escape into flowers

Escape is perhaps the wrong word. There is no escape. Flowers is nicer. Flowers evoke calm and serene waves. Balance a wrong word with a nice word, a bad dream with a pleasant dream for new meaning, which eludes definition. During a nightmare, Lohbado realized it was just a dream. To escape thugs who pursued him in a dream, Lohbado dreamed his way into a lush garden, where he found many lotus flowers.

skeleton man

  Time lapse, the stages of life, flowed through Lohbado’s mind. He saw, in the blink of an eye, himself as a boy, as adolescent, as adult and suddenly middle-aged man, pushing sixty. Lohbado laughed at how one minute he was young and in the next, old.

bardo zombie

The above zombie mutate escaped from the science laboratory of Lumpkins University, after repeated electronic attempts to replicate the human brain and implant it into a corpse. The corpse came to life, jumped off the table and ran away before the operation was finished.

metro stop announcer's voice

“I’m a total nerd. I wake up in the morning to continue where I left off the day before. There’s no point even mentioning it, other than than to make a point of no point,” said Blair, a thirty-five year old office worker, under his breath, as he hurried to the metro.

Compost Guardian

Compost guardian is concerned about the state of the environment. His or her job is to remind people to not sell the future for short term wealth. Don't put pristine wilderness at risk. If one loses respect for the earth and denies the consequences of climate change, I don't want to be around to see what happens. This sounds like platitudes, until you consider it in the current context, when to speak about climate change and to protest against destructive exploitation of natural resources is to be considered a radical thinker. In the current context, it's normal to support the extraction of resources and to be good humoured while some people make a lot of money, while funding for cultural projects and social safety is cut. As Canada plans to become an energy superpower, it's a paradox to talk about cutting programs and destroying those things that increase quality of life.

Lohbado Writes a Book

Lohbado decided to write the story of his life. He grabbed a popular novel off the shelf and tried to write like a pro. He knew he would never be able to compete with the opening line of Chapter 6 in Jim Thompson's novel, Heed the Thunder: "Winter fell like a harlot upon the valley. One day there was only the musty odor of her ... the next she lay sprawled across the land ..." (page 53, Black Lizard Edition, 1994). His favourite spring line was from Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse: "The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on the fields wide-eyed and watchful... " (page 198, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955). Lohbado closed the book and wrote:

ego

Hank got Lohbado temporary work in the Silver Tower, a fifty-story building in city centre. Lohbado’s job was to edit a few thousand photos and to upload them to a government database. He processed files in batch automation. Add a little vibrance and sharpness. He had to sort through a lot of files, according to a set of instructions. It was top secret. The people in the photos had identification numbers. He wasn’t supposed to know who they were. 

The ones in beige were the OOO. The ones in olive green were the Yee. The OOO and the Yee were mortal enemies, with conflicting political ideologies and religious beliefs. You get my drift? Same old story you can read about every day in the news. Strong emotion and rigid ideas ruled the day, no compromise.

The OOO believed in the power of circularity, the circle, wheel or cycle. The Yee believed in wavelength trajectory, EEE, sound vibration, infinite sequence. Y reached out with two arms to receive cosmic energy. The trunk of Y is rooted in the ground. Outstretched arms of the Y vibrate to the E-tune of the cosmos Yeeeeee.

The OOO took a more holy approach. Each O was a hole in the moment, a portal from here to there, leading along a circular corridor from there to here. You would think the OOO and the Yee could work together, the OOO spinning like wheels of a motor vehicle along the Yee highway to eternity. So what’s the problem?

The problem lies in the mind, or rather, in the ego. Ego involves a template of desire, belief, opinion, hope, fear, aggression and ignorance. Ego is by definition a dualistic, limiting factor, me you, us them, for us or against us, yes no, agree disagree. Ego abhors difference or disagreement. Ego wants to rule. To ensure a safe nest, ego creates an enemy to hunt down and punish. Ego likes a scapegoat, someone to sacrifice on the altar of fear, someone to blame, or even hate. Blame someone for all the discomforts of the human condition. Ego operates under the illusion that everything could be fine, if everyone would cooperate, agree and behave in a way that I feel is best for everyone.

Ego is doomed to conflict and bewilderment. So that’s the story, the frustration and disappointment of ego pursuing the way of the world at Vanity Fair. Of course, ego is not the whole story. To see the limitation of ego could open up a whole new ballgame. One could get over ego and see it for what it is, but that’s another story.