When you’re trying something newDo you remember the first time you drove somewhere new? Especially if you were moving somewhere else. Every sight, sound and every other sense was new and foreign. You might’ve felt alien. It was unmapped territory. You did not have a mental image of how far the road went, how many buildings were on it, who else was around, etc. You might have even imagined your surroundings based on clues you observed but nothing yet was fully explored, verified or memorized. There are so many details we take for granted typically and simply allow to fade into the background. Of course, much of this is simply because we have limits on how much we can readily absorb. Our attention span might not have the strength to simultaneously execute navigating unfamiliar territory, executing our daily tasks, our daily needs and then say, also mentally note how many trees line your block. We let a lot blur into the background. If we tried to study every single thing we encountered we would overwhelm ourselves and not get anything done. Of course, filtering is necessary on some level. It has some utility to see certain things in the mode of archetypes with less detail and we do need to utilize our energy effectively towards our goals and agenda. We might note a shopping center on a drive but not find knowing each store as relevant. If we did not discard some of what we observed, we would dilute our sense of meaning oddly enough. A book holds the words, sentences and ideas it holds, not every word, sentence and idea, if it held them all it would cease to have its own story. A story is also defined by what it does not have, what is missing often says just as much as what it does say. Even if some filtering is necessary, it seems wise to try to map out surroundings on an as needed basis. As there are relevant landmarks to your specific daily tasks, long term goals and simple navigation of your surroundings. One might widen the net thoroughly for their own neighborhood so they have a home turf advantage. The irony here is when we first arrive and everything seems new, we are highly observant but feel like we know nothing. On the flipside as we become accustomed to going about our day, staying true to the minimum we need to observe to get through said day, we tend to mark our immediate surroundings as “known” when truly they are often a blur on the roadside of our tunnel vision view. Do you know the types of trees growing in your neighborhood? What is the color of each house to your right and left and across the street? Do you know how many steps up to your apartment? Do you know your neighbors? As this is a martial arts website, of course the implication is “beware of your surroundings, stay observant”. While this is true, it’s not just about safety. It’s an even more hardwired human need than safety; community, friends and love. We should reach out and meet our neighbors not just as a tactical solution to clear security risks and have a communication network. We should do so because we are better off when we hide alone in our homes less. When we see each other face to face and try to connect, even if all we might seem to share in common is geography, it is vitally important to meet diverse groups of people for our learning and growing. On a side note, if you ever need to make an emergency call, being able to describe landmarks, know adjacent roads and describe neighbors houses is vital information to receive aid faster when seconds really count. If there is ever a burglary or worse, well, first of all you might prevent it to start with simply by knowing what your neighbors look like. Otherwise some stranger suspiciously lurking your neighbors home stands out a lot more when you know them. It’s important also to not simply trust someone wearing a uniform or holding tools. This is a common scam. The other method is to hide in plain sight. If we form a network with our neighbors we can ask them to keep a lookout and inform them if someone is coming by to do some work. We can provide the age old example of a cup of sugar, we can do favors for each other. We are able to form trust, build more of a traditional community where we help each other. Another factor I was thinking about while writing this is comfort zones. I think a lot of minimizing our scope comes down to either 1. Specializing our view, 2. Succumbing to tunnel vision, or 3. Adhering to a comfort zone. We get really clingy with our comfort. Even if most people seem to say they want to travel and they want adventure, sometimes it is more of an image they are seeking or an ideal because the actual reality is not the same. Ever heard of someone saying they hate their hometown but they also never leave? It occurred to me, thinking of it as a comfort zone or lack thereof is incomplete. Don’t we want a relative level of comfort even as we are challenged by a goal? We want some level of soreness when we leave the gym, sure, otherwise we might question if we worked hard enough, but we don’t want injury. We are “comfortable” with the soreness. Soreness even releases feel good chemicals in the body. So it is not so much I am asking you to abandon your comfort zone. I’m asking you to expand it. I’m also saying if we mark things as “known” mentally be it our surroundings, a subject, a skill, or anything else we do, it limits our view. It heightens our risk for danger through lack of awareness of our surroundings but also of our own ignorance. Even more vital, we do not appreciate the novel things if we need them to jostle us out of a haze before we notice anything. Even what might seem mundane is beautiful and amazing if you apply attention to it. When we open our eyes to our surroundings it allows us to appreciate the grand mystery of this world and this universe. It allows us to see the stories of those around us and make connections and hopefully grow those connections into new friendships to heal a world divided by too much screen time, too much social media and media generally. We are able to appreciate our world and aim to achieve more than just survival. We are able to strive for more than the road of least resistance, deciding to accept challenges, seek out the horizon, imagine what is out there and go see for ourselves.
To devour—, and willingly allow yourself to become devoured—, completely, is truly a unique experience for us humans indeed. Unique in how the human spirit is unable to bear the weight of such trauma but only once. No matter the degree of self-hatred any mind may potentially reach, none is equipped with the possibility of repeatedly placing itself on a platter for another’s digestion. Like death; it is irreversible. The blessed are spared from ever feeling it at all. We—, who know its face, memorized its hollow sockets where cloud-filled eyes hang in the shadows and can draw their dark swirls from memory—, are forever cursed to feel its warm breath on our napes. Unique in that it isn’t solely to satisfy a gluttonous urge of gorging our spiritual stomachs with another’s soul, but rather, a craving to consume. Utterly and without pause for logic or reasoning, to consume everything. Their deepest dreams, worst nightmares, most highest-held hopes; it all must be swallowed—, no, choked down! Unique in that much like Escher’s Drawing Hands, it isn’t enough to stand in pride while ingesting their very oneness. They themselves must be doing the same in return, wearing an identical smirk of self-gratification that we’ve got permanently plastered upon our own lips. Unique in that we simultaneously become both The Lover and The Loved. And it’s within that exact line of logic where we find our ability to continue sleeping when the sun sets at night. The guilt cancels itself out. We offered up our own bodies for consumption and without hesitation, they eviscerated our layers like lions, one by one, clawing and tearing and ripping us apart, forever digging deeper down until they reached the most hidden compartment of our hearts we hadn’t even known we were hiding under so much soil and dirt. Just like we’d reached theirs. A mutual feast. Unique in how once that specific door is opened, it can never be closed again. The heart won’t allow it. The soul will change its spiritual composition from that day forward, not unlike the drug addict, we are never the same. Our eyes see through a new lens now. It’s a darker shade, it makes the light harder to see, to feel. Harder, but not impossible. We must look more thoroughly for it. Somewhere, it’s still shining down in our direct line of vision, somewhere that’s a bit tougher to see through the newly descended smoke and ash and dense fog, but it’s there. It’s there and if we squint and remember that what it means to be human is both tragic and beautiful, then when we do occasionally re-find it and feel it once more on our skin, its warmth is that much deeper, it carries that much more meaning and purpose. Precisely because we know how much darkness and frigid cold there truly is all around us, waiting. Waiting for the doubt to creep back inside and whisper through the muddled trenches of our memories; “was there ever really any light at all?”
Exilio By The Ralphamale - A Fictional Story I was approached by someone close to Thinkspot and asked to come write here a little bit. I had already considered opening a SubStack, and I still might do that in conjunction with this, but I liked the guy and said yes. Why not, then? I’m in Argentinia, host of Deathwatch, my daily live stream on the internet. It used to air at night, but I started carrying this site called Nozy during the day, and their main man aired in my old slot. So, I just changed the time from afternoon until 10 P.M. EST (fuck the other “correct” acronym..it’s always EST to me). I’ve been stuck there ever since. In a way, it’s helped. I used to have an ensemble of co-hosts for the nighttime run of the show, but they’re all scumbags now. In this sick trade, you have to be ready for a turn at any point in time. Private messages leaked, fake private messages leaked, various other incendiary imagery, sneak attacks from supposed friends, the theft of your child via the courts…it’s sort of a nasty business. The pussy has been pretty good, though. Believe it or not, the pussy was fire in pretty much every case. I only ever truly loved two of the women I ended up bedding throughout this fucking insane bullshit. I’ll leave that up for debate. Not because those bitches give a single fuck, but because it’s funnier that way. I moved down here, to the lovely city of Buenos Aires, with family in-tow. You know, I’m not perfect, but taking someone’s child, leaving while they are out of town, and cutting off any access, knowledge, or photographic evidence of that child is somewhat unsavory. Many people might even call it sadistic. If you hate me online, you would say it’s justice. Or, you might not even know about that salient fact until you read this story. It’s all about the mob and the “accepted lore” at the time. I can remember this woman, Samantha, telling me she didn’t know that she was a real woman, until I had fucked her brains out about 30 times. Sexual chemistry was always off the charts. If we met even now, and there was some drinks and maybe who knows what all else, she would fuck me again. I’ve had her doing every dirty thing you could imagine, and some you wouldn’t even want to. In a way, she was the perfect partner for that era of me because she would do whatever I told her to do. She was already a slut when I met her. We both cheated on our partners to kindle our initial romance. So, I was basically a dick as well. Damn, It was hot, though. I remember the first time we fucked, in a Red Roof Inn off some highway down in the South. She asked about a condom and we both said we were clean and fucked raw right there on the spot, for about six hours. I bought a special bottle of champagne and ordered food. We both lied to our significant others about where we were. The passion was insane. The problem was she was crazy and obviously I must be a crazy motherfucker to even dedicate this to print. She was slutty, yes, but I often wonder just how much of her mind I fucked up. Sam used to tell me that it turned her on to know I fucked other woman. So, I fucked other woman. It seemed like a great set-up, at the time. Looking back on it now, I see it as her self-harming and letting me do those things because she didn’t think she was worth a shit. Subsequently, she revealed some alleged molestation from a family member when she was younger, a cousin. She was also separately when she was sixteen. Looking back now, I see it so clearly. Sam just wanted to be hurt again and again because she thought she wasn’t good enough. I often consider how I pushed her to the wrong side of that instead of the healing side. I could have been the stabilizer and instead I was the chaos agent. Looking back now, I see that all the debauchery wasn’t really worth it. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun. Fucking a pornstar with your girlfriend, cumming all over said pornstar, and then going to do an interview with the pornstar after you had just been inside her pussy…I mean it was pure rock star shit to me. Still, It put more stress on an already stressful relationship. Deep down, I think we just both wanted to be normal and love each other, but the constant push for more hedonism and debauchery was a constant theme, at least in our early days. The sad fact she never seemed to understand was, I always thought she was good enough. She was often great, actually. I guess some of this may be down to my own communication skills. I grew up romanticizing film and television. I am more of a “big gesture” type of guy. I fuck up or an am asshole for a period, but this Big Trip is supposed to show you that I really love you. In fact, that is how I show love. It doesn’t land, though. You have to be daily about it. Samantha once told me, “The best times with you are better than the best times with anyone else I’ve ever known…but the worst are the worst.” So, it’s not like I’m some innocent motherfucker. We both did drugs, mostly weed (except for her LSD trip revelation of familial molestation), until she eventually quit. We were going to have a son and she decided to get serious about all this health bullshit. I wanted to. Before and after she left me here in solitary exile, I had long stretches of sobriety. The one before we finally broke it off was the hardest. All I wanted was to hear anything back from her. I could see her checking her messages. “Just send me a picture of our child,” I thought. Tell me anything. One word from her could have stopped me from not caring again. When I don’t care, I’m a somewhat reckless and dangerous person. All I wanted was one word. I was sober, I was ready for resolution, good or bad. However, it was refused. Rest is a bit of a blur. Took a bunch of pills. Don’t remember much. Had a run in on acid in some small Mexican town. You just pay a fine here, it’s not too bad. Fucked some pussy. Good pussy, but it’s sort of empty. I’ve kind of come to the point where I think, “What’s the point of even having a bitch?” You can just go buy pussy or at least flirt with it for free. Real woman are seen to me, as I approach the age of 40, as a goddamn fucking headache. Also, if you spend any real time with these whores, as I did with Sam, they always come up in your mind, even if just for a second. Of course, they think about you, too, but it’s not the same. They laugh about how they stole your child, while you think about that time in London where the sunlight was shining just right on their hair when you snapped the photograph. Google Photos had the courtesy to remind you the other day. Then, you think why couldn’t a brick have fallen off and done its work on the bitch then and there. Women seem inherently more evil than men. It’s hard for me to one-hundred percent hate a former domestic partner. It seems a lot easier for them. The female mind seems to take particular joy in trying to humble their ex. If the ex refuses to be humbled, it only motivates them more. Plus, unless you lock these bitches out of everything (you should), they use every single piece of vulnerable information that you’ve ever given them, along with some fake shit on top, to ruin your life. Anyway, long story and that’s a bit of a teaser. I wrote it to tell you I ended up in Argentina making my own way by accident. There was supposed to be a team of motherfuckers making this work. The LSD down here is strong, but that’s not the answer. The answer is, “Trust No Bitch.” If you do have to trust one (you will), minimize all damage possible and leave as little on the record as possible. They’re by far the dirtier species. I’m now sober in one of the biggest party capitals in the world. The fucking Zionists are going to throw us into another war on behalf of Jewish interests. The US election doesn’t even matter. I’ve got about four civil cases in the US courts over silly shit. Kid stolen from me with no access or updates. Who even gives a shit anymore? Let’s just go out fighting. You know what I do have, though? This shitty fucking internet. I have 2024, which promises to be one of the most consequential years of my lifetime. That’s not a bullshit line, this time. It really will be. I’ve got Deathwatch back up off the deathbed and it’s rolling along nicely. I said to someone the other day, who was simping over some bitch who used to suck my dick: “Women are like Toyotas. They come out with a new model every year.” They’re not hard to find. They almost always aren’t special (but always think they are). Some, I assume, are good people, but stressing over some slut is the dumbest thing you can do in life. Which is why I don’t do it…much. You smashed the pussy. Nutted all inside it. Their biggest prize, they gave to you over and over again, with great enthusiasm. I let some bitch in an El Paso strip club suck my dick. I didn’t give you anything, other than some money spent on you, that you weren’t even worth. Whatever, I’m in Argentina.