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Further Adventures of a Rogue Journalist

by Nowick Gray, Editor of Alternative Culture Magazine

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On Novelty

1 February 2002

As the world winds its unsteady way toward the so-called zero point in 2012, the chief characteristic of our remaining time promises to be "Novelty." Indeed, this is the concept Terrence McKenna used to identify the meaning of the end of time as we know it. And all through our 2- or 7-billion year history, each step forward--while rising and falling with the inevitable ups and downs of resistance and change along the way--has been fueled by that same motive force, tending toward that same inevitable conclusion.

Is it the creative energy of the universe at work here, in us, and in less than ten years are we finally going to give in to it utterly, to get out of its way altogether?

In the moment, now, we realize like a hungry teen that there is something to be had just beyond our grasp. Eagerly we await the next intoxicating substance, event, morsel, gift. The mystery of waiting is made both more anxious and more delicious by not knowing exactly when or if that next satisfaction, however temporary, is to come.

The mystery of not-knowing threatens to throw us back into the chaos we have been escaping ever since our birth. We keep our backs turned, then, at all costs, toward the future, toward novelty. We crave the certainty of achieving...something, it hardly matters what. As long as it's new and different.

Imagine what it might be like to crave--no, to dwell within--the very heart of novelty itself. Then we might know something like the true satisfaction of desire, not in any small object or passing experience to be gained, but rather in the essence of desire itself. Remaining desirous, yet without object. Dedicated to novelty, yet again without object.

We will have then graduated from the status of hungry teen, to that of spiritual adventurer. It won't really matter what comes next, because we'll be at peace riding the crest of the wave.

Hold onto your hats, kids. It won't be long now.

--Nowick Gray

 


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Archive

Many of the essays appearing here are collected in convenient e-book format (pdf). Coming Home: Nature and Me and Other Essays is available now for free download.

Right-click to save to your computer: nature.pdf

Rule Reversals (January 2003)

Telling it Like it Is (January 2003)

White Rabbit (February 2002)

On Novelty (February 2002)

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party after September 11 (December 2001)

Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion (book review) (November 2001)

Forest Storm (September 2001)

Feminism, Poetic Myth, and Alternative Culture - An Homage to The White Goddess (July 2000)

Quests for Identity and Other Addictions (May 2000)

Wheel of Fortune (April 2000)

Great Writers and Street Poets (February 2000)

Upgrade for Speed Because Time is Running Out? (August 1999)

Retail Therapy: Decision Making in the Computer Age (August 1999)

Retail Therapy2: Random Brief Downtimes (August 1999)

Farouche Speaks (April 1999)

NetGlut: Notes from a cleansing fast (February 1998)

To Unix and Back Alive (January 1997)

Webness (November 1996)

Surfing Again (November 1996)

Bananas in British Columbia (May 1996)

Confessions of a computer addict (May 1996)


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