A Belated Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you both enlightenment AND endarkment on Black Friday... with a little special offering

Although many of you haven’t yet joined the Discord, I’m grateful for you where ever you’ve landed. Grateful for whatever the level of initiation you’re called to in this nascent weirdo cult of indy publishing and illusion-smashing, archon-pranking, enlightenment-seeking good times.

I consider each and every one of you a true blue Creekmason, your hearts pumping questionably potable suburban runoff.

And as our numbers swell closer to the triple digits each day, I feel a bit baffled that there are almost more people reading this blog than it takes to amass half the world’s wealth!

Baffled and grateful. The only appropriate mood for tripping on tryptophan surrounded by the people you tolerate most.

But that was yesterday! Today is Black Friday.

The traditional chaotic tumult of consumer gladiator battles has abated via the rise of online shopping options, yes. We’re left with this inexorable race to occupation of the entire period from equinox to solstice with seasonal sales.

Still, while Turkey Day was a time for reflection on the good, the day we spend hungover and bloated afterward still culturally represents—at least to me—more of a shadow side of American Nuclear Family-ism. The “Black Friday” Walmart battles memorably spoofed on South Park are vivid glimpses of some darker aspects of our familial cheer on the steroids of a media-driven scarcity mindset beset by lack, hoarding and ugly competition.

It’s the shadow of the togetherness we celebrate on Thanksgiving and Christmas: the prioritization of our own closest connections above those we undeniably share with those Others also in line for flat screen TVs.

I have so much more to say about this, but I’m at a weird place where, while I feel totally estranged from humanity generally, I actually do belong to a handful families via marriage and friendship, so I still have two more Thanksgivings to equal parts celebrate and endure.

(What a joy! What fodder for gratitude! I genuinely am so thankful for the people who accept me as a part of their imperfect units.)

What I want to say today, however, is this: aren’t we at a place culturally where we can finally stop Othering dark things?

Wouldn’t loving even our own tendency to Other, cause fewer catastrophes as its tentacles catch us by surpise less often? If, instead of Othering the Othering, we loved ourselves for our Loyalty, how might these Black Friday events go down differently?

How much less likely might we be—as beings who own our own and therefore appreciate each other’s Loyalty to their own familial units—to elbow a stranger over a tickle-me Elmo?

The Creekmasons have been casually book-clubbing the beautiful polemic, Luminous Darkness, by Deborah Eden Tull.

I am swayed.

The continual reference to darkness as negative and sinister—and the assumed divide between light and dark—has created a severe tear in the fabric of human relationship. It has caused a dualistic fracture in how we see everything—good/bad, right/wrong, higher/lower, worthy/unworthy.

These dualistic associations have contributed to systemic racism, classism, misogyny, sexism, domination over nature, and the demonization of mental illness and physical disability.

…

Because day is the domain of activity, productivity, and the conscious mind, it is generally considered to be more relevant than the night. It is the night, however, that provides us time for restoration, stillness, empty space, and freedom for the subconscious mind.

Tull’s argument is that we honor our darker aspects. That we feel fully. That we love even the stuff that is frequently considered dark. That we cultivate endarkment to balance the enlightenment we seek.

I’m going to have a lot more to say about shadow work and its relationship to self-love, but I have to get going.

I’m going to leave you with something that I often shove unceremoniously into my own shadow.

I am going to plug. To promote. To shamelessly self-advertise.

This feels appropriate, as what I am going to advertise deals with a college kid obsessed with enlightening his neighbors about a political issue that had been long shoved into the shadow.

It is a story of the legalization of cannabis, magick, psychology, climate change, and door to door light bulb sales.

Yup, my very own epic poem, Mental Appendage, is on sale for Black Friday.

It’s free. It’s fun. It’s rhyming occasionally, and painstakingly metered. I’ve been told it qualifies as both cerebral and emotionally evocative.

My only ask is that if you connect with it, you let me know. Here, on Amazon, where-ever.

Here’s the rundown.

The Mental Appendage.

Dylan Friedman is your typical college stoner who finds school-funded psychological research and LSD to be a gateway to the Occult.

That’s typical right?

Dylan beats the pavement, supposedly to “save rainy San Francisco from a plunge into the Bay” due rising sea levels. That’s only a piece of real reason. Dylan’s “Enlightenment Campaign” is a mission to change out people’s incandescent bulbs for energy efficient LED alternatives, while subtly steering conversations toward shining a light on California’s Prop 19, a ballot initiative for the legalization of cannabis.

Students of history will remember how Prop 19 faired come election season. Still, Dylan’s forays into applied psychology (also known as Magick, with a “K”) might help ensure the war isn’t over.

This short, melodic, metered Epic Poem is sure to stick with you long after you put it down.