And now for something completely different….

And no, I didn’t write this, I copied it from this website.

I’d like to talk about something very beautiful: you are alive. That’s incredibly beautiful. And when we talk about the self, we are talking about recognizing, understanding who you are. When you think, “I am an Australian; I’m a New Zealander; I am English, Scottish, Irish,” you are forgetting who you are. You are a human being.

We hear about superheroes who have reached the ultimate state of being. What if I said that you have reached the ultimate state of being? You are alive. That’s the ultimate state of being. There isn’t a higher state than being alive. This is it.

People go to the movies to be entertained, for some action, some drama. They have a whole ritual of getting their popcorn, their candy, their soft drinks. Talk about planning! The army could learn a thing or two about discipline from these people. They know exactly what and how much to get. Then they sit down in their chosen seat. The movie starts, and the line between reality and the artificial blurs. Some people even start crying. If they could see the real shoot, they’d be laughing, because what they’re looking at is maybe the fifteenth take of the same scene.

We believe. Let’s believe for a minute that there is a cow in front of you, and the cow moos. Maybe there’s no harm in believing in it, but when you need milk, remember one thing: If this cow does give milk, it’s only make-believe milk. It’s not real. You won’t be able to drink it. You can imagine it, you can pretend you’re drinking milk, but it won’t satisfy your thirst. Everything about it has to be make-believe, because it’s all a fantasy.

In the arena of knowing, there’s no make-believe. You experience. This is what I talk about. It’s not a fantasyland. There is a longing within a human being so deep that it leaves you dry and, in the same moment, fills you up. It’s a magical dance of quenching the thirst within.

Have you ever had water when you were really, really thirsty? Water becomes sweet. The focus is on nothing else but to take that water and drink, drink, drink. After you finish drinking, you say, “Ah!” You’re satisfied.

What is water? It’s something that has no identity. It isn’t square and it isn’t round. It takes the shape of whatever contains it. It has no color. It flows out of the ground, sometimes out of rocks—unbelievable places. If you were to try to describe water for its physical appearance, you could not do a good job, because it would always sound insignificant. Yet its power is so incredible that nothing can stand in its way—no mountain, no rock. Over time, water will carve what we think could never be carved. Yet water has tenderness, gentleness, softness. It’s the softest feeling, and it can destroy mountains.

The lack of water has wiped out civilizations. Yet water has a clear understanding and sense of purpose. It comes from the ocean, it travels through the land, but water clearly knows its destination. It knows it has an appointment, a love affair with the ocean. When it merges with the ocean, its identity is gone. It’s stripped of all that it was. It’s home again.

Why am I telling you all this? How is this going to help you? Because you can learn from it—about the passion, the desire, the want in your life. You have a thirst in you. You have a thirst to be fulfilled, but many people don’t acknowledge it because they’re afraid. Why? Because they don’t know what will happen to them. They have some concept that if they really acknowledged this thirst in their lives, they might become a vegetable, they might become irresponsible, or they might not be able to hold down a job.

What you do in this world, you do. It has nothing to do with your inner passion, because it will never satisfy that inner passion. They are two different things.

I’m here to tell you to listen to that sweet thirst. How could you not desire true peace in your life? Understand the passion for peace and satisfaction in your life. You have been thirsty. Throw your bucket in the well. And when that bucket is full, reel it in, and you will have a reward. Your reward will be satisfaction.

Prem Rawat

John Lindensmith, notorious on Xanga as The_Church_of_Fat, is the author of Mystery Man, the story of a brilliant surgeon transformed by a gunshot wound into a vicious serial killer.

He’s written a review for Xangans, the paperback showcasing authors from the Xangan community, and I’m reproducing most of his review below

A collection of short stories, essays, and poems from the Xanga blogging community. The collection offers a mosaic of human experience: tragedy, anger, alienation, joy, religion, and politics.

Dan the Theologian, one of Xanga’s most popular writers, sums up the blogging community best in his introduction: “We came together to share our pain, addictions and struggles with someone that would read them. So many days, I cried while reading a post only to find myself laughing and celebrating with the next entry I read.”

XANGANS is a collection of truly unique voices: Cynthia Craig is a writer to look out for. She creates beautiful minimalist stories and poems that cut to the bone. My favorites, “Reading Lolita,” “The Picture of Miscommunication,” and “The Girl Walking,” deal with sex and relationships. Lost-In-Reverie, in her article “Because I want to Believe; Or, why I Am Sometimes Jealous of People with Faith,” chronicles her loss of belief in religion and God. On the opposite spectrum, Tukha Al-Jibouri offers a humorous and informative essay about why she wears “The Veil.” If politics is your thing, Jon Nelson’s essay “Television and the Debasement of Political Discourse” explains how TV has turned America into a bunch of blind sheep who accept anything they see on the noise box. Toni, in her essay “Things I Rarely Talk About Anymore,” offers a heart-wrenching story about how her hand was damaged in a car accident. Pervy Penguin, in a brave essay entitled “I Will Never Understand,” is blatantly honest about a unique condition: asexuality. If poetry is your thing, Scott Christian offers riveting verse, especially in his poem “Pane.”

My own story, “Another Night on the Town” is included in the collection. It chronicles the wasteland and boredom of the teenage social scene, narrated by a homicidal youth. Graham Worthington, the editor and compiler of Xangans, includes segments from his novels Wake of the Raven and Zorn, not to mention some very vivid and powerful poetry. Xangans offers a plethora of voices, styles, and interpretations of our world through the eyes of a blogging community. This book wouldn’t be possible without the unique advantages technology and social networks offer us in this day and age. The collection isn’t just for members of Xanga; it’s for anyone who wants to read about the human condition from the perspectives of many unique individuals.

    -John Lindensmith.

Xangans is now available on amazon in the USA, Canada and the UK.

Xangans, the paperback collection of stories by bloggers and authors in the xangan community, is now available in Canada and in the UK on each country’s Amazon.

This is considerable progress from where we were a few days ago, when CreateSpace were giving me a load of gloomy stuff about “CreateSpace is not supported on international sites.”

You’ll notice that each of the two latter sites are warning “out of stock,” or “not yet available.” This is the usual hot air, and should change soon. (Edit – Xangans on both amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk has now gone to full availability.)

Peep peep =)

PervyPenguin, one of the new authors featured in Xangans, is badly in need of funds to go to college.

PervyPenguin contributed one of the longer stories to be found within the pages of this paperback, a fascinating piece on sexual and emotional identity, which is often a puzzling and troublesome subject for many young people in today’s complex world; and sometimes a mystery to the not-so-young too.

She is a thoughtful yet amusing writer, who deserves the education she will need to fulfill her potential. Yet as is the case too often, financial circumstances are denying her this opportunity.

PP has entered two competitions for scholarships. She doesn’t want anything from you but your votes. Can you blast over to her site NOW and hit the link to give her those votes that can make such a difference?

Remember, there are two links, and she needs a vote per day from this 21 of June to the 2 of July.

People whose work is featured in Xangans, can you recommend this post, and recommend Pervy’s too. This is one example of the kind of support we can provide through our efforts.

starshinefaerie

….is at this very minute leaping up and down in excitement, having just published…. 

Its available on amazon.com I’m going there now to buy a copy, so that I can review it on amazon and on Xanga. Can you do the same, and help promote the most undervalued form of artist in the entire field of arts – the author?

Paul Koster, a Toronto playwright, has written

The State of New York v Peter Pan

It’s to be staged by The Hamilton Fringe this July, and – as is usually the case with playwrights, authors etc. who aren’t yet well known – Paul and the company are having to foot the bill for production costs, so the cast and crew are hosting a fund raiser this June twenty-seventh at Bread and Circus

It’s a night of stand-up, sketch and improv, featuring the best Toronto has to offer. All proceeds from tickets sales and a 50/50 draw go directly to the production. The cast and crew are utterly amazing and deserve our help.

If you’re in Toronto, and you haven’t been arrested for disrupting the G20, consider dropping by.

Brought to you by the publisher of Xangans, the first ever paperback featuring members of any online blogging community

Toronto has been rocked by an earthquake.

The whole house shook, and the ceiling rumble as if it were the skin of a giant drum. I, sitting toiling at my keyboard for the better good of Xanga, felt the floor tremble, saw ever reflection dance crazily in the faint mirror of each glass door.

I ran into the street crying “no,no, it wasn’t me, and I’ll never do it again.”

Early news reports state that a disabled Chinese man was rescued from the ruins of a collapsed building. He was found sprawled across a keyboard, murmuring, “Beautiful Ladies with Earth-shaking boobs….”

It is a judgement from God.

Xangans, the paperback collection of stories by little known xangan authors, first appeared on amazon.com on Wednesday the ninth of this month, although it seems like weeks ago. Xangans was published using the customer account publishing system CreateSpace, which I last used in January this year to publish Zorn. 

From that experience I expected Xangans to appear on the international amazons (Canada, the UK, Japan etc) within about two days, say Friday the eleventh, as Zorn did.

But it didn’t. And several other features considered desirable haven’t appeared either, such as Look Inside.

So for some days I’ve been corresponding with CreateSpace support. I’ve found that they’ve changed their policy back to what it was in October last year, but not bothered notifying their account holders.

In short, they no longer places titles Created by CreateSpace on the five international Amazon sites. And, to reiterate, not bothered to notify account holders, though they can squirt little format emails for minor matter through email with ease.

This is not too serious a situation in Canada, which shares the world’s longest border with the USA, so that canadians can and do shop on amazon.com with very little extra mail cost. But it’s bad news for interested xangans in the UK, as the additional postage cost and time delay may be considerable.

I’m now chewing on this major pain, but I don’t see what can be done.

Congratulations to disillusionisreal for being the first to put a review of Xangans onto its page at amazon.com

“Xangans, a book written by bloggers on the social networking site Xanga is a wonderful mix of short stories and poems. You may love getting your literary fix via the internet, while others need to have book-in-hand. This book fulfills these two separate niches. There are many talented writers out there, and this book has brought some of them together to showcase their work. It is worth the read, quick and painless..and full of thought provoking prose, thrills, chills, humor and sadness. It goes to show that you don’t have to be an established, published author to make your mark in literary history.”

Thanks disillusionisreal, 2008 Mathom Fiction Award winner.

According to The_X_Rankings I’m Number One on Xanga this last week in terms of power ranking, which I don’t understand so I won’t try to explain how it’s worked out.

This is no brilliance on my part, but due to the cooperation of the thirty blogging authors who sent me their stories etc for Xangans.

Paul_Partisan doesn’t agree with this, saying it’s “illogical,” so I think he’s been watching too much Star Trek, and I need to tell the following story.

In the nineteenth century there was a bold highwayman in England called Dick Turpin. He would mount his horse, Black Bess, and gallop her alongside stage coaches while waving his pistols, and when they pulled over he’d rob them.

One day he pulled a coach over after he’d had a bit too much to drink, and when the trembling passengers got out he shouted “I’m Dick Turpin! I’m going to rob you, then I’m going to kill all the women and rape all the men!”

One of the women wasn’t scared. She shook her hair and sort of heaved her bosom at him, sort of sluttish (women did that in those days) “Surely,” she said, “you mean you’re going to kill all the men and rape all the women?”

A neatly dressed little man stepped out from behind her. “You be quiet bitch,” he said “this is Dick Turpin. He know’s what he’s doing without your help.”

And so does The_X_Rankings

Incidentally, for three days Xangans was in the top 0.07 percent of all books selling on amazon.com, and is still in the top 0.7%