Do you ever wonder how many scientists and government and non-government agents as well as media and news reporting people—holy shit they have to number in the thousands…if not more—that are all keeping the secret (apparently from the pharmacology industry as well as you) that 5 servings of raw rutabagas a day absolutely cures cancer? Or maybe it’s ginseng or St. John’s Wort or one of the gazillion other alternative medicine, “free” and natural resources on this planet. It doesn’t matter what the magical, mystical “thing” is…

…it’s a fact that they are all keeping such a vital and life changing secret from you because…um…

…because they’re not.

There is only one kind of medicine, the kind that causes—through experimentation and documentable proof— a demonstrable and positive change in an underlying (negative) physical condition. It is based on facts and evidence derived from hypothesis and scientifically valid experimentation run by multiple, unassociated groups using the same resources following the same formulations and processes.

Alternatives to that are not called medicine, they are called wishes.

That there is some huge anti-human health conspiracy roiling just under the surface of our government, our universities and, most importantly, our huge pharmacological corporations all designed to restrict or eliminate these alternative, “free” and natural resources in order to maximize their profits is not only ludicrous, it’s just plain impossible.

We are talking about vast swaths of human beings—the same type of idiots who won’t let you merge on the freeway, who throw trash on the street, who walk so slow in front of you that you just want to push them into traffic—all uniformly and consistently keeping a massive, world wrapping conspiracy amongst themselves. The same people you hear on the grocery store line telling a friend on the phone about their cheating wives or husbands, their deadbeat delinquent kids…

…or who tell you, in intricate detail, all about their boob jobs, their sexual dysfunction or upcoming colonoscopy’s on Facebook! You really think that all those idiots—and you and I might be included in that population–can keep something like “curing cancer with vegetables” under their hat?

Really?

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Political fact. Let that roll around inside your mouth for a minute, feel it’s slimy smoothness as it slides across tongue and teeth but also its edge, it’s protrusions…it’s “almost” razor blade sharpness. Say it out loud…Political Fact. Over pronounce the guttural “P” and “T”…Political Fact. Let it sit there in the air in front of you, mocking you, calling into disbelief all that you thought you were sure of.

Everything that you believe about the people who lead us.

Political fact is not only oxymoronic, it is the actualization—literal translation—of non-drying modeling clay into actual words; malleable, formable, changeable. It is the use of words as mere figments…user defined and subject to change…to convey whatever meaning is needed at the moment. Even if the moment is continually changing, the words will keep up…and be redefined as required. The “actual” words meaningless and bereft of value, they are chameleon pieces of the puzzle, transformed on contact.

Political facts are irrelevant to political party, they are untied from governing, from the scheme of things. They exist by fiat and by the pressures of power and the hoarding of power whilst simultaneously being the fundamental underpinnings of power.

Political power cannot exist without political fact.

The people who leads us, who govern us are generally unable to experience the self-awareness required to realize how deeply and fundamentally they lie to us. They believe what they say because it is “political fact” never seeing its manufacture, it’s creation and management through to its transformation into an entirely different product, over and over again. We can ask the question “Can a lie tell itself apart from the truth?”

Does water know it is wet?

Political fact guarantees that there will be more losers than winners, more poor than rich, more hungry than fed, more ‘have nots’ than ‘haves’ and more lies than truths because political fact cares nothing for reality. Political fact cares only for the power that it can create and maintain. It cares for girth and reach and breadth and bigger and bigger swaths to govern and control because power and money flows from control.

And control is everything.

Forget political party, forget deeply held philosophical beliefs, forget domestic or foreign, defense or economic policy…forget what you know about the people who govern us…

…instead, concentrate on allowing them as little as possible to govern.

It was an algorithm, a nine
by nine meter square of total
silence…
…a beating heart
she interrupted the quiet
of thinking looking breathing
and
not knowing
she was pushing me
forward (to a moment|
a minute…a mad
dash toward…) I am
left wondering
wandering alone
or not thinking (the
same) while the
algorithm silently ticks
forward, back, to the left
upward…a geared assembly
turning clockwork—
heartbeats—she
asked and I
answered, without knowing
without
thinking…I just said
yes.

Now that summer is looming on the horizon, I’m starting to see all the fad diets emerge as trending items. The ever present Green Juice Cleanse diet, the Dr. Oz Swimsuit Slimdown diet, the Abs Diet for Women, the F.A.S.T. Diet, the Fiber 35 Diet, the DASH Diet, the <add your own weird food/fruit/whatever> diet…

…and I felt left out.

So I did what any free-thinking, red-blooded internet troll would do (via a huge amount of deeply sourced and carefully researched “info spelunking” on the many storied interwebs) I made shit up. Here is…

…The TrevorZen 10 Step to Freedom Diet

1. First, you must envision a theoretically perfect—but realistically achievable—end-state of your physical self, such that your brain and imagination are primed and receptive to react positively toward the many painful and onerous activities and participatory actions you will be forcing your body to sustain and even thrive from when you imagine the many inches of your physical presence and ultimately the clothes sizes to be lost.

2. Put the doughnut down.

3. Place yourself in a deep and meditative trance such that you are at one with the universe and are significantly habituating the single “now” that is your unique manifestation on this plane…and put the goddamned doughnut down.

4. While still in this meditative stupor, push your mind into the deep past and let it recreate the sense of freedom and reverie you felt as a child, running on endless carpets of green, green grass, spinning sideways while staring at fluffly white clouds while feeling the ripple of summer’s sweet warm winds ruffle a shock of hair falling across your face…and get on the fucking treadmill.

5. Without the doughnut.

6. With your mind attuned to the feeling of a weightless and seemingly endless imagination you place a foot in front of the other, not contemplating the direction nor the destination, as there is one direction only and no destination but now, and push backward…pushing those thoughts of the previous you, the yesterday you, the you not-on-the-endless-and-repetitive-going-nowhere-roll-of-rubber-mat you deep into the inner recesses of your soul. Do the same with the other foot and then the other and then the other…

7. Repeat step 6 approximately 8,428,493,334 times…

8. …twice a day…

9. …until you die.

10. Once you achieve the sought after state of physical manifestation (your pants size goal) to finally complete the process and attain true freedom; deepen and broaden your meditation such that you manifestly increase your intrinsic internal awareness and keenly strict observance of the excruciating physical pain you’ve been routinely causing to diverse areas of your body…accept that sacred throbbing willingly and gladly while you access and envisage a future bereft of too-tight fitting clothes, being socially ostracized and, most importantly, the complete an utter absence of doughnuts.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Here’s something I’ve noticed over the years about women (and girls back when I called them that) and that is that very few, like 1 out of hundreds…maybe thousands of women, who are actually proud of their bodies. Proud in the sense that women actually like themselves (visually), how they look (clothed and naked) and feel that they are pretty, sexy, desirable, etc. I’m sure it’s society to blame but…

…there’s plenty of that stuff to go around.

Many times when I compliment a woman on how she looks—i.e. in the form of a truly sincere and meaningful (to me) comment about her outfit or her hair or her body…whatever…it’s like she understands that this is what I’m supposed to say, that I am merely being polite and I can’t possibly mean any of those flattering things. Seriously, if you’re a woman you know I’m not exaggerating…you’re so uncomfortable addressing your own body image (whether that discomfort is derived from society as a whole or specific trauma) that you cannot, even for a second, imagine that the nice words being said about you are true or sincere.

You just don’t believe it.

And that disbelief affects more than you know. It affects how we (the men or the women attracted to you) eventually see you because the more that you deflect and downplay and distract with deprecation or self-belittlement…or even giggles, the more we come to be convinced that you are right and we are wrong. That somehow we’re not seeing reality—the real you—so we adjust and conform our perception to more closely align with your perception. So eventually you end up not having to deflect or downplay or distract us anymore…and not uncomfortable anymore…and ultimately…

…surrounded by people who just stop noticing the physical part of “you”.

That, in itself, is such a sad and desolate thing, to never be noticed, to simply pass through life as if a shadow or a ghost but to add that it is the people who love and feel deeply and strongly for you who are the ones you’ve taught to ignore you, well…

…that’s the saddest thing of all. Um…

…but it’s not like you’re going to change a pattern of behavior (learned your whole life) as a result of one semi-articulate dude on the internet so let me ask you to one simple thing. The next time someone—anyone at all—compliments you on how you look, your smile, your clothes or even your body…immediately smile and simply say “Thank you”. Do that a couple of times…

…and you’ll soon be able to see what you’re teaching people.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Another thing I’ve learned along the way.

You don’t own shame.

Shame is what people give you when they see that you have none (or not enough) and they believe that they need to give you some of their own self-hatred because they have too much. Know that the shame that you have was given to you by someone else and you accepted it thinking you didn’t have a choice. That was a lie by the person giving you that shame, you always have a choice.

Please know—deeply and completely—that you are a beautiful, amazing and independent individual reliant upon no other person on this planet or in this universe for how you feel and who you are. Shame is the name of what we feel when we turn away from ourselves, when we disregard our own worth, when we accept the hatred from others…when we agree with them regardless how utterly and completely wrong they are.

There is nothing that anyone can say or do that can make you feel differently unless you actually agree with them first.

Nothing.

Love yourself and lose your fear; fear of being alone or being with the wrong person…fear of not being loved…fear of not loving…fear of being hurt…fear of failure or even of success. You lose shame not by giving it back, that only increases the amount you have, you lose the shame that was given to you by simply understanding…

…that it was never theirs to give.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

So, um, yeah…that death thing. I was thinking about it…actually I have been thinking about it a lot lately but not in a dismal, “oh woe is me, that’s it I’m ending it all” kind of way…more happily (philosophically happily anyway). So, as I started to say, I was trying to figure out why humans are so afraid of death and I stumbled upon an idea that, at least to me, feels revolutionary, and that is that we don’t fear death itself, we fear “missing” life when we’re gone.

Think about it.

Think about being sad because you’re going to miss that show you want to see…or you’re sad because you imagine the success you’ll miss by not going to Grad school…or the fun you’ll miss by not buying the convertible sports car. As humans we project ourselves into the future and base current decisions on the things we imagine we’ll feel then, not how we feel right now.

No one ever plans to be unhappy, right?

Or unsuccessful or unsatisfied or unfulfilled…we all plan on something better than now so I think people are afraid of death because of what they’ll miss, the good stuff their planning for their future that they won’t get to experience. And that made me laugh…that’s the part that struck me as being the key to our fear because after we’re dead…

…we can’t feel or experience anything.

As in zilch, zero, nada, nothing…not even unlimited emptiness or darkness because that would require senses (to feel/see/hear the contrast). When we’re dead there is no looking back and wondering what we’re missing because there is no thinking, no sense, no feeling…everything just stops. So how can we miss anything?

As a result, I’ve stopped fearing death because I will never be able to regret or feel anything about what I’m missing after I’m dead My strategy now is to live this moment, this minute to its fullest and it’s best—even if that minute is filed with the most boring repetitious work and drudgery…

…because there might not be another after it.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Close your hand into
a fist, count—1, 2—and
wrap your fingers
around themselves—3
4, 5, 6—now close your
eyes tightly—7, 8
9, 10—until you see
sparkles stars
planets under
eyelids—11, 12, 13
—with a small breath
—14, 15—blow the hair
sideways from where
it lay on your cheek—16
17—and imagine
in your empty—18, 19
—fist, that those things;
all none of them—20, 21—are
everything you—22—can’t
—23—do.

I woke up today
thinking about life,
and everything
I imagined it could
and couldn’t be…little
did I know that life
was thinking about me
too…only life knew
where I was going
a petulant child, life
would not divulge
it’s secrets…so now
my mission, my
goal and objective
is to flatter, to cajole
to convince life
with smiles and
laughter and giddy
anticipation
that I am ready, I am
willing wanting wearing
my best face…all
toward a tomorrow
that life holds in
careful hands
behind its back,
waiting
for me, for the
minute
when I am ready
I want to say
I want to be
I want
and life smiles
waiting
until that very minute
that I need

I got in a few screaming arguem…er, um, civil debates this week over such things as religion (truth…or global Ad campaign?) and the effect of statist politics on the rights of citizens to view the information they want (Comcast gobbling every internet provider on the planet)…as we’ll as virtue and what things are dangerous to it (hint; virtue doesn’t exist). And, looking back at the “debates”, I have a few thoughts that I’d like to share. I know, please step off that ledge, it will be short(ish).

Something that I noticed in all of the arguments is that people tended to provide facts or evidence (regardless if they were (or weren’t) either fact or evidence) that apparently they knew by heart. I mean, no one stretched toward a vague concept or something that they were barely familiar with to support their positions. They talked about things they knew. They used debate points that they had heard before…and that got me thinking that…

…people find what they look for.

To bolster my argument and to try to make my point I too used information and talking points that I had experience with, that I had previously researched and found. I used things that I had looked for…not necessarily things that I just happened to find.

And that is the point.

We have social and political ideas that we constantly seek to validate, to verify that they are accurate, so we’re constantly searching for answers to do just that…validate what we already know. We have these social and political ideas and models because they were built into our brains as the result of a billion different variables; our home environments whether we were encouraged to learn, to reach…our school environment and whether we were bullied or allowed to be different…our social world apart from those two…a billion more.

By only ever finding what we are looking for, we only listen in order to refute and be “right”, only read responses in order to write our counter responses back so we’re not “wrong”…we only argue to increase our internal awareness of what we already know. Rarely, if ever, do we synthesize what is being said into a coherent and combined idea because in those debates it is all toward winning the argument…

…not to learn.

But right or wrong is immaterial—when there is nothing learned—because without learning we are stalled, stagnating and soon to be dead. Brain dead, consciously dead or even ambulatory with a dead conscience (think politician). Without the constant care and feeding of our souls—through gaining knowledge and understanding (that is brought by knowledge)—we die in some small way…but we die nonetheless.

So…next time you’re in a screaming argume..um, civil debate, don’t think about finding what you’re looking for…

…but what you find when you’re not looking.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen