Online Self-Interview
Tantra
Bensko* What did you have for breakfast?
Plain goat yoghurt, with raw agave nector. Sort of like the land of milk and honey. I imagined bathing in it. In my bath, I imagined what our lives would be like if we never ate, or took baths, how we'd forget about being human in bodies, and would get caught up in our minds. The bath water looked at me and said, yes, indeed, I would miss you if you never took baths. I love you......I love you too, bath water.
* What's your favorite restaurant?
The one at the end of the Universe. I'd like that to be Cafe Gratitude at the end of the Universe, which is a raw vegan gluten free restaurant chain. More like a celtic knot of virgin rope than a chain. The entres are named things like "I am ecstatic." They ask you the question of the day, like--What do you love about your life? Well, I love my bath water.
* What's your favorite poem?
My favorite poem is a woman from Taiwan, named Song.
* What's your favorite plant?
I don't play favorites. How would they feel? There are some plants I love in rural Alabama because I've known them all my life. Mostly, those are large, ancient trees in our woods. But the ones I grew up with, trees I spent even more time hugging, their ghosts are in me, winding, and smiling, vibrating oxygen at you, dear.
* What's your favorite totem for your personality?
I find that if one picks out one thing, then the anti-thing comes along sometimes looking hungry. You see, it's all about food, and baths. A few people have told me I remind them of a mango. Or a papaya.* What's the address of your blog, if you have one?
I have a lot of websites. My writing one is called Lucid Fiction, and the website is http://www.freewebs.com/tantrabensko. My overarching site is www.LucidPlay.com.
* What's your favorite website?
All those wonderful people out there making websites out of their dream hearts, how can I chose? I like the alternative news ones a lot, which tell the truth about what is going on behind the scenes. I used to have an art site that linked to hundreds of them.
I was the Art Director of http://www.MadHattersReview.com ever since the first issue, with Marty Ison taking over that position right now. We are an experimental, edgy age of enlightenment magazine that has a lot of innovative poetry and fiction, as well as video, art, comics, essays, and who other things which can't be named. It's one of the biggest, most elaborate sites that everyone should check out, and help out if possible financially if you want to see it continue long.
* What's your favorite side?
My favorite is my memory of my son when he was young, wanting to go outside. In his sweet, high little voice, he would say "Side. Side."
* Look to the left right now. Turn back to the computer and describe what you just saw.
I see a picture of my son, bending to a rose.
I see my hypnotherapy certifications and a letter of invitation from the UN to to to Romania, some romanian and polish paper money, all tacked to the wall.
I see my metaportal shrine I made, with a page from my Tantric Metaportals book, (http://stores.lulu.com/lucidplay), which reminds me slightly of Ganesh if that Tantric elephant headed totem were abstract, but in my own style. That intensely red and orange flamey enigmatic creature in the center is standing on a level of stairlike things, but archetypal, and centered. Along them are drops that might remind you of chakras, as ecstatic as they are, as beautiful.
It has words along the bottom of the page. They say: Using the direction of your eyes, feel the levels of yourself, and of the frequencies of life. Look upwards, closing your eyes for a moment, and feel them stacked up, other versions, other perspectives."
* Make your own question and then answer it. (Leave your question here for others to answer)
What direction do you like to take experimental fiction?
I like to reconsider our need for the traditional plot arc which is based on duality, conflict, drama, and seems to me like the ego's addiction to the adrenalin rush. Instead of just reading one story after another, along a horizontal level of existence, I like to encourage stories that take us up vertically out of the very need for the traditional style of stories.
I also like to question the idea of what a character is, what a person is. Our society is based on broadcasting that we are limited beings encased in this local incarnations, bounded by our skin, and predominantly, we are seen as our egos, which function on the beta brainwave frequency. I like to include the perceptions that come from the alpha and theta and even delta brainwaves, which give us more of a sense of an expanded quantum reality in which we are part of a continuum that is only labeled into discrete, separate units from the beta brainwave perspective. Both the separate and the unified are important, and they make the vibrations of our universe.
