WRITINGS FROM THE RODENTS OF THE UNDERGROUND

Other than that, you should know that we are underground rodents who believe in freedom of speech and free will and all the rest of that jazz. So feel free and welcome to drop us a line...

Enjoy the paper. Hopefully someone enjoys it. Hopefully someone at least glances at it. Otherwise I'm sitting here on another Thursday night writing to myself again for no purpose.

What gives people the right to decide what is right and what is wrong? Why exactly do we, as people, care when someone openly states that our ideas do not agree with theirs? Doesn't everyone realize that there are different ways and ideas on how to do things? If no one went outside of the common lines there would never be any change in anything. The styles would never change, nothing would be invented, and artwork of all kinds would never differ. Music would always sound the same and paintings would all look alike. If only those who were the right specifications for the perfect guy or girl were ever lovers and given a chance to have children, the whole world would eventually look and act the same.

Look at one of the fights you have had in the past, trace it back to the very first reason the fight started. It will always have started either because of the fact that they are different or there was already hatred between the fighters. This hatred will most commonly boil down to the fact that they had a different idea, way, or color than you. If we keep fighting, we will separate into single person "groups." No one will have any friends because they will never find anyone exactly like them.

The friends you have now are not exactly like you. In fact, they are probably very different and that difference is the reason you are friends with them. You will compare your ideas and together find out which you like best. You are accepting differences when you do this but most often we fight with someone because of a difference in opinion. How on earth do we decide what differences to accept and which to hate someone for? Why do we hate them for it? Can we not just realize our ideas don't mesh, compare them and/or walk away? Would it be so bad if we actually agreed with something different?

Take a look back into history at who were the famous actors and performers. Do you notice anything different from the ones today? Take Betty Boop and Roger Rabbit's girlfriend, Jessica, for example. Think about it, they were both equally popular during their time but one is heavier than the other, the hair is different entirely, and their voice is, too. This is proof that it is human nature for our ideas to evolve through time. Go ahead, admit it.

Even if it was possible to find someone exactly like another, one would be afraid to admit they acted like that and would decide that they are better than that person anyway. differences between the people in this world are what start the wars between countries but they are also the reason people admire others and try to act with the same values they agree with. All we can do is hope that people will realize that we need to still accept one another for the way we are. Remember that it is individuality between people and ideas that makes us human. It is pointless to change that.

bottled plastic chairs
stored in cans of Snapple
like liquid Christmas ornaments
waiting to be unleashed upon
the masses, for the destruction of
the world. No one knows the
canner of these chairs, they
just appear-- budding from plants
and flowing out of toilets-- waiting
for the hapless finder to open
it up that they might enslave
the fool holding them down,
keeping them from food and
squeezing the crap out of them
until they die in a fate similar
to unfortunate Charmin toilet paper.

All days are nights but not all nights are days, in fact very few are . There aren't on stars anymore because it's winter now. Well not really winter but there was a bad snow storm, it made it feel like winter. Now the snow is melting ant there is nothing to do except get wet.

As I walk around some people look at me with a hint of fear in their eyes and others just point and laugh. They don't understand. They are the reason I look like this. People like that are the ones that make things hurt like hell. There are a few people that can look through the coat and glasses. They are the ones that help me, but even they are not enough sometimes. At one time I was happy but that time has long since past. It ended when things changed and what I had was taken away from me by death and memories.

It has been a long time, almost a year but it does not feel like it. Even though time has past the pain is still there caused by the loss of every thing but my memories. The feeling that I have lost everything is still and probably always will be there. Have you ever had the feeling that you lost everything that was keeping you sane?

It hurts physically and mentally. Sometimes you think how easy it would be to take the knife that you are cutting your dinner with and stab it into your heart, and with your last breath think that your problems have all gone away. But instead you finish your food take your plate and put it in the sink but as you set your silverware in there you hold the knife just a little longer then if falls into the sink with a "clung". You walk back to the living room and watch the television shows that you think are dumb but they are one at this time so be happy.

When the time comes you can't sleep even though you got up at five o'clock in the morning and it is now well past two in the morning You can't sleep because this one Question keeps repeating in you mind over, and over, and over again: "Will it all be okay in the end or will I just die?"

Your alarm clock buzzes, then becomes louder and louder until you figure you should do something about it even though you didn't need it to wake up because you never did get to sleep. Oh well another day, another dinner, another knife, another chance to sleep.

So have you ever felt like this and does it ever end or turn out all right when we dream?

People tend to try to measure pain. They measure it by the events that have happened to the person in question: has he had a hard life? Is his home life good, what one might call loving and caring? Are his parents well-meaning people, etc., etc.? I'm sorry, but you could have what appears to be the most perfect damn household in the world that shaped a well-rounded down-to-earth kid and one day he could just snap. Hurt and pain is not always so plainly seen, it's not always as clear as a gash across the face or as loud and in-your-face as a man in a fast food restaurant who suddenly pulls out a gun and begins to shoot people for no apparent reason. Pain is experienced, but then it can be hidden from others, ignored and suppressed by the one who feels it. If ignored, it just keeps coming back to haunt you in dreams were you're immobilized by your own fear and hate, unable to help yourself let alone whatever may be going on around you. The pain grows inside you like a mad fungus, creating a universe all of your own making in which you build a deep, dark cold pit of personal hell. This is hell. This is where you go when you die-- you turn inward, to live in whatever universe you believe you deserve. This is why dealing with pain and controlling your motions is such a fucking smart move. Otherwise, you just about fuck yourself over. This palace of pain and suffering stretches far beyond the reaches of your material, physical brain. It is your inner world. And when you shove fear and pain and anger into that world and pretend they don't exist the angry thought forms, your symbolism and fantasy, take over and can attack you and rip your to pieces-- they are the demons of your mind, your creations. If too deep in despair you can fall into that world before you die-- because your soul is already dying, your body's just slow at catching up. You store the bullshit you experience and feel in this collective realm and this mucked-up society and felt your inner world's realness. You've fallen into your own astral hell many a time. More reason not to sleep until you're eyes start to pulsate at uncomfortable rates. More insomnia. More reason to fear. More to fear.

You want to not care, but you can't ignore it. You fear feeling the source of your fear, yet you fear ignoring your fear. So like everything else in your life you teeter-totter in-between, shivering in cold fear as the lull of nothingness stings your skin. You continue to die.

Gee, you're feeling better already.

Yet this is the way of the world. You can't help your certainty that the world is going to go shithouse in a few years, that governments are going to fall, that wars are going to get bigger , that new weapons are going to change life as we know it here. That things will be exposed that no one will be ready to handle, even those who have already had a taste of it's reality.

You can't stop the paranoia. You can't stop the pain.

So you run you're face right into it.

They feed our minds
With what we crave
A blind belief
That our souls he'll save
A place to rest
A place to die He hears me cry
An answer from him
is all I need
You walk behind And let him lead
I look around
See the hate & the pain
The poor & the sick
The rich and the vain
Bury my body
In the earth's dark core
Tell me I'm in heaven
That I'll hurt no more
Tell me what
I want to hear
Too scared to know
Too much too fear.

NOTHING:

I.TOMATO
the chains of sanity bind me here
meekly I raise the brain above my head
it can't be broken, shattered or gooped.
it will live so long as there is thought
the home of madness is still suppressed
mind groping tongues craving for a soul
still I am alone holding up the brain
the chains tug relentlessly, hope starts to bleed
fingers begin to tremble the brain begins to slip
and then I know that the only freedom is insanity
I drop the brain and hear only one sound.
Splat.

II.HERMIT
My mind is my only companion,
here in this cell of Nothingness.
something grasps My heart,
with a definite power.
but it is not fear or despair,
it is an unforgiving clutch of loneliness.
no other concept exists for Me anymore
Nothing more for eternity, absence of idea,
beyond good or evil, "G"od or "D"evil.
I have surpassed as the "G"od of Nothingness.

III.PINHEAD
alone for 1000 years contemplating the aspects of Nothing
the powers of Nothing are infinite,
everything has a limit, but Nothing is forever.
if I could figure out how to mix something with Nothing
I would have the power of everything infinite.
mustering My strength, I aim it at a star.
I create a pit of Nothing, that eats at everything.
the power I gain is instant and great.
I soon create more; universes are my playground.
wormholes, folds in space of Nothing.
black holes, gateways of time, universe, and power.
the lowlings pray to "G"ods of good and evil.
but I am the "G"od of creation, Nothing, all.
only some can find me; in meditation.
minds that ask for Nothing, search for Nothing
"G"ods have tried to overcome Me, with duplicity,
but merely pass out with the new universe's generation.

IV.YUM
I decreed time would have no beginning, no end
it would travel in both directions, with a common center.
I personally lived in all time, at the center of Nothing.
My home was of a 1,000 dimensions, but no substance.
I was the adored, the despised, the hero, and the hated.
but all this matters not for I am Nothing.
I have no feelings of love, boredom, sadness, emotion.
I am Nothing, that possesses all, and yet;
loneliness suffuses Me, insanity My lone companion.
I realize the splattered brain of sanity still exists.
merely distorted, it still acts to pervert My mind.
picking it up, I raise it to my lips, and swallow it.
acrid and burning, yet satisfying, immersing me in pain.
I have eaten it and became it, as it ate Me and became Me.
you are what you eat, and We have eaten each other.
We are one, in an agony of pleasure supreme.

Those in a universe of all, are nothing,
yet they strive to be something, offering to give anything.
I advise you chose one thing, and reach for all of it.
with luck you well get some of it;
you have about the same odds shooting at a single bird with a shotgun,
as you have shooting at a flock of birds with a rifle.
So increase your odds, take the biggest, fastest firing gun you can get,
bring all the ammo you can carry and shoot at every bird you can find.

You know what? Shit happens; quite frequently I might add. And certain things tend to piss most people off. For instance, if you're sitting quietly and half-awake in study hall, ready to drift off into dreamland when all of a sudden a stressed-out Sophomore starts stabbing you repeatedly in the back of the neck with a magic marker while chanting a well-known Barney tune: That, my friend, is simply annoying. It goes the same way with some people and fear: Most people just don't like it. Some people have a lot of it anyway. Most people fear the unknown, and therefore hate it and refuse to accept it. Or they come up with a rigidly-defined reason to explain the anomaly and dismiss it. Or, if the anomaly plagues them to the point where they have to find a group of people that will accept it, they buy into a mass perception (i.e., a religion) in order to come to terms with it and find a way to explain it other than mainstream materialistic views-- yet, still desiring many who will believe in such an anomaly, they will instead buy into a mainstream spiritual view, such as, say, Christianity.

Such a religion would be chosen because it would explain her anomaly, however without any specifics, without limiting it to common forces. Were science would list it as a hallucination or waking dream, religion would label it a revelation or God experience.

In short, we, as humans, desire to be like others, we desire to be a part of something bigger-- we already are, but we, as humans, are also blinded by that. We subject ourselves to rigid definitions such as those given to us by religion and science not because it fully answers our questions, but because it is open enough to allow such an experience to "exist" under certain rigid guidelines. Science would list it as a hallucination. Religion would list it as a meeting with God. Somewhere in the middle you might find something a little more closer to the truth: You had a near death experience and were crossing over into the astral plane.

Yet that's too detailed an explanation for something supposedly "unknown". Too many want it to be either defined by science-- were we are basing everything on observation-- or defined by religion-- where we have no real definition but are taking the word of the church who relies on faith on an entity called God of which there is supposed proof of within a book ages old.

Sorry. I apologize. I have a serious problem here. Truth may be existent, it may be not. If it is, we are fooling ourselves. I am no stranger to this. I have fooled myself, but unlike religion and science (and history in general) I am at least learning from my mistakes.

Picture first a box. A box of confined perception. A box I have kept myself in in staying away from people who I was afraid were going to hurt me in one way or the other. The box is a metaphor for mentality, spirituality, and material. I lock myself in my room living off my books and constructing my theories nowadays, afraid to think for myself. And I find here, inside a coffee house listening to a Biblical conversation, words concerning this ancient text that explains the experiences with others with "something else"-- something outside their box. What that something is cannot be defined as "god" or "alien", but must instead me seen for what it is and slowly be allowed to prove itself or forever be looked at cautiously... no more, no less. To jump to a conclusion instead of merely speculating is to be ignorant and thus blind. There is no smarter way than to be unsure-- but you must be sure you are unsure. For instance, don't pledge to be a skeptic if you merely doubt their are spiritual realms beyond your realm. The true skeptic doubts all gods, including "God", all spiritual realms, where she stands-- the true skeptic questions the very existence of existence. To believe in one or the other is to be blind to a whole side of reality-- to see with the world that the left brain paints for you without seeing what the right paints for you is ignoring a whole half of Truth. Obsess on either side and you are wrong. You cannot not be. To make a conclusion, any conclusion, one must look at all sides and all possibilities-- no wise man learned in any other way than this.

It's like this: Of course there is a Truth. Yet Truth has to be interpreted, and those interpreters would be all separate truths interpreting each other-- the truths' accumulation would be Truth. Truth could not exist without the truths, and the truths could not exist without the Truth. They are both dependent and independent upon one another for existence and definition of each other. All existence is a dream. Without someone to dream you can't exist. Without be dreamed, you can't exist. Neither is higher than the other. We're simply each other's dreams. Check out Yin-Yang philosophy: Yin to it's extreme is Yang, and Yang to it's extreme is Yin. Whose to say which is more right: Right or Wrong? Good or Bad? Light or Dark? Left or Right? God or Devil? They're merely words, symbols of something greater: thought. Each defines his own right and wrong, his own good and bad, etc. There is no universal here. Each has his or her own. And, in a world were everyone thinks they're right, they fail to see how right they are. Yet in assuming they're right beyond themselves, they're wrong. So what I'm telling you is pure bullshit.

It means nothing to anyone but myself. Well, tough shit-- I like the sound the keyboard makes as I type.

We often find it difficult to define ourselves, looking to compare ourselves to others and converse with others in order to do so. Key here is: others. Other conscious independent free-willed actively thinking and reality-making units such as ourselves, only different in how they choose to do so. We are the proof of infinity. No two others are alike. If we're all separate truths and none of us are like than how do we all accumulated create a higher Truth, you ask? Our accumulation is our contradiction, but it is our root source, our opposite that is also true. And yet there are many truths an interpretations around us, none are really higher or more important than the other, just different. All separate truth in themselves, they find more of Truth in comparing themselves to others and in talking to others-- yet we should also look inward, not only outward, but to much of one way and we become a victim of either the outside world or ourselves. This is what is maintains balance with ourselves.

Foes, arch rivals whom we despise and are our absolute opposite and whom we have a deepest hate for give us our deepest interpretation, just like light's contrast, darkness: They both bring out each other in the night sky as the void of space and the twinkling of stars.

We all need a foundation of belief. We can get this from our experiences or from pure thought or simply from the words of others: their experiences and thought. All but the popularly-titled "atheists" and not-so-sure agnostics jump to the conclusion that a God, or multiple gods, must exist: For flowers such as us to grow, someone must have planted us, a higher being much more powerful than us that can water us or step on us if he chooses. We should love him; we should fear him. Nyeh. Instead of lying faith in an entity which controls everything, why not examine both the flowers and the soil from which they grow? You learn little through faith. Through faith you learn to be blind, as it directly implies. Believe, and don't question. This is beyond all doubt stupid. It makes absolutely no sense to me. It is almost as stupid and annoying to me as it is lazy. I really want to believe these people can be helped and kicked in the ass so that they'll learn to think for themselves. How fucking easy is it to believe in something you can't see? Too fucking easy. I heard someone comment once how they admired another because she could keep so much faith in something that she never had seen or experienced-- that it took much courage to do so. Bullshit. It takes little to believe in what you want or need to believe in in order to stay sane. It takes courage to believe in something that goes against almost everyone else simply because you've examined it with every sensory organ and psychic ability you have possession of and cannot ignore the true evidence that observation and experience has given you. Faith takes nothing but willingness to let go into a sea of gullibility.

A book alleged to be encounters and actions of our "Creator" or tales of our superhuman "creators" does not mean that they were what we took them to be or that they did, indeed, create us. Even if they had, this in no way means they are higher than us. There is complete anarchy in the universe. It's as if some people are afraid of free will, having to believe in a higher deity beyond all doubt.

Let's tale a look at religion again: Religion has many definitions. I'll tell you mine. Religion to me is primarily based on the perception of one, a "religious leader," for instance, and is then followed by many others who favor such an idea. Pretty much you have taken someone's perception and romanticized it and popularized it. It is taken almost blindly by others as something to have faith in. Someone else has already done the work for them-- HAHA! WHY THINK?

Many may turn to religion because they have had odd encounters or experiences that they can't explain, and are shooting for an answer that will satisfy their curiosity enough to allow them to keep their so-called sanity. The religion, having been based on one man's perception, will delude the lost person with symbolism that is meaningless to anyone but it's source and with explanations with wide gaps in between them and with nowhere, except maybe a book with about as many holes, to go looking for answers in "further reference" or "background check." You simply blindly have faith or you find another religion.

I say think for yourself. Don't latch on to any mass interpretation, form your own-- alone. The definition of religion I have displayed would label science, supposedly religions' arch rival, also a religion. Science brings out methods of observation: good idea. It's based on a purely materialistic perception: bad idea. Open-mindedness has been lost because we're forming addictive collective mainstream perceptions that are stunted with "blind faith." We're labeling things "god" or "alien" without exactly knowing what that means. A light from the sky where their should not being a light, irradiating from a metallic machine driven by a creature not of this terrestrial sphere many years ago would've been a god or angel, today many call it an extraterrestrial or UFO-- some still call it angel or a god, because they have been stunted by their blind faith, by their limited perception, their unmoving view and outlook. "God," nowadays, for such a phenomenon is a sorry, sad, simplistic explanation. It is a generalized term. By thinking this is a god or angel or the true only God, we have deluded ourselves to the Truth and it's mechanisms and capabilities. If you're living off anther's perception, a mass perception, you're confining yourself. If the perception doesn't move, you don't: it controls you. Work of your own and it changes with you. You're only trapped in a box of ignorance if you're afraid to be open. Debate definitions, debate meanings, debate existence-- just don't debate words, don't debate definitions you don't understand and perceptions that are not yours. You may find that behind your words lie no definition-- and if there does lie a definition, you may find that to your "enemy", although the words concealing the meanings are directly opposing, the definitions are strikingly similar. Understanding and true wisdom will follow. Otherwise your desiring truths you're setting up blinders to, like most of the human race. I hope we open up to the truths, as a whole, before the shit really hits the fan-- before the truths get pissed and start biting us on the asses.

We want the truth and yet we're not even striving to reach for it.

The day they took my toilet away I was pissed. I didn't know who the bastards were, but I swore that somehow, some way, they would pay for the pain they'd caused me by taking my lovely crappy toilet away. It was so beautiful-- not in appearance, as any old ninny with the brain capacity of a brick could tell you-- but rather it had an inner beauty, it had a feel about it that was most heartwarming and undeniably unique. The way it rested there, amidst the weeds and freshly mowed grass, it just called out for you. I remember the times I would drive by there-- not me driving, of course, I'm the yutz who waits two years and four temporary permits down the line to even go in for the driver's test, then four times for the test, only to pass it on Friday the Thirteenth, a month and a day after his eighteenth birthday. No, it was usually my mom driving, talking about something important that was essential for me to know about my future and about getting through high school and keeping my grades up and growing up happy and focused, as I stared blankly out the window in that usual zoning glare of mine, dissociating the entire world and hoping for a scrap of sanity to fall into my lap. A purpose to make my belief in life, and in the afterlife, and in atheism and anarchy and anti-psychotronically brain-linked massmind communism all worth something. I stared out that window hoping to find a shred of something that mattered. And out there, right around that company that's digging up all the land around here and making those nifty piles that are fun to run up (until you get stuck, sink down into the sand, inhale the minute pieces of stone and suffocate, never to be seen again), atop a hill by an old oak tree, that toilet just stood out for no apparent reason. It wasn't right. It didn't belong. It was so... *not* conformity. You almost sensed a bravery about that crappy torn-up toilet, and it made you want to burst into tears. Whether out of madness of laughter, you'd find yourself cracking up inside and out yelling frantically "THE TOILET!!! THE TOILET!!!", and in the midst of your pointing and shouting and uncontrollable laughter you'd finally notice that what you had just done was completely uncalled for, and you'd realize that you were me-- because no other idiot ever gave a flipping hoot about that toilet.

Yet then, one day, I went by that same old place looking for my friend the toilet and he was gone. Someone had taken him away. Trash, right? Garbage? Junk? Some bastard just takes my toilet away and thinks he can get away with it? Who the FUCK do you think you are, man? Take my toilet, will you? By taking that toilet you flushed every hope for this world right back underground. Above remained conformity and all that desired more rigidness-- more government control, censorship of just about everything, drug illegibility, laws against the homeless, ignorance of things beyond current understanding and/or simple humanistic left-brain orderly "common-sense" comprehension, proclamations of a universal ground-in-stone law of what's right and what's wrong for every existing and nonexistent factor.

Below, underground, was flushed all the "shit." All those who liked to swear because of something called the FIRST FUCKING AMENDMENT. Well, minus that middle word maybe-- put simply, they rape the right to freedom of speech. They teach ignorance and thus vulnerability to things outside our understanding. you grow up thinking the world, the adults, society, knows everything, and you find as you grow older, even a little older, that it knows little-- truth is, the world, society, adults-- they know shit. Great lessons are to be learned from history, true. That's why we study it. So we know what not to do. We keep doing them. Logic? This is a logical world? Were the logic here? Something in between the lines I'm missing here? War equals death equals no one truly wins. Did I miss a beat? And above all they took my goddamn toilet. The fucking rectum weasels. When I find them, the bastards will pay. Yet I know out there, somewhere, some wise man or woman or group of fine living beings set upon that hill that toilet for one reason or another. If I had another, I'd stick it out there (that was phrased poorly, but oh well). Maybe someday I'll get the opportunity to stick a toilet on a hill. I hope I grow to be such a novel man. Now pardon me, I must urinate.

Did you ever try to figure out what exactly you were feeling? Did you ever wish you didn't feel a certain way about something? Do you TRULY believe you have no control over your feelings? Did you ever admit to yourself that you're forcing your feelings into the wrong direction? I have tried to figure out my feelings and found myself trying to change them. I believe I often do it without realizing it. I also believe the people around me do the same feeling forcing as I do. Maybe that's where stress comes from. When school starts do you feel more stress? It could be that you decide you want to feel a certain way so that more people will notice you for either being so strong or soft. "Wow, nothing bothers that kid" or "That girl she looks so upset she needs someone to lean on." No one wants someone to think "That's just one normal teenager feeling normal feelings" so they force their feelings to the extreme; therefore people notice the feeling more. Everyone does this, even if they won't admit it. Too many people are afraid of the truth., but that's another story.

The mind is a piece of immaculate puzzle
That loses its pieces, and cannot be put together
Unless the puzzle pieces can be understood
That they are puzzle pieces, not just cardboard.
_________________________________

Love
is like
the thorns on the brambles
you pass by in the woods
that capture and cut you
unaware,
leaving you bleeding and in pain.
_________________________________

There is an Evil in the way of Love,
love lost in a warehouse of Dispair I reach for my lost love Mourning his loss, the excruciating pain of loss
Walking on a tight rope
To find his soul and bring him back to life
Haven't found him yet, lost in the myrid of my dreams
But someday I will.
__________________________________

The mists of time
have faded my memory
of my midnight dream
Of years ago
But the passion still remains
fresh in my memory
of love pure and true
and the loss of my soul,
creating the essence of pain
branded in my mind
Forever.

As I sit here pondering
I am wondering
Why? can't humans fly.
Why? must everything die.
What? is going to happen next
After? this life.
Where? are we going
How? are we getting there
Are? these the questions
Does? everyone ask these
Or? is it just me.
Is? there a Purpose.
Is? this insane. Why? is it in my brain.
Is? there nothing
Is? there everything.
Are? they the same.
What? matters now.
How? are things going for you.
Do? you use corect english
Is? this the END?

email: s002jng@nova.wright.edu (temporarily)

mail-mail: We don't have a PO Box yet, Bob...

The Gopher is a member of Z7Group and can be found on the web at http://www.z7group.com/zines/gopher

Gopher Home	Z7Group Home