NO GODS BUT MY OWN 12

A CODA, OF SORTS

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Hello again! I hope this installment of No Gods But My Own finds you well. This time around we’re going to close some things out and plant the seeds for what’s next.

Let’s get this thing started.

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THE DAMNED MACHINE

This is a direct continuation from NGBMO 11 and will make a lot more sense if you start there. Click here to go back to the beginning.

BUSY HANDS DON’T TETHER THE MIND

The hiss of pneumatic presses, up and down, rhythmic like a heartbeat.

From above, the cricket hum of exhaust fans, slow and consistent.

Like a metronome, crimping machines click a steady beat.

At first blush, the noise of the factory floor seemed like a chaotic din. Over time it became a peaceful soundscape that inspired some of the best moments of altered perception I have ever experienced.

It’s hard to describe the transcendent feeling I got when I was standing at my machine and allowing myself to space out and go blank. I’ve never felt more present. Entire novels were written and imagery was conjured up from the aether that became nearly all of my artistic output for that period.  

How many tasks do each of us have in our day that don’t require us to be fully present? How many jobs do we do that open up the chance to try a more active style of meditation?

The odds are that there aren’t actually that many. Count up the moments in the day that you give up to meaningless things and distractions. There are far more than you realize. It’s time to treat that time as rich fertilizer instead of fallow ground. 

What I am proposing here is the eradication of the wasted moment. Learn to compartmentalize and be of two minds while engaged in menial tasks; one mind to keep track of the job while the other dives deep. It will take time and discipline but is well worth the effort. It adds another layer of spiritual meaningfulness to the mundane and frees you to explore the imaginal and luminous instead of simply avoiding boredom.

That boring state was incredibly important to my magical work. I had always assumed that altering my mental state through more exciting ways like orgasm or running until exhaustion would be the most potent. I was wrong. That same state can be achieved through the dull and mindless. Not only that but it was so much stronger for me.

Only the entitled are allowed to do their work in a vacuum. Those of us on the ground, working the factories, digging the ditches, getting our hands dirty, have to find solace where we can. Sometimes that means sussing out moments of bliss amongst the cacophony. 

THE JOB ONLY OWNS YOU IF YOU LET IT

"Left arm, bend at the elbow. 1...2...3…"

The voice was gentle but monotone. It would have been angelic had there been an ounce of emotion behind it.

"Release. Right arm, bend at the elbow. 1...2...3…"

On both sides, lined up in neat rows, were mostly middle aged Vietnamese women doing our daily calisthenics. Their form was rigid, each of them following cues from the moves of their neighbors.

"Release. Left wrist, bending down, hand flat. 1...2...3…"

Most days I would ignore that voice and keep on working, keeping my head down and hoping the lead wouldn't notice as she patrolled the department for people doing exactly what I was trying to pull off.

"Release. Left wrist, bending up, hand flat. 1...2...3…"

There weren't many of us, we shirkers of the stretch break. Most of the crew felt that complying was the path of least resistance.

They weren't wrong.

"Release."

Some people like to ride the fence when it comes to their jobs. They listen to the communiques from above but do it begrudgingly. They wear their uniforms and try to shave every once in a while. They keep in. 

Then there are those people who have broken through the fence and get lost in the corporate wilderness. These people worship their jobs and devote themselves to it like a spiritual calling.

That same level of apprehension should be applied when taking inventory of your own relationship with your practice. No spiritual pursuit should ever eclipse every other part of your life. It makes what should be an act of enrichment into a vampiric codependency.

This was the biggest hazard during long stretches of overtime. Week after week would pass and we would all start to lose our connection to the outside world. It was hard not to get swept into a strange devotion to the place, like all of us were industrial monks filing into the temple for a day of prayer. 

A good spiritual devotion is a symbiosis, meaning that it gives back just as much or more than you put into it. It's important to cultivate that and focus on the ratio of cost to benefit because it can be a fine line between that symbiosis and parasitosis, meaning that your benefit is eclipsed by the amount taken from you. There is a very present danger of losing yourself in a toxic affair with the luminous once you untether from the world beyond it.

Taking a hiatus from magic once in a while is your best defense against a burnout or something much worse. Like with any other strenuous work, the human body and mind can only exert themselves so much before breaking.

I can tell you from experience that life inside that kind of breakage can get desperate and harrowing. I spent roughly two years buried in books, trying to unlock some unknown part of myself and transcend.

I never found that transcendence. Instead, I found new levels of  loneliness, anxiety, and near suicidal depression. I couldn't sleep and hardly ate. I lost so much weight and acted so erratically that my co-workers thought I had gotten hooked on drugs or had developed a tumor of some sort.

It took an intervention to finally break me out of the cycle I had found myself in. I had hit a point where the only way I communicated with anyone was anger and aggression. I resented anyone who tried to put themselves between me and my work. When the last few people I had kept in my life threatened to leave I had to reevaluate. I consider myself lucky to have been given that wakeup call. Not everyone gets thrown a rope.

It's hard to say if the knowledge I found during that time was worth the price I paid for it. It was a life changing experience that I would consider the first step of a longer journey but I'm convinced that there were far healthier ways of finding that trail.

I thought I had control the entire time, that my education was a symbiotic relationship between myself and the forces I was trying to petition for help. It was my hubris that turned that symbiosis into something more dangerous. 

Humans aren't meant for that kind of constant pressure. You are bound to be crushed without forcing yourself to take some kind of reprieve once in a while.

Go for a walk.

Take a trip.

Spend time with the ones you love.

Separate yourself from that pressure for a while.

This is also why it's important to find things outside your obsession to spend time with. You need to insulate yourself from all the parts of the symbiote if you want it to stop feeding.

Every Friday there was a standing invitation to go out drinking with my coworkers and every Friday I would decline. Not because I didn't like going out but because I had already spent sixty hours over the last five days with them. I knew them better than I knew my friends. I also knew that the only topic of conversation was going to be WORK. 

Only a parasite takes over your vision so completely that you can't see anything beyond it. Healthy relationships don't take over a life so completely and remove you from the world so thoroughly. It's a possession, of sorts. These things have taken ownership of you and only you can take that back.

Without the rest of the world, magic is nothing more than a tool without work to do.

What purpose does a hammer have if there's nothing to pound but itself?

YOU DON’T KNOW THE SHAPE OF A THING UNTIL YOU’VE LOOKED AT ALL THE SIDES

It would take weeks of planning before the engineers would give us the plans for a new prototype. It was up to us to manifest their ideas in the physical space.

These prototypes were important, not simply as a proof of concept, but as something that could be viewed and inspected in reality. The build could be viewed from all angles. Things like fitment and wire stress could be measured and tested. Those of us charged with building the assemblies were watched and timed to make sure it was feasible to take on possible orders in the future. 

It was the only situation that an assembly became a sandbox of play and creativity. Things never, ever went as planned so we were left improvising and developing new processes on the fly. Sometimes weeks would pass before trial and error would finally bring us to an iteration that functioned as desired.

This idea, that you should be utilizing all of your senses and viewing things from every possible angle to bring something to life, was possibly the most vital and easiest for me to translate to my practice.

Nearly all of my magic is centered around the creation of art and drawing. While my drawings are two dimensional the experience of producing them is not. There's the weight of the pen in my hand, the smell of the ink, the sound of the nib scratching against the grain of the paper, and all of it while I focus on the line as it emerges from the pen. The experience is deep and rich, taking every part of me and focusing it, centering it in on an outcropping of the imaginal. It's hard for me to view my books as anything but long term rituals made in corporeal space.

Clay idols, calligraphy, acid etched metal, and any other physical manifestations of creation make great focal points and physical workings. They are full body experiences if you have the perspective for it. It's full immersion magic.

Failure is an essential part of the process but creating and cataloging your physical creations allows for a three dimensional archive of what did and didn't work. You are allowed the opportunity to roll those experiences in your hands, see the naked underbelly, and perhaps learn to improve next time. 

Moving from the literal to the strictly metaphorical, this same rule could apply to most other situations and systems. Decisions should never be made without knowing all the sides and angles. Most mistakes get made when the unexpected suddenly arrives. It may be impossible to prepare for any given problem but it couldn’t hurt to know SOME of what’s coming. 

There are rarely ever two sides to things and a coin is a terrible decision tree. When you make plans you have to take all of your senses into account, your motives, your desires, your skill level, your enthusiasm, the entity you want to work with, THEIR diaries or motives, and a million different things. If you want higher hit rates in your magical work try to think as multidimensionally as possible. Not taking any one of those aspects into account may be the single thing between success and failure. 

FEED THE MACHINES WELL

I would get the weirdest looks. 

I started each morning with a conversation, not with my co-workers or the boss but with my machine. I liked to let it know what kind of day we would be having, what I expected from it, and what it should expect from me. I treated them like they were my allies and partners, like beasts of burden about to start the harvest.

There was an accord struck: if they treated me well I would treat them well in return. To keep my end of the bargain I would take care to be attentive to their needs. This meant daily upkeep and cleaning, inspecting various connectors and ports, and making sure I had all the material I needed to get the job done. That was what we were both there for, after all. We had a job to do.

I never expected a reply, not a spoken one anyways. The results were obvious; my output was better than almost anyone in my department, with less errors and more consistency. My machines never broke down and if they had trouble I would fix it without losing time. The accord held like that for years. All the way until I quit that job those machines had my back and I had theirs.

At some point each of us has spoken to a machine. You might not have noticed because it was a time of stress or anger. That's when a lot of people start to ascribe human characteristics to the equipment they're using. Your car starts to chug up a steep incline and suddenly you're giving her a pep talk. Your computer crashes and you're cursing the day it was soldered. 

It's a natural urge, giving the things around us identity and intelligence, but some simply write it off as the result of a stressful situation or don't notice they've done it at all. It falls into the same category as anthropomorphizing your pets or talking to yourself. For some of us it gets taken at face value, that everything around us has some sort of living essence that we can and do communicate with all the time.

Back when I was still speaking with machines I had never heard of Animism. My point of view at the time was far more mechanistic and thought that maybe my connection with the machine had something to do with my acknowledgment of the greater machine in which I believed we all existed within. I never figured out if the belief in a cold, unfeeling machine running all of reality was the byproduct of working too much overtime for too long or if it was a faith come by honestly.

It wasn't until later that I began to feel that the opposite was true and that everything around us has a spirit and life essence. I came around to thinking that we are surrounded by allies that we can consult and befriend. For me, those allies have always been machines.

Sadly, it seems as though most people don’t view machines in the same light. We live in a disposable culture. We buy cheap items that come to us through exploitative channels, we throw those items out when they break instead of repairing them, those items break more often and inspire us to buy even more breakable products, and the waste created by manufacturing and disposing of those items causes untold damage to nature and our environment. It’s a tainted existence that only grows worse with the total disregard of the soul inside each and every part of that chain.

Changing that corrupted cycle may start with something as simple as language and syntax. Replace words like repair and maintain with care for and feeding. Name things like your car and your refrigerator. 

Don’t stop there, though. 

Get to know your machines intimately. Learn how to fix them. READ THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL. 

Every machine is an individual. They may come from a product line where every assembly has the same design but each and every build is different in small, unperceived ways. No two cars run the same. No two blenders hit the same mixing speed. If a human hand has touched the manufacturing of a thing in any way there will be flaws and differences. Learn them like you would learn the idiosyncrasies of a friend or loved one.

Speak to your machines and give them love. This is how you feed them and they will repay you time and time again. Take care not to overwhelm yourself by filling your home with so many electronics. With this frame of mind, anyone who surrounds themselves with useless gadgets and devices is akin to a pet hoarder. Only take on what you can. You will easily survive without that bread maker or bun toaster with the holes for hotdogs.

A few weeks after quitting one of my long term factory jobs I ran into a manager from the shop. He explained that all of the machines I ran suddenly stopped working. No matter who they called or how familiar they were with the machines nobody could get them up and running again. 

It was the damndest thing, he said. 

I’m relatively sure that the only reason that could’ve happened was that I knew best how to care for those things but there is a part of me that is truly saddened by the idea that they may have just missed me.

PATIENCE IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR

Overtime was a memory hole. All of us were working so hard and so fast. Exhaustion and long hours made it so you forgot if it was Monday or Wednesday.

Maybe it was Saturday?

I didn't know. 

I couldn't know.

The expectation was that we would not only work twenty percent more but that we would also produce that many more prices in an hour. What came next was no surprise.

The schedule would return to normal for a week or two. There would be a communal sigh of relief. People had time for a life, for their families. They had time to BREATH for the first time in months.

Then came the wave.

Box after box showed up in the loading dock. Customer returns piled as high as the ceiling, from all over the country.

Rework.

In the rush to get through the glut of orders corners got cut and details were missed. It's difficult when you're trying to get that much done. It's nearly impossible to do it right through the fog of exhaustion.

Patience.

It's a concept that's become an anathema. We know what we want and we want it now. 

Fast training.

Fast turnaround.

Fast results.

Fast knowledge.

Fast experiences.

We attempt condensing time at every turn even though we know that it's impossible and all of these things take the time they take.

You have to fight for patience, from yourself and from others. Nobody is going to give that to you. You will have to take it.

Getting good at anything TAKES TIME. It takes repetition and rumination for learning to stick. Rushing things is hubristic and only works to delay training even longer.

You can always read a rookie if you know what you're doing. Especially when they're young. 

It was one of the big mistakes the management made when the rushes hit. They would hire a bunch of younger people, just out of high school, and expect them to learn the job in a week or two. 

For most of them it was their first or second job. It was obvious fast that they were green but that didn't matter as far as the managers were concerned. 

Everyone had to fill their quota. You didn't get to stay if you didn't hit your numbers.

So these kids would push out shoddy work as fast as they could. Assembly after assembly destined to add to the wave of rework. None of them ever asked for help, not at first. 

They knew the job.

Any idiot could do it.

If only they had taken the time to learn, truly learn, their job.

That applies to anything you're trying to do. You have to breathe and take time. Live with what you're learning. Realize that getting good only comes to those who wait to get there. It takes humility to wait and that humility brings more knowledge than ego ever will.

It's not about striving for perfection because nothing is without flaws. It's about taking the time to truly feel what it is you're doing, to fall into a synchronous orbit with your ultimate goal. 

Take the time.

Breath.

Life is long and gets longer every day. It took fifteen years to mine what magic I could from the factory. It's taken even longer to learn how to make art or connect with the deeper veins of the luminous. Longer still to learn how to live with myself at any level of comfort.

To make a connection with your world with any level of depth or compassion it cannot be done without patience. 

Take the time.

Breath.

CONCLUSION

It dawned on me while I was writing this that all of these words were directed at one very specific person and that person is me. Not the me of right now. No, it's for the me of twenty years ago, the one just starting this journey. Lord knows he could've used the guidance and reassurance.

I've been meaning to write this for the last half dozen years. There's been a lot of false starts and dead ends over those years and I think it may be because of him.

You have to understand that I failed him, way back then, and I didn't want to fail him again. It's difficult to describe what it's like to grow up in a small town. Money and options are both in short supply. The horizon was a brick wall that I was screaming towards at high speed, every second an inch closer to the dead end my life would become if I tied myself to that place. I had to get out but the climb seemed too steep and my velocity too fast.

I didn't get over that wall until just before my thirtieth birthday.

I wish I could tell him that his patience would pay off and that all of those ideas he had bouncing around his head would bring him to the happiest life he could hope to ask for. 

But then it would all be different, wouldn't it?

If I had known all of this before the process took hold and assembled me into my current configuration?

If I hadn't been patient?

It may feel like the process is almost over but it's always starting again and continuing on. There are always new things to make and new processes to test. 

So, in the end, this isn't about magic.

Not really.

This is about work.

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I was thinking that I would change things up this time, considering it’s the official close of what I view as the first volume of this series. No god this week. Instead, I have a coda for you. It’s a reunion, of sorts, and my longtime readers should recognize it pretty quickly.

Coyote looked out at the candy colored horizon and laughed. The sun was going down in the desert and the air chilled just enough to be a welcome relief.

Just a little death, said Coyote as he watched the sky fire go out. 

He laughed again, dryly this time.

We've done it before.

We'll do it again.

Coyote could hear his brothers and sisters stirring. They were hungry. But, then again, so was he.

This coyote, he was different from his siblings out there in the dark. He liked hunting in the daylight, when the fire was high and hot, and the price he paid for the contradiction was hunger. 

Coyote was always hungry but somehow he could never find that one thing to satiate him. No rodents or lizards would do, not for this coyote.

This coyote, he dreamed of birds and the taste of feathers in his mouth.

That's all the taste ever was, though.

Just a dream.

So Coyote laid down in that little death and kept on having that dream, filled with hunting and falling and flying and birds that'll never be caught. 

In the morning he'll be reborn, once the fire is high and hot.

We’ve done it before.

We’ll do it again.

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And with that we end Volume One of No Gods But My Own. I hope you all got as much out of these essays and drawings as I did. Starting this series has been a revelation for me and I’m so glad I could share it with you.

I’m hoping to get the collection all put together and have the book released by the end of January. I have an overwhelming drive to collect things in hard copies so the book is honestly more for myself than anything else but If you want to pick up a copy after it’s forthcoming release that would be awesome as well.

After that I’ll be starting volume two of this series. So far I’m calling it The Four Color Arcana: Secret Teachers and Super Saints and I’ve already got the first four parts written and all fifteen outlined. It’s going to be a spiritual view of comic books and a meditation on superheroes as something more than pop culture fodder. I’ll be starting to post that here once I’ve got the entire first draft written and I can do some overall editing. I’m hoping for to start releasing installments by the end of January but it’s hard to say for sure when I can finish it.

Thank you to each and every one of you out there reading this. You have no idea how much it has meant to me to hear from you and get your support. This has revived a love of writing I had lost a long time ago and it wouldn’t have happened without your support.

Until we meet again,

EJM

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