Emptying, to Form...

Where am I going with this?

What am I doing?

What's wrong with me?  Why am I so unhappy?

What do I want?

Do I love you, completely?

Do I love you, at all?

Or do I just need to feel loved by someone?

...

No.  No, that's not the right question.  I do love you.  We've been through way too much together for way too long, have too much history, for me to not love you.  There's a part of me that will always love you, in some way.

The question is, do I love you the way that I'm supposed to?  Do I love you the way that a husband should love his wife?  Or do I just love you as the one person I've been closer to in my life, and shared more of myself with, than any other?

And is there a difference?

Questions, questions, questions!  Everywhere I look it's more fucking questions!  WHERE ARE THE FUCKING ANSWERS?!!

...

I've moved out, temporarily.  Checked myself into a hotel for the week.

Why?  What do I hope to gain from that?  Am I just trying to "shake things up" - just introduce a little anarchy into my life to see what happens?  Am I just trying to force a random change?  Or am I trying to step out of my life, to gain some perspective?  Or am I just hiding?  Just running away?

I don't know.  I don't know if I ever knew.

I'm grasping at straws here.  Suddenly, every single little thing is pregnant with meaning.  Is this The Answer?  Is this what I need?  Will this make me better?  Will this solve my problems?

How can I get better when I don't even know what's wrong?  How can I find The Answer when I don't even know The Question??

Am I looking for fulfillment?  Or do I just want a happy, satisfying marriage?  Are they mutually exclusive?  Or are they one and the same?

...


I keep coming back to this one thought.  That I need to clean up my act.  That everything will be better, and I will be happy and content, if I just give up the drink and all the rest, start working out and losing weight and eating right, start meditating again and studying the Tao, etc., etc.

But then I also can't shake the feeling that all of that is just a bunch of middle-aged, white, American, liberal, hipster bullshit.

But I'm following my gut, aren't I?  That's what I'm doing right now.  I'm following my gut instincts, blindly, in a desperate attempt to get away from wherever the fuck I am right now, to someplace, anyplace else.

And it's my gut that's telling me to follow that path.  That salad yesterday (my first in I-can't-remember-when; it's been all pot pies and beer lately) was the best thing I've tasted in a long, long time.  It's was, literally, unbelievably, shockingly delicious. And there was absolutely nothing special about it - just greens, some veggies, and oil & vinegar.  I keep thinking about how wonderful it would be to just spend some time sitting still and being quiet.  I keep dreaming of my gomden the way I've so often dreamed of the pipe.  That stupid little weekly email quote from Pema Chodron felt like the Universe speaking directly to ME.

And it's my head that's telling me it's all a load of crap.

That means something.

Doesn't it?

But what if all of that only feels right because it's my safety net; because it's safe and familiar because that's what I do when I get lost in these existential crises?  ("Existential Crisis" - jesus, talk about a first-world fucking problem.  How spoiled of a brat do I have to be to even be taking any of this seriously?  But, what, am I supposed to pretend I have the experience of a migrant worker in Guatemala or some shit??  I DON'T.  I can only be who I am. And I am a white, middle-aged American liberal, who is fortunate enough to have the luxury of being able to engage in this kind of introspective panic.)

But what if that's what I do when I get in these situations because that's what I'm supposed to do in these situations because that is The Answer to these problems?!

Ugh, this is making me dizzy.

...

And way, way back in the deep down of me, I feel this fear.  This fear that I'm going to die here.  That I'm never going to get out of this maze of questions alive.  That any reprieve is only temporary, and that I will always end up right back here.

That they're going to find me, cold and still on a hotel bed, the same way they found my mother.

I'm scared of the way that feels like Destiny.

...

And She says, "I'm sure it hurts!  I can't imagine caring so much about so many things.  It must be exhausting!  Maybe you should get back into the Tao so you can let things go and ease your pain..."

And I can't help but laugh!  She has no idea I've been thinking that, or writing this here, at the exact same time.  Out of the mouths of babes...

Is it another sign?  Or am I just connecting dots to find the pattern in the chaos that I want to see?

...

Is all of this just because I don't like myself?  Is that why I feel compelled to do all of those self-improvements?  Because I feel like I would like myself better?

...

When I'm drifting like this, grasping at straws, lost and desperate in this vague and undefined way, I find that I start to obsess about strange things.  A lot of the time it starts as ordinary, banal escapism.  But sometimes it leads me to the Way Out.  The most famous example of this in my life so far, was reading Wild Cards in the bath way back when.  In about the strangest way possible, it was those baths that led me directly to my first direct experience of the Tao.  Changed my life forever.

Right now, it's The Moth.

I can't stop listening to it.  Every story just makes me feel, so much, and so powerfully.  And so I guess there must be something about that feel-ing that I need right now, just like I needed to disappear into the warm water back then.  I would assume then, that also like the baths, I probably will only be able to explain this obsession in hindsight.

Follow Your Instincts.

It's the only thing I feel like I can do right now.  When all else fails (and, let's be honest, all else really has failed here), then Follow Your Instincts.

It's the only thing I feel like I know, for certain.

...

Yesterday, the quote on Zen Pencils reminded me of Bill Hicks' "It's just a ride..." quote.  I got a strong urge to submit that quote to the author/webmaster.  In doing that, I had to find it in my PDA so I could copy and paste it into the email.

Just now, I needed to go into the same section of my PDA that holds all my little notes and stuff, to look up something else.  It was still on the same page with the Bill Hicks' quote.  That page is titled "Philosophies."

I have a collection of notes on my Philosophies of Life that I've collected over the years, stored in my PDA - and I had completely forgotten about it!

And there it was, right in the middle of the list:  The Tao of ManniMoonYin that had come to me so many years ago under such similar circumstances - the Tao that I had been led to from my bath.

How can it be??  It seems that I've forgotten my Tao:

"All things that are, are change."
("All things that are, are fire."  The only constant is change.  Nothing lasts forever.  EVERYTHING is mutable.)

"You cannot be good.  You cannot be bad.  You can only be."
(You cannot be "good," and you cannot be "bad."  These are entirely relative judgements - what is "good" for one will be "bad" for another, and vice versa.  The only thing you can "be," is Michael.)

"Look on the bright side."  "Make the most of it."
(This is the only life you get.  There's nothing good nor bad but thinking makes it so - so find the good in *everything* - even your mother's suicide was a good thing when you figured out how to look at it right.  Choose joy, and you will be joyous.)

"You are amazing.  And so is everyone else."
(Glass houses; no one is fit to judge anyone else.  Judgement only leads to division, separation, and loneliness.  We are all One.)

...

That's 3 coincidences now today, all pointing to the same thing.  And today is my 3rd day of this desperate searching.


Even if I'm just connecting the dots in the chaos to find the pattern I want to see, that pattern is obviously deeply meaningful to me in some way.  My path clearly leads in that direction.  And if I am to follow my instincts, then how can I ignore the pattern I see in the noise, like meaning in an inkblot?


It seems that I have found My Answer.

...