Even in absurdity, sacrament. Even in hardship, holiness. Even in doubt, faith. Even in chaos, realization. Even in paradox, blessedness
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"Life expands or shrinks in proportion to one's courage." ~Anain Nin
My life in random, internet comic  Bogged with school, et cetera. Please play outside on my behalf. jaybird found this for you @ 17:08 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Pale Blue Coincidences 
In these past few days The sun, so white and incessant, People can talk so easily of distance To be captive, here, on this pale blue dot, jaybird found this for you @ 21:55 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Autumnal Scribble I just placed my mood bracelet in the freezer because it seemed too happy. Yes, today is the first autumnal day, and in a few minutes I will walk into night air which is being changed by the tilt of the Earth, the rays of a neighboring star, and a metaphysical infusion of wonderment and human preoccupation with transformation. We are getting colder, day by day, that we may come inside and light fires and get warmer. And we will do this again for an unknown number of times until the cold penetrates us, and we are finally stone. Thinking that that new cool fall jacket keeps us warm, we are not separate from the natural cycle; we are the natural cycle, and will be absorbed by it in a million different ways. I am still mentally unpacking from California, and readjusting to life in Asheville. Ten days away can put a whallop on your consciousness. The blog isn't a huge priority right now- much more so is spending time with myself, getting back into this collection of muscle and memory, and playing the definition game. I'll make my best effort, blog as much as I can, but rest assured that after almost four years of this site, I refuse, ardently, to abandon ship. So, check in when you can, and bundle up (or not), for you are an animal stalking, whether it fits or not. jaybird found this for you @ 22:41 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Approach of the Sea III Yes, I know, I fell off the face of the Earth (rather, off the coast of that mythical frontier, California). While I have been journaling my experiences religiously, I've been lax in the electronic format. Whodathunkit? Anyway, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.I am having a stellar time, even with the knee getting worse, and having a rather tedious episode of getting lost in the city trying to corner another mythical frontier, The Castro, and all of the emotion and power of that rainbow. We've been to Big Sur, Monterey, and, well, just about everything I can think of. But it's been the relaxation I need, I'm feeling replenished and at peace. There's much more to say, much more to articulate that cannot yet be attached to words, these feelings of mine for this place and the feelings stirred as I choose to decontextualize myself amid the glittering skylines and emerald waves. Words are forming, like the fog belt, and encroaching, and like it there is no forcing, words appear on their own terms. So, when they do, there'll be more. One joyously lets go of expectation, slips onto the moment like a cable car on Market, cresting the hill, awaiting the next intersection, upon which one disembarks free, timeless, and hopeful... jaybird found this for you @ 13:35 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
California Stars: Real Jourrnaling This time, I'm handwriting my journal entries. I'm really enjoying that as it's muchmore intimiate, more of an interface between myself and I than myself and a computer. So, here's an entry presented in the old fashioned way. Good luck with my handwriting:  jaybird found this for you @ 12:49 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
So beginneth the journey west Undercover of night, the car is packed, the coffee made, the tickets confirmed. While I am very ready forthis, I am also torn, as my mother's situation has become more fragile asshe hasn't been hospitalized yet. Yet thereisonlyso much I could do, even in person. Thus, following advice of deeply respected folks, I'm just having to let go and trust. There's nothing else I can do, but it does add a bittersweet taste to the adventure ahead, to a golden coastline, to the western winds. Onward and upward. jaybird found this for you @ 02:27 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Surprise Surprises. The fact that they are an essential part of life is reason enough to savor the expectant journey through each minute. Surprises rule. Twenty four hours from now, I'll have loaded up and car and started the drive to the airport, for soon I'll be singing the verses to "California Stars" under such light. I'm headed to northern Cali for a real, gen-u-ine vacation in the company of one of the better humans on the planet, Gustav. This comes after an obviously troubling week, in which my mother had to be admitted to inpatient psychiatric care and work (as much as I love it) kicked my tushie. Luckily, my mother is safe, and in the hands of the very professionals she has spent her professional life training. I have proxies activated, and while the decision to continue the trip in lieu of her breakdown was difficult, I have her blessing to go, plus the knowledge that as a fellow adult, she must pursue a path of her own to wellness. I'll post a final thought later today. For now, it's bed and up in four hours to perform the liturgy at Jubilee, a final push before the west opens up, and the ocean rushes in. jaybird found this for you @ 02:24 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Mother Update Thank you,faceless bureaucrat, for keeping my mother away from the help she needs. Thank you for thelimitless red tape and arcane rules against protecting the mentally ill. Thank you for holding off on providing my increaingly frail mother with the safety net she deserves, and forcing her to sleep another night in a house so unlivable that I'm fighting from keeping this episode from the media in order to preserve her dignity. Thank you, faceless bureaucrat, for sitting on your puffy, soft, pink procedural hands while a very special personin my life falls rapidly into despair and mental anguish. You're doing a heckuva job. Yes, my mother is a cipher in some kind of procedural nightmare. They were unable to get her into the hospital today, despite the advocacy and support of several important community members. Apparently, the admit wil be tomorrow, and I'm afraid that my mother will again get caught in procedural malarkey while she is fighting a major battle- to regain her sanity and dignity. Of course, in protecting herdignity, I won't spill my mothers beans in this venue. Rather, I invite those inclined to send some positive vibes in her direction, especially a resolution to this quagmire preventing her from getting the help and support she deserves. jaybird found this for you @ 08:03 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Reality Thursday I received word yesterday from Delaware that my mother is rapidly deteriorating mentally. She is delusional, hallucinating, and has been off of her psychotropic mediation for an unknown amount of time. Her home was discovered to be in such a deplorable condition that it was immediately condemned due to environmental conditions related to her cat hoarding behavior, unlike anything a police officer attending the inspection had ever seen. Tomorrow morning at 10, she will be evicted and committed to a psychiatric inpatient facility. I knew that she has been decompensating, but not to this extent. I'm obviously overwhelmed and saddened, and kind of at a point of not knowing at all what to do, other than stand by the phone and wait for news. She does have a limited support system there of concerned friends and fellow church goers, willing to do whatever is needed, which is reassuring. I knew it would eventually come down to this, as she hasn't let me in the apartment for three years. I just hope that she is treated with dignity today, with love, support, and compassion. I hope she gets the help she needs. I hope she knows how important she is to me and how much I love her. jaybird found this for you @ 07:04 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Tuesday's Sleep Mumbling words between worlds, jaybird found this for you @ 08:28 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
The Waiting So, between the low altitude clouds jaybird found this for you @ 14:56 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
A Genteel Abduction Here's a strange one: The dream started off with the discovery of a large butterfly which had intentionally buried itself in the sand, with only the top of its head poking out. I grabbed my camera, and started shooting, and I suppose it got shy, bolted out of the sand, and took off. So, I continued on my hike, and there was a great roar over head. A squadron of blimps were racing through the sky, as if they were more like jets. I know there is some aeronautical discontinuity there, okay, but that was when myself and my hiking party were abducted by the aliens. We were all "made at home" in their lovely saucer, complete with glowing lights, reclining chairs, and journals to record our thoughts on the matter, which appeared to be generally benign. It also helped to make this abduction more genteel that the aliens looked like your typical Floridian library volunteer. One of them confided in me that they forgot the combination to a rather importnat hatch, and I glibly suggested that they try the Fibonacci sequence. Oh my, that just might be the ticket! So, I was appointed to make the "group report" to the aliens of our human experience of their saucer. Problem was, the 'saucer' began to revert into a regular ranch house, complete with a sliding glass door for easy escape, and rather drab, tedious furnishings and tchachkes. At this point I had lost all enthusiasm for I thought was an excursion into outer space, but was rather a mild trance taking place in Auntie Mabel's bungalow. I really wanted to get back to work, and the "alien" was going to try to hold my satchel of paperwork hostage. At which point I slugged the bitch, the alarm went off, and it was indeed time to get to work. Fortunately, work today is on the same planet. jaybird found this for you @ 11:54 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Saturdays I've fallen into a bit of a routine on Saturdays. For one, as I write skirting near the 11th hours, I am about to leave the house for the first time. As sweet and tempting as the verdant August world was through the window, I was far more compelled to read books as raptors consume prey, to note the sounds of the the house when I'm the only one in it, to indulge the cats in play, and to rest, and heartily. I find it interesting that on this day of the week where I am unbound by schedule, I abide here as an anchorite and leave only under the complete hush of full-on night, where cicadas mark the passage of true time and long shadows are cast from the lamps we hope maintain civility in these hours of planetary wilderness that creep in after sunset, poke at the shutters, and rifle through the trash. It is stimulating enough to witness, from this my sanctuary, a day breeze by with its bird calls, car horns, and conversations carried by the wind from the other side of the water. I slept through one promised party, though Casey did come by and we shared wine and spoke of California, which is almost two weeks away from jarring me out of my contextual cradle. As I need to go into the city to attend to a weekly chore, I am going to attempt walking. The knee feels much more pliant today, and the rebuke of pain seems to have subsided into an annoyance of nerves. The swelling has decreased to almost give one the impression of leggy symmetricality, though I'm not certain this case can be made yet. I hope, perhaps audaciously, to mount Prospero (my trusty bicycle steed) and ride into the city's morning. We shall see. While having been a brute of a mechanism, the knee is really not a big deal, compared with the overly abundant exapmples of everyday suffering I've personally seen and held, so I'm disinclined to hobbling painfully through life when so many can barely even move forward in its muck. The cicadas are luring me, begging for an audience for their interplay between trees. I've got to get my shoes on, pack a bag, and survey the city while the final minutes of Saturday pass, and the planet edges ever closer to another arbitrary point in time, upon which we humans fixate and dote upon with such ferocity. jaybird found this for you @ 22:51 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
selves within selves The light is long, as a sigh, jaybird found this for you @ 11:09 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Weird Electromagnetic Things Tonight Um, yeah. A flashlight which happens to be sitting on the dining room table just flashed at me- a sustained flash of about 2 seconds. I checked it, and nothing's loose, and it wasn't on. It's got an LED bulb and I watched the beam of opaque light on my shirt. Earlier, I flicked a light switch and the flourescent bulb in there, brand new, was flickering. Not supposed to happen. Once it worked itself out it became insanely bright. And the Wifi network is a total wreck- flying one minute, toast the next. What's going on and am I a little kooky to be slightly unnerved by it? jaybird found this for you @ 22:03 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
A brief dispatch before scrambling eggs It is raining, and more or less has been since I went to bed, which was at midnight. I awoke a few times with the thick night just musical in rain. Just a fewminutes ago, I left a book open at chapter 3, and waddled into my bedroom to find some shorts and that it was 11. That's late for me. I've been so consumed in reverie and the bucolic morning that my own annoyingly accurate penchant for knowing the time almost to the minute was thrown far off course, breezeless at sea. If there's anything big going on in the world right now, I don't know about it. The knee seems to be making a little less nerve noise, though I am aware of it, certainly. I've not made my Saturday eggs yet, and just a few minutes ago made my tea. I'm enjoying the rain, and I know that in a few weeks the taste in the air willbe crisper and the darkening skies will herald the contrast of cooler weather, and the closing up of the festive canopy that is summer. Bittersweetness. Things are good. Work is rewarding, the cats are entertaining, and the mystery which underlies everything throbs without hesitation... perhaps in muscle and bone, perhaps in the cadence of a stranger's voice, perhaps in the song that keeps rattling through the head like some coal-laden train through the steep valleys of thought and memory. And so it goes... happy Saturday. jaybird found this for you @ 11:10 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Canto LeConte When I was little, When my hands were small and still knew innocence, What changed? It could have been a glut of wasted days, "Whatever," one can say breathlessly, This is the whim of all incarnate, the mountains seem to say, LeConte, Wayna Picchu, Looking Glass, Shasta, Olympus, Devil's Tower- jaybird found this for you @ 17:20 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Moments So Far  Two rainstorms, now there's sun- Such is mid-afternoon on the sixth day of the week, The cat contemplates the light through the door- jaybird found this for you @ 15:14 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Happy Birthday, Little One I raise a toast of apple juice to one whose life brings great joy to a family, and great hope to the world. Happy 3rd, L. jaybird found this for you @ 00:01 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Scenes from Saturday As the bike and I made our way through the intersection on this thick July moon-as-peach-half-in-syrup night, the gentleman leaned out of his car window and asked, without the typical niceties of such a request, if I "suck dick." Now that information is not typically available for public digestion, so a wry smile was the only answer I felt was needed without even bothering with introductions, or discourses upon the weather. The smile, it sees, was deemed a provocation (touché!), and the gentleman in the car sent the remainder of his icy beverage after me, with the cubes rolling down the hill by the Federal Building as I slid further into the night, unscathed by projectile refreshments or by the obvious juvenile jabe which initiated our brief interaction. Fortunately, the bike prefers speed to dilly-dally among the many struggling comedians of summer. The higher you are above water, the harder it is to get the body to cooperate and dive, all graceful and swan-like. Perhaps that's why diving is an Olympic sport. At the lake house, I tried, from varying distances, many permutations of the dive, and had many sweet successes, gliding through the water with the aquatic elegance of a carp, all the hydrodynamic pizzazz of a barge. Yet the brief flight through the many strata of the lake (dark green and cold, yellowing and warm, surface with mist atop) was an exhilerating thrill ride and gill wish. Yet many attempts to perfect the dive from higher and higher heights were comical. Socially, it's much easier to explain that you're perfecting the belly flop, and to suck up the mid-flight change of plans. This body still remembers that last year, on July 9, water almost killed it... so this skiddishness at the edge is perhaps a mechanistic response to old programming. Perhaps, however, it just isn't that into the facial shock resulting from the impacting of water schoz first from twenty feet up. I watched a Kingfisher do its thing today but its nose is rather built for parting the water below with ease. How very like me, to have bird envy. The morning was all fits and starts, bouncing from dream to dream like a debutante at the ball. Something idyllic was about the place... it was the very quintessence of Saturday morning; bright, distant sound of lawnmowers, NPR in every room, cleaning the house naked with an omelet (mushrooms, garden pick'd tomatoes, garlic and Swiss) in the pan. Yes, cleaning the house buck nekkid. Please don't feign shock because I know you've done it too. Clothed, of course, I wandered through Marjorie's garden, and was astounded atthe ecosystem that is the front of our house... bees knee deep in squash blossoms, ladybugs doing aphid drivebys, the momentary glimpse of a curious rabbit. The sunflowers were audacious in their height, let alone their broad petal finery. It was quite a way to wake up, nevermind what's in your cup. Then, I gathered myself to examine the day's news. Pitiful. Another bloody Mideast war on our hands, thanks in part to the policies on this side of the pond. Talk about ripples. I have to wonder at this point why the phrase "if it ain't broke don't fix it" does not have a contrarian relative in modern parlance. It is ALL broke, can we please fix it? We have enough tragedies going on already, quota fulfilled, do not pass 'Go.' This crude exchange has the potential to blow the lid off of the whole region, and our president (?) is busy talking about eating pig in Germany? WTF? Sorry, I forgot that the humor was meant to be 'folksy.' My omelet was slightly below par while worrying that the Neocons have finally set the stage for the Armageddon they've so thirsted for. At least the orange juice was good. jaybird found this for you @ 23:45 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
An Open Letter to the Motorists of Route 280 [WARNING: extremely rare graphic verbal content] Dear Individuals, Today, there was a tragedy on the road, and you were directly responsible for the painful, agonizing death of one sad, misplaced creature. Today, I impugn a slurry of care-free motorists for failing to stop and aid the creature in its misery, and I accept no excuses pertaining to your rush to attend barbeques, picnics, pool parties, 24 hour sales in the next county over, monster truck pulls or any other dubious attempt at leisure making. Out of scores of passing cars, none pulled over or even slowed down- the doe died slowly, with tortured undulations, without dignity, after being hit not once but twice by the passing fancies of a four day weekend. Blood, cherry red as a Corvette, exploded from the animal, and I just stared in awe as such an elegant creature suffered convulsive fits under a motherfucking McDonald's billboard. It struggled to make sense out of the dual 50 MPH blows which landed it across the street, whereupon I rest my next indictment to the driver of the white truck. The driver of the white truck, with his aviator glasses, Carhart boots and mullet, did stop, and I was filled with hope that someone will either a) be a little proactive in flagging other drivers to avoid re-injuring the creature, or b) will deliver swift mercy to the terrified, heaving, and even-in-death magnificent being. No. The gentleman kicked the deer in the back of the head, the way a car buyer kicks the tired of a jalopy to-be. Not a kick intended to relieve the doe of her torment, but an asinine boot thrust of a callous coward immune to the extreme pain which lay in a golden coat beneath his feet. As if to say "you're mine, bitch," his kicked and the deer quivered in an attempt to life her head. Had she the ability, she would've certainly kicked back. I know this man saw only meat before him, not a confused refugee of shrinking forest, I know he was butchering the creature with his eyes, and I certainly know that I will be counter-accused of Bambi-like over-sentiment. I've honestly never seen the film, but I do feel greatly that there is a sick injustice at work here, the injustice of man's purported rise above the thickets, woodlands, and marshes of his ancestry. Man inhabits artifice: white trucks, pavement, restaurants and shelters which seem so promisingly fortified against the wilderness. Yet man is entirely interwoven with wilderness, the twain are inseparable. The doe, utterly in the wrong place at the wrong time, represents to me the great, unbridled spirit of the early years of the American experiment. This nation was lauded by the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and Wilde for its brave open expanses, for the idea of cohabitating with the wilderness rather than the need to have dominion over it, to crush it with interstates and outlet malls. We lost the balance and entertained the power of greed, and greed of power. We lost the respect for the bear, the elk, the buffalo, and saw them instead as in the way of our industrial hard-ons which sought ever-ripe ripe valleys for their profit and prophet motivated pleasure. The doe, the walking wild, no longer has her place within our world, unless she is meat. I was mightily disturbed a few months ago when the most popular arcade game played by the kiddies was a simulated hunt; the pixilated creatures do not thrash about after getting virtually shot, they do not meet your own eye with their own glassy upturned gaze, they merely disappear in a bright cartoon explosion, and you’ve got points. Have we so over-saturated ourselves as humans on the destruction of the natural world that we must now simulate its slaughter in air conditioned comfort? What the hell? Thoreau, will you come to cradle the dying deer? Who will stand for compassion? May America stop a moment to wipe its dying brow? I know full well that I’m oversimplifying and at the same time aggrandizing a simple accident with an animal. I know that the man in the white truck is conditioned against these pansy sensitivities of mine, and I can’t find him truly at fault, for he’s never known otherwise. Once born into the machine, it takes a major malfunction of sorts to see beyond it. I am grateful that the machine of my incubation was faulty enough to allow me to see the system from outside, yet as a human on this planet where the system is the predominant political and social paradigm, I am dependant upon it, weakened by its gravity and spellbound by its latest products. At times I am the frightened doe, calculating danger as it crosses the highway. At times, I cannot help it, I am the man in the white truck, kicking my quarry, sold to the material moment, lost in the drool of utter predation. Yet I sense deeply and possibly recklessly that the ever elusive purpose for our presence here is to evolve, passionately, and to think, and reason… to be the neural mechanism for this organism we call Earth, to be the cat that catches its own tail, to be sensory organs to witness with our lives the expanse of Creation. To say that I don’t believe that we exist to tear apart the flesh of this world with our psychic teeth does not mean that we are above the cycle of predator and prey; indeed we are animals, and as such, have a place within the mammalian/chordate dance of hunter and hunted. We are peer to (and in the wild needfully respectful to) the beings of claw, talon, fang and hoof. Their presence is essential to the balance and sustainability of this amazingly intricate ecology which comprises of billions of organic metaphorical gears, pulleys, and levers per square mile. The does, falcons, turtles and amoebas are the body of this world, and we may very well exist to be the mind of it, the self-experiential engine of its time incarnate. The soul is another thing entirely. So America, as represented by the motorists of NC 280 Southbound, will you be mindful of the brakes within your artifice? Will you be mindful of the teeming, verdant and quintessential state of affairs from which you emerged, bipedal and curious, oh so long ago? Can you take notice that the quiet ideas that keep you awake at night might just be more meaningful than the deadlines which split your life up into a clutter of parentheses? Just, for the Love of it All, attend and heed to your actions and consequences, and strive against casual pain, lest we find ourselves on the road, dodging the density of our own machinations, imperiled by the pretense of being what we’re not, by the haste to complete a defeatist game of our own design. Happy Fourth. Sincerely, A human whose pansy sensitivities won’t preclude him from speaking bluntly, when needed. jaybird found this for you @ 13:13 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Fost and Lound So, I just went to retrieve the wallet which I discovered went missing this morning, when I rolled out of bed still in shock over a humid hour of unexpected kissing and companionship at the club last night. I emerged from slumber late for Jubilee, exhausted, and so reactivly allergic to something that my eye was damn near swollen shut. I think, for that span of sneezing and awful hours, I was allergic to the very air we breathe. I spent the day, when conscious, anxious over the missing wallet and all the drudgery of having to replace all of this thin pieces of paper and plastic that somehow cement my identity in the 21st century. All was there, execpt for about $100 in cash. What a weird mixed blessing, y'know? The hundred clams were gone, but they (the ubiquitous they) could've destroyed my bank account with the debit card, or stolen my identity with everything else. The cash came from a wedding I'd performed earlier, and I was quite thrilled at the time not to get a check as I could spend it with a quickness. Yet had I gotten a check, I probably would'nt have gone to the club and thus wouldn't have gotten into the extended make-out session, which was quite pleasurable, as you can imagine. I was also pleased with the pay out as I got stiffed for the last wedding I'd done (by my family, no less). It's a mixed bag of no gain, no loss, and making for damn sure that my pocket is buttoned whilst tongue jousting amid a sea of drag queens and trance tramps. I just hope that the cash went to a worthwhile cause rather than up the nose, and I'm sure that I'm somehow working off a karmic debt load on an installment plan. Seriously, though, I am thankful that most everything is there, but I am pissed that people can't just return lost objects without finder's fees. C'mon, peeps, there is something called decency and doing what's right, is there not? I know the deathknell for Chivalry has been rung for some time now, but I've not yet seen it listed in the obits. I have found several wallets over the years, sometimes with much cash inside 'em. I call the police and turn it in, without so much as thumbing a single because it's just plain right. Don't we as a society engage in enough interpersonal theft (intentional and otherwise), and aren't we collectively the victims of enough institutional pickpocketing to be turned off from emulating it in our own little self-governing spheres? Then again, nothing gained and nothing lost, really. Behind that lost cash is a newly married couple and warm fuzzies of a garden ceremony. And in the moment that the wallet left my back pocket, I was all a'smooch to the bass of drums on a warm, sweetly dark Saturday night. So, I reckon, despite my curmudgeonly misgivings over the loss of cash, the memories which bracket the day last far longer than five pieces of paper. Call it "memory tax." jaybird found this for you @ 23:06 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
3 weird fortunes At the Chinese restaurant tonight: jaybird found this for you @ 00:02 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
It's a little too bright out there today It looks hot out there. The sun is full tilt, Americans are bracing for an orgiastic celebration of codependence, and I've got an outdoor wedding to do in a few hours. It caps a week of being "on," and I'm hoping to be off, quite off, very soon. It seems that tomorrow is a day completely bereftof schedule, dayplanner scribble, or anything even masquerading as a responsibility. There is much writing to do, which usually falls under the leisure header, though tomorrow I might just go completely visceral and instead do things to spurt creative juices (ahem) rather than force them. Right now, however, I've got to see if I can unwrinkle the wedding shirt and get into matrimonial mode. Meanwhile, here's pictures of wonderfully silly summer kitties:   jaybird found this for you @ 12:39 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
The spiders of my apartment  jaybird found this for you @ 08:41 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Singing (ritualistically) in public, etc. You may have noticed that on Sunday, I Honestly, though, the most profound aspect of the experience was the wave of music that I bodysurfed on... hearing three hundred people singing back to me, doing the hand gestures, and transmitting a powerful signal of acceptance was overwhelming and intoxicating. I ceased being "me" for fifteen minutes and just focused on the moment exclusively. It was unlike any other organic, holistic, nondogmatic ministerial experience I've had thusfar. Word. In other news, last night I skinnydipp'd with a slew of relative strangers after an incredible meal. The lightening bugs in the trees were downright selacious in their luminescent burlesque. Meanwhile, the high energy drink I just drank (synonymous with a rufous masculine bovine) is not helping me to "fly" but seems to be fucking with my ability to stay awake. What the hell? Have I bottomed out on caffeine so completely that these single servings of motivation are not little more than placebos in a can? What's next? Resorting to hourly trips to the electric outlet with tongue outstretched? Smoking espresso beans in covert, jittery tokes behind art galleries? A trip to Gitmo for wakefulness training? I have two cases of the shit and two hours to get some serious work done. I'm tempted to see if one more will do anything to keep me from yawning my way into another night of being highly unproductive. jaybird found this for you @ 20:13 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Meditation: A journey home to the soul Every morning before I make my tea, I brace myself as I turn on the radio to groggily hear what matters most at the top of the hour: “From Galactic Public Radio on Planet Earth, I’m a human being. In today’s news, a mockingbird sang late into the night in Asheville, while a cacophony of fireflies lit up a field with bioluminescent abandon. A waterfall in the Pisgah National Forest formed countless rainbows, through which children dove and butterflies flew. The sunset was reportedly a honker, while a weird little man watched in awe and realized that the soul is not some hackneyed daydream but a real manifestation of our quest to experience fullness of life. And politicians worldwide have determined that they are no longer relevant to an emerging paradigm of personal spiritual evolution, and the weather’s fine.” If only, right? If only soul stirring moments were the headlines, and soul deadening institutions took a hint and folded. We can only dream, and in the dreaming, possibly catch a shimmering momentary glimpse of that elusive concept we call “soul.” Everyone struggles, at one time or another, to define the thing, which as an enterprise is as daunting as a cat finally catching its own tail. Yet we all in our own way seek out the soul within ourselves and each other in a mythical odyssey to at last Know Thyself. Breathe deeply. The word ‘animal’ is derived from the Latin anima, which is defined as soul. Anima itself comes from the Latin root “ani,” which translates to ‘breath’ or ‘wind.’ In my line of work, I must occasionally remind children that we are animals, and their reply is typically defensive. “Animals stink.” Actually, we all stink (some more than others) and anyone who denies it needs a nasal recalibration. “Animals can’t talk.” I truly believe otherwise when I hear a wren defend its perch or my cats chew me out for coming home too late, and who can forget Koko, the sign-language gorilla? “Animals can’t build spaceships.” True, but you, my young friend, can’t rollerskate in a buffalo herd. But, as Roger Miller sang, “you can be happy if you put your mind to it.” At which point the kids look at me funny, walk away, and seek more validating conversation with toy robots. Ancient wisdom tells us that the soul is the animating principle in all living things, while science tends to beg difference. Science has articulated a mechanical approach to understanding life, yet hasn’t devised a theorem to say why we exist at all in the first place. It is in that ‘why’ that I find sweet mystery, a refreshing lack of answers, and creative wiggle room. Perhaps diving head first into that ‘why’ one may catch a clue to that self-referential spectacle of purpose that confounds us when we attempt to define it. In quantum physics, it’s been demonstrated that when a particle is under observation, its behavior changes. The soul seems to operate in a similar manner. Averse to being boxed in, the soul plays hide-and-seek when you have the dictionary and magnifying glass out, yet it makes itself known when you’re nowhere near the ‘record’ button. Right now at the very least, most of us are awake and conscious, or as much as we can be for a Sunday morning. Consciousness is for psychology what the soul has been for mysticism; consciousness forms the seat of awareness, while the soul connects our awareness to something vaster. Like the soul to the seeker, consciousness remains a mystery to researchers. Thousands of pages in scholarly journals are written about consciousness each year, just as thousands of napkins are scribbled on by yearning poets journeying to understand the breath within them. The readings today tell of feats of magic and faith which transform inert, dead matter into life sustaining flesh. How may these parables inspire consideration for our own bodies, awareness, and stories? What about them ignites an inmost tickling of our reckonings with the soul, body, and the subatomic entanglement of it all? Breathe deeply. Being a bit of a self-proclaimed metaphysical wing-nut and card-carrying member of the Wacky Ideas Club, I have had my own theories about the soul. They began with a rather inventive cosmology as a young child, in which I believed every person had a little Casper the Friendly Ghost inside them who sent a daily celestial telegram of misdeeds to God, who weighed them against the amount of guilt you should feel for the rest your life. Fortunately, I was exposed to transcendentalism early on and we tweaked that just a tish. I can’t recall the first time I truly sensed of the soul, but I’d like to think that it was a night that, as an nine year old rug rat, I stayed awake in my bunkbed all the way through to the purple light of morning, mentally overheating while attempting to grasp the idea of the infinite, and the sheer terrifying size of the Universe. While feeling so utterly small, I recalled feeling a ripple of interconnection, a weird sensation of safety and connectedness within it all, a nearness to the eternal. I felt that sensation within the scrubby woods of youthful summers, touching leaves with hopeful fingers, rope-swinging over dark water and hidden bullfrogs, and in willful surrender to the drenching daring-do of passing thunderstorms. As a child yet unjaded by the minutiae of routine and responsibility, the freedom of forest and sand was exhilarating. By virtue of being alive, we are all entitled to experience a harboring within holy moments which illuminate a sacredness unique to us, within and throughout. Call it the soul, the mind, or the silent whirring of mitochondria, do you think these conscious experiences of closeness might just be one way the cat finally catches its own metaphorical tail? The words and music are by Dougie McLean… CHORUS: I feel so near to the howling of the wind And yet, as you can imagine, getting to know the absolute core and essence of the self is not entirely a joyful romp through huggy-kissy happy land. As beings whose range of experience is not bounded (!), we at times must endure great despair in order to comprehend the magnitude of our being here, the repercussions of consciousness. Indeed, as innocence passed beneath my little troll feet, the world of youthful awe became grittier, discovery and surprise became harder won. I forged my way through foggy and dead times, sloughing off wonder for the quick fix. I had never felt the soul as a vividly essential part of self as I did in the aftermath of my greatest failure, lying there one gray morning in pain, loneliness, in my own reckless crucifixion. It was that feeling, there, within and around the hardened earth of my own body, which forced me to sit up, forced me to breathe through the miseries of my own decisions, to come to life again and transform. VERSE: So we build our tower constructions CHORUS: I feel so near to the howling of the wind Anima, spiritus… “Young man, I say unto thee, arise…” Anam Cara, soul friend… “…and the soul of the child came into him again.” We have the remarkable good fortune of being cosmically allowed to be shocked out of our stupors and into realization of our presence within the eternal. We rent a framework of muscle and bone that, as aspects of the Universe and ongoing expressions of the Big Bang, can arise, breathe, laugh heartily and love big for the blink of time we’ve won. It would seem that the gift of our being here is easily distracted by the mundane, yet why can’t it all be a vehicle for self-awareness? In “Wings of Desire,” a film by Wim Wenders, Peter Falk tells an angel considering giving up the business of merely observing the world beneath him that “on a cold day, you can rub your hands together, and you can drink coffee, and it’s good.” What he describes is a holy moment, a firing of the senses for the conjuring of spirit. In one of his last and certainly shortest sermons, the Buddha lifted a flower, laughed, and just walked away. Simplicity. Directness. Presence. The soul won’t be summoned by pedigree and pontification, but by doing something purposefully, by breathing with the wholeness of the body, and by savoring the unpredictability of each passing minute. CHORUS: I feel so near to the howling of the wind So these holy moments of realization can come cheap, if not free. For adults, it may take practice, but for children still living within a world as yet unfettered by deadlines, those wide eyes and intense curiosities are symptoms of the adventure of knowing thyself, of the journey home which decades later is still unraveling as a map marked by a miraculous topography. The journey to the soul, down sunset trails, passing through rivers of deepest magic, is our birthright, and quite possibly, our purpose. CHORUS: I feel so near to the howling of the wind Oh yeah.  [delivered today at the Jubilee Community, Asheville, NC]
jaybird found this for you @ 14:25 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
A big tacky event At present I'm chaperoning a 450-person event that is quite gaudy. Cute, but gaudy. This time tomorrow, I will hopefully be lying flat after Gotta go, I think the burlesque performers are getting antsy. jaybird found this for you @ 14:21 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
♫Going back to Cali, Cali, Cali♫  Hovering over the "Purchase Tickets" button was agonizing. Do it?, not do it?, ad infinitum. It was in fact a muscle spasm in my left index finger that caused the rather spontaneous ticketing, and now I am two months away from accidentally gallivanting through San Fran, Big Sur, the Esalen Institute, with mi amigos Gustav and Casey. I'm actually flying on that recently minted "ominous" day, Sept. 11th, just because that's how things worked out. No doubt, it will be a safe day to fly. Anyhoo, it's not only a day off, it's also the twentieth anniversary of my first official Day of Rebirth, June 21st. The story is long, and you can read it here. Today, I'm taking off for Max Patch for some soul stretchin' and revitalization at the top of the world. As always, the lessons of this day are unpredictable. We shall see... jaybird found this for you @ 13:59 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Aloha, Shalom, Loveya. A few days ago, it was time to say my 'goodbyes' to my soul friend Gustav, who was returning to Californa, from whence he came. I found the actual act of uttering that word difficult, so the best I could do was mutter 'aloha' into his shoulder. The word which comes far from my cultural sphere is defined as both hello and goodbye, love, peace, and all that jazz. Goodbye implies such a severing of continuation, a closing, rather than the open perpetuity to which I cast my love and friendship. 'Aloha' initially conjures up images of Hawaiian shirts, tiki torches and schmaltzy luaus with Don Ho crooning late into the night, spilling to VFW parking lots all across America. Hello, Hawaii. Yet on a whole other level, subbing 'so long, farewell,' with the Polynesian homage to 'shalom' blasts a tearful moment with a tish of blazing sun, open heartedness, and a bit of a mystical acknowledgement that it's all the same damn thing... the soul is somewhat learning disabled when it comes to the human, limited perception of time. The soul understands that time doesn't quite flow the way we think it does, and once two conscious beans meet and groove into a friendship beyond weather reports and water cooler dialectics, we click on a cosmic level and stay connected no matter what. Aloha is a little easier to prepare in the subconscious kitchen of language. My best friend Joshua beautifully takes things a step further and assures that even the most casual conversation ends, if it really ever does, in 'I Love You,' which is even more blunt than the pineapple-scented syllables from the Pacific. Goodbye is for wimps. So long is for wussies. Aloha, and its subsequent transcendent spirit, forces us to open to all possibilities, and to worry not about the farewell, but to bask in the love and to glisten in the coconut oil of gleaming opportunity. So, to Gustav, here's to transformation, and a lifetime wave of friendship so large you could surf an elephant through it.  jaybird found this for you @ 19:49 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Bare Ass Nekkid As a silly stunt after swimming the other day, I walked b |
