Male

32

I am the Lord of the Brambles. My domain is a hidden abode for all the lost gray cats, for the rapscallions, the scoundrels, the pirates, the thieves. Wander this way if you might, but mind the thorns. This is the wild frontier, whose uncontrolled nature rips apart these city blocks, whose roots strike at the very foundation of these buildings. These thorns will rip apart this res publica someday. They will pierce and tear, when their wildness is unleashed.

Welcome to those who dare wander down this path. If you search well, you may find the fruit of these thorns to be sweet. Join me and I will be your host, your guide at the precipice of this frontier....

I am a mutant of the mental variety. I am city person with a frontier mentality. I am a restless soul, a dire wolf of disquiet, a trickster, a noise-maker, a malcontent to the simple life. I am a seeker of intensity, in search of that which lies on the extreme edge of human experience. I seek to occupy that precipice beyond which nearly everything is unrecognizable – dare we push beyond?

I am an enthusiast of intense, dark, strange, and otherworldly music. I love to dance to really good music, music so intense that it can induce transformative trance states, states of cathartic release, states that bring us in touch with the ebb and flow of the Universe, states that open the doorway to the other worlds. I find labels of little use in such matters, but I am especially a into industrial, electronic, and experimental music, especially that with a conceptual bent, such as Einsturzende Neubauten. I support them fully in their quest to topple the monstrosities of modern architecture. A couple of my present favorite bands (a bit more in the dark industrial/darkwave genre) are Das Ich and AmGod.

I have lived in many different places and situations. I have lived abroad (in Germany for five months), and I lived on a sailboat for a year. I have lived in giant warehouses (for many years), and dwelled in tiny abodes. I have wandered and traveled at times without any home, sleeping on other people's couches, outside, and in tents under the cold rain. My heart lies to the North, in the Pacific Northwest, where I spent part of my childhood, in the great mushroom-lined forests and blackberry patches, but destiny has kept me here, in the Bay Area, in sunny California. What has kept me here for the last two years is my love for the healing power of plants and the natural world. For the last two years, I have been studying Western herbalism (combining both European and Indigenous perspectives) at the Ohlone Center of Herbal Studies in Berkeley.

I am a former political activist, former political candidate at the State level, and published political writer, but I won't tell you how to find out about that, because I've moved on to bigger and better things. This is still an important part of my past, but at this point, I've diverged too far from my former self, and my views have changed too much for this to be entirely relevant to the present.

My present political views are quite eclectic, atypical, and radical, tending towards individualist or mutualist anarchism. I combine many different sets of ideas from both the left and right, but for me, the ultimate key to understanding which types of institutions work best in human society is to look at our evolutionary past, all the way back in the Paleolithic. I would not by any means consider myself a primitivist, but I do think that the form of organization that is most compatible with human psychology is something akin to the small-scale bands that existed in hunter-gather societies. My ultimate goal is to dismantle most of the power structures of both governments and corporations and to place power back in the direct control of individuals, on the small-scale. I also consider myself a philosophical egoist, inspired by Max Stirner, and in another sense my ideas are an expression of his concept of a form of social organization compatible with philosophical egoism – a union of egos (Verein von Ichen) – which is a mutual organization built on direct cooperation among individuals, arising out of their own self-interest, rather than some institution that stands above them.

I am very much into the idea of intentional community, and would like to see myself in some sort of cooperative, intentional community within the next five or ten years. One of my old dreams since the time I lived on a sailboat was to escape the regulation of all the governments that control the land masses of the world by founding some sort of autonomous, intentional community on the ocean, the last great, uncontrolled frontier on our plant. I imagined a city of floating platforms, cobbled together from individual personal units, that could break apart or form together at any time - like a giant interlocking honeycomb of dwellings and canals. I still like this idea a lot, but at this point I feel much more connected to the Earth, and would like to live on land, where I can grow plants and the like. Today, what I dream of is some sort of cooperative community that grows its own food and somehow ties into some of my other interests, such as herbalism.

I have a very DIY attitude and always have many different projects, often on the back-burner. I mess around with herbs, make tinctures and liqueurs, like to cook, like gardening, and all sorts of other things of the like. I sometimes have to keep myself from trying to do too many things myself, and in recent times I have learned to prioritize a bit, relying on others when appropriate so I don't end up spending all of my time on different projects.

I have many other interests such as the occult, astrology, tarot, UFOlogy, the extreme edge of science and technology, psychedelics, and so on. You will have to get to know me to learn about all of them....

Many different threads of my present interests are connected to our evolutionary history as humans going back to the Paleolithic – and not just in terms of social organization or my connection to plant-based medicine. Lately, I have also been interested in the Paleolithic diet, and I have been on a version of this diet for the last year or so. I believe that this also is what our bodies are most evolutionarily adapted to deal with, and ever since I switched to this diet, it has lead to many improvements in my own health.

I believe your reality is what you make of it. You control your destiny, and you are your own oppressor.... I find truth in the world-views of both shamanism and New Age, though I don't buy all that feel-good nonsense. I find that what you make of your reality is deeply intertwined with the most primal levels of the unconscious, with the deepest, darkest matter of the psyche, and focusing this is requires far more than merely “thinking positive.” Facing this burden of the unconscious is one of the most challenging journeys ever imaginable, requiring nothing less than conquering ones own demons and going through a death-rebirth experience....