Go Beyond

Gotta escape that zone of sameness and bland expectation, where your complacent everyday self knows exactly what it will do (nothing) and who it will see (noone). Break the cycle of doldrum limbo stagnancy and force yourself into a situation wherein you know you will be uncomfortable and scared to go, cuz in that place of strange alien modish pressure you will be taken beyond what you can control, and you will be forced to be exactly what you are in that exact moment of place-time circumstance. In all of your imperfect, half-formed glory. Go, no matter your status, your age, your defined self in-context: go to places that you have never seen, go to people you have never met, stick yourself into sketchiness, fear, gray dim areas of uncertainty, where you don’t speak the language, and you have to gesture to make yourself understood, and people are tattoed and pierced and confused and full of life. Do this, and you will never despair. Do this, and your fear will lessen. So that you are not scared to live. So that you are not scared to die. Because the two are one and the same. So go go go go go. The tether that holds you to yourself cannot be broken by anyone except yourself.  Be yourself and go to places where you do not belong.

Gaining the Loss

The rule of the cosmos: you can’t ask for anything. You’ve got to just take what you need and give what you have. Seems to be the way things work, more or less. Like, if I get a little bit too screechy, needy, desperate for love and attention, then all I can hear is the veritable waves on the shore in the shell held up to the ear. So I have to regroup, sit down in the empty night space and meditate on my nothingness. How I have nothing, I am nothing, I will gain nothing. I’ve got to keep it all in perspective, somehow. Clam up, button the hole, and just observe, just watch the way the world works. The way that light seems to be generated not by light but by some other order of power. How all of the good things in life are really just a residue of extreme evisceration. The trickling out of beauty from the suffering awareness of despair.

So how to live life in this full declaration of madness? The masses recline before the injection of beauty. So dawn it upon them in full, without shame or fear or denial. There is nothing to lose. There is nothing to gain. There is just what you allow yourself to be, here, in this place of moment.

A Way to Subvert

A cross roads of sorts eventually asserts itself from the mist as you trudge ever onward towards inevitable oblivion. Is the inner development that you require necessitated by your outer reality? Is this really what you need? To be beaten down into submission before the homogeneity and failures in communication of the onslaught of desire? Everyday that you attend to reality, there is a reason to hate humanity, to give up the effort of continual sustained professional growth. There is a reason to shrink up within yourself and seek a means of escape.

But observe the one who maintains integrity: the way, the light that follows the heat. It isn’t about formulas, or scriptures, or any other formal adherences. It’s about following your heart. It sounds like Hollywood, Bollywood, but missing the essential main ingredient: your active oxygenated attuned rhythmic pulse conveying the life force that is you and all of the world but only you. Intuition. Empathy. Creation. Love. This. Moment. Only. Known. Now. Now. Now.

Rebel. Reinforce. Reinvigorate. Challenge the cold distant regularity and expectations that define your reality. Everyone that you know—including yourself—seeks comfort and coalescence in the face of an explosive and potentially destructive alien and dissociative desire. Ignore and let fall the immediate and reactive demands of public demand. There is something higher. Something quiet. Something powerfully calm and removed from immediate accessibility.

Life isn’t about Top 40. You make money? You plunder lots of virginal gullibilities? Let’s see how far you fare within your own tabulation of your life’s worth. Just awaiting your own death? Or what? What?

It’s about us. It’s about community. It’s about town, city, state, nation, world, way. It’s about identity as related to growth. It’s about me as related to you and them. It’s about everything. It’s about enemy, lover, and happenstance commuter companion. How much can you respect yourself in relation to me?

Enough. Either you are in, or you are out. Something within you or without you has determined this cosmic stance. What matters except your own life force of will, of choice, of effort? The confinement of the everyday delimits us all. Only the procreative will will find a way to subvert. Yes. And no. And Yes.

Is and Should Be

Life is and should be hard. To compete for the sun, establish one’s space in which to grow, to harmonize with what already exists, and develop continuously for deeper rootedness is a struggle. To be able to propogate only love, without bitterness, without anger—this is the pinnacle of existence. How many people do you know, whether rich or poor, who can smile at any stranger and fill their momentary solitary space with light? It is rare indeed to be able to penetrate the inner sanctums of alien awareness. You think you got something? Whatever it is that you hold is a barrier to divinity. Your own mind. Your own body. Your own desire to be something greater than this situation in which you find yourself, to be someone better than the people you are surrounded with. This moment, this day, this everyday mundanity. You are of this. You are this, with no delineation, no distinction. This, you, bounded, distorted, disarrayed.

And then just when you despair: the light. The tomorrow making of vision. A higher-ness of determination. Your potential succor staggers your stasis into omega futurity. You are of what you are, bounded only by what you aren’t, which is ultimately or predeterminately of what you are.

Simply put, the light, the love, the making of our interrelated creation: this is exactly and precisely the manner and whey in which it should be. A separation of layers, a diminishing and ascending relation of solidity. As I shed my past, shed my reluctance to be more or less than my own imagining, I find out who I am meant to be. This parcel of exact and apportioned reckoning. This complex version of what is and always will be simple in a single vision.

My Heart, The City

In the midst of the city, the light, the electrified transmission of energy, the movement and motion towards securing a better day tomorrow, if not for oneself than at least for one’s children. The strained acceptance in the faces of the waiting people on the train, swaying together to their destinations.

The way the jagged skyline of downtown is like the electronic visualization of sound. The way our lives are organized somehow towards a possibility, a potentiality beyond our own capability, grounded in everyday effort, a struggle steeped in mystery, faith, and irrational desire, yet somehow blessed by scientific technological development, by the evolution of market economies and political entities. How we strain towards betterment, despite the worst in ourselves and each other. How we adapt and orient ourselves against the steady erosion of our world. Communities huddled together against the unknown. Killing each other, loving each other. Living, dying, blessed, bereft.

I have joined the struggle of the masses by learning to become something lesser than what I can imagine. I will subsume my burning passion to the steady and solid rootedness of the earth, of this place and time and here and now that is my life and my love and my place in the world, stabilized against the storms of change. There is no greater adventure out there, somewhere exotic in the the vast cusp of the alien distance. My struggle is to live and to die by what I know, by what I can hold onto and cultivate within me, beneath me, around me. Homeward bound.

The wind blows through me as through the arms of a tree, unharnessed, a movement betrayed only by the shuddering of its leaves. I will harness the light.

I will surround myself with a community that will support me, that I will support, reinforcing one another against the void. Allowing myself to become weakened to become tied into something stronger, something wider, something encompassing of the cosmos.

The way the transit lines pump through the arterial lines of the city like the life blood carriers of a gruesome divinity. The way a trumpet echoes through a late night subway platform. The way my heart beats with you, for you, against you, to you.

Home, Here, Now

Break above the Bridge

All that must be done is to delimit the sphere of your influence down to the place wherein it belongs: home, here, now; this is what it takes to get the caged bird to sing: the simple denotion of place, of season, of the helix that is time and inevitability and spontaneity. The cipher that we encode from our embattled sites of life engagement is the formula that connects the dots of the universe. The enmeshment of disparate atomized beings into a whole one picture that is neither pinnacle nor perfection but at the very least, us and everything and complete for the moment until we fragment forward into the continual struggle for progress. Progress, really, is a simple diminution of progression–a narrative enjoining codexed frames, forming of each a totality that lingers at its finish, a completion that negates itself into a recreative force of action or thought in another entity. An insemination, a secretion of meaning that can only push, build momentum, act as a wind in the halls of acceptable candor, thrusting a challenge of betterment into the static norms that define the immediate past. All of this is relative to each individual understanding, but ultimately answerable only to a collective engagement of agreement, a cult acceptance that intakes the information for deeper rumination.

This is as much to say that politics and power is more than just personal: the forces that generate change and define the manner and form by which society engages with itself are self-created and crafted from within—but more importantly, from within an engagement that is ultimately beyond. Beyond personality and bordering sublimity. Encroaching omega supramentality, a tugging of spirit impulsions, a development defined by environment and place and time but impelled by eternity, impulsed by a necessity for a completion that can never be had. A form of death that is life, that defines and outlays the struggle for existence itself, an expenditure of energy in the attempt to fill an impossible void. This is our struggle, your struggle, my struggle. Yet we are not hopeless, for the void, though impossible, is a void of the forces of our own making. We are of this void, crafted of this void, expanding endlessly towards a point wherein we must become again this emptiness beyond emptiness, this form beyond form, within form, against form.

Dirty Hands, Clean Mind

You’ve formulated these full, glossy lit pictures of perfection in your mind. You’ve established how you believe the world should be. You’ve determined how you want those you love to be. And now you find yourself putting up walls between yourself and reality, constantly on retreat, the ebbing colors of your idealism flowing into the eroding moat outside your acceptance. You hold on tight to your imagined versions of who you love, as they slip away invisibly from between your bestowed masks and costumes like a greased pig. You clutch at ghosts, you cherish empty husks, you bed with demons. You dig yourself in deeper, unaware of how alone you have become, how lonely, how lost, how stranded.

Those who love you become your enemies. They talk about you behind your back, unable to confront you with a reality that you can’t accept. There is no possibility of change, no potential for a different outcome, until you’ve come to the end of your own rope. Until you are ready to reach out from behind the walls of your idealism and step back into the world that exists beyond your limited desires. Until you drop your selfish ego and accept your diminutive status within the world. Until you drop the burden that you have created and free yourself to become involved.

To become involved in the nurturing and growing of living things, you must get dirty. You have to struggle, get down onto the ground on your hands and knees, work at the earth, sweat into your clothes. There is no easy way to create beauty that will survive apart from you.

There is nothing wrong with being a perfectionist, with being an idealist, with wanting the world to change, with being angry and bitter with the way things are. But if this idealism is preventing you from becoming effectively involved in your own life, then it is just as dangerous as greed, just as dark as blood shed by warfare. In order to act, a thousand other potentialities must be destroyed. The question is: is this action the right action? Is this involvement the right involvement? These are the things that frighten you. These are the things that hold you back. While your plants are withering. While reality grows ever more desperate, more detached, more inclined towards despair. The real question is not right or wrong; the real questions are: how selflessly can you act? How fully involved can you be?

If you can give yourself completely, then there are no questions.

Dirty your hands in the challenge of your world. It is best, of course, to think and choose the best course of action. But how many times have the options only become apparent after you have already committed yourself? In the streamline of successive moments, the right way will become manifest. You must believe this. You must have faith in what is beyond yourself of which you are but a part. You can’t out-think the physical manifestations of the universe. You can’t formulate a perfect philosophy to encompass each and every moment. You can only open yourself to learning, like a child. In response to reality, you will know what is the right way to act.

Open yourself to the suffering transparency of the light. Break down your walls to the invading hordes of the world.

It is only your mind that misleads you.

Steady Love

Summer Bloom

Love evolves in my life, broadening its branching to include all the world in its fruit, while narrowing its focus to the sustained, steady, and slow nurturing that comes from daily persistence. I once thought of love as a passionate, momentary outpouring of connection discovered from the sudden rupture between two worlds; this it certainly can be, but found more plentiful, more sustainably in the constant rediscoverance of love right here at home, in the one world that has been forged through struggle and dedication. The recognition that shambala is already here before me, and there is no need to hold myself apart. That perfection and attainment of bliss are not unattainable images of desire; they are at my fingertips, ready to expand with attention, flowers blooming within each step of awareness. They have always been there, pinnacled tips of contentment, but self-doubt gets in the way, blinding me to my own wonder. Forget about ideals; how much better is this reality fulfilled!

Forging Networks

Coming close to this everlasting present, the infinite presence that is almost touched for the briefest space of a few breaths, you know that there can’t be anything more critical then communion. These moments of complete openness. There is nothing more that is needed. To be possessed by something beyond yourself, contained within yourself, incorporated within yourself.

It is an ingrained notion we have as humans to consider perfection, harmony, or love to be something complete, something attainable that could be captured. But that’s a traditional thought process that shatters immediately, and repeatedly, in the face of true power and beauty. Life has never been about the completion and culmination of an individual, nor of any one thing—it is rather the momentary bridges forged between distinct entities that unites them into a greater harmonic vision. This bridge necessarily dissipates, as boundaries are revised, and breaches are created in some other part of being. It’s like an air bubble in a sealed container. The bubble can be pushed, expanded, broken into smaller compartments, but the same volume of air will always be there, until it is released into a vaster field of containment. So we journey ever outward, expanding our capacity for awareness, forever dismantling old bridges (because what was once detached is now one entity) and struggling to cross into new. The landscape of the soul is seemingly ever changing, and yet the total energy remains constant—the states simply shift as they find new dimensions in which to attempt to dissipate into, to merge into, to possess and to be possessed thereof.

Love—like enlightenment—therefore, is something that would appear to be unachievable except for singular moments of time. But inwardly, what occurs is more like the dynamiting of a tunnel through two separate caverns—suddenly the water flows between the two until a steady state has temporarily been achieved—that is until another hole is blasted through into yet wider spaces. Like the roots of a tree, the tentacles of awareness seek restlessly their source. Eventually, over time, as the outer world shifts to reflect the release of tensions into greater harmonic wholes, localized about the exploratory meme, a forest is formed, a network is evolved. So too in love, after ups and downs and fights and many starts and finishes, the heart begins to forge a solid network, the base of a building that can sustain itself for centuries.

All of this is rooted in the breakthrough of momentary climactic impulses. The skin knows. The heart knows. The mind is always playing catch up, struggling to define what has already occurred. All that really must be done is to allow ourselves to change, to continually change, knowing that what we truly desire can never be fully possessed. Until we have built up the forests of the heart, all across the world, then we will forever be restless.

The Eye in the Middle of the Storm

In seconds of self-awareness, Janet felt bliss in the middle of all of the noise. It was as if all this anxiety, madness, fear was designed just so as to enhance and demarcate clarity in the moments when it came, crystalline, dew-dropped, silent before the storm. There was no denying that even in her weakest, most insecure of times, Janet still knew that she was beyond all of it, beyond the stifling imposition of other’s jealousy or indifference, beyond her own vanity and ever-shifting self-image; she was somewhere already still, sitting neatly next to the stream, taking it all in, letting it all wash away of its own accord. Like a sieve, like a net of the heart, a purity that dirt could run through untouched. All that would be left of herself in the end were these treasured moments of beauty, when the light focused through her and everything she was and everything that she touched was perfect, in tune with everything that is. Then the light faded and she became human again, petty, insignificant. But the diamonds were there, hidden, nestled into the back of her heart, and she waited inside of herself quietly for the moment when the treasures would become illuminated into the outer world again.

Janet knew that these moments could be sustained, lengthened, and increased in frequency. But she also knew that she could not produce them herself out of thin air. She had to learn patience, and learn how to open herself to the light when it came showering down into her face. It seemed that the more that she relaxed and allowed herself to be herself, the more frequently that she felt ecstasy.

All of the noise, the fear, the anger, the gossip, the taking for granted, the holding onto things, the materialism, the fake spiritualism, the pseudo-intellectualism, the superficial, the one-dimensional, the apathy . . . all of it added up to barriers between herself and her own heart. She was already free, if only she listened correctly. The knowledge was there, flagrant, demure, unappealing direct and simple and baby-soft and harder than steel.

Janet slipped out of her seat on the bus and stood swaying calmly in the stuffy heat of a Phoenix afternoon. The double doors pulled apart, hissing, and she dropped down the steps with gravity like water, centered, moving with music and light. A man stared wonderingly after her, his hand looped in a supportive strap, craning to look through the graffiti strewn window. She had something that he could not see.

Destiny

There are paths set up for us to explore what we may tentatively think of as our destinies, such as academic institutions, corporate career paths, bureaucratic runways. We struggle to fit ourselves into predefined boxes, we attempt to conform to some kind of standard of who we think we should be in order to be successful. Yet life itself continuously re-corrects our crooked paths, setting us back onto our journeys into ourselves. Whether we want to believe it or not. Often it is simply a matter of whether or not you accept where you need to go or whether you fight it every step of the way. Because it is quite easy to follow gravity. Because it is quite easy to fall in love. Because it is quite easy to move into the future with nothing but positivity in your gut.

Basically, if you are unsure, then this is the first sign of a problem. You should not be sure or unsure (remember that commercial, by the way?). All you ever need to be is yourself. If you have to change yourself to meet standards that are not your own, then that is unnatural. And every step that you take away from natural movement places you closer to the lip of disaster. Let’s take this idea quite literally: when you are hiking down steep rocky paths, any step you take which is not balanced could easily twist your ankle or worse. And to take balanced steps is not rocket science, considering that animals such as deer or goats or squirrels do this speedily all the time. Yet most people are unable to free themselves of their own minds enough to even perform this most basic of natural actions, simply because they have introduced themselves to disassociation and fear.

It’s like mankind is both a movement forward and a step backward. We move forward into the realm of the mind but step backward into the realm of fear and disassociation.

The movement into the future requires release and embrace. We already know where we need to go. We just need to fall into place.

Set paths are established for you to follow to emulate others and pretend you know what you are doing. But all along you are afraid and desperately uncertain, and every step grows more precarious, til you are only a tentative thread of a human being, connected to others only by name-brands and alma maters. Is this the path you want to follow?

The water flows directly to its source. It will find its way.

Ever More

This moment is you. Standing hopeless on the brink of your desires, your washed up dreams. All the fantasies that you cultivated in solitary stimulation. The world moves on, distant, primal, alien. You listen to your mind striving to form some narration that would fit you in, lock you into a perfection and beauty undeniable, eternal, broadcast across time and space to shine into understanding and love and sex and money. But you know, of course, that your spirit is undefinable. Incapturable. That the only things that come out of you that are beautiful are not your own. That this darkness, this doubt, this everyday struggle simply to look in the mirror and walk out the door into the unseeing crowd is the keystone to this very moment.

When you stand face to face with your death, you understand then that such moments are everything. That all the times of wasteful heedlessness—spent suckered into some suit’s notion of what you are supposed to want, given your date of birth, sexual orientation, and geographical location—were exactly that, a waste. That most of your life has been wasted. That even despite all of this waste, all it takes is one moment of truth, purity, and honesty to clear it all away. The tally is tipped every time by one simple look into despair. You could never be good enough. The world could never be enough. And yet, it moves, it breathes, it feels, it floods. Death and movement are one and the same. Periods are a pause in the formation of thought, like the pulling back of the sea before it moves to crash itself into the shore. Again and again. There is no stop. No end. No final dark night that has no meaning.

What do we call this thing within us that fears and hides and spits at the world? It has been called ego, it has been called self, it has been called humanity. It is our suppressed divinity showing forth as demonic manifestation. Let it shine. Let it out. You know everything that there is to know about yourself. You were born crying, helpless, misunderstood in your inability to articulate. You learned to buffer yourself by silence, conformity, and following the drawn lines of tradition. You found moments of freedom when you rediscovered connection, empathy, intuition. These are the tools that take us into the future.

Draconian regressive clutchings at domination and anger, addiction and blame, have defined our history. These egos. This humanity. These childlike gods, terrible in their bitterness. We all must grow up eventually, one way or another. To face our extinction or our transmutation. Both which appears the same to the uncritical eye.

The alchemist leaves behind his learning, leaves behind his doubt, leaves behind his fear. To make magic. To believe in what has been taught to us as impossible. To find in one moment the key that would unlock all of sleeping eternity. To move beyond himself, his attachment, and his desire.

Because beyond death there is a greater power. It has nothing to do with the transformation of lead into gold, or of water into wine. Nor the movement of mountains, or of the stars, or of your heart. What stupidity! It is the power and binding strength of communion. The severing of self to find union in your Beloved. The letting go of what holds you back and pins you down to find that you can fly, that you have been flying all along, that the world flies and holds you and cradles you and pushes you beyond yourself at every turn to look down into what seems inevitable and certain impossiblity. Can you handle it? Can you handle what you were given? Can you handle what you were made to become?

It is not one or the other. It is not you or them. It is not life or death. It is love, or it is Love. It is death, or it is Death. Nothing less. Ever more.

Sea

It isn’t there, if you have to look for it, see. It’s already envisioned, already happening. It’s moving. You’re on it. You’re in it. You are it, every step of the way, every hurt, awakening, joy. The godhead, this beautiful presence. That’s what you’re looking at. Don’t look for it. It’s there. It’s here. It is, it be, it now. This has all been said before, but it has never, ever been seen quite the same way, through quite the same eyes, in quite the same form. Quietly, the world revolves into wholly new arrangements of recycled material. Spiraling coils that stretch into any space given. A beauty that is everpresent, evergreen, all inside everything that exists, as long as you can see it. Look at yourself. You really believe that you are anything else? Anything but you? Who you been listening to?

Because it sure as hell can’t be said. This is just kind of a reminder, you know what I’m saying? This is a memo between me and you so that we remember. Remember that nothing in the world is as important as what is manifestly occurring right now within us. Here. Beholden only to our own sacred knowledge of what we feel. No one can tell us that, not even ourselves. We’ve just got to be listening real close to the world which is ourselves in different times speaking in different voices through different movements that we are one, that we are many, that we are all in this shit together and that it really don’t matter what anyone holds onto—because everything has already been made into a picture that moves and defines and clutches at hungry bittersweet beauty when we all know, all we know, we already know quite well that we are this, peace, whole, center focus of all understanding and polyrhythm and harmonious atonal interconnectivity that thrusts and crawls and flies into love, into love. Into what we can only call love, belatedly and in sad departure because we are full, as the apple is full when it falls to the earth, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of everything, falling out of fullness and inevitability into the future. Because it must be. Because it is. Because this wind has blown in this current out of the circulation of this sea from this sun in this exploding set of dust and stars and energy.

To Be Here

The Zen Buddhists are oft quoted curtly stating, “Here. Now.” Attempting always to snap attention to where it is most needed, the present moment. Because the world is sinuously, continuously shifting. Because enlightment is not some perfect pinnacle to be reached and planted a flag into. Because the only way to be effective, relevant, and alive is to be consistently adaptive, morphic, rooting, exchanging. Boundaries must be extended until they are simply memories, snapshots of shedded patterns of the past. Trails as an imprinted arrow to the impromptu point of now, where we stand attempting to surf the unknown stimuli that floods every moment into our hungry receptors.

So many of us are terrified of what is to come, this dark mass of potentialities. We cringe to look at our breathing selves, at the very raw animal divine life that we are, existing, extruding so many things that we don’t even know where to begin to prune. But what is to come is just as frankly irrelevant as what has already occurred. What of course always takes precedence over anything, every time, is the everpresent here and now. To be omnipresent does not mean to exist outside of time. It means to exist so firmly embedded in this very present, now, now, NOW, that in tunnelling through this eternal presence you come to exist everywhere all at once, through the simultaneous intuitive deep superconscious connectives that link you through to all life that exists in the same moment in other forms, to see through their eyes as your eyes, to know the universe through yourself through the universe.

Such moments are hard to come by. Such concentration is required simply to relax. Such study and discipline and luck and love are required to allow and to accept and to embrace each fleeting moment to its fullest.

The first step is just to acknowledge the utter critical importance of awareness of your present existence. To meditate is not to sit. To enact yoga is not to exercise. These are matters of life or death. This is the purpose for which you are here. To be here.

Making Love

Love isn’t something that you find or discover, latent somewhere in some hidden offspring, but rather something that you must create, re-create, every single day, every single moment. There is a reason why there is the term “making love.” You must make love, you must forge it in the transmuted fires of your soul, mind, and body. It is not something that simply comes to you, that appears out of thin air like fairytale gnomes. It is the purest of human endeavors, a task both magical yet wholly rooted in mundanity.

Don’t sit around waiting for love to rise out of a hidden abyss in some stranger. Create it. Make it. Love is a gift beyond the giver. Love is the flow of divinity through the vessel of you. Love imbues anything and everything with new light. Love is the only reason life has to exist.

Beloved

To love is to bridge what seems at times the insurmountable distance between individuals. To have a beloved is to discover that you belong to another, and that that person’s fears, strengths, and history all have become your own. Holding hands, hugging, kissing–these are the physical expressions of unity. What is most important is the inner essence, the burning flame, the secret that none of the outer world can see–you could give up everything else and still be in love. You could be worlds away. What matters is the place in your heart, the intention in your mind. Even one moment of attention spent away from your beloved can be felt in the rift that divides you, even if she lays right next to you. It takes much more time to heal and repair these rifts than the moment that caused them. You have to focus your whole being on your beloved. The myth of separation is dispelled. Nothing else matters, the future, your hopes, your fears, what people think. To love is to realize the myth of your solitude. The beloved is within you, at all moments, even when you are not touching, even when you are not speaking. It is only through selfishness that your suffering is created.

Every Thing

Every woman is your sister, your daughter, your mother, your friend, your nemesis.
Ever man is your brother, your son, your father, your friend, your nemesis.

How can such unseeming things be so deeply interwoven, complementing,
contrasting,
ever struggling,
strong?

Yet it is so, and you know it is so. It is so because everything which lives, and has passed, and is to come–one can’t exist without everything else, –all, all one, I and I, there are ten million ways to say this, and they will never mean a thing until you have seen it, the millions of eyes inhabiting your very deepest self–the millions of arms and mouths and skins that would seem to separate you from all the world–all working for you, through you, against you.

We put ourselves through such suffering to understand that we are not alone, have never been alone–in fact, we are struggling so hard just to be alone, just to pretend that we are alone, just to maintain these illusions every single day–and it takes a lot of work, a lot of selfishly inflicted pain. It’s somewhat ridiculous and overly dramatic, our daily attempts to convince ourselves and each other that we are isolated and innocent of what another may feel. All along knowing the pain we are causing in this continuation of detachment from ourselves and others.

But there is, everymoment, at all times, the possibility of moving beyond the bullshit onto the next level, and this is offered, everymoment, by love, by the selfless love offered by others, by the love found in giving yourself, by the love which always awaits just outside of the door you are so frightened of passing through. And when you pass through, you look into another’s eyes–you do not see a friend, an enemy, a lover, a sibling–you see yourself. And then you see that person for what they are:
Everything.

This Wine

What you looking for out there? What can ever be better than now, than what is held here, in your arms, in your heart? There is nothing more to be found beyond yourself. We could go as far as torrential spotted Jupiter, we could go as deep as the dark deathlike peace of the bottom of the oceans–and find nothing as surprising or strange or beautiful as the treasure found within ourselves. Go out to the mountains, go into the wilderness, and look into the face of a living interconnected crown of divinity, see it in the trees, the way they stretch out into the light, hear it in the birds, calling out across the density to each other, hear it in every manifestation of everything, look on its flowing beauty. This is a glimmer of the surface of what you can contain. Where the sun can never reach, where logic can never penetrate. You, your life, your every breath and movement into the next moment. The only thing that keeps you from god is your lack of discipline. Listen! You are telling yourself something–life is telling you something–every single person in your life is telling you something! Listen! Concentrate! Look! Everything that is before you lies already within you. Uncork it and pay attention. Swirl it in the sunlight. Sniff it carefully. Think about what it is that you taste. Feel its weight on your tongue. Let yourself go with the drunkenness it bestows. Wine, what is wine in the mouth of a close-minded fool?
Wine is as good as those who know how to taste it. Life is as good as you will accept yourself.

Water Motion

Water runs in the path of least resistance, drawn simply by the unjealousy of gravity–it will find it’s source. So, too, like water runs your life. It is your mind and your fear of suffering that hinder your way, diverting your stream from that which is most easy and least apparent. Have you ever watched a mountain goat move seamlessly down a treacherous cliffside? There is no thought involved. The goat is not an enlightened being, necessarily. But there is much to learn from his movement from rock to rock. For you, too, can move in such a manner, if you were unafraid and supremely confident in each placement of your foot. The goat moves in the manner of water. Each step is part of a motion towards sublimity, some ultimate tonic key that will never be reached but that hovers soundlessly through each approaching note. He slips, he misplaces his hooves, yes, but easily corrects himself–like in jazz, there is no such thing as a wrong note while immersed within context. The love supreme, the keystone, the source guides the flow. In such a context, everything is stumbling, and everything is right. There is no fear, no retribution, no hesitation. There is death and love and struggle, yes, but these are the path, these are the wandering stones that guide your motion onwards, the hillside distinctions that will mark your passing. The sun is a sparkle in your eye. Your spine gushes with music, and gravity calls you over the lip of the unseen and it is easy, easy, easy to fall so beautifully forward into yourself.

The Flower Blooms

An harbor from the sea, your presence against mine, entwined to stillness, so perfectly unmatched, so humanly fitted. Warmth, the finding of softness between our angularities, jutting elbows, folded wings, a language surpassing articulation. Preening, grooming, contentment in constant attention. The flower blooms.

Amazement resides within the most slippery of moments, easily missed, easily relaxed. Here it is, life, love, touched by your fingertips, responsive to your dreams. Cherish it.

The sunlight which comes through the window every morning is the burning force of a new sun, the open scope of a new day, the birth and the death of a new self, a new mode of being, a new way of seeing, never to come again, always dipped into the shadows of night to be lost. A new day. A new life. To be cherished, to be nurtured, to be loved.

Embracework

I can be as lazy as the next motherfucker when there ain’t shit to do or if what I do don’t matter, but I’ve discovered the satisfaction in working hard when other people rely on me. The work itself is almost secondary, although physical labor does seem to be more fulfilling. Having evidence–a trail of effort viewed–is fulfilling–to see the fruit of toil, a growth from cultivated soil. Shoveling snow, screwing anchors into drywall, moving heavy things, organizing scattered objects into a functional shape, all things tending towards purpose.
Given a clear and achievable goal, I will work towards forging a bigger picture. The bigger picture is more important than excuses and conceits for the withholdance of myself. Beyond myself is the other, and the other is myself, only understood when served selflessly. If oneself is the other, than what lies in between? What is between is work. Work to lose one self to gain oneself.
Who is to say what one does is not good enough, or not doing anything for humanity, for the good of the world? If you can give yourself to your work, than it is good work.
The samurai of ancient Japan studied the art of serving selflessly. They gave all of themselves, all of their life, to the art and philosophy of war. One slice of an enlightened sword could unite heaven and earth. What bigger picture is there than this very moment? Complete dedication, utter devotion, to the now.
The life of a soldier is a destitute reality of the destruction of the natural world for the greed of shortsighted, manipulative men. But what is not seen by the outsider is the inner light carried by the soldier working selflessly to fulfill his given purpose. He has a function, a place in the bosom of the world. People want only to hear of war as terrible fear, senseless destruction. What civilians cannot understand is the sense of heightened clarity in the midst of battle, the purpose that carries him through terror and into tomorrow. He cannot go back home. He is a vehicle for forces well beyond control, yet these forces reside within his gut. It is not his function to question. He is empty for that which he serves.
Who am I to question his purpose and resolve? It is sad to be used for purposes that are not honorable. But the men who fulfill their tasks selflessly are blessed, even if it were to destroy whole worlds. They are blessed because they have found peace within themselves.
Whether you are an assassin or a gardener, an accountant or a nurse, you have a function, a purpose in the world. If all you do is work to make money, than you will never know what it is to live.
Living centered in the universe is to do what one must do. To act selflessly is to act beyond concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. It is simply to give all of oneself to one’s actions, completely. Because who knows if the drill will slip and the picture will be crooked? Who knows if the arrow will land in its target? We shit because we eat, and we eat because we desire to live. Every path re-affirms what has already come, and destroys a part of what could be, and creates a newness never before seen. Embrace it.

Here

Here in this everlasting moment of flowing ether, here, watching your hair falling around your face, here, looking deep within the mirror of your love to mouth the words I didn’t know were there so apparent in my essence, here. Here, tasting the salt of your tears in the moonlight fading and calling the taxi for you to leave forever, here, carrying your suitcase up the stairs through the snow, here, holding you one last time. Go. You must leave. You must catch your plane. I cannot keep you. Here, listening to our loss on the phone, here, hearing my heart harden in resignation, readying myself for another long period of loneliness. Here, sitting in my office alone at night, remembering you. Here. Where can I go to see what has happened to me?

everybody feels the wind blow

i will tell you what i have discovered of love. it opens up your core and your eyes can see so deeply into each moment that before were veiled by fear of pain. you can look at the impassive beauty of the sunset on the lake and truly experience it, because you know what gives it meaning. i am like an alien in your bedroom, baring you to my curiosity. yes, there are walls of suffering everywhere trying to stop our bodies from knowing eternity. but despite all insecurity, we cross into each other like boundaries were the dream, and our freedom scientifick reality. when i fall through space to find my lips on your surface, i sense shimmering waves billowing from far below what can be known. hunger to get there, to get to that place that we spend all of our life to remember. i would wait forever by this emptiness just to feel the gentle quiver of my heartstring plucked from another universe, breathing for the moment when my deepest self is hooked into you.
love is the verification of everything that you have become. love is the refutation of everything you have been. love is here. love is now.

To This

i was watching the smoke from a stick of nag champa swirling in the light
directly neath the lampshade just now, and realizing that i can’t really see
it, can’t really feel it, not as it is, not with the attention and empty
focus that it requires, just like i can’t really appreciate the almost
imperceptible yet ever present iridescence of the snow covering everything
in the winter sun rise, the shimmering in the sky, in the air. it’s there,
and i notice it, and i look straight at it and yet all i can see and feel
are the things that bind me to my circumstances–work, or the latest love
interest, or my fucking ego getting in the way of everything that is good in
my life. i want to feel and appreciate all of the beauty that is all around
me, but i can’t get past myself. here i am, sitting in my den, looking at
the incense swirling, and yet it’s all just an act, all a pretense–and i
think, how can i get to that space where i can really feel it? or is it
impossible? but it seems like it can happen, in a different world, a world
where you don’t have to work a shitty job where they treat you like a dumb
animal, in a world where you don’t have to wonder if what love you feel from
another human being is really something that means something, in a world
where you aren’t always using other people in order to survive. i want to
be there, but i know that there is no shortcut there, and i know that it’s a
long road to where i need to be, that’s it’s such a long, long road, just to
get to here, just to get to now, just to get to where i am, to where i
really am.

Set Up

jacob scaled his fire escape to the 3rd floor and pushed up his window and
slipped into his room dukes of hazards styles, knocking over a glass of last
night’s scotch. he did a jig of pure joy, slapping his ankles and twisting
into a pile of clothes on the floor. it was hard to believe that it was
real, and yet it was, god fucking-a, it was, this feeling of belly
shuttering ecstasy, this love, this world of raw pleasure that he had
forgotten could ever exist. he pulled out his pipe from his desk drawer and
packed it chock-full of hash, giggling insanely. one hit a two hit a three
hit, all in a row, getting fucked up now, not enough, four a five a seis, a
sex, a two multiplied by a three, resultant in an exponential increase in
explosive sensory information. what was this his heart was saying? this
was unbelievable, that his own bodily mechanisms could speak to him in firey
chemical rhythmic tongues. alive, alive alive! conscious movement, jacob
practiced tai chi to aphex twin in his boxers. water! food! this was
amazing. yet it could be regulated, channeled, communicated. he picked up
the phone and dialed the now instinctual number.
“yeah?”
he jumped up and down. “honey goddess baby queen.” his mind’s noise
suddenly quelled.
“hey sweetie. what’s goin on?”
“i am scaling heights i couldn’t ever have imagined a whole day ago, a whole
universe away, like so fast that i feel g-forces. shit. i feel so fucking
good!”
she laughed shyly. “yeah, i think i know what you mean. you’re fucking
crazy, you know? i love you.” she paused, looking out the window. “i need
to finish my work. i’ll talk to you soon” she hung up. he hung up.
the silence reverberated with cosmic force. jacob wanted to cry, his heart
was an open wound, his mind was upside down, his body ached for immediate
enwrapped alien warmth. he laughed. life was so fucking amazing. it was a
rollercoaster, it was a movie, it was a cup washing over the rim into
aether, it was ink sloshing into indecipherable patterns, it was beautiful,
it was horrendous, it was shocking and powerful and new.
“for good. for good for good for good,” jacob whispered to himself as he
rocked, clutching his knees. “always use this energy for good. it is not
yours. it is not for you. this is for everyone. this is for the world.
this is for what all of us thought was missing. it is here, it is
everywhere, it is in her eyes and her hair and the sucking sea sound of
sweat between our bodies. wonder! wonder! wonder! i am in love. i am in
love and i am frightened. i am in love and i am insanely happy. i can feel
the blood pushing through my veins to the pulse of my heart. i can feel the
heat of astral connection spreading throughout my limbs. i can hear the
sound of my dreams resonate in the hollows of my brain. i have been here
before. i am here. in this, the deadly still center of the eye of the
storm. i am incredibly lonely. i am incredibly hungry. i can never get
enough, enough of her.” he smiled sadly. “for good, for good for good for
good. she is not mine. and i am in love.”

5 Points Constellating

* trying to get closer to this moment, into the multifold waves of all the
universes that wash together into the deep silence when you sit on the
mountain top at night to watch the stars vibrating their past into your
picture, when you can see everything milky, shining, thick, frothing and
beautiful, when you smoke and drink and think and say a few things into the
stillness where everything moves around you

* and how small we are, how infinite, how prolonged is our life when it
extends out to everything. if we destroy this world we have meshed within,
how the waves will spread, how they will echo, how the mountains resound
with thunder, how it fades and leaves the trembling children triumphant in
their mortality.

* and knowing this, that we can go anywhere, and everywhere, and that we are
not stuck, that we are not bound by our weapons of mass destruction, that
our so-called leaders have control over nothing, that none of us have
anything but words, but tongues, but delicate reedy leaves that vibrate with
the wind.

* watch the enfolding of the currents in the arms of the grass. watch the
faces of your friends flutter with the flux of energy that you manifest.
listen to the voices that merge into your memory. open your window and
watch the world billow with your releasing breath. that is simple. let it
be simple.

* peace. what else is there to struggle for? justice. what else is there
to learn? love. what more is there to give?

thought movement

crystalline mountain dew breath of the morn, i sucked into the outer deep and knew that this time was not the last. it would be forever. it had to be, simple as that and infinitely extended, mirrored corridor never-ending.
this moment, the shine, the gleam of it. i was here to do things. i would eat my meal with satisfaction, because i had made it. that kind of thing. abstraction itself could be called a blessing, if it wasn’t so undependable. it starts towards something and then disappears. i wonder.
i think i get my tenses mixed up frequently. but to tell the truth i’ve never really understood the delineations based upon time. past. future. present. as far as i can tell, there is just is. and then there isn’t. some people who are not “present” are still is. some events that have yet to occur effect now. kind of like this so-called boundary between life and death. as if there were some invisible barrier to be crossed into the impenetrable mystery. yet they are inseparable. death. life. i can’t really tell the difference. i don’t understand why these states have to be given names. happy. sad. is just is. i am forever. i am nothing.
in the amorphous journey into itself. so much lies in the mind. the drugs. the guns. the sexual deviancy. all of this is an extension of the mind.
scientific excursions, logical outgrowths. forgetting something? the mind. a wonderful, dangerous thing. sharp, almost aware of itself, buzzing.
thought is a weapon of destruction. creation is of no mind. thoughtless, active, fecund. the true mind is without consciousness. thoughtlessly rhythmic, like the heart. the thinking mind impedes, it puts stops, it backspaces, it deletes. movement is without thought. nothing. forever.

Running The Gauntlet

here’s a little drip-dropping flow for you, bro, sis, mister, miss: i dive into the alien elements like a dolphin through the light shafted sonorous medium of words, the media of existence, reverent movement of the lettered masses to the radiance of an individual creating, network flashing across unchartered space with a train of thought to carry the coals burning for you all to capture in your scopes, stationed, shameless, timeless,
us.
i share my shadow for the world’s shine, in the spirit of the spoken earth i dig, rhymes like jewels crevicing into the microscope of this moment, nodal points, subliminal ambience beating against the linear fragments of time–
and i am creating to be captured, felt, rhythmed into your skin spirited mind,
represented, reflected, released
into the blind eternity
of nothingness,
divine,
i am.
read me, listen to this song i sing to ease my struggle,
disarm my pain, despite the distance that i feel
in between my heart and the keys boarded along the crawling subterranean
fingers of broken waves;
it’s a process, you see,
the apple and the snake,
seeding, shedding, 1 + 2
and the outcome, you know,
is in the balance of you
and me and our acceptance
of the today in the tomorrow
of the child sanctified moon woman sensualizing sun,
of the old man in the sea,
fishing for the mystery
of giving ourselves,
of sharing ourselves
with one another.

i am here. now get you over, bring your elevation to the bridge, build this positive energy that we need like watered green for the soul, synapse stretch your spirit across the distance, breathe together and look at how the fear of our loneliness falls around our wonder like we one, like we tear drops dropping from the eyes of almighty everything–wordless, endless, forever feeding from our lives unfolding into now.
i think that we are beautiful. i think that we are alive. i think that all of the ugliness in the armored coinage of imprisoned emotions, all the loaded blindness of boxed-in shells, all of the fucking greed of the marketed surface world
can’t stop us from living
beautifully.

it’s a new year, my friends, my memories, my possibilities, my intertwining compatriots on the dance floor of our generation. shed beautiful art for me, for yourselves, cause our creation, our motion, our explored direction is what we’re going
to be treading over
to keep going, to move on,
to love.

this is dedicated
to all of you
who have made the effort
to show me your way
as you pass
by my path.
thank you.

A Glimpse Of Shameless Expression

joy, the movement of the body full of light, bouncing, rippling, limbs loosened, unfettered by appearance. she stood on a street corner dancing, wobbling about to a rhythm only she could hear, cars streaming through the intersection glancing, passerbys milling past the curb to the flashing call of the next sidewalk shore.
is it that people have seen everything? world-weary, dulled by the daily accosting blur of difference? or is it that people have seen nothing since that moment in their lives when someone beat the wonder out of them? childhood distilled to a residue of hidden malice. indifference.
there is only one language that cannot be misinterpreted: the unwithheld delight of the soul: the springy swinging of a dog’s bottom when you return home; the croon of a baby at the gift of attention, fingers waggling in bliss; the resounding, enveloping waves of beauty that emanate from a singer striking the depths of a note in a song; the radiant eyes of a stranger who knows herself in you.
sitting by the window in the bus, stopped at the light, i watched her standing there bopping about. i smiled to myself and felt happiness spread into me. i felt the potential in people, the delight fermented, waiting to be uncorked by a loving touch. there is so much more to every moment. if we could just stand like that in the midst of the crowd, and let our feelings flow through us, instead of running away to the next safe haven, instead of pretending not to understand. what is it in our lives that is more important than how we feel?

be beep b

once there was light it was seen that this was the way that it should be. in the pulse of our fading fears was known the path of many things. a subtle buoyancy of tempo pulling at fingering hesitancy, drawing out calling beauty til the pieces get sticky raw with stuff of life. here, says the glorious slug, herein lies the bait. can’t be always balanced, making ends meet. the ship slips down and sometimes takes on a bit of water on the way back up, if it be stormy, arrr. time is not a drum machine. notice the way the beautiful bottom of a girl washes side to side in a sway determined by what is around her. pretend not to notice, or stare blatantly from behind shades, it is the same. it is not for you or me, this earth. all of us, filling and emptying, slipping into nuanced sheens of interactive neurons. the only dragon’s hoard to be found nowadays sits within the calm depth of focused breath, streaming from belly-center. a halo of energy moves beyond while within the space of the mind there is nothing, there is simply skin.
steady, fluid, sexy.

Everywhere Here

we went down the road long way before we come home. and in the interim the rain it fell round, and like a spell we found that we were empty. we were free of all associations past present and future. ghosts spoke like wheels in our skin, through our minds. we were captivated by our deaths. looking for shelter, many of us tried to stop off the path and get dry. but no turning back. we’re addicted to the end, we said, shaking our heads.
here we are, moving, looking for a farewell. ain’t gonna be peace, never. everything is wet, sliding, glistening with everything. we try to be cool, we try to be hot, we try to be something, but it slips, it falls, it rises, it melts into nothing we can hold because it’s ourselves.
well breathing with the world we come to know the road is our home. the rain it falls round and intermittently the thunder scares us, and we see things clearly suddenly before the rune has rung back silence and darkness has swallowed the world again. and death, darkness? no, that was not the fear. the fear was the light, blasting, laying everything so crystal clear, so perfectly sudden, so known before understood. and emptiness, oh, we
are shelled by the enemy of ourselves. so we are hard
and we are soft,
and we are home, now.

shots in the dark

What am I going to do with my moment? When your eyes are directed at me?

I am running for cover. I am firing rounds. I am wondering. I am still. I am moving. I am loving you. I am wanting you to leave. I am growing weeds in the garden. I wish to share them with you. Your waves are in my space, excuse me. Rippling over my surface. I am trying to learn myself when I teach you the path to my heart. Never surrender to me. I will not fight you. I will devour you, lull you to sleep with my fingers, take you into myself, turn you into a dream, into a memory, into a symbol.
Struggle with me, I dare you.

Where are you going?

Calling

weell, so here is the room, spinning. sometimes i want to scream, ya know, cuz i have absolutely no idea who i am or where my mind is going. absolutely. bean bags form mountains into which i sink. but i feel so good sometimes, when i finally settle down inside of myself and say, “yeah. i’m here.” but then everything flies apart. come, fly in the teeth of the wind. but we need to be grounded. we need a solid beat that drops in order to get through to these kids on the streets, man. gotta cultivate that mask that distances the emotions while molding them into understandable forms. ever noticed how pop singers are so goddamn sincere? it makes me sick. i’ve never felt that sincere about anything. the things that really get to me come in the form of dreams, you know what i mean? they give you these indescribable feelings and fill you up with light and then you wake up the next minute and you have to take a piss, and you have to get on with your life. what i’m trying to say is that i’ve lost the ability to define myself. and noone’s helping me do it; in fact, people just tear me apart, claiming parts of my heart, exploding through my dreams, reverberating in my thoughts. so i wait, i hold back, looking for a space where i can stand and look at it all and understand. sometimes i look into another person’s eyes and this light will flash out to me, and i don’t understand. there seemsto be something going on that i have nothing to do with. what are they trying to tell me? what is it they want? what is it i want?
should i want something?
ha ha, now the funk starts to settle down into that groove where you know that it could go on forever, and then it suddenly turns the corner and you start looking around and noticing the little changes, the little interplays going on all around up in it. let me describe a vision which i have just received. let me relay to you some information downloaded from the network of my mind. brought to you live from the energy source that now sits in the thick of the scene. this is mc duod, also known as nothing in particular. i see this: i see waves. i see bodies. i see a rustling forward, a tentative meeting of the sunlight on the crest of it, twinkling with motion, wondering, rolling away, darkening, deepening, swinging, building, desire, emptiness, rushing back up to light with intensity, exhaling, knowing now what is there from what is not. warmth slapping into itself. there is an air we breath, there is a space we occupy. sharing. clutching into oneself. pushing away. climbing back. alone.
beauty only comes out of dark places.
and then everyone comes out to look at it, passing by, shining. it calls to them. it speaks to them. it sings to them. oh, god, how scared everyone is. they think that if they follow the voices they will drown, they will be left
stranded.
well, i guess they’re right. i feel lost. the only map i’ve got is the stars in the sky, and they don’t tell me much. they just shiver their dead light silently in the vast stillness of the night. and yes, how beautiful it is. it stuns you, it touches a place inside of you where all you can say is “oh, how beautiful,” as if it were a painting you could buy and hang on your wall. but here it is, every night, ready to overwhelm you. and what can you say? what can you do? there it is. and then you’re turning to look at the person next to you and you’re talking about tomorrow, or about yesterday, avoiding the depth that sits charged inside of you, the hunger that waits to swallow you when you’re alone.
yes, i know. it drives us forward. we are the stars now, shining constellations, randomly created pictures of the moment surrounded by an unfathomable darkness. light spitting into the void. life happens somewhere. the light catches on some piece of dust floating by and the music suddenly floods together, the spaces, the silences become part of something else, a song that moves between two closures, vast emptiness and exploding lights. there is a mind listening, connecting the distance with imagination. there is a heart feeling, connecting the distance with love. there is a body pulsing, connecting the distance with heat. and here i am, sitting, the room spinning. and there you are, sitting. i don’t know what your room is doing. i don’t know what your mind is doing. i don’t know what your heart is doing. but i know that it is beating back to me somewhere, sometime. i know that out of this distance there is a wave that travels into the ocean, i know that there are fish that move, eddying with the currents, i know that you will need to eat, i know that you will be hungry, i know that there is a bird singing, calling outside of my window suddenly, i know that i need to pee really badly, i know that i will rise from this chair and do what i need to do, and that you will rise from your chair, and do what you need to do. just that. just this.

american dream

What is the future you’ve got stocked away in your heart? Gonna make it? Gonna make your parents proud? Are you holding all your happiness for that distant rock in which you’ll plant your flag and secure for all eternity?
Someone’s walked on the moon. It means nothing. We have gotten
nowhere.
Generations upon generations of people building mountains of money out of other’s flesh and blood. Someday, they tell their children, we will have it all. Someday, we will escape. Someday, we will be safe.
And so there is fear, and there is darkness, and there is locked rooms, guarded.
Open the door to your heart and let me in. I’m starving. Do I have to prove myself to you? Do I have to speak your language?
How close to the earth must I sway, sweeping in the wind like a broken tree?

Territory

Liquid, water forming steps. Slide down. The earth pulls. Forming and reforming with movement forward. Centering, dispersing. A motion picture as a succession of frames. On/off. On/off. The way light bulbs flicker just beyond perception. Transience, a continuous progression of establishment. There is much beyond. There is too much beyond. Focusing on what is immediate, what is sensed, what is felt, what is touched. Driving, stop go, green red. Pieces circling endlessly around an imaginary whole. Construction of narrative from selected layers. What you see is what you live confined within. A continuous passage, shuttling between perceptions. Negative capability. Man/woman. What space does the body occupy? What space do i occupy in my body? What space do I occupy in your body? Claiming, reclaiming. The only territory that i can truly possess is my own. Right here. Right now. This is mine. Always shifting, transforming. Boundaries are permeable, porous. In the search for an identity to occupy, in the search of the i for the I, i must find a space, i must fill it, and I must leave my mark, scented, scarred, burning. And then I must defend it.
You can have it. i am no-where. i am gone by the time You sniff me in the wind.

Tribe

Watching. Distant our minds grow from our bodies. We gaze at ourselves through the television, intelligence pouring from our faces like the fall of water onto rocks, streaks of lightning from a clouded sky breaking into the earth. We become objects, glistening with light, charged forms of desire, tremoring, moving across the surface of time like possessed animals, indefinable symbols.

Do you see the flood, O man in the suit, O man of the mirrored fortress?
Do you see what you have ruined in yourself? Do you think words will save
you now? Do you think that your past will teach you how to breathe
under
water?

There is no narrative that can encapsulate us. We are not a nation, we are not a generation. We are eyes, taking out the world, giving in the world.

We are love,
consuming everything,
holding onto nothing.

(Feb 7, 2000)

Did i say “love”? Such a trademarked term, traditional, safe. Not love, then. It is the experience of the moment i’m speaking of, the pushing forward like the prow of a ship through time, the forward falling pulse of a hi hat in a jazz stream. It’s the refusal to hold back any longer, the sudden spontaneous agreement to let go of everything and let yourself be whatever it is you are doing, whatever it is you are feeling. it is letting every single wave of consciousness that hits you run through you, refusing to stop, refusing to fall back onto what is known, what is certain, what is dead.

so then when you watch, when you sit and gaze at these dead images moving, dancing before your eyes, you are looking past everything you see. you know that these forms are meaningless, these words, these illusions. but you go with it, you let it take you, because you are no longer scared, you know that there’s nowhere that you can go that will take you away from what you aren’t. it is acknowledging that you could never possibly capture it, that you could ever possibly understand. it is accepting that every moment is a death, every moment is a birth.

we are the dead watching the dead,
living somewhere
in between.

pop life

the whole problem seems to lie in thinking that there is something you could do that would be considered wrong. that there’s some space youre not supposed to fall into, its like a pop beat–if you dont hit the snare at that one beat, youve fucked up the whole thing. so youre walking around avoiding certain things where you think you might do something wrong. and its superstitious, like avoiding cracks on the sidewalk and shit. theres normal and theres abnormal. theres right and theres wrong. youre on and youre off, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. really youre just losing all the time, youre always losing cuz theres that certain something that youre not getting that you need to get in order to be safe, in order to feel that youre something. like pussy, or money, or the new moby cd. our culture has kind of built up a nice myth to cover up this dilemma–the myth of the true love–that there is someone out there who will complete you, the missing rib from your body. so were always running after something that we dont have, because theres something wrong with us, theres something missing. theres emptiness inside, when youre alone you dont know what to do with yourself so you watch tv. but of course theres really nothing, noone that can ever make you more than you already can be, so eventually you run yourself down. but theres always little things there for us to fill ourselves up on before we hit empty again: nice little things like cigarettes, movies, video games, parties, sex. were scared that if we stop, if we dont feel like were going somewhere, if there isnt that snare right there when we want it to be, then were gonna fall flat on our faces, well be just another faceless part of the dead masses. and we will, because weve set ourselves up for it, because weve built our lives so much away from ourselves that when we fall back into ourselves we suddenly realize just how much none of it means anything anyway. we set ourselves up to fall the minute that we assume that there is the potential to fall, and this comes from the decision that we want to climb. but theres nowhere to climb if theres nowhere to fall. theres only one place to get to–and that’s where we are.