.
However, dubstep is natively from down-the-river suburbs of Brixton, in resume, a complete “ldn” sound, and it will stay like this for the next couple of years, in the dark, smoky, shoe-box-sized venues of south London. By this moment, dubstep remains in the dark, out of the hype. It is just six years later when Skream will release his first album, for which he will have some publicity in order to let know the world about dubstep, even though the female Dj Anne Hobbs is already playing some dark dub tunes at Radio 1.

Dubstep was getting known by more and more people, and at the end what made dubstep so appealing to the people (and still does) is the friendly environment of everyone sharing the same passion for the same bass beats. As many people know, this is not how we recognize or describe many if not most of the places around Leicester Square a Friday night out.

Where some girls are wearing uncomfortable heels in order to look “sexy” and “girly”, some other are wearing flat hand-made sandals or just some cheap colorful old trainers.

Dubstep is a London thing, first of all because it was originated from London, and second of all because is made from proper suburb Londoners. We don’t talk here about international guest DJs, here we talk about Rusko with his Cockney thug, we talk about Stenchman’s scary mask, and we are talking about Doctor P’s Sweet shop, just to mention some very typical things you might find in a dubstep party in London, not anywhere else.

Nowadays dubstep more than just a genre of electronic music, is becoming a whole set of a culture. A culture as Indie culture is, also natively from the UK but a bit more up north in the university city of Manchester, both with a whole kind of invisible and “unconscious” system of clothing and fashions. A typical dubstep guy would normally wear baggy sweatpants or jeans, with some old, already wasted DC shoes and finally an oversized hoodie, being this last one, the most important element of their fashion as it gives the proper dubstep “look”. Anyhow, if your dubstep influences are more rooted on good-old jungle or ragga tunes then you would want to dreadlock your long hair and wear some hand-made kind of clothing, this applies either to males to females, in dubstep (contrary to Indie) there is no difference.

In conclusion, dubstep culture in fashion, came as a counterpart and antithesis of what dancey, mainstream, electro and clubby R’n’B culture, even Indie cultures have made: separation almost complete of gender. When in almost everywhere in the world girls are trying to look the most “girly” that they can, in London’s dubstep nights they can wear from oversized colorful hoodies to hand-made skirts made from cannabis hemp (they make a fabric to be known as super resistant and 100% eco-friendly).

Long live to dubstep, i say

A blog entry on... blogs

This is, for the record, the 6th blog I start. Somehow I either forget to update with new entries or sometimes I just don’t have anything interesting to say (as one of my favorite professors indirectly told me, being this more likely to be the truth, and God bless him for letting me know so I can make a better use of my brain now). After all, why should I waste words that won’t be of any interest for anyone but me?

I look back into my old blogs and I can’t stop laughing on embarrassment reading those good-old entries on restaurants I visited or those haiku poems and the very sad entries of me dreaming about living in England…*stops*. Ermm… Is this boring you?

I know; it bores you to read about my life, after all, who am I? I wouldn’t say the typical cliché of “I’m just a regular girl trying to make it herself in life” but I haven’t appeared on TV either; I haven’t done or been involved in anything that you might find interesting, I reckon. But hey! Let’s be fair about it and say that I’m interesting on my own way. You disagree? You don’t care? Whatever, it doesn’t surprise me at all, why would you? At the end you have more interesting things to do, you say.

Anyhow, if I stop and think about what is the purpose of a blog, I don’t quite find the answer; if is not for you to feel free of publishing your thoughts and share them to the world and then find out that maybe some other people might been feeling like you (or not) and then create brand new ideas, then why creating a blog?

As I’ve been researching there exist different kinds of blogs: video blogs (vlogs), photoblogs, etc, each one of them with one purpose and way of transmitting some kind of information, feeling or thought. And then, there are different genres for each of these types of blogs. So basically you are completely free to express yourself and even create new forms of art, online.

However, let’s not be pretentious about it, is not that just because you own a blog, everyone will read it, actually, for some people the fact the they are being read by other people has no meaning what so ever. What is important for a blogger, I’m talking about me here, is the fact of being able to put some thoughts together and keep a record on it, like having you own little magazine where you can even design your own layout and make it look however you like. And no, It’s not a Barbie dear diary, no is not an “emo” pseudo-suicidal plan journal, it is way more than that, it’s a whole new world of even self-discovery.

Also, as I’ve been learning lately, blogs are not only a part of an entertaining medium, but they also can work as a secondary research tool on any topic you want to learn about, as many of the entries can be links to other websites containing further or more interesting information about that topic you are researching.

Blogs have had a great impact on politics too, as for each entry other people can also contribute with their opinion and thus create an in-depth analysis on the situation. These topics can go from Euthanasia to the economic meltdown. The means of this kind of blogs will depend on their popularity, so the number of readers it’s meaningful in this case.

In sum, blogs are one of the widest and more accessible medium of online communication nowadays that can be used by anyone with a desire of posting “stuff” and play “the message in the bottle” kind of game.

Concluding, from my grandma’s blog, where she posts her delicious recipes to the world, to celebrity gossip blogs, where you can lively learn about the hottest scandals of your favorite (or not so) star, I just can’t deny the awesomeness and power of the web-log world.

bigmouth strikes again.

Days of complete isolation, stomachaches, feeling sick and nervous, not being able to eat even when hungry. How long I've been feeling like this?
Is it the drugs?, the alcohol?, the london?, the dubstep?, the circumstances?

I really believe that I haven't done enough shitty class E drugs to feel like this. Anyways, I have a big mouth and I tell people everything I do. They laugh, they say they don't judge me, they do. They do it everytime I open my big mouth and say things like "i did so much mephedrone last nite"(I dont say this in a pseudo-prentencious way, for me is just a comment but apparently is not that simple for them). They also judge me when I lie, when I try to stick to the "real" world we live in and that they enjoy.
My intent to stick to this world is so in vain cuz it always comes up in a shape of a lie, which is not a lie, really. is just me, talking bullshit.

I don't believe in absolute truths... I don't know who I am, I don't own or hold opinions or arguments, I don't know where I come from or where Im going. All I do is go with the flow and if i stop to put some brain on stuff, it just gets chaotic.

But going with the flow is bringing me some troubles lately cuz i just cant hold the same opinion with different people. i dont like trouble, you know? i just give people what they wanna hear. it makes communication so much easier and more effective innit?

Some people get so pissed at this, they say they can't stand liars but i reckon everyone lies or at least they put a lie in a fancy dress to make it look like an adorable truth. it doesnt require special skills to do it, is innate.

Some people are so demanding, they can't stand lies but they can't handle the truth either, what should i do then? how can you manage this mess? how should i behave to not piss off these people?

i wanna have a peaceful soul, i dont want to argue about it, each to their own.

Other people get shocked by this thoughts, they laugh uncomfortably to make me feel better but I cry, i cry dry tears inside, no no no it is not a good feeling. Funnily enough they keep laughing and saying that they are not shocked, that everyone have the same feelings that they all think the same, sometimes.
How the hell do they know this? is that a fact? It makes no sense to me at all.

I just dont know what im talking about, ever. Is like feeling you always choose the wrong answer, in all the question life, people or god asks you, so you choose the answer you would never normally choose and then again, wrong.

Im kinda lost in life... honestly but yet, i don't think i will ever stand these money-making-machine people reading their "who ate my cheese" books that give up their emotional intelligence to sell their souls to $$$. I mean, there should be something else innit? something more meaningful. i know i know... we all need money to pay the rent but once the rent and food is payed why the bloody ambicious needs more? anyways, thats the way we roll, sadly.

At the end the only thing (i think) i know is this feeling, or just feelings in general, (the ones i perceive). and this, our empathy, that goes beyond...

The rest is just a huge question mark.

X

Arianna.

Listening to: corn flex-roundhousekicks (2008-11 live mix)