RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Wednesday, October 29

Dollygdrazyllika: Part One

It’s nearly impossible to not be conscious of audience when putting words together, since language by organic design is a means of communicating to others. And yet by letting ourselves get polluted by salivations for the fruits of word actions, we impose limitations on our reach, not necessarily in relation to human audience, but more in terms of what our language is reaching for. There is a vast wasted land we ignore when we become too attuned to audience.

That term “wasteland” is commonly enough used within language that it conjures up images of a post-explored world, completely to point of pillage and rape utilized by men, with the carbon-colored dilapidated hulks of abandoned civilization scarring the landscape. But the wasted land I speak of here is an internal wasted land, as vast and expansive as the space above, best exemplified by a clear night sky, with seemingly endless stars stretched out further than our monkey existence has come close to even guessing exists. That same space – unexplored even partially, and full of potentially everything, every Thing, and all of It – sits inside each human, and maybe each animal, and perhaps plants and even on the molecular level. Who is to say? Not me, because I’m only a man, writing humane words, attempting to ignore audience, though being these are humane words, obviously they are strictly for humans being.

Being human is not naturally a complicated procedure, though it is highly complex. The complexity of life is best exemplified in man through the corpus callosum connecting the right and left hemispheres of his walnut brain. A poorly developed corpus callosum, creating a bridge between the two sides of human existence, leaves a human being extreme and unbalanced, and unable to handle complex tasks or mind meanders. A thickly developed corpus callosum, bridging the two hemispheres, gives a more balanced and complex sensory processing organ, and enables complexity of existence. It is said that scientists studying Einstein’s brain found a deeply developed corpus callosum, which supports the theory I just now threw out at you, but also is dependent upon the findings of research scientists, so perhaps questionable information. All too often, they are polluted by their desired audience.

Man, meaning us humans being, tends to break things apart, literally, but also philosophically. We are less attuned to understand the overall complexity of life – the Big Picture, so to speak – than we are at splitting hairs into parts to analyze DNA and put together puzzle pieces we think will one day give us the Big Picture, when in actuality it destroys the Big Picture into fractured shards and spiritual fragments that lose their natural complexity. In other words, man complicates shit immensely, by breaking it apart, making it harder to be a simple human being, much less a complex one.

So that is the wasted land I speak of, that potential of richly explored vast space lying dormant within. Very much like the factory carcasses and fire-stained smokestacks we envision when we think “wasteland” is our existence as women and men walking around, upright, unused, exploited, wasted, scars upon the landscape. That is what it means to be humans being.


External is always reflection of internal, always the complicated senses complicating a complex but simple world. (We are trained to think of “complex” and “complicated” as synonymous, while “simple” is an oppositional word, but simple and complex are on the same dynamic plain whereas complications are an entirely different lower level of existence, which breaks all things – It – into parts, for interchange and exchange and rearrange. Complexity cannot be broken into parts, because it is simply whole.) So many of us immersed sadly into the external world as a reality can see all too clearly how the internal wasteland is reflected in our external structures. From the fire-breathing riverside factory to the simple white pine pallet, the madness and haphazard conditions of our humane geometry is somewhat obvious, if you are able to deny the dopamine triggers dwelling too heavily in the sensory experience causes.

This world we inhabit – externally speaking – becomes a dreary one as it is the sensory reflection of a collective wasted state. We indulge in touch, and then use those hands of the addict to “create” useful tools which further reinforce the complication fallacy that all things – It – is nothing more than parts to be piecemealed together in a limited variety of combinations. We indulge in sight of moving electronic images which further reinforce the complication fallacy by manufacturing “realistic” portrayals of pretend events necessitating complicated robot programs to “create”. The robot programs, built upon the philosophical spirituality of believing in complication fallacy, become an external extension of what we think it is to create. We indulge in listening to sounds to where we take the complicated sounds we make using the robot programs, and allow earbuds to blossom these manufactured sounds directly into our heavenly dome, blocking out the true complex sounds layered infinitely into the background or existence. Essentially, we are damming the simple complexity of all life with our own manufactured complications, all while doubling down on the complication fallacy, and proclaiming this new order of the world as Progress.


“You can’t fight progress,” a wise old curmudgeon of the darkest heart and harsh prejudiced brain once told me. I still consider him wise because despite his closed mind quick to condemn so many swaths of our shared society space, he had somehow navigated existing for many decades, thus had seen many various forks in the life path, and these travels always give our heart valid “sense” even if our closed mind is not open to exhibiting these lessons in our words. And he was right, because to fight the external Progress man claims to build, would be to attach one’s self to that external unnecessary complication, to grab through war the fallacy. One can’t disprove fallacy by beating at it with anger and hatred. Fallacy is just fallacy, and the nature of life is complex enough for one without complicating it into endless pieces, and then demanding that all the other pieces not considered self also agree completely, or at least partially, or at least tolerantly. Tolerating fallacy acknowledges it exists to an extent, so by fighting the wasted land, you get further buried into the wasted land.


Thus, as the external wasted land reflection of collective internal gluts becomes too much to bear, for some souls the personal goal for progress is to beautify the external waste with whatever sensory color they can find to best replicate whatever beautification efforts are going on internally. Not all make those internal efforts, or feel that umbilical tie to creator spirit, a possession of spirit to splash “beauty” by any means necessary upon the waste.

Within the wasted land systems, and ruled by the complication fallacy, are orders called Civilization, ruled by those who benefit the most from the complication fallacy. With these pyramid-shaped schematics of civilized life, the ordered beneficiaries more often than not are ordained with the accepted (meaning commonly taught through cultural education) appearances of “beauty”. Thus, those born outside that benefit, or crushed deeper down on the pyramid structure, have to struggle to create an alternate beauty. A harsh side-effect of the internal/external complication is that just as external reflects internal, we falsely theorize that internal reflects external. So this creates large swaths of humans being who become heavily conflicted with feelings of self-loathing, self-ugly, weighed down by pyramid scheme’s educational enforcement of fallacy, so that we lose our part in the basic and simple beautiful complexity of existence. We feel like we are shit, quite literally within the metaphor of civilization.

If blessed with perseverance of raw spirit, these crushed types will begin to flourish the industrial detritus they are condemned to live amidst with splashes of the internal beauty that somehow still blossoms inside of themselves. But make no mistake – this is no chance “somehow” so much as it’s affirmation of the beautiful complexity of life, that even the ugliest industrial part or piece of the complication fallacy, when properly aligned with universal creator spirit, becomes beautiful, in direct contradiction to the accepted and educated fallacy. In fact – actual fact – this becomes a contra-indication to narrative of the pyramid structure, and simply by being simple and naturally beautiful, these aberrations to the fallacy are actual acts of rebellion. The layered beauty to this type of rebellion, however, is that the rebellious force does not become at war with the pyramid civilization and the fallacies it considers truth. The force is not working counter to the fallacy, fighting it and thus becoming further enmeshed within it, so much as it is simply returning to natural complex intertwining of all – ugly and beauty, together in one, as one.


This is not a complicated process for a person, but it is hard, not as in having a lot of parts necessitating more difficult-to-procure robot programs, but hard as in the act takes strength. And though, being all our humans being, every person has the potential for that strength. But the pyramid crushes downward hard, and the education of our minds attunes us to external senses not internal census, and this all unnecessarily complicates our strength, which again – is simple though complex. Each of us has the strength of the universe within us, at the nuclear power level.


Many times, the chance vagaries of life put packs of us nomadic, socially-inclined humans being into small localities confined by geopolitical magic or actual physical jutting rocks or inconvenient waterways. These become our psychological notion of “home”. Usually, these areas will be defined within accepted power structures in place (current masters of the pyramid schematic) by commonly shared visual representations, historically silken flags of some sort. The practice of utilizing these visual displays as representation of collective self is generally enforced through educational programs offered “freely” by pyramid power structure masters; thus the notion of “home” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, and all the various localities all somehow are able to think “we are the best”.

A negative consequence of this effect is when multiple localities with differing psychological representations of self butt up against each other, the conflicting “we are the best” notions often initiate a “we are better than them” conflict. A further consequence of these conflicts is that within each separate tribe, so to speak, minority contrarian thought streams will feel solidarity with outsider groups, and thus be regarded as a threat from within by the pyramid power system. So the pyramid works tirelessly to instill strong sense of self-identification with the master pyramid schematic, all while weeding out dissent, as well as protecting the individual power scheme against threats from neighboring power schemes.

For the purposes of this story being created through language, the particular locality conjured up is known “officially” as Dolyggdrazyllika. It exists without a historically-known (in your “world” as reader, coming from your own self-experience pyramid power structure form of control) flag, and the visual image its inhabitants self-identify to represent “home” is a bird stencil.

Oddly enough, not the shape of the paint left behind, but the stencil itself is regarded as the identifier of Dolyggdrazyllika, so that citizens of this land do not publicly paint the image on buildings or linens or elder trees or stone slabs, but instead cut a stencil and spray paint the image on wood slabs, over and over, to give the stencil itself a layered appearance, according to position in life usually, and then burn the wood in ceremonial fires every thousand days during a holiday called Idol. (More on Idol practices later, should it come up again during the course of this word wander, but the name of the holiday was born from the raw notion of a wholly day – day to be whole – off an acronym for Intercultural Day Of Letgo, known briefly in your world as International Day Of Lounge.)


Higher-ups in the pyramid used gold and silver colors for their stencil layering, as is common amongst most humans being and their power structures, as humans worship shine as a signifier of power. For the support networks just below the tips of the pyramid, often darker earth tones were used – blacks and browns and deep greens, much like the camouflage of modern earth soldiers. The further down the pyramid you got, the more outlandishly bright the stencil coloring, to give dull oppressed lives splashes of hope.


The central character and potential hero/antihero of this story is Cuervoblanco. In many ways, Cuervoblanco seems like myself, but there’s a lot about him I don’t know yet. I would expect that you as reader are expecting me to be the omniscient narrator, who comes into this mutual agreement of writing/reading knowing everything that’s going to happen, having mapped it out in a creation process. Unfortunately, that’s not what this is. I’m no creative. Dollygdrazyllika is an actual world with an actual resident named Cuervoblanco, and actual events are ongoing. For whatever reason, this world has crossed realms with visions which seems to be emanating within my physical existence somehow, but with all the strange human technology related to transmission of stuffs, and with human technology always chasing universal technology (that word feels clunky in relation to the universe though), I would imagine – no pun intended – that the universe is more than able to transmit these visions into my physical being with little control to resist or accept it on my part. In other words, my free will in this mutual agreement of writing/reading is somewhat limited.

My relation to all this is more of a reporter, sharing what details I can uncover through words, although none of it is exactly covered up in the first place, so much as I don’t know about it. Thus, this is an ongoing investigation I am reporting on, and the story may at times lack the strictly chronological narrative standard “stories” you are used to in the conventional writer/reader unspoken agreement. I can’t promise that seamlessness, as the universe doesn’t really give us that, does it?
From what I’ve gathered though, there are points of empathy on my part for Cuervoblanco’s existence. And then on the other hand, I live on the earth we consider real, where Dollygdrazyllika doesn’t technically exist. So I can only be but so empathetic.

It is difficult to share stories as they unfold because I, in telling, and you, in reading, place so much of ourselves into what is being told. We desperately want to be part of the story, to relate, and the loose definition of each word compounded infinitely by all those loose definitions added together into sentences and paragraphs attempting to recreate the existence of Cuervoblanco simultaneously enables us to do just that while complicating telling the actual story as it actually in actual fact happened.


This, of course, doesn’t even take into consideration our real earthly way of believing these types of stories aren’t actually happening, but created, so that the creator can own the world. I can’t own this story of Cuervoblanco and his happenings and struggles in Dollygdrazyllika; I am simply sharing as much as he allows sharing with me. This is his story, and to be honest, I’m not sure how much I am betraying his trust by even relaying these things to you, the reader. Were he to catch wind of this happening, he might be pissed, and cut me off entirely, ending forever the visions being transmitted by the universe into what is considered my physical being.


Nonetheless, Cuervoblanco is the main character as he’s the one relaying the story. The first thing you notice about Cuervoblanco is his face hidden behind a white mask, which he always wears, and plans to die in. This is because of his own immense shame felt internally. The face is what we are most often visually identified as by others, and it also masks the part of the body where brain is concealed, which is where we are educated to believe our sense of self is most deeply shaped. Thus, when psychically hobbled (sometimes even crippled) by internal doubts and struggles against chemical tides of depression, the face – which we also identify as self, through mirrors and photographs and selfies – becomes the representation of our own horrible shame. This is certainly the situation Cuervoblanco is born into the middle of, and from an early age, he took to wearing the all-over mask to conceal anyone else from regarding his face as what was him, for fear of them also seeing the loathing and persistent questioning coming up with poor answers.

To what end? Would he realize happiness and unmask, to reveal his face to the world? If not, and he truly was these awful things his psyche conjured as self-identity, wouldn’t the external world, which is somewhat superficially motivated in Dollygdrazyllika, much like our real earth, just regard his white mask as what Cuervoblanco was, and see that as the horrible, wretched thing associated with his name? What was he truly accomplishing by wearing the mask?

I can’t say, and if he knows, he’s not told me. But the mask was always a part of what he appeared to be. He was careful to have at least three, so that a clean one was available to change into at all times. The first time as a child he was stuck with his lone mask, muddied by normal childhood existence, it filled him with just a touch more self-loathing and doubt, as if his face’s perceived failures was leaking through the mask, sullying even that. So he got a second white mask.


It should be noted he sleeps, eats, baths, exists entirely in this mask, so having the second made sense for those moments when he needed to change it out for a fresh one, to launder the dirty one. But who among us launders all their garments in a timely and perfect manner, even those of us required by our tormented psyche to always wear a white mask? So Cuervoblanco kept a third mask, in case more than one hit the laundry basket for too long. And he’s made it clear to me that he actually possesses four of these masks, with the fourth one never worn, and saved for burial, so that no matter what happens in life, even in those last moments of physical existence, no matter how tortured and bloody, he’ll have a fresh, crisp, pure white mask to be laid out nicely for death.

(The question occurred to me, though, who would change his mask in that moment, and be the one to see his “real” face, if that hidden mass of organic molecules will even be considered his real face after a lifetime of residing behind a white mask. I didn’t dare ask him though, because a struggling man sharing his story with you doesn’t need you questioning the wisdom of his decisions towards getting right again.)

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