Let’s Have Sex Instead of Putting Out the Kitchen Fire...

September 19, 2008

Let’s Have Sex Instead of Putting Out the Kitchen Fire...

I yearn for justice; burn for it in fact. There's a piece of me, on the inside (maybe it's the outside) that still feels the sting of the steel gauntlet smashed across my face, and that piece churns toward the return favor of an eye for an eye. The object of said seek (without naming names to protect the… umm… innocent… ahem…from those who would follow through on retribution in my name) knows this is inside of me, because it knows what it's doing. It's as clever as I am in its clarity, a shadow-me that understands me more deeply than I do on some level, but still I burn.

This unsettled seeking leads me astray from my own business, the business of getting down to the bottom of me (figuratively, you sicko, but funny to imagine the literal), the business of letting go those outrageous, egregious, indignities suffered at the hands of my own projection of self-protection and survival. Because, if the claim to nationalistic pride is moot and the need to self identify by heredity has been given the boot, then the want to validate me by the behaviors of those I see is completely beside the point too, which, when understood this way, works to actively free me of a prison of my own design, or one of my own worldly training.

Could be culture that's the culprit here, but if I can see it then it makes me an accessory by default, or by dumb misunderstanding. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm beating on myself too badly (or maybe I am, but denying), because how long can I allow my shoulders to stoop under the weight of social programming (there ain't no real thing, even though it does feel like I've placed an awkward, gangly thirty-three (33) year old, one-hundred thirty pound, five foot three inch, screeching, scrambling, virgin, fighting tooth and nail as I take him to get over his fear on my back)? It's this programming that tells me to fight back, and hand over the come-uppin's, but who's really done anything to me?

If someone does something that I disagree with, and maybe that something is even seen to violate a belief I've held firm in my understanding of human decency, then maybe I should take a look at that reference point – see its nature and its origins, and wonder why I feel that it keeps me safe, when obviously it doesn't? Is it because I know what I believe in, and by knowing what I believe in and would stand up for, I can operate with clear confidence as I make my way in the world? But wouldn't defining myself by what I would stand up for automatically make me stand up when that definition is challenged? And, enter someone, anyone, who wouldn't give two shits for a pile of gold about what I believe in, couldn't that button be pushed by them at anytime, and wouldn't I be forced to stand upright like a tiny toy soldier on display, bearing my rifle and bayonet? You might ask yourself, "Why would anyone get off on that?" which would echo my own sentiments, but then again, why would anyone get off on getting off? Why is it, for some people, they would get off on the notion of feet being rubbed on their face? It's not for me to decide or say what does or does not get someone off, but it would seem to me that people can get off on some pretty peculiar things (relative, of course, to what I might find peculiar…maybe another reference point to examine), meaning that the feeling of control that one might get by finding a button to push on another human being could be tantamount to a fiendish foot fetish.

So my ready run has found me an encounter with a hardcore, tale of erotica, button pusher, and my buttons are always on an open display – I sort of make it a practice to keep them exposed just so's I knows what it is that will make me stand at attention upon somebody's whim – like some carnival freak who incites mass public appeal – and I don't guard the buttons I know exist, because that would be operating out of a fear (not only that, but I kind of like to hand over my buttons just to see what someone will do with them, and it allows me to understand my pressure points so I can massage them in to oblivion), it would make me stand on vigilant guard, which would also curtail my interactions with just about everybody, unless I trusted them with my buttons, which would force me to operate in the world in such a way that would make me be very particular about whom I let into my life. And as the ball of yarn unrolls in the underpinnings of my not-so-silent-anymore subconscious, I realize what an exhausting endeavor it is to live a life with these particulars in place. I guess it could be argued that that's just the way it is, and it ain't no thing to keep your guard up, well, okay, be that way if you want, but it occurs to me that, in the entirety of this much too long sentence, I've seasoned liberally with the words "force" and "make", implying to me that we have no choice but to do so, and that, to me, is not living very freely, and if the operation be one of the seven layers of, then the fear of the button be the constant blazing inferno that keeps me there, not the button pusher, so my quest for justice, vengeance, just desserts, payback's a bitch, or what goes around comes around seems invalid. My feelings surrounding the situation, however, seem pretty real.

So, if by invalidation, it's not about seeking retribution, because the situation doesn't really exist in any real way, but my feelings about said situation are very real, and keep me from being happy, or present to my experience, then it would seem to me that I need to reconcile the way that I feel inside. And I don't mean to extricate myself from the situation in order to make myself more comfortable, so that I can be present for the remainder of my days only to die with my comfortable ego lying comfortably on a cozy deathbed and I'm either writhing in agony, or slipping away in my sleep just to do it all over again the next time around this merry-go-round we call life, because the way I understand it, if a similar situation arises (a talent for which the Universe seems to have an uncanny knack), then I get it that I'll be sent right back to the rack for a little bit of pre-ego game stretching. Not only that, but I'll have an undercurrent of fear pervading my life (my being) of the situation coming back, so I wouldn't be free in such a respect. But man, oh man do I burn for retribution!

It really only distracts me, this wrathful fomenting, from what I'm really about. It's as if someone, let's say Randy Johnson (a pitcher in the major leagues for those who just went, huh? He throws a fastball upwards of 100mph) threw an apple at my head, and now my ability to walk in a straight line is compromised, because, not only, after finding out who threw the apple, am I searching for a resolution outside of myself, all the while that I'm doing so I don't know peace. Peace on the inside. Because it fucking burns! But I could go through my entire life, or multiple lifetimes in this struggle and not ever get the admission I so desperately seek, so what else can I do but resolve my feelings to the situation in order to let go?

"It's like this," Johnny De said to me, "Where is your ego?" (since the only place to look is inside myself), "Look for it. You can't find in there, because when you're looking for it, you're present, and, it doesn't fucking exist" (author's note: I embellish with the fuck word, because sometimes it conveys the point beautifully. Johnny De in no way, shape, or form used the word during the delivery of said moment. not that he wouldn't, just that he didn't) Whoa…he's right, if I search for the justice seeker inside myself I can't find him. There's no purchase to find for my gripping hands, no hands to grip with, I'm just looking. Present. I don't rightly feel incensed when I'm just looking for it. And since I can see that there's nothing in there to touch or feel physically, then I'm chasing a puff of smoke with sandpaper. How am I supposed to catch a puff of smoke with sandpaper? So just looking doesn't actually cause me any harm, and when I do so, for some crazy reason, everything within range of my six senses just springs into view, because now, here I am, just looking. Cool, huh? *sniff sniff* is there something burning?

Flap

August 14, 2008

Flap

I've been on this precipice for a few months now. Teetering on the edge of the place I retreat to, and hanging over the yawning chasm of that place in me that I know exists. That place of connection. That place of deeper bliss. My understanding has begun to eclipse my want for the worldly things, and in so doing has moved me along the path to my own self realization. An interesting place to be for me is this place of certain uncertainty. I want to take the ball and run, but as long as I want it, I can see that place within me receding. I let it go and it comes back again. When it's just within my grasp I lunge for it, and it dances away like a little pixie imp on its own turf. In and out, to and fro, back and forth we dance and I grow more and more…complacent? Patient? It's just like breathing. Everything is the breath in that way. Out of a confused state I draw from the only place that I can rely upon – that inner strength, that energy or fire that burns on the hearth inside me, the dance be the bellows and the flame roars up, the heat intensifying, burning more and more of me away.

"Whenever I had a falling out with my teacher," my teacher said, "it was the worst time of my life." Those words echo in my head, clanging around like a jumble of rusty scrap metal inside an empty dumpster. Why did he say that? Why were the last words he said to me, "Don't call me, I'll call you. Fuck you." Back and forth again with me, confusing instances, conflicting reminisces, my mind misses the making of senses, and I let go a little bit more. Am I being kicked out of the nest? Have I crutched my way in this safe place for too long, or just long enough? The guru's den – the place where my soul has been, racked and flayed, skinned of that thin definition of who I think of as me – has been shut away from me, and when I turn to face the world, one thought comes up: am I naked?

"Of course not," the inner narrative chimes in, "you've been decked out in the finest of fine. You've been decked out with the deepest divine. Don't waste another second on the 'woe as me's. Take the tools you see wrapped round your belt and get to work. This is what you were meant for." It's been such a long time since I've heard this voice, the voice that is me, my inner guide, a being I've known longer than my concept of happy birthdays, a voice filled with love and laughter and light hearted mayhem. The broken connection was the issue the whole time, squashed under the weight of my own flattery.

The first time I heard it, once again, a "Good day to you sir", and lo it begins, tears filled my eyes, and I grasped, greedily, for it. It danced away of course, and inside I howled. I was so close. I returned to my breathing. It's back, I can tell, so I'll just have to quell my desperation in sloppy grammar and inconsistent contradictions, and sync back up through synchronicity. "This is the direction in which you've been running, sprinting, tumbling, cartwheeling, willy nilly-ing, rolling, flying, free wheeling. Away from, but right into the arms of me waiting, the thirst never sating, while you were left debating your own fate. It was where you were living the whole time." My fate is me, not some further destiny where I meet my maker. I've met him. He's me. In the making.

The Other Side of the Story - Part 1?

July 28, 2008

The Other Side of the Story - Part 1?

Direct is just my way. It's endearing, I find, in a falling on your face from a foot and a half up kind of way. "Did I break anything," I say, with a wiggle of my nose bridge, "No, but what the fuck just hit me, or what did I hit? Is it okay? Have I gotten passed the point where I care less about my injuries and more about the object that broke my fall? It could possibly have been inanimate, in which case, I don't know, unless it's a stained glass window, what's to care about. Even if it were, then, huh?" The rattling breath I heave in to begin the coercion of my senses into some semblance of cohesion tells me that I'd better see about me for a couple more seconds at least. There's no blood, so I guess it wasn't glass, stained or otherwise, nor was it sharper than a stop on a dime, or I'd be split into two pieces. My inner eye hasn't stopped spinning like a top just yet though, so whatever it was must have been harder than my notion's constitution. I could cry and complain, but I'm not at the recovery phase just yet, and I have no idea how long that will last, could be a couple of light years, or less than a second's breath, but in the infinity between congruence and cacophony it seems all but irrelevant.

Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. Sometimes I don't see the warning signs until I've made intimate terms with an anvil's table-top (that's what it was! But the soft iron made for just a jarring experience), and I get myself into what most would call trouble. But until you've seen a Seles backhand in the form of an iron skillet, you'd have no idea the notion of trouble, or trouble's constituents for that matter. I didn't mean break me off a piece in the literal sense, but more, in a creative sense. Where the idea is taken in, shared, enjoyed and then made into something else to then be shared, enjoyed…blahdiddyadda…and so on…and so forth…the anvil wasn't listening. It must be a busy piece of equipment. All that hammering and white fire and such. It must work 10-12 hour days, and then have a beautiful anvil to come home to after a hard days work of getting hammered, so, by rights he must have to transfer some of the earnings...so to speak. I can't blame him though...have you seen his anvil?!

There must be a couple of screws still loose upstairs, but I can tell there's men hard at work, because the smell of horses and hay on its post-postmortem was the first thing to register and with it came the flood. The farmer's daughter, his wife, him, the sheep (all of them), the reach for the door, the bottle of Aunt Jemima Syrup and the quick inquiring thought about it's proper uses, the foot race (with me its only competitor), the long, slow, boring conversation about the rights of some peoples and the lack thereof of others (if only his cohorts new about the syrup…), the tussle, the anvil and the sweet smell of a stallion's aftermath… I'm surprised I'm still here.

Reaching my hand for an assist that would never come, I realized my error: Don't forget to leave out the part about challenging their definition, and using their name when they're in heat only meets with a short fall into a long wagon. "But don't you see that your affiliation with your…umm, Klan…Stan – no judgment…is just a distraction from your own joyful state?" Apparently them's fightin' words in this here place. Apparently the words "no" and "judgment" when used in conjunction only make people think you really are judging them. But not only that, apparently it stands to mean that the person who utters those words (for the moment anyway) is God almighty incarnate, in the flesh, and now's their chance to beat down the only thing that would solidify their actions as truly unseemly. They know it. They just won't admit it in this here place.

A dim, dank barn from the smell of it, and the sight of it's not much better, with its rusty tools that implement the seasonal demise of hayfields all across the wide open expanse of America's great planes (yeh-huh, planes) – at least I think that's what they're used for. I guess when someone believes so deeply in their definition, what they do, who they do it to and who they affiliate with to become what they are first and foremost, and, as opposed to realizing their humanity is lying just under the covers, they attach themselves to it like a large three mast ship to a dropped anchor, and if you try to be the wind in those unfurled sails, something's gotta give…

It was my face, from the outcome of it, or my lack of fisticuffs ability – chicken or the egg there – and as soon as that gave way, so did what passed for my consciousness. I've had this theory that, even though you're out cold you're still aware in some capacity, because the only thing that persists through time and space is you, or, to put it another way, your omnipotence, because the only thing that's out cold is what you think you are in relation to a great grandfather clock. How is that going to help me here? It's not. But it's nice to know that my faculties are still in a modicum of working order.

I shake in the cobwebs a bit as my eyes adjust to the new level of light, and when I lift my head, I find that I'm looking into the amused set of the single horse who shares with me the confines of my temporary abode – a gorgeous piebald pinto, whose eyes are, through some marvel of scientific terminology, a curious deep blue. Those eyes are saying, "Dude, I can't believe you were sleeping where you slept, but, you can do what you want." (Apparently Kansas horses speak in Californian, and they're big on allowing you to be and do what you feel like, even if it's sleeping without your legs underneath you…).

While I'm checking my face for feces, I hear voices from outside speaking in a drunken, slow southern drawl. From the sounds of it, they're not too concerned with where I nap either, but they are concerned with what to do with me once I'm awake, because they're foot stomping mad, like a leprechaun who just lost his pot'o'gold to a quicker competitor (they should watch that temper, it just makes them seem petulant. not that petulant's a bad thing per se, or that one should really care too much about what the world thinks of them for being what it is that makes them happy, but still...). And since I've never been one to want to find out anyone's plans for me before I can hatch my own, I move gingerly across the dirt floor to test the big wooden door leading to salvation. It's locked; from the outside. By something that would probably look like a hayfork, or maybe a wooden cross as of yet to be burned for yet another hundred year old misunderstanding.

I don't really want them to know that I'm awake just yet, but only because it's dark outside and if I let them know now, then I'd ruin my chances for escape, so I find a place to sit comfortably and meditate for a couple of minutes. The knot in the middle of my forehead is growing larger and more uncomfortable by the minute, but only by way of resistance, so I slip a little deeper, past what I think I am, and into the indefinable in order to allow for clearance and lift off, but before I can go too deep and just after the point of acknowledging that pain exists, I hear my buddy boy piebald…neigh? whinney?...in what I would call one of most beautiful voices I've ever heard (maybe I could take it on the road. We'd make a fortune with that throat. It'd be like the frog singing broadway show tunes, only, with a horse, who whinnies...neighs?). I look up to see piebald halfway up a stair leading into a hayloft I didn't notice before (I didn't know horses could climb stairs) and those eyes again, apparently not as impressed with the sound of his own voice as I am, say, "Hey man, we can get out this way. What the hell are you doing sitting on your ass for?" (someone should teach him that you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. Where'd he get his education at?). Then he makes his way up without even a backward glance...

Earn Your Spurs, Make’em Jingle Jangle Jingle

June 24, 2008

Earn Your Spurs, Make’em Jingle Jangle Jingle

"Smarts don't it?" It was Samuel Clemens, or rather, his glib gibboned moustache (pronounced with quick emphasis on ache, as in ashes to ashes). The words tumbled out of his follicles, as if there were anywhere else they could come from, what heard crumbled my resolve as his insight settled into my seat. How did he know? "Maybe it's in the reaction that showed me your contraction? You made a move, a tricksy maneuver, but you always get you sooner or later, like a prowling alligator you always wait for you to do what it is you do. Are you done yet? I bet I bet you can always tell the tall tale by the inhale…" Cryptic, sure, but I'm no stranger in those lands, I'll tack and track with my bare hands if I have to, so I took it for what I meant.

Found out on so many levels, and the fly swat from his angry swatter smattered me a squattered mad hattered battered by belaboring my personal points - a one-two punch with a punch drunk uppercut thrown in for sloppy seconds. "Maybe you were just trying to see? Did you react in a loving way, or was it from that who-do-you-think-you-are kinda place? I'm sure I didn't get you on as many levels as you got you to, because you know the truth of you much better than I do, with much applause and insignificant ado, with a much to your chagrin and chicanery to boot, you...wanted for simple extemporaneity, just like me." What the hell was this arrangement of stultified hair-do talking about? I began to wonder to myself, all before I realized I was in some kind of dreamy dream state. Did I slake the thirst for my wanton need, or do I need to be straddled by the Chinese feed bag one more time? Is that what he means? I admit to only this keyboard that I was sliced pretty thin, and maybe there is something to this, that I cut through me thing, through the all that I hide in me thing. The hair smiled a wicked loving smile as if he had known my thoughts that deep all the while, but wanted me to make my own way there, damnable hair, when will I shave? When will I shave that I don't have to make slaves of the knaves I see and in the shaving to see the be-ings in front of me not as the bee stings demanding humility, but as winter's thaw (dribbldy drip draw) drop Sam's rainplop dance, and springboard me into the reborn year?

I yearn not to take advantage of all the openings I can see, and only the openings significant, when others around me only see the openings. Is that an opening? Where'd all these trees come from and where'd all those bees goes off too? They left me here naked and alone and there's so many trees that I'd have to call them my own, or at least something other than "what the spring brings". The Rainmaker's call brought me brought me to a silly brawl with myself, and lanced so much pain through my main water main's veins that I suffered a spiritual stroke, hit the ctrl+alt+delete and rebooted where I had myself rooted. All I can think of, no, all that I am in this moment right here is: I let you down. As much as I tried to keep us afloat because that was what I thought I ought do, I couldn't. And I knew the price to be paid, to have a deep friendship waylaid out on a slab and only brought back by constabluatory fab. And now I'm out here on a paper boat learning how to not try and keep it afloat and just let it sink into the clinkity clink if that's where the needs be kept. There are still the sweeping heartbreaks and smothering heartaches to contend with. If there was a sure fire way to slip past those unseen instead of turn to face'em I've tried it. I've pried it loose from the caboose of some kind of unseen drizzle. I'd make it past if I could, past the feint and the fizzle as I sizzle my nizzle bizzle dizzle dialect from what makes like the cool but only shows the drool of the monkey wrench while I sit out here warming this bench wishing I was in the game. What am I to do with with with this seemingly useless tool? There's no other end to contend with in sight; nothing to loosen and nothing too tight. I can swing and swing with all my might, even long into an April shower's night, but there's just no fight left in me. "Maybe you could see that you don't need to contend with me, because I'm no easy meat, but I'm the toughest ornery scofflaw who's on your way home." But it's not really about what I want for me to be anymore, or is it?

I want it to burst like the overfilled water balloons on the precipice of summer's gas. What a gas that'd be to find a fancy fancy me on the quaking stems of a dozen reddened roses equipped with as many lengthed noses to take advantage of such an affair. There I am again bottling up the opportunity and selling it up for upwards of a dime-bag a piece. But Sam, you said you were something else…you you said you were something you're not showing me to be…do I fade it again amdist the growing grumbling get pissed ride that's building up inside? "What do you think?" came his hairy reply, and as I pondered over why, we passed his neighbor the nostril's snort and it issued its lowly shortened report for a sneeze, and Sam gave out laughing wheeze and I couldn't help but join in, ending the guffaw in a silent grin just for me. Why don't I share it anymore? Why do I think? What what for, giv'em? What what five?

So I could only slip in what I think I am, could I? No no Sam I am! I do not like those green eggs and ham. You were supposed to play with me. "But maybe I am and you just don't know it, maybe I am but I don't sow it so easily into the infertile place of need. I could respond and react and make things easy, but that's not what you're about, like George and the Wheezy sneezy. There'll be nothing to satisfy you short of what you think you are it would seem, and that's just a shame to me. Come down from your cat and mouse game any time you'd like and just hike me the goddam ball. Because when all is said and done, this one is mostly about the kind of fun that's undone by light uproarious laughter. I don't want to give the gifts to those who don't know how to sift through the bullshit, but I will anyway, because as plain as I am found, I'm laying it all down in what I say. This is me Taking it Easy, with a paint brush and easel, no, not a weasel after all, just enjoying the color sprawl and arranging and derailing with them tools, the norm to form coherence inside of incoherency, because really whose approval do I need to create? Break me off a piece, and Break it loose, we've got a good sixty odd years yet if we so choose.

So Let's Rebut With More

So Let’s Rebut With More 

So let's rebut with "more". The word "more" - to me, since so many people seem to need the qualifiaction that I'm not really including the globe in it's entirety in my opinion, possibly because their sense of self isn't strong enough to realize that the fact that I'm saying it (not you Doc, I know you get this) would make it seem relatively obvious, again, to me, that it is the way that see it and not necessarily the way that everyone else does, hence the words "to me" (I will forever refer to this email in all of my writings as Doc P) – defines a perspective of having, needing, or wanting because we think we see that there is more to have and to hold than what we already have and hold within ourselves (and yes, I realize that I want for things, so I'm not above this principle, but I work on it everyday, and not by way eliminating things from my life out of fear, but more out of the realization that attachment is the warm wet tongue on the frozen flagpole of forever), as if we ourselves aren't enough for us to feel fulfilled. But it's interesting to me, nowadays (it didn't used to be so interesting), that we look into the possibility of a love/romantic involvement as a completing event, as if we needed it to make something whole within ourselves, when really, it's a constructed game created by, at first, an ecological need, then ultimately developed into a sociological foreplay that meets with it's orgasm by way of the broken heart. And if there's anything I really get about life, it's that all human construct,whether physical or otherwise (i.e. marriage/relationship, the effiel tower, race and nationality, the pyramids – notice how I leave out the word "great" – gender, Odin's beard, necromancy, Uncle Charlie's snorting noise that you know probably just developed as a result of too much cocaine use, but you're pretty sure that more than half the time he gets a minor amusement out of doing it on purpose because, really, who needs to snort fifty-two times at Thanksgiving dinner...wait, why did I even count?, women's accessories, Mtv, pornography (bestial or otherwise), families, religion, bricks, diamond rings, yesterday's newspaper, liquid soap, bars of soap, tomorrow's newspaper, and I hesitate to include any of those organizations who would assign assassinations for such heresy) is all hogwash by impermanence, especially when taken too seriously, and is at best a pleasant distraction, like any other common everyday highly addictive drug when taken intreveniously through the dance of living life. Sure I understand that all these things exist and I'm even willing to go so far as to ask, why not participate in them if we want to? But when we make it such a big deal that we feel the need to breakdown or break somebody's face, it just seems like we're not really doing it for the joy anymore...may I please get a witness to corraborate these words? 

So "more" is either total horse manure or it's dancing a couple of grace notes inside the beat of a fancy tune, and how many times do you feel you deserve anything while you're dancing, let alone "more"? I'm willing to wager none, because you're just dancing. And how many times have you ever deserved to get caught up in hogwash? I've never felt that I've deserved it, I mean, how is that fair to the hogs? 

And so you're right, my dear Doctor, there has been a pattern, whether real or imagined, emerging in my life as far as relationship and betrayal are concerned, and so, just because I deserve "more" (which is pure opinion believe you me) to emerge from out of the social milieu to have someone in my life who won't betray me, don't you think that I just might, entering into that new deserved relationship, keep that pattern alive in mind form and then manifest it into my everyday experience out of a fear of it happening? And then, wouldn't you think that if I feared so much and so often I might begin to act as though it were happening, which very well may even end the relationship or cause that which I fear to happen!? And if I didn't do these things, and could somehow feel comfortable with my newfound love/romantic relationship, then wouldn't I be putting a piece of me to sleep on the pre-school cot comfort food of social pardigms, leaving me in a twitterpated state which is not very fair to me or the person I'm with? I want someone who's awake and not easily lulled by lulliby of need to take a snooze through overabuse of over-indulgence in what society demands of us just so we can appear normal to an outside perspective. Normalcy is mundane from my perspective. Normalcy is asleep.

If the goal is to remain awake in a metephorical sense, then the problem of deserving "more" lies within me and nowhere/one else. People will do what they do and if I can't find enough love for them to live their experience, then I'm finding fear for protecting mine instead, and that's such a shitty place to be that I would prefer the love, not out of a denial, but because the social construct of the image (meaning your typical everyday situation) "is what it is". So, now that I've experienced the worst in relationship and found love on the other side of it, then, if the end of the "relationship" does actually occur (which is a minor misnomer given the fact that the only way a relationship can cease to be is if we sever all ties forever and ever somehow, but even then we could ponder upon that person and the relationship still persists, so we'd have cauterize the memory(ies) of such an individual) I can walk into the next relationship with the absence of fear of betrayal and be only loving with the romance of getting to watch them grow into themselves in ever deepening ways and even grow myself as a result of the contact. Now that's romance…wait a minute…were we discussing romance?

The Majesty of Momentum

The Majesty of Momentum

A little bit of momentum for the moment has built up and I'm a couple of feet off the ground. I've taken my chances and rolled the dice, but not so hard this time. When I say that we're all God, I don't mean that this ego perception of us is God (although it is, just diluted down into definition), because ego is the way out of the perceived in. The way I see it, we're all "crazy" personified in some way deep down, we've just developed enough cognition to keep our mouths shut lest someone from the outside looking in spread the word, and, we're kind of chicken shit on some level to get a mud spattered reputation for whatever reason. I don't know, I kind of like it when someone develops a predisposition about me based on surface level detail, because, at some point, if they're around me long enough, I get to see that part of their ego crumble into a love they never knew they had (an ego piece, I know, but we all have'em).

So we have two of us in here: There's this Other that's been a contracted response to a world that's caused pains and pleasantries and the actions of effect based upon them. This Other is a powerful voice inside telling us to fear and not open up. It's telling us that we're not good enough to do whatever it is we set out to (if yours doesn't tell you this, well, good for you, but notice that it's telling you something). And, there's this One that's always the same and never changes no matter how many instances of life are lived. It doesn't verbally tell you anything per se, but it does gift you with the feeling of things, which can be translated into words if you need it, which is just a filter for your own protection. The Other is a mask worn for protection from discovery and is based upon the social extravagance that's built up over millennia. Some of us build our masks so effectively that entire masses of people are duped into a love belief outside of themselves (maybe "duped" is too harsh a word, we're all looking for love from somewhere). Others have built these masks from precocious, ferocious make believe last stands, fighting off the evil that's not in harmony with them with every ounce of their being (exhaustive, that). But the fight's the same whether we make a reason to love or hate; it's the reason made that puts us in our egregious states.

This One that I'm referring to has no reason, no rhyme scheme, no class, no style, no sedimentary piles of what it thinks it is, it just is what it is, and has such a flow that I don't know how deep it actually goes, if deep is indeed the direction. It does, however, seem to manifest itself through your own sense of style that you get to apply for your Other's enjoyment (is the Other such a bad thing? What's bad mean anyway?). So the Other is constantly fighting this One based on it's perceptions of the world of response and protect, instead of repose and connect – so many different ways and sets of beliefs, so many ways to cause destruction in the "name of", but let's steer clear of the potbelly ideals of wars and terrorist saboteurs for while – no, no no, how about forever. So what about the all battles of attrition that political motivations have made it's mission to defend (you can do what you want with your energy and so can they, I won't waste much time with mine, it's all too short to begin and end with)?

Let's take it to a bit more personal level and a bit closer to home (although it's all the same thing when looked at the right way): there are person-to-person skirmishes being fought every day, little tricks and games that we play to try and get the other party to think in their head about what the party of the first part really thinks in theirs. What a wasted effort (to me anyway). We could be using that energy to create for ourselves and not make anybody else create something that they wouldn't want. It could be argued that this is what some want to create for themselves: turmoil for others in their own experience. Fears, anger, given offense, and None Taken, intrigue and mistrust, it's all the same in exaggeration of an Other state that mates with its own sense of self satisfaction. The One, in a way, doesn't be that way; it just guides you on your way to where you really want to go. But these little games exist and persist anyway, so there must be something that can be done to fig'r out how to not be swayed by those who would seek to do so for their own sadistical perpetuations (eesh, so what, huh?)…

It's in the real, or keeping it so, as truthful as you can come to grips with (those who have the courage grip it). Meditation is a good way of keeping things real, I hear, to clear out the clutter of your mind. I used to make the attempt at my own method of heron meditation. I'd sit, for however long, trying to elicit an altered state. Sometimes it would work and I'd be in a place of such energy and bliss that my Other was long forgotten. But then I figured out, by way of the effortless feel, that I can just sit wherever I am and dip deep into the pool. But that's weird from the window shopping perspective, people looking in at you just sitting there, "What are doing!? Why are you just sitting there!? DO SOMETHING!?" But sitting there and not feeding your Other its "needs" for familiar feeling 

Love is the sword inside your soul and the only wielded shield necessary for protection, because when you love someone, you're completely unconcerned for you own safety. "Sure, but you can't love everyone," you say, "That'd be impossible." But would it? It doesn't have to be about a person in specific (that asshole who makes you feel small because they feel small inside, the jerk who thinks they know something, because they want to feel bigger and better, etc…), it can just be about the effortless depth of rolling with it (the assholes and all. When you find that yourself "in it" it doesn't matter what comes your way). Some might also purport that it's more fun this way (to fuck with the head of the weaker, but I've heard some circles say, "What's fun? I'm in bliss.") I hear it all the time, about how someone wouldn't want to give up their pain because it makes the pleasant so much sweeter, but, bullshit. Why give yourself up to the rack and gallows, when so much sweeter is the mainstay?

Do what you want and I'll make my own way, but I want to see, in the remaining bits of day, myself in service and love, because fuck, man, it feels too damn good, losing track of the time, and finding that place where the energy graces itself through me, it's the energy that animates us, it's the energy that we are contained in (or that we are) and not the other way around. Don't see it as mystical, or spiritual, or religious if you can't handle it. See it as a scientific fact (ick, though, let it go, eh?). If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, then I guess that means that what's here as far as energy is concerned, is here to stay and will and does pervade all things (a Good Orderly Direct concept if I've ever heard it). Who am I to say anything about what it is to be though, right? All I know is my own exploration and would rather keep it that way. No more trying to figure someone out to prove to myself that I can, and to keep someone in a little box because it makes me feel smart and safe.

The ego does this little song and dance when I say the word "service" (to jump around a bit), like you have to be some subservient driveller who has to serve those in command, but we're in command, of our own exploration anyway, so why not serve the needs of others when the need arises? Not that I would do someone's laundry if they demanded it of me (I would if they didn't have the means and I did at the time, but that probably wouldn't come out as a demand, and I wouldn't do it out of an obligation, I would do it because why not?), or wash their unmentionables with my tongue, or dig a hole and then fill it back up, twice, but it's just in the attitude of not attempting to control, or, to put it another way, the attitude of just being there, as you, without the fear of deep down exposure. That exposure can be a gift to see where release can happen. The service of which I speak is service to the continuity in the moment. To me, it implies work and effort until the effort becomes effortless (egoless) to keep the moment flowing just like during "good times", there's no assembly required.

Okay, so I may be making this all up, hopping on top of my soap box holding a sign that reads, "Smite ye down oh vile sinister sinners!" For some reason though, I'm only reveling in what it is to write down words within this energy and manipulate that energy into a painting that I find entertaining. The words on the page truly have no meaning save for the one take from it. If you have to sit back and say, "Jeez, Bernie, let it go," then do what you want with your energy, I'm allowing you to by way of focusing on my experience. These are the words that are coming out for now, I don't know what specific locale they're coming from, and don't rightly care, although I used to. I used to think about the grand insight I'd have and be so excited to share them with people, but because I looked so smart. Bah! So what about all that! What a wasted gift. What wasted effort. Give me a pen and paper and I'll paint you a picture because it's a pretty kick ass feeling to be "in it" in the first place. Give me a guitar and I'll play the color swirl and just let the words unfurl from this "in it". If my voice cracks I'll make it pastel. If I sing off key it'll be the rough brush stroke that was always meant to be.

Calling All Warrior Monks

July 21, 2007

Calling All Warrior Monks 

It's been a while since I've written anything; my fingers feel like two and half race horses all doped up and ready for split fixins (the half horse has two legs in my head, set right down the middle. You wouldn't think that it's balance would be so good, but it's two hooves are broad enough to cover the equilibrium, so right out of the gate it's gait gulps ground faster than a kidnapper's white unmarked van, the Malleability of Reality is totally unmistakable). I don't really have too much to say, so I'll just make this an exercise for my horses and see if they can outrace the battery on my laptop; all for the cropped hop in my wacky, wily Mr. Eds.

The past few days have been an amazing experience (I stopped to look just to satisfy my own Curiosity). The luminosity of life freely lived, as well as I know how, has been in the spirit of love freely gived (spellchecker says that's not a word, but if I lend it a voice and an equal enunciation it rings clear in my ears). Given in the form of a chance glance, or a beam of light, an adorning smile is it's backing might, and the reciprocity is sincerely implied. It's all I need, I've come to find, to find the divine behind lying eyes. Whether it's given freely, or taken by force, the love in mind knows no bounds and is reflected without even trying, without even seeking, looking, or finding.

By way of explanation of my experience, neither concretized for your understanding, nor abstracted for mine, there's a sly way to slip in between the ribs of an ego. The glory's in the shiv, constructed by love, unobstructed, and delivered in the dark. Doing in the deepest sin of a proud ness partaken laced by the crisscrossing of Crossing Paths. Isn't that just the way? When a ready run comes across some random out comer, it's either take on a fighting stance as you assess one another, to poke and prod for buttons and levers (pronounced LEE-vers, possibly painted by a British accent), to see if one can gain the upper hand in a handless land of strangers, or, maybe you just drop ideas and ideals and notions of what's real, and shove love in the form of conversation. I guess it all depends on the time and place, where you'll find your own way by ways of grace and gratitude for an attitude shared, a rarity, inside a multitude of energies bared like the teeth on the grinding gears behind the face of a crooning sin of a tick tocking clock, mocking our steady measured pace.  

So I went to the local sanwhichery here near work (to round the first turn, ol' two leg in the lead) and, alongside a waning day, my energy ran parallel to the pattern of it. My stomach had been badmouthing me for most of the morning, and I had finally had enough of dodging it's racial slurs and nasty epithets, so I decided that if it wanted some work so badly, I might as well see what I could do.

As I arrived on line at this quaint eatery, contemplating the day's deeds and how I was to refuel, this woman jumped (yes jumped; she landed on both feet) in front of my face and blurted, "You baol me sa su?!" Her dialect was only slightly garbled by a broken English delivered with a sweet and sour Asian flavor, and was possibly due to a taste of over sized tongue. 

"You buy me sa su?!" she cried again, the volume of her voice rising with insistence and shrilling her need. Her teeth had an interesting pattern to their set, if I didn't know any better, I would have said she had a black tooth for every white, as if some slightly slipped on banana peel of a piano maker had forgotten that there are no sharps or flats between E and F, and B and C. I didn't attempt to play them, but I quickly ascertained that her black keys were only gaps in the scenery, making a milieu of interacting ivory and space. 

"You buy me som su-Puh?!" I think she might have realized, by the confused airs in my eyes that I was having difficulty digesting the unexpected, so she over-exaggerated the enunciation of her final consonant (a plosive no less), littering the air around with spittle and interesting breath, but by this point I had figured out what she was requesting of me and an interesting thing happened. 

At first, my inner program kicked into gear. You know, that programming we all have ingrained in our self-concept about how to deal with a world that's never really been effectively dealt with. This particular program was the one about hobos and their apparent need to fill their stomach because they don't have money to buy it themselves, so they resort to more insistent methods of cajoling a meal from the Universe around them (okay, so maybe that's not the program verbatim, but it's a close approximation). 

I caught myself shutting down in judgment of this woman and her lack of ability to feed herself, or find food. In the wild, she'd be dead by now (in the now she's clever enough to do what it takes, which kind of makes it another kind of wildness in and of itself), socially below a person who fends for themselves and makes their living working hard (isn't it hard work to do what she does?), insinuating herself into my personal boundary and breaching all kinds of social etiquette (maybe she never got the handbook). Instead of shutting down with a shunning frown however, I found a new narrative nosing it's way into my system. This one said, "look, you have the money and she doesn't. You're going to eat and so could she. It actually wouldn't take much out of you if you were to buy this woman a bowl of soup for five bucks. Why not just ba her sa su?" 

I bought her some soup, and the relief and joy in her eyes that shone through could have felled a steadfast mountain. The guys behind the counter glanced at her, then at me as if they've seen this all before and I the sucker of this regular occurrence, but I didn't really care. It wasn't really about this woman, or me, or the situation. I was just buying soup. They kept their mouths shut, for whatever reason, and bowled up some soup with some silly smirks and knowing looks passed about like too small a joint around too large a circle of acquaintances. The really cool part came after I'd completed the transaction. 

I turned to my new wingman (wingwoman?) with, potentially, her only meal of the day in my hands, and, after she asked me to set it on the table for her (which I did), she reached into one of her many plastic bags and pulled out a packet of CreamSavers (by Life Saver I think) and handed it to me with so much graceful gratitude that I was actually touched by the gesture. She didn't have any money, or any real sustenance, but she had a pack of Life Saver candies and gave it without hesitation (not a lot to me, but probably thirty percent of her world, give or take a point or two). 

My stomach and I did eventually come to terms, but it was probably less grateful, in some respects, than the stomach that has no concept of when legal settlement will arrive. 

If I understand it correctly, meeting someone on the outskirts of social perception, where all things are equal, shares a kinship with apogee, or could, if the ego drops long enough to see through the hardened veil that instantly besots our personal point of view. A simple conversation can be a nice thing standing on line at the grocery store, or the bank, or among the ranks of warrior monks everywhere. You never know what the exchange of knowledge could be, but you'll never find out by rubbing in those things we think we are. A shooting star, or a flying fish, can be wished upon all the same and after all the fame and glory embers are dismembered, you still lie in bed alone and float on glorious memories remembered, or worries engendered by whatever it is the fear sings in your ears, as do I. But the fear doesn't really belong in a song to sing, it has not much bearing on the direction in which we're heading, which is to say, to the same place. Right Here. Right Now.

Is the Shortest Way

June 24, 2007

In response to a response to "This!":

Hearts are only broken when there's something at stake, even though there's nothing really to lose except for a perception, but it happens nonetheless, and I can only say that, after a broken heart, a person is typically more at peace with things after the devastation wears away, so when looked at this way, the broken heart mends and the fall of life bends into a boon, or gift, one might say. 

Before the word "love", or more precisely, before words, what was there? Remember a while back I told you that I take the world and dismantle my definitions, move beyond all perceived meaning, and see what I'm left with? It's a feeling, a sensation of some sort, and nowadays everyone makes it "mean" something as it relates to the story they've created for themselves. But if we remove all the meaning and just feel "this", then all we're doing is exploring the energy that "this" feeling brings. 

If the meaning of things is pared away completely, meaning that there are none of those pesky, persistent thoughts (defintion = pesky, persistent thought = any thought at all = thought = meaning), I think that the overall blissful energy that we're left with is the closest approximation to the word love. Falling in love is possibly one of the greatest feelings in existence, wouldn't you say? It makes one high, able to fly on the wings of a pure sensation. We feel we can do anything and have no more fear of just about everything wecould possibly fear. It's this feeling I think we're left with without the meaning of things. 

When I think of a situation that I might be concerned with, say, losing my job, then I get this feeling of dread at the implications of what this could "mean" to me. How will I live? Where will I get money? How will I pay rent? How will I find and pay for food, or gas, or clothing? Each one of these has it's own meaning, and, when thought upon, evokes such a contraction in my solar plexus that I'm literally frozen from fear. But, if I can see clearly enough to know that life will move on regardless of what it could mean to be unemployed, then there isn't a problem, because I know that things will work out, and if they don't, then they work out anyway, but only because that's the way it was supposed to be, so I persist in a constant state of energy that feels very akin to loving expression. 

The question is what to do with the energy? We create. Making all of "this" about the creation of your everyday kind of allows you to let those perceived negatives go. Imagine what one could create if they truly understood that gravity didn't exist (I haven't yet discovered how to fly, so obviously the meaning of gravity still carries some weight in my mind)! Whatever we want to happen will, because you go after what you want and create a way for things to be okay no matter the circumstance.

What does it mean to me to say or hear "I love you"? Well if I remove the storyboard element (i.e. the romance of falling in love, the social implications of what it means to be in such a state, etc...) then all it means is that I'm hearing or saying something that already is this constant state of awareness by energy. So, with this outlook, to hear "I hate you" would still be the same thing to me, because I'm already in the constant state. And truly, if I were see into the words spoken by the individual, I would understand that this person, who must hate for whatever reason, is really in the same state as I, except they're making meaning where there truly isn't any to begin with, and so they are in a hellish place, because to me, whenever I've hated someone in the past, it's me who's felt torn apart by that hatred, not them, even though I tried to make them feel the way that I did. But if I feel the burning of that hatred toward someone, and let's just say that they don't feel it at all, and go about their life, happy, despite my feelings for them, then who has the problem? 

I had an interesting experience recently where I actually had feelings for someone, but they weren't returned. I still felt this feeling, but, instead of pining over or cursing upon this person (like I normally would), I took this blissful feeling and just experienced the world through it, and I have to say that it was probably the most contented two days of my life. If only I hadn't made up meaning in my life elsewhere to destroy the sensation. If only I could have stayed in that place and spread that energy around to everything and everyone I came across. I did, to some degree, and still instill that feeling to all things in my life, because it feels so damn good! 

I definitely think we were supposed to meet each other when we did. I learned a good deal from you, oh sensei of getting what you want, and apply those insistent attidtudes in my everyday life, because we all deserve to get what we want, all we need do is go after. I think the difference between the way you and I go about it is in the way we perceive the world around us. You see that the world is full of liars and cheats, whereas I see a world full of beauty and wonder (here's the part where you get your shovel ;' ). Even though you've intimated this very thing to me about the status of the day's barometer, you look at those places you think are not beautiful, like humanity, and can only see liars and cheats, but it's all underneath those liars and cheats knitted neatly into the fabric of your life, created by mind, which we preposterously think we are. Yes, I still see it when they lie and cheat, but instead of becoming incensed, I just understand it as all the more of what this fantastical world has to offer. 

There's nothing in this life that can truly be taken away from you that would make you anything less than you are. If I lost my arms, it may take time to get used to, but get used to it I would. Would I really have any other choice? Does it make me any less than what I am now, which is to say, right here and right now? You're already that whole individual regardless of the outer layer you choose to wrap yourself in. That layer changes on a daily basis, if you haven't noticed, although I'm sure that you have, so I see past it as the creation of our world, even if that causes some form of anguish. That anguish is a gift. It shows us where we are and what it takes to tear us down (like pushing a person's buttons). If I get a button pushed, I'll shine the light of my consciousness and understanding of the world, to discard the need for that which would tear me down (not that I'd like to lose my arms of course!). But ahhh, Life is Wonderful, is it not?

Like I said before, I'll always be here (where else would I go? even if I went to Timbuktu, I'd still be right here and right now), so anytime you want to talk the "fuzzy", just let me know. Talking/typing from this place is what it's all about. 

Derek

This!

This!

June 19, 2007

Sometimes it's enjoyable to redefine a word to suit the purposes of the moment. When we plop drop into this world, swinging on an umbilical chord like Tarzan of the Apes (what? you didn't?), we had no notion of knowing what a word meant. We didn't even know the words word, or meant. We didn't even know to know, you know? But as we progress through life, words and their meanings are subsequently crammed down our throats by those who "know" better than we; many are the influences on how a word defined came to be.

So we awkwardly titter our way through life on the shaky legs of another's definitions, until we develop our own sensibilities, using any and all potential influences: our parents, our siblings, the outer layer relatives, their friends, our friends, our enemies, theirs (who must be my friends by definition, right?), television, motion pictures, literature, porn, street signs, photographs, stubbed toes, broken bones, dastardly deeds of our own designs, benevolent deeds designed by another, deeds inspired by the divine, deeds conspired by insipid devils- all us –and we deeply discuss with our inner narrator the value of the way we see it, but why? Why try a lackluster lockdown? If someone claims to have taught us the definition of something, they're so caught up by themselves (just like you and me) that they can't shake loose (just like you and me). They've taught us a fractional degree of something in a world, the way they see, where even that something will influence, to some degree, the way we define it.

If you get my drift, if we're having a discussion with someone, and the question of semantics rears it's ugly head, it only rears because we're not realizing that the other side has a billion trillion shades of meaning that ever so delicately steer the culmination of an argument/debate/friendly conversation in the direction of the semantic iceberg. Understanding "this" allows us, not only within a conversation, but within our own mind, to bend the possibility that no word will ever mean the exact same to me as it does to you, and thereby we'll be able to free ourselves from an imprisonment of definitional solitude, because we all tend to adhere rigidly to the definitions of our world at some level. "Hey! Don't fuck too deeply with the way I see it, or I'll go ballistic! WHO ARE YOU TO SAY THE WAY IT IS!? HUH?!" It's the common response of the unshaken shook. I've been guilty of this a time or two, but I have to admit, that afterward, I've been a little more flexible and a little less rigid by the experience alone, like the way a dog's chew toy must feel, minus the drool, after a wrestling bout with the dog's mouth.

Let's take the word "love" for example. If I were to say, "I'm beginning to see love as the only thing truly in existence," most of the unshook would shake with mirth at the idea that such a thing could be true, after all, in what way is love traditionally referred? The word sentimental comes to mind, and maybe affection, friendship, infatuation, lust, adulation, devotion, crush, attachment, passion, rapture, the hots, worship, yearning, to name way too many, each one with their own emotion attached. But "love" means none of these to me, it is all of them at the same time. "This".

When I read those words I get a feeling, an emotion and I'm temporarily waylaid by my sense of "love" in each instance. In some cases love has been a prison from which I could barely escape with my life still mine. How could one be entrapped by a word defined, if physically they could walk away from a word repined? It's simple, though it didn't seem that way at the time; we're locked away by our mind, because we think that's how we're defined. We're not.  

Our mind is just a tool (without digressing too far), a stool sat upon to stew over the thoughts it presents, like watching a big screen with all the channels and then some. But if we truly believe that we are our mind, then every time we have a thought so big (the love we can't leave behind) we're paralyzed in that thought for extended lenghts of time, until, of course, some kind of break in our alleged reality occurs—death, a lover left -finally realizing that we aren't our minds and never were this whole time– breaks of all kinds, all shapes, all sizes.

It's the intent that makes the word, like a man's clothes, wrapping a mental image in an amalgam selection from the alphabet and shows us the word's quality. Our mind seems to manufacture our intent right in front of our eyes, like some mad scientist in his lab amongst the beakers and Bunsen burners. The quality of that intent, which is outside the scope of this single-sided argument, grants us our wishes in such a way that we learn to be careful what we wish for. Wish is just a word, yes? "No No!" you say in careful consternation, "it's so much more! It denotes the hopes and dreams of all things, big or little, smothering or brittle." There's intent there, I'm certain. Intent makes curse words a perfect example to pick. 

A curse word (shit, fuck, prick, or cunt, to name a few) has such loaded intent it'll make a person cringe with singed eyebrows, if they are so inclined. It'll make a pariah out of the charismatic, depending upon the company he or she keeps. It's either find new friends or keep a mouth shut, or maybe change the word to something like, "Sugar!" or "Fudge!"

Change the word? I don't get it. Isn't the uttered expletive uttered for a reason? Doesn't it convey the way a stubbed toe feels, or inconsistent lovers revealed? Shifting the assembly doesn't seem to really turn that trick quick enough. It's as if we're telling the world, "Well, I really am concerned with what you think of me, but I'll act as though I'm bush beating your delicate sensibilities, because I'm just that concerned with damaging your eardrums somehow. Really though, I'm worried about myself and what you might think of me" Phleh. To be dishonest, I don't really use them so much myself, but I will, given the perfect puddle of water and exposed light socket. But the clothes don't really make the man, just the way he's perceived, so "Sugar!" still carries a magnitude of intent if only inside our own heads, the weight remains the same, if with a little bit of mirth slipped in.

And so, of course, there's nothing actually wrong with changing the word into something a little more palatable, but for creativity, not for propriety. When I think of all the crimes committed in the name of proper proper, I want to vomit my choanies into a shot glass, or poop in my own pillowcase. It's just another way of deeming our experience a little less significant to ourselves in the name of someone else's, and in the grand scheme of things it's such a little thing, a word, with all those different shades of meaning, it really has nothing to do with "this".

In It

02 May 2007


In It
Current mood: indescribable

As I sit here on the eve of the night one year away from the day that the last vestiges of my life fell apart, I'm mulling over a history replete with love and chaos, mulch and payoffs, a moist and insidious assiduousness. The happiness of a pre-defined lover's net, knotted into what I can only call harmony in the third degree – quick someone start the investigation, the body might still be cold…

Ahh, the lovers dilemma, fraught with fastidious ties and subtle power struggles intertwined with a great love's delight, and the might of the combined will of a long term moment dared to be shared, but eternally misunderstood. Did I make the right decision? Have made the right move in accordance with what my heart has told me to do so many times, only to be ignored by an ego fraught with fright and cowardly misrepresentation? Well, it felt no good to be a lion in search of his birthright. It felt no good feel a hollow, tin bin of an empty ribcage, seeking to find, or feel, a heart that was long since forgotten for another's ideal way of life. If the fact that my heart no longer feels as though it were on the business end of a garlic press is any indication, then I guess I'm finally walking the way of the warrior.

It's funny though, how much I've pondered over a decision made with excruciatingly slow deliberation (the Pisces is represented by two fish swimming in opposite directions you know, and to top it all off, my Libra rising only compounds the issue). We tend to take the things in our lives and blow them into a proportion fit for five kings on their way to an African Oktoberfest, because, after all, those things are happening to us, but when measured against the bliss of leading one's own life – feeling one's own moment unfold, feeling those little intricacies of an energy system that contains not only the story, but the rest of you in it – all those problems really seem relatively insignificant: damn! I've lived this life with a person I've been deeply in love with for such a long time and it was such a blissful act in a play that's staying power still pervades my senses to a degree. Do I leave because I'm supposed to? No, not yet. Damn! Why does my heart not seem to be where it used to be when, really, this person hasn't changed one bit? Somehow, it must be me who's changed – rewritten the play to say something other than what was initially inked in…or was it? Maybe this is just the way the play was meant to go. An act played out like a cold beer on tap poured into a frosty mug and clapped onto the table with such ferocity that the foam has over flown into the fable. Okay, so by way of justification, if it's all a tall tale and I'm doing the telling, I might as well tell it the way I want it told. The way my greatest love put it, I "lit up a clove and then tossed it on the rubbles of our life which I had dutifully doused with gasoline." Wow. I never knew how dramatically bad-ass I was, until I realized it of course, until she told me, of course, just like it had always been, just like the way my world went 'round.

The Universe always tends to know what's best, so when there's a tapping on the door I'm more apt to listen, now, and answer, and see who's there. Dare I ask? Mom always said, "don't open the door for strangers, tell'em I'm in the shower!" But you never know who the stranger will be. If you had any faith, you'd figure that there would be a lesson on the other side of an unsettled doorknob, whether it be in the form a raving, slavering lunatic, or a somnambulistic mirror image of a karma unleashed in grand fashion, equipped with a sense of humor, a wry smile and a sharp chortle.

So I turned the doorknob, much to the chagrin of all parties involved, and eventually found a world that I never knew existed outside of the social paradigm. Do I tell the others, those whom I love and care for deeply? Hell yes! Will they listen? Some of them will, others will scoff, or seize up, or shift their feet and avert their gaze, or laugh openly, or attempt to subvert, saying that it's not my responsibility to speak my mind. Well, I say yes it is (yours too). It's not my mind to begin with (where is that anyway? Kerry gets me), so why not just open my mouth? First I guess I should come to grips with the idea of loving this experience that I'm witnessing, which includes all of y'all (what a great contraction) and anything else that might sashay its way into my field of view. Will I ever fall in love again? Probably. I'm in it aren't I? Will I approach it in the same way I did before? Don't be ridiculous. How could I? Will it be the same rabbit trap? Sure, but I'll walk into it with my eyes open at least, and understand how to walk out without becoming the beast I once was. Do I still love her? So much so I that I think I'll find my enlightenment there…