12-11-13

The crunch of snow on the morning walk to work is a metronome
along with cross thrusting lessons fraught with laughter
The first recognition of waking awareness is an anxious jolt
The first notable sensation is slight nausea
I'm seeking distraction distraction distraction
Getting through the day so I can get through the afternoon
while needing the bravery necessary to sit patiently

I am 100 different people during the span of any given day
I brandish cynical intellectualism one moment
and embrace pseudo scientific New Age ideals the next
I carry crystals to align my chakras
and laugh at the naive simplistic views of religiosity

One second celebrating the exhilarating freedom
and the next fearing the big scary unknown
I am a giant box of contradictions
who does not believe in shapes

My ideologies are interchangeable
my moods quite unstable
I've fought an uphill battle against demons
yet thrice a day want to invite them back into open arms

What face should I wear today?
What belief system do I want to adopt?
What would my future self be most glad about?
I don't want to be an ant.

Going and sounding crazy are no longer fears
so this rabbit hole will be an endless expedition

On the cusp of metamorphosis.

I remember laying in bed when I was in my early to mid teens, my legs aching inexplicably. My mom explained to me that these were growing pains. I'm pretty tall so I had these a lot and they hurt like a bitch. There was nothing to do but lay there and endure.

I'm now realizing a parallel between those literal, physical pains, and the pain of loss. As I've gotten older I've started to realize that transformation and change are almost always uncomfortable. You invest yourself in whatever your current life is and you get comfortable with it. You mistake it for your SELF and what makes up YOU. And then one by one all of your attachments are inevitably ripped from you, or they disintegrate, or you make the choice to give them up, and lo and behold, you still exist.

Those things were not you. That job was not you, those habits were not you, that partnership that you felt so permanently ingrained in... not you. Ripping things that have been growing into you, out, is going to fucking hurt. It's like pulling out an impacted wisdom tooth, very much a part of your being but hurting too bad to keep in place.

Remember all of those times that you thought you'd die from the pain, whether emotional or physical? Well, there you sit! We're all stronger than we feel at any given moment. Trees battered by storms grow deeper roots.

Every feeling passes. Even the feeling of the wind being knocked out of your lungs every time you think a person's name, which has become so familiar over the past months or more. This is a universal, ubiquitous, and omnipresent experience, as much a part of being human as the need to sleep. Suffering inevitably follows attachment and we will keep learning these lessons until we realize that we own nothing, not even our bodies.

Weekend musings

There's a pulsing vibration filling up my entire body, if it were visible it would be luminous. It exists over communication with type and in person the volume's turned way up, and I am a live wire.
Personal space bubbles overlapping, I'm breathing in sparks, I am buzzing with energy, I could combust at any moment. In fact it's a wonder to me that I don't.
Being in the same mental space is all it takes, though sharing physical vicinity makes it almost too intense, like sitting a little too close to a camp fire and starting to feel the burn. This vibe is similar to but way beyond sexual excitement, though the two often overlap.

I'd like to use all of these blessed cyber platforms to communicate but I'd prefer real voices complete with body language, and I'd accept telepathy. Yes I believe telepathy is possible, and that it was happening before our interactions even existed. I believe we are bridging a continuum of time space here and interlocking souls regardless of whether they exist.
This connection is bigger than me. I am tapping into something ineffable and I don't completely believe I'm even a necessary component. I am a point of consciousness lighting up on the map at the same time as you, we are burning bright.
Intellect fails in understanding this. It's serious but the most laughable thing in the world. It's the most ease filled difficult situation, fraught with paradoxes yet insanely logical. I doubt motives all around including mine.
Something so powerful seems to beg careful scrutiny but at the same time I want to trust the pulse, because it makes me feel alive.... like cliff jumping into almost painfully cold water, like turning a corner too fast and almost flipping your vehicle, like challenging fate only to have it lash out at you and remind you what's up. Is something that turns up the volume on liveliness what should be trusted most? Ahhh natural highs.

Thoughts

Writing is exorcising demons. The nasty ones, and the nice ones too. Writing is purging your spirit of whatever filth or joy may be swirling around inside of it. Writing is catharsis, an inexplicable connection to something, a mode of expression both limited and limitless.

I read somewhere yesterday that in your head it's hard to tell what's going on but something about ink and paper brings out the truth. I find this to be startlingly true, though I prefer type since I can keep up with the flow of my thoughts much easier. You cannot allow yourself to lie when you dictate your own thoughts, and if you do it's difficult, it's painstaking, it feels wrong. It's not catharsis but fabrication and feels more like work than passion.

One could argue that fiction is fabrication but I don't believe that to be true. I think writers write to find out what they feel about something, factual or imaginary, and I think every character has a piece of the author within them.

There's "COPS" on in the lobby at my work and the remote's batteries died, so I'm being subjected to something terrible out of my control.

There's a woman(I struggle to call her this instead of "bitch") who comes into the bar my friends and I go to, and sits across the way from us, hating me. I've never met her, and looked up one night to see her giving me the most hate filled incredulous look I'd ever seen. It was truly striking, since this was the first time I'd ever laid eyes on her. I saw her again last night and she started adding snarky comments and eye rolling to the spiteful gazes, as if my very existence offends her at the deepest level. She wants so badly for me to feel badly, and she does not know anything about me other than what I look like. At first her attempts at inflicting pain worked a little bit, I was pissed, and puzzled. Now after seeing her a second time I try my best to laugh at this stupidity and I'm starting to succeed but it's just a reminder of how confusing life can be. How unnecessarily hateful people can be for no reason other than the fact that they are in pain, and do not like themselves. She cannot stand to be in her own skin. She goes out every 10 minutes to smoke cigarettes, I remember when I used to do that, it's a symptom of being constantly uncomfortable. Some people are truly impossible, nay, difficult to have compassion for. She sits there and looks so miserable, I won't let myself be infected with that misery.

Right now the woman that lives in the apartment complex across the street from the work desk I currently sit in is texting me and offering to bring me these pills that I am addicted to. I refuse to give in but regardless I will probably think about it for the rest of the day.

Right now my relationship is in a weird place, I'm unsure of whether it's going to work and that is an uncomfortable place to be, sorta like walking down a staircase in the dark and not knowing how many steps there are and whether you're going to trip and topple down. We get along fine but I still have a sense of something impending and I can't shake it.

The struggles never end, you just have to keep going.

These are the tests we undergo in maintaining our peace of mind. When we think we've found it something will come up to shake us up and make us doubt it. It is how we consciously decide to deal with things. Reacting out of habit is easy, consciousness takes work and it's a job I am going to undertake.

weird poems midday

Whirlwind of apocalypse
sunsets bleeding through
to reveal what's at the center of you
Internal refuge or eternal slumber
if you're brave enough
to embark down under
Bow and crawl
let them nail your hands
Share a smile with yourself
as they shout their demands
Those who go red with shame and rage
won't read the invisible ink
written on this page

Surrealist Mumbo Jumbo

I forgot the importance of fiction. I had forgotten that important messages and lessons can be gleaned in the most unexpected of ways. I've been failing to remember that nothing is inherently good or bad except that thinking makes it so. I've been hesitating, suspended in limbo. I've been limiting myself to rules and regulations, acting like rearranging the furniture on the porch is going to make the inside of the house more organized. I've been selective with which friends I want to be around, failing to remember that when you know how to listen, everyone is the guru. I have not kept in mind that any time I encounter someone, even one I have known for years, I am encountering a new entity. To assume I "know" them is pure foolishness.

I've been worshiping expectations, and worshiping this funk, unwittingly.

I've been puzzling over the order, progress, and speed of things, while completely forgetting that life is not linear. It all happens at once and BOOM, flowers can have eyes. I can dance and sing. I can decide not to be a painter. I can write poems and blog entries that do not make sense and forgo the impulse to go searching for or assigning meaning to them. What I assign does not matter. I AM. I can fear that I'm losing my mind and not care one way or another. I can live a completely ordinary life or make a habit of hitch hiking.

I can stop editing myself, I can START turning that search beam inward. I can also extract answers out of the depths and crevasses of my being and be unafraid of what comes out.

I can unlearn.

free write

Leaves start being tinged with rouge, orange, and liquid gold. They drift to the ground as if hinting at the approaching snow, making way for bareness, for refuge seeking, hibernation, and rebirth. We begrudgingly loop scarves around our necks as if a grudge against what the sky is doing matters any.

Where are the new and strange people with stories to tell?
I'd like to rewrite my own stories, and to strike a creative goldmine.

I hope to be wandering out in the woods one day and trip over a branch to find myself submerged in a stream of creative consciousness that will carry me wherever it wants to.

Maybe it'll pour me out into a cathedral of sound where the challenge is not to find chords that complement each other, but single out a melody from the myriad of endless perfectly paired notes.
I'll look up to see swirling colors on the roof and the question will not be what to paint, but how quickly I can get my hands on a brush to dip in that ceiling and begin.

Upon walking out my surroundings will be moving. I will have to join them to prevent getting motion sickness, and the question will not be of what movements will look best together but doing what my body is crying out for me to do.
I will walk right past the bar because who in their right mind would choose to go sit in a dark room when there is such wonder to behold in staying in motion?

Recent travels and lessons.

            A few days ago I got back from a week long California trip. We literally got off the flight, got home at 9pm, went out with some friends(one who was passing through our city on her way to Colorado) and spontaneously decided to drive 8 hours to Denver the following Friday morning. I was already stuffed to the brim with new experiences and just wanted to rest at home and practice cello having missed an entire week of practice, but my boyfriend was so excited about the idea that I agreed to it.

Once I got there I didn't regret it at all...

There are quite a few lessons and realizations I've gleaned from that entire travelling experience. Upon arriving home from the separate Colorado trip, I started coming down with the flu. This is the result of not sleeping enough while being away from home, and starting to get careless about what I put into my body during the second half of the trip. I knew I needed some rest after California but I pressed on anyway, and I paid for it.

When we returned Sunday, I spent the entire day in bed sleeping with my significant other bringing me minced garlic to swallow, raw honey, and vegetable broth to drink, in between the sleep. My body forced me to rest and get some nutrients in me since I had pretty much been neglecting to do so. The intelligence of the body is truly astounding and if you neglect to take care of it, it will force you to rest.


In California, I had a falling out with a really close friend of mine. Close enough to have matching symbol tattoos signifying our friendship. Though she was rude to me and rude to Luke one of the nights over a petty incident, that isn't the main reason here. I've felt it coming on for a while.
When we would talk on the phone after 6 months of not hearing each other's voices. I would be sitting in my backyard pondering or writing about something, have her call me, voice various concerns going on in her life, and realize that we have a lot less in common than we used to. My concerns are different, what I want to focus on is different, the way I view life and myself is different, to the point of clashing. I suspected all of this and only had it confirmed and solidified after spending a couple days with her. So the lesson there is a tried and true one that many people know, people change and grow apart. Sometimes it's more painful to stay in a relationship/friendship than it is to part ways.

Returning from this trip and getting back to my trusty work desk, where I currently write this entry from, I've come to the conclusion that after being in new places for a while and returning to your old life, it's the perfect time to discard old habits or acquire new ones. Basically it's a good time to start fresh and decide who you want to be, because you've been taken out of your routine.

Another lesson, will power and risk gets you places.

9-12-13

There is a glutton for experience within, greedily assessing the value or appearance of everything, always needing to be right, and ashamed and embarrassed when incorrect.

There is a glutton for experience within, who sees nothing as worthwhile that does not lead to bigger and better things or an enhanced sense of self. Easily bored, always looking back or waiting, constantly plagued by a vague feeling of unease.

There's an inner glutton who is always imagining ways things could have gone better, always seeking to feel this way or that, wanting to impress or astound others, obsessing over other people's opinions. You can tell when this entity is present behind someone's eyes because they do not see you. They are too busy rehearsing, reviewing, planning, searching, never satisfied, always hungry like a bottomless pit, even with a decadent feast sitting in front of them.

Starve the glutton within yourself and become free.

       
             I love learning new skills or hobbies. Being able to express and entertain myself in any number of ways, flow with other artists, and trade information with other people with random skills are all exciting ideas. I once traded a friend a painting for him changing my oil. My boyfriend and I swap knowledge of musical scales and chords and vocabulary. That's the kind of stuff I think is cool.

Over the winter I started learning how to hoop dance and got decent at it. I still do it every day, but previous to that I always thought I was not physically coordinated enough to do any type of physical activity, like sports or dance. These things never seemed to come as easy to me as others(though in retrospect I wonder if that's just because I believed it to be true), and I usually don't even try. But I was exposed to the most amazing dancer that made me want to learn, just by how awesome she was. Inspiration is the best fuel for putting in a bunch of painstaking time towards learning something. Learning random hoop tricks(and especially how to make them flow together) was and is difficult, but it's impossible to dedicate time each day to something and not start feeling comfortable with it. There is nothing like struggling day after day with something and slowly starting to feel it become muscle memory. Yet another mode of expression, now as natural as drinking water.

I once read an article on the fact that there is virtually no limit to how much information our brains can hold. In other words, we can't "run out of room" in our memories. This is one of the most encouraging facts I have ever learned, and makes me want to master every instrument I can get my hands on. Now the trick is learning how to focus my energy on mastering one in particular.

Recently I decided I'm going to learn to play cello. Picking that thing up and holding the bow makes me feel like a fumbling toddler. Starting anything new feels extremely foreign, and it's hard not to get discouraged at first by your idea of what you want to sound like compared to the atonal screeches you may be producing at first(allow this to be a metaphor for whatever new skill you want to acquire). But it's impossible not to feel progress each day, no matter how seemingly small, if you actually put time in. I have a looooong way to go with the cello(I hurt my own ears when I play that thing) but it is kind of exciting having a blank perspective and starting from the ground up.

As I've heard people say before, the time is going to pass anyway, why not spend a half hour less on facebook and spend it instead learning something new?

I have never been a very "goal oriented" thinker, more like all over the place with a million ideas but no discipline to set them in motion. It was a very recent thing that I started to see the value in some type of structure in life. My vague ideas of "something creative" as what I wanted to spend my time/life doing were just not cutting it. Some type of routine and priorities are very necessary. Kinda like when you first learn to drive, if you don't keep your eyes on the road up ahead, and instead focus on the ground immediately in front of the vehicle, you start swerving all over the place.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-memory-capacity

Ego ramblings about the ego.

Many people, myself included of course, have found liberation in the knowledge of the ego.

The ego is that little voice inside your head that chatters a lot. It congratulates you on your accomplishments, it tells you you look sexy today, or like a loser, it keeps you up at night, it prevents potentially embarrassing situations. It makes you look stupid, it makes you look smart. It is neither inherently good nor bad. 

Realizing the difference between YOU and your mental chatter(ego) changes your life. Before coming upon this revelation(which you could acquire many different ways and with different terminology), you wonder a lot if you're crazy! I still wonder that sometimes, but knowing that the voice that runs rampant in my head is just a small function of my self, rather than my actual self, makes me feel a lot more at peace. I now know that I don't have to believe every little thing that crosses my mind, judge myself for "stupid" thoughts, or take my thoughts to be reality, or let an anxious thought start a whirlwind of nervous tension that starts at my head and spreads throughout my entire body, and day, infecting those around me.

When is the last time you had a song stuck in your head that you don't even like? When is the last time you had a thought that you didn't actually believe or even want in your head?(such as a self deprecating notion, or an unfair snap judgment about someone based on their appearance). And how many times has that led to you judging yourself or getting depressed or worried?

Exposure to a myriad of different things like the average person has day to day is going to affect your mind. You may think you're immune to pop culture, or gossip, or social conditioning, or the people around you rubbing off on you, and if you think you are, I have some disappointing news for you... You're not. 

You are going to think about things you don't want to think about (latest example for me would be Miley Cyrus twerking at the VMAs). Simply seeing something somewhere online or the television(I try my  best to avoid those but they're everywhere!) is enough to make it pop up again later when you're trying to study for a test or fall asleep. Not mistaking these random, often nonsensical and certainly non-beneficial mental phantoms for YOU, means being more grounded in reality. Calmer, more in control of yourself. You are no longer tossed about by every little ride your brain tries to take you on. You can now let your thoughts pass you by and maybe even laugh a little at the ridiculous ones. You can pick and choose which ones you want to explore more, and which ones can be discarded or forgotten.

I've recently decided to beware of any of my own attempts to "live beyond ego". That is the biggest ego trap I have yet to encounter. Thinking that you have risen above the ego and are immune to its tricky tactics is the most sure fire way to find yourself trapped again, this time without an escape because you think you've already escaped! This mind stuff gets tricky.

 It's an invaluable skill to be able to separate yourself from your inner narrator, or as I've heard it quite accurately described, your raving lunatic. But it is a useful tool we can utilize, so don't go getting an ego about having no ego! ;)

Nature soothes the soul.

Last night I was playing board games with my boyfriend for about 5 hours straight. It was awesome and fun until we tried to start playing one I was unfamiliar with and almost started arguing. The almost was all it took to bring awkwardness into the situation, as we are both extremely sensitive and always seem to reciprocate, mirror, and amplify each other's emotions. We are both also prone to anxiety and had been smoking so my heart started immediately pounding. This doesn't seem like a big deal but in the state of mind I was in, it was, and my body was on high alert, dumping stress hormones into my system. I went outside to smoke the rest of a cigarette I had and saw our hammock over in the yard that I barely ever lay in and decided to give it a shot. I almost didn't but for some reason it felt like the best thing I could possibly do.

When you get in it naturally starts swinging, and I closed my eyes and took some deep breaths. I started noticing how many noises were going on all around me. A symphony of insects in the night air! At least 3 different kinds that I could hear as separate noises, plus some other noises of the neighborhood. My mood slowly shifted and I felt my body and breath calming. I think that relaxation is the most natural thing in the world, and that we often forget how to do it. Becoming absorbed in nature is the best way to calm yourself. You can choose between your senses; smell the plants, feel the wind, look up through the trees, hell, even eat some dirt(it's healthier than McDonalds!) Nature is your friend, nature is YOU, and there are so many things we can learn from the intrinsic order within it.

First festival-esque experience.

I saw the band Phish over the weekend. They had 3 nights in a row of music. The experience in its entirety was noteworthy(my first train trips, getting lost in downtown Chicago, walking miles and miles and seeing many many characters), but the last evening in particular changed me for good. I've known since it happened(and even a few times while it was in process) that I wanted to write about it, and try to describe the indescribable, so here is my attempt. It may be quite lengthy.

At these infamous "Phish shows" there are parking lot areas where people congregate for a few hours prior to the shows. My boyfriend and I were talking to some friends and sweating in the humid July weather. The black top seemed like it was pretty newly paved so the sun rays were bouncing back at and baking us thoroughly. He told me he was thinking about looking for some acid and asked me if I would be interested, to which I replied yes. My experiences with this drug have been pretty limited and I figured this was a good environment for it. You do not have to look for drugs at these parking lots. You walk around and hear people subtly yet pointedly call out names of various drugs. Near the end of one of the lots an older gentleman called out "liquid" and we told him we're interested. He proceeded to drop the clear fluid(a drop each, though in retrospect I think they were more like little puddles) directly into our palms. We decided to get 2 each, for good measure. He told us to enjoy the show and we walked back to our group of friends, getting prepared for the long walk to the venue where the show would start. We waited in line at the port-a-potties, watching the tracers our hands left behind, and laughing at the clouds, which were swirling around continuously. Everything glowed.

We started walking and things started making less sense. We were walking with a huge crowd of people(these particular shows drew in 20,000 people to give you an idea) and I started noticed that I could "zoom out" and hear the overall buzz of excited conversation and just as easily zoom in to each particular voice. It was easy to get swallowed in the chaos of sound if you let yourself. By now a good hour had passed and I kept noticing and commenting on the fact that I felt like I was still climbing, and slowly coming up on the trip. Usually by this point it would have reached a plateau and remained steady for a while. My body was buzzing with electricity, I felt slightly nervous, I needed to see Phish and Trey(guitarist)'s smiling face. I knew it would calm me. I walked with my best friend Christian and started pouring my heart out about Trey Anastasio and how much I respect his smiling jovial attitude and his strength in overcoming heroin addiction.

I was so sensitive to every little thing, the people checking tickets seemed authoritative and foreboding. At the exact moment I noticed that the ticket checkers were actually laughing with each other and jokingly yelling into the megaphones about tickets, Luke echoed my thoughts out loud. I remember being very comforted by the fact that even characters that seem so official are just people messing around like the rest of us.

We walked into the venue and instead of going toward the crowd to find a good place to watch the show I really felt like I needed to walk the opposite way where there were fewer people. "Is it ever going to stop peaking?!" I kept asking. We sat down in a field out near the edge of the venue, I started getting worried. Everything seemed so weird, I didn't want to go into the crowd, I could not focus on anything because even stationary objects were vibrating with movement. Birds in the sky looked like lines in the sky because the tracers were so heavy. Any time Luke or I started to lose our train of thought I kept telling him to look at my eyes. Everything but the solid black circles of his pupils was swirling, changing, vibrating. Our eye contact felt like my only tie to sanity. I was staring consciousness in the face, and I was watching his eyes mirror every emotion I felt. I breathed and felt that "I AM". We mentioned that no matter how crazy it gets, the "I AM" underlies everything.

I started to panic and cry because I still hadn't felt the plateau yet, just the continuous building of my reality falling apart. The band started playing, my back was facing them, and the music kept changing positions. The direction of the sound kept moving around behind me even though I knew that was impossible. It was disorienting, just like everything else. I kept trying to remember to breathe. I  kept reminding Luke to look me in the eyes. I felt like I was in a horrific carnival as people with crazy costumes walked by, and Luke mentioned the fact that "it doesn't help that they're playing all of their craziest music right now". "Ok, so it's not just me", was my thought in response to that.

It started sprinkling. Luke and I were in the eye of the storm. The wind started picking up and we each sat cross legged, facing each other and holding hands. Each raindrop felt like it contained multitudes. Each raindrop was so loud, and so heavy. The weather was echoing my internal state, getting stronger and stronger. I closed my eyes and listened to the music and somehow had the impression of sitting in the middle of a crosswalk in golden sunlight as leaves blew across our path. I felt hours and days and months and years pass though I had no coherent idea of time. Nature felt comforting to me, I focused on the sky, wind, and clouds but was afraid of people and lights. I kept feeling the urge to go out in the corn fields, curl into a little ball and meditate until this passed. But we had traveled far and paid a lot to see this band.

It started pouring, the rain washed my tears away, we finally left our bubble and decided to walk around. "See look?! It's okay!" is what Luke exclaimed as I saw all the dedicated and slightly crazy Phish fans dancing in the rain as the storm picked up. He stopped me and said "let's dance", to which I replied, "I need to keep walking!" Our clothes were soaked and we heard an announcement from the stage that the concert needed to be paused due to this weather.

We went and stood up against a tent that sort of shielded us from the wind and ended up huddling with strangers trying to stay warm. We watched the chaos from there. We both realized and commented on the fact that this was an insane experience that we would remember for the rest of our lives. Everyone was running but there was no shelter to be had from what was coming down from above. Flashes of lightning lit up everything and some people danced in the storm. It was freezing cold. I kept mentally preparing to make the long long trek back to the parking lot in the crazy weather yet Luke seemed determined that they would come back on. We shared some true solidarity with the other people huddled next to the tarp/tent, making jokes here and there about the situation. One guy right next to me kept saying he wished he were on some drugs. I would have gladly given him some of my trip. The people on drugs were in the exact position as this begrudgingly sober guy, and I saw clearly the "grass is greener syndrome" of his mental state. "If only this were different, I'd be okay" is something we all tell ourselves all the time. I had been doing it the whole day and night at this insane concert, and realized intensely and vividly that if I could not be okay right then, I wouldn't be any other time! I saw people craving cigarettes and wanting drugs and saw this as only the appearance of wanting those surface desires and realized it was the longing for something deeper, something wordless, something that I had touched a few times during this night. It was something that no external chemicals were necessary to attain, though they could sometimes act as catalysts.

Slowly we found some friends, then lost them again, the rain started letting up and someone in the giant huddle said it's probably safe to leave the group now. We all kinda looked at each other and laughed and joked about sticking around solely for the company and community we'd built up next to that tent wall. I mentioned leaving and a bearded gentleman who impressively managed to keep a cigarette dry enough to smoke out in that rain silently raised his fist in a symbol of farewell. I noticed that it was only 9pm, meaning that about 2 hours had passed and the entire night was still ahead. I was astounded. At one point the entire group found each other and we loudly cheered and celebrated. I felt the cheers reverberate through the crowd.

The lights from the stage came back on and we heard the band members thank everyone for waiting. We excitedly joined the crowds walking back up to watch the show and I noticed the air get much warmer.  Without something to focus on, everyone at the venue was literally frantic. Everyone seemed to be on some type of drug so this exacerbated any feelings they had, but once the music came on they all had something to focus on. Phish really knows how to direct the emotion of large crowds of people. With the music, lights, and crowd all perfectly synced up and the musicians channeling this perfect energy of sound with seemingly infinite power, I was reminded of the feeling I had while looking into Luke's eyes amidst my surroundings falling apart out in the field. That feeling of consciousness, presence, the breath, the "I AM" of infinite possibilities. I noticed that these people were literally worshiping that energy and the musicians channeling of it, and saw that there was no greater appeal or power. The music took me on an emotional roller coaster and made my body climax. I experienced the depth of every possible emotion, fear, and joy. I saw dark sides of myself and others and beautiful things and saw straight to the depths of human desire. I will never be the same again and I could not be more grateful.

Hey.

I spent literally the entire day yesterday playing music. I learned a couple favorite songs of mine to cover, and also wrote my first song with lyrics, on piano. After talking to a friend today I pieced together the fact that that creative outpouring was at least partly(but I suspect greatly) spurred by not being online at all the 2 days prior to that. As Terrence McKenna has said before (and I have a new appreciation now for this quote): "Stop consuming images and start producing them."

I've been meaning to start going online less. I walk into work every day with the intention of reading a book or drawing or doing something other than surfing the internet for the entire 8 hours, but have yet to do it. Well, watching my creativity, and as a logical result, my happiness skyrocket due to abstinence, only reinforces that.

I always thought I couldn't write lyrics and proved myself wrong. Writing songs is a whole new awesome level of writing because you don't want to be too wordy. Brevity is a virtue when it comes to lyrics, in my opinion. Here's another song I just wrote that I'll be putting music to some time in the near future:

They say lack of expression is a slow death,
So with that in mind, let's explore our depth.

I'll plunge into the divine sea of me,
and extract potential we all can be.

You don't have to strive or work or yearn,
just let the embers of your passion burn.

Don't be dismayed if you happen to catch fire,
Ashy remains fertilize the pyre.

Strength in Vulnerability

People who have made peace with their inner being and choose a path of openness and frank vulnerability get hurt less than those who guard their heart.

This may sound counterintuitive at first glace, but it's the same reason why the drunk passengers seem to break less bones than their sober companions when hitting trees or other cars. Rather than seizing up their muscles at the impact of collision/conflict, they relax into the motions, however chaotic. I'm not saying you should drunkenly stumble through life, but that relaxing into the motions of life will leave you less battered than resisting them.

Once you've decided to accept yourself, and learn how to look at your own thoughts and fears and emotions with utter honesty and openness, how can external influences disrupt your inner flow and peace? You can sit in the eye of the storm, find your anchor via breath, make friends with the real You that resides beneath whatever mental phantoms your mind happens to be generating at any given moment. This tie to the divine is omnipresent and always available to us. Like any other art form, accessing it must be practiced. Like the breath, it's there consistently, just waiting to be noticed and basked in.

Don't cling and it's all yours. Intentions block opportunity to experience wholeness and direct naked experience. Give up the compulsive need to define everything, especially yourself. Once you allow yourself to be free of labels and definitions, you can allow others a safe space to be who they are. Nothing they say can hurt you, and no generalizations can touch you because you'll know you are beyond that. We must learn the art of mental silence, and joyfully cultivate an appreciation for existence as it is outside of our limited concepts.

 

 

All hail broken soliloquies

Fragmented sparks and eerie melodies

What did I come here to interpret and glean?

Labeling reality now seems obscene!

A trip through the park and forest

The womb of Mother Gaia is swallowing us whole,
Deep greens and earthy scents, relinquishing control,

Rough terrains contrasted by soft easy walking,
The magic of nature opened as we stood knocking!

I kept wondering why everyone was wearing shoes,
The sky was a dream of innumerable hues,

Constantly changing, television seems absurd,
The symphony of dusk should always be heard!

Poem.

Existence speaks for itself, wordless and unrelenting.
Narration is not needed and will only leave you resenting,

It's not culture's fault that language is inherently limited,
but the truth of life is wordless, so speaking leaves you inhibited.

There's a light that's always there for you to breathe it in,
It will revive your entire Being, and every cell within.

Its wisdom stretches back, far beyond my lifespan,
Surpassing yet encompassing the world, and dawn of man.

Writer's block?

I was sorting through some stuff in my room and starting to move it out of my apartment. The lease is going to be up June 1st. Our power is out and probably will be until then. Necessities("necessities"?) get thrown by the wayside in favor of cravings and impulse and white flagging. I got so caught up on knowing and thinking of my"self" as a recovered addict that I didn't see the danger right in front of my nose and realize that I still was/am one! Thinking of myself in a concrete way has never failed to limit me. Back at square one and picking up the pieces. Getting used to having someone close by that I cannot fool, that sees me and calls it as such, that does not allow me to lie to myself, that shook me out of my zombified self deception and illusion. Hurting you is hurting myself. There is no difference! And you are a mirror. And everyone is. And everything is.

I'm learning over and over that simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication. Sitting in grass at a park can be an invaluable lesson in life and death, in impermanence and ever-changing form and life and death coexisting and fueling each other.

I came across a few notebooks in my room. I have a good stack of them dating back to age 18. I can read them and be transported to those times. My old writing seems to be primarily done while in extreme states of mind whether they be inspiration or despair, or written after the accidental ingestion of some crazy drug, detailing what I would later come to know as "depersonalization".

The question is, do I spend time immersing in past journal entries for how fascinating they are in relation to my journey as a whole? Do I want to see how many ideas I've started and not finished including a fiction novel that might have even been pretty cool had I written more than a few pages? Do I  keep these books or toss them? I'd like to have as little of a "self" as possible and I feel that these nostalgic items only add to it. Maybe it's good being reminded of how intensely I, you, the world, foliage, and everything else under and above the sun, changes. I'll give these books a once over and put them in a box somewhere. Maybe these realizations can lessen my self.

And irony is, smoking an entire pack of Marlboro reds in a smoke free hotel room at age 16 and working in a hotel 7 years later to face the stress of being scheduled for full capacity and one of the rooms being smoked in to the point of being un-rentable.

Irony is the sinking helplessness felt when a loved one is poisoning themselves with substances the way many have had to see me do, knowing and respecting that I had to figure it out on my own.

And irony is wanting to know someone so badly that I had to wait until I didn't want it as bad to get a chance.

And irony is wanting to paint something so magnificent that I cannot even pick up my brush.

Ideas currently being held in mind and pondered: The concept of pondering(and searching for a balance between all out constant analyzing and casual mind-play). Not about building up love within myself but searching for and breaking down the barriers I have built up against it. Thank you Rumi.