Pop: “King of Pop Dead”

so announced that strange etheric groupmind we call pop (as in pop culture) the other night through its happening-response dispersal units we call the news or gossip or word-on-the-street.

and what is the one comment we can make with absolute certainty?
the reports are untrue.

the one&only Michael Jackson did not die where, when, how and why he is said to’ve.

as far as we know, he just as likely could’ve died several years ago as he may live for many more to come.

facts were contorted. but which facts and how so?
the news will continually update us on where not to look, what is not true.

you would need business-intelligence breakdowns as absurd & impossible as the national security defense-intelligence breakdowns on 9/11 to allow a product as phenomenal as the King of Pop to die randomly.

 

“conspiracy theory”
1. there is always more to the story
2. no one does anything alone. everything literally is a conspiracy.
3. “conspiracy theory” is the pop phrase for stories that factually contradict news stories.
4. the popular understanding of “conspiracy theory” is at least as misguided as the popular understanding of “the news”

 

ultimately the news’ product is a stabilized perspective, a compromise between ever-evolving truth and justifying the past. it’s what we sell our own selfs as individuals, sure, but organized for a group.

truly interesting is wondering how people would be feeling & acting on this day if not for this news. chicken&egg the news and the popular reaction maybe.

oh but that’s preposterous.

 

that phoenix show was like a creepy dreams-come-true slap in the face. it’s maybe the one thing i wanted for sure. it never even occurred to me to consider it possible. then one night Al, rather off-handedly, broke the news of some “super-secret myspace show at the record bar.”

i still don’t believe him.

highly suspicious, i looked at him like, why are you telling me exactly what i want to hear most? wondering if i should perhaps be physically guarding my heart.

i might’ve attacked a lesser man.

 

i think phoenix is one of the most important musicers in the world. and i consider this event to’ve been like a priming, like a raindance say, like how i heard they were charging the London 2012 Olympic sites with raves, which sounds silly but a smart idea whether true nor nay.

i find the future very exciting. i don’t see why it can’t be so very exciting for Kansas City as especially as anyone.

 

we’re reorganizing for a new project around here. almost done. or ready to start rather. everything takes forever.

 

here’s the song we’ve been doing: Vacation by The Go-Go’s

“two weeks of attitude and i still haven’t gotten over you yet”
–not what they say

burglar’d

finally got that hamburglar away from sweetms. he was out of town with his rock & roll band, and she was at Kelly’s – pounce!

so i roll up with my way-cool oversized plastic cup o’ swill: ”good grief hamburglar, you’re sure looking terrific tonight.”

and she’s all excited: “katz, hey! bryan-bryan-bryan-daisy-bryan-daisy…”

she’d been having the worst feelings all day about something so horrible happening to that beloved bryan. and it practically all came true! there really was some rock & roll band van disaster. no one was hurt though. not too terribly serious in the end. oh but what a disruptive inconvenience indeed.

“no, but seriously,” she kept saying to re-emphasize the intensity & reality of the worry that had plagued her all day, clawing at her insides, projecting the most horribly heartbreaking premonitions on that big screen in her mind. she said she’d just been thinking the worst thoughts all day. and although no fate so murderous & complete had found her sweetums, that relief remained quite overshadowed by the feared possibilities of the day and their apparent correlation with the actual happening of bad & danger.

i knew what she meant. there was certainly an ominousness in the air that day. my own housemates had left on a roadie too, and some strange foreboding had me practically expecting them never to return, seeing crumpling metal and flames, doggie fur flying and a single heartbreaking tire escaping down the roadway. and there was nothing i could do to prevent it. so i didn’t worry about it. i know what a ridiculously overreacting liar my silly brain translator can be. so whenever those thoughts would occur out of nowhere, i’d just look at em and wonder why. be like, oh, really? that’s all gonna happen huh? should i freak out about it then? is that what you want? and where’s your proof again exactly, mr. almost-always wrong, way wrong?

i’m exceptionally lucky in that regard, though, i realize. able to so-avoid many normalcies in my rather stunted growing-up, i’ve managed to study my own self and that hilarious mechanical character we all call the human body not to mention the ultra-strangeness we simply call reality, in unprescribed ways, luckily discovering many patterns of tricksies those three tricksters so love playing upon us.

i was relieved to hear how the hamburglar’d been dealing with these thoughts, these negative unwanted thoughts by erasing them, and i was proud of her father for having taught her to do so – brilliant! basically, what she was doing was instead of trying to avoid & flee the unavoidable worries & fears attacking her from behind, from the inside like a double-agent uprising, she turned to face them. (see how empowering certain types of info can be?) she stretched out on the couch, relaxing her body, and concentrated on the thoughts in her mind, using her imagination to fight back by imagining an eraser erasing them back to their source and even erasing those darn aggressive & mean thoughts, trying to monopolize her day’s limited time & energy (Life), right out of existence. 

unfortunately, she still spent most of the day overwhelmed, but what she didn’t do is panic and allow the confusion & anxiety to steer her into even more dangerous situations & accidents, which is what tends to happen to people, huh? though she had been fighting a losing battle with old technology. the barbarian hoardes had since upgraded to laser blasters against which her erasing-technique’s joan de arc sword was barely any match at all. what she needed was a jedi’s lightsaber, which can not only deflect them laser blasts but even redirect them in progressive ways. because there will always be conflict, it’s absolutely indispensible to these stories we’re being, but conflict can be allowed either to ruin the story or to progress it.

so, first we have to understand what is actually happening in such situations. notice that some unknown force basically hijacked her imagination and was using it to broadcast or project her fears to herself. something about that day, the quality of the day, not even necessarily having anything to do with specific circumstances, the past or the future – just something about that period of time included a particular type of force to an unusual degree, and this force was acting upon her in an unwanted but unavoidable way. it so pre-occupied her thoughts that it effectively prevented her from thinking about & doing what she would’ve preferred. although she hadn’t the means & awareness to overcome that force, she did have each sufficient to engage it in a stalemate essentially. the less self-aware would have become mobilized by this force, acting in ways contrary to their own self, likely lashing out at another, perpetuating the spread of this strange (though quite natural) force.

so hamburglar wakes up. knowing sweets is roadtripping, she has a natural tendency to have her imagination throwing itself out towards his journey, worrying about him, but also imagining good times for him. this is just part of having a relationship; the closer or more intimate the relationship, the more intertwined are the individuals’ energies, but in any relationship energy is constantly bouncing back & forth between the sources, like the constant interchange & pinging of info between those computational terminals on that interwebbing (Indra’s net); depending on one’s level of awareness these pings may manifest as thoughts & images in the nog or just get stuffed straight into that maximum security containment facility in the subconscious.

but something about this day contorts her imagination, directing it only toward the negative, using it to express her most pertinent fears, like selecting just the right lure to hook that fishy. and not only is her imagination forcibly contorted toward the negative, it is also made to express itself unrelentingly, made to gush at full overwhelming speed ahead. whatever this something is, whether in fact some part of the hamburglar’s own self or some outside culprit or even both, we’ll simply call it a force. unfortunately, we can’t really say anything for sure about this force’s ultimate aim – no point in judging it too harshly. but what we can say is this force was absolutely intent upon draining the hamburglar’s energy. and not just any energy, not physical energy, as it didn’t seem intent upon runaway motor-boating her body all around the room willy-nilly; but creative energy, hence stealing through the imagination & emotions rather than logical thought or reasoning or physical movement.

let’s think about creative energy then. where does it come from? when you sleep your body stores up energy, regular physical energy; then it wakes up and spends that energy on tasks – physical movement and related qualities of thinking - till it runs out of energy and must sleep again. plenty of earthlings still dwell only upon this level of energy exchange with Life. it’s rather animalistic or mechanical and completely habitual and survival-based.

there is a more complicated aspect of life that can develop within the self though, and this is called self-awareness. self-awareness is like a whole other level of reality grown within an individual. it begins with an inciting moment, an experience shocks the individual enough to induce the necessary depth or breadth of realization, leading to self-reflection. think of Tarzan seeing his own reflection in the mirror and finding it to be different from those apes he’d always associated with. this aspect of life can then grow or wilt, and it can be cultivated of course. while the body sleeps, accumulating its physical energy, this self-awareness attracts its own energy, creative energy.

so, one’s level of self-awareness will determine the amount of creative energy accumulated. what is your own level of self-awareness? well, good luck figuring that one out. for one thing, regardless of your own potential, you’ll tend to stabilize at the same level of those with whom you associate. your excess creative energy will then be spent on maintaining that level, by creatively denigrating your own self, self-defeating thoughts and such to bring you down to and keep you at their level. this is why friends are important, and why i’m so picky there. but it’s less about friends even than cultural conception.

perhaps you can see that television, brought to you by them adwizards, is like a mirror with a manipulated image. it contorts your self-concept, your conception of others and society at large. in doing so it shapes your accumulated creative energy, directing you in the re-making of your self, in the imagination and creation of your self-image & persona. it channels your creative thinking, imagination, dreams, desires and such into pre-formed avenues, which are really marketplaces. and the majority of people’s creative energy is spent on becoming socially acceptable or improving their standing in society, dreaming of that car or that job or that girl or that wristwatch – that lifestyle. really this is the effect of the mirror of popular culture rather than only television.

even more powerful expenditures of creative energy than thing-accumulation are sexual & romantic imaginings. complicated-complicated for sure, at least to discuss like this. the stereotype would be that girls have a tendency to focus all or most of their creativity into the building of a relationship, a romance. and so it was in the hamburglar’s case on that day that when that force hijacked her imagination to deplete her creative energy stores, it did so through the romantic relationship channel, creating sweetms-related fantasies, worriful fantasies.

why worriful? because this, then, is the most common expression of excess, otherwise unexpressed, unintentionally expressed creative energy: anxiety, worries, negative fantasy and the like. for whatever reason this is the more socially acceptable expression of what is really creative emotional leakage & seepage. the man on the street is allowed a much greater breadth of expression for negativity & worry than for positivity & joy. in fact, the latter pair often inspires or stimulates negativity in others, aggressive negativity even.

and so those with above-average self-awareness are often found to be excessively emotional, and this is because their lives are structured in such a way that does not allow for the otherwise constructive expression of this excess creative energy. hamburglar & i were both pestered by this same force of creative suction, but its affects upon us were drastically different. for one thing i’ve been trained in more sophisticated means of re-distributing my own energy within myself, multidimensional meditation for instance. but even more importantly, i’ve cultivated creative outlets that are not dependent upon anyone or anything else.

the reality of this strange force’s affect upon us was an influx of creative expression. because i have learned to use my nightly accumulation of creative energy on the imagining, organizing, and writing of stories, and made it a practice in my thinking and even more gradually in my doing, though, i had more of an outlet, an autonomous outlet not dependent upon the circumstances of another, at which to re-direct the energy of this force. hamburglar, though, living her life by much more normal rules than i, has, as a function of growing up, allowed herself only the assigned outlets for her excessive creativity.

i feel like i’m surrounded by exceptional artists who refuse to be artists because they have jobs & relationships. it’s even more frustrating than my own self refusing to have jobs & relationships because i know i am an exceptional artist and instead focus all of my energy on cultivating that part of myself. hopefully a balance can be struck, for all of us.

but i do think a supposedly abnormal creative outlet is essential for psychological health, the health of romantic relationships, and for personal growth. and the creative outlet really should be a project or projects that can be cultivated & fed throughout time, especially as necessary, expressing essential parts of the self. these are the parts of the self which must be expressed, and if not done so productively, they will express themselves in emotional outbursts, inordinate suspicions & jealousy, aggressiveness within a romantic relationship, emotional meltdowns, woe-is-me-ing and just on & on in the same unnecessarily destructive direction. and if the only arena for these creative expressions are the romantic relationship, dependent upon that other, then that other and your romantic relationship will periodically be put through the most ridiculous & unnecessary of wringers.

even worse, you’re denying your own individual self one of the truly great joys in life, which is creative self-expression and the personal growth that it stimulates. to have that essential experience dependent upon another - career, lover, children - is unfair to them others. and to allow your solitude, which is filled with such enormous potential, your own enormous potential, to be wasted on waiting & worrying, even partially, is not only unfair & mean to your own self but to all of us. we desperately need your incredibly exciting creativity to be expressed toward all of us, to infuse this life with your own, inspiring others and even inspiring just the feeling of being alive to expand in that way that only you, your exceptional self can.

please do find ways, your very own ways, to prevent your creative energy being burglar’d, instead redirecting it toward self-expression. such is an experiment, an exercise, a way of life fit to evolve & grow over the course of a lifetime, and so should be treated with kindness, compassion and especially patience. demands, judgments, expectations, comparisons and the like – these are foolishnesses of the nearsighted brand and should not be considered; they are merely wind-resistance, lactic acid. simply give your creativity, your expression, attention (focused energy), and it will blossom, beautifully, inevitably; as will you, as you’d never even dared imagine.

 

(the day of which i speak was 5 months ago. i’ve been hoping to write this ever since. occasionally trying, but never forcing. smartly ignoring frustration. finally it came. not perfectly, but as it shall be. i’ve been waiting years for others to ripen, years upon years. that’s what i mean by patience. it’s a way of life; living, so it’s no big deal.)

Regroup

Again with the Regroup. Hope on autopilot. The crowd of selfs hushed, leaned forward, closing in around their leaders.

Changes tapped the hope gauge like a plummeting pilot attacking the swirling altimeter.

“Going nowhere,” Tlorm Zazzle said emotionally. Then his eyes glazed over as he tugged at his collar: “eeeeeeee…”

Marthur Ronschond laughed uproariously. At least they assumed it was a laugh. There was no real deciphering Ronschond; so everyone always just pretended they understood his sounds & silences just fine. He was indispensible – that much they did know, and it made him terrifying.

Changes was not amused. “We’re just getting killed out there,” he said, slamming a clipboard to the ground. Even before the loudness of the punctuating crash had filled their ears, he was bending to retrieve it.

The three sat in Regroup. Again. This life, it just was not working. Literally nothing tangible going for them. Yes, motivation was scarce, had been since becoming necessary. Fame, fortune; family; finances–flash. These things: they just didn’t care. Sex, saving souls; even survival was unappealing as insufficient, possible but played, a nice sweetner maybe. They wanted to live (”live, damn it, live!” as Changes had exclaimed in so many Regroups previous), but they didn’t know how. Where to aim their limited and erratic energy?

“The depression is gone, long gone, and thanks be to that; but who would have ever’ve thought this malaise character’d be such a bugger,” Tlorm said, slumping forward, face drooping bit by bit. Then he perked up: “Kudos to him, I say. To malaise!”

Marthur chortled.

Girls though; certain rare fascinating girls, proximity to whom made every pixel of life thrilling, and the memory and possibility of whom practically powered the Regroups, without which they’d really be sunk, and so many times over. Such a lady’d even found them recently, against her own will perhaps even – and they were scrambling to become presentable. An emergency Regroup this was. Determined to use the invigoration to power positive change, they were, before circuits blew or connections severed, perhaps corrected.

“We need a reason to believe she would ever be interested in us,” Changes declared with raised index finger.

Marthur: “O.M.G. Still calling it a she then? A giiiiiirl? Oh boy how utterly booor-ing!”

“Oh and it has got to be fun – it’s just gotta be,” Tlorm added quickly, nodding & nodding & nodding while looking around at everyone for already-presumed approval.

And so it was: the same agenda of every other Regroup ever. Rumor, in fact, claimed knowledge it went as far back as a three year old bashfully scribbling formless love letters and babbling about Snow White over a quarter century ago, but no records remained so someone yelled “Hearsay!” and the crowd cheered.

“But, so basically though, the question is still ‘How to live?’”

And here came the real work. Sleeves were rolled up; lunch-pale props suddenly appeared; Marthur put on coveralls and slapped soot streaks on his face.

“Hmm…how to live…?” Changes thought aloud, rolling his eyes back and tapping his lips with that index finger.

“How to live…?” Tlorm asked the sky, looking like a strobe light he was so quickly cycling through every emotion in his repertoire; constantly checking the others to make sure it was still time for hard work and then aggressively returning to his own version. “Yes, how to live indeed–indeed!”

“Hoooooow. Toooooo. Leeeeeeeve.” Marthur sounded like a jungle. “Howdaleeve-howdaleeve-howdaleeve.”

They could go on like this for hours, months. Well, not all of them.

Almost immediately came “Ugh!” and flopsy arms tossed in the air by Tlorm, as if he’d really been elbow-greasing the bejarnsus out of the problem for so much longer than no time at all. “I keep coming back to ‘Fun!’” Then Tlorm grabbed a notebook on which was colorfully magic-markered ”Fun!” circled repeatedly and accented with three random childishly-drawn stars. He presented the notebook and its aspiration to the crowd, tapping it with his marker and slowly circling the word, saying “Fu-un” as if the sound of the word needed to confine its expression to the circular bends. “Come on! What is ever going to beat fun?”

“’Afraid of Everything’,” Marthur grunted, leaning back, raising his hands like claws and gaping his mouth & eyes in silently horrified shriek.

“’Afraid of Everything’? They’re still in the race? Concede already! You’re holding up the process,” Tlorm exclaimed, shocked, almost betrayed. Then Tlorm turned to Changes to add, more seriously, “They’re holding up the process.” Exclaiming as if uncontrollably again: “No one even likes you!” Then turning seriously back to Changes: “No one even likes that one.”

Marthur snickered. He stood up slowly, struggled, as if oppressed by a bulk, then shaped as large an imaginary circle as his suddenly longer-then-ever arms could manage, as if circumferencing an utterly enormous globe, all the while declaring, in dramatic early-era sci-fi movie trailer announcer voice: “The entire past!”

“How’s that?”

Marthur quickly sat back down, and then immediately began an exact reproduction of the globe pantomime.

Changes cut in. “The past, Tlorm. Ring any bells? The always? Remember? Marthur’s merely pointing out that this is no one-time decision and then everything is different from then on. He’s saying we’re constantly answering this question of how to live with every active decision we make. (“The entire past!” Marthur announced dramatically in the background while no one listened.) And we choose ‘Afraid of Everything’ as our guiding principle practically every time. A thousand times yesterday, and a bazillion last month.”

“Oh, brother – what an exaggeration. Plus – plus, Changes, isn’t that just the point, the very point? It didn’t work. It’s not working. It never has worked. Where the blarn did it even come from? It’s sooooo STU-p(id)—“

“’Fun!’ is not working either. OK, Tlorm?”

Tlorm crumpled upon his desk as if he’d been socked in the gut. “OK? No (cough, cough), no that’s not OK. Not in the least.” Tlorm pushed himself back up, regaining his strength, even getting fired up. “Not in the least! This has gone on long enough, gosh-darnit. It’s time for a new direction, a new founding principle. A new—“

“Yes!” Changes and Marthur Ronschond cheered.

“A new ultimate aspiration.”

“Hooray!”

“A ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ for the less Jesus-inclined.”

“BOO!” and rotten veggies were flying everywhere.

Tlorm deadpanned as a flying tomato squished against his cheek and slimily squarsched down the side of his face, exploding like a Gallagher prop upon the wooden floor. To which Tlorm, with tears welling and lip trembling, made the second-to-last comment before the presentation: “After over 28 years of doing something, we still can’t figure out how to do it. Or why. Or even what in blazes it is.”

And like shooting it out of a blow gun Changes said “exactly!” as he cut the lights and rolled the projector, flickering the climax of 2006’s $30 million-grossing college-rejection-letter comedy Accepted on the wall.

 

Synopsis: Justin Long (of “and I’m a Mac” fame) plays Bartelby, a recent high school graduate who’s been rejected by every college to which he’s applied. Hilarity ensues when, desperate to conceal failure from their parents, Bartelby and pals start their own fake college and three hundred clownish fellow-rejects show up with tuition checks.

Bartleby improvises a sort of study-whatever-you-want atmosphere and everything is going just smashingly. The Dean of the local prestigious college cannot stand for this, forcing a climactic trial before the State Board of Accreditation. Bartelby must persuade the board to accredit their school, the South Harmon Institute of Technology (distastefully affectionately acronymed SHIT), or supposedly he is headed for prison:

 

Glen the Goof somewhat ceremonially slaps the defendant table, rises and announces, “Faculty stand!” and the entire student body of South Harmon Institute of Technology is in attendance and stands. Spine-tingling, whatever the reason.

Dr. Alexander, Chair of the State Board of Accreditation: “What is the meaning of this?”

Bartleby: “See at South Harmon, Sir, the students are the teachers.”

Which moves their opposition Dean Van Horne of nearby and hallowed Harmon College to rise, protesting smugly: “Ope! This is preposterous. Students are not and cannot be teachers.”

Dr. Alexander: “Dean Van Horne is right. You must have a faculty as defined by the state or you cannot be accredited.”

Some tension-building superfluous lines which we’ll represent as “…”

Bartleby: “You guys have already made up your minds. I’m an expert in rejection, and I can see it on your faces. And it’s too bad that you judge us by the way we look and not by who we are. Just because you want us to be more like them when the truth is we’re not like them. And I am damn proud of that fact.”

Dean Van Horne: “Your phony school demeans real colleges everywhere!”

Bartleby: “Why? Why can’t we both exist? Huh? You can have your grades, and your rules and your structure and your ivory towers, and then we’ll do things our way. Why do we have to conform to what you want?”

Dean Van Horne: “Your curriculum is a joke, and you, sir, are a criminal.”

Bartleby: “You know what? You’re a criminal. ‘Cause you rob these kids of their creativity and their passion. That’s the real crime!”

And Bartleby goes on to speak about the conditions that created this wonder of a school—that so excited these losers and rejects about learning for the first time since childhood, if ever. “But out of that desperation,” he says. “Something happened that was so amazing. Life was full of possibilities.

“We came here today to ask for your approval, and something just occurred to me. I don’t give a shit. Who cares about your approval? We don’t need your approval to tell us that what we did was real. ‘Cause there are so few truths in this world, that when you see one, you just know it. And I know that it is a truth that real learning took place at South Harmon. Whether you like it or not, it did. ‘Cause you don’t need teachers or classrooms or fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. You just need people with a desire to better themselves, and we got that by the shitload at South Harmon. So you can go ahead, sign your forms, reject us–shoot us down, and do whatever you gotta do. It doesn’t really matter at this point. Because we’ll never stop learning, and we’ll never stop growing, and we’ll never forget the ideals that were instilled in us at our place. ‘Cause we are SHIT heads now, and we’ll be SHIT heads forever and nothing you can say or do or stamp can take that away from us! So no!” And for emphasis he slaps his chair, tumbling it as the crowd rips up in cheers and the soundtrack triumphantly whammys a guitar.

Dr. Alexander and his gavel quiets the crowd. The Board confers, nodding and shaking heads and pointing at legal pads.

Dr. Alexander: “Bartleby, your presentation was unorthodox to say the least, and your methodology is questionable at best. However, the true purpose of education is to stimulate the creativity and the passions of the student body, and in that regard you have certainly succeeded. This Board does not reject innovation, but it must be watched, carefully. Therefore, the south Harmon Institute of Technology will be granted a one-year probationary period in which to continue its experimental programs. Don’t be so quick to judge us by the way we look. Congratulations.” Dramatic stamp.

The crowd explodes in exuberance! Guitars wail! Amidst the celebration the heroine finds Bartleby.

Bartleby: “What are you doing here?”

Heroine: “I don’t know. There was just a lot of things in my life that I thought were real that ended up being fake. So why can’t the opposite be true?” And she laughs. And they smooch.

 

“Aaaaaaand stop it right there,” Changes said, re-enlightening the Regroup.

But the desired dramatic, reflective pause was immediately broken as Tlorm, pre-empting Marthur’s objection to the allowance of such foul language in the presentation, said, as if offended, “I take issue with the line ‘when you see a truth you just know it.’ Maybe you know it when you feel it—maybe. But most will never recognize it with their eyes.”

Marthur morphed from his profanity-stunned dismay. “I mean cooooome oooooon,” Marthur rolled out of his mouth while rolling not only his eyes but his whole head, bouncing it back and forth on its elastic neck, practically falling out of the chair.

“Fine, Tlorm. Yes. In fact, I suppose I agree. But this is not the crux, not the crux at all. And so,” Changes added, getting excited; “it shall be.” And all in unison finished with a cheer: “Stricken. From. The Record!” Even a participant in the lower register joined in unnoticed.

Changes raised his hands to quiet the crowd. “’But out of that desperation,’ he says, ‘came possibilities.” Emphasized like a dynamic preacher. “’And it was amazing!’”

“So I ask you. What is the answer to this problem—How to live?” Changes raised his index finger, saying, “We don’t need a reason to believe she would ever be interested in us.” He thrust his finger to the sky: “We need a reason she would always be interested in us. Reasons!”

“Tlorm was right,” Changes continued. “We need a new founding principle: possibilities. We need more possibilities to make this life amazing. We need possibilities never yet heard and possibilities never yet even dreamed. And we need the abilities necessary to experience these possibilities. Regroups upon Regroups upon Regroups, pouring over the ideas of the past, searching for leads on possible sources of motivation. The excitement of roles to play, places to explore, experiences galore. And they’re great ideas. We’d love to do most of them. But in none of them are we exploring Egypt and Nepal and this lady in America at practically the same time as leading a revolution—the cost of even one of these experiences, judging by humans past, being practically an entire lifetime. And what about them Andean caves, and this planet is even barely the beginning. No. No, these limitations will not do. We must be something more. Something able to experience all that is offered, truly, and, even more importantly, we must be able to share this experience with others.

“’Cause you don’t need teachers or classrooms or fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. You just need people with a desire to better themselves, and we got that by the shit loads!’” Changes quoted as punctuation.

Tlorm and Marthur, the crowd too, ripped up in cheers, though Marthur also mixed in some hisses, protesting a certain word choice.

“You see, it’s about becoming. Bettering yourself, learning in a certain direction is becoming something other than what you were, growing. Now, we’ve done this. We’ve experienced this in our scouring for motivation, almost as a side-effect, right? But instead of searching all over the place for something as elusive and subjective as motivation, we should become something that needs no motivation. Even great men remain subject to the human condition, and their motivations have not moved us.”

Marthur Ronschond spoke slowly, softly, clearly: “We become something more than human, encompass the possibilities of man without being confined by them. Something for which questions of motivation are unnecessary, an amusing idiosyncrasy observed in humans.”

“Superman?! We have to become Supermans?” Tlorm Zazzle squealed shrilly, terrified and overwhelmed.

“Jesus, Tlorm. No. Not us and not Supermans neither. That’d be pretty unoriginal, huh? Plus, Superman had that whole motivation issue too. Even being from Krypton his love for Lois still expressed itself toward human ‘normalcy’ instead of in serving her own super adventure, her own supering. Because for all his super, he was still a man…strangely.

“No,” Changes continued. “You know who wins in the end? Not man. No, only the hero wins in the end. And the hero needn’t search for motivation, huh? The adventure calls to him.”

Now this was getting exciting. The crowd closed in even more, murmuring in anticipation.

“But even if we’re out there hero-ing and everything—I mean, look at us,” Tlorm worried, flapping his weak flopsy arms, embarrassingly hiding his flabby body.

“Hideous,” someone grumbled nastily.

“That changes,” Changes encouraged. “That’s part of it. Maybe we have a lot of work to do. For as long as we live there will be a lot of work to do. That’s never been our issue. But where or toward what is our work propelling us? Why? Right?”

“I know, but, I mean, there will always be some Val Kilmer-type with his Madmartigan mystique to just ride right up, all seething with sex and immediacy, and put on a little show and pied-piper them weak-kneed heroines away. This road to me becoming a successful hero does not sound fun. I’m sorry. Not fun at all.”

“Well, first, again,” Changes explained. “It isn’t exactly us that’s to be doing the becoming. And you were closer with your Superman, Tlorm, than with your hero panic-attack. But, no, you know what I think the word is? Not just hero, but super-hero. Becoming Superhero. Yes. There, that’s much better. The hero comes standard with motivation, and what speaks of endless possibilities more than a ‘super’ something? Yes. It shall become superhero. And we shall guide it.”

But Changes had completely lost them at “Becoming Superhero.” They went just bonkos for it. Regroup was in Uproar – such excitement, creativity exploding. For a time, potential slogans or mottos were popping like corn to tremendous cheers. “Because if you have more than one aspiration, why on earth wouldn’t you choose us?” Cheer! “As long as you’re crazy (‘and ultimately alone!’ some crazy bastard added), you may as well shoot for good-crazy.” Cheer! “Becoming Superhero: Abnormal Does Worthwhile.” Cheer! “Becoming Superhero: The Final Montage.” That got the biggest cheer; they really went wild for that one. And nobody but Marthur heard the last one from a low, mumbling-grumbling voice. “BS: Failing in the right direction,” it said, and Marthur screamed with laughter.

When the crowd calmed, Changes animated another speech. “Now that we’ve finally found a worthy aspiration on which to spend the creative energy this lady inspires in us, we must ask our self, ‘how would a superhero act in this situation?’, and do our best to act accordingly.”

“But won’t the answer always be to be flying about or superhuman-strength-ing something or other, Changes? Won’t it?”

“That’s comic books and such, Tlorm. Or anyway, we do the best we can. So while a flyer may fly, we are not, as yet, flyers. We do the best we can. But we do our best in celebration of the forever-expanding empowering possibilities of superheroicism. We are only becoming bit by bit or leap by bounding leap. The best we can do is to strive to improve our best and to be aware enough to learn how we’ve managed to do so to empower the passing along, the sharing of that knowledge—there’s the golden nugget!

“The first kindness, the best, most super kindness is to enable another to do for themselves, to be the hero—the superhero in their own life. If the best we can think to be is superhero, then the best we can think to do, the best we can offer, the best we can offer the Lady, our heroine, is a mapping of our progress into this unknown land of such unusual excitement and adventure, a mapping of our progress toward becoming superhero. And if we should fail to complete the journey?”

The mere suggestion was almost too much for Tlorm to bear. He turned white and clammy, staggered, fanning himself waspily.

“The lady will have all the possibilities yet mapped as all we can offer as tribute to her for inspiring us to life.”

“And should we lose our lady to one of these tall dark volatile heroes…?” Marthur Ronschond prodded with a wry smile.

Tlorm spit-up upon himself, plopping white infantile vomit upon his striped shirt and collapsing upon the hard wood floor like a demolished building.

“There are always more chances for the willing,” Changes encouraged, calmly raising his index finger, a twinkle in his eye. “Or we’ll zoom through one of them blinking winders in time-space. Or whatever! But as we’ll already be changed toward becoming superhero, best to leave such possible reactions to the surely way more capable, more superheroic us of the future, even if only tomorrow. You see? Worries and anxious anticipations—we’ve no more room for such in our life. We focus on our own growth and how best to use it to serve further growth, to serve our Lady. And the map will exist! For someone, anyone to gain from. It’s the most that can ever be asked of anyone: purpose fulfilled to the best of ability.”

“What’s more,” Tlorm sprang from his mouth as his body sprang from the floor; “There’s reason to believe it’s possible, even attainable. I’m confident we can do this!”

“I’m confident too,” Changes agreed. “I mean, we know how to do it even.”

“Well sure.”

Marthur Ronschond poorly hid his wide-eyed exaggerated eavesdropping with a disjointed and rather creepily fake, “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“But I’m always confident at Regroup.”

“Well, sure.”

“But let’s bring it back,” Changes said, settling the crowd, apparently their work was not quite finished. “Remember how it was before. Just then. I mean, just. Right? Literally two weeks ago. We could die at any moment, sure; but we could also just up and lose interest in this life altogether at any moment, and that’s what we must defend against, prevent.”

“You mean creative life,” Tlorm corrected.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, not like before. I mean, how many ways and reasons did we find just looking for motivation for that other?”

“Right.”

“Right. Sure. But, while we have this elusive creative energy,” Changes continued, “please, let’s be spending it on some way that might make the bad times not so worrisome, decreasingly worrisome. We’re not asking a lot. Not anymore. Not from—We just want to make a positive contribution before we lose our way, motivation or body. Which we could suddenly realize at any moment has already happened, as strangely it doesn’t happen all at once or even on a slow decline but as a near-constant, like, unnoticeable flickering of the light switch if with every flick the dark stole just barely a bit more from the light until at one moment you find yourself suddenly standing in total darkness, all confused and wondering what happened to the light and where on earth to go, which direction.

“How does this happen? How is it that Regroup sets a direction and then just some hazy amount of time later we realize we’ve totally re-routed and even doubled back, sabotaging all efforts? Because, while I definitely agree we’ve finally come up with our greatest direction ever with this becoming superhero business, we’ve been pretty darn excited about some pretty darn terrific ideas and decisions before. So this problem of losing our direction, our compass is as important as the other. And it happens because after—christ!—a couple moments of doing things right, of following course, of following through with the directives of Regroup, we all run off to party and congratulate ourselves. And who’s left running things then?”

Tlorm, who’d been nodding and nodding in jovial agreement, contorted his suddenly colorless and terrified face into a question mark.

“Base,” Changes added, pointing to a repulsive murky black blob in the corner.

“What’s he doing here?!” Tlorm shrieked, eyes bubbling, a trickle of blood seeping from his ears, legs buckling, covering his nose and mouth as though to escape the stench of decaying flesh, death.

The Crowd, which had been leaning in more and more, moment by moment, rushed away as far as allowed, screaming and gasping, huddling in a squirmy mass against the back wall.

“And so I’ve invited Base here today, without reservation. That’s right, clueless, hideous-old, scared-to-death, Base. I mean, it’s time to face it. We pretend like Regroup somehow erases Base from existence?! What is that? Sounds a little perverse to me suddenly, and I know it’s not becoming of a superhero for crying out loud. No. This is the great flaw of Regroup. Base is never invited except when we’ve no choice but to Regroup at his place—how did we ever make it out of those alive?—And we always pretend he won’t be running things in the future. When, in fact, the realities of the ebb and flow of our energy—Base is practically usually piloting this god-forsaken barge!”

Collective gasp.

“No wonder he’s always undoing our work and turning the whole dadgum ship back toward point of origin—he’s still stuck on ‘Afraid of Everything’ for chrissake, because everyone pretends he doesn’t even exist instead of explaining at least something to him. So you know he’s too stupid and scared to trust that we’re ever coming right back and not freak out when he finds himself suddenly behind the big ol’ wheel and in charge. I mean, I take a bathroom break and it’s practically full screaming reverse—that’s the reality of the situation.”

Changes took a deep breath. “This is what I meant about ‘not us’ becoming superhero. We will be along for the journey, but if Base does not become superhero, then none of us do. And so we must guide, literally serve Base’s journey as we would the Lady our heroine’s. For if we can superhero that—yuck!—that stanky, repugnant Base, we can certainly do so for her. And only by charting course from Base can the map be complete, and therefore useful to others. As in such a case as this, point of origin is as crucial to the viability of the map as destination and truth of plotted path.

“Look at the dramatic and exciting revolutionary results Bartleby got by accepting and encouraging and embracing the rejected in today’s presentation. We must raise our Base, and that means dealing with our self on the level of Base, as Bartleby did. So, while I embrace and literally do believe in becoming superhero, expect it even as a beautifully gradual unfolding, I remember we didn’t have this same confidence just a two weeks ago, before that infusion of creative potential she seemed to’ve shared with us, inspired within us. And, in fact, we were practically hemorrhaging that creative confidence, life, downward spiraling like a fighter plane caught in the jet wash.

“Anyway. So, now that we’ve decided where we’re headed—becoming superhero—and we know how to get there enough to set off and find our way, Base here will remind us where we really are.”

The crowd, who’d relaxed a bit in their interested listening to Changes, again withdrew as much as possible and wrinkled up their faces, bracing themselves to stand fast against the stench.

“We don’t like what we see,” Base grumbled-gurgled-snarled. “It’s not going to work; we’re never going to make it; it’s practically all over, about to collapse. We’ve got to lay this thing down in the right direction though. Grrrrr. Serve some measly good purpose, whatever the use of trying. We think of DeNiro in Awakenings, drooling disgustingly, his grotesquely rigid arm chicken-scratching ‘learn’ on the chalkboard he used to communicate; grunting and slobbering ‘learn-learn-learn-learn-learn,’ begging Dr. Robin Williams to extract some positive, however small, however impossible of actually benefiting DeNiro personally, as he rapidly heartbreakingly digressed back into his catatonic living rigor mortis.”

Even Marthur Ronschond was frozen, gaping in horror at the creature and task before them. Surely Base would destroy them all. And yet, then Marthur laughed and laughed and laughed. It was the hardest he’d laughed in Regroups.

Music filled the atmosphere. As the crowd dispersed, Rivers Cuomo sang “ohhh this is the way, that a man, loves his lady…”

investing in your future

“where should i put my money, brother dave?”

my brother Randy, wife and two-years-old son visited Grandma & Grandpa Brown’s (where i live) recently. i came upstairs, late-night, after a particularly heavy exercise session. my eyes wide & glassy, body exhausted, just nothing going on upstairs. the women & children were safe in bed. i plopped on the love-seat and listened to Father & Brother discuss the apparently suprisingly disappointing leadership (all hail Economy!) these days, the apparently surprisingly untrustworthiness of supposedly previously trustworthy avenues for safe investment in the future.

it’s almost like, where did the good old days go, you know? i can’t believe they finally disappeared. banks failing. mutual funds – or whatever the fuck those adwizards call the various slightly-more-lucrative and however-more-risky for you and way-more-lucrative and even-less-risky for them bank accounts to trick you into energizing them with your money & trust – drying up or going poof. even cash is risky as it seems to be losing value to the tune of new cars easing off their lots. gold? gold would have been great, but now it’s too high.

yeah, i think. i remember a few years ago when gold was still under $300, trying to tell my rich friend about it, but he had all his money tied up in Sprint stock – (how do you type the sound of a bomb whistling toward ground at zoom-pace?) KaBOOM!

so i was surprised when Brother turned and addressed me specifically. “where should i put my money, brother dave?”

my response was delayed, as always. it’s not something i do on purpose, just something i always do. like i’ve been suckered into one-too-many rhetorical questions for this lifetime, thank you very much. if you want my answer you’ll have to wait a beat because i’m a huge weirdo and talking is some sort of enormous undertaking for me usually and i’m not going to expend all that effort just to have my words gusted back in my face by that gale-force coming out of that hole in yours. i try to use that time to edit whole volumes of thought down to whatever few words actual time or your attention span will allot me, carefully trying to choose words that are perhaps connected to the least explosive associative tripwires. hence my leading the league in guilty shrugs.

there’s some convoluted formula determining my ability to speak to one versus another. you’d need a brilliant economist, like a federal reserve chairman or a weathermin, to understand the ebb & flow of energy within and predict its future materialization without. will the water gush from the hose or sputter or trickle or kink up all together or will the darn flow get so backed-up & stagnated & polluted it explodes? well, it can only gush toward one ultra-rare beauty at a time (i’ve only ever found three, not counting kyle). but it sure did almost explode during those few years a few years ago – yikes, would that’ve been nasty – lucky i’m willing to be so patient with my own brilliantly inept self.

“personal creativity,” i said finally. but it was all i could say. before i could barely even begin to wonder why, Father regained control of the conversation, providing the definitive answer. there was a split-second there though where it seemed Brother might give me more power in the conversation, let me repeat by asking “what?”

that he’d addressed me with the question at all was rather a shock, but he’s always been very interested in me and my thoughts. i’ve been super-lucky to have him as a big brother. he’s, like, 8 years older than me and was always super-cool, especially during those years when even i couldn’t help being super-enamored with coolness. he made sure i had cool clothes and cool haircuts – those types of appearance decisions have always paralyzed me. drove us all the way across town to see Batman on the biggest screen possible on opening night, and then again the next in the most intense rainstorm. and introduced me to cool music, smuggling me and a just-released cassette downstairs against our parents’ wishes for a life-changing listening: MJ’s Thriller.

but i don’t think i ever really answered him very well hardly. it’s sad. too many worries: that i’d prove myself uncool, fearing the wrath of culture; or rude, fearing the wrath of society; or bad, fearing the wrath of parents; or sinful, fearing the wrath of religion, which i’d mistakenly learned to call god; or weak or laughable, fearing the wrath of peers, which i’d mistakenly learned to call friends. i was stupid. he certainly never deserved to be lumped in with them tormentors. and even stupider still just a couple years ago when i claimed i’d punch him in the face if he vaccinated his as-yet-unborn child. and always neglecting his birthdays supposedly due to destitution - intense idealism & perfectionism gone horribly awry – but really only for the selfish indulgence of intense self-absorption, that part of me seeking always for new & exciting ways to justify feeling terrible about myself, as if to prove god-knows-what to god-knows-what, to avoid feeling otherwise about others really. what a silly little heartbroken clown i’ve so often been.

“personal creativity,” i said faintly. but it was barely audible. before i could barely even begin to wonder why on earth it came out so hushed, Father regained control of the conversation, providing the definitive answer. there was a split-second there though where it seemed Brother might give me more power in the conversation, let me say it louder, so all can hear, by asking “what?”

my guess is that someone already knew the answer and wasn’t too interested in mine. i can be exceedingly obliging, pliable even. and it tends to ruin my ability to communicate, especially in small groups with their empowered individuals with their differing levels of interest, capability, willingness and such, threat levels. if one wants to hear from me and the other doesn’t or won’t understand, i think that’s when my speech tends to muffle for only the one’s ears. i do tend to do better one-on-one, but there’s still all sorts of problems with attention spans and figuring out how to communicate to the one specifically. i’ve always had the least problem with large groups – they coalesce into this group mind that’s a cinch to address & amuse. but there is one thing i’ve learned over the years: no matter how loudly i speak or shout, you’re simply not going to hear or understand me unless you’re listening, unless you’re already giving me some of your interested attention, holding your horses and not jumping to conclusion.

there’s an hilarious aside i’ve discovered while living here this past year - exploring my past, trying to discover my future – that goes along with this self-described obliging nature. my parents have two wishes for my future: that i find some form of happiness & flourishing to be shared with them through communication, and that i be out of their hair so to speak. strangely though these are set up as contradictory roads into the future. the path to the first is defined by me through creative pursuit, writing, which requires much unconstrained time without obligations or responsibilities, silence, focus, energy, certain technology, space and seclusion. the path to the second is defined by them through the getting of a job, or jobs, of any type, to trade my daily limited time & freedom & energy to some money-paying entity, storing up the exchange at whatever rate i can manage to eventually trade the accumulation for ever-increasing out-of-their-hairnesses. how on earth to reconcile these two?

comically, i held a rather lucrative job for over a year before moving back in here. i was quite out of their hair. but it was so stifling energetically, creatively, so time-consuming & stressing that i spent most all of my money trying to find ways to improve my energy, to find something worth talking about, to empower my creativity; but mostly to manufacture those good feelings, the feelings of happiness & flourishing which can only really be found, at least for me it seems, through creative expression, writing, but can be imitated briefly by such as alcohol with a side of drugs perhaps. as a result i felt mostly terrible about myself, deteriorating health and unable to communicate. and my parents would worry about me and try to get me to go places and say things, depressed & stressed that i was uncommunicative.

and now? i am increasingly thriving creatively and often feeling quite wonderful about myself and my increasing ability to flourish, coming more & more into line with that so-necessary future of empowered writing. and yet my parents become increasingly overwhelmed and worried that i am not improving their situation, that i am not taking steps to get out of their hair, not getting a job, jobs, of any type & rate, which will provide the evidence that their apparently lacking desired future is actually being empowered, safely invested in.

and really this whole tug-o-war is being fought at least as much within mine own self as without. i do need to be generating money for inspiring myself with times and that girl and those legends. i do need to be still improving my energy through more refined nutrition than i’ve access to here. i do certainly need to be in my own space for freer exploration. i mean, that i’m in this situation at all, that i let it all affect me so needn’t necessarily be taken as evidence of anything other than me being little more than a grotesquely grown old baby. but there is a greater lesson. we all carry these competing energetic essences within us, and to flourish, both as individuals & societally, as a species, we must reconcile the two, reconcile & merge, balance the two competing, seemingly divergent paths into the future.

at this stage of the game it’s all about being offered two supposedly mutually-exclusive options and seemingly being forced, on penalty of death or whatever comparable, to choose one over the other. this is why brilliants since time immemorial have called reality an illusion; why tricks are for kids. because it is all a trick, this choosing between supplied futures. the real answer, the way to actually progress, to get off the merry-go-round&round&round is always through the hidden, unmentioned third option. the third option is the as-yet unknown. and it is drawn to you, encouraged, found by your own creativity, whether conducted through others’ creativity (books, movies, public personas giving speeches, etc. - whatever potentially expands perception of choice) as chaperone, crutch or inspiration for stimulating your own imagination; or whether you’ve empowered your own creative growth to the point of receiving timely & tailor-made ideas & insights & realizations, revelations when needed. when actually needed, hence patience is a vital component to growth of both awareness & creativity.

the creation of crappy futures to be experienced as stanky nows is done like this: let’s imagine – let’s use whatever amount of creativity we’ve as-yet collected to imagine possibilities for the future, choose the ones we want the least that seem to be the most likely, figure out how to defend against those and yet constantly empower their likelihood with our imaginative worrying, and whatever creativity we have left over will be used to allow ourselves certain luxuries. and since we’ve never been encouraged or shown how to grow or even empower our own creativity, the most we have energy for is choosing between futures dreamed up by others and marketed by fact dealers like News & School; futures sold like products by the makers of products to ensure the continual use, the continual growth of those products - an original act of creativity, empowered to such an extent as to’ve co-opted the creativity of so many others. essentially buying, with both our creative energy (emotional imagination) and its material representation ($$$), pre-packaged futures not only not meant for or fitting for us, but so unsuited as to require extensive trickery & manipulation to coax our participation, our investment. but invest we do, practically all of us, with everything we’ve got. because of their rewards & bonuses programs; because of their reliability & security; because we are the us-es not the thems.

“where should i put my money, brother dave?”

“personal creativity.”

“i’ll tell you where to put your money: ammunition.”

Father & Brother are into guns; they have many; and those shooting bullets, which really are a threatened, increasingly scarce commodity. they do, or play at, competitive shooting, especially Father – it’s more imaginative than just popping off some caps willy-nilly, requires a forever sharpening focus to merge with that playful attitude. it’s fun for them and also empowering. in the futures when guns are needed, they will be ready.

i used to love-love-love playing guns as a kiddie.

of course what i especially loved was getting to play – to imagine with others. that’s what i’ve always especially loved the most. over the years, the nows & futures others are willing to allow you to imagine with them changes drastically, normalizes, i guess it’s called. i was always shocked and thoroughly depressed by these changes, often marked by dispersals such as to college or girlfriend-boyfriend land or what-have-you. but in recovering from such heartbroken panics, i’d always learn enormously about myself. for instance, if it’s up to me i’m really not into guns at all turns out. that alone seems to have me rather doomed in any futures in which guns are needed. but, even worse, i’m such a little empathic basketcase that if i did manage to “win” a gunfight, i’d likely be spending my creativity forever afterwards in wishing i hadn’t. and that’s best-case scenario, as likeliest-case scenario has me just royally screwing up with a slip or an oops right into even more hellish scenarios of friendly fire and jail cells.

so i think that even if i do end up in a future where guns are necessary, the best way for me to empower myself in that future is to empower the only parts of myself that may ultimately free me from the obligation of the choice between shooting a gun or being shot by a gun. there must be a third choice – there is always a third option, in the moment, and the way to invest in your ability to choose it, in the moment, is to invest in, to empower the growth of creativity & awareness. so that maybe when the time comes i’ll have the possibility & imagination to avoid or transcend the either-or. it’s my only true hope for thriving.

and i think similarly about investing money. new! from the people who brought you the world-ruining corrosive economy comes an all-new, even more technologically advanced, slightly-less-destructive and slightly-more-sustainable Green economy! complete with the endlessly costly solving of problems we’ve just made. with brand new company names, graphics and color schemes. and now with bonus: ceaseless self-congratulations! and if you act now and call within this very generation, you’ll still think you have a choice and feel just wonderful about yourself for making it right.

i’m sure there’s still just gobs of monies to be made by investing in that old economy’s companies. oh but that sexy new spring-green one – yowza! just look for words like sustainability, the greening of the previously tainted; or governmental plumpings if you’re going banking, i guess. these economies and their companies are built upon bringing people together under the auspices of common purpose for creating & growing a common future. for various personal reasons, the people contribute their time & energy to growing the company in the present and contribute their creativity to imagining the company in a therefore increasingly necessary future. mainly people are suppressing their own individuality in service of another’s in exchange for an ensured level of freedom through wages and security for their luxuries, like adult toys, offspring and treaured feelings. the actuality of the exchange is life-potential traded to the manufacturer of bad futures in exchange for assurances against experiencing (too soon) an even worse future. (it’s the exchange of individual life-potential for sanctioned playtime – what a magic kingdom!)

but i’d prefer the third option, the true economy.

the economy worth investing in is community, true community, that which is built upon the essential individuality of the commonly-purposed, like how all the cells came together to form this exceptionally efficient community called the human body. the bad news is you have to build it yourself, and none of your externally supplied organizational tools – proximity, religion, political affiliation, sexuality, job, school, television programming, even family – will be of any real help beyond perhaps offering clues. the good news is the way to doso is by being yourself. and really, the more you empower your own essential individuality, the more you will naturally attract these truly like-minded, rather than like-influenced, individuals, who will be striving to grow continually their own understanding of their own essential selfs, which naturally leads to the evolutionary accumulation of and necessity for community – it’s an eddied iteration of the perpetuation of the same evolutionary processes that pulled together specific materials for the forming of this very earth, pulled together specific individual cells for the forming of this very human body. individuals doing & being what they love naturally, which naturally includes sharing with and helping others – playing together productively in imaginging & creating the desired, dreamed and deserved future.

ultimately the whole of your available energy must be considered currency for investment. and the whole of your potential energy, which is ultimately what we’d call infinite, but really only beyond our capacity to understand, which is still just terrifically as-yet unimaginable, is your range for growth. so begin by investing whatever time & energy you can manage in self-discovery. let up a bit on imagining wants like sexings & playthings, and redistribute a bit of that energy into encouraging your own natural creative expression, which can come in some many variations, including the seemingly unartistic researching of your own personal history. whatever encourages personally revealing imagination – taking some time out to explore your own memory will suffice and most wonderfully even. there are so many ways in which to grow your own self, your own understanding of your own essence; and so many ways in which to increase or re-direct your own energy to empower this exploration.

this is the natural adventure that is called life – exploration of the self. and it’s a reason why creating a new human child is so very enlivening & re-envigorating. because it externalizes the process of self-reflection & self-discovery in a way that no other possession or toy ever has before. in watching that child react to the world, you are remembering to a certain extent your own natural self. also, the child evolves the partnership of the marriage naturally into a community, activating that essential part of life, of the self. the growing of the family is the growing of a self-contained community. when the family collapses or weakens, it is because it lacked its own economy, at least its own economic vitality or individuality. the more it is dependant upon other economies, the more it will be ripped apart and re-arranged to serve the needs & preferences of those other economies.

so while i have no money – none! – i invest as much of my time & energy as possible into encouraging my own growth as an individual. growing my creativity in order to make something special & useful out of opportunities. growing my awareness in order to increase my likelihood of noticing opportunities. these two aspects of the self are closely connected and reciprocate each others’ growth – they are perhaps the parents from which the true economy is birthed.

meanwhile, i am always on the lookout for spectacular individuals, like the general manager of sports team always on the lookout for hot young talent. not the imitative loud & overt & bombastic qualities associated in those schools with individualism. i am looking for open people, people with unusual potential to grow, to learn and to love. people who naturally inspire and attract me. i’ve always been a crack-shot at this game, as for whatever apparently unusual reason i’ve always been seeking to build this community, probably because restructuring my own self to fit acceptably into the normal has always been the one thing at which i’ve failed miserably & continually. hence my heartcrumpling despair when our time together is shown only to’ve been another prescribed role till separating for the next.

and into these individuals i invest my energy – my love, my encouragement of their own growth of creativity and exploration of their own individuality. and one day i will have money, and i will invest that money in just such individuals as these, in the growth of a true community with a true, natural economy. it needn’t be without interaction with the greater world-at-large economy, but the community must be self-sustainable, progressive, truly green, independent as an individual. then the previously barely imaginable futures become the exciting nows, and the futures are too wonderous even to imagine, yet they come about, naturally evolving from full investment in the now.

happy investing

I Will

 

 

i have my own space!
i can just write & write now. really without regard for clocks or calendars or social obligations, practically none of them undesirable interruptions. oh my is this ever practically everything of what i’ve always dreamed. it’s not as though everything’s perfect in the pervertedly bissfully-heavenly way in which most people tend to imagine perfection for whatever reason. but it is perfect in that the circumstances & variables are so aligned as to allow for the putting forth of my best possible effort towards encouraging the best possible outcome, and tying the two together in a self-perpetuating & continually-progressing feedback loop. it’s practically full-throttle conscious evolution, at least at times, and in those times it is perfect, perfectly balanced in its constant oscillation between imbalances, propelling us forward like a railcar powered only by our effort and its naturally multiplied returns. the incredible thing is that all i can really do, the only thing i actually have control over is my attitude, my effort throttle, and my intended aim. the force or universe or god or mommy nature or whatever-shall-we-name-the-third really does all the real work just like how it evolves the less “free-willed” of nature. …she has her own space too, quite nearby (i’m soooo lucky), which is definitely necessarily comforting; but we can go days on end without even seeing or speaking to each other sometimes (rarely, really though). but then – whoa! – when we do get to be together again – a break from the magic of creating to revel in the magic of being.

i am making passionate love!
holy moly, man, it’s practically ridiculous. i should be so very embarrassed to even speak of it, huh? and yet could anything be more necessary to the thriving of a creature? and i don’t just mean with her. i aim to make as passionate of love with my reader through my writing as possible. because ultimately love is about communication. sex just happens to be the most necessary articulation, as without it the species would die out, life would die out, cease. so of course it’s the basest, most intense drive we feel in our human bodies. and that’s why its the widest & easiest channel through which to manipulate those bodies of the self-unaware. but that’s also why it holds such power & potential, especially creatively. afterall, it is the means through which a brand-new human body is created, no? …and boy-oh-boy are we creating new humans practically every time, she & i. not making babies, not making chil’ens, oh no. but we’re conscious enough in the act, in the time we share together so intimately, so very conscious in our love & passion for each other that the intensity of the interaction really can be said to remake us both; it’s a specific window in time in which our creativity explodes together for the purpose of remaking each other, growing together – how can it not change us deeply, profoundly? i know it’s rarely like this for other people, unfortunately. i think the main difference is all the effort she & i put into empowering & feeding our own creativity as individuals between sexings, as well as the consciousness & intention with which we go about exploring our most intimate times together. it’s always new, she’s always new: ceaselessly astounding …and i must say: it’s such a wonderful relief-release finally to have somewhere safe to fire my passion, like being shot out of a cannon and free-flying over the great expanse with the reassurance of being caught by the safety of a warm soft net.

i have such fun with friends!
the time we get to spend together really is so great. i’m enormously lucky to get to be friends with people who actually remember how to play, how to have fun. they haven’t yet morphed into those strange imitative “adult” characters, losing their spark of creativity or having spent it all on one (or more) all-consuming new-human-making moves. they may still be more into being entertained than i am, but even being entertained by performers is great fun with these friends because they’re still enjoying the performance in their own individual ways, making their own fun out of the performance, rather than hypnotically reacting to the socially programmed rhythms: laugh now, cry now, take offense now. usually though we’re making our own fun, creating games or just hanging and havin’ laffs. i get so much inspiration & life from these people. thank goodness they’re still near and haven’t all dispersed to the prescribed destinations. and also that i now – finally! – get to visit those that have. i’m so thankful because i know what these friendships have done for her & i’s relationship and for our own relationships with our selfs, how these others have empowered the growth of our own creativity. without them that creativity, our own individuality and the breadth of possibility within our intertwined pair would have withered in ways we wouldn’t even have noticed, effectively preventing this future of now, and definitely eliminating any hope of ever experiencing that even more amazing & fantastic future of soon. 

i’ve finished & published the first book!
the one about the fun club and recovering our youthful enthusiasm for life, for playing and exploring and learning in the real way that so many years of constant schooling & ruling made us forget & lose; about finding our self, our individuality and our own voice; remembering how to be friends instead of just associates or contacts; especially how to love and how to create: self-reflection & self-expression. …i was totally right: it did come fast & furious, easily almost, just gushing forth once i finally was in a better situation to allow for it without having to worry about being forced to cut off that flow once i really opened it up, what that might do to me. thank goodness i waited and just let it come in bits & bits until then. it was tough really, ignoring all those darn voices in my head, judging & prodding, telling me what i wasn’t as long as it wasn’t. it’s not like its publishing had me swimming in money like Scrooge McDuck or anything, but oh how it had me swimming in glee, just super-empowered like nobody’s business. …but soon we’ll’ve finished book two: becoming superhero. and it is all becoming quite a bit more lucrative already.

i’ve finished & sold the first script!
the fun club adaptation was first. it’s funny what a different animal movie scripts are to write than stories. luckily, i was ready for that. i’d studied structure & symbolism enough to know that there’s really hardly any leeway at all in film scripts. there’s no time for anything hardly and yet that little time there is all has to be spent adhering to all these hidden little rules of structure & symbolism and giving the audience what it expects and giving the studio types what it expects; tricking both groups in different ways into feeling like they’re seeing something both completely new and completely familiar. weird to think about like that. but it really was fun. i mean, really the book came about so i could really fully conceptualize the scripting. i sure am lucky the way it came together like that. and the story really was such a relief to have. if i’d had to start with becoming superhero as i once expected, oh boy would that’ve just driven me bonkers. …also, she & i wrote & sold the one about that girl with the unfinished business. that was a challenge, a wonderful challenge though; it was great getting to work with her like that, and it seems to’ve done wonders for her creative confidence. she sure is incredible really.

my body just loves me because of how i fuel it!
it was so great when i got to be in control of my own nutrition again. that really was one of the toughest things about being personally destitute. i was infinitely blessed to have my parents sheltering & feeding me. infinitely blessed - i simply could not have made it here without them. but i do have an especially sensitive body that kinda does require a rather absurd diet from the normal perspective. my parents’ nutrition has improved terrifically over recent years, but they were still into calling a lot of degrading drugs “food”. although, as consciousness is always the ultimo, as long as they’re prepared well, which my parents do take care to do, some worth can be salvaged, injected, but it’s still such an unecessarily low ceiling. also, though, i was extremely lucky to be plunged back into such a normal diet as it proved many of my previous extremes unnecessary. i spent just gobs of money before going broke looking for the miracle nutritive cure, so i’m really lucky to’ve had my perspective so well balanced since. …now, though, i mostly fuel myself as efficiently as possible – easy, simple, powerful: raw leafy greens & superfoods with a few supplements, thanking goodness that i can afford to doso. it’s basically raw spinach with goji berries, a protein shake, a whole-food shake, and this one vitamin supplement and a daily dose of bee pollen. heck, for the most part though it’s just a diet of raw cacao & water – that’s what powers the creating. it’s not for everyone, this diet – actually it totally is, you just have to be willing to break some addictions first. …she’s not so into this way of fooding of course – those girls and their eating: succulence! it’s great though because it helps keep me from really becoming a super-weirdo with food. i’m learning to cook sometimes too – finally! – so i can make her meals to swoon over occasionally. and of course there are the foods for fun, noshin’ and whatnot, and heck-yeah i’ll have some drinkers and a smokey – let’s really do this being, you & i, why not – the after-effects of fun are practically naught when you’re otherwise always inputting such high-powered materials. and i especially relish any food prepared for me – devil-may-care! so there’s none of those i’m-a-this-or-that refusals from me, no never. and i do love exploring food, but i prefer to doso with others or as the circumstances & surroundings dictate; if it’s just me in my own little world looking to fuel creativity, i just peel out full speed ahead for strange. …my allergies & breathing difficulties are completely cleared up. …also, i’ve been doing this thing called oil pulling as extra pampering for revitalizing my teeth organs.

my body is fit & strong & flexible & inexhaustible!
you really should see it. i can just run – zooom – and dive and roll and spring back up and dodge and spin and leap – wow! and climb and pick things up and move ‘em around, just all over the place. my body was a real disaster by the time i finally left Damaskus. it was really struggling to keep up back then, and failing miserably in its efforts. it’s an especially tempermental body i’ve got, there’s just no getting around it, and the darn thing starts dying and quickly like nobody’s business under certain conditions. thank goodness forever my parents had that tredmill for me to use. and i got myself lifting weights for the most i’d ever managed in my life. not to mention my empty pockets helping to limit heavily such as my alcohol and silly noshing. …now, though – wow! – it’s incredible what daily, or near-daily, yoga can do for a body. flexibility is a tough thing to get behind, much like the breaking of taste bud & brain addictions. it’s a disappointing, seemingly unnatural pain initially, but that all changes very quickly. in fact, flexibility, better described as fluidity maybe, is way more empowering than weight lifting. even the guys that lift the big weights and get the big stupid muscles, somehow they’re maybe still not as strong really as someone trained in yoga with their much smaller, or compact, muscles. i think the difference is about empowering the natural power of the body – again, as always, it’s about being a human individual instead of pursuing some imaginary ideal. afterall, if you examine the stories of spontaneous superhuman strength by the likes of the normally-or-even-less-muscled, you’ll find a great clue to the potential of the human body and the difference between apparent & accepted reality and the truly infinite potential of the moment. …so yoga has worked previously unknown wonders for this supposedly aging body of mine. plus, i love that it’s a much more meditative practice than any other way (besides playing) i’ve ever exercised. i’m also going for runs fairly often, which is something i’ve always wanted to feel confident enough to do. it’s weird running became so very intimidating to me, when i was a kiddie i used to run just everywhere – so freeing to’ve recovered that feeling & willingness. …also, i play tennis regularly. frankly, i’ve always been a little embarrassed by how much i love playing tennis. with a decently-matched opponent it’s just the funnest in the world almost. but my fitness regime is very carefree. mostly it’s about being playful. and boy-oh-boy can i play – weeeee! this really is the funnest body i’ve ever had.

my mind is forever expanding!
i really owe this, perhaps the truest wonder of mine own personal life, to, not just meditation, but the particular practice i was so incredibly lucky to find soon after it was really released to the world. it’s just a complete super-upgrade in existence as a whole, turning it into something you’d never’ve imagined hardly, or as close to what you could’ve ever imagined only better even. practically anything really is possible. the body & brain resists it pretty heavily initially, seemingly anyway, according to how we were raised to process our experiences, but if you stick with it and make it a regular practice there really is no more expansive activity (or non-activity) to spend your time on. only a handful of years later i was plainly seeing the poor & numerous flaws in even the most supposedly brilliant man’s conceptions of reality. it can be a lot to process! but it’s so worth it. just go at your own speed and integrate it slowly into your everyday life and enjoy the increased noticing of subtle wonderment & achievement, the constant acceleration of your forever expansion into truly conscious evolution. it can be called multi-dimensional meditation because it works on so many levels, growing you in so many directions at once, expanding you outwards like the spinning of an ever-enlarging spiral, freeing you from the unnecessary confines of the straight line and it’s repetitive circle. and because it empowers these previously unknown, seemingly dormant aspects of yourself, they like to say it awakens dimensional consciousness, as in multi or hyper dimensional. i know it doesn’t really make sense now, and your programming may even be repulsed by the story or money involved; that’s fine, just maybe wonder why. money is just a means of energy exchange standardized for society. and really the story they designed was to inspire & hook certain others, like i used to be kinda. i’ve naturally got a whole new story to tell all about the very same unfathomable rosetta stone-ish technique for growing your true mind and unlocking the understanding of all that has ever eluded you – it really is that powerful, just ridiculous. but be warned: it changes you, gradually, subtly but definitively (thank goodness, right?).

i am teaching!
i remember in college how i feared & dreaded the inevitability of teaching. heck, it’s probably as much a reason of why i droppied as any other. to become as they are – ick! oh, but then i eventually realized (thanks to my unique combination of guts & gutlessness) that those are hardly ever teachers really. a teacher is not something made by a certificate bought with such heaps of money & time and strictly defined programs for programming. in fact, when done right, it’s about the most enlivening experience there can be. not so much about being an expert or know-it-all so much as it is about being a conduit, making connections, pulling information together in the power of the moment to teach your own self what you thought you already knew as much as to teach those others what they thought they never would know. and you’d never believe how your own students’ growth away from you somehow feeds into you as well, forever even. it’s spectacular! …so i’ve been teaching this multidimensional meditation! for quite a while i was the only one who really knew it in KC – me & Dan Helsing, i mean – now there’s tons of us – you’d never believe what a difference it makes even for the city. like beautification projects for parks can radiate out to inspire the beautification of run-down neighborhoods, this is like a beautification project for minds & individuals, hearts especially, and it just radiates out to inspire others – hooray! …the other thing i teach sometimes is writing. i got to help bring an 826 Valencia to Kansas City. man was that thrilling to be a part of. it’s not like i really did anything hardly, just encouraged the right people to be themselves more mostly. and we have projects for old peoples as well as for the kiddies & teeners. in fact, we got the kiddies & oldies working together, writing the oldies’ pasts and the kiddies’ futures. so rad. honestly, though, i hardly do any teaching there. ultimately i’m pretty selfish with my time – i’ve got so much more to do, and it’s already practically impossible to tear myself aware from watching her own fascinating evolution – i’m kind of a pervert like that, and we all know what a history of addiction i’ve. …my main aversion to teaching, aside from their sorry imitative examples, has always been the worry that i didn’t know enough. i felt like you had to be an expert, to really know literally everything about the subject. not so much that i felt like those teachers were actually like that, but that i’d never be comfortable trying to teach without being like that. that was my real problem, not being scared of being in a position of leadership or authority or even looked to for answers, it was the fear of not having the particular specific expected answer when looked to and losing, even more than all credibility in the eyes of others, all confidence in mine own eyes, which is something i always used to struggle with so much. thank goodness i learned the true fluidity of what they all call answers. and even moreso the true power of the moment for the willing. the answers just come, and if you’re open enough, they come in the form best suited for relay to the actual asker or the class rather than necessarily for some “scientific & factual” textbook. really it’s not at all like i’m the all-knowing teacher and they are the ignorant students. it’s much more like a game we’ve all agreed to play. we all agree i’ll play the role of teacher and they’ll play the role of student, and all of our collective energy works together with that 3rd force to feed the answers through me to them, to us all really – there’s no better way to learn than to teach. fact is, i didn’t start really learning anything taught in schools till i fled those schools and started teaching it to myself. it’s a whole other way of processing thought. and, as i imply, it can be an internal interaction between parts of your own self or an external interaction between commonly purposed peeps in a window of time. …my favorite was when i got that laptop and was finally able to cut up those movies for aids – i’d wanted that capability forever practically. there are some truly super-brilliant moments in movies sometimes, but they need to be caught, to be given thought. creativity is the only real teacher in this life, and it teaches in moments, packaged to us in experiences as we’ll allow. and so hardly anyone used to be catching these and letting the understanding of them grow within naturally over time, nourished by contemplation. used to be only the super-luckies had the time & will for contemplation, but now practically everyone’s brain’s speeding up, fluidifying its processing. 

i am helping friends!
i just love helping my friends whenever possible. it’s a soft spot, maybe even a weakness, evidence of selfishness perhaps. whatever. really having actual friends is practically the awesomest thing in the world, and i revel in it every chance i get. plus, they’re all super creative and way awesome. fact is, their brilliance is plenty ancient, and i’m totally justified in focusing on growing them a bit more than others – we’ll all benefit in the end, you’ll see. …i got peetro a part in the fun club movie. i mean, really though, i didn’t do anything hardly. he got the part himself. and while they haven’t even started filming yet, he’s already working on another movie. so it’s not like i did hardly anything, just a little encouragement and right-place right-timeness. it is super-exciting though, i must say; he’s gonna be terrific. …the other incredible thing i was able to do while i was out there doing those re-writes and enduring those meetings – i got set up in a place decent enough to offer extended stay america to koney & sweets’ band and all our many visitors for a few months. talk about havin’ laffs! and their shows out there were awesome, unavoidably so. i’m pretty sure we’re getting maybe even several of their songs in the fun club movie, and a fighter plane song too looks like, though there’s no trusting anything out there till it actually happens. they really could have done all of that without me, no problem, but boy-oh-boy am i sure glad they didn’t. …i helped get big matt credentialed to grill those chiefies! really, it was that girl i love that got it done, but i refuse to leave myself out of this one. besides, you could say it was my idea (oh the arrogance!). there’s no telling how this one will play out, we must admit. the whole nfl could be coming home in a body bag when old chat gets done with em – worth the risk. we all know what a supporter of independent, even aggressive journalism i am, at least when those two things are teamed, never the latter without the former of course. …and i’m helping big hatt with his script! again, i’m hardly doing anything really, just helping a little with structure and layering in the necessary symbolism for those strange movie mafiosos. but don’t think i’ll not be shoving that feather right into mine cap either way. …oh, and there’s the hip store! again, my role was limited to encouragement and veritable toadying. i’m not the least bit hip and i’ll be having words with any man who says otherwise; but they sure are. it’s really a fantastic place, oddly futuristic in its legitimate un-agenda’d celebration of all things truly necessary in individualistic culture, if that makes any sense; a real place for real people – finally!

i am helping family!
i love the space they’ve opened. it’s sort of a hip store for another generation, you might say – a brilliant re-imagining of the essence or ideal of the old town meeting halls & pubs. somehow we’ve managed to solve the problems that plague most such ventures: taken the brutishness out of the bar, the idiocy out of the talk. mainly, i think it was just time for such a place. people are finally changing, expanding beyond the rigid prescriptions – some of them anyway – and it’s a great place to be, the place to be. it’s actually alive instead of just another imitation droning out the same recorded conversations & feelings you can find anywhere. …it’s funny my dad wanted to open a bar – it’s the perfect venture for him, he really is a man of the people (like i like to pretend to be); my brother’s an expert barkeep and an even more expert character; my sister and her husband are expert restauranteurs; and my mother’s an incredible designer & decorator, very sensitive to the necessary manipulation of energies, though she’d never think to phrase it such, not to mention the role her network played in the building of this place. …i can’t believe i even had to say anything; shove my dirty old face in there and be like, um, maybe you guys should…but apparently – well, who knows, maybe it would’ve happened anyways. maybe i’m just running around meeting all these glorious people so i can get to be a part of all those amazing things they’re doing or going to do – fine by me! it’s really just a matter of perspective in the end.

we are redesigning kansas city’s energetic grid!
subtle & secret but true. we made the hip store the flagship test market for the initial phase of regridding kc. initially only a helsing & katz venture, it’s catching fire now; well now that we’ve finally been teaching what we know of course, that sure helps. next we focused on ‘the place to be’ and the 826 valencia building. it’s just grown from there. it’s kinda like how those weirdos did in the re-making of that certain area into the power & light district to suck all that energy, especially monetarily, out of KC. (no, i don’t care how they’ll swear up & down to’ve done the opposite; when you learn to think dimensionally, energetically, you might realize how perverted was the naming of that place). only we work more energetically, empowering the actual area and individuals within. i know, it sounds kooky, doesn’t really make any sense, and is actually quite different than what those who think they understand actually imagine. anyways, though, you’ll understand soon enough. you can already see the results, it’s just hard to attribute any of them to this odd project – i dig. more to come! 

i am getting to enjoy being alive even while sleeping!
once i finally – finally! – got to start tapping into the power of my dreams, got to keep experiencing as the energetic being i am during sleep instead of blacking out all amnestically, woo-wee did it all start to take off. there’s just all sorts of stuff you can do in there. intentionally experiencing dreams and those other realities is where it’s at, as they’d say. you can teach in there or regrid, for one thing. just another enormous benefit of commitment to the meditation and creative expression. it started when i finally made a simple dream journal a discipline but without getting too serious about it like i used to, just letting it come as it came and appreciating. then it was increased recall, then increased awareness, then increased influence. then it was full-fledged awareness within the dream, even more aware & capable than in the waking world since it’s even more a world of my own making than this one and the physics & rules are so much more pliable. then there was meeting the other creatures and realizing i really am visiting other realities, and even discovering finally how to interact with this very reality while my body slept! …she’s there too sometimes. those really are the best. but usually she’s got her own explorations & discoveries & learnings to experience. and i’ve got mine. but it’s really interesting because they somehow sort of bend into each other in our waking life. like one time i wrote something and then when i re-read, it was especially not me, sounded more like her, and we thought about it and traced it back to a dreaming she’d done all by her lonesome not so long ago. that was a true delight! and now it happens a lot more we’ve noticed. she’s made stuff out of my dreams and i’ve made stuff out of her’s without the least discussion or previous awareness. will the fascinations never cease! 

i am travelling!
boy-oh-boy how i have wanted to travel but hardly ever have. thank goodness so much though that i did wait. now i’m actually aware enough, myself enough to truly-truly enjoy it, experience it. first it was visiting the coasts for work. nyc was great because of friends there. cali was scarier but ended up being incredible, thanks especially to the accompaniment of even more friends. but beyond overcoming my babyish worries and laffin with friendlies, it was so great to get to experience those pillars of current & recent civilization, especially as a powerful, aware, individual ready for and capable of interaction, with money and even a few friends in higher places i kinda mean, just for access’s sake as much as anything. fascinating places. …i’ve been getting to go on skiing trips too. i absolutely adore skiing – thank you forever to those who have helped me get back to those mountains. …and the return to hawaii for the writing of becoming superhero. i’d been thinking that would happen practically every year for years on end. certainly a relief to my seerdom, i must say, that it did finally materialize. i just love it there, almost dangerously so. should i mention how lucky i was to lack the means or resolve to force it beforehand? of course! …and even the best ever was the cross-country roadie she & i navigated. it was really the perfect experience for this body, this life. we just had to find the time & opp to make that david brown’s dreams come true like that. without him, for sure none of this would’ve been possible. there aren’t even thanks on the planet to thank that one for his patience & willingness, even if his laziness & stubborness nearly did kill us all so many times before – stronger it made us then! and returning home and each of us feverishly pounding out our own ’on the roads’ was maybe the sexiest thing i’ve ever experienced – was, by far! …and still more travelling to come. much more alone this time. she’ll be there occasionally, thank goodness, especially at the destinations but mostly not along the journeys in-between. after finishing all this BS hollywood bs, we set out to find the 3rd, to become the 3rd. collecting our ancient selfs along the way – Egypt, Japan, India, Russia – all the places practically. wherever it takes me. basically a constant journey into the underworld and, hopefully, continual re-emergence, re-birth into known lands. so intense. i haven’t been this scared for years. exhilarating!

i’m so lucky to be involved with so many thrilling projects!
who could have ever predicted such a stream of revenue from bodypets by othernow? hilarious, but it really is fun & helpful for people. …becoming superhero: the game! i love it. we’ve got side quests! …the recapitulatory documentary project with old folks homes. …the ’i was wrong’ blog and its spinoffs. …i sold my journal design, and it’s being produced! …the becoming godfather script - don’t worry they’re not allowed to call it that, i just refuse to bother to think of another title. …the fun arcade bar. …the obstacle course. …the new news. …bringing edible education to kc!!!

i have no economic worries!
i really live a simple life. no real wants or desires so much, consume very little, require very little. with time to write & share, love & fun, and access to enlivening nutrition, i really have all i need. especially with that girl being the way she is and getting to share so much time, so many experiences with her; without her it mayn’t've worked, almost certainly not as smoothly and wonderfully. what’s really awesome is the more energy (like $$$) comes in, the more i am able to invest in the further growth of goodness: spreading opportunity as a farmer sows seed in a field. the quicker i get it out to those right people, the quicker it seems to come back in.

even my professional relationships are enlivening, the people are good!
it’s almost unbelievable. thank goodness other people are changing too! if it was just me i would’ve gone so crazy and exploded like one of those horrible killing bombs probably. i’m so lucky to get to associate almost solely with real people even in those arenas so dominated by the jerks and the fakes and the ruiners. i was super-scared about meeting those hollywoods & publishers, but it all worked out in super-lucky fashion, as an incredible like-minded had just gotten the job, or the worst guy in the world had just been promoted or moved or just any kind of wonderful saving grace you would never dare imagine or hope for practically. my agents & editors are even brilliants. they’ve taught me so much already. they’re working with crumbs now too – they’re smart enough to love him practically as much as i do. it’s a way better situation or relationship than what he’d had. there’s almost no pleasure like finding a brilliant real person amongst the horrifying hoardes of others – oasis!

i am comfortable around others!
even kids & adults & parents & animals & plants – finally comfortable being in & relishing Nature! - creatures of all sorts, kinds you’ve not yet dared to imagine but actually exist all over the place in all sorts of ways. even comfortable around the meanies & jerks & manipulators – i see right through them. they’re weak really; it’s sad kinda, but easy as pie to redirect or dodge or overpower them. it all just comes from knowing thy very own self. then you can finally stand up straight in full, real (non-imitative or projected) confidence in your knowledge of your own individual self. the problem was always worrying that i wasn’t this or that or enough or whatever so when i would come upon another creature i would invite its energy – it’s desires, preferences, beliefs, etc. – to change mine own energy. silly, silly little katz. oh, but what a challenging habit-program-addiction to change, to overcome. awesome though once i did finally. the depth & immediacy of experience exploded practically. then i knew everything about whatever was standing before me because i was just as much it as it was me – we’ve all got all of each other inside of our own selfs, if only we’re willing to allow our own knowledge & experience of it, aware enough. it empowers your ability to serve the destiny of others as much as your own – indispensible!

it really is all happening now – wow!
here we go: to infinity & beyond!

Betty Edwards

“I see you as an individual with creative potential for expressing yourself… My aim is to provide the means for releasing that potential, for gaining access at a conscious level to your inventive, intuitive, imaginative powers…and…become a confidant of the natural world…delve deeply into a part of your mind too often obscured by endless details of daily life…develop your ability to see underlying patterns and possibilities for new combinations…expand your powers as an individual through increased awareness of your own mind and its workings…enhance your confidence in decision making and problem solving…come to know this power and make it known to others…[by which] you are made visible. [As] the German artist Albrecht Durer said, ‘From this, the treasure secretly gathered in your heart will become evident through your creative work.’”

well. i couldn’t agree more. i should’ve said something like this, exactly this in the About section of this blog. that is my aim. and that is how i see you. and by ‘you’ i really do mean all of the real humans. but especially those who are willing to become close enough, open enough to allow such a view. seems it can take lifetimes to get just to that point of allowance, to grow from that common seed of potential to the cusp of expression.

and how lucky am i to be so surrounded by such percolating reals on all sides. but ultimately i must be speaking of my own self, that creative part of my own self upon which i must intentionally focus my own attention to encourage its growth as the sun’s energy encourages the growth of greenery.

make no mistake, almost no one reads these writings i’m writing. it’d seem a waste of time, so very much time, and effort too then. oh but not so. in fact, even were there completely none readers besides my own self, and were death or imprisonment assured for tomorrow even, such as this would still be the most progressively productive act in which to engage. nothing prepares you for the experience of death or sleep or tomorrow like the self-reflection of creative expression. (well, excepting meditation, when done right, of course, but that’s because it’s doing pretty much the same thing but for a different, even more essential part of your self, your next self.)

i suppose i’m especially lucky to’ve been so obsessed with death and its likelihood to strike at any moment, whether by my own hand or another’s or that silly master of accidents fella, and to be so inept at providing even the most basic of necessities for my body to actually feel that death’s possibility very really, to really know it; lucky to’ve been so obsessed with freedom and my need to expand mine own to be very aware of the billionses of ways in which it can be taken from me at any moment, whether by my own hand or another’s or whomever that inconsiderate mister accident feller is, and to be so inept at fulfilling even the most basic of requirements for my body’s continued inclusion in society to actually feel that imprisonment’s possibility very really, to really know it. so i’ve been working on this problem rather intensely for quite some time, trying all sorts of other people’s - reasoners’ & religions’ & revolutionaries’ – suggestions, examples, and this is what i’ve come up with: self-reflection & creative self-expression.

basically, we carry this ever-increasing bulk of experiences & reactions inside of us like a big ol’ burden. and our interactions with the external world acts like a magnet, inspiring the loosening of random portions, which then rise to the forefront of our awareness. check it out, this seems to be happening just constantly inside our minds. the problem is that we tend to be so judgmental of our selfs & pasts & associations that our reaction is rather to grab that clump of externalness then and just jam it right into the dislodged hunk of internalness, weighing it down, so it sinks back into the forgotten dungeon of wherever that stuff inside of us hides.

but! if we instead appreciate even the perhaps (or likely) undesired external experiential magnet and also appreciate what it brings to light within us, really examine it, reflect upon that part of our self we’ve become aware of, then we can maybe see how that internal part fits together with that external part, which we’ve just brought into our self through the act of experience. and then, instead of shoving them down inside of us like gluttonous misers or scaredy katzes afraid of our own shadows & reflections, we can combine the two, in a very natural creative act, and express our self accordingly. in this way we become lighter.

i hope that made a bit of sense because it’s brilliant. for a more concrete example of what i mean, see this and every other writing i’ve published here. if none suffice, then all i can say is do please hold your horses, i’ll get it right eventually. because that’s what i’ve been doing. responding to external prompts by weaving my own self through them and sending the newly-created hybridization back into the world to change it as best as it can. (like two human bodies merging to create a brand-new one? yep, like that kinda.) 

the more you neglect the opportunity to share yourself with the external magnets, the more they will just keep returning in similar forms to give you yet another chance to unload your baggage. but if you instead participate in the process, then you’ll become more & more empty, in a good way, allowing for all new experiences to fill you up, light you up. and these then will soon be followed by their own magnets, and what you’ll find is that these new creative expressions aren’t so much about enlightening your own load but the load of others. and that’s really what feels the greatest of all, though mostly we’re way too depressed by our own self-obsessions to have any such idea.

anyway, though, the other cool thing is that it needn’t be the most terribly long or consuming process either. very often the expressions turn out to be like sliding one of them long skinnies into a tightly packed tetris board, and in a flash and a poof it’s cleaned up and all set for progression toward never-before-dreamed high scores, and the never-before-dreamed experiences & accolades that come with them.

so the way to start is by empowering your most natural expressive inclination by feeding it time & thought energy. and you can get tons of extra such energy if you pry it away from the likes of worrying & self-criticism & considering (considering others’ opinions, established categorizations and rules above your own internal inclinations); if you slow down on those emotional outbursts and reactions to happenings and the constant judging. simple observation accumulates much more worthwhile information & experience and expends hardly any energy comparatively. it’s a process of small gains and never giving up returning enormous results.

for me it’s supposedly writing. so i kinda tend to want that to be everyone else’s as well. though even if so it needn’t be so blatantly paraded as this. a journal for your own eyes only will suffice to begin. plus, there’s probably so many other ways i’ve not mentioned, or i’ve forgotten or i’ve never known or not even anyone yet has ever dreamed.

which is yours, i wonder? i sure can’t wait to find out. i especially sure can’t wait to watch how that big old world changes the more you let it find out. you’re all so g-d creative – it’s really so very exciting.

 

“Drawing, pleasurable and rewarding though it is, is but a key to open the door to the other goals…The potential force of the creative, imaginative human brain seems almost limitless…The exercises are aimed at opening access to skills you already have but that are simply waiting to be released. To put it another way, you already know how to draw, but old habits of seeing interfere with that ability and block it. The exercises in this book are designed to remove the interference and unblock the ability…And, as many of my students have told me, their lives seem richer because they are seeing better and seeing more.”

so these quotes are from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. i removed the drawingnesses from the first quote because the what & why of her sayings is so much bigger than only drawing. this does look to be a wonderful book for learning to draw though. i can’t wait to go through it. just as soon as i can figure out how to get my hands on the few necessary supplies. (katz burglary?)

she gets rather amazing results from peeps after only a 5-day workshop. here’s a before & after gallery, if you care to glance (or just check out those raving comments on amazon). the ultimate trick is finding the right books, the right information, the right teachers. most of the teachers & information out there is imitative enthusiasm-crushing filler junk. there’s a very lucrative & convoluted science to keeping you from understanding yourself, from being aware of what you already know. like she says, you already have the ability and even knowledge within you, it’s just a matter of finding the simple, sincere keys truly made for unlocking.

 

“When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.”–Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, 1923

i am enamored with you for this very reason, because i can see the so-called artist in you, and it’s flarkin beautiful & inspired. and i don’t care how adamantly you’ve always refused to think of yourself as an artist, how convinced you’ve been. it’s only because you’ve been tricked. tricked by bad teachers and stankified info. and those imitative characters so busy claiming to be artistic, so busy trying to force others to approve their produce as art, they’ve completely missed that the role of an artist is to inspire the artist in others not to overpower & conquer it. 

the artistry is in the progressing of self-awareness and the communication of such. it’s nothing more than growing as an individual and willingly sharing yourself with others along the way. and it is simply everything. it’s the intertwined dance of a constantly evolving individual with a constantly evolving reality, inspiring the change & progress & momentum in each other, and always kicking up brilliantly enlightening produce to pepper the madding crowds like pixie dust, freeing them from the oppressive gravity of their anchors to oblivion.

Kris Kristofferson

“Love to me is the only answer to what’s going on with the world. The kind that you feel unconditionally for your children. And if you work at it, you can get to where it includes others too….If you were to attain the highest state, I guess you would love everybody.”

there’s a feature on Kris Kristofferson in the April 16 issue of Rolling Stone (the one with yer boy Lil Wayne on the cover). it’s called The Last Outlaw Poet. and it’s written by Ethan Hawke. sexy, huh? uh-huh, totally. and just delicious. but especially enlivening.

it’s just what i needed on that Sunday: packed with potential but wondering which draft to apply myself to; wandering room-to-room awaiting that spark, the break in the conga line in which to insert myself and have a ride.

this is how it goes when the house empties and a new opportunity for writing presents itself. the possibilities storm the vacuum from all sides. the rabble closes in around their king (that’s me!), all begging for expression, but he can only pick one. and if he chooses foolishly, mistaking that wormtongue’d ego’s voice for his own, everyone’s day will be spent in frustration.

so mostly i struggle to find something to remind me of how beautiful it all is, so i can remember what it feels like inside, find that envigorating enchantment that makes the pain of writing wonderfully worthwhile because it’s just what these humans (like me) need so constantly. and then we set about working out how best we can manage to arrange them words to communicate & transfer that feeling to others. and wormtongue’s just a-snakin’ all throughout that brain and in & out them ears the whole g-d time. that’s it.

“When it works, I feel blessed that it does. But it works just when I’m being as honest as I can be with whatever it is I am playing.”

that spark can happen like an invisible lightning jolting us out of hypnotic thinking, practicing meditation certainly increases the frequency of such. or it can be found in books or movies or whatever. sometimes even in dreams, which is nice because then you get to wake up with it. or songs, of course, music for sure. wherever it’s found, regardless of how hard you’re looking, it’s found, honestly, by allowing it to happen to you, by being open enough to follow your intuitive whims without too harshly judging or too strongly committing. and timing is everything, as what will work better than ever at one point may never again at another.

i had an empty house for a few hours, maybe more, but i’d already used up the first. not so many months ago, weeks even, i might’ve even given in, become desperate to find my creative niche for the day – i could smell it, in the courtyard, the worryful stink of desperation demanding an audience, so very self-important.

watch a movie? exercise? just sit down and force myself to write? should i do that meditation again, the one for which i require an empty house, the one i just finished? i’d spotted the Rolling Stone issue when i was just in the upstairs meditation room, my sister’s old, the last time. i should be sure to read that article before she comes and gets it, i thought. but definitely not now, when i’ve such freedom – after this med i’ll be right as rain for the writing.

but i wasn’t. and after burning probably another half-hour in wanting things to be how my stupid self wanted them to be, wanting things - the everything of the world that is my world - to be different from what it is, i finally stopped trying to change it and let myself interact with it just as it is, we are.

i sat down with the article, read the first couple pages and tried to stop but couldn’t. it was wonderful; i was having the best time. just one more section. just one more section. then i put my foot down. that’s it. the rest will be saved for a more needy time. i had another med, promising to write afterwards.

the struggle is that what’s always kept me from really exploring creativity productively, so that i’m actually using my body & life-time to shape it into a shareable form instead of committing the great self-destructive sin of only hoarding it all within my own suppressive self & body whether due to laziness, arrogance, ignorance or whatever, has always been the many-headed monster of indulgence, just indulging in all sorts of corrosive crapola.

maybe that’s not so fair to call that stuff a mean name like that. but the unfortunate truth is that, at least for me, writing takes forever. and i can’t squeeze forever into bits of time here & there. i need at least almost forever in which to convince myself that i really can sit down and write forever. because to really get it to work you have to find that timelessness within yourself and lose track of the ticking time surrounding yourself. that’s when, whatever bit of eternity made it to the page in however few words, when the session does end i am more alive than when it began: i am happiness.

“I was lucky that the old creed of imagination that had got me there in the first place didn’t get killed in the process. Through it all I could still find reasons to write and go out and sing. I became unmarketable in music and film at the same time – but I was still experiencing enough joy just from the creative act.”

these are the lessons you have to learn – i have to learn over & over & over. each time i do, ackowledging what i’d forgotten, the space for writing, for creating, enlarges just that little bit; the time of remembering between the time of forgetting expands, and my capacity & possibilities expand along with it. it’s the experiencing of joy that does the expanding, that joy from intentionally pursuing a relationship with that timeless part of yourself-ourselves-It’s Self.

i feel very lucky to’ve grown up with an awareness of such as Kristofferson. my older brother Dan is cut very much from his mold, that of Dylan & Cash – that whole group of sincere greats currently in their twilight or final dark night. so it’s not just that he was always playing their music – how much i loved listening to Highwayman and There Ain’t No Good Chain Gang and Brownsville Girl with him – but that he carries with him their essence, which is a deep romantic earnestness of character, of honesty & justnest, and that’s as far as i dare go with trying to word it till i’ve become much more capable.

so i wasn’t really a fan or involved with Kristofferson except through my brother. it’s enough to know that i would’ve never bothered to spend that time that Sunday reading about him otherwise, and what i would have missed out on, what that strange part of me tried to keep from me even still. reluctantly, after that last meditation, i accepted my gifted fate, returned to the article and read through to the beautiful end; such a beautiful ending. 

“Shit, though, once you get right down there on the bottom, totally broke and an embarrassment to your loved ones, and it still hasn’t killed you, suddenly it’s all easier – nothin’ to lose, ya know?”

but that quote’s not from the ending, it’s from the beginning. and the everything that was lost was really only just the everything of everyone else. that’s when you become a vacuum, and life pours in from everywhere you’d been missing while your focus was off listening to that wormtongue, wanting things to be different than they are, trying to be what you aren’t: a part of that everything of everyone else.

you’re not an everyone-else, you’re a creator, a creative individual, a real live human – the real humans are creators.

i hate to be the one to tell you this because you so love projecting your depth onto all those others, giving them the qualities you’re so eager to refuse are your own, while accepting in exchange their mechanically programmed suppressions to maintain the status-quo and prevent your expansion. they’re not doing it on purpose. in fact, we all do it. it’s what happens to us when we’re not using our creativity to engage in life. it gets used for us – it gets used to prevent the engagement of life, and it just radiates out from us. and we all pick it up from each other. and our brain translates it into criticism and judgment and anxiety and worry and all the real stinkers of your times in life.

and it all just gets piled so high upon that poor neglected suffocating creativity, so loudly drowning out your own individual subtle creative voice. for some, the only way to find it and free it, to learn to hear it is to just go straight to the bottom and wait, wait for everything & everyone else to lose interest, to give up on them enough to shut up their mouths & minds and move on.

and then, finally, there it is, your essential creative self, loud & clear. and like being deep sea diving and popping the top off your oxygen tank, you’re suddenly zooming back up toward the surface like a torpedo, and exploding into the majestic sun-filled sky you just keep on climbing like a blasting-off rocket. at least that’s how it kinda went for Kristofferson for a while.

True Love Waits

 

 

it was over again. i turned for the end: an hilarious handshake as i dropped her off for yet another, perhaps a final, disappearance into the far-away. and i said “goodbye.” definitively. but why? that wasn’t my line, the one i had read to me, fed to me again & again & again, zooming through my head; loudly, clearly, prodding & trembling my body like a bell, melting my pounding heart into a singular swell: “i believe in you completely”.

god how i wish i’d said what was meant. but i sure didn’t.

and there was never to be another chance.

nor did i care to need one, i claimed with my statement-statement of straying off script. i don’t even care then. because i’m tough; battle-tested and survival-ed. i don’t need this. i can rebuild my heart & psyche a thousand times over, no matter how teensy & completely them pieces be minced. each restoration (resurrection) more elegant & capable than the last. i can be anywhere, do anything. so if it’s to be done, let’s be done - move on. become something entirely different then, something actually worthwhile now.

but, of course, were that true, i would’ve just said as my head had pled instead of forcing such a “safe” revision.

and now i envy that other me, that other them, on that other timeline, where i didn’t shrink from opportunity – they could be anything by now. wonderful even; together even; happy & flourishing.

and there was never to be another chance.

 

and yet, later, there it came: one more chance. she did return, and life’s fervency with her as if the wind of her wake were the actual activator of spring, but even more immediate, an urgent insistent gushing even, as the determined straining of blooming greenery in time-lapse photography; fluttering my dreaming eyes, babbling my i’d-rather-be-smooching lips. just babbling & babbling those lippers, in fact, like how it must’ve been when they were first coming up with that wheel or the different ways to section bread for buttering: a real trial & error brainstorming hoedown.

babbling about god – god for chrissake, how could anyone ever get that joke. telling her why i’m so drawn to her, her stupendous singularity in processing thought - what? that she finally makes me what i already am – aye yai yai. describing the invisible muscle which when properly flexed transcends time & space – as if then someday in the future she’ll make that day today, giving the greatest present of all: the no more separateness of our togetherness. and every chance was spent in babble, all the time, till there was no more, and she was here no more, away to the there of her future.

but here there was so little time this time, every time, for these enchanting & inspiring times, for this one amazing time. and so unlikely ever to be so gifted again, as this present had been. just trying to say something helpful, for the future. so that just maybe, if i manage to say something helpful enough, worthwhile enough, maybe just the right thing in just the right way, then she’ll return, in the future, and especially that then, in the future, she’ll tell me all about her own self, life & thoughts & dreams, as that’s what i’m so the most interested in, that’s the future present i’m most especially anxiously, excitedly awaiting.

but she was right there – here, now, then. what is this future business? the future was now. oh, woe, but now the future was then. and she is there, way out there; wherever. till when? forever.

god how i so wish i’d rather listened; let myself just gaze & smile at her with abandon and just listened & listened. but i sure didn’t.

and now there is never to be another chance.

oh holy lord – that’s it? that was it? and that’s what i said? did? what the flarn, man. i can’t be that – that selfish, that stupid – that – that whack. and now it’ll just keep coming back, whenever-wherever, all humiliatingly hot & sweaty & sticky & oh-so-pathetic, just flushing the life, the everything right outta me. i’ll be all excitedly skipping off into the future, whistling & smiling, just beaming with the confidence & optimism of forgetfulness: taking deep glorious breaths; using words like ‘glorious’; getting all close to things to examine them closer because i’m just so interested in them all, in everything that’s doing this being with me, but in its very own ways; tickling a cute little doggie under the chin, or tickling a cute little baby under the chin, or tickling a cute-as-a-button friend under the chin. and that’s exactly when the undertow creeps up and sweeps me off me feet, and a yank & a sank later i’m a-drownin in the sea of memory. there’s a whole whirlpool of idiocies in there – saids, sents, givens - carefully recorded and constantly replaying, all just clamoring to be the yesterday to finally sink me.

while tomorrows promise to be equally deadening. i’ll have to go away, to become more normal, or even – eek! – less. or she’ll never return. or if she does, she’ll be someone else entirely – someone else’s someone else, the she of some other he, remade in his constricting but supposedly glamorous image: sharp & dark, aggressively powerful, like with money & status & movement; maybe helping to make a brand new baby human and even offering a fence: dreams can come true, it can happen to you - nightmares too!

and there will never be another chance for either of us.

 

but, really, there’s always another chance. it’s never done; it’s never over. or, even if it ever is, it’s got nothing to do with the solidity of matter in moments, with physical proximity, with being eye-to-eye in a window of time. cycles make the real rules; fixed, circular orbits of our abyssal internals, of essential attraction & magnetism; and chance always comes round again (& again & again &…) like them seasons, till final enlightened blooming escape into the form of the next; or final withered decaying collapse and reabsorption or reconstitution into another of the same for an extra go-round of go-rounds.

so there will be another, at least one last.

and when there is another chance:

i will focus on assimilation; concentrate on remembering the feeling of being with you, the feeling of remembering my best self who i hadn’t seen or even realized i hadn’t been in so long and yet now get to be again whenever you’re around, and for a little while afterwards too. till my memory of how & why slowly evaporates well beneath that high-water mark - that’s what i should’ve been doing, concentrating on sandbagging those memory banks to prevent such heavy leakage & seepage; meditating on being what i’m so lucky to be seeing reflected in your eyes: my most alive & inspired & capable, truly participatory, altruistic even, self. i will. i will sample that feeling of being that me, of being with you, of being me-with-you. so i can recall it at will; so i can learn to apply it to my contemplations of, my interactions with others – to teach myself to love others as i do you.

this is the useful progression of a relationship, like a single eternal conversation bridging time & space. beginning by burrowing inward toward intimacy, learning the what-of & how-to of love; that you can at all, that all you had before you really hadn’t, is the first surprise. and then the more you see the you you’ve never seen reflected in all the mirrors before reflected in the eyes & smiles of this beloved loving other, the more you’re scraping away, digging through layer after layer of pretense & presumption, defense & decay, till you strike the gold at your core, discovering the infinite worth within the infinite depth of your infinite self; and awakening an ancient pool of passion which is to erupt outward with volcanic fervor, spewing your new-found loving brilliance as far in every direction as you can handle, remaking & enlivening the world around you as Kilaueau is growing the earth’s own heart, activating new pools of potential for life’s forever expansion: evolution.

and so, especially, should it empower the same in the other: progressive reciprocity. another, any other, many others, so very many.

and the chances will multiply exponentially, reverberating out like them ever-enlarging rings in water, stretching all the way to that immovable boundary and even pushing it back, bit by tiny bit, making way for even greater possibility. 

 

all this never silliness has been just that: never true, always silly.

it’s the egoic worry and indulgence in all things unnecessary, gloom & desperation at first subtle then louder upon louder that bleeds off, erodes that wealth of power & potential, that self-awareness, with which i’ve been enthused by my proximity to you. that self-awareness. not the restrictive, repressive, anxiety called self-consciousness. but the empowered kinetic knowing of self-awareness.

and when i lose that awareness i get scaredy. becoming unaware of my own momentary opportunity and instead focusing on fearing your own, imagining you’ve an overabundance, preferable all to my own self-sorry neglected self’s. and i’ll lose you, and be all alone again, as i’ve suddenly decided i already am, feeling so awfully frightful. and then comes my yank upon our bond as though ’twere rather our shackle, taking up the slack, demanding my partner’s return as though ’twere rather my captive.

and the fears’ worries will multiply exponentially, reverberating out like them ever-enlarging rings in water, stretching all the way to you, your immovable beloved boundary, and even pushing you back, bit by tiny bit; pushing you away with panicked flailings & lungings for you, to use you as does an addict a drug, like a pacifier, to clutch & cling selfishly, miserly, making way for even more erratic worryings and fearful imaginings.

the fear is the one will out-grow the other. and so can i deprive you, us both, us all, of the benefit of our time apart, when others, our own selfs even, get to be with us as individuals again, even more individual individuals now.

because they must separate – the partners, the lovers – as completely as possible; so that when they reunite, they reinvigorate as completely as possible - entirely, intensely teaching each other, changing each other, evolving together, together activating new pools of potential for life’s forever expansion: coevolution.

you are teaching me to feel, by allowing me to, about you; i am teaching me to feel, by allowing me to, about you; we are teaching each other and our own selfs to feel – to feel; and to exist as we must, to survive as we must within this greater world of experienced feeling. just as before, alone, we’d shrank from this world in deference to survival alone.

so that when you’re gone, jigging down upon your individual’s own evolutionary story line – whether for a moment or a lifetime – there will never be the wondering, the worry, the obsessive craving, but rather the simple exuberant appreciation for the gift of the moment, mine own individual moment, your own individual moment, to be treasured still more when shared again as before. especially when shared with you, but still so specially when shared with all the new experiential answers to all those never-before-dreamed questions you’ve inspired within me.

only gifts will remain.

and there will never be the need for another chance.

 

last chance saloon:

we were in the saloon when i wondered aloud to her about how i so wonderfully was able to talk to her as i’m almost never with another. how i finally understood what it was like to have a gift in the way that others have the gift of writing or leadership or so exquisitely playing an instrument – that’s how it felt: like she was my instrument and i was my song, and i was finally gifted enough to make beautiful music as i’d never with another. how i felt so wonderfully fulfilled & capable & aware when with her as i’m almost never with another.

“because you’ve got a captive audience,” she said.

god how i wish she’d said “captivated.” but she sure didn’t.

here’s hoping

had an interview last friday. they scheduled it for 930a. i was furious. i was going to have to sleep through the night instead of work. jesus. whatever. i got up too early and tcb’d like never before and even arrived early, clean-shaven.

this was my first face-to-face job interview since being here. i’ve actually tried, hard at times, but just never can seem to get any love from anyone. it’s been shocking, truly.

 

basically, the whole year played out in repeating cycles. there’d seem to be a rising unstated tension in the house to which i’d respond by feeling increasingly worse about myself. what am i, afterall, but a lazy delusional mooching addict loser who flushed a perverse amount of potential and a budding career at one of the world’s largest telecommunications providers down society’s toilet and now is back parading his overgrown-child impotence in front of his super-hard working parents’ faces day after day after day with no end in sight.

after being dumb enough to let this beat me down for a bit, i’d shift into heavy self-improvement mode with much exercise & meditation and focusing on being more productive writing-wise and improving nutrition when i had the means. i’ve gotten quite good at this over the past few years and after only a couple days i’d be feeling very terrific about myself and really progressing personally. often this would culminate in the gift of an opportunity to spend a rare saturday night with my friends again finally.

i don’t even want to think about how many times i was dancing my way out the door to do so when my father caught me to confront me with his disappointment over my apparent refusal to get a job. why haven’t i, and when would i, he’d demand. impossible questions, unknown answers. all i could say is i really don’t know; i’m trying; i can’t believe it’s not working; i really thought things were going to go differently; i’ll try harder. and over the course of the next few weeks i’d rework my resume, apply for a bunch more jobs and medical studies and have us all re-convinced things were soon to turn around.

of course all this time spent trying to figure out how to be someone one of those hirers would want me to be, figuring out how to communicate in that way, really cut into my ability to focus on developing as a communicator of thoughts & ideas one of those hirers would have no professional interest in. and when nothing panned out as we’d hoped, tensions would rise and i’d start feeling pretty terribly about myself.

it’s really a standard cycle. i went through pretty much the same deal while working at Sprint, only the role-players & circumstances were different. perhaps you’ve noticed similar unfoldings in your own passage of time. life gets a different kind of strange when you start noticing the unacknowledged cycles within the greater acknowledged ones. it feels empowering, but the inability to actually communicate what you see & feel in that regard to the others involved really just seems to put you at a disadvantage. this is the first real organized effort i’ve managed.

and though there’s been enormous progress made, if you ask me, people are only really into measurable, tangible results, which i’ve only been managing to produce more of recently. though even still those are certainly not in the form others would prefer. a few measley blog posts? what’s that? it takes like two minutes to read, wasn’t really very enjoyable to read, and it’s totally forgettable. it’s been a year, shouldn’t you have written a whole book in that time? and all i can say is “um, yes?”

  

the receptionist showed me to the interview room and gave me some papers to fill out – my interviewer was stuck in a meeting. he kept me waiting for a good hour. about every 10 minutes i’d hear the receptionists wondering what on earth was keeping everyone in that meeting for so long and worrying about me and all the callers awaiting the meeting’s ending. then they’d apologize to me. clearly the meeting was running over, it should have ended long ago. meanwhile, the interview room is between the reception area and the obvious meeting room as i can hear occasional outbursts of laughter, the laughter of office-types, and jolly-good times through the wall.

finally my interviewer comes in and says, “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long – I had no idea. I was just in a meeting – they could have come and gotten me. I don’t know why they didn’t come in and get me.”

boy it was great to be back in the world of the lying blame-shifting liars. i settled in for my time of judgment, trying not to stare too repugnantly at his ridiculous college ring. he reminded me of a restaurant manager i once worked for, just a weasle ready to take advantage of you at every opportunity. i tried to snap myself out of a tendency to feel sorry for the guy and instead remember to supress my urges toward honesty, my achilles heel.

there were a few missteps but it certainly could have gone way worse. i felt i had the job at the midway point but things ended on a down note, especially when i couldn’t come up with any questions during the questions portion of the judgment. i always fail this section. it was really trying to haunt me on the way out. what kind of bullshit questions are people asking at this point? everything about the simple job and situation is very obvious. i’ve promised myself from now on i’m not leaving the questions portion without asking what kinds of questions they expect.

there’s a requisite second interview, so i’d have to wait by the phone for a couple days. as i headed home i became totally depressed. it was really retarded. very like a charlie brown rain cloud just sliding on over and settling right over my head. i watched it happen but couldn’t stop it nor figure out the why of it. had i blown it? that’s it, isn’t it – i’ve blown it again, failed again – what an embarrassing failure i am. and on & on. that was how the depression wanted to express itself in my head, but it didn’t really feel right. i don’t think i was depressed because i wasn’t going to get the job.

 

while writing this i was startled to hear my father getting up for work. 4a. four fucking a.m. still dark and definitely cold. jesus christ i’m a pussy.

seeing my father go off to work has always terrified me – no less today, certainly not. it’s very Silver Thunderbird. and he works for the biggest dicks in the world. they’ve got an investigative report in their future, they do. if i can ever become confident enough to actually look horribly confident people in the face and ask them a straight question, that is. someday i’m going to have to just cry my guts out over all of this. not looking forward to that one.

my dad was like a spiritual counselor of sorts for a couple churches in the 70s & 80s, back when people like Bobby Dylan & Keith Green and all those former hippies were shifting over to Jesus. that was some movement back then. too bad it had to go away for so long. he really inspired a lot of people during that time, just making a huge difference. i watched a home movie recently – you should have seen them all, so thankful to’ve had my dad to talk to them just the way they most needed. awesome.

he’s gonna get another chance to be like that again if he wants. when it all explodes again, like it did before, only different this time, way better even. in just a little bit now. he may need to write his book first though. hopefully, if i can get my darn self to figure out how to write mine own, i’ll be able to show him how. and then it’s no more putting up with the pricks and almost always missing out on family & community.

 

so i think the real reason i got so depressed when driving away from that job interview is because i’m actually going to be offered the job. the horror. at a stop light i scribbled down this note: “sometimes i think my difficulties dealing with your work-a-day world basically just point to me being a terrible person (and i’m not the only one).”

this is the kind of thinking they inspire in me, that world of theirs. i was barely even in it for a second. on the way home i passed the Sprint campus and very nearly got caught up in regretting leaving, sprinting away from there. it would have been the first time. it was right there, like standing atop a tall gushing water slide: all i had to do was take a small step forward or slip and i’d be plunging into that wet pool of regret. leaving that place was the best decision i’ve ever made. it would have been the best decision ever even if my first step off campus had plunged me directly into The Mangler.

they called me back for that second interview. if they offer me the job i want big congratulatory handshakes beneath a shiny Welcome Back To The Bottom banner. here’s hoping!

oh thank goodness

oh my goodness, seeing phoenix on snl was so dawgone enlivening. anticipating their new music is so exciting. it’s what winning the lottery must be like – just going all googley-eyed over all the wonderful times you’re going to be having with these winnings. like schools-out-for-summer or quitting a bullshit job or finally being reuinted with someone you really love: finally, i get to be myself again! just the biggest relief in the world.

that’s how i’ve always described that type of blissful elation, the kind you see propelling goal-scorers into hysterics on the soccer pitch. relief, i’ve always called it. finally a momentary reprieve from the world’s worries & injunctions. finally a moment in which it is socially-acceptable (so rare) to throw yourself into the experience, really soak in the feeling.

for a lot of years i got to score a lot of goals on them soccer fields. it was wonderful. though i never reacted like those guys in the big leagues. i was never allowed to, you might say, though i realize now it was only my own self doing the restricting. part of it was that i actually understood my parent religion (the part that actually is understandable anyway), and so never went anywhere near self-congratulations nor especially the dreaded vility of arrogance. though i realize now, of course, open expression of jubilation outside a worship service needn’t be arrogance. but let’s just say, if you describe a goal, point or touchdown-scoring celebration as arrogance in front of little davey brown, rest assured you won’t be seeing him expressing his own self so triumphantly for years upon years, if ever - he’s a real dot-conector, that one. but come on, when the award for a misstep on the Lord’s playingfield is unimaginably excruciating torture for all eternity, don’t you have to be? aparrently not.

sucker! apparently my only real crimes were having too vibrant & intense an imagination and too much self-awareness allowing for self-discipline enough to give eternal-hell-worthy behavior a wide birth. even on the soccer field where part of my goal was actually to play by the rules as best as possible. meanwhile practically everyone else out there’s just cheating their little arses off. what a bunch of little shits, those kids and their parents & coaches. yes, strict adherence to the agreed-upon rules was quite a hindrance to my competitive success. 

i was really lucky though in that regard to’ve been sent to a god-fearing school by my god-fearing parents. it kept me good in those societally successful ways all twelve years. of course, once hell & god were out of the picture school-wise, the separation between education & learning became too horrible to bear, and i just could not get my body to them classes. the guilt & shame sure remained though – and how! as the brit announcers would say:  ohhh unlucky!

i sure did start learning a lot on my own though. now who’s laughing all the way to the bank? oh, right, still definitely not me. …or am i? i actually think i am, just that darn bank is always over the next hill and there always keeps being just one more hill. it’s just, the mere fact that no one in their right mind would agree with me is the least of all deterrants because that “right” is either based upon recent (at best) social convention, as though such is forever-fixed rather than forever-fluxed, or just a blatant arrogant lie.

believe me, i’m scouring for exit ramps as i zoom along my highway lane straight into the bright flash and rising plume of whatever they’re fleeing. but i’ll sooner set the cruise control, recline my seat, throw the old hands behind my head and drive that last leg with my knee and a big ol’ smile than swing around and get with the program and join those jam-packed skyways out of town. i don’t want to be amongst them at the end any more than i want to end up where they’re headed.

so if all i find over that next hill is the head-lopping checkmate of death’s final scythe-stroke, it’s fine by me. i’ll shake his hand and stretch my neck, try to make it a little easier on him – he’s only being his own self as best he can afterall, playing by the rules really. besides, i’ve learned a lot about the whole ordeal since i started thinking & learning for myself, and i’m not so scared of it or whatever comes after anymore. in fact, i’ll probably be hearing that mexican’s elated cry of gooooooal! and really relishing that feeling i’ve always called relief. who knows, maybe a new me’ll even rise from my ashes, like a phoenix.