The Sleep Room

I woke up from being awake

Talked out of my talk

All this new nothing that I have

I gotta take stock

Shocked to still be here

Shocked being the operative word

All roads lead back here

When I can't remember any roads

And where is here anyway?

Here is not there I suppose

So many things I reckon

Only the Scottish god knows

Patterns depatterned

He sees patterns in everything

I am too tired to hear his thoughts

As I fall asleep the insulin sings

Am I not who I was?

Was he not I?

That's the beauty of depatterned patterns

It is always seen by new eyes

Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? *

As they sow that which Ill never reap

And in a room such as this

Tis' better to be asleep

Recently I've been reading a lot of books about the CIA and two figures really stood out to me - Allen Dulles and Dr. Ewen Cameron. I chose to put up this one about Cameron because, for all of how horrific he was, I never heard of him before these readings.

Born in Scotland, Dr. Cameron was considered something of the maestro when it came to psychology and psychiatry in the 50s and 60s. But over time as his ambitions grew, his methods for achieving them became more and more extreme.

One of his most controversial ideas was something called de-patterning. Where an unwitting patient with some mental problem (and it's that vague, anything from postpartum depression to schizophrenia) would come into Cameron's clinic, the Allan Memorial Clinic, and he would basically use insulin and electric shock to erase what they were. The idea being to remove harmful patterns by means of a system overhaul.

After that, the good doctor would place the patients into what was known as The Sleep Room. This was a large room where patients would "sleep" (i.e enter a comatose phase) and undergo what he termed, "psychic driving." Psychic driving was basically a form of brainwashing where the comatose patients would be subjected to looping audio recordings of positive psychological ideas for up to 20 hours a day, every day.  Sometimes for as long as two to three months.

And then, voila, it didn't fucking work.

*Qui custodiet ipsos custodes is a Latin phrase, attributed to Juvenal (Decimvs Ivnivs Ivvenalis) meaning "who guards the guardians?"

Ἄορνος (Aornos)

Ἄορνος* (Aornos)

(For those interested, Aornos was Alexander's final siege in his Indian campaign. It was an extremely elaborate and well fortified piece of the Hindu Kush. To me, Aornos represents the point from which Alexander began pushing for the sake of pushing. Wherein this king, whose meaning and raison d'être we conquest, became acutely aware that he could not possibly keep that which he is about to take.  There's something very humanizing about that impasse, about that point where Alexander saw the limits of his prowess manifest before him.  He would go as far as the Hyphasis river, where his troops would refuse to march forward and go over the Ganges.)

My conquest gives me reason

My eyes cannot stray

Heracles** couldn't take it

But nothing will stand in my way

The lines move ever backwards

There can be no retreat

I shall always be with you in spirit

Where the Acesines and Hydaspes meet!

I am come thus far

But I'll never see Macedon again

Aornos o Aornos

Won't you let me rest

Lost in a land I own

Own but do not understand

Wisemen and soothsayers around me

Asia falling apart in my hand

(I am come thus far

But I'll never see Macedon again

Aornos o Aornos

Won't you let me rest )

The gods do so hate the mortals

Whose glory shan't quietly die

Oh, what hateful things are glory and victory

The absence they leave in our lives

*Aornos was the Greek name of this fort, which literally means "birdless." Why was that the case? I haven't a clue but there are some etymological speculation online.

**There is a story where Alexander was enticed to take this fortress to compete with Heracles. Alexander's family, the Argeads, claimed to be descendants of the Theban demigod, and legend has it that Heracles himself could not take Aornos. This story is widely doubted and Arrian, who wrote The Anabasis of Alexander, also didn't believe it, but I thought it was a compelling little side-note

Diplomacy VII - Death Tourism

So here and there, in these less than fun times, I feel the need to cynically, and some might say insensitively, talk about politics on the page. Usually, most of my Diplomacy series has two markers -

1. It opens with “I’m not a diplomat, I just lie a lot”

2. It goes directly to my drawer.

But seeing as everybody is already fighting on one street or another, I thought - why not arm myself with a blunt object (my drawer) and go online?

Results inbound -

Diplomacy VII- Death Tourism

Springtime is here, the missiles are in bloom

Ran out of Kiev, nearly forgot my tomb

Tel Aviv and Tehran just started to dance

I'd bring my dancing shoes if I got the chance

Washington is never next, Putin sleeps all too well

Somewhere, somehow - Khamenei is smiling up from hell

The whole world will look like Khan Yunus

A smoke plume rises from Nablus

Maduro on an overnight flight - eye covers ready

Cuba and Haiti, earthquake rockin steady

But I bought their freedom on a Saudi buck

And the UN never really gave a fuck

If you can't beat em - join em

Never again again

We don't ever gotta stop

As long as we cut the fault and bring a mop

So for the final time -

I'm not a diplomat - I just lie a lot

I'd stop but...

I've got no reason to.

The City of the Immortals

The City of the Immortals

Stairways in and out of my mind

An apple of the blind eye

Four faces all avert their gaze

Guess it all figures in figures -

I was never meant to understand,

The cave dwellers spoke of

Where the heart runs away from the hand

Do the walls hide them or  protect us?

Mirrors that we reflect

Monstrously yoked together!

It all figures in figures

Purposeless ways purposefully wrought

The cave dwellers spoke of

An eternity they forgot

They live for forever

In what eternity would consider a day

And this, this they called reason

"This city, I thought, is so horrific that its mere existence - the mere fact of it having endured, even in the middle of a secret desert - pollutes the past, and the future, and somehow compromises the stars! So long as this city endures no one in the world can ever be happy, or courageous. I do not want to describe it."

- Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortals (The Aleph and Other Short Stories)