Whoops. Laid in bed for 5 minutes, then had a little idea that seemed sufficiently worthy to post. (Yes, it's good to have my computer not only in the same house, but also the same room where I'm sleeping again. Cause under my previous circumstances, if an idea like this occurred just between waking and sleep, chances are it would have never seen the light of day, and fizzled.) So here goes.

It relates to yesterday's topic of sorcery and sigils. I was thinking about how I only drink a tiny fraction of the soda that I once did. And it's not as if I've gone on some sort of diet where I'm forcing myself not to consume this stuff because it's unhealthy. It just doesn't hold much appeal anymore. I look at it, I taste it, and I don't care. It's like, "Why would I want that shit?"

Consider the following sigil:

Through years upon years of propaganda and cultural reinforcement, this sigil became intertwined in my mind with youth, sexiness, coolness, celebrities, and excitement. I'm assuming readers here are already pretty much familiar with how this happens, so I won't belabor it. (Though I suspect that even among those who are in the class of the aware, most either underestimate the power of the sorcery or attempt downplay its significance.)

The part I want to get to is how, in my case, the deprogramming worked. Those who have kept up with this site know that a little over a year ago, I began to undertake dumpster diving (mostly for food) as my action sport of choice. I also engaged in other activities that some might argue could have posed serious risks to my health, such as picking up half-eaten discards off of public benches and munching down on them.

I was nowhere near starvation, or even real hunger. Indeed, I had money in the bank that I could have spent on food at any time, as well as parents who didn't mind feeding me. But I did have an interest in seeing how far I could take these exercises in urban survival, as a way to become better prepared to cope in the event I might someday find myself in a big city with no money, legal documents, or other means to gain "legitimate" sustinance. Plus, it was just one hell of a fun adventure.

Sometimes, I would find discarded cans or bottles of soda. Opened or unopened, it didn't matter. I would take a sip if I felt like it. In doing so, I took perverse pleasure in overcoming my American-inculcated paranoia of germs/cooties, while at the same time recognizing that I was indeed endangering my health, just like everyone who drinks the stuff, whether it comes sealed and polished from a sterile shelf, or out of a gutter half empty.

By conditioning my brain to associate the sigils and their flavors with dumpstering and scavanging, I accomplished not just one, but two feats. Not only did the sigils begin to inherit the "negative"/dirty associations that accompany the stereotypical dumpster, but I was also able to transfer the youth/sexy/cool charge into the act of dumpstering.

When you drink Pepsi -- a substance totally superfluous to survival -- from a dumpster, you are no longer inhabiting the narrative of the dirty starving bum, but have instead snatched the hotness right out from under Britney Spears' corporate-inflated tank top, and put it into a context that lies outside the sham of the market illusion.

Once you've done that, you realize on a level, of whose existence you were previously unaware, that it's all just a bunch of shit anyway, so to hell with the whole thing. (Or, as I shouted in my not-so-famous public protest on August 26, 2004 in the parking lot of an anonymous gas station somewhere south of Denver, "It's all trash." Damn was I lucky I didn't get arrested. Fuck, my mind was wacked out in those moments.)

This could lead into a nihilistic embrace of the death machine (and yes, I have experienced some of that darker side of this whole art, which never really goes away completely), but more optimistically, it could also lead to a path that leaves the sigils defused, while the power with which they were previously vested is now available to channel into whatever the former victims (i.e. me and you) would like.

In other words, the energies and spirits of sexiness, coolness, and vitality are no longer tied to the act of drinking their poison. Even in the depths of our subconscious impulses, we can be hip, young, and powerful, and we can do it on our own terms. No logo required. Or, if we prefer, we can make our own.

Dihydrogen monoxide. The present looks better than ever.