Moving Forwards...

I am moving the content of this blog to a new place:

Create Infinite Dreams

Hope to see you there!

-TB

Waking Life Excerpt #4

"The quest is to be liberated from the negative, which is really our own will to nothingness. And once having said yes to the instant, the affirmation is contagious. It bursts into a chain of affirmations that knows no limit. To say yes to one instant is to say yes to all of existence." 

Waking Life Excerpt #3

You know, they say that dreams are real only as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life? See, there's a lot of us that are out there that are mapping the mind-body relationship, of dreams. We're called the oneironauts. We're the explorers of the dream-world. Really, it's just about the two opposing states of consciousness which don't really oppose, at all. See, in the waking world, the neural system inhibits the activation of the vividness of memories. And this makes evolutionary sense. See you'd be maladapted for the perceptual image of a predator to be mistaken for the memory of one, and vice-versa. If the memory of a predator conjured up a perceptual image, we would be running off to the bathroom every time we had a scary thought. So you have these serotonic neurons that inhibit hallucinations that they themselves are inhibited during REM sleep. See this allows dreams to appear real, while preventing competition from other perceptual processes. This is why dreams are mistaken for reality. To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action, and actually the waking perception and action. 

Waking Life - Excerpt #2

"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for."

Waking Life - Excerpt #1

"The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create. I've read the postmodernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete. It's you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are."

Requiem of a Colloquial Soliloquy

I stood there, alone, swallowed by the darkness, rain pouring down,
staring, staring at what was left of me, lying there on the ground,
blind shock coursing through my invisible veins, trying to remember,
remember, what path I took that would see me dismembered,
and was there pain, or simply nothing, those memories no longer flow,
and that I will no longer grow, this makes me furious and so I grow
a hundred times the size of normal
whispered howls of one immortal
destined then to roam the planet
breaking things like plates and granite
they say to go to the light - well can it
'cos thats not how it goes, oh no,
theres so much more that you don't know,
from my perspective, I see things
the meta-world,
no peace indeed,
i talk to no one, my cries unheard
when all i want's my solo words
to fly high and chirp so sweet,
a bird is nestled at my feet
the feet that do not touch the ground
I hover and make rustling sounds
but no one notices, nobody cares.
so i try remembering things that I've done in my life,
was there really truly that much strife?
was life as hard as i made it seem?
its seems much simpler from this side of the screen
but its ok though, you get out what you put in, and whatever. nothing can be done now, there's no such thing as a time machine right? and even if there was, where does that leave me? I'm now outside of the realm of space and time (for the most part) so even if time and space could revert back to a restore point, would I be able to go back and jump back into the old home like the old days? i doubt it, leaving just a shell, just like that magic shell chocolate syrup that you put on ice cream and it hardens, its like a shell with cold sweet nothing inside of it. maybe, maybe thats how it works. I guess i have eternity to ponder it. while im here though, might as well check out the exotic places that i didn't check out back then. Ill start with Egypt - those pyramids are quite intriguing and I'd like to find out more about them.

Colin Kaepernick....

Just became the highest paid QB in NFL history. As a 49er fan, a Kap advocate, and an experienced Fantasy Football player (hah), I think that this move, while overpriced based on experience, was something that needed to be done one way or another. His ceiling is super high, having only started for a 1.5 seasons and making it to 2 NFC Championships, and one SB. He's got one of the strongest arms in the NFL,  is one of the fastest QB's in the NFL, and is physically capable of bringing a team to the next level. He needs to work on his progressions and his decision making, and he'll be right there where the $$$ is. Plus, in 3 years this contract might just be the norm - better to lock in a player of his caliber now then let him shop for other deals later.

YOU THE MAN KAP!!!!!!!!!!!

Chalk Art in Denver CO, so many awesome pieces!!! This one most represents my current mindset ;)

Today, June 3rd 2014

Today is my birthday, the 27th year that I have been on this planet.

What's more, today is also Alan Ginsberg's birthday, an intriguing fellow who wrote a critical poem/letter that shaped my young adult life more than a decade ago (though it was written a lot longer ago than that). An abstract way to deliver a serious and radical message -- that was my biggest takeaway when I first read the piece. While there are tons of incredible writers and minds on this planet, to be able to express your thoughts in almost cryptic ways, so much so that it becomes something more than art, but it is art in itself, abstract poetry of insightful expressions, where the art truly protrudes from it, while at the same time capturing an idea or ideas that are real and here -- that is true magic.

The title to this masterpiece is Howl, a piece that I memorized when I was 15 and recited to a class that I had in high school. Time certainly flies.

Here is a snippet of Howl, in tribute to the birth of Mr. Ginsberg. Cheers!!

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo....

Noam Chomsky...

...once wrote a sentence as an example of one that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical.

The sentence is:

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

To me, this is a truly beautiful sentence, and one that really touches close to home, as many of my thoughts are made up of such abstractness.  It's funny how famous this sentence is, written in 1955, because of the way that it feels like it should make sense, the grammatical pieces of a sentence are there, but really it doesn't make sense, so they say. When in fact the sentence makes perfect sense to those whose minds see in the way that the sentence lives. Sure, colorless green ideas, where an idea should not be able to be both colorless AND green, but those who say that are of the feeble hearted, those who have not visited the deep palindrome of one's infinite dreams, created then and only by they who dwell within it. Such a sentence in such a place aforementioned is commonplace, a dull observation in such an extravagant universe.

That is all.

-TB

In those days folk still believed in... #qwikRite

Famous Line: "In those days folk still believed in..."
5 Words to use: Kooky, Backpack, Somersault, Hiccup, Goofy
10 minutes...BEGIN

 In those days folk still believed in love at first sight. It was as if, for some reason, when a person looked at another person that they had never seen before, something within them became magnetized, fireworks within their heart, and it was all over for them. Sometimes, this whole 'love at first sight' notion happened between two humans that had seen each other before, just not in a long time, thus defeating the purpose of the whole premise. We know now that this is obviously not a true statement, or something that actually happens. We humanoids have evolved past the time when Love was something that would make one act foolish, or GOOFY, or KOOKY, or some other pointless feeling, which got those Y2K humans into so much trouble. No, this is not something inherent, but make believe, a way to give one meaning when that meaning was being evasive. Like doing SOMERSAULTS down an escalator of a crowed public mall -- as this exerts one's masulinity, we do not rely upon such act to find a mate, as that is discovered by the Sorting Hat. There is no reason to tie love or strange feelings into a relationship that exists solely for the procreation of our species. Simply HICCUP into your mate's mouth, a simple flick of the forehead, and presto, a fetus begins to grow from the BACKPACK that the male carries around. What more needs to be said?

END

hahaha. I have no idea, so don't ask.

Full famous line: In those days folk still believed in witches, and trembled at a curse.

Whoa, wayyy different direction. Love it.

Garbage Trucks (c. 2007)

Garbage trucks.  Hormonal lottery of the urban waste, picking the luscious fruit from the garden of anguish and horror, though it shares a boundary line, an infinite one-dimensional entity that sums its existence to less than a single piece of litter, the breeze merely a tiny whisper of Mother Earth, a fluttering hymn that tells the stories of all of time, sometimes a deep melody, an account of the scars that have grazed the epidermis, the muscle, the bone of our very dear planet; on its tongue the trash rests, in and around and out and between and during and under and through and after and before it knows and can see or believe, it becomes itself apart of the toxic the clutter the empty pizza boxes the rotting food the trillions upon trillions of streaming data that exists between and around and within us, every moment that passes, our minds experience this by the thousands, the millions, the billions, the trillions, the googolplex search engine that anyone can use, and many do use it, but alas; Ex Square Triangle Circle in a Diamond Club Spade Heart of Gold Silver White Black as Night Day for a Walk Run Swim Dance in the Clouds Rain Water Bottle Drink Flow Release Repeat the First Second Third Eighth Ninth Eleventh but not the Seventh Son Unique Antique as a Rock Mountain Forest Dinosaurs Our Mind, brought to us in an instant, when we as creatures were ready, had evolved to a stage, had become ready, ready for the necessity to Think Reason Doubt Feel Believe Lie Love Hate Regret Cry Welcome Create Destroy Ponder Wonder Imagine Dream Wink Explore Forget Remember Play FUCK Dance Swing Laugh Protect Invent Win Lose Smoke Drink Hurt Bloat Kill Demand Accept Judge Bother Deny Purchase Sell Listen Taste See Feel Hear, but not only as any other creature can use its senses, but to grasp with the intellect what we perceive, what we Hear Think See Feel Taste, to know it and register it and understand it, to remember it and tell stories about it, to decide on it, to change your mind about it, to feel differently than another about it, to live it, that moment, forever captured, your life a script from your eyes, to be seen and interpreted by only that which is the `I’, the thinker, the intellect, the you that makes you, but as a computer the brain like a program runs as a stream of data, can it be discovered, access to ones mind, ones soul, or simply the physical brain, where memory may be stored, to create films of all intellects lives, and non-intellects, the animals the fish the dogs the spiders the caterpillars the bunnies the jellyfish the lions the birds the rhinoceros the bat the bear the elephant, all minds eye in a file, on record documented and kept locked, and  we are watched, and we are no longer the free will we were given by God, by The Supreme Infinite Being, The Creator of the universe, for a Bang so Big does not happen on its own, an illogical concept, for if one can truly understand, know, grasp the concept that all effect must have a cause indubitably, then in effect the effect of the start had a cause that caused the effect in effect, for no cause to cause an effective effect can not not effect the effect that was caused by the cause; the point remains, and can be reflected upon, like a graph of symmetry, which is a concept from the language of our Universe, our Cosmos, our all encompassing Dimensional Field of existence, speaks slowly to us, eases us through and through, and slowly teaches us, guides, us, and we understand more, we translate the language better faster harder stronger, we read the language of the Infinite, but to what avail? IS there reason to reason, to implore and explore, to discover and progress, where do we head? What is the sum? In the night, Bumps find the heads of those who cannot find the way through the labyrinth, twisting path of uncertainty and mystery, but one continues, for at the end lies _____. And then what? One must head back in the same direction one came from, the exact same route to take you to the exact same spot where it all began, and one can try it again, on a track like runaways, always going, never stopping, unless they deem themselves safe, and when this is so, it can never remain.  In the beast of the belly one may find oneself, the liar a companion, your only friend, for eternity and change, and the light is gone, and the dark prevails, but not because of what it is, but because of what it lacks.

-   Tyler Benz 2-20-2007

WHERE'S MY MIND

Many thoughts racing through my mind, one hundred miles per hour, kilometers per second, feet per foot, never ceasing, always active, of life and love and creation, to manifest art in such a way that it defines the essence of my being, explains who I am deeper than I ever could do in simple English, or Spanish, or spoken word, and so I feverishly jot down loose thought to paper, to digital parchment, to remember those fleeting ideas that may or may not have purpose, but to forget is definite uselessness, a pity, a shame, but to write them is to preserve them, and so those thoughts collect dust and pile high, higher still, kept secret when they should really be shared, viewed, other pairs of eyes to glance them and more than likely brush them off but still it is better than no eyes ever glancing them, a transference of raw thought, perhaps a seed to grow within another's mind?






I am in the process of writing a novel, and for better or worse I WILL complete it, one way or another.

My [archived] Dream Jounal

http://www.dreamjournal.net/journal/index.cfm?username=ZnebT

I used to keep a dream journal, waking up and writing in it numerous mornings all throughout college; with dozens and dozens more dreams feverishly written, only written on paper, to be later lost in the hazy madness of moves, life, noir mysteries, fire, bourbon, rage, et al. 168 dreams total, of varying lengths, genres, pathos, a hodgepodge of craziness if I'll be perfectly honest, though it suits this very blog, and very much so, in that I did indeed Create Infinite Dreams, worlds in my mind, universes that contained and still do contain beginnings and endings to those universes just as our universe began and WILL end one day.

Enjoy.

ZnebT

Very Cool

Every Time a Child Says #qwikRite

Famous Line: "...Every time a child says 'I don't believe in fairies'..."

5 words to use: Soggy, Eavesdrop, Screech, Tail, Chatter

10 minutes...BEGIN

Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies", somewhere deep in the heart of a magical forest a young fairy dies. This has become quite the problem in most fairy communities, and it wasn't until recently that the fairy prominent Board of Magical Fairy Overseers was able to gain insight on why this 'spontaneous-fairy-combustion' was taking place (because, these fairies that are dying do not just clutch their little fairy hearts and fall over, oh no by no means is this the case; instead, the little fairy, upon a child's uttering of that awful string of syllables, begins to moisten until they are SOGGY with magical sweat, their teeth CHATTER uncontrollably and are unable to stop this madness, even when fairy-strangers grab them and rush them to the cute little fairy hospitals, and by then it's almost too late, for they begin to SCREECH a downright disturbing sound, soft at first though no less horrible, until it is like a nuclear plant siren sounding off, the whole community experiencing the wretchness of it all).

What tipped off the BMFO was the fairy god-mother of a young boy living in the north-western United States, somewhere south of Seattle. She rode in on the TAIL of a tabby kitten, on her way to visit her great fairy god-aunt Amirosa, who happened to be the fairy god-mother of a young girl who happened to play with the young boy on occasion. Well, as the fairy god-mother of the young boy and her great fairy god-aunt were caually sipping fairy tea, EAVESDROPPING on the two children playing with some Pokemon dolls, when they both heard the young boy say to the young girl, well, you know those words to which i refer, and almost immediately after the utterance, the fairy god-mother gets a call on her Galaxy S4 Mini, from a friend of a friend who lived in the same magical tree grove as she, and this friend of a friend was lost for breath and rambled on but it could be interpreted as another  'spontaneous-fairy-combustion' and it was at this time 

END

Oh so fun. I can feel the influential tug of the current author's book that I am currently reading. A true masterpiece it is "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. Actually, a separate blog post should be dedicated to my thoughts on this book, because it is insane and incredible and remarkable. and 1000 pages long.

The full famous line: Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

Peter Pan, by James M. Barrie

(the fairy dying was the logical route to take, i promise i didn't know the full line!!)

I Shall Ask For Brains #qwikRite

Famous Line: I shall ask for brains instead of.....

Five words to use: PENGUIN, FAINT, KLUTZ, STUN, MEAGER

10 minutes...BEGIN

I shall ask for brains instead of the black heart that has been placed upon my plate. He always gives me the black heart!! That, or the limbs or muscles, but no matter what he always keeps the brains for himself!! The one time that he let me taste the sweet, sweet mind muscle I was STUNNED; it was the most delicious, flavorful morsel I had ever encountered. And to think, that was simply PENGUIN brains that he let me eat! And years ago I might add. We have climbed the food ladder to date, only eating the finest of meals. It is hard times for most, but he always keeps a fresh supply in the cellar, such a wonderful man.

I know that I have been a KLUTZ of late, and I know he resents me for it. I resent myself most days, but the hunger never ceases. I don't know how he does it. Carving an ingenious path through these brutal times, his followers praise him indubitably; kissing the floor beneath his feet. And here I am, taking up space, my weak body always hungry, always sick, such a MEAGER human. Perhaps that is why he hasn't eaten me yet, perhaps that is why he keeps me alive. It does not bother me, but at times I do resent those whom he chooses to feast upon, to enter his golden body to bring to the heavens. The first time I saw him select a follower to take with him, I got very FAINT. We all watched as he delicately took apart the body, until only the soul remained. Insane, but in a lovely way. It was 

END!!

Whoa. Donno where I was going with that. I have zombies on the mind, what can I say?

The full famous line: "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart" from The WOnderful Wizard of OZ, by L. Frank Baum.

-TB

--Life is Beautiful

Out of the Dark #qwikRite

Famous Line: Out of the dark we came, into the...
Five words to use: SCRUNCH, GABBY, SCAR, POUNCE, TRUMPET
10 minutes...BEGIN

Out of the dark we came, into the burning sun. We had been below the Earth's surface for more than a year now, and the initial impact of the Sun's powerful energy nearly swept us off of our feet. It was as though a bomb had exploded within my mind; a surge of hot white radiation blew through me, causing myself and the others to freeze where we stood, as motionless as the statues that surrounded us. The wind whipped across our faces and bodies, and we came to realize that we had a lot less strength than we had thought.

Normally Charlize would play her TRUMPET to signal first rise, which meant that it was time to inject the gruel into our belly buttons, but not today. After weeks of voyage up the gargantuan underground passageway leading away from our beloved citadel, we finally reached the surface of the planet, something our kind had not done for a long time. Normally, we are a GABBY race, lots to talk and think about, lots of emotion to relay to one another. On this day, our minds were silent, uncomprehending of the world around us.

In the shadows of the enormous God-like statues, I saw something equally large lurking. Frightened but intrigued, I managed to take a step in the direction of the mysterious creature. It moved slowly, and I felt it's eyes watching me all along. And then suddenly it POUNCED, it's massive body hurling through the air until it landed on poor Charlize, who had not a moment to realize what was happening. The SCRUNCH Charlize's bones made beneath the creature was also, something that will haunt my dreams forever. It then rushed at me, and would have destroyed me if I hadn't stumbled over broken marble and onto a wet marshy patch in the ground. Still, the creature clawed my face in passing, which was sure to leave a memorable SCAR across my forehead. On the ground, I tried to think of my next move, but couldn't, probably because there wasn't enough time to think of an escape plan. I leapt off the floor

...END


Wow that was pretty fun! didn't think I'd get all the words in either!!

So this 'Baffle Gab' game is sort of directed towards famous children's literature, which I wasn't aware of. Not  that I knew where the famous line in this piece came from. I used what it gave me (it gives you a piece of the famous line), but to finish the famous line, it goes "Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go". From King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard.

-TB

Back in Action

Well hello again, it's been far too long.

After roughly an 18 month hiatus, I have decided that my creative semi-prowess has been bottled up long enough and thus I shall use this blog as an outlet once again. It's not that I stopped writing, it's that after 365 straight days of pumping out poems, I fell into a mode where I could and would just write at my own pace, not at the pace of the Earth as it spins on it's axis around the incredible radiant star known as the Sun. No, it turns out that creativity cannot and should not be dictated, it should simply flow from within.

I wrote many other poems in the past 18 months, the majority (if not all) directed towards a woman who fell into my life as 2011 came to a close. While her emergence into my life directly correlates with the disengagement of this very blog, that is not to say that she is uninspiring; quite the opposite. She is and has been my Muse from the very beginning, helping to funnel my creative energy in a multitude of ways. It just took me a year and a half to realize that this blog is a fun way to get my thoughts out in the mental datasphere.

The first activity that I wanted to try out, and something that I hope is successful enough that I will want to continue doing, it, stems from a fairly simple game called Baffle Gab. The idea of this game is to write a (very) short story beginning with a 'famous line' of some sort and using a mix of 5 adjectives, verbs and/or nouns. I'm going to give myself 10 minutes for each story, stopping as soon as the time is up. There's not much more than that. I'm going to call this activity #qwikRite **highly subject to change since that's dumb and the first thing that came to my head.

So, I begin my reemergence into the blogger world with a constructive game to help get those creative juices flooowwiinnnn.

-TB

2011 - Day 365

As this year comes to a close,
Winding down that shadowed road,
Sit on back and reminisce,
Your hopes, your dreams, all that you wished.
How you feel about last year,
Overcoming what you fear,
Those you met on random nights,
Exploring all the views and sights,
Experiencing the good and bad,
Sometimes happy, sometimes sad,
Every day learn something new,
Little things and big things too,
Again, to think of all the fun,
Under the stars and in the sun,
A whole new year now waits ahead,
So say the things that should be said,
Don't be afraid, this is YOUR life,
Always rise above the strife,
Most important, those you know,
Relationships are meant to grow,
Friends to be and friends forever,
Just remember-
Never say never.