When I came home a few days ago, my daughter pointed out this rather large brown praying mantis above our front door. He was actually quite the looker for a scary insect. As I studied him, his head would move and study me. He seemed to be amused by my presence. I pondered for a moment… Exactly how many of these have I seen in my lifetime? The answer is just a handful of times, and here in California, it seems they are even more elusive… But there he was. I decided he was some sort of sign, but for what I could not tell. I went into the house and he was forgotten…

Fast forward this morning. I went to bed at nearly 4am, and forgot to set my alarm. I had a deep and dreamless sleep, and when I awoke the sun was beaming through my curtains. I awoke with a start. More than a few thoughts went through my head at that moment.. Was I late? Did I miss my alarm? Where was my clock? And in that instant my eyes focused on something that seemed to be wavering just inches from my face… The Praying Mantis was on my pillow!!!!

I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was reactionary fear of course. Normally, I love these guys… I’m not afraid of them in the least. But right there on my pillow? ON MY PILLOW??? I sat next to him, and he gave me that look, the same one (I know how that sounds) and I knew it was the same one. I picked up my red pillow and I set him loose on my porch. He stayed perfectly still right in front of the door. I bent down to the ground and got a really good look at him. He was beautiful, a perfect little slice of life in this great little world we call earth.

I went about my day, decided to see if I could find some lore on Mr. Brown Mantis and discovered the following:

The praying mantis has a great deal of myth and lore associated with it.  Its name comes from the manner in which they hold up the forepart of the body, with its enormous front legs, as though in an attitude of prayer.

Martial art forms in China have adopted specific movements of the mantis into their practices. These movements help the student reconnect with their personal chi or energy.  The discovery of how energy moves through our body, what it is projecting and where energy blocks are located can be a great aid in healing ourselves.   Those with this totem would benefit from prayer, meditation and martial arts.

These amazing creatures serve the earth and her people in various ways. They consume large amounts of insects helping to maintain ecological balance. Excellent hunters with an efficient attack strategy the praying mantis always knows the right moment for attack and for retreat. Time in the linear sense is irrelevant to the mantis.  They move according to their inner instincts and remind us to do the same.  Moving effortlessly between worlds the mantis is associated with time travel. They help us break out of linear time and move according to our personal bio rhythms.

The praying mantis can remain motionless for an indefinite period. This ability helps them blend with their environment becoming invisible to predators. They hold the secrets of materialization and de-materialization and awaken this ability in people who hold this medicine.  Perception through stillness is part of its teaching.

Patient, perceptive and focused this little totem holds a powerful message. When it appears in your life it is asking you to direct your energy, your thoughts or your actions in a different way. Asking the following questions can give you the insight necessary to motivate appropriate changes.  Have I lost patience with a particular situation?  Have I been too patient, and if so, has this had a detrimental affect on me?  Is my perception correct regarding a situation?  Have I become narrow minded? Am I focused on my objective?

So… What do you make of this?

– Claude S.

The latest news from the Abox camp is that they have signed up to Ustrem.TV for doing live video feeds from the studio (and who knows where else). This team-up will also allow for the group to chat live with their fans as they stream video and audio…. Here is the link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/anything-box-live 

Bookmark this and have fun!

Como salido de una cápsula de tiempo, Nineteen es un álbum rescatado después de veinte años de creado, un regalo del pasado. Claude S., el lider de Anything Box, lanzó en el 2008 este trabajo personal, un recopilatorio de sonidos de finales de los ochentas bastante dulce y nostálgico, con sus sentimientos marcados en él. Las canciones fueron grabadas en un cassette en dos días, durante un fín de semana de 1987 o 1988, utilizando solo dos sintetizadores, un “drum machine” y la voz de Claude. La cinta había sido olvidada durante años hasta que el mismo Claude la encontró guardada en una vieja caja y volvió a escucharla. Fue en ese momento que decidió remasterizarla, digitalizarla y lanzarla a la luz después de veinte años de olvido junto a un pequeño libro en formato digital que él mismo diseñó llamado The Book of 19, treintaidós páginas llenas de recuerdos, dibujos, fotos, notas y poemas para acompañar el álbum. Como nota curiosa, entre las fotos incluídas en el libro, encontré una de Macchu Picchu y otra del Parque del Amor de Miraflores (ambas de Perú). Más que un álbum en sí, Nineteen es un mensaje personal, con ocho canciones del synth pop más puro y simple, fieles al sonido Abox. En la página web de Nineteen se puede escuchar el álbum en su totalidad.

From:

http://segmentoese.blogspot.com/2009/06/anything-box-nineteen-mayo-2008.html

The first step is to recognize that you are actually having a panic attack, which can really feel as if you are going to die. Your mind may be racing, you may have your thoughts out of control, or worse, feel that you are about to die. In order to stop the process, which is actually a result of improper breathing…

1. Recognize that you are having a panic attack. That’s all. Know it, believe this as a truth. And know with certainty, no one has died of a panic attack. This step goes a long way. Believe it.

2. Breathe in measured deep breadths. Do it slowly, counting as you go. Take your time inhaling, and take your time exhaling, just counting. Do this as slowly as you can, all the while focusing on nothing more than the numbers.

3. If you are hyperventilating, get a brown paper bag and breather into it until your breathing stabilizes long enough for you to repeat steps 1 and 2.

About the condition:

What Is A Panic Attack?

A panic attack is a condition of adrenaline being released into your bloodstream. A message of fear sends a signal to the adrenal glands that there is an emergency.

The adrenal glands are pea-sized organs that sit on top of your kidneys. They are filled with adrenaline that, when released into your body, gives you heightened abilities to respond to emergency situations. This emergency response causes physical symptoms that many people misinterpret as a heart attack or other serious physical conditions. Misinterpreting these symptoms can cause the fear response to continue.

Here’s How It Works

Adrenaline causes the heart to pump extra blood. This extra blood gets pumped into your major muscles to increase your ability to run fast and to increase the strength in your arms. Extra blood also goes into your brain to give you heightened abilities to respond to the emergency.

It takes three minutes from the time that your brain sends the emergency signal until your body is fully adrenalated with extra blood in your large arm and leg muscles and in your brain. In that three minute period you experience your heart pumping hard and extra blood flowing throughout your body. As long as your adrenal glands keep getting an emergency message, they continue to produce and release additional adrenaline. Once your brain stops signaling an emergency, your adrenal glands hold the adrenaline instead of releasing it.

It Only Takes Three Minutes To Stop A Panic Attack

It takes three minutes for your adrenal glands to fill your body with the adrenaline response. It also only takes three minutes for your body to stop the adrenaline reaction. If you stop a panic attack as soon as it starts, the reaction only has to last for three minutes.

You may wonder why I posted this. I was surprised to find out how many people were affected by this condition. Having suffered two accidents, I guess I just wanted to give a little bit.

I originally sat and wrote some of this down as a bio for the The Diary, which many people do not know is my alter musical ego. Some would correctly say the same thing only different, and they would be correct. Why I chose “Separate” as the album to reveal this bit of my past I will never know. But I’ am very happy it exists. I will tell the story here in more detail… But first… Why it is relevant…

Someone emailed me about this a few days ago, asking about my “drowning story”, based on my post about the afterlife. Does my experience prove there is one? Scientists will say no, spiritualists will say yes. Who really knows, right? Even I had doubts. In fact, death and the afterlife seem to be coming up quite a bit these days in conversations and blogs… Is it my Catholic upbringing (which I am free of now)? My bout with Atheism and science (which was a waste of spiritual time)? Or my rejection of all things Religious / Corporate (which I loathe)? I cannot tell you why it happened. Maybe because I’m older. Wiser to a degree, but maybe not. But it happened.

One day I sat up in the middle of the night and for no apparent reason I had a panic attack. The whole thing was absurd. I did not have nightmare, I did not have a “night terror”. It was just baseless fear, irrational even for someone like me. And I did not know what it was. But there I was, in a state where my brain and thoughts were rushing as if I was on the verge of dying, and it was the aftermath of thoughts which really got to me. These are some of them (paraphrasing):

What if there is nothing, and all thought stops and all there is is an infinite silence that never ends… But somehow I know that this silence is infinite and knowing this now freaks me out!

Who is going to go through my things and wonder if my life had a value? Who is going to keep my journals, my sounds, paintings? Is life useless then? To have written, painted, sung and recorded all that and not even feel a shimmer of this when I’m dead?

There is nothing. No energy field, no Soul of The World, no God? Nothing? How can there be nothingness? No!!!! This can’t be? What good is living for a silent end?

Ad nauseam. And these persist to this day, although somewhat less and less as time goes on. Exploring these things has given me insight, but the mystery of life still baffles me…

Any who… Here’s the drowning story… 

  “When I was 10 years old, my family and I went to a place in New Jersey known as Seven Lakes. As soon as I got out of the car, my cousins and I headed for the water. I jumped in from a diving board and went straight down, losing my air as I hit the water. I panicked, and began flaying in the water, knowing full well that I was drowning. That’s when reality faded to white…

As I lost consciousness, my life began to playback in my mind as a series of dream films, in a way that all space and time was distorted and infinite. I marveled at this even as I drowned, and when it seemed that no rescue was in sight, I gave up. I sunk to the depths of the lake, watching the sunlight above me through the water as I passed out. completely.

I found myself in a white room, bathed in white, with no obvious doors or windows, and I felt a strange warmth. I saw the bare outline of a door and noticed it had a handle. As I reached for it, I felt a sucking sensation and I was pulled back from death’s door. I had been rescued, and someone was pumping water out of my lungs. Needless to say, the family vacation was canceled.

The side-effect of that event was profound. Firstly, I had guitar lessons, which I’d hated and thus my guitar sat in a corner of the room, gathering dust. After the drowning, I picked it up and began to write. My pictures, mostly of space ships and war scenes began to shift into a more surreal take on things. I began reading more, painting more, feeling more. I matured quickly, and I am convinced to this day that drowning had everything to do with my creative outflow. And then…

At twelve or thirteen, my family went to the beach. I met a dark-skinned girl, very beautiful, building a sand castle there. I sat down next to her and we exchanged a few words. She asked me if I had ever kissed underwater. I said no. I was nervous. I knew what was coming next. ‘Do you want to try it?’ she asked. I nodded my head yes and we went into the ocean. As we kissed the drowning sensation (which manifested itself from the earlier trauma) was replaced by a feeling of profound peace and serenity, as well as excitement . Her lips were like a toxic candy that once tasted, would never be forgotten, and I will never forget that kiss. There have been others of course, memorable ones without a doubt, but that was my first and it was underwater. A secondary death, you could say. Years later I would still write about that kiss. I never saw her again by the way…

Around this time, I discovered 60’s stuff; The Beatles, Kinks, The Who, etc… Shortly thereafter, Punk, electronic stuff like Kraftwerk, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, and New Order. With all these experiences in tow, my fate was sealed when my father gambled away all our savings. My mother divorced him. Music and Art became my escape and my reel-to-reel my way of dealing with the pain. I became both an antenna and a transmitter of repressed emotions.

In other words, I became an artist.”

Claude S. / Anything Box / The Diary / ?

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the seminal book by George Orwell, society is oppressed, with Big Brother bearing down on all citizens. News and Politics are delivered as NewSpeak, and the thought police is always on the lookout for those who oppose the New World Order…

In many ways, 1984 was prophetic. Many people feel that this world, this seemingly impossible world of police states and loss of individuality that is represented in the book would never come to pass. Orwell made sure it was painted well. He designed a myriad of ways for the intelligent man or woman to catch this before it could begin. He gave us the clues to the future. But he forgot something. No. Worse, he could not have imagined it in his wildest dreams.

Orwell could never have imagined the ‘marketing’ of such a terrible thing as slavery. He lived in a world that was still proud of its heritage and strengths. His brethren and families close to him had been in a world war, facing yet another. How could they have known that in the future, Big Brother would not rule by force but with the unflinching complicity of its citizens? How could he know that Big Brother did not need to cast a dark look from the TV screen? Just give the people technology that enslaves them and sell it to them as a need. Let them enslave themselves. 

From the simplest of devices, one can find the subtle hints of this. Want to know where your friends are? Look them up on GPS of course! You can see exactly where they are going. Isn’t that just the coolest thing? Or how about this? If grandma or little Billie should get lost, we can use PLD (Personal Locating Device) or Digital Angel (now there’s a name) imbedded in their arm in the form of a tiny RFID chip to find them and bring them home? Isn’t that great? And we can stop terrorism in its tracks by having this little thing in all of us, to make it harder for the terrorists to attack Amerika. Isn’t that just swell? Don’t you want to sleep well, knowing that everything is under control?

No. Orwell could never have predicted that marketing something terrible could still result in sales. The numbers don’t lie. People like these contrivances of technology. They are only fed the things they want to hear: Friends, Flirt, Meet, Engage! But avoided are the words, Tracking, Papers, National Identification, Slavery or Human Rights. These things, these terms, are made to feel passe, old. GPS is cool!

What have we done? Where did this all go wrong? As I sit and write this, the G20 are saying that a global currency is at hand, and that these nations are in fact welcoming such a shift. After all, they argue, the world has become smaller. We need to lose a bit of sovereignty to become a global community. International co-operation to end this crisis will require all citizens to agree and adapt to this New World Order. The good will overshadow the bad.

But will it? I bet old George is wishing he’d been around to release 1984 2.0 right now. Hell, why not revise the book and call it 2009?

Here is something new / old…

This is from lost.cubit.net… I cannot believe this. Lost was the only show I didn’t watch on TV, waiting for each season to come out on DVD… And now Cornficker fucked lost!!!! WTF??? Read this and weep… Buaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

“In a bizarre series of events, not unlike many of the plot-lines in the veteran island mystery drama, LOST co-creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer, Damon Lindelof, has abruptly broken all ties with ABC and quit the show, just a few weeks before the hit series’ fifth season finale. The unexpected departure has left ABC executives and LOST producers scrambling to quiet concerns over the series future. Lindelof has largely been regarded as the driving force behind LOST, and the main source and inspiration for the shows overall direction. His premature exit has many industry insiders questioning whether or not the sci-fi pop-phenom will even return for it’s sixth and final season next year. More after the jump.

Reports from Hawaii indicate Lindelof went into a frustrated rage on the set early this morning after the Conficker Worm severely corrupted his laptop. Doogie Knarp, a miniature model builder working on the LOST set, reported hearing Lindelof scream at a cowering grip, “Don’t you get it? It’s gone! All of it! There is no backup! We got conf*ckered! I can’t take this anymore, it’s just like Y2K!” Doogie described what happened next as “unbelievable”. “He just snapped. He had this crazy look in his eyes. He took his laptop and threw it on the ground, then jumped in one of the prop-buses and repeatedly drove over the computer – back and forth. After that, he picked it up and threw it into the ocean. All the time, with this odd laugh and those eyes. Then, he just walked away, saying that he quit.”

Tan Leer, a local non-union seamstress, was sewing a patch onto a jumpsuit when she heard the commotion. “I was just finishing up the Dog Catcher uniform, when I heard all this yelling outside. At first, I thought it was Carlton and Damon arguing about another continuity error, but then I realized there was none of Carlton’s usual high-pitched crying – so I went to see what was going on.” Tan found Lindelof bashing a script supervisor repeatedly in the head with a rolled up screenplay, and immediately tried to pull him away. According to Tan, Lindelof shoved her back, and then turned his fury on her, “I was scared. He looked crazy, and I knew he had some Parker Jotters in his pocket. You could really hurt someone with one of those!” But instead of physically attacking her, Tan says Lindelof broke down and started to weep uncontrollably, “You don’t get it, do you? I lost everything. Season six, gone. Dark Towers, gone. All my notes for Star Trek XIII, gone. The scripts for my upcoming 12 issue miniseries Ultimate Gambit vs. Mole Man, gone. Nash Bridges – The Motion Picture screenplay, gone. It’s all gone, all of it. Years worth of work, gone. I’m finished!”

Two hours later, Lindelof allegedly called into a morning radio program on WFTW hosted by Chet Waller. “We were talking about the rumors, about Lindelof… you know, having fun – and all the sudden, he calls in”, Chet described the occurrence. Recordings of the program feature what appears to be a very subdued Lindelof making a brief statement about his actions earlier in the morning. “I just want to say, I’m sorry for what happened this morning. I lost my cool, and that isn’t acceptable. I’ve just been under a lot of pressure lately, not that that is any excuse. Now that I’ve had time to think about things, though, I realize this is all for the best. I just don’t need that kind of stress in my life. And, to be honest, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. I mean, Charlotte’s on the island five years before she is born. The runway was built for the plane to land on, but they didn’t know to build it until someone from the plane went back in time and told them. It’s all chicken and egg. We were just making it up as we went along, and I have no clue how we were going to reach a logical, rational ending next year. I think this whole Conficker thing just helped me realize I don’t need all this. Someone else can figure it out. I really just need to simplify my life right now.” When asked if he would be returning to LOST, Lindelof replied, “Never. Never, never, never. I left the island, and I’m never going back!”

LOST creator J.J. Abrams could not be reached for comment, and ABC has not released any official statement on the matter. The eleventh episode of the fifth season of LOST airs tonight, April 1st, on ABC at 9pm EST. The season finale is scheduled to air May 20th.

 

It’s actually very simple, and it comes down to one thing: YOUR EGO.
If you die and your ego still clings to this life on earth, you stay until you decide it’s time to move on. But it is a lonely existence. You cannot really communicate too well with the living, so it all will seem like a purgatory. Some will try and try and be noticed, but conversations in this state will be quite useless. You always have a choice. God never takes that away. Even in death. And for some, it may be that a few days or months is what they need to experience before they realize they are free.

Now the person who has ‘control’ of their ego but still abides by it will die and instantly want to ‘know’ everything, experience it all… Fly to ends of the universe, go right through a black hole, sit on God’s shoulder while he creates a new planet or life form that is millions of light years away and so different we would need six senses to describe. He or she will ride spaceships (unseen), fly to earth and catch up on how old their surviving friends look. They will see as many movies as they want, and lounge on the beaches of the planet of their choice… Like Mercury or Saturn. They will grow in size and see the earth as a pebble in the abyss, or be a particle and be everywhere at once… Time travel… And then…

Some will become bored.

So the fun part is then to erase all of one’s ego and come back, to experience creation again. Maybe here on earth, maybe elsewhere. If you were a man, you might want to try being a woman. If you were blond and blue-eyed, you might want to come back Asian. And you will do this because you will understand that time is infinite, so you give up nothing more than a hundred years or less of that infinity…

My father was not a creative person. He did not understand the arts, so we could not relate to each other. He was a normal practical man. No religion, no nonsense. We never saw eye to eye on anything. Then he died. A few days later I awoke to see his face hovering a few feet above my bed. I thought I was dreaming.. Just then he said, “This is so strange, but very cool. You will really love this and appreciate it! This is so you…” and he was off. I had never seen him that happy. Maybe it was my imagination. Nah. I saw him all right. Goodnight all!

Or you are just worm food. Even simpler, but not as much fun. Now I have to choose. No worm food.