So, while I really wanted to give an accurate and detailed account in my book, I’m finding that my current struggle is over the issue of privacy; both personal and that of others.

For example, some of you may know that I believe in and exercise the right to smoke ganja, despite whatever legal reprocussions I’ve encountered in the past. Publishing my use of weed as a creative tool or herbal medicine is something I would like to do, but feel apprehensive about for a few reasons. The first being that it is illegal. The second being that my family may be reading my book, and the last is it’s not exactly information I disclose readily or immediately upon introducing myself.
My argument for it is that it really kind of is just part of who I am and how I choose to enhance my physical and analytical senses. It allows me to lose myself into my surroundings and become more aware of its contents.

http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/015.html

12:42 – After watching Lauren’s slideshow from an outside perspective, the story in the pictures, the direction, I’m truly amazed by the creativity.

12:46 – The slide show repeats as I search for the link to post it somewhere, and I watch it one more time. Then it hits me. Some of this is my story. Some of this I saw. Some of this I was a part of and a lot of those people, I know! And, the tears come.

The new system would operate under the USD, since it’s failing anyway, under a digital construct based on individual basis. The credit system would be backed by things of pre-existing value, by X amount of Degree. This way, value is established by the length of the digital trail from transaction to transaction.

In lamer terms, lets pretend I want to sell you a guitar. This system has been around for a bit, and you have 500 credits just sitting around. Some of these are backed; Meaning, lets say, 400 of those credits you earned from various other sources; a value can be traced back by a series of transactions so its established that those 400 credits are legitimately worth 400 credits. Several sources backed that.

Okay, you’re a musician, you make music online and sell it to people online for credits. But these are kids who aren’t part of the system yet, but they’re thinking it’s a good idea, so they buy your album for 10 credits, out of no where. These credits aren’t really backed, but you take them anyway because hey, they’ll just sit at the back of the bank and maybe some day they’ll mature, and it’s better than totally giving away my music for free.

I want to sell my guitar for 415 credits, but I know that I’ll be getting 15 credits from you that aren’t backed. Because you’re my good friend and I know you busted your old guitar last week while we were jamming out, I’ll sell you my guitar for 415 credits and call it even. But if I know half of those are going to be empty credits, I might not want to make the deal with you. Because, then my ratio of backed to unbacked credits will go up in favor of unbacked, thereby lowering my over all “rating”.

In this sense, you are required to make an informed decision of your investments at the exact moment of purchase depending on the status of another person. This would operate partially under a digital medium that profiles the person based on their backed vs. empty points, their occupation, status, etc, to determine if their unbacked points will mature in time to benefit you.

So, if I decide to take all those unbacked points anyway, knowing you’re a pretty good musician and you’re starting to get pretty well recognized by the art community, I’m thinking, what the heck, maybe they’ll be good soon. Turns out, six months later, you sold a bunch of albums and those unbacked points then get tied to the kid who bought the music with unbacked points that was given to you, and then to me for the guitar. We could trace back to where the kid got his points backed, but that’s the simple version.

Make sense? Should I go on?

I’m having very stressful deep thoughts about this weight I all of the sudden dropped on my own shoulders. Impending student loan payments, meaning this very fine November I have to start repaying my private loans, and shortly there after in the lovely month of December start paying my federal loans. Alright. No big deal, I knew I had loans, I knew I had to repay them, I knew I had six months. Oh! There it is, the slip, the catch, the glitch! Six months? But, November, that’s, well by gosh that’s next month!

Deep breath. Turns out after I opened some mail last night I discovered that my payments are a lot sooner than I anticipated because I assumed I had six months from the time of my declared “Withdrawn” status.

In this fine situation that we’re currently in that can best be described as the calm before the storm, I have no idea what to make of all of this and its relation to me. To the lovely banks of America, and coincidentally, Bank Of America Ô , Six months ago started in May, when I was last taking classes at the University of Connecticut. As I call the offices with my big long epic story as to why I’m not going to school anymore, basically, my novel in a phone call. (haha)

As an automated woman answers my call with the same tone she’s repeated to hundreds of thousands of other phone calls, I have to enter all sorts of numbers and birth dates and zip codes and I realize to them I’m just a bunch of numbers, a serial code, a product needing to mature, and investment waiting to be backed.

My mind drifts to a scene of me, and 50,000 people, at least, ahead of me, stretched across a barren round earth with the light looms brightly just slightly at the edge, to where I’m oriented in going. In my hand is a long thin strip of paper, with a multi-digit number splayed across its surface in black ink. What am I waiting in line for? What’s at the top and who has that?

The real shock comes when I’m finally directed to go to “the AES website at www.thisquestionis.moreeasily/answered.here” or, “wait on the line for a very extended period of time because there are thousands of other people calling with the same exact story as you that they just decided to drop out right before school started too, tough shit”.

Considering the beauty of speaker phone, I put the phone down and logged on to the website, just to humor them. I took the deferment eligibility quiz, (after spending ten minutes signing up for yet another account with yet another password with yet another 5 security questions to remember the next time I need these people and forget) very quickly getting a feel for my status when, on the first question,

I can’t even check one of the possible options. Now, to humor myself, I finish taking the quiz anyway, hoping 1 out of 5 each time was pretty good. It wasn’t. Instantly, through a series of electrical impulses and computer generated programs based on a series of seven arbitrary questions related to status and not profile only, I was declined, ever so politely with a red X. Denied, Next.

And I realized that’s the issue with our credibility system. There’s a vast amount of generalized profiling going on in order to credit or discredit someone for their needs upon one another. On a vast scale, at the company level, in the case of these banks when it comes to loans, (really any kind of large scale management, centralized management, etc.) the only way the people at the bottom get a chance is if they fit a certain, narrowed level of selection while the rest of their customers have to find some other way to come up with the means they don’t have either. Unfortunately in this economy, it’s not just the disabled or the military that can’t pay their debts. It’s a vast amount of middle class, small business, majority America that pay for anything, because the network of wealth that sustained that genre of people in the past has now been sucked up by huge corporations amongst a small, by comparison, ensemble of men.

The Velvet Underground

Your first time to Burning Man there’s this great ceremony of the ringing of the bell. Before I got out there, I was warned by the Burners of our group that I should be prepared to hit the Virgin Bell, or roll around in the dust. In my mind, either of the two options were equally exciting to me, and I intended to do either with the utmost pride and vigor.

Now, looking back, I understand what it really means to enter the world of Black Rock City as a virgin, a first timer, a novice, an innocent child. Out of everyone in the group, I feel like I was the biggest virgin of them all, not because I was without knowledge, understanding, compassion, and wisdom, but because I am void of true experience.

It was my first solo trip. It was my first leap outside of the normal excepted lifestyle. It was my first with truly focused and brilliant artists, all trying to capture and produce. It was my first introspective look that I was able to capture and want to create from. It was the first time where I felt my existence occurred as a result of the current troubled state of the world.

I talked to Mike the other night on the phone, and this wonderful talented mind told me I had a beautiful piece of film. I can recall the piece perfectly; I was in Camp Heaven, hardly feeling bliss. In a moment of true vulnerability, I have captured myself on camera feeling disconnected, alienated, and out of place. At the time I felt like the only one, but Mike says to me, “its like wow. Is this really what people go through in Burning Man? And its like, wow, well yeah. But then you get over it and you adjust along the way.”

It comes in waves.

To fully explain my state of mind currently would take decades, but to give the shortened version, at this moment I am completly inspired and hopeful. Ideas of an internet currency and sustainable network community existing excites me beyond all adventures. This is the Neo in the Matrix, the Superman in the city, the turn around to a New World Order.

To really put you in my mind, here are two conversations of the evening:
SiorraidhSeirc: so, what I’m saying is, if you’re serious about the keene, film degree thing
SiorraidhSeirc: start early. make a film now that you’re proud of and something that means something to you
ddisastertourism: yeah
SiorraidhSeirc: because if you do then making films will mean something to you, because your professors Will notice.
SiorraidhSeirc: they’ll know art when they see it, and you’ve got the vision
ddisastertourism: yeah, I know, I just have to have an idea for the final film already
ddisastertourism: but I think i have one, I have to talk to them about it though
SiorraidhSeirc: what is it? if I can ask
ddisastertourism: im not gonna say much, but its has to do with Alan’s Pychedelic Breakfast by Pink Floyd
ddisastertourism: and no, its not going to be literally about a pyschedelic breakfast
ddisastertourism: haha
ddisastertourism: its not going to be quick cuts of bong hits and dialated pupils
ddisastertourism: im questioning whether or not theyll let me because it has like talking in it
SiorraidhSeirc: to make it simple, yet expanded, this is the deal
SiorraidhSeirc: you have your camera, you have your knowledge of film, you have your software.
SiorraidhSeirc: you have your specifications, 5 minutes, thats all
SiorraidhSeirc: what would you produce for five minutes that you really felt was something you wanted to create?
SiorraidhSeirc: if you feel its a powerful work and goes against the rules a bit, by all means
SiorraidhSeirc: because, what you’re really doing is bending a rule
SiorraidhSeirc: its not really dialogue, and you know it.
SiorraidhSeirc: dialogue is a really literal way of translating a scene
ddisastertourism: i know it isnt dialogue
SiorraidhSeirc: well, then just explain that to them in the initial write up etc
ddisastertourism: like, he almost didnt let me leave class thursday until I came up with an idea
ddisastertourism: yeah, I know, thats what im going to do
ddisastertourism: everyone else had an idea
SiorraidhSeirc: it takes a process
ddisastertourism: i actually dont think so
ddisastertourism: it just comes to me
SiorraidhSeirc: you notice a pattern, you get a fleating vision, and then all of the sudden something makes sense and you just want to produce something that expresses that urge
SiorraidhSeirc: well, yeah, it seems to come from no where.
ddisastertourism: yeah
SiorraidhSeirc: think it comes from no where?
ddisastertourism: yes and no
ddisastertourism: sometimes I think it comes out of nowhere, like genuinely straight up nowhere
SiorraidhSeirc: the optomistic and spiritual side of me really likes to think I’m channeling something I can’t understand
ddisastertourism: why?
ddisastertourism: what makes you think youre channeling something you cant understand?
SiorraidhSeirc: well, not that I can’t understand
SiorraidhSeirc: but, we’re all the same, in actuality
SiorraidhSeirc: we percieve a world, based on our perspective and our perception.
ddisastertourism: mhm, in your opinion
SiorraidhSeirc: yes, absolutely
SiorraidhSeirc: I can only speak from my own experience
SiorraidhSeirc: but, to me, it makes sense because think of a sunny day
SiorraidhSeirc: from our perspective, it is sunny. from our perception, it make be a good or bad day depending on how we react or respond to what we think about and encounter that day
ddisastertourism: haha yes I know this Jamie
SiorraidhSeirc: so, ever person or think in existence that can percieve its reality is seeing something different
SiorraidhSeirc: well you’re the one that said “to you.”
ddisastertourism: well I understand it as a theory or whatever
SiorraidhSeirc: so, I’m just telling you how I see it. how am I supposed to know this makes sense to you too?
ddisastertourism: well…I just told you
ddisastertourism: haha
SiorraidhSeirc: haha well yes, moving on then.
SiorraidhSeirc: so, if you think about that concept in a bigger sense, how awesome is that? like, if there is one, existing force, one consciousness
SiorraidhSeirc: and its only purpose is to create, manifest, transform, than what better what to do so through a creation that can realize itself?
ddisastertourism: yeah, i suppose it’d be pretty awesome
ddisastertourism: i.e. a human
SiorraidhSeirc: like, to look at things and people and ideas and art and music and realize, I am creating this because it is my job to create, that would be so rewarding.
ddisastertourism: i see it differently though
ddisastertourism: like
ddisastertourism: I like music far more than I will ever like film
ddisastertourism: like, by a landslide
ddisastertourism: but if I was a “music major” or anything like that, it would take something that I really enjoy and love and turn it into a stress-omitting bag of stress that film is for me
ddisastertourism: so I guess to reiterate some old saying, “dont mix work with pleasure”
SiorraidhSeirc: I absolutely understand
SiorraidhSeirc: today Roger’s father was like, I took 4 years off from my job to do photography
SiorraidhSeirc: and decided I loved it too much to make a career out of it
SiorraidhSeirc: the great thing is, you can mix the two

 
SiorraidhSeirc: the girl I was supposed to room with, a true jem in the realm of friends, had a birthday party last night. however, because of various reasons, went our separate ways
SiorraidhSeirc: but, despite the riff, I went to the party and had a great time and pitched your idea/ my intepretation of your idea to  some really great, really smart people, one an economic major, another a musician I believe, etc, and they were confused but followed it and liked it.
SiorraidhSeirc: then today I talked to Roger and Tarynn about it and they are both on board. Roger has some counter points we’ll have to discuss, but for the most part I made it make sense for them in a way that really worked
SiorraidhSeirc: my main point was we’re all artists that, well, we really just want to create, eat well, and have a place to live. Which, basically, are the three basic elements of survival for human beings. Shelter, food, and the ability to channel and create.
foureyedmonsters: haha, great!
SiorraidhSeirc: and tonight I was at a party. Arin, there were 9 people there, average college students.
SiorraidhSeirc: a freshman knew about four eyed monsters and knew about burning man, and she was amazing. and my friend chuck from last year, I told him about our idea and it makes sense to him to
SiorraidhSeirc: so… why can’t we brainstorm and find a way to start this?
SiorraidhSeirc: honestly.
SiorraidhSeirc: it sounds crazy and too simple, but occams razor, the simpliest explaination is the best. The real crazy idea is that we exist in the state we do right now where the main goal is to acheieve all the money
SiorraidhSeirc: but why do we want all of the money? because we want all of the stuff.
SiorraidhSeirc: but what if all of the stuff was immediately and instantly available via our credit transit sharing bartering all in the name of creation nation?
foureyedmonsters: Yes, well this morning the first presentation of the day was by Todd dagres and he said he thought that filmmakers could share resources and wanted to invest into a team of people that had a slate of 7 films.
SiorraidhSeirc: this is so hard to wrap your mind around, we reallly need to sit down, record it, and translate it
SiorraidhSeirc: guess what.
foureyedmonsters: Our small “network” with these concepts can probably get investment and then one of the initiatives would be to make this currency thing happen and start being used right away.
SiorraidhSeirc: okay. can you do me a huge favor?
SiorraidhSeirc: Lean back, take a deep breath, and realize that this can happen. this is epic.
foureyedmonsters: Yes, it’s pretty big stuff.  Huge implications.  And a very practical and real road map.  It will happen.
SiorraidhSeirc: can you imagine?

SiorraidhSeirc: if you could do something wild right now what would it be? like totally off the charts?
ddisastertourism: if you could do something wild Jamie, I mean completely off the charts, what would it be?
SiorraidhSeirc: Well I feel i’ve already started.  I left school, I went out to the west, I started joining a film
SiorraidhSeirc: well, I want to start this new idea of an economy
SiorraidhSeirc: its in its infancy but I think there’s something to be said about it
ddisastertourism: new economy? does it involve poker chips?
SiorraidhSeirc: nah. just time travel.
ddisastertourism: oh, of course
SiorraidhSeirc: cutting is the greatest tool ever
SiorraidhSeirc: I love cutting out nonimportant ideas
ddisastertourism: eh, sometimes its the nonimportant ideas that help bring about the important ones
SiorraidhSeirc: yeah. but sometimes its just unnecessary information
ddisastertourism: but i know what you mean
ddisastertourism: its a good feeling
SiorraidhSeirc: especially if you are creating in a world where people can only read your stuff for so long
ddisastertourism: if you create for others, than yeah
SiorraidhSeirc: you can create for yourself and for others at the same time
SiorraidhSeirc: when you create for others you just narrow down your idea
SiorraidhSeirc: and the people that agree with your idea will hop on board and follow your idea through if its good enough.
ddisastertourism: i guess, yeah
ddisastertourism: there are men literally sawing wood with electric tools outside my window
ddisastertourism: at 2:45
SiorraidhSeirc: I’m thinking about volunteering at the Kushi institute
SiorraidhSeirc: and living there this winter.
ddisastertourism: theyre being loud as fuck
ddisastertourism:
SiorraidhSeirc: well, its great, well ballanced, healthy satisfying food
SiorraidhSeirc: its quiet, secluded, and peaceful
SiorraidhSeirc: I could live there for free, volunteer during the day, and write my book and create on my free time
ddisastertourism: ah, sounds sweet thensm: oh eah, why?

And that’s all.

Alright, so I’ve given myself almost exactly a month to decompress and settle out life ABM (after Burning Man) and I still haven’t decided, “now what?” In my mind I have the notion that looking for a job or trying to fully exert myself towards that is rather silly on two points:

I may be leaving again soon in Mid October for a road trip from LA back to CT with a friend of mine who’s moving and, When Ari comes back some time in October, I won’t have a vehicle of my own to use anymore.

 I feel like someone’s pulled the plug and I’m now sitting naked in an empty tub, wondering where all the water went. Being at home is tougher than I imagined it; by the end of my trip the only place I wanted to be was home, and now that I’m there I’m finding it uninspiring, stressful, and depressing. Sleeping is a common occurance, when I’m not writing or waitressing or taking pictures.

My family has a certain way of living that is familiar to me, but it is hard to coexist with them. I work at night, I cook large, healthy organic meals, I have young adult angst. Every day for them is the same, so every day for me is the same.

I’m ready for these daily mood swings to end; it’s getting to the point where I’m not sure which way is up.

   Looking back on certain influences in my life, like Slyvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Jackson pollock and and Jim Morrison, I always felt a sort of yearning or connecting towards their experiences and how they needed to express them.

   Now, as I’m starting to find I’m not  as well put together or collected as I thought, I’m starting to come to the point where a reason for writing this book is because it was a deeply meaningful yet almost truly impossible to express in its entirety, yet maybe with enough story telling and proper metaphor and detail I can capture it in another way I enjoy to express; Word.

Per request, and through my own personal coaxing, I have decided to post clips and snipets of stories I am trying to develop. What you read here will generally be one page, roughly explained stories. Most of the time, you won’t really need to know who any of the people really are, but if it gets too confusing let me know.

it would be appreciated if you posted comments with suggestions towards parts to be elaborated, details missing, etc. whatever you feel it is lacking.

      Wow. I feel like I’ve fallen out of the birds nest. Straight up been kicked out into the real world to actually make decisions for myself that decided truly, what life I’ll have. With my recent decision to leave college, my seperation from my boyfriend of two years, my twenty day odyssey out west to LA and Burning Man, and now my return and adjustment to adult life, I’m paralyzed.

    I’m so confused as a soul, and I’m stumbling upon there being more to the world than I cared to believe or really see for my self. I’m being awoken to patterns and to the fact that I’m not as calm or collected or put together as I fooled myself to be.

I’ve decided to keep my thoughts here and work on my book here as well. I don’t want to reveal too much of it before its complete, but we’ll see. Here’s hoping to a success!