I never really know what any of this is supposed to mean.... what I'm doing, or why.
Sometimes I tell people it's important to be aware of the things that motivate us to act... but to be honest, most of the time I never know where it comes from. I feel a compulsion, and it's so hard to explain that tears come to my eyes if I even think of attempting to.
Chris was telling me about a compulsion he had at work the other day. His boss seemed so troubled that morning, when he handed her some coffee. All day he felt compelled to tell her what he thought of her... about the respect he had for her and what she does for the people around her, and her passion for the work she does. He couldn't stop thinking about it all day, so before leaving he sat down and wrote her a letter, and gave it to her. The next day she took him aside in an effort to explain how much it meant to her, that she was moved to tears. There are no words for these things.
I was listening to him tell me this and I myself felt very moved. It's something I think about all the time, and try to put words to when there are none. It's so beautiful when people are honest with each other. We hold back so much, for fear of standing there naked, vulnerable to the world.
We think we don't know who we are, or how to represent ourselves. We think we are so alone. We think we cannot describe ourselves to each other in a way that could be understood. We think when we 'say', we don't say what we mean, and when we paint, it's never as beautiful as the image in our heads. We struggle to birth reflections of ourselves into this world all the time, and we feel pain when our meticulous efforts fail to reflect the true beauty of this thing inside us.
And all this time, here we are standing, naked under it all. Beautiful. Always. To Everyone.
We are not hidden. We shine through, marvelous accidental.
Listen: these compulsions? Listen and see yourself shine through. I know that if I stay here, eyes open, ears open- I will hear and I will see the difference between Everything Else, and my soul singing to be heard.
But this isn't a task, or a quest, or a journey to overcome obstacles. Even if you don't hear it, even if you don't see it, even if you don't think you know it.... you shine through, anyway. Marvelous accidental.
Someone once said, "Existence does not exist for others. It is of itself, for itself, by itself."
Alan Watts once said, "Contradictory as it may sound, it seems to me that the deepest spiritual experience can arise only in moments of selfishness so complete that it transcends itself."
Damian once said, "Any autobiography is an act of vanity."
And I once thought that compulsion, selfishness, self- consciousness and vanity were things to be frowned upon. Negatives to which surely there existed positive alternatives.
But what is compulsion, if not an act driven by a force that seems larger and more overwhelming than your own notions of logic, reason and etiquette? I thought it was something that had to do with lack of self-control, or of acting without thinking or consideration. But this is only one element of a very multi-faceted relationship. If you look at Chris's story, you realize that sometimes acting without thought or consideration can manifest itself in ways so thoughtful and considerate that we did not know we were capable of it.
Along the same lines, selflessness is in itself an act of pure selfishness. This is how much language serves its purpose in manners such as these.
Self-consciousness could be described as a condition of ceaseless fascination with who "I am". It is self-consciousness which is often crippling and misleading, often a circus house of distorted mirrors and illusions. But how much would we know, how much would we laugh and understand if we just really tried to look at ourselves? We are constant reflections of each other.
And vanity. The other thing that causes us to think twice before showing ourselves to the world.The other thing that makes us ask 'Well, who am I to say?' or, 'Well, who would really care to look at me?'
For one reason or another I am thinking to myself, whether or not a diamond is hidden will not change its shape, form, beauty or flawlessness. But it can only be brilliant in the sun.
For one reason or another I keep thinking about these things, and about how I thought they meant one thing, and were to be avoided....
... but now I'm starting to realize that things like this: compulsion, selfishness, self-conciousness and vanity... are completely unavoidable, and I have been struggling to overcome them when they themselves are part of who I am.
And not only that, but that these things, while they can be negative, can also be very positive, too. That there is no opposite, and no alternative, because these conditions are balanced within their own true meanings (whatever they are) They are neutral elements that are part of this game, and we can play with them in ways that can bring joy into our lives and others, and a little more brilliance into the world.
Okay then. That is all.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Touch and Spill
I feel a little overwhelmed... this is good... it's quite good, actually (Amanda, you know)
Why does it floor me so to listen to music someone has made that comes from their hearts, and souls, and that perfect, radiant, gorgeous part of them that seems to shine when we just let it go?
Oh lord. It floors me so. It moves me like nothing else in this world. Every modular swell is like the crest of the wave that my heart is riding on. I feel like spilling all over the place, perfect, melting, water into water. Like salty tears melt into the ocean.
It touches me.
This is how it is with music.... I was ready to go to bed and Nick asked me to wait five minutes and sent me the beginnings of a dubstep track he'd started working on tonight.
It's hard to explain, so i'll just say it in the first words that came to me... I told him, 'Now you've got me, making such a pretty thing....
... it's like you touched your fingers to the keyboard and to your computer and it went through something intangible to get to my ears... and then from there you reached right into me and touched my soul.'
What does it sound like... it sounds like flattery. People hesitate to speak when they are touched like this. Me, I can never keep my mouth shut about much, especially when it's overwhelming.
It wasn't just that it was beautiful, though. I felt like the universe-sized complexity of the nature of the relationship between he and I had been explained to me in less than five minutes, and without words.
Does that make sense?
I heard it and I knew, without any words exchanged, that he knew me. Open ears, connect. Not just me, Josephine, age 23, lost in her life.... but me... who I am.
I'm having a hard time with words, here. But what I'm trying to say is, every sound, every movement, every rhythm- it moved with me like when two dancers know each other so well they dance effortlessly, beautifully together , pushing pulling. Like my ears were meant to hear it that way. Like I've been waiting all my life to feel that elevated.
I love to see it spill like that.
That's what making things is, to me, I think. Cup Overflow. Honest Gorgeousness into the world, because we can't even help it.
Why does it floor me so to listen to music someone has made that comes from their hearts, and souls, and that perfect, radiant, gorgeous part of them that seems to shine when we just let it go?
Oh lord. It floors me so. It moves me like nothing else in this world. Every modular swell is like the crest of the wave that my heart is riding on. I feel like spilling all over the place, perfect, melting, water into water. Like salty tears melt into the ocean.
It touches me.
This is how it is with music.... I was ready to go to bed and Nick asked me to wait five minutes and sent me the beginnings of a dubstep track he'd started working on tonight.
It's hard to explain, so i'll just say it in the first words that came to me... I told him, 'Now you've got me, making such a pretty thing....
... it's like you touched your fingers to the keyboard and to your computer and it went through something intangible to get to my ears... and then from there you reached right into me and touched my soul.'
What does it sound like... it sounds like flattery. People hesitate to speak when they are touched like this. Me, I can never keep my mouth shut about much, especially when it's overwhelming.
It wasn't just that it was beautiful, though. I felt like the universe-sized complexity of the nature of the relationship between he and I had been explained to me in less than five minutes, and without words.
Does that make sense?
I heard it and I knew, without any words exchanged, that he knew me. Open ears, connect. Not just me, Josephine, age 23, lost in her life.... but me... who I am.
I'm having a hard time with words, here. But what I'm trying to say is, every sound, every movement, every rhythm- it moved with me like when two dancers know each other so well they dance effortlessly, beautifully together , pushing pulling. Like my ears were meant to hear it that way. Like I've been waiting all my life to feel that elevated.
I love to see it spill like that.
That's what making things is, to me, I think. Cup Overflow. Honest Gorgeousness into the world, because we can't even help it.
Patience in Playing the Game
How does it work in chess?
I am a very impatient chess player. I tend to spend the time the other player is deliberating mapping out all possible moves and counter-moves so that when my time comes, it takes me less than a few seconds to turn the tables.
About 80% of the time this works for me, the other 20% of the time, something happens that I didn't quite see... because I'm not perfect, and I miss that kind of stuff sometimes.
Other times, I'm so focused on some intended strategy that my impatience turns into anxiety, and then into complete distraction. I am so preoccupied that I accidentally overlook the trap that my opponent has laid out. That's when I get my ass kicked. That happens sometimes, too.
Patience isn't just a virtue. It's a calmness, and a tranquility. It's the stillness in the eye of the storm and what makes the dancing beautiful when you let go of all inhibition.
It's realizing you could save yourself a whole lot of cuts and bruises if you just move with current and let it take you right where you're supposed to be. It's less like gravity, and more like magic- and it will drop the pieces right into place when you least expect it, because it's always happening whether you can see it or not.
Anyone who's played the game, or put their hands on something with the intention of reflecting this beautiful thing inside has gone through the frustration of trying to say what we mean, or show what we see, or make the 'right' decisions.
The thing is, we inherently understand the nature of things, whether you want to call them rules, or laws, constants or truths. We already know that we know the right moves, instinctively, and without thought.
But if you're anything like me, you often get impatient with yourself and your relationship with time, and you start to second-guess yourself, and get distracted.
What I mean to say is, here I am writing about how things are a matter of time, and I know this, but I'm still tapping my foot and looking at my watch. My heart rate is going up, and my anxiety, and I feel held back, if anything by a self-imposed, imaginary standard or deadline.
But waiting isn't just sitting there and expecting something to happen. It's a wonderful time! It's a chance to reflect and look forward, and to calm yourself and know that whatever happens, you'll know how to get through it. It's an opportunity to think, and more importantly, an opportunity to not think at all, and to just 'be'.
I had no idea how important that was. I always think it's so pointless and unimportant, and that I'm not being productive. But when the ball is in the world's court, what could be more productive than tapping into the part of you that is omniscient and happy, because it is in its nature? That part of you ir more than intelligent. That part of you knows.
I am a very impatient chess player. I tend to spend the time the other player is deliberating mapping out all possible moves and counter-moves so that when my time comes, it takes me less than a few seconds to turn the tables.
About 80% of the time this works for me, the other 20% of the time, something happens that I didn't quite see... because I'm not perfect, and I miss that kind of stuff sometimes.
Other times, I'm so focused on some intended strategy that my impatience turns into anxiety, and then into complete distraction. I am so preoccupied that I accidentally overlook the trap that my opponent has laid out. That's when I get my ass kicked. That happens sometimes, too.
Patience isn't just a virtue. It's a calmness, and a tranquility. It's the stillness in the eye of the storm and what makes the dancing beautiful when you let go of all inhibition.
It's realizing you could save yourself a whole lot of cuts and bruises if you just move with current and let it take you right where you're supposed to be. It's less like gravity, and more like magic- and it will drop the pieces right into place when you least expect it, because it's always happening whether you can see it or not.
Anyone who's played the game, or put their hands on something with the intention of reflecting this beautiful thing inside has gone through the frustration of trying to say what we mean, or show what we see, or make the 'right' decisions.
The thing is, we inherently understand the nature of things, whether you want to call them rules, or laws, constants or truths. We already know that we know the right moves, instinctively, and without thought.
But if you're anything like me, you often get impatient with yourself and your relationship with time, and you start to second-guess yourself, and get distracted.
What I mean to say is, here I am writing about how things are a matter of time, and I know this, but I'm still tapping my foot and looking at my watch. My heart rate is going up, and my anxiety, and I feel held back, if anything by a self-imposed, imaginary standard or deadline.
But waiting isn't just sitting there and expecting something to happen. It's a wonderful time! It's a chance to reflect and look forward, and to calm yourself and know that whatever happens, you'll know how to get through it. It's an opportunity to think, and more importantly, an opportunity to not think at all, and to just 'be'.
I had no idea how important that was. I always think it's so pointless and unimportant, and that I'm not being productive. But when the ball is in the world's court, what could be more productive than tapping into the part of you that is omniscient and happy, because it is in its nature? That part of you ir more than intelligent. That part of you knows.
Response Letter
A response letter to a friend who wrote me in response to the last blog. I took out names for now out of respect, since I haven't asked his permission to publicize our conversation. I'll stick them back in if he has no problem with it:
______________________________________________
hey _____, thanks so much for your insight, i'm very excited to eventually get a chance to talk to you about such things.
I definitely fluctuate between defining my own identity and disassociating from it. I've come to think of it as a game, but just like winning and losing in games, if I feel like the story I'm unfolding has hit a wall, I start to get frustrated. I am a sore loser.
It's really, really helpful to be reminded to focus on the things I know, but have turned a blind eye to (again). I thank you for that.
As far as conclusions go, I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing. I have an intuition that there's no answer to our most provoking questions, and the pursuit of such only reveals more questions. So it must be about the inquiry, and the joy and sorrow of it.
I'm okay with that. I just forget I'm okay with that, sometimes.
I empathize with what you went through with _______. The last person I was with (for most of college) lied to me several times about some seriously painful things before I literally couldn't bear to speak to him anymore.
It was a terrible time, my heart was completely broken, I felt my trust for other humans desintegrating, and with every new chance I gave him thrown in my face, I felt more and more like a fool.
Those kinds of things force you to question every little thing about yourself, whether it's reasonable or not. You wonder what was not good enough about you for the other person, what you might have done better, why the person they're with now is so superior to you in quality. You question the nature of human interaction, and whether or not it's meaningful at all. And so on.
Most importantly though, relationship aside, it forces you to look at yourself, and really try and see who it is you really are- the truth of it. Heartbreak might have been the most illuminating thing that has ever happened to me.
Here's a little thing that my life has brought to my attention recently, that I feel compelled to share with you for whatever reason-
- I thought for the better part of the last year and a half, when I was mostly solitary and healing, that I might never be able to trust or love again, or that past events had damaged my ability to do so. Since I've been in this city, I realized that things like that are never beyond our reach or lost to us.
The broken-hearted have had to peel away layers, and have become wiser for it. They realize that love and trust are not for everybody, and everything.
They are gifts that we give to this world, to those who bring it out in us. When we meet those people, no matter how much we've been hurt, there's no way in the world we will be able to help it. We can't help the loving, and the trusting.
I didn't know, but it pours out of you when you find someone worthy of it. I've been quite surprised, actually... it happens when you least expect it... and I know that sounds cliche, but there's truth to it, that's how it becomes cliche in the first place.
I understand what you mean about being comfortable floating in limbo. I have been quite comfortable, and happy-
- I know that I'm on the brink of something, though. Like I'm on the edge of a waterfall, and the floating is about to be pulled out from under me and something wild is about to happen. It's excitement and nervousness, is what it is. The other side to the floating, if I were to be taoist about it.
And yes, your words were a great aid. They came just at the right time. (namaste)
Josephine
______________________________________________
hey _____, thanks so much for your insight, i'm very excited to eventually get a chance to talk to you about such things.
I definitely fluctuate between defining my own identity and disassociating from it. I've come to think of it as a game, but just like winning and losing in games, if I feel like the story I'm unfolding has hit a wall, I start to get frustrated. I am a sore loser.
It's really, really helpful to be reminded to focus on the things I know, but have turned a blind eye to (again). I thank you for that.
As far as conclusions go, I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing. I have an intuition that there's no answer to our most provoking questions, and the pursuit of such only reveals more questions. So it must be about the inquiry, and the joy and sorrow of it.
I'm okay with that. I just forget I'm okay with that, sometimes.
I empathize with what you went through with _______. The last person I was with (for most of college) lied to me several times about some seriously painful things before I literally couldn't bear to speak to him anymore.
It was a terrible time, my heart was completely broken, I felt my trust for other humans desintegrating, and with every new chance I gave him thrown in my face, I felt more and more like a fool.
Those kinds of things force you to question every little thing about yourself, whether it's reasonable or not. You wonder what was not good enough about you for the other person, what you might have done better, why the person they're with now is so superior to you in quality. You question the nature of human interaction, and whether or not it's meaningful at all. And so on.
Most importantly though, relationship aside, it forces you to look at yourself, and really try and see who it is you really are- the truth of it. Heartbreak might have been the most illuminating thing that has ever happened to me.
Here's a little thing that my life has brought to my attention recently, that I feel compelled to share with you for whatever reason-
- I thought for the better part of the last year and a half, when I was mostly solitary and healing, that I might never be able to trust or love again, or that past events had damaged my ability to do so. Since I've been in this city, I realized that things like that are never beyond our reach or lost to us.
The broken-hearted have had to peel away layers, and have become wiser for it. They realize that love and trust are not for everybody, and everything.
They are gifts that we give to this world, to those who bring it out in us. When we meet those people, no matter how much we've been hurt, there's no way in the world we will be able to help it. We can't help the loving, and the trusting.
I didn't know, but it pours out of you when you find someone worthy of it. I've been quite surprised, actually... it happens when you least expect it... and I know that sounds cliche, but there's truth to it, that's how it becomes cliche in the first place.
I understand what you mean about being comfortable floating in limbo. I have been quite comfortable, and happy-
- I know that I'm on the brink of something, though. Like I'm on the edge of a waterfall, and the floating is about to be pulled out from under me and something wild is about to happen. It's excitement and nervousness, is what it is. The other side to the floating, if I were to be taoist about it.
And yes, your words were a great aid. They came just at the right time. (namaste)
Josephine
Re-
I feel this huge sense of relief, even though it's just from myself, and my thoughts.
I haven't been writing much and that was bothering me, and also not really playing guitar or thinking too much about what to do with myself. I worry a lot about whether or not I'm making progress, or moving in any direction in my life. If there's anything I have a fear of, it's stagnation.
It's a silly thing to worry about especially since I'm aware that my life has changed so drastically in every direction in the past few years... just like it's about to change again, and really soon when my severence runs out and I am burped back out into the 'cold, harsh real world'.
But there it is. I'd been thinking about when I left Maui and the intentions I'd set- which I realize now I've never written about, but have faithfully kept in the back of my head since the moment I stepped on the plane and waved 'Aloha' to the island that set my heart free.
They were as follows:
1) There was a sense of clarity and knowingness that I had only caught glimpses of before... which I felt so consistently that I believed it to be a part of me that was timeless, and would never go away.
I came to Kahua and every beautiful thing reflected it back into my retinas and ears and fingers and mouth in such a way that I could see it with my eyes closed, or open, or full of tears.
I could see it in the persistent and unrelenting beauty of every person's radiant face and body, no matter what shape or proportion. I saw it in the majesty of every crashing wave, waterfall, bird, flower and plant that even now leaves me at a loss for words, and that photographs do no justice.
I could hear it in the insects, and the wind in the trees, and the crashing of the waves and the ringing in my ears resonate on one frequency... low... rumbling... it breaks your heart and you fall on your knees and palms and look down into the grass and the ants are singing along with it...
I could feel it when sand fell through my fingers, and when I jumped into the warm ocean under the hot setting sun and it was like diving into liquid gold, luminescent and salty, letting me float. I could feel it when the wind blew my skirt and made me feel like I was flying, and in the soles of my feet on burning hot rocks and icy cool grass.
I could taste it in the tiny yellow pineapples that we watched all summer, waiting for them to ripen. In the papayas that turn yellow and cry for you to pull them off the tree in a way that a person completely in love wants to give every ounce of their being to the soul that holds their heart. I could taste it when Amanda and I scooped a passion fruit out into a papaya and ate the two together, and realized that it didn't matter who was responsible for such perfection... just that it was just that- perfection- put on this planet for us to discover with our tongues.
What was It....
... It was in our fingers touching, and our mouths tasting, and our eyes seeing, and our ears hearing. Everything. All of it. It was realizing that this overwhelming beauty couldn't EXIST without us- us, being TRULY present, and REALLY there, to play the crucial and sacred role of finding it beautiful.
It was a blessed interaction with the world around us. We were so blessed, all the time... and all we had to do was see, and hear, and touch, and taste. It was bigger than winning every prize in the world, because it was like winning every prize that our imaginations could conjure, even when it came to intangible things like the human soul, or the universe.
It was so important for me to know that this could still be a consistent part of me outside of Maui, no matter where I was, or under whatever circumstance. I needed to know that I could do this. That it wasn't a dream. That it wasn't an illusion veiled over my eyes... some sort of inner-beautiful mirage brought on by the overwhelming decadence of living in paradise. In other words, I needed to know that it would still be there, even in a city, surrounded by strangers, in a place I'd never been to, that is cold and dark eight months out of the year.
To tell you the truth, I was afraid I would leave Maui and lose myself in the confusion and complexity of life outside of our little island. That I wouldn't be able to see the sun through the smog, or hear anything over the roar of the city, or feel anything because I have numbed myself to protect myself from things that may hurt me, or taste anything because food is just a thing we put in our bodies to keep us from running out of the energy it takes to survive, both mentally and physically.
I was afraid I would forget how to see, and hear, and touch, and taste.
And now as I've written this, I'm laughing because it seems that I'd forgotten that the 'forgetting' is part of it all. We forget things so we can remember them... to feel this thing that I'm feeling right now, this remembering, which is wonderful.
And I remember it here, in Boston, which is beautiful in a completely New and Different way that adds another dimension of beauty to the way that I experience being alive.
2) I knew I was meant to learn something very important by accepting the job offer and the re-location to Boston, regardless of whether or not the job worked out... and I intended to learn that lesson, whatever it was.
And it's funny, because in a way I knew what was going to happen, even though I never could have predicted it and I had no control over the outcome. I'd told Amanda then, and on the balcony of our hidden surrealist castle which we'd struggled long and hard to find, that this would be El Ano Fuerte, the year of strength. That hard times would come, and many things would be out of our control, but that we would move through it gracefully like water over a cliff-
- water transformed into water. Constantly changing but always, in it's truest essence, just what it is. And strong enough- with the knowledge that anything is possible over a long enough timeline and that life is long- to carve stone and reshape this world. That we could, and we would- no matter what happened to us- and just by Being.
3) After I'd seen Gabriel play for the last time, I realized that I would not hear anything quite like that in Boston, because it just simply wasn't there.
Yet.
I told Amanda that in two years I would be a Ninja - Fairy - DJ: that I would playing in clubs in Boston and enrapturing people the way I was enraptured, and made to dance because I couldn't help it, soul-cleansed, mind-cleared. Gabriel gave me a gift from his ears to mine, and I fully intended to, with enough listening and passion, take something that had given me joy and re-create it through my own ears, and creativity, and perspective, which is wholly unique in a way that everyone else's is, too.
I haven't been writing because the time for me to write was not then, but Now. I had just been doing something other than writing; I have been expressing myself to the people around me in words, and facial expressions, fingertips and smiles, which is what I do when I am meeting new people in a new place.
I haven't been playing guitar because I've been learning to DJ- re-configuring auditory synaptic connections in a way that excites me so much it is electrifying, and you (I mean You) can feel it. I may not have played guitar in a few weeks. But I have never in my life been so immersed in what is happening to my ears, and how I am hearing it than I am now. And that is something worth reckoning.
And I haven't been thinking about so-called progress because it's already happening, and effortlessly... so much so that it feels so fun that the lack of struggle is unfamiliar to me and feels like Play.
I was feeling lost this morning, and worried. There are a lot of things to worry about if you look at it one way.
It's funny, and also okay. I just forgot you could see it other ways... and I see it another way right now, for now.
The perfection all around me. Smell in my nose, beautiful people in my presence, old wood floor full of history under my feet. Inspired fingertips and listening ears. Laughing mouth, gorgeous old city in my eyes. The unparalleled, appreciative look on people's faces after eight months as they gradually realize that soon it will be warm.
Perfection all around me. Nothing like Maui. Everything like me and the world working together to make beauty exist.
I haven't been writing much and that was bothering me, and also not really playing guitar or thinking too much about what to do with myself. I worry a lot about whether or not I'm making progress, or moving in any direction in my life. If there's anything I have a fear of, it's stagnation.
It's a silly thing to worry about especially since I'm aware that my life has changed so drastically in every direction in the past few years... just like it's about to change again, and really soon when my severence runs out and I am burped back out into the 'cold, harsh real world'.
But there it is. I'd been thinking about when I left Maui and the intentions I'd set- which I realize now I've never written about, but have faithfully kept in the back of my head since the moment I stepped on the plane and waved 'Aloha' to the island that set my heart free.
They were as follows:
1) There was a sense of clarity and knowingness that I had only caught glimpses of before... which I felt so consistently that I believed it to be a part of me that was timeless, and would never go away.
I came to Kahua and every beautiful thing reflected it back into my retinas and ears and fingers and mouth in such a way that I could see it with my eyes closed, or open, or full of tears.
I could see it in the persistent and unrelenting beauty of every person's radiant face and body, no matter what shape or proportion. I saw it in the majesty of every crashing wave, waterfall, bird, flower and plant that even now leaves me at a loss for words, and that photographs do no justice.
I could hear it in the insects, and the wind in the trees, and the crashing of the waves and the ringing in my ears resonate on one frequency... low... rumbling... it breaks your heart and you fall on your knees and palms and look down into the grass and the ants are singing along with it...
I could feel it when sand fell through my fingers, and when I jumped into the warm ocean under the hot setting sun and it was like diving into liquid gold, luminescent and salty, letting me float. I could feel it when the wind blew my skirt and made me feel like I was flying, and in the soles of my feet on burning hot rocks and icy cool grass.
I could taste it in the tiny yellow pineapples that we watched all summer, waiting for them to ripen. In the papayas that turn yellow and cry for you to pull them off the tree in a way that a person completely in love wants to give every ounce of their being to the soul that holds their heart. I could taste it when Amanda and I scooped a passion fruit out into a papaya and ate the two together, and realized that it didn't matter who was responsible for such perfection... just that it was just that- perfection- put on this planet for us to discover with our tongues.
What was It....
... It was in our fingers touching, and our mouths tasting, and our eyes seeing, and our ears hearing. Everything. All of it. It was realizing that this overwhelming beauty couldn't EXIST without us- us, being TRULY present, and REALLY there, to play the crucial and sacred role of finding it beautiful.
It was a blessed interaction with the world around us. We were so blessed, all the time... and all we had to do was see, and hear, and touch, and taste. It was bigger than winning every prize in the world, because it was like winning every prize that our imaginations could conjure, even when it came to intangible things like the human soul, or the universe.
It was so important for me to know that this could still be a consistent part of me outside of Maui, no matter where I was, or under whatever circumstance. I needed to know that I could do this. That it wasn't a dream. That it wasn't an illusion veiled over my eyes... some sort of inner-beautiful mirage brought on by the overwhelming decadence of living in paradise. In other words, I needed to know that it would still be there, even in a city, surrounded by strangers, in a place I'd never been to, that is cold and dark eight months out of the year.
To tell you the truth, I was afraid I would leave Maui and lose myself in the confusion and complexity of life outside of our little island. That I wouldn't be able to see the sun through the smog, or hear anything over the roar of the city, or feel anything because I have numbed myself to protect myself from things that may hurt me, or taste anything because food is just a thing we put in our bodies to keep us from running out of the energy it takes to survive, both mentally and physically.
I was afraid I would forget how to see, and hear, and touch, and taste.
And now as I've written this, I'm laughing because it seems that I'd forgotten that the 'forgetting' is part of it all. We forget things so we can remember them... to feel this thing that I'm feeling right now, this remembering, which is wonderful.
And I remember it here, in Boston, which is beautiful in a completely New and Different way that adds another dimension of beauty to the way that I experience being alive.
2) I knew I was meant to learn something very important by accepting the job offer and the re-location to Boston, regardless of whether or not the job worked out... and I intended to learn that lesson, whatever it was.
And it's funny, because in a way I knew what was going to happen, even though I never could have predicted it and I had no control over the outcome. I'd told Amanda then, and on the balcony of our hidden surrealist castle which we'd struggled long and hard to find, that this would be El Ano Fuerte, the year of strength. That hard times would come, and many things would be out of our control, but that we would move through it gracefully like water over a cliff-
- water transformed into water. Constantly changing but always, in it's truest essence, just what it is. And strong enough- with the knowledge that anything is possible over a long enough timeline and that life is long- to carve stone and reshape this world. That we could, and we would- no matter what happened to us- and just by Being.
3) After I'd seen Gabriel play for the last time, I realized that I would not hear anything quite like that in Boston, because it just simply wasn't there.
Yet.
I told Amanda that in two years I would be a Ninja - Fairy - DJ: that I would playing in clubs in Boston and enrapturing people the way I was enraptured, and made to dance because I couldn't help it, soul-cleansed, mind-cleared. Gabriel gave me a gift from his ears to mine, and I fully intended to, with enough listening and passion, take something that had given me joy and re-create it through my own ears, and creativity, and perspective, which is wholly unique in a way that everyone else's is, too.
I haven't been writing because the time for me to write was not then, but Now. I had just been doing something other than writing; I have been expressing myself to the people around me in words, and facial expressions, fingertips and smiles, which is what I do when I am meeting new people in a new place.
I haven't been playing guitar because I've been learning to DJ- re-configuring auditory synaptic connections in a way that excites me so much it is electrifying, and you (I mean You) can feel it. I may not have played guitar in a few weeks. But I have never in my life been so immersed in what is happening to my ears, and how I am hearing it than I am now. And that is something worth reckoning.
And I haven't been thinking about so-called progress because it's already happening, and effortlessly... so much so that it feels so fun that the lack of struggle is unfamiliar to me and feels like Play.
I was feeling lost this morning, and worried. There are a lot of things to worry about if you look at it one way.
It's funny, and also okay. I just forgot you could see it other ways... and I see it another way right now, for now.
The perfection all around me. Smell in my nose, beautiful people in my presence, old wood floor full of history under my feet. Inspired fingertips and listening ears. Laughing mouth, gorgeous old city in my eyes. The unparalleled, appreciative look on people's faces after eight months as they gradually realize that soon it will be warm.
Perfection all around me. Nothing like Maui. Everything like me and the world working together to make beauty exist.
Moment of Clarity - Letter to Amanda
You and I are going places, my friend. And by that I mean adventure like you wouldn't believe. I've been thinking a lot lately about making beauty. About making things and thoughts and love and life beautiful. I think we're pretty good at it and getting better.
I love your reading and your loving it. I love your questioning and appreciating it. I see an invincible kind of happiness in you, and you know what it is? It's that thing. Really.
I love that you'll go for the brilliant adventure story over the safe alternatives. It made me remember that's why I took this job. It's also why being run out of your apartment by gangsters is not such a bad thing :)
I have an idea about the future. I'm thinking about talking to my (former) boss today to negotiate some compensation and finally free myself from the power struggle. It's been hard this week thinking of the disappointment and loss of the opportunity I'd been so excited about for so long. It fell through my hands like water and there was nothing I could have done different to keep it from happening.
This whole thing about pain in the changing tides- my mind goes to Pa'ia beach and how one day we came to swim and half of it was gone. I'd thought about the million pounds of sand and shell lost to the ocean.
What I didn't realize right away was that along this newborn coast, there had been revealed to us a mosaic of new debris and fallen trees and suddenly it wasn't a loss anymore- it was a whole new, beautiful landscape that I couldn't have predicted, even if I tried.
What brilliant landscape has just been revealed to me? What infinite possibility? I love to indulge in this game of being re-shaped again and again, learning new things with each changing tide. I don't know if I'll ever tire of it. It tantalizes me like licking flames of fire to the eyes of man. It's magic to my eyes and ears and mind and soul.
And then?
I figured it out.
I'm going to write. And not because I'm in love with the image of being a writer, or even because I would like to be one... but just because I already do. I'm going to write because it's like breathing air to me. I'm going to write because I'm already writing, and I always have been writing, and always will write, even when no one's looking. I'm going to write like it's too big and it's got to get out of me.
And it occurred to me just now that I might be romanticizing. But then I recall the lesson I just learned when trying to talk sense into my boss- that when people feel deeply moved, they often mistake this overwhelming sensation of love for romance.
Romantic love, in my head, doesn't even come close to the love that emerges out of real human connection. It's a case of mistaken intentions. You see those eyes and arms and hearts, and outward cries reaching up and out and its gorgeousness overwhelms you. The inquiry is so pure, and true, and beautiful. It pierces the soul.
How can you not love it? Two souls touching provides a sense of clarity that we hunger for, every day of our lives. I wake up, every day of my life, for that clarity. I cry out, and I reach my arms for that clarity.
I write for that clarity.
I feel a pressure in my chest right now, from how much I mean it.
I love your reading and your loving it. I love your questioning and appreciating it. I see an invincible kind of happiness in you, and you know what it is? It's that thing. Really.
I love that you'll go for the brilliant adventure story over the safe alternatives. It made me remember that's why I took this job. It's also why being run out of your apartment by gangsters is not such a bad thing :)
I have an idea about the future. I'm thinking about talking to my (former) boss today to negotiate some compensation and finally free myself from the power struggle. It's been hard this week thinking of the disappointment and loss of the opportunity I'd been so excited about for so long. It fell through my hands like water and there was nothing I could have done different to keep it from happening.
This whole thing about pain in the changing tides- my mind goes to Pa'ia beach and how one day we came to swim and half of it was gone. I'd thought about the million pounds of sand and shell lost to the ocean.
What I didn't realize right away was that along this newborn coast, there had been revealed to us a mosaic of new debris and fallen trees and suddenly it wasn't a loss anymore- it was a whole new, beautiful landscape that I couldn't have predicted, even if I tried.
What brilliant landscape has just been revealed to me? What infinite possibility? I love to indulge in this game of being re-shaped again and again, learning new things with each changing tide. I don't know if I'll ever tire of it. It tantalizes me like licking flames of fire to the eyes of man. It's magic to my eyes and ears and mind and soul.
And then?
I figured it out.
I'm going to write. And not because I'm in love with the image of being a writer, or even because I would like to be one... but just because I already do. I'm going to write because it's like breathing air to me. I'm going to write because I'm already writing, and I always have been writing, and always will write, even when no one's looking. I'm going to write like it's too big and it's got to get out of me.
And it occurred to me just now that I might be romanticizing. But then I recall the lesson I just learned when trying to talk sense into my boss- that when people feel deeply moved, they often mistake this overwhelming sensation of love for romance.
Romantic love, in my head, doesn't even come close to the love that emerges out of real human connection. It's a case of mistaken intentions. You see those eyes and arms and hearts, and outward cries reaching up and out and its gorgeousness overwhelms you. The inquiry is so pure, and true, and beautiful. It pierces the soul.
How can you not love it? Two souls touching provides a sense of clarity that we hunger for, every day of our lives. I wake up, every day of my life, for that clarity. I cry out, and I reach my arms for that clarity.
I write for that clarity.
I feel a pressure in my chest right now, from how much I mean it.
.love.heart.ear.mouth.heart.love.
Last night I was drafting the first part of the mural on my wall alone in the apartment and listening to music, dancing around and having a fine time. When my roommate came home, she was quite distressed over her new boyfriend; she likes him so much that she seems to be losing her self-confidence and also her faith that he likes her. I was listening to her get so angry and frustrated about expectations and 'should's, and every lover's struggle to overcome jealousy- and I could see where her pain was coming from, but I couldn't tell her 'you just have to trust, even though it might hurt'.
Right afterward my friend Alexia called me sobbing; she has taken on two good jobs and makes a lot of money and lives in New York. She has, on the outside, all the material indicators of success: she is good at her job as a modeling agent, writes screenplays for a Greek TV show, good looks, and so on. But she is cripplingly image-conscious as a result of her job and generally miserable from the fatigue of trying to satisfy the expectations of her 12-year-old self to become a famous writer. I could see where her pain was coming from, but I couldn't tell her 'you need to find the real you underneath all that, and release yourself from the expectations from days when you didn't know so much about yourself as you do now. And then you will know what will make you happy, and nothing else will matter.'
A few minutes after I hang up with Alexia, Amanda calls. She never tells me if something is wrong because she is brave and tries to be strong and think things through first. But because we share a supernatural bond I can tell when she is troubled. I wish I had listened more closely to the tone of her voice before spouting off excitedly about my solitary walks around the city, and how I love it, and how I feel like for now, Boston is really, truly my home. I noticed afterward and she told me she was back in Maui, and awestruck and adjusting.
I remember a conversation I had with her once when we were both feeling a little blue and lost. She told me she felt a bit down, like everybody does sometimes- only on top of that, she felt guilty. Because she felt down in paradise. I had these moments when I was in Maui too, and I feel for her because it's one thing to be down; it's another thing to feel that bad and then to feel like you have no right to on account of your environment.
And I could see where her pain was coming from. But I couldn't tell her, 'You can feel blessed in a wretched place, and cursed in paradise- your environment can influence, but is not the source of joy and sorrow.'
Why can't I tell them? It's not that I couldn't, it's just that I know they already know. I have been in their shoes, and felt what they feel- just like they have been in mine.
We know that things will pass and clarity will re-surface. But this doesn't change the fact that sometimes we just feel jealous, or insecure, or guilty. It is during times such as these that we catch glimpses of the relationship between the god and the human in us. The relationship between knowing and feeling. The relationship between the Truth and being.
At first I sat and listened to first Rachel, and then Alexia and found myself getting frustrated. I wanted to show them and tell them those things they already knew, and that they didn't need to stress so much and feel so bad. I wanted to point out how silly they were being, and didn't they know these things?
"I'm sorry," I said to Alexia, after yelling at her to pull herself together and realize how strong she could be. "I don't mean to get so angry with you. I just love you and I know you know better than to hurt yourself like this, and I get frustrated."
And she said, "I know you love me. I just need you to listen because I don't want to fall apart alone."
Because I love them as I love myself, I sat and tried to think about what they need.
They did not need me to tell them something they already knew.
Knowing these things are True is important... but it's something different than experiencing Truth.
It is the difference between learning, and realization.
It's like reading everything there is to know about piano playing, versus playing by ear- learning by tapping away awkwardly and painfully at the keys until you start to get a sense of the relationship between your fingers, and the sounds, and What Feels Right.
You can learn to play all the sheet music in the world with knowledge and practice, but to speak fluidly from the soul- more fluently than with words, even- you have to Be it.
You have to Be heart-hands-fingers-keys-soundwaves-ears-heart. As if the piano were part of you. As if it were like your legs, and you were an infant learning to walk.
I love them and I want to help them. I thought if I loved them then I should try to take away their pain and confusion. If I could only get them to learn the Truth of the matter- but who am I, in all my frustration and impatience, to teach them about unecessary bad feelings? It's not about learning, anyway.
It's about Being.
Taking away their suffering and pain would be like wishing they were deaf, dumb and blind. We know it hurts, but like fear, it is neither inherently good or bad- it is an experience of Truth. A sensation. It is reaching out and feeling, and touching, and understanding.
And so I realized something that I already knew- that there was nothing I could do, because there was nothing TO do- because it wasn't about action, either.
After all this frustration, I realized that all they needed was for me to love, and care, and listen. To Be there. Just that. That is all. Which is effortless, because I just do.
How does this (seemingly) obvious realization come into Being?
I realize this only after a lot of frustration, and blowing up at friends, and pain for myself and others. I realize it through experience. Love-heart-mouth-ear-heart-love. I realize it in my bones, like it is my legs and I have learned to walk.
Where is the mind in all this, and knowing? It's like a diver perfecting his dive. It's like an archer perfecting his aim. While at first these actions take an excruciating amount of conscious effort, at some point the mind steps aside in reverence to the effortlessly calibrated perfection of experience.
Weren't You Afraid?
Weren't you afraid?
Someone asked me that today, when I tried to describe the circumstances of how I ended up in Boston.
I wanted to write something about it, because it's been on my mind all day. But I'm not sure where to start.
My reply was something like, 'Well. Of course! I was quite afraid. I am often afraid, but, for better or worse, I often do things in spite of the (fearful) possibility that everything might go horribly, horribly wrong. With reckless abandon, I guess.'
In everything that we do... in our relationships, in our work, and every day that we set foot on the street or venture inward into our hearts, we take risks. Sometimes the out come is good. A lot of the time, it can get pretty bad.
When you're almost certain of the fact that at some point it's going to hurt a lot, it makes sense to feel afraid. It makes sense most of the time. I don't know what I'm trying to say really. It's like I'm looking at this thing, fear, and I'm paralysed and my thoughts are incoherent.
But I suppose just like any other emotion, fear is neither inherently good nor bad. We seek out haunted houses and roller coasters, we skydive and ski, we venture into space and all other such things that we do for no reason except the thrill of it. It's thrilling, yes? Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie.
I hear in the long run that shit is bad for you.
When Amanda and I were shopping for iPod speakers before the great adventure for our jungle dance party, we had a conversation with a kid our age working at the Circuit City in Fort Worth, near my old high school.
He asked us what the speakers were for and we told him. He asked if we were from around here and we told him we were once, but now we live far away. He told us wistfully that he'd love to get out of 'this hellhole'.
And we told him he could, if he really wanted to. He said he had a job, and his family was here. He said he didn't have enough money. He said it was too expensive, and where would he go, and what would he do, and how could he go out all alone into the world.
We looked at him, and said, 'No, really. You can go anywhere. You can do anything. It's not about money, you can get a job anywhere.' He said to us, 'Well all my friends are here.'
I looked at him confused. Everything he said seemed kind of irrelevent to me. I'd gone to Maui with almost no money, and certainly not enough for a return ticket. I'd been afraid, for about two days. At that point I realized that I didn't have to worry about how to get back, just like if you know how to swim you don't have to worry about staying near the edge of the pool in the deep end.
Finally, he admitted slowly, 'I guess I'm just scared of the unfamiliar.' And I could understand that.
It's hard to be brave in the face of risk. When things don't go as planned and the risks we take make life difficult, it reveals a little of something to ourselves, and it's hard to look your fear in the face. It's hard to really take a good look at yourself... flaws, and all.
Is it about bravery, though? People tell me I have a lot of courage. My boss tells me this all the time. I still cry when I get home from the sheer fatigue of trying to hold myself together. It's not that I'm sad, or fed up. It's just a lot of work to be brave, and I get tired.
Being brave is exhausting. Some people could call it masochistic.
I don't think it's quite so tragic as pure masochism though. A person could go through a struggle and say 'well, that was hard.' Your inner fuel gauge might indicate that your strength is low. They might accept their flaws as they are revealed, and with resignation.
'Yes you're right, world,' you could say. "I am a total fuck up.' You could take a real beating from this world this way.
No... that's not bravery. That's like looking into a mirror that shows you an incomplete reflection of yourself, and a wretched one at that... and accepting that image as the Truth of who you are.
Bravery, I think, is giving yourself a chance. It's looking at that wretched image in the mirror and shedding the illusion of it. It's shedding the layers of judgment and the behaviors and thoughts that you've mistaken for the real you... and seeing what a beautiful, and persistent, and brave creature you really are.
It's not seeing the beauty in the flaws of who you are. It's seeing that you... the real you... is not flawed, is not confused, or ignorant. You are not insecure or hurtful or mean.
Are you brave enough to know that you are perfect, and all-knowing? It doesn't seem like it's something you need bravery to do.
But I don't mean 'know'. I mean, really, really know. In a way that I can't explain. I mean knowing more surely than knowing you breath air, or exist. I mean knowing more surely than you know 1+1=2. I mean knowing more surely than anything you have known, or thought you knew in your whole life. A lot of really smart people would conclude that this kind of knowing doesn't even exist. When you use your brain, you realize you can never be sure of anything at all, in the end.
But this knowledge isn't about intelligence, or your brain. I know that some part of every person on the planet has always 'known'. I know this because that part of you, and that part of me are the one same thing.
Let me tell you what I think is at the other end of this endless journey. I think it's something that is worth more than all the suffering, and fatigue, and uncertainty and fear in the world. I think it's all that matters. I think it's the Truth.
All you have to do is something like carving marble with a toothpick. It's something like crossing the ocean in a paddleboat or jumping over rooftops.
All you have to do is continue to be brave enough to be afraid.
Someone asked me that today, when I tried to describe the circumstances of how I ended up in Boston.
I wanted to write something about it, because it's been on my mind all day. But I'm not sure where to start.
My reply was something like, 'Well. Of course! I was quite afraid. I am often afraid, but, for better or worse, I often do things in spite of the (fearful) possibility that everything might go horribly, horribly wrong. With reckless abandon, I guess.'
In everything that we do... in our relationships, in our work, and every day that we set foot on the street or venture inward into our hearts, we take risks. Sometimes the out come is good. A lot of the time, it can get pretty bad.
When you're almost certain of the fact that at some point it's going to hurt a lot, it makes sense to feel afraid. It makes sense most of the time. I don't know what I'm trying to say really. It's like I'm looking at this thing, fear, and I'm paralysed and my thoughts are incoherent.
But I suppose just like any other emotion, fear is neither inherently good nor bad. We seek out haunted houses and roller coasters, we skydive and ski, we venture into space and all other such things that we do for no reason except the thrill of it. It's thrilling, yes? Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie.
I hear in the long run that shit is bad for you.
When Amanda and I were shopping for iPod speakers before the great adventure for our jungle dance party, we had a conversation with a kid our age working at the Circuit City in Fort Worth, near my old high school.
He asked us what the speakers were for and we told him. He asked if we were from around here and we told him we were once, but now we live far away. He told us wistfully that he'd love to get out of 'this hellhole'.
And we told him he could, if he really wanted to. He said he had a job, and his family was here. He said he didn't have enough money. He said it was too expensive, and where would he go, and what would he do, and how could he go out all alone into the world.
We looked at him, and said, 'No, really. You can go anywhere. You can do anything. It's not about money, you can get a job anywhere.' He said to us, 'Well all my friends are here.'
I looked at him confused. Everything he said seemed kind of irrelevent to me. I'd gone to Maui with almost no money, and certainly not enough for a return ticket. I'd been afraid, for about two days. At that point I realized that I didn't have to worry about how to get back, just like if you know how to swim you don't have to worry about staying near the edge of the pool in the deep end.
Finally, he admitted slowly, 'I guess I'm just scared of the unfamiliar.' And I could understand that.
It's hard to be brave in the face of risk. When things don't go as planned and the risks we take make life difficult, it reveals a little of something to ourselves, and it's hard to look your fear in the face. It's hard to really take a good look at yourself... flaws, and all.
Is it about bravery, though? People tell me I have a lot of courage. My boss tells me this all the time. I still cry when I get home from the sheer fatigue of trying to hold myself together. It's not that I'm sad, or fed up. It's just a lot of work to be brave, and I get tired.
Being brave is exhausting. Some people could call it masochistic.
I don't think it's quite so tragic as pure masochism though. A person could go through a struggle and say 'well, that was hard.' Your inner fuel gauge might indicate that your strength is low. They might accept their flaws as they are revealed, and with resignation.
'Yes you're right, world,' you could say. "I am a total fuck up.' You could take a real beating from this world this way.
No... that's not bravery. That's like looking into a mirror that shows you an incomplete reflection of yourself, and a wretched one at that... and accepting that image as the Truth of who you are.
Bravery, I think, is giving yourself a chance. It's looking at that wretched image in the mirror and shedding the illusion of it. It's shedding the layers of judgment and the behaviors and thoughts that you've mistaken for the real you... and seeing what a beautiful, and persistent, and brave creature you really are.
It's not seeing the beauty in the flaws of who you are. It's seeing that you... the real you... is not flawed, is not confused, or ignorant. You are not insecure or hurtful or mean.
Are you brave enough to know that you are perfect, and all-knowing? It doesn't seem like it's something you need bravery to do.
But I don't mean 'know'. I mean, really, really know. In a way that I can't explain. I mean knowing more surely than knowing you breath air, or exist. I mean knowing more surely than you know 1+1=2. I mean knowing more surely than anything you have known, or thought you knew in your whole life. A lot of really smart people would conclude that this kind of knowing doesn't even exist. When you use your brain, you realize you can never be sure of anything at all, in the end.
But this knowledge isn't about intelligence, or your brain. I know that some part of every person on the planet has always 'known'. I know this because that part of you, and that part of me are the one same thing.
Let me tell you what I think is at the other end of this endless journey. I think it's something that is worth more than all the suffering, and fatigue, and uncertainty and fear in the world. I think it's all that matters. I think it's the Truth.
All you have to do is something like carving marble with a toothpick. It's something like crossing the ocean in a paddleboat or jumping over rooftops.
All you have to do is continue to be brave enough to be afraid.
?
I used to think that constantly questioning everything around you... other belief systems, the belief systems you relate to... your own belief systems and everything you identify with- signified a total lack of faith, perpetual disorientation, and excruciating, overwhelming insecurity. You could find yourself lonely. Who do you identify with if you can't even identify yourself?
In a way this is true. But Truth is what I'm talking about here.
I'm asking questions. I'm never sure. I'm told I never give a direct answer. I'm told my opinion is elusive. I suppose in some form or sense, this is true, too.
But it's strange... even though I'm never really sure about anything at all... I've never felt more sure of myself.
What happens when the ground is taken out from underneath you? What happens when you realize you'll never know if up is really up, or down is really down? When you realize your grip on this world is asymptotic in nature, moving moving, closer closer... and never ever touching the surface of 'the way things really, actually are'?
I'm skimming the surface of that thing with no words. But I'm not even sure about that.
What kind of courage does it take to really, truly question yourself? It takes the biggest kind. You can feel it in your chest. Or what may or may not be your soul.
Do I have it? I don't know.
What does it feel like... I think it feels like that moment you're standing at the top of a cliff and the earth crumbles beneath you and time stops just long enough for you to be aware that there's nothing to grab hold of.
What then, though, in that moment. What do you feel. What's the one thing you've got.
Think about that moment and what it might feel like. To me, it would feel like true freedom. It would feel like I were a sun that is just going to shine. It would feel like I were an atom just being an atom. I would feel like a person just falling.
It would feel like being.
What do you have left when you haven't even got your beliefs?
You have you. You just have you. And it feels like everything.
Look Away
I wanted to write a song about all this, but it just wasn't worth it.
I wanted to write a poem, but i couldn't find the words. It all just seemed too thoughtfully constructed to be geniune. Kind of like you.
You, with your meticulously crafted image of apathy. You with your carefully choreographed song and dance... and not that it isn't beautiful, because it is- but I've seen those words before, I've heard those tunes. There's nothing new in it. It's all head, no heart.
Do you know what transparent means? I'm sure you do. I know you well enough to know that dictionary.com is one of your most frequented websites. I know you well enough to know you spend more time thinking about what people think of you than you'd ever care to admit. But who else (me, admittedly) spends that much time obsessing over alignment and glamourizing anonymity. I still see (right through) you.
I like the words that come out of your mouth. Your quotes are quotable. In one way or another, your quotes are quotes "quoted". And I'm glad you have a sense of humor with yourself, because I think you're laughable. You make me laugh. I think you're absurd.
I love the flaws, though. I love people's flaws, I love my flaws, I really love your flaws. I love your flaws like some part of every person loves to be slapped in the face.
I love it because I can feel it. It is shocking and appalling. It jolts me into the present. It reminds me I'm alive.
I love this darkness that I feel when I have to think of you because it reminds me I'm not perfect, and I never will be. And I love that it shows, that it's so penetrating it pierces right through my meticulously crafted mirage of apathy toward you. I love that I hate you and I can't help it, and that I finally don't give a shit whether or not you read this. Because it's so fucking real.
Look away and look forward some time. Keep looking away. I looked so far away that I came full circle... and suddenly I was staring at myself, behind myself, beside myself, and all my insecurities. And look at that, I found myself looking at you. I saw that you were me. And I couldn't look away, like I'd seen a trainwreck, with limbs. With ligaments and bones, and blood and fingers.
And I love this perfect tragedy, too. Just like I love everything that can't help but be beautifully terrible... it's so terribly beautiful... it really moves me
I wanted to write a poem, but i couldn't find the words. It all just seemed too thoughtfully constructed to be geniune. Kind of like you.
You, with your meticulously crafted image of apathy. You with your carefully choreographed song and dance... and not that it isn't beautiful, because it is- but I've seen those words before, I've heard those tunes. There's nothing new in it. It's all head, no heart.
Do you know what transparent means? I'm sure you do. I know you well enough to know that dictionary.com is one of your most frequented websites. I know you well enough to know you spend more time thinking about what people think of you than you'd ever care to admit. But who else (me, admittedly) spends that much time obsessing over alignment and glamourizing anonymity. I still see (right through) you.
I like the words that come out of your mouth. Your quotes are quotable. In one way or another, your quotes are quotes "quoted". And I'm glad you have a sense of humor with yourself, because I think you're laughable. You make me laugh. I think you're absurd.
I love the flaws, though. I love people's flaws, I love my flaws, I really love your flaws. I love your flaws like some part of every person loves to be slapped in the face.
I love it because I can feel it. It is shocking and appalling. It jolts me into the present. It reminds me I'm alive.
I love this darkness that I feel when I have to think of you because it reminds me I'm not perfect, and I never will be. And I love that it shows, that it's so penetrating it pierces right through my meticulously crafted mirage of apathy toward you. I love that I hate you and I can't help it, and that I finally don't give a shit whether or not you read this. Because it's so fucking real.
Look away and look forward some time. Keep looking away. I looked so far away that I came full circle... and suddenly I was staring at myself, behind myself, beside myself, and all my insecurities. And look at that, I found myself looking at you. I saw that you were me. And I couldn't look away, like I'd seen a trainwreck, with limbs. With ligaments and bones, and blood and fingers.
And I love this perfect tragedy, too. Just like I love everything that can't help but be beautifully terrible... it's so terribly beautiful... it really moves me
One Perfect Maui Moment
My faith that life's blessings fluctuate and come full circle have come to fruition.
Someone once told me that the path to spiritual enlightenment can be attained just by spending a few moments every day in genuine awe. Boy, am I in awe.
I have been having a blast here (of course). What has been going on?
A beautiful full moon party in Kaopo, on the other side of the crater/mountain from where we live, between mile marker 30 and 31 on the Haleakala highway. Look for the unmarked dusty trail and you see a beacon of light, green light, not that intense blue light of the moon that the clouds are diffusing over you in a way that you would imagine clarity would manifest itself as haze.
Kaopo is the desert in Maui, in case you ever lived on an island and wanted to know what a desert was like. Three inch-long spikes portruding from angry bushes turned my sandals into swiss cheese and the palms of my feet into throbbing reminders that blood pulsates from my legs to my heart via the stomping pressures of my uncontrollable dancing.
Gabriel and Zelis are spinning like vampires into the night, luring you in with their irresistable jungle rhythm and hypnotic sounds of broken, beaten, electric honey for your ears. Fire dancers are flinging wild lances and chains dipped in lighter fluid and casting the most intense shadows on the enraptured faces of everyone who's come out to this secret party, which is advertised only by word of mouth on the night of it's fruition.
A wild dust storm howls over the ravine and giant lava rock cliffs hang over us like guardian beasts. We dance with our eyes closed, mud-streaked tears, the wind blowing, pulling on my silk skirt like mother nature's puppet strings.
I find that I can't breath and no matter how good Gabriel's amazing DJing is my eyes sting from the intense dust storm. I feel like a character in Dune, hood over my head, scarf over my face, running out to the ocean, three inch thorns threatening tender toes.
The ocean, like all of the things in Maui's desert, is harsh and intense. The sand is made of coconut-sized boulders. You threaten to twist your ankle if you try to walk on it so you crawl, tangle of arms and legs, Gollum-style and then sit there under monochromatic fullmoonlight, contemplating the possibility that the boulders are really sand-sized, and you've just grown smaller. Suddenly we are such small humans, on such a huge beach.
The waves are monstrous, miniature tsunamis towering overy our head and crashing with full force against the rocks. The spray makes you feel like it's constantly raining. As the waves pull back, those billions of gallons of water-strength pull the boulders with them as if they were tiny pebbles, and the rumble of all those heavy rocks rolling into the sea is enormous, like a stampede, or a cavalry. You feel the earth move under you and you hear it all the way until the boulders drop into the muted depths of the pacific ocean.
The next day driving through Hana and back to Huelo we emerge from the desert into lush, rainforest, waterfalls at every turn. On the side of the road are wooden stands everywhere, full of fruit and flowers with cardboard boxes for you to deposit money in, full of good faith that you will pay the good farmers the amount written on the coconut in Sharpie marker. A woman gives us as many liloquoys as we can carry, and a few papayas for a dollar.
We have a feast picnic of fruit and cheese on Red Sand beach, which is an intense hike to a beautiful lagoon of water, protected from murderously turbulant waves by a barrier of lava rock. Three sexy male fire dancers from the full moon party the night before are swimming naked by the rocks, hunting for shellfish and fish. They come to us with tasty clams and feed them to us by hand, and we talk and sunbathe and laugh and lay.
Moments like these are few and far between but will always remain, in my memory, perfect. A perfect moment, forever.
Someone once told me that the path to spiritual enlightenment can be attained just by spending a few moments every day in genuine awe. Boy, am I in awe.
I have been having a blast here (of course). What has been going on?
A beautiful full moon party in Kaopo, on the other side of the crater/mountain from where we live, between mile marker 30 and 31 on the Haleakala highway. Look for the unmarked dusty trail and you see a beacon of light, green light, not that intense blue light of the moon that the clouds are diffusing over you in a way that you would imagine clarity would manifest itself as haze.
Kaopo is the desert in Maui, in case you ever lived on an island and wanted to know what a desert was like. Three inch-long spikes portruding from angry bushes turned my sandals into swiss cheese and the palms of my feet into throbbing reminders that blood pulsates from my legs to my heart via the stomping pressures of my uncontrollable dancing.
Gabriel and Zelis are spinning like vampires into the night, luring you in with their irresistable jungle rhythm and hypnotic sounds of broken, beaten, electric honey for your ears. Fire dancers are flinging wild lances and chains dipped in lighter fluid and casting the most intense shadows on the enraptured faces of everyone who's come out to this secret party, which is advertised only by word of mouth on the night of it's fruition.
A wild dust storm howls over the ravine and giant lava rock cliffs hang over us like guardian beasts. We dance with our eyes closed, mud-streaked tears, the wind blowing, pulling on my silk skirt like mother nature's puppet strings.
I find that I can't breath and no matter how good Gabriel's amazing DJing is my eyes sting from the intense dust storm. I feel like a character in Dune, hood over my head, scarf over my face, running out to the ocean, three inch thorns threatening tender toes.
The ocean, like all of the things in Maui's desert, is harsh and intense. The sand is made of coconut-sized boulders. You threaten to twist your ankle if you try to walk on it so you crawl, tangle of arms and legs, Gollum-style and then sit there under monochromatic fullmoonlight, contemplating the possibility that the boulders are really sand-sized, and you've just grown smaller. Suddenly we are such small humans, on such a huge beach.
The waves are monstrous, miniature tsunamis towering overy our head and crashing with full force against the rocks. The spray makes you feel like it's constantly raining. As the waves pull back, those billions of gallons of water-strength pull the boulders with them as if they were tiny pebbles, and the rumble of all those heavy rocks rolling into the sea is enormous, like a stampede, or a cavalry. You feel the earth move under you and you hear it all the way until the boulders drop into the muted depths of the pacific ocean.
The next day driving through Hana and back to Huelo we emerge from the desert into lush, rainforest, waterfalls at every turn. On the side of the road are wooden stands everywhere, full of fruit and flowers with cardboard boxes for you to deposit money in, full of good faith that you will pay the good farmers the amount written on the coconut in Sharpie marker. A woman gives us as many liloquoys as we can carry, and a few papayas for a dollar.
We have a feast picnic of fruit and cheese on Red Sand beach, which is an intense hike to a beautiful lagoon of water, protected from murderously turbulant waves by a barrier of lava rock. Three sexy male fire dancers from the full moon party the night before are swimming naked by the rocks, hunting for shellfish and fish. They come to us with tasty clams and feed them to us by hand, and we talk and sunbathe and laugh and lay.
Moments like these are few and far between but will always remain, in my memory, perfect. A perfect moment, forever.
"You know, this is a really crazy time in our lives."
Peggy: "You know, this is a really crazy time in our lives."
Me: "Oh my god! it's the craziest time in our lives! I'm only recently realizing how amazingly free we are... we can go anywhere... we can do anything... and we can take care of ourselves. What an amazing thing to realize."
____________
I am thinking, what is this, some sort of 'coming of age' story? Of course it is.
Will I look back at all of this that I've written, and what will it mean to me, then? I've noticed I write in questions a lot recently. Suddenly, I am okay with that.
Yesterday I sat looking into the shining moonpie face of my neuroscience advisor, watching the joy ooze from his pores as he recounted the day that his daughter called him, to tell him, "Daddy, I just realized something amazing- I just realized that I can go anywhere, and do anything, and that I will be okay, and that I will be able to take care of myself. I can wait tables, I can type letters. I can serve drinks, or rule the country. I can do all of it."
His eyes were shining as he told me, "Her mother and I of course had known this all along, we'd known all along that she was capable of taking care of herself. We'd never worried about that. But to hear it come from her mouth..." The pride radiated from every cell of his being. If I were not so proper, I would have dropped to my knees in awe.
_____________________
I am experiencing something I feel compelled to document... not so much as a personal history but simply because it refuses to be contained. I discussed love and spiritual awakening over boba tea with Karina the other day, recounting with wistful melancholy the circumstances of my recent heartbreak (because everyone always asks why Nick and I no longer talk).
She brought up something that should have been obvious to me, just like my conversation with Nikola had, and my many conversations with Bjorn, and with Kate, and Peggy, and Mike, and Karen and the many other luminescent reasons why I had to come back to L.A.
"If you were still with Nick," she said, "Would you be on this adventure, this crazy journey of yours? Would you be going to Maui? Would you be so free?"
I concluded that I would not. Pondering this later that day, I was looking in the mirror at my face, not so much out of vanity but more to confirm whether or not I was the same person. I pulled on my hemp necklace, the one I had woven at the sime time I'd woven Nick's necklace, and also knitted his guitar strap for his birthday two years ago. It has not come off since.
I turned it around on my neck to look for the knot, where it had been tied and couldn't find it. It was an endless knot of woven strings, all the loose ends had been worn off long ago.
I tugged it closer to the mirror, to get a better look at it... my resilient token of the past... and with a slight pressure on the back of my neck I heard it snap.. and I held it in my hand, this necklace that had been a part of me for two years.
I am a sucker for symbolism.
I smiled to myself, and removed the other two necklaces that I wore around my neck, looking at my naked collarbones, one of them crooked and broken from being hit by a car when I was thirteen.
All of this change. My eyes are wide open and suddenly, all of this change is so beautiful, and so infinite in its possibility. Suddenly I felt all of this love for the sweat on my skin from the too-hot sun, and for the tears on my face. I felt all of this love for the wrinkle on the right corner of my mouth from all the smirking I'd done in my life, and for the thin-ness of the skin under my left eye, where you could see a tiny vein, because I cry too much.
I type this to acknowledge today that this was not the manic ecstacy of a hormonal surge, or an unusually good day, but a turning point- if only symbolic... of emerging from the other side of the jungle.... even if only to immerse myself in yet another.
_____________________
What are mantras?
To me, they are simple little things that we say to ourselves, and to each other- to remind each other about things we already know. A while ago I asked Karen, who is even greater a nomad than myself, what she did when she ran out of money, and options.
"You always have your friends. Your friends are always there for you. Chances are, they have been in the same position as you, and they know that you will help them, when they need it- and when you have the means to help them."
I remember when Alexia said to me with a laugh, that "Life is a problem. That's all it is! I have faith that you will solve it."
And talking to Amanda about Maui, and about going there, with no prospect for a job, or a place to live, or a goal, or purpose- other than adventure:
"Just listen to what your heart tells you to do. If you heart tells you to come to Maui, just come, and come without fear of uncertainty."
Bjorn has reminded me, always, of what true responsibility is. I worry so much about being responsible, and doing the right thing. The night I quit my job, and bought my plane ticket to L.A., she had told me:
"Your first and foremost priority, your biggest responsibility is your responsibility to yourself. You have to take care of yourself, because this world is cruel and will not take care of you. Responsibility is taking care of yourself."
Carl has given me too many -isms to document all of them. But I will always remember recieving a text message from him, while looking at birds at the zoo, the day after I quit:
"I am so proud of you, and your strength and resilience".
If not for my writing this now, with glistening eyes, he may never have known how much that statement will always mean to me.
The capacity of a human being to love another, to feel pride for and to care for them- the capacity we have to become a family, or to connect- if only briefly- is a phenomenon to be reckoned with. There is a godliness to that wisdom shared, and that connection. There is a universality that is illuminated when all of the light in the cosmos shines from our eyes during these moments of realization.
__________________
"To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful un-knowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.
Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.
The bright hours when the young rebelled against the descending sun had to give away to twenty-four-hour periods called 'days' that were named as well as numbered.
The Black female assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance."
- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Me: "Oh my god! it's the craziest time in our lives! I'm only recently realizing how amazingly free we are... we can go anywhere... we can do anything... and we can take care of ourselves. What an amazing thing to realize."
____________
I am thinking, what is this, some sort of 'coming of age' story? Of course it is.
Will I look back at all of this that I've written, and what will it mean to me, then? I've noticed I write in questions a lot recently. Suddenly, I am okay with that.
Yesterday I sat looking into the shining moonpie face of my neuroscience advisor, watching the joy ooze from his pores as he recounted the day that his daughter called him, to tell him, "Daddy, I just realized something amazing- I just realized that I can go anywhere, and do anything, and that I will be okay, and that I will be able to take care of myself. I can wait tables, I can type letters. I can serve drinks, or rule the country. I can do all of it."
His eyes were shining as he told me, "Her mother and I of course had known this all along, we'd known all along that she was capable of taking care of herself. We'd never worried about that. But to hear it come from her mouth..." The pride radiated from every cell of his being. If I were not so proper, I would have dropped to my knees in awe.
_____________________
I am experiencing something I feel compelled to document... not so much as a personal history but simply because it refuses to be contained. I discussed love and spiritual awakening over boba tea with Karina the other day, recounting with wistful melancholy the circumstances of my recent heartbreak (because everyone always asks why Nick and I no longer talk).
She brought up something that should have been obvious to me, just like my conversation with Nikola had, and my many conversations with Bjorn, and with Kate, and Peggy, and Mike, and Karen and the many other luminescent reasons why I had to come back to L.A.
"If you were still with Nick," she said, "Would you be on this adventure, this crazy journey of yours? Would you be going to Maui? Would you be so free?"
I concluded that I would not. Pondering this later that day, I was looking in the mirror at my face, not so much out of vanity but more to confirm whether or not I was the same person. I pulled on my hemp necklace, the one I had woven at the sime time I'd woven Nick's necklace, and also knitted his guitar strap for his birthday two years ago. It has not come off since.
I turned it around on my neck to look for the knot, where it had been tied and couldn't find it. It was an endless knot of woven strings, all the loose ends had been worn off long ago.
I tugged it closer to the mirror, to get a better look at it... my resilient token of the past... and with a slight pressure on the back of my neck I heard it snap.. and I held it in my hand, this necklace that had been a part of me for two years.
I am a sucker for symbolism.
I smiled to myself, and removed the other two necklaces that I wore around my neck, looking at my naked collarbones, one of them crooked and broken from being hit by a car when I was thirteen.
All of this change. My eyes are wide open and suddenly, all of this change is so beautiful, and so infinite in its possibility. Suddenly I felt all of this love for the sweat on my skin from the too-hot sun, and for the tears on my face. I felt all of this love for the wrinkle on the right corner of my mouth from all the smirking I'd done in my life, and for the thin-ness of the skin under my left eye, where you could see a tiny vein, because I cry too much.
I type this to acknowledge today that this was not the manic ecstacy of a hormonal surge, or an unusually good day, but a turning point- if only symbolic... of emerging from the other side of the jungle.... even if only to immerse myself in yet another.
_____________________
What are mantras?
To me, they are simple little things that we say to ourselves, and to each other- to remind each other about things we already know. A while ago I asked Karen, who is even greater a nomad than myself, what she did when she ran out of money, and options.
"You always have your friends. Your friends are always there for you. Chances are, they have been in the same position as you, and they know that you will help them, when they need it- and when you have the means to help them."
I remember when Alexia said to me with a laugh, that "Life is a problem. That's all it is! I have faith that you will solve it."
And talking to Amanda about Maui, and about going there, with no prospect for a job, or a place to live, or a goal, or purpose- other than adventure:
"Just listen to what your heart tells you to do. If you heart tells you to come to Maui, just come, and come without fear of uncertainty."
Bjorn has reminded me, always, of what true responsibility is. I worry so much about being responsible, and doing the right thing. The night I quit my job, and bought my plane ticket to L.A., she had told me:
"Your first and foremost priority, your biggest responsibility is your responsibility to yourself. You have to take care of yourself, because this world is cruel and will not take care of you. Responsibility is taking care of yourself."
Carl has given me too many -isms to document all of them. But I will always remember recieving a text message from him, while looking at birds at the zoo, the day after I quit:
"I am so proud of you, and your strength and resilience".
If not for my writing this now, with glistening eyes, he may never have known how much that statement will always mean to me.
The capacity of a human being to love another, to feel pride for and to care for them- the capacity we have to become a family, or to connect- if only briefly- is a phenomenon to be reckoned with. There is a godliness to that wisdom shared, and that connection. There is a universality that is illuminated when all of the light in the cosmos shines from our eyes during these moments of realization.
__________________
"To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful un-knowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.
Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.
The bright hours when the young rebelled against the descending sun had to give away to twenty-four-hour periods called 'days' that were named as well as numbered.
The Black female assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance."
- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
How Do I Say How I Feel
I am engorged.
I am a cup overflowing.
A cornucopia of nonsense.
I am swollen with fear.
What am I doing?
Where am I going?
What am I seeing?
Who am I being?
My life is an open ended question, and I have the answer inside me somewhere, if only I could find it.
It occurred to me that I am not motivated by the pursuit of happiness but by a desire for fulfillment. I have come to realize that the two are not one in the same. This is why they are two different words.
I am being led into unknown territory by an invisible leash pulled by an unknown force.
I don't like to call it God.
I don't even like to call it a Concept.
I was listening to a story on NPR about Laney who finds her calling.
"I know what I'm going to do!"
"What is that?"
"I'm going to play the drums!"
"The drums? How did this come about?"
"I don't know, I was in the music store, and I saw them, and they were beautiful and shining at me, and red, and I realized, I am a drummer, this is my purpose in life"
"But where are you going to get drums?"
"I don't know!"
"How are you going to afford them?"
"I don't know!"
"How are you going to learn them?"
"I don't know!"
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I don't know! I don't know! All I know is I am (insert many drummers' names here), I have it inside me, and I am a rockstar!"
At this time I'm realizing I am being silly because tears are welling but not falling and I feel my heart become full and lift itself up in my chest, pulling again against some unknown force (neither God nor Concept). I am driving home and I feel its pull, and I am wondering where it is in such a hurry to go.
The tension drives me mad, and the tears threaten to form. I am changing lanes and trying to function as an element of the Highway Machine, but find it impossible to focus. Don't they know that my heart is trying to fly away, even as it is tethered to an anchor, and that the anchor is somewhere inside me? Don't they know how terribly distracting it is?
The story on the radio has switched gears and a woman with a Jewish accent is going on about the show Roseanne and she is slightly annoying, talking about scriptwriting and Mel Brooks. The pull starts to fade.
I am left with the words echoing in my head. Recycling back, periodically pulling. Periodically lifting me up to tiptoe on the convex layer of oxygen molecules that hold together what would otherwise be an unapologetic outpouring of atoms. I am doing this consciously. Bringing myself to the brink.
"What are you doing?"
"I don't know!"
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know!"
"Why are you doing this?"
"I don't know! I don't know! I don't know where I am going, or why I am doing this. I don't know what is right and wrong. I don't know how to go about it. But this is me. This is me. This is ME."
I think about it over and over again. About the joy and terror of replying "I don't know" and the overwhelming right-ness of it. I step out of my car and lock the door. I walk toward my apartment and think about how this is the last day I will be at my apartment. I think about last night and saying goodbye and my last weekly Thursday seeing Keegan's band play- one of the few rituals in my life. I think about how much more you appreciate people, and places and experiences when you experience them for the last time.
I think about how I was sad when I turned ten, because I would no longer have a one digit age.
I think about crying when I graduated the fifth grade, knowing I would never be 10 and in elementary school, and reading Tom Sawyer under my desk while the teacher talked. How I would never see so-and-so again and how I would forget their name some day.
I am so very sensitive about things. I always remember feeling silly about it. About being sad and crying. But as I let two tears run down my face as I am walking to my apartment door I am not really feeling silly or sad; instead I am understanding something a little better about myself because I feel so strong, even though I am shaking and almost crying, and truly terrified. I feel a strength unparalleled. I feel a push, even as my heart pulls.
I realize I love this fullness I am feeling. I love that I can feel it. I love it's touch, and the invisible leash and my intangible force. It is beyond me. I love it so much I can barely contain it.
I am a cup overflowing.
A cornucopia of nonsense.
I am swollen with fear.
What am I doing?
Where am I going?
What am I seeing?
Who am I being?
My life is an open ended question, and I have the answer inside me somewhere, if only I could find it.
It occurred to me that I am not motivated by the pursuit of happiness but by a desire for fulfillment. I have come to realize that the two are not one in the same. This is why they are two different words.
I am being led into unknown territory by an invisible leash pulled by an unknown force.
I don't like to call it God.
I don't even like to call it a Concept.
I was listening to a story on NPR about Laney who finds her calling.
"I know what I'm going to do!"
"What is that?"
"I'm going to play the drums!"
"The drums? How did this come about?"
"I don't know, I was in the music store, and I saw them, and they were beautiful and shining at me, and red, and I realized, I am a drummer, this is my purpose in life"
"But where are you going to get drums?"
"I don't know!"
"How are you going to afford them?"
"I don't know!"
"How are you going to learn them?"
"I don't know!"
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I don't know! I don't know! All I know is I am (insert many drummers' names here), I have it inside me, and I am a rockstar!"
At this time I'm realizing I am being silly because tears are welling but not falling and I feel my heart become full and lift itself up in my chest, pulling again against some unknown force (neither God nor Concept). I am driving home and I feel its pull, and I am wondering where it is in such a hurry to go.
The tension drives me mad, and the tears threaten to form. I am changing lanes and trying to function as an element of the Highway Machine, but find it impossible to focus. Don't they know that my heart is trying to fly away, even as it is tethered to an anchor, and that the anchor is somewhere inside me? Don't they know how terribly distracting it is?
The story on the radio has switched gears and a woman with a Jewish accent is going on about the show Roseanne and she is slightly annoying, talking about scriptwriting and Mel Brooks. The pull starts to fade.
I am left with the words echoing in my head. Recycling back, periodically pulling. Periodically lifting me up to tiptoe on the convex layer of oxygen molecules that hold together what would otherwise be an unapologetic outpouring of atoms. I am doing this consciously. Bringing myself to the brink.
"What are you doing?"
"I don't know!"
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know!"
"Why are you doing this?"
"I don't know! I don't know! I don't know where I am going, or why I am doing this. I don't know what is right and wrong. I don't know how to go about it. But this is me. This is me. This is ME."
I think about it over and over again. About the joy and terror of replying "I don't know" and the overwhelming right-ness of it. I step out of my car and lock the door. I walk toward my apartment and think about how this is the last day I will be at my apartment. I think about last night and saying goodbye and my last weekly Thursday seeing Keegan's band play- one of the few rituals in my life. I think about how much more you appreciate people, and places and experiences when you experience them for the last time.
I think about how I was sad when I turned ten, because I would no longer have a one digit age.
I think about crying when I graduated the fifth grade, knowing I would never be 10 and in elementary school, and reading Tom Sawyer under my desk while the teacher talked. How I would never see so-and-so again and how I would forget their name some day.
I am so very sensitive about things. I always remember feeling silly about it. About being sad and crying. But as I let two tears run down my face as I am walking to my apartment door I am not really feeling silly or sad; instead I am understanding something a little better about myself because I feel so strong, even though I am shaking and almost crying, and truly terrified. I feel a strength unparalleled. I feel a push, even as my heart pulls.
I realize I love this fullness I am feeling. I love that I can feel it. I love it's touch, and the invisible leash and my intangible force. It is beyond me. I love it so much I can barely contain it.
Larry
Sometimes when I am waiting for the elevator to pick me up I hear a voice. If I press the 'up' button and the elevator is going down, it slides right past my floor and I hear the voice ascend and descend accordingly. My favorite part is the chuckling. You can hear it grow and fade in volume;
fourth floor, hehehehehe
third floor, HEHEHEHEHEHE
second floor, hehehehehe
first floor, ........hehe.....
basement.
In spite of the talking and chuckling, and especially when I am not paying attention, Larry the Janitor and I startle each other at least once a day stepping on and off the elevator. When this happens, I jump and Larry chuckles. It goes like this:
Me: "!"
Larry: *chuckle chuckle*
Before Larry steps onto the elevator he is always saying something in a very excited way. He continues to talk as he pushes the button. It's like he's having a conversation with an old friend, only he's not talking to me really, and no one else is there.
Larry is the only person I really like listening to while he talks to himself. Most of the time I find it incredibly disturbing and annoying, but when Larry talks to himself I love it because Larry never has anything bad to say.
Today I am riding on the elevator with Larry and his big blue dumpster cart. "It's a grey, grey day," he says, and I don't say anything, I just listen to him. "It's terribly grey and rainy."
He looks up at the sky and I follow his gaze, but I don't see anything except for the grated elevator ceiling with the tiny circulating fan behind it that's supposed to help us breath in this metal box.
"Ye look up at the sky and all you see is grey." He closes his eyes and shakes his head and for a moment I think I might not hear him chuckle this time. But then he opens his eyes and cracks the biggest smile I've ever seen. The kind that squeezes the water out of your eyeballs like they're sponges and pushes it all to the corners of your eyes, making them sparkle and holler in jubilation.
"Oh but just a while ago all that grey broke apart just a little bit,"
He's looking up at the sky again. "And there was our glorious sun, and it was just shining down on all of us, and it lit up the world just for a second..." There's the chuckle. I am so happy to listen to Larry talk.
".... thank you Lord, for this day. Thank you for this day, Lord!" He lets loose a rich, deep laugh as he walks out of the elevator and pushes his big blue dumpster into the hallway. His laughter fades away as the doors close and he walks away from me; and I am left almost, but not quite, the way I began: speechless.
There are angels among us. I know it, I love it.
fourth floor, hehehehehe
third floor, HEHEHEHEHEHE
second floor, hehehehehe
first floor, ........hehe.....
basement.
In spite of the talking and chuckling, and especially when I am not paying attention, Larry the Janitor and I startle each other at least once a day stepping on and off the elevator. When this happens, I jump and Larry chuckles. It goes like this:
Me: "!"
Larry: *chuckle chuckle*
Before Larry steps onto the elevator he is always saying something in a very excited way. He continues to talk as he pushes the button. It's like he's having a conversation with an old friend, only he's not talking to me really, and no one else is there.
Larry is the only person I really like listening to while he talks to himself. Most of the time I find it incredibly disturbing and annoying, but when Larry talks to himself I love it because Larry never has anything bad to say.
Today I am riding on the elevator with Larry and his big blue dumpster cart. "It's a grey, grey day," he says, and I don't say anything, I just listen to him. "It's terribly grey and rainy."
He looks up at the sky and I follow his gaze, but I don't see anything except for the grated elevator ceiling with the tiny circulating fan behind it that's supposed to help us breath in this metal box.
"Ye look up at the sky and all you see is grey." He closes his eyes and shakes his head and for a moment I think I might not hear him chuckle this time. But then he opens his eyes and cracks the biggest smile I've ever seen. The kind that squeezes the water out of your eyeballs like they're sponges and pushes it all to the corners of your eyes, making them sparkle and holler in jubilation.
"Oh but just a while ago all that grey broke apart just a little bit,"
He's looking up at the sky again. "And there was our glorious sun, and it was just shining down on all of us, and it lit up the world just for a second..." There's the chuckle. I am so happy to listen to Larry talk.
".... thank you Lord, for this day. Thank you for this day, Lord!" He lets loose a rich, deep laugh as he walks out of the elevator and pushes his big blue dumpster into the hallway. His laughter fades away as the doors close and he walks away from me; and I am left almost, but not quite, the way I began: speechless.
There are angels among us. I know it, I love it.
Say Think Do Make
Saturday was the perfect day. It was the kind that brings tears to your eyes and a hint of a smile and makes you realize what is important. It started off as a stumble- late to work, a traffic jam, fresh out of cigarettes and me cursing in silent frustration at marathon runners and getting lost and lost and lost. And lost.
Due to circumstance I tried unsuccessfully for about half an hour to just get my car across Camp Bowie Blvd. I don't mind waiting as long as I have a cigarette. Which I did not. It was all so terribly metaphorical and I was late for pancakes with Ollie, who was waiting at Ol' South about five minutes away. I probably could have walked there faster.
A brief conversation transpired discussing myspace drama over black coffee and donated cigarette before I realized suddenly that I was supposed to be at a wedding in two hours. We rushed (reluctantly) to the mall because it was clear I could not attend wearing my torn green curduroys and brown old-man sweater.
I walked into a shop that smelled like a familiar, comforting incense and asked the Indian man at the counter if he sold it. He was so happy that I shared his appreciation. "I'm so sick of all the people that walk in complaining that my incense is too smoky- and I think to myself, I would rather smell my incense than your stinky breaths!"
He did not sell incense, he just had a ritual of burning it in front of a shrine to his mother hidden behind the counter. "I always have an extra box," he told me, "and I want you to take it. Come back any time and I will give you another!"
It was the nicest thing that has ever happened to me in a mall.
Time elapsed and I buckled under the pressure to hurry (I am a bad hurry-er). I could feel cortisol levels rising and obscenities spitting out of my mouth at an unbelievable rate and so I decided- for the best interest of the planet earth- to forego the wedding, ditch the mall and focus on 'chilling the fuck out, you crazy bitch'.
Drank a Gatorade. Ingested some St. John's Wort. Thinking that I either smoke too much pot, or not enough.
I was glad I'd brought Eileen. The guitar's name is Eileen now. I don't know. It came to me.
Everything settled into a beautiful dusty pattern as we ran out of the pouring rain and into Ollie's dad's painting studio for a little bit of meditative activity.
The building is weathered and worn, like the old barrio mercado on the corner of 23rd street and Portland in Los Angeles, where I used to live. The paint on the walls is like an archeological mystery, peeling off to reveal the many lives it's had before this moment. The ground makes you think once it had blood on it, and tears and sweat- all of it culminating into one 'dirty concrete floor'.
An overwhelming holy presence always accompanies buildings that are this old and full of passion. It was once a church. You can tell by the virgin mary painted, fading on the outer wall with a myriad of tired cherubs peeling in genuflection. It was once a seamstress's workshop- I was told she was murdered there years ago with a pair of shears.
There was a coldness about it, like the coldness of being lost in the woods. It would seem like a place where no person would want to be, but it felt like the only place to be right then, lost in the woods, rain pouring down, white sky piercing through cracked windows and tattooing a pastel portrait of broken perfection on my retinas.
An old, iron woodburning stove near the center of the studio was the only potential source of warmth. Water was leaking from the ceiling into damp, dark puddles from the heavy rains. We set a fire blazing in the stove and warmed ourselves... I took little Eileen out to strum a few chords and she sounded big against those old walls. Big and rich with the energy and rhythm of all the hearts that have beaten there.
Ollie began to paint and I found an old piece of scrap wood and began to follow suit. We painted all afternoon, feasting on day-old pizza and chocolate-covered cherries. I painted one thing, and then covered it in thin white paint and painted another thing.
I wanted it to have layers like the building. I wanted it to have layers like me and my moods. My laptop was rattling out a random assortment of music on shuffle, and my painting style changed with every genre.
An old monk (Savath and Savalas... Langas Gypsies of Rajasthan) emerged out of one layer. He developed the tribal look of a man who has seen it all (Aesop Rock.. Tom Waits)... all of it dotted with logarithmic patterns and wild, radiant veinous fractals (Venetian Snares.. Aphex Twin)
We painted for five hours and the fire burned, keeping us half-warm. Chain-smoking and bowl-smoking, taking guitar breaks and not speaking a word- really, just co-existing in this creative silence that I crave and miss most in my life. The sky faded from white to black as I finished my painting and it was time for both of us to leave. It was pure, tranquil perfection in every sense of the word.
Later that evening I attended a lecture with Jasmine by Maya Angelou, who is one of my dearest heroes. I can't really put into words what effect this had on me. She was absolutely striking. Dynamic. So full of love and hope for her fellow human being. I wrote one thing she said on the back of my ticket stub. I don't know why, it seems like such a simple thing to state:
"Please know, that each one of you has the power to change somebody's life for the better."
I guess it just seemed like something I should make a point to remember.
Letter to Matt Piper
well, part of it.
"Communication is echolocation, and it happens both internally and externally. Communication with other people helps us find a reference point- we are all parts connected, so understanding other people's perspective helps to establish an image of that otherwise invisible thing that connects us. And of course, internalization helps us to situate ourselves in all of this mess.
Sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that things can be, and often are existing in perpetual contradiction. It's all both infinitely different and inescapably similar. We're all alone together."
"Communication is echolocation, and it happens both internally and externally. Communication with other people helps us find a reference point- we are all parts connected, so understanding other people's perspective helps to establish an image of that otherwise invisible thing that connects us. And of course, internalization helps us to situate ourselves in all of this mess.
Sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that things can be, and often are existing in perpetual contradiction. It's all both infinitely different and inescapably similar. We're all alone together."
Letter to Lara
Lara sent me this essay by Richard Brautigan sent to her once by someone she meant a lot to, because she thought I would appreciate it (I did) and this was my reply:
_______________________________________
that's fantastic. I love that richard brautigan.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Having meant that much to someone, at some point in time. I guess it's worth it, right? It's so much more true than thinking they never loved you like they should have, when it comes down to it. They did, once. And I guess that's worth all of it.
Time is a tricky thing. In our memories it tries to trick us into thinking it never existed. It tries to flatten our past into a single state of being in order to get us to forget the texture of it.
We tend to think of it happening this one way that we can record and remember for posterity's sake. When in reality, everything in our past occurred a million different ways, in a million different directions.
For example, there are volumes of detailed memories that form my past two years of 'being in love'. However, probably after some time has passed, I will group that novel of a history into a few words: 'painful memory', and a single feeling that does it no justice.
I suppose this is a bleak way of looking at things... but in a lot of ways, memory is a bleak, simplified thing. All the luscious details fall through the cracks and flatten the landscapes of our souls. If you think this is tragic, that's because it is.
On the other hand, it's silly to try to hold on to something that never belonged to you in the first place. Resistance to this sort of thing is like trying to claim ownership of the wind that blows across your face. That moment was never anyone's to keep. It just happened, and it happened to you.
That's why it is important just to love the feel of these moments in time as they slip through your fingers, helplessly, like grains of sand resigning to gravity.
I think it's important to remember that feeling. So that it might help to guide you every time you touch your fingers to something in an effort to connect. I guess that's what the art in our lives is. A beautiful byproduct of some unrelenting compulsion to break down walls so we can see the infinite vastness and infinite minuteness that we are (every one of us) a part of.
It's the kind of thing that gives you a bottomless sense of hope... thinking about all the millions of hands and hearts and memories, constantly intersecting to weave the blanket that keeps us warm and alive in this cold, dark universe.
Tuesday Morning
We are all three of us basking in the sunlight, delightfully delirious from the previous night's reckless euphoria and soaking in the most perfect sunrise. Amanda has just had a shower and is facing the sun, drying topless with towel around waist, like a roman statue, or a greek one before that. I have claimed my wooden porch-throne in front of my two regal subjects: Ollie's two very wise-looking cats, one striped and one black. The finches in the aviary are asleep together in little feather balls, and it is quiet except for the turtles in the pond- ducking in and out of the water- ploop....plop.
It is an amazing moment. I have smoked so many cigarettes that I must sound like Tom Waits with a cold. I have laryngitis and it is strangely sexy. I am sitting, and staring, and smoking- and the cats are intently listening to what I have to say without words. Wise eyes locked. Intently listening for an infinite moment.
Ollie walks out onto the porch with a deformed orange that won't fall apart in any of the right ways. She sits next to me, and I dismiss my catmeeting and realize I've been crying this whole time. Tears drip out of me like an overripe fruit that can't hold itself together anymore. I've become a mush. I've become a mushy fruit and it is too late and I've lost all my lusciousness.
Ollie asks if I'm okay and I am crying and I say "Well, no! of course not-" and as I say this I start to laugh. The crying turns to laughing, and I think it's strange but I don't care- because suddenly the situation is really hilarious and ridiculous, and delightful.
I'm laughing so hard I have to hide my face. I feel like I'm going crazy. There's something heartbreakingly familiar about this sound coming out of my mouth. Ollie asks what I'm laughing about, and I just say, "I don't know. I'm so ridiculous!"
I am laughing at myself- uncontrollably- and suddenly, I remember the hundreds of times I've watched Nick do the exact same thing I was doing, laughing at himself, out of the blue, and not on acid.
I felt happy and sad at the same time. Sad that I'd lost him, but certainly happy to have acquired such a delightful, ridiculous habit from knowing him.
And now I remember something we'd brought up in all the acidspeak about the Thing with no word, that moment of infinite complexity and infinite simplicity. Amanda had said "I don't think there is a single word that encompasses Buddhism" and I shrug off the 'Buddhism' part because I do not like to use religious words, and say
'There may be no word, but there is something:', and I laugh.
And laugh.
And laugh.
I Can Dodge Bullets and Jump Between Rooftops
It will all work out, however it is supposed to be. There is a bipolarity about our kind that is a crazy mixture of insane self-discipline, and the reckless abandon of giving ourselves away to our hearts and our dreams... no matter how unattainable and masochistic they may be.
Time lets these actions and their consequences unfold in a sort of staccato binary pattern so that upon reflection, before our eyes close on our deathbeds, we may gaze upon the vivid, changing, infinite digital landscapes of our souls.
There is a strength and a weakness to self-discipline. There are two sides to having control of a situation... to be summed up by the image of you in the protective barrier that you have built, to keep the scary things out. You may be safe. But you are still in a cage.
And by 'you', I mean 'me'. And everyone we know.
Never interpret your irrational quest for What Feels Right as a moment of weakness. Never write something off as a shortcoming because you followed omens, and it hurt, or you were wrong. These are not moments of weakness. These are just something other than common sense.
We try so hard to do the right thing. Sometimes there are two kinds of right things, and they are somewhat opposite. Whatever the outcome... there is a marvelous accidentalism to it. We mad ones must dive into our lives with an old wisdom, and a youthful lack of regret.
la la. la yeah. *little dance*
i do not know what any of this means to me. it is not a Truth. I'm not referring to anything. it is what is travelling through my brain at this time.
Time lets these actions and their consequences unfold in a sort of staccato binary pattern so that upon reflection, before our eyes close on our deathbeds, we may gaze upon the vivid, changing, infinite digital landscapes of our souls.
There is a strength and a weakness to self-discipline. There are two sides to having control of a situation... to be summed up by the image of you in the protective barrier that you have built, to keep the scary things out. You may be safe. But you are still in a cage.
And by 'you', I mean 'me'. And everyone we know.
Never interpret your irrational quest for What Feels Right as a moment of weakness. Never write something off as a shortcoming because you followed omens, and it hurt, or you were wrong. These are not moments of weakness. These are just something other than common sense.
We try so hard to do the right thing. Sometimes there are two kinds of right things, and they are somewhat opposite. Whatever the outcome... there is a marvelous accidentalism to it. We mad ones must dive into our lives with an old wisdom, and a youthful lack of regret.
la la. la yeah. *little dance*
i do not know what any of this means to me. it is not a Truth. I'm not referring to anything. it is what is travelling through my brain at this time.
A Letter to a Kindred Soul
I'm sorry everything is such a nightmare right now... but when you get through this, it will help you to see how beautiful everything is. For me it seems like whenever something terrible happens, after a certain point of pain I am completely, utterly, overwhelmed by the infinite beauty and infinite complexity of this thing called life, and this phenomenon of being. So much so, and after all these years, and a few hardships, sometimes I feel incapacitated by it. I sit outside and look up at the sky at the clouds moving slowly and think about how the clouds are our backdrop, and we are theirs and I cry about the beauty of it... this happens many times a day... I cry for joy, I don't know what it is.. some sort of divine ecstacy I've been experiencing... but I have gone off on a tangent.
Life is not beautiful for me right now... it's far from perfect, and my heart hurts every day about 'lost love' and yearning, and dreams that are far away. You haven't shred your love for the gods of war. You fight because you love each other. If you didn't, you wouldn't care enough to. Every transformation takes its form in destruction, and pain. It hurts, it hurts! I am hurting with you, and for you, and for myself- but everything that is going on is telling you something about the way the earth is turning, and the way the heavens pull on us, and the way the atoms dance- and it's terrible and beautiful at the same time...
I know it's hard to see the good in this... its a bit of a paradox, because in one way, there IS no good in this, and in another, that is what is profound about it... and it is one vivid, deep, dark and rich drop of paint in the landscape of your soul. Try not to mourn the loss of something beautiful until it settles like dust on the ground and becomes something insignificant. And you and I know, as far as we know, that in this situation, that will never happen.
First Breath After a Coma
I jumped out of the plane and my parachute didn't open
All at the same time, my pants fell down, and I peed myself
I was ashamed. I cried. Could things get any worse? I threw my hands up in resignation and the air resistance from the fall kept them up like that- up, in that ridiculous position.
My tears dried against the wind. No one even knew it happened
I was falling, and I fell
But when I finally gave up-
-time stopped-
and for the moment I was flying
My eyes opened... and the world was coming at me fast, coming closer to me. 'Come here, world... come here...'
I was me once, and soon I'd be something completely different
The laws of physics demand that I change form
All at the same time, my pants fell down, and I peed myself
I was ashamed. I cried. Could things get any worse? I threw my hands up in resignation and the air resistance from the fall kept them up like that- up, in that ridiculous position.
My tears dried against the wind. No one even knew it happened
I was falling, and I fell
But when I finally gave up-
-time stopped-
and for the moment I was flying
My eyes opened... and the world was coming at me fast, coming closer to me. 'Come here, world... come here...'
I was me once, and soon I'd be something completely different
The laws of physics demand that I change form
Kelso
It's always funny how words can have the power to move people into action, and to motivate people to try and see for themselves.
If It weren't for Lewis and Clark going on about some pretty mountains, America wouldn't be the great, strange sprawling landscape that it is for us today. The American landscape is a gift to be opened by all of us, but not the kind of gift that belongs to us... it's the kind of gift that let's belong to it.
It's so quiet here in Kelso it makes me want to cry the way you do when someone does something so selfless you're at a loss for words, or when you realize how much you love someone. The sand is cold from the night before and the sun is hot- and together, these sensations combine to form an experience of indescribable comfort.
It is the quiet that allows me the privilege to hear two crows laughing in the distance while they play. It is the boom that you hear as sand cascades below your feet on the dunes that allows you a sonic manifestation of the relationship between your body, and the earth.
I saw a tree, and its branch had grown too long, and too far out and it had broken off. As I sat on it, I thought about how the breakdown of this tree had sort of just- occurred- and that this was neither good nor bad, nor meant to be- just that once it was a certain way, and not it's not anymore.
If It weren't for Lewis and Clark going on about some pretty mountains, America wouldn't be the great, strange sprawling landscape that it is for us today. The American landscape is a gift to be opened by all of us, but not the kind of gift that belongs to us... it's the kind of gift that let's belong to it.
It's so quiet here in Kelso it makes me want to cry the way you do when someone does something so selfless you're at a loss for words, or when you realize how much you love someone. The sand is cold from the night before and the sun is hot- and together, these sensations combine to form an experience of indescribable comfort.
It is the quiet that allows me the privilege to hear two crows laughing in the distance while they play. It is the boom that you hear as sand cascades below your feet on the dunes that allows you a sonic manifestation of the relationship between your body, and the earth.
I saw a tree, and its branch had grown too long, and too far out and it had broken off. As I sat on it, I thought about how the breakdown of this tree had sort of just- occurred- and that this was neither good nor bad, nor meant to be- just that once it was a certain way, and not it's not anymore.
Leaving Los Angeles
We left Los Angeles like embarrassed men leave whores in the middle of the night, hoping to shed the indiscretions we had for no reason in particular brought upon ourselves. We wanted to go no where, we wanted to see nothing, in no place for a while, but as the lights and the haze disintegrated into the dollhouse fantasy microsystem that it really is, and the true, real darkness revealed to us the beautiful details of this world (because sometimes, it is almost too bright to see...) I realize that wherever there is this absence, well, there it is, and it's really, truly, that thing we've been looking for
The moon is giggling at all of our human silliness and hiding her smile behind the soft, dark sheets of the earth's mountains. Everything is radiant- the world is sparkling like a jewel in the dark, sparkling just for you, reflecting the one and only light in your eye
Sometimes there is so much of something that it is overwhelming. Sometimes it is unpleasant, but this is usually due to a build up of recycled worries and replayed incidents, and you collect your misfortunes in your memories like it is a hobby, and you lose sight of why you even got here, consumed by your collection of broken dreams, your stubborn resistance to transcience, your self doubts.. your self pities.
Even then though, when you have traded all your optimism and hope in order to fuel your habit, there is something to be said about being at the end of your line- naked- cold, and more alone than you ever thought you could be
You get a little taste of what it must have felt like to be born
And the only thing that overwhelms you is the possibility of the next moment, and the infinite gorgeousness of being able to feel something so intensely that you know what the electric shock that brings us to life feels like, over and over again.
The moon is giggling at all of our human silliness and hiding her smile behind the soft, dark sheets of the earth's mountains. Everything is radiant- the world is sparkling like a jewel in the dark, sparkling just for you, reflecting the one and only light in your eye
Sometimes there is so much of something that it is overwhelming. Sometimes it is unpleasant, but this is usually due to a build up of recycled worries and replayed incidents, and you collect your misfortunes in your memories like it is a hobby, and you lose sight of why you even got here, consumed by your collection of broken dreams, your stubborn resistance to transcience, your self doubts.. your self pities.
Even then though, when you have traded all your optimism and hope in order to fuel your habit, there is something to be said about being at the end of your line- naked- cold, and more alone than you ever thought you could be
You get a little taste of what it must have felt like to be born
And the only thing that overwhelms you is the possibility of the next moment, and the infinite gorgeousness of being able to feel something so intensely that you know what the electric shock that brings us to life feels like, over and over again.
Open Eyes Connect
I wrote this on an old grocery list while driving a cab in L.A. It started out as a letter to someone, and just kind of went from there...
I hope that when you're dreaming you can hear the thoughts that I intend for you. I'm sure you can.. I know you're catching them in the peripheral vision of your dreaming mind's eye because they are instantaneous and numerous as the phenomenon of two things happening at once.
I looked in the mirror this morning at my tired face decorated with darkened fingerprints of the things I've seen under my eyes and little telltale wrinkles around the corner of my mouth written like a roadmap testament to the joys that I've encountered. These are the battle wounds of fighting to feel alive. I want to take your hand and float with you- I want to feel life like a California breeze against my face- cool and calm, and well traveled over oceans. When you and I connect I can feel all tension disappear and the richness of the moment is suddenly thick enough to cradle me and float me along like a raft on rapid waters, finally giving me a chance to enjoy the view while still soaking wet from trying to keep from drowning.
Those moments are unifying, I think. Those moments make sense. It's like turning the focus on a camera- you're not so sure this is the best image you can get... everything is an approximation of everything.. until you touch your fingers lightly.. waiting.. a millimeter of a turn and you just know, at that moment, that things couldn't be clearer. Those times we can't seem to understand each other we are just taking another half step and turn in the dance that we are moving our bodies and minds to every second, a conga line formed by our inescapable relationship with time- fluctuating in the no-particular broken pattern that inevitably forms in a world of endless variables, pulsating to the rhythm of life.
I closed my eyes just now in a half-sleep to watch the frequencies that embody you and I vibrate and play tag together- I turn my head a bit to turn the image of it around in my mind... it is an endless spiraling landscape of jagged edges and heart soaring loops, I see calm waves, voluptuous curves, sines, cosines, tangents.. even the occasional flat line. There are kinks and knots and curves and side by side our minds echo vibrations that mimic the maniacal laughter of utter chaos.
But when I stack our wavelengths parallel, along with as many people's as I can imagine- and as you can imagine, there are more than you or I combined could ever imagine- I run my fingers vertically feeling, strumming the guitar strings of a unified whole, striking a cord that plays a melody so rich I drop to my knees and sob- which moment was that? It had to have been that one, so very rare moment every billion years that our collective consciousness could have reverberated so beautifully in my mind that I could taste it, feel it, smell it and see it all at the same time so vividly I'd venture to say that I KNOW it... and it renders me incapacitated, tongue lolling, speechless, in a state of ecstacy.
I want to live that moment forever. I want to crawl into it and revel in its glory- it is the absolute perfect. I've experienced it now and I know it's there- it's the glorious IT, it's that moment I KNOW you know, because each of our moments moved in harmony then, we felt that little vibration whispering against the back of our necks and we all smiled, just a little inside, even if it didn't show, even if we were just shuffling down the street thinking a no-thought.
I want it again to keep it forever so desperately I run my fingers horizontally over time and the guitar strings of our souls squeal with delight, tickled, and I do too, because my fingertips have morphed into my eyes opening to survey a landscape incalculable by X and Y axes- so bumpy, so broken and so beautiful and wild that it is ridiculous to think that time had even a finger's grasp on it- which brings me suddenly to a realization that folds into itself, screaming "1+1= YES!" and other such nonsenses because some third eye has opened that is gleefully watching the shackles of time fall from my wrists. I am truly free to move about every sad memory and worry of my future and see the beauty of it like two colors juxtaposed on the cheek of an angel in a Botticelli painting to produce that incomparable blush-
a pause-
and winded with all this I feel approaching a hint of the kind of smile that lies behind teary eyes threatening always to break surface tension, and overflow in all directions- I know that it's happening now at the exact moment that two lovers are meeting and feel that particular elation and fear... right now someone is losing, someone is winning, and fortune and fate are dancing under the moonlight, trembling together, swaying and turning together bejeweled by sparkling tears of sorrow and joy, painted with the blood of pain and smiling in a way that sunlight breaks through the clouds and makes you think "God... or something like it"
It is a beautiful dance to the beat of Everymoment- and it is INSPIRING. So take my hand and dance with me under the stars and make me shut up so we can experience together this feeling that can't be described by words, but only our hearts beating, atoms bumping into each other, stars imploding on each other and all other such things we can't touch but understand, in our own little ways. Open your eyes and connect with me, because its all that matters, it's all that ever mattered and it's all that will matter when our bones have turned to seed fertilizer and our ideas are nothing but a whispered breeze in the eardrum of a deer.
I hope that when you're dreaming you can hear the thoughts that I intend for you. I'm sure you can.. I know you're catching them in the peripheral vision of your dreaming mind's eye because they are instantaneous and numerous as the phenomenon of two things happening at once.
I looked in the mirror this morning at my tired face decorated with darkened fingerprints of the things I've seen under my eyes and little telltale wrinkles around the corner of my mouth written like a roadmap testament to the joys that I've encountered. These are the battle wounds of fighting to feel alive. I want to take your hand and float with you- I want to feel life like a California breeze against my face- cool and calm, and well traveled over oceans. When you and I connect I can feel all tension disappear and the richness of the moment is suddenly thick enough to cradle me and float me along like a raft on rapid waters, finally giving me a chance to enjoy the view while still soaking wet from trying to keep from drowning.
Those moments are unifying, I think. Those moments make sense. It's like turning the focus on a camera- you're not so sure this is the best image you can get... everything is an approximation of everything.. until you touch your fingers lightly.. waiting.. a millimeter of a turn and you just know, at that moment, that things couldn't be clearer. Those times we can't seem to understand each other we are just taking another half step and turn in the dance that we are moving our bodies and minds to every second, a conga line formed by our inescapable relationship with time- fluctuating in the no-particular broken pattern that inevitably forms in a world of endless variables, pulsating to the rhythm of life.
I closed my eyes just now in a half-sleep to watch the frequencies that embody you and I vibrate and play tag together- I turn my head a bit to turn the image of it around in my mind... it is an endless spiraling landscape of jagged edges and heart soaring loops, I see calm waves, voluptuous curves, sines, cosines, tangents.. even the occasional flat line. There are kinks and knots and curves and side by side our minds echo vibrations that mimic the maniacal laughter of utter chaos.
But when I stack our wavelengths parallel, along with as many people's as I can imagine- and as you can imagine, there are more than you or I combined could ever imagine- I run my fingers vertically feeling, strumming the guitar strings of a unified whole, striking a cord that plays a melody so rich I drop to my knees and sob- which moment was that? It had to have been that one, so very rare moment every billion years that our collective consciousness could have reverberated so beautifully in my mind that I could taste it, feel it, smell it and see it all at the same time so vividly I'd venture to say that I KNOW it... and it renders me incapacitated, tongue lolling, speechless, in a state of ecstacy.
I want to live that moment forever. I want to crawl into it and revel in its glory- it is the absolute perfect. I've experienced it now and I know it's there- it's the glorious IT, it's that moment I KNOW you know, because each of our moments moved in harmony then, we felt that little vibration whispering against the back of our necks and we all smiled, just a little inside, even if it didn't show, even if we were just shuffling down the street thinking a no-thought.
I want it again to keep it forever so desperately I run my fingers horizontally over time and the guitar strings of our souls squeal with delight, tickled, and I do too, because my fingertips have morphed into my eyes opening to survey a landscape incalculable by X and Y axes- so bumpy, so broken and so beautiful and wild that it is ridiculous to think that time had even a finger's grasp on it- which brings me suddenly to a realization that folds into itself, screaming "1+1= YES!" and other such nonsenses because some third eye has opened that is gleefully watching the shackles of time fall from my wrists. I am truly free to move about every sad memory and worry of my future and see the beauty of it like two colors juxtaposed on the cheek of an angel in a Botticelli painting to produce that incomparable blush-
a pause-
and winded with all this I feel approaching a hint of the kind of smile that lies behind teary eyes threatening always to break surface tension, and overflow in all directions- I know that it's happening now at the exact moment that two lovers are meeting and feel that particular elation and fear... right now someone is losing, someone is winning, and fortune and fate are dancing under the moonlight, trembling together, swaying and turning together bejeweled by sparkling tears of sorrow and joy, painted with the blood of pain and smiling in a way that sunlight breaks through the clouds and makes you think "God... or something like it"
It is a beautiful dance to the beat of Everymoment- and it is INSPIRING. So take my hand and dance with me under the stars and make me shut up so we can experience together this feeling that can't be described by words, but only our hearts beating, atoms bumping into each other, stars imploding on each other and all other such things we can't touch but understand, in our own little ways. Open your eyes and connect with me, because its all that matters, it's all that ever mattered and it's all that will matter when our bones have turned to seed fertilizer and our ideas are nothing but a whispered breeze in the eardrum of a deer.
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