Because You're Mine...

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine,
I walk the line

I find it very, very easy to be true
I find myself alone when each day is through
Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you
Because you're mine,
I walk the line

As sure as night is dark and day is light
I keep you on my mind both day and night
And happiness I've known proves that it's right
Because you're mine,
I walk the line

You've got a way to keep me on your side
You give me cause for love that I can't hide
For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide
Because you're mine,
I walk the line

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine,
I walk the line

                                                -JC

My Precious...

I keep forgetting that this all started with Her.

Amid all the psychodrama and melodramatic, existential bullshit at my latest rock bottom, I keep losing sight of how I ended up there in the first place.  Of the reason why I started running head-long toward the dark at the end of the tunnel at all.  And equally, in the effervescence of all of my recently re-discovered joys, in the heady excitement of my bright, shiny new serenity, I also keep losing sight of the fact that, that reason is now gone.  That I got what I wanted all along.

That I'm so in love with Her.

Yes, it's Spring, and that certainly has to be factored into the equation.  But that doesn't make anything I'm feeling less relevant, or any less real.  For months, and maybe longer, I felt like I'd lost her.  (I realize now, I'd actually lost myself.)  I couldn't find any reason to be with her, except momentum.  I couldn't find any joy in her company, in her touch, or in her place in my life.  I realize now that I couldn't find any joy in anything in my life just then, but at the time I was completely focused on her.  I thought that We were the problem, that something was wrong with Us that needed to be fixed.  That if she could only change, or if I could only learn to be happy without the things I felt I needed from her, then everything would be better.  But it never was.  It was never good enough.  Nothing was ever good enough.  And I only ended up more unhappy, and more lost.

I believe my biggest flaw (and I have so many), is how I respond in these situations.  When I cannot find joy in my life, when I feel lost and alone, when I begin to struggle to find a reason to keep going, I force-feed myself artificial pleasure in the form of deadly poisons.  Now, to be fair, most of the time it's not like that.  In fact, I'd say 99% of the time it's just a little here, a little there - just having a good time and blowing off a little steam.  And nothing that's even really dangerous, let alone deadly.  Under any other circumstance, it's all innocent and under control.  No, not "under control," because the truth is that for most of the time, there's nothing there that even needs to be controlled in the first place.  But then there's that fatal 1% of the time, when I feel like I have nothing.  And believing I have nothing, and feeling that it's all downhill from there anyways, then I might as well enjoy the ride.  And that's when I push the plunger on my self-destruct button.

And that's exactly what I did here.  I'd made her my entire life, in about the most self-destructive, co-dependent manner imaginable.  And so when I felt like I'd lost her, I felt like I'd lost everything.  I hadn't, but I couldn't see that from the bottom of the hole I had dug myself into.  And when I finally hit bottom, I wasn't even thinking of saving myself from myself.  I still hadn't even realized that I was the problem.  I thought I was trying to save my marriage.  I thought I was trying to find a way to live with her.  But I was just trying to find a way to live.

And now I'm so happy, and so overjoyed with every second of every day, blah blah blah.  The high of the near-death experience.  And it's all such a big distraction, so constantly overwhelming, that I keep forgetting to pay attention specifically to all that I've re-gained with her.

My heart beats faster when I think of her now.  It actually skips when she kisses me.  Can you fucking believe that?  I didn't think that was possible anymore!  Everything she does makes me happy right now.  Even the things I used to think I couldn't stand.  I don't know how I ever felt any other way than I do right now.  I'm so grateful for the gift of her life, and the fact that she actually, improbably, inexplicably, wants to share it with me.  I look forward to seeing her every day in a way I only distantly remember feeling, long ago.  I ache softly inside when I have to leave her.  When I make her laugh, I own the fucking world.  And when my hands are on her hips, and I pull her to me, and feel every curve of her pressed against my body, I am lost again.  But no longer in darkness.  Lost in the cloudy depths of her palest-blue eyes.  Lost in the scent of her skin.  Lost in my lust to reunite with the other half of me.  Lost in the warm, comfortable weight of the life we've made, wrapped around us, holding us tightly together.  Lost in my joy of Her.

I hold no delusions that this will last forever.  Rule #1:  everything, everyone, everywhere, ends.  But because I know that right now, I am more grateful than I ever thought possible, for every single second I get to be with her.  And I remember now, what I had so tragically forgotten:

That She is the single greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

And that no matter whatever else I may be in my life, the one and only thing I will always be, forever, is Her's.

Dream Diary #1...

It's late, and I should be leaving the office now, but I really don't want to try to write this at home, and I also really don't want to skip writing today.  Today was one of those busy days where you feel like you never get a chance to catch your breath, and this is really just the first opportunity I've had to write at all.  So, I'll try to be brief.

I had a strange and unsettling dream this morning.  A lot of it I don't remember, and a lot of it was fluff not worth remembering, but there was a core of something strange, and vivid, and unsettling enough that it's been on my mind off and on all day.

I remember that Dollface and I were staying in a hotel room somewhere, in some small town that was strange to us; we'd never been there before.  It was a cheap motor lodge kind of place.  I remember that she was asleep, and I was bored, and I decided to go check out this new town while we were here.  (Something that has happened in our waking life many times.)

It was the middle of the night, and I drove just down the street aways, until I came upon this strange strip mall.  It was all lit up like an amusement park.  But all the stores were wooden cabins, like you'd find at a campground.  Porches and screen doors; everything hung with strings of lights.  There were shoppers and kids and punks and stoners smoking joints and junkies looking for a fix.  And there were prostitutes, most of them looking like junkies or meth-heads, trolling for johns, so they could get their medicine.

I decided to try and find one I liked.

Definitely not something I have ever done before, in the dream or in real life, and I can't say exactly why I made that decision.  For some reason, I thought the best way to go about this was to sit down in the grass next to one of the porches of one of the stores/cabins.  So, I sat down there in the grass, and looked up at the stars.

It was then that I noticed that there were two moons in the sky.  Both waxing gibbous (a little more than a quarter-full, heading towards full) - mirror images - one slightly above and to the right of the other.  And there were these strange trails of the image of the moon, like a dragon of smoke in the sky below them.  In the dream, as I stared at this awesome and impossible sight, I remembered hearing about this rare lunar condition on the radio, and felt delighted that I'd actually had a chance to see it, since the radio had said it was not going to happen again in my lifetime.

A young girl walked over to me and asked if I was looking for some company.  I said I was.  So she sat down cross-legged in the grass in front of me.  She was wearing a thin white t-shirt, cut-off blue jean shorts, and low-top chuck taylors.  She was very thin.  Too thin for her clothes.  She looked very young, too.  Her skin was smooth and soft and pale.  Her dirty blonde hair cropped short in a sort-of bob.  She didn't look sick and used, like all the others.  In her face, she looked like she still had some baby-fat.  She probably could've passed for 15.  But I was going under the assumption that she was at least 18, because her arms and legs were covered in tattoos.

All of her tattoos were glyphs and symbols.  Sigils and hex-marks and other occult signs.  And Runes.  I could read them.  They were incantations.

"Those are runic incantations," I said to her, pointing to the string of runes on her shoulder.

"Uh, yes, they are," she replied, slightly taken aback.

"Oh, and that is a very powerful mark," I said, pointing to a runic sigil on her bicep that was written in a sort of runic "code."  The ancient runic sorcerers had used it after the christian conversions in order to keep their work hidden from the prying invaders, who had a nasty habit of burning sorcerers.

"Now, you don't look like the kind of person who can read runic incantations," she said, smiling.

"No, I guess not."

We sat in silence for a while, staring at each other.  I liked her.  It seemed like she liked me.  At least enough, anyways.

"What's it like?," I asked.

"Well, for the most part, I actually enjoy it.  Haven't gotten hurt yet.  And I'd be doing it anyways, but this way I get paid for it."  She looked down at her feet, started playing with the grass.  She looked like such a little girl.  "But, I don't really have much choice, do I?"

"Why do you do it?"

"Well, ya know, I got things I need, ya know?"  I nodded.  I did know about that kind of need.  I've felt it pulling down in my bones before, too.  Watched from outside myself as I did things I couldn't believe, just to make that ache go away.

I was beginning to feel that way about this beautiful, sad little girl in front of me, as a matter of fact.

"I know what that's like."

"Yeah, right," she said, and I could tell at that moment she thought I was an asshole.  Just another mark.  I realized what a stupid thing it was to have said.  What the fuck did I know about her life?  What the fuck did I really know about that kind of hunger?  I felt like a privileged rich kid telling a kid from the ghetto that I understood being poor.

I laid down on my back on the grass beside her, and looked up at the sky, with the twin moons, and the dragonsmoke trails of lunar dust.

"Look at that," I said, "Isn't that beautiful?  Won't happen again for a thousand years."

She looked up from the grass.  "Yeah, I guess it kinda is."  She laid down on her back next to me, and watched the sky.  We stayed like that for a while, in silence, at peace.  Until I felt her take my hand.

"What do you want?," she asked.

"How much?"

"Twenty, fifty, or a hundred, depending on what you want."

"I want it all."

"I know."

Day of Rest...

I've decided I'm taking the day off.  I need a day to just relax and watch TV (Mad Men Season 5 tonight, yay!) and play some video games (about to storm Andrews Air Force Base end the Enclave forever in Fallout 3, yay!) and not have to work on making myself a better person for just a little while.  And I'm totally fine with that.

Back to the introspective grind tomorrow.

Sitting In Stillness...

Finally meditated again this afternoon.

I've been wanting to meditate for over a week now.  But my altar and my cushions were all covered in a thick layer of dust.  (How's that for a metaphor?)  And it's been hard to find the time this week to clean everything and get it all ready to be used again.  But today I had plenty of time, and there was nothing I wanted to do more.  So I took it all apart, cleaned everything until it was looking like new, and then set it all back up.

It felt so good to be sitting there again, counting my breaths.  A little strange, only because it's been so long, but also so intimately comfortable and familiar, because I've spent so much of my life that way now at this point.  Kind of like putting on your favorite old pair of jeans after not wearing them for a couple of years.

I've decided to do things a little differently this time around; we'll see how it goes.  In the past, I've set aside a certain amount of time for meditating - 15 minutes, 20, 30, an hour, whatever - and used a timer to tell me when that set time period is up.  I actually have a special meditation timer just for that purpose.  When the chimes sound, it's time to stop meditating.  But I've decided not to do that this time.  Somehow, it just feels too rigid and boxed-in.

Instead, I've decided to just meditate until I feel the desire to stop.  Maybe sometimes I'll stop after a certain number of breaths.  Maybe sometimes I'll stop when my back can't take it anymore, and the pain gets too intense.  Maybe sometimes I'll stop when I get distracted and lose focus.  Maybe sometimes I'll stop when I just feel the time is right to stop.  Who knows?  The point is, that each meditation will be unique, and each experience will be dictated more by the feeling of the flow of Tao within me, than by whatever my brain decides is the most appropriate time to put on the clock.

Still, I'm curious to know how much time I spend meditating in each session.  So, I'm still using my meditation clock.  But now, instead of an alarm counting down, it's a timer, counting up.

Once I'd settled into position and gotten into a rhythm of counting my breaths, and begun to relax, it was just like riding a biker.  It felt like I've been doing it my whole life.  There was nothing that seemed to indicate that it had actually been almost a year since I'd last meditated.  And it just felt so good.  And so right.  So peaceful and serene.  So calm and quiet.  So empty and relaxed.  I knew I'd missed these feelings, but it took being there again to really bring home to me just how much I'd missed them.

I stopped after 181 breaths.  Seemed like a nice, prime number.  Also felt like I'd about hit my physical limit; my back was starting to hurt pretty bad on every inhalation.  When my eyes had adjusted to the light again, I checked the clock, and found I had been sitting there in stillness for just over half an hour.  Double the amount of time I used to spend in a typical session.  And basically effortless compared to the half-hour sessions I used to do, where I would have to push myself to get through it, always waiting for those chimes to sound, always wondering how long it had been so far, always "surely my half hour must be up by now!"  But this time, without that predetermined finish line to push towards, there was nothing for me to do but simply let go, and relax, and breathe, and be still.

I can't wait to do it again tomorrow.

The New Commute...

I started taking a new route to work this week.

I've known about this route for years - a snaking backroad through farm country that leads straight from my home to my office - but I've always been told it takes about 90 minutes to traverse, so I've never bothered with it.  Taking the more direct route down the clogged and congested 6-lane commuter highway, I-270, takes me 90 minutes on the absolute worst days.  Usually only takes me about 45 minutes to an hour, on average.  And my top priority was always to minimize the amount of time my commute took above all else.  As far as I was concerned, an hour and a half to two hours a day in shitty traffic on a big highway was much preferable to three hours a day in shitty traffic on a country two-lane.

I realize now, as I so often have, what a fucking idiot I am.

I don't know why I decided to take the back way on Monday morning.  The pull of the Tao in my gut urged me in that direction just then, and so I followed the flow.  It took me 45 minutes.  And I know for a fact that was a heavy traffic day.  So far this week, it has taken me an average of one hour to make the trip either way.

And it is a beautiful drive.  Farms and orchards and tiny, old towns the whole way.  Great views in every direction the entire route.  Forest trails and nature preserves and river walks one after another.  Blooming dogwood trees and cherry trees and pear trees every-fucking-where I look.  It even smells wonderful!

And it's fun to drive!  All twisty and curvy and up and down and around.  Definitely a driving enthusiast's road.  (And, of course, I love driving.  A good driving road is one of my favorite pleasures in life.)  Yeah, it's only a two-lane, so every once in a while you get stuck behind a slow truck or something, but there's plenty of places to pass.  And getting to overtake someone every once in a while just makes it that much more exciting and fun to drive!  And when you can't pass, well, it just forces you to slow down and relax and enjoy the ride (not to mention the view).

Aaand... because all of that wasn't good enough - turns out I get a lot better gas mileage on this road.  So it's actually saving me money, too!

I mean, it's like a dream-come-true!  It's more fun, less expensive, takes about the same amount of time, and rather than being an exercise in frustration and aggravation and aggression and terror and psycho-drivers and gridlock and exhaust fumes and assholes talking on cell phones and not paying attention to what they're doing and why don't you hang the fuck up and drive you stupid motherfucking piece of shit!!...  Instead I get what amounts to a driving meditation to begin and end my day.

I am trying not to grieve too hard for the decade I wasted on that asphalt Styx we call I-270.  I am instead trying to concentrate on how grateful I am to have found this oasis of a commute at all, ever.  How lucky I am, to never have to feel that stress and pain again.

The sight of rolling green hills, the purr of my engine as I round another bend, and the smell of cherry blossoms are making that pretty easy for me right now, I must say.

The Tao of Yin Becoming Yang...

Yesterday was a really, really bad day, and not just because of Mr. Squirrel.  That was, unfortunately, only the beginning.  In fact, yesterday was a continuing escalation of a bad day that had really started the day before.

My computer crashed yesterday morning.  Again.  And crashed, and crashed, and crashed all day, and nothing I did helped at all.  In fact, every single one of my personal computing devices has died in the last week.  My smartphone died on Friday, and I'm still trying to find the time to get back to the store before they close in the evening to pick up a new one.  On Sunday, my internet at home crapped out, and didn't come back up again until Tuesday evening, after I reset and reconfigured every single part of it.  And for the last couple of days, my work machine has been dying a slow, painful death, as well.  I feel like I've spent my entire week just trying to get my computers, which I rely on so much for the functioning of my everyday life, to simply fucking work.

I ended up spending almost my entire day yesterday trying to fix my work computer.  Of course, I couldn't get any of my work done while I was doing this.  But that doesn't magickally push any of my deadlines back, either.  So every hour I spent trying to fix my machine was an hour that I no longer had to get any of my work done, and I was very aware of this in the moment.  And every time I tried to fix the problem, and failed, my frustration, aggravation, and stress levels rose.

I tried to find the Joy in my situation, but I just couldn't overcome the negative things I was feeling.  Even the fact that in trying to fix my problem I was learning all sorts of new things (normally an almost sensual pleasure for me) about the coding and configuration behind-the-scenes of my web browser wasn't enough to make me feel better in the face of ACH! FUCK! WHY WON'T MY COMPUTER WORK?!

I felt like a failure.  I'd barely made it a week, and here I was, losing my sense of Joy already.  I knew it wouldn't last forever, but I honestly thought I could make it last longer than that.  And then I realized that feeling like a failure for not living up to the spirit of UT #3, was also contradictory to the spirit of ManniMoonYin's Universal Tautology #2, "You cannot be good.  You cannot be bad.  You can only be."  Which, ironically, only made me feel like more of a failure.

But this morning was the beginning of a new day.  And I awoke with a fresh perspective.

What I realize as I observe all of this, is the Tao of Yin Becoming Yang.

You can't be happy constantly, all the time.  It's not that it is impossible to accomplish, but rather that if you're happy all the time, then eventually it ceases to be "happy" and becomes simply "normal."  Yin and Yang combining to form the Tao symbolizes that we live in a world of duality.  Or, rather, that our perception of the world is a dual one.  We can only distinguish something in terms of its opposite.  We only know what "happiness" is, because of "unhappiness," and vice versa.  Without "happiness" there is no "unhappiness," and vice versa.  So, in order to maintain happiness, it must occasionally be tempered with some unhappiness.  I realize now that the goal of UT #3 is not to be happy all the time, forever.  It is simply to be as happy as possible, as much of the time as possible, and to learn to let the unhappiness come and go when it must, without attachment, and to recognize it as essential to continued happiness.

In that sense, yesterday was actually a success for me.  Not because I got upset.  But because when I was upset, and when it became clear to me that I was not going to be able to Brightside my way out of these feelings, I responded by trying to let them go and not hang on to them, and by trying to remain calm and simply deal with the problem at hand without letting myself get all worked up about it.  I reminded myself that, "Yes, this sucks, but it's not the end of the world.  And sometimes things suck, and that is just a fact of living.  So, there's nothing to do but try to let it go, and focus on the problem at hand."  And I remembered UT #1, the "Primary Directive" (I totally just thought that up - no, really):  "All things that Are, are Change."  In other words, "This too, shall pass."

And it did.

A Life's Lesson...

I killed a squirrel this morning.

Hurrying down a snaking two-lane back road in the early-morning fog on my way to work, the little grey furball darted out in front of me towards the double-yellow lines.  No way I could've stopped in time, and no way I'm slamming on my breaks for a squirrel even if I could've.  But I swerved to the right, in the direction it had come from, in order to at least try and miss it.  But as soon as I swerved, the little guy noticed me coming, and darted back in the same direction I'd swerved, essentially running itself under my wheel.  If I hadn't have swerved, I wouldn't have hit it.

I felt the bump, and I heard the da-thud-wump against my car's undercarriage as I ran over it.  I looked in my rearview and saw its limp, lifeless, furry little body flopping down the road in my wake.  I instantly felt like shit.  And then I felt like an idiot for feeling like shit.  I mean, it's just a squirrel.  And I did what I could to try and avoid it.

But I just couldn't shake the feeling that I'd done something wrong.  I'd ended a life.  And we're not talking about an insect or an apple here.  This was another mammal.  I don't have any experience with that, so I don't know how to feel about it.  But in my gut, in my Tao, it feels wrong.

No, it probably wasn't sentient; it probably wasn't aware like we are.  But it was still a complex lifeform.  And killing it didn't help me to survive in any way.  I feel like it had every right to gather nuts, and chase lady-squirrels around tree trunks, and not get run over by some asshole who's late for work.

What's the Brightside?  I don't know.  I have no doubt that there is a lesson here, I just don't know what it is yet.  I guess I will use this opportunity to practice acceptance.  Acceptance of myself (I cannot be good or bad, I can only be Michael), acceptance that all things must end (All things that are, are Change), and acceptance that living means that sometimes the Universe is going to throw a squirrel under your wheels.

Sorry, Mr. Squirrel.

Brightsiding...

I'd wanted to write something about Spring, today being Eostre, the Vernal Equinox.

But I'm not feeling it.

What I am feeling today, is frustrated.  And I'm still going with the flow, so here we go...

Today's just been one of those days.  Everything that can go wrong, seemingly is.  My smartphone just up and died last Friday night.  The replacement arrived yesterday, but I couldn't make it back to the store before they closed.  Was going to pick it up tonight instead, but as soon as I got into the office this morning, I was reminded that I volunteered for a CPR class this evening after work, so I won't be able to make it back to the store in time again, which means I'll be without a phone for another day.  My browser crashed my computer, costing me 45 minutes of my day that I desperately needed in order to get some of my work done trying to fix it.  Run to the bathroom real quick, there's an Out-of-Order sign on the door.  Run upstairs to use that bathroom instead, and the door slams back on a wound-too-tightly hinge, and the door handle nails me right in the middle of my forearm.  Go to get coffee, and the pot is empty, and no one has started another one brewing.  And I could keep going, but I'll stop there.

With each and every one of these little annoyances thrown in my way, I am reminded of ManniMoonYin's Universal Tautology #3:  "Look on the bright side.  Make the most of it.  Choose joy, and you will be joyous."

I'm trying.  I really am.  As soon as I realize that I'm pissed off or upset about some minor injustice committed against me by the universe, I say to myself, "Ok, what's the brightside here?"  And then I try to think of the situation in those terms, instead of in terms of getting fucked by fate.

Another day without my phone?  Brightside - learning life-saving techinques in a CPR class.  Bathroom out of order?  Brightside - get to walk a little farther, and up a flight of stairs, burning a few extra calories.  Door handle cracks me on the arm?  Brightside - the pain helps to toughen me up and gain endurance.  Have to brew another pot of coffee?  Brightside - get to spend a few minutes just standing still, relaxing, listening to the slow gurgle of the machine as it brews.   And, of course, each and every one of those difficulties also carries the implicit Brightside of giving me another opportunity to practice looking on the brightside.

But it's not always that easy.  From past experience, I remember that some of the hardest moments to maintain UT #3 were when the brightside wasn't so obvious.  Like losing an hour's worth of working time dealing with a computer crash.  It's hard to figure out how to be happy about that.  And somehow, the fact that it's an excellent opportunity to practice brightsiding doesn't really make up for the amount of frustration and aggravation I feel.

Sometimes, the answer becomes clear after a while, if you're patient, and attentive.  As in this case, when I restarted my browser (which had caused the crash), and, miracle of Miracles, I somehow hadn't lost all of my tabs and settings!  The relief that I felt just then was a wonderful physical sensation, and I allowed myself to just sink into the delicious feeling of it, like a hit, or an afterglow.  It was fantastic.

Or, perhaps a better example would be my mother's death.  The pain was devastating at first, and it was years before I could see how it was actually a good thing to have happened.  As much as we didn't want to admit it at the time, and as much as we didn't listen to her when she told us, the truth was that she was crazy, and she was in a lot of pain, and she was devastating our family.  And she knew that.  And her suicide was, at least in part, the ultimate act of love.  She sacrificed herself to save our family.  And she did save our family.  All of the happiness and joy in life that we have experienced since her death we owe, at least in part, to her.

(Broswer just crashed my computer again as I was writing this.  Brightside - an opportunity to practice patience and acceptance.  I didn't do very well, but at least I had the opportunity to try.)

But the hardest times of all, are when I try, but simply fail to imagine any brightside at all.  I think and I stretch and I reach and I try my hardest to come up with something, anything that could serve as a potentially beneficial outcome to some unpleasant turn of events, but I just can't come up with anything.  Or nothing I come up with is good enough.  It's times like that, I have to learn to trust.

The Christians would call that "faith" - belief stemming from a will to believe, rather than knowledge or fact.  But I don't use that word for this, and not just because I want to avoid all the xtian baggage that comes with it.  It's also just not what I mean.  Because, believe it or not, I actually consider myself to be a skeptic.  I know that might seem contradictory and hard to believe, considering some of the whacked-out, mystical, some might even say superstitious things I believe.  But I would call myself a skeptical believer.

Yes, I believe in magick.  I believe that I (or, really, anyone, for that matter) can affect changes in consensus reality through non-local means.  But I don't believe that just because I want to believe it.  Yes, I wanted to believe that magick was real and possible and that I could learn to do it.  But I didn't know if that was true or not.  And so I spent years and years studying and practicing and testing and experimenting.  And it was only after repeated, verifiable success after repeated, verifiable success that I was finally able to accept that yes, magick is actually possible.

So, yes, I believe.  But only because I was able to prove it to myself beyond all shadows of my doubt.  Hence, I'm a "skeptical believer."

And so, when I get in these situations where I cannot imagine any brightside to my misfortune, it is not faith that I rely on, but trust.  I fall back on all my past experiences where I have felt the Way, the Flow, the Tao, and remember how in those mystical moments the path has appeared in front of me from out of nowhere, brick-by-brick at my feet.  I remember every instance of hindsight realization, where I find that though I didn't get what I wanted, I got exactly what I needed, even when I didn't know that I needed it.  I remember every time that I didn't know what to do, and so followed my instincts for lack of any other response, only to find that my instincts had led me to do exactly what needed to be done.  I remember all of these moments and I remember how these lessons have been reinforced through experience over and over and over and over again throughout my entire life, even before I'd ever heard of "The Tao" - and I trust in that feeling.  It has never failed me.  Not once.

And, honestly, in those moments when I'm lost in the pain or sadness of it all, it's not the trusting that's the hard part.  It's remembering to trust in the first place.  Because we're told our whole lives that these things aren't possible.  That you aren't supposed to believe in them.  And that, if you do, you're crazy, or broken, or sick, or in some other way wrong.

I guess in that way, I'm lucky.  Because I've never given a fuck what anyone else has to say about what's right, or what's wrong, or what's true.

And that is my Tao of Choosing Joy to be Joyful.

Te: The Power of Small Things

I combed my hair the other day.

For many months now, I've been sporting what I've referred to as, "The Mad Scientist Look."  Hair going up and out in every direction, like a birds' nest; my only effort to do my hair in the morning being simply to wet it, towel it dry, and then muss it up as much as possible, almost as if I were giving myself a noogie.  Though I thought of it as "Mad Scientist," in retrospect it probably came off more as "The Homeless Junkie Look."

After my drift on Saturday, after my shower, as I was getting myself ready to go out to dinner, I decided to comb my hair.  I honestly can't remember the last time I did this.  (Even before the M-S-L, all of the haircuts I've had in recent memory have required the use of my hands to arrange, if they've needed arranging at all.  I can't remember the last brush I owned, and the only thing I've used a comb for lately is my beard.)  Just combed my wet hair back along my part, very simple and neat.  I don't know why I made that particular change just then, but I felt different, so it felt right to look different.  And I'm still following my instincts, listening to my gut, going with the flow of my Tao, etc.  And the pull inside me just then said, "comb your hair."  So I did.

I have to say that I like the new look better than the old.  Overnight my hair went from curly to straight.  And I hadn't realized how long my hair had gotten.  Swept back over my skull, it has an almost classic, yet still quite nerdy feel that I find I'm enjoying.

But it was a fairly severe departure, as you can imagine.  Pretty much the exact opposite of what I'd been doing before.  This has become especially apparent to me today, now that I am back at work, in the form of the many double-takes I've received from co-workers.  Over and over again, I'll pass someone in the hall whom I've worked with for many years, and we'll each say "hi."  And I'll see in their eyes when we first address each other, just a split-second of the process Incomprehension-to-Recognition-to-Surprise.

What I realize as I observe this, is the Tao of Properly Applied Force.

Such a small thing to do, such a minor difference to make, and with such minimal effort.  But the affect of this miniscule action ripples out through my entire life and changes so much.  My appearance, or the information that I broadcast to every other human I encounter in my day-to-day life, is now completely different.  And so not only has my message changed, but for those who know me, and who know how I looked before, there is the additional message of, "something has changed with him; he is different now than he was before."  And not just with the hair.  Because on some level, even for just a microsecond, they have to think:  Why did he do that?  Why would he change his appearance to almost the exact opposite of the way it has been for so long now?  And why now?  What happened to him?

And it affects me greatly, as well.  Every time I look in the mirror, or catch my reflection in a pane of glass out of the corner of my eye, I see someone that I don't immediately recognize.  For a split-second, I am a stranger to myself.  And again, there is that instant of cognitive dissonance, of gnosis.  That brief crack in reality where, for the tiniest of moments, you're not sure which side of the looking glass you're standing on.  That hyperunit of time where everything is true, and everything is possible.  And then recognition sets in, and your ego returns, and you're suddenly aware of who you are again.  The effect of so many brief flashes of un-reality inserted into ones' day is not to be underestimated.  It tends to make everything feel less real, and more fluid; it tends to make the seemingly impossible feel more possible.  And it is exhilarating.

I've managed to change my sense of what is real, simply by combing my hair.

Technical Difficulties...

Ok, so I found the first kink in my plan:  in order to post, one must have a working internet connection.

So, for what's it worth, I did write this yesterday, even though I'm posting it today.  (And who exactly am I justifying this to here?  I know the situation, and the only other person who'll read this knows the situation, so why do I feel this need to say all of this?  Recording for posterity?  So when my future-self reads this several years from now, I don't end up thinking, Wow, he failed after just three days! -?)

Better late than never:
 

"I had a dream that I fucked my old bartender last night.

Don't need to be Freud to figure that one out."

Drifting Backwards...

Goddamn I hate this hotel room.

I cannot wait to get out of here.  Tomorrow, I'll love ya...

I just had to get out, for at least a little while.  Decided to just go for a drift.  Left with a bottle of water, some good walking shoes, and a strong desire to get lost.  At every crossroads turning down the path of least familiarity.

End up in a maze of an old residential neighborhood I've never been in before.  (It still amazes me just how many parts of this town I've spent almost my entire life in that I've never seen before.)  Winding capillaries of pre-fab, post-War homes.  It was an old neighborhood, in every sense - I lost count of the number of "No Smoking - No Open Flame - Oxygen In Use" signs I saw taped to front doors.

Winding my way this way and that through a fucking beautiful spring afternoon, I turned a corner... and there was my old high school, from an angle I had never seen it before in my entire life.  I had no idea where I was just then, but suddenly I also knew exactly where I was.  Cognitive dissonance.  Gnosis.

How could I not wander those grounds again?  I made my way towards the campus.  Passed the old apartment building across the street where my first love had rented a small basement apartment with a friend of ours when she'd moved out of her parents house after graduation.  Where she'd gotten pregnant with his child.  Where she'd lied to me that it was mine.  I can never see that building without smelling the pennyroyal tea she had used to abort it.  A sick, metallic, moldy smell, it had permeated every surface in that small apartment and hung in the air for months.  It made the air taste like pain and fear and sadness.

I kept going, and walked around the campus of my old high school, taking in all the sights - noting all the things that had changed, and all the things that were still the same.  I saw the giant old oak in front of the school, where we'd use to sit on days like this and eat our lunch.  I slid down the bannister outside the front door - one more time, just for old times's sake.  I wasn't quite as graceful as I remember being back then.  And it gave me a wedgie.

I made my way around to the back of the school, to the parking lot and main entrance.  (I always thought it was funny that the main entrance was around back.)  I saw the brick tool shed for the apartment building across the street, behind which we used to hide to smoke between classes.  It was under a tree on the lawn of that apartment building, across the street from that school one spring break so, so long ago that She and I fell in love.  Though it would take us another decade to realize it.

I sat down for a rest under that tree.  And I just took it all in.  The weight of all that nostalgia like a lover on top of me - heavy, but pleasant; on the edge of smothering, but in a good way.  I felt back to all those years ago.  I remembered the children we'd been then, so awkwardly confident, so brazenly strange.  Even then, we knew that moment was special.  That we'd never have another like it for the rest of our lives.  It might've been the one thing we'd been right about.

We never could've imagined what would come for us.  That we would ever become so important to each other.  That we would ever wrap our lives around one another.  That we could ever possibly become fat, old drunks.

I realized I was crying.  For the children we'd been.  For all we've lost.  I sat there under that magickal tree in the glow of the evening sun, and I grieved for every missed opportunity, for everything we used to be, for every weight of the world we've decided to carry.  For all we could've done.  For all we can never do again.

I cried for the children we'd left behind.  That beautiful, strong, scared, strange little girl.  And for the boy I'd been.  And I realized, how much like him I still feel.  How I still see myself as 16, as 19, as 20, 25.  How could it be that I am this boy with a beard, sitting here under the weight of these memories that are so much larger than I have ever been?  It won't be very long at all before I'm 40.

At what point do I begin to feel like a man?

Words Everyday...

I've decided - for my mental, emotional, spiritual, psychic, and perhaps even physical well-being - to try to post something here every day.  We'll see how long I'm able to keep that up.

I imagine most, if not all, of it will be like most everything else I write - masturbatory, self-indulgent drivel all about me, Me, ME.  But they say "write what you know," and what I know is introspection and self-analyzation.  I am, after all, my favorite subject to ponder.

I think a key to keeping it going will be to just write whatever I'm feeling right then, whatever comes into my head, whatever I want to write about.  No set topic, no set word limit, no pressure to do anything specific other than WRITE SOMETHING.  Again, we'll see how well I actually do.  But I'm looking forward to it.  It will feel good to do some small creative exercising every day.

...

Some people are able to walk the middle path.  Able to keep balance in their life.  I know that I have wanted that for as long as I have wanted at all.  And, I guess, in my way, I have been able to do that.  But not in a straight line.  Instead, looking back on my life, I see that I have always bounced back and forth from one extreme to the other, over and over and over, back and forth.  And there is definitely a kind of balance in that.  But not stability.

It's a violent kind of balance.  Not exactly the serenity one associates with the idea of "walking the middle path."  And, I must admit, not really what I want for myself, either.  I keep hoping that one of these days, I will end up in the middle.  That I will somehow bounce myself into a state of grace.  I'm not sure how realistic that is, though.  I like to believe that each time I whip from one pole to the other, that I get a little closer to the center, that I am drawing my poles closer and closer to each other with each oscillation.  But I don't know if this is true, or just wishful-thinking.

And another thought I try (and often fail) to not worry about:  is this what they refer to as "bi-polar?"

And if it is, then what does that mean for me?

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.

...

Diamonds and Tin...

These have been the best 10 years of my life.

Thank you.

I will Love you, forever, Snowflake.

Happy Anniversary.  :*

In the Dreaming of Olde Fredericktowne...

Friday, May 28th  (last night of the full moon)

-8:39p - Sacrament: sick rose

-8:45-9:19p - ritually deconstruct altar, construct altar to Cthulhu

-9:20p - Sacrament: liao

-9:25p - all lights off, ignite altarcandle/Lya'o incense, take meditative posture of half-lotus, hands on knees in Kish mudra and engage mindfold

-~9:30p - decide to perform Battery Activation Meditation (routine chi-visualization ritual I often use as an opening rite; activates the power-centers, opens a Black Lotus at each of my tan-t'ien, encases me in a geometric energy construct that serves as both a dimension portal & a protective barrier, and finally centers me on the Axis Mundi) - sitting inside my construct, I feel powerful, serene, comfortable, safe, strong, secure, aware - hesitant to perform the last step for some reason - don't want to "break the bubble", which I've never felt here before - eventually I gather my chi along my spine and launch out the top of my skull and down my tailbone and out to the ends of creation until I am centered on the Pole of the Universe - something strange, different from other times; something I've never experienced here before - normally I feel god-like from this vantage point - but now I suddenly feel absolutely infinitesimal - instead of retaining my own perspective, as has always happened before, it seems as though my perspective on the Axis Mundi has shifted to the infinite universe itself! - I feel like I've shrunk to the size of a particle - and, yet, I also feel, quite distinctly, as though the ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS NOW STARING DIRECTLY AT ME - I shrink even further

-9:43p - Journal Entry: "mindfold - darkness, which had been comfortably enveloping me suddenly became oppressive and claustrophobic - I wanted out - then malevolent! - some thing was coming AT ME through the dark - trying to get into me - masses of black worms - tendrils IN MY EYES" [note added here: my entire field of "vision" inside the darkness of the mindfold was filled with the writhing of black tendrils - I quickly removed my mask and opened my eyes, and saw my new altar for what felt like the very first time]

-9:46p - JE: "almost as if in response(?) sudden overwhelming urge to masturbate myself before the altar - pleasure was overwhelming, yet remained flaccid throughout, even through orgasm and ejaculation - very aware that it was the mental image of my limp cock birthing millions of tiny tentacled blobs of slime that finally triggered my orgasm" [note: another experience unknown to me before tonight - afterward, felt slightly nauseous, kind of sticky & gross; wanted to take a shower] [addendum: realization as I'm writing this that I should have consumed this sacrament, as well!  a missed opportunity.]

-9:59p - JE: "decide it's time to begin my descent" [note: following this entry, I gathered my tools and got dressed - I wore the Silver Key on a ribbon wrapped around my wrist, and an ankh (for ghouls) on a chain around my neck - I filled my pockets with small sacrificial offerings from my altar, a few tools I thought I might possibly want or need along the way (bag of runelots for divination, iPod, etc.), and some basic practical items for the journey (water, phone, etc.)]

-10:29p - JE: "Begin descent." [note: after making this entry, I opened the blinds covering the window above my altar, letting the world back in, and letting it out onto the world - then I turned around, put in my earpieces and turned on my music (Aklo, "Unnameable" and "Beyond Madness", shuffle/repeat), formed both hands into the Kish mudra and began to count out the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber that begin the descent into the Dreamlands]

-seventy steps from my altar turned out to be the second to last step at the bottom of the stairs before reaching the courtyard of my building - was this the Cavern of Flame? - I waited - no, it wasn't - what now? - there is a secret door at the back of the courtyard; an iron gate that leads out into the wild of vines and weeds and giant, gnarled, hundred-year-old oaks hidden in the darkness behind the building - going through the gate is step 1 of the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber

-I count my steps through the dark, leading along the path from the gate and out into the gravel lot behind the building - there is a large, ancient, rectangular hunk of shattered concrete embedded in the middle of that lot for no apparent reason, and the seventieth step places me square on the South side of that block, facing North, looking directly at the gate leading out of the lot, and exactly in the middle of a 2' triangle formed by three intersecting cracks in the concrete - when I step into the triangle, the music crescendos and the chittering sounds grow louder and more insistent - this is the Cavern of Flame

-I stand waiting in the middle of the empty lot - I am in darkness, but I can see the cars and people on the street not fifty feet in front of me - none of them seems to notice me - despite the security of the darkness, I feel open and exposed - I become aware of two large, columnar shadows suddenly flanking either side of me - I don't want to look directly at them - tall, shadow-black, man-shaped, arms folded over chests, wearing headdresses - Nasht and Kaman-Tha - am I worthy to proceed? - I stand waiting, waiting, under the weight of their gaze - why am I sweating? am I starting to shake? - cold rush of fear - I look to my right, directly at... Kaman-Tha, as it turns out - then to my left: Nasht - I am left alone - stepping out of the triangle is the first of the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber

-counting out my steps toward the gate at the N end of the lot, I am suddenly aware that I am about to walk out onto the street, in public, walking in an odd and stunted way, with both of my hands rigidly held in what, to anyone else, is the middle-finger sign - I think this might arouse a bit too much attention - I jam my hands in my pockets so that I can continue to hold the mudras without being so obvious about it - now, with my hands jammed awkwardly in my pockets, and my staccato off-kilter walk, I feel as though I look like someone doing a very bad job of trying very hard to act nonchalant - this becomes especially tense when, around steps 450-500, I have to walk directly through a party of people that has spilled over the stoop and onto the sidewalk - I cannot hear any of them, am acting VERY weird, and have to walk right through the middle of everyone, very aware that I am interrupting everything and everyone is staring at me - I just continue counting - 523, 524, 525...

-at step 600, reach a crossroads - to my right is an alley - I feel very strongly that the remaining 100 steps lead in that direction - however continuing ahead of me, I know there is a sacred spot I've been to before; should be about a hundred steps away - which way do I go? gut feeling or intellectual curiosity? - usually I'll go with gut, but that alley looks like it leads into someone's backyard; I really don't want to get caught trespassing in someone's yard, right now, do I? - better proceed fwd instead

-at ~step 660, reach the gate of a public park, wherein lies the most potently magickal natural setting in my neighborhood - surely the Gate of Deeper Slumber is in there - but there is a large sign drilled into the gate - have I ever seen it before? - it says it is illegal to be in the park at this time of night - seems no matter which way I go, I'm going to have to commit some type of crime in order to reach the Gate of Deeper Slumber - there are a lot of people about on the street - no way I could walk in without being seen - how long have I been standing here, staring at this gate? - ... - ... - I can't do it - I guess I failed this attempt - nonetheless, I hold my mudras, and cross the street counting down the last steps, until I reach the seven hundredth

-10:45p - it feels wonderful to release my hands, roll up my sleeves, take a drink of cold water, and walk like a normal person again - am I in the Dreamlands now? - I don't know - decide to just start drifting

-L onto W. Patrick - "Crystal Row" - all the yoga studios and Reiki treatment centers and naturopathy clinics - never realized before, but all of these buildings are old *houses* - this has been a business district my whole life, but looking at it now, I can't help but see the residential neighborhood it was a century or more ago - these huge, old, Victorian "homes"; what would've been "mansions" back then - some of them still fitted with gaslight - how sinister and imposing they seem to me now, as never before - what horrors and atrocities had been birthed within those walls a hundred years ago? - how oddly out of place it seems to me now that they should all be housing new-age wellness centers! - like an amusement park built from the ruins of a concentration camp

-R down a street I've never seen before - lined with several multi-story condominiums I hadn't known were there - road makes a 90* bend to the R, and I follow it - end up in a back-alley that ends at a T - L, another alley - follow that to a crossroads where R looks like it leads out to a road - I take that R and end up... on the opposite side of Baker Park from where I just was up on W. Patrick. - I'm about a mile to two miles away from where I'd first turned down this street - ??? - how can that be?? - I'm on the other side of the fucking CANAL for fuck's sake! - how did I get to the other side of the canal without crossing a single bridge?!

-disoriented, I walk to the nearest bridge and cross the canal, then work my way back to the other side of the park, to where I'd been just a few minutes earlier [note: realizing now that it never even occurred to me to trace my steps back in the direction I had come - ??] - the path leads me through the park, following the canal - the water is black, and stagnant, and smells like a marsh - it is full of flies - I stop and sit down beside it to gag on the smell for a few minutes - doesn't take long before I'm actually starting to retch, so I continue on my way

-at this point, my wife begins txt'ing me from her night, and we continue to txt back and forth for the next couple of hours, until she goes to bed - the experience feels somewhat like getting a phone call from the other side of the looking glass

-TXT-Received: "Where you @, baby?" - Sent: "Dreaming"

-11p - finally free from the park, I am shocked to discover that the entire ordeal, everything from the seven hundredth step on, which seemed to last for hours, has only taken 15 minutes

-TXT-S: "How did that year only last 15mins?!"

-leaving the park, I cross Bentz and head E down W. Church St. - the mansions lining this street are pre-revolution, colonial - by American standards, they are ancient - if the houses on Crystal Row held hidden horrors, these ancient estates bled and screamed with unseen atrocities - every edifice seems to leer - every shadow has fangs - every well-tended topiary squats lifeless, like flowers in a tomb - I can hear screaming children being raped and sodomized - a young nigger slave girl's gurgling wails of uncomprehending terror while she watches as her infant is viciously carved from her womb - the sickening snap of bone - the sharp sting of a whip - the sloppy wet sound of vomiting - the smell of blood and shit

-then I come to the churches - this is Church St., after all - they've been built upon and added to and refurbished and renovated so many times through the centuries that they look modern now in comparison to the brick mansions all around them, even though they are technically much older - these are the "famous" Seven Clustered Spires of Olde Fredericktowne - standing on the street I look up to the top of the spire above me - from the smoky blackness above, I see the image of a dozen gargantuan tentacles free-falling out of the sky - they land squarely on the church, absolutely demolishing it in an explosion of brick and dust - I look down the street and see another mass of tentacles descend similarly, crushing another huge old church on the other side of the street - then the first mass of tentacles to my right lifts up into the sky almost as quickly as it came down, and I see it come down again, further down the street than the second mass but still on the same side of the street as it was before, again crushing another building - I realize now that these are limbs of some Thing that is *walking* down Church St. - every step utterly destroying some giant old stone building like a toy model - it quickly stomps off into the darkness at the far end of the street, several blocks away - I decide to follow it

-PIC1 - What long-forgotten tomes of ancient occulted knowledge are held hostage by the insidious Mr. Marshall Etchison??

-11:12p - JE: "reach the funereal [sic] home on Church St.  it begins to rain.  no... mist"  [note: an enormous gothic mansion, the first time I visited this funeral home was to view my mother's body; this fall, I was back again, in the same room as a matter of fact, for the funeral of my wife's father - as I stood there staring at it, contemplating the width and breath of that horrible old building's place in my life, the air suddenly became wet - at first I thought it had started to rain, but then I looked down the street and realized that a mist had rolled in off the canal]

-turn R down Carroll Alley - past the post office - the stench of manure - end up on another bridge crossing the canal again - decide to turn L and head E down the canal towards the other side of town - quickly reach the end of the renovated "garden/shopping district" area of the canal and keep going, past the art museum, entering into the "flat, wide open river of concrete with a sewer running down the center of it" portion of the canal walk - suddenly notice there are marks covering the concrete here - no, wait; paintings - the entire expanse of concrete has been marked off into a grid of squares - each square is numbered - some of the squares are filled in with paintings - a couple indicating classes of schoolchildren - a couple apparently done by (and to promote) local civics organizations - a few of them simply artistic - I imagine that people must be purchasing the rights to paint these squares - but why? - it begins to rain in earnest now; silent lightening strobes the sky - a few of the painted squares grab my attention

-PIC2 - this square was apparently painted by Ms. MacGregor's 4th grade class - the knowledge of the Horrors Beyond the Stars has already infected our young!

-PIC3 - suggestion: skip lines 5-7, instead going from line 4 ("We are more than") directly to line 8 ("...life") - re-read - what is it saying now?

-PIC4 - in case the image is unclear, this block of stone displays the message "the stars eat your body." - someone PAID to write that there - I feel simultaneously wigged out and a growing affection for my hometown - this phrase would repeat in my mind for the rest of the night

-I follow the canal until it goes under E. Patrick - turn R and head E down E. Patrick - wife is txt'ing me again - we have a small chat back and forth as I walk - going back and forth from staring at the bright screen to trying to find my way down the dark, unlighted street is disorienting me - every time I close my phone and look up, it takes what seems like forever before I can begin to see anything again, and every time I get a new text it feels as if the screen's light is going to burn out my eyes - I end up taking a dark side street I've never been down before - I take a couple of turns this way and that [I don't remember exactly] - I have no idea where I am anymore - suddenly, I find myself in a housing project I've never seen or heard of before - there are more people out here than anywhere else I've been so far tonight other than the heart of the bar/restaraunt district downtown - every single one of them is poor and black - any of them could have ended up here after being forced to move out of my neighborhood after my wealth magick had succeeded in gentrifying most of downtown, starting with my neighborhood - and here I am taking a stroll through the middle of *their* neighborhood, their home, in the middle of the night - and they are all looking at me and it is obvious that I do not belong here - I'm hoping to walk through the project and out the other side to who-knows-where, but I get to the end of the street and it empties out into a huge cul-de-sac of project buildings - there are people everywhere and they are all staring at me and I am The Outsider and there is no way out - and now I have to turn my back to all of them, only the sounds of madness in my ears, and find my way back out - I can't hear them, I don't dare look back - I'm lost and don't know how to find my way out of this maze - but I remain calm, keep walking, and make the Voorish Sign to appease any deranged savages or gibbering creatures that may accost me from the darkness - eventually, I find a side-alley that cuts through two backyards and leads me back out onto E. Patrick - a few blocks further down, I take a R down a street I know very well, but have never known the name of

-~11:55p - TXT-S: "I'm starting to limp." [note: three days later, I am still limping - if this is the beginning of some transfiguration, I am not amused]

-~12a - down this unnamed street, I find a small church that I have never seen before - how many hundreds of times have I been down this street?  how could I never notice this church?! - I realize just how many fucking churches and chapels I have seen over the course of the night - it seems like every street I've been down has at least one house of christian worship - often it's an actual house that has been converted to a chapel, but just as often it's a huge, stone church, bordering on "cathedral" - why do we need SO MANY CHURCHES in this town??

-TXT-S: "There are churches EVERYWHERE!"

-reaching the end of that unnamed street, I suddenly realize where I am

-~12:10 - TXT-S: "Wait... this is... South St.?"

-realizing I've ended up back on my "home turf" as it were, I feel the pull to return home - I'm exhausted and my nerves are shot - I'm soaked in sweat and I'm out of water, and I have to piss like a camel - I send the street names in txt's to my wife as I make my way out of the mists and fog of my dream, and back to the more stable footing of the "real world"

-~12:15 - TXT-S: "East"

-~12:20 - TXT-S: "Carroll"

-~12:25 - TXT-S: "All Saints"

-12:29a - JE: "home"

-being home again felt like being tightly strapped into the most comfortable bed ever made - I showered the slime off myself, got dressed in a more relaxed and normal outfit, and at 1a went to catch last call at my local and get a pint and a shot of whiskey before the night was over - I felt I'd earned it - couldn't really interact with anybody much in my current mental state, so I passed my time by reading up about the city of Kish online while I drank (apparently, it is the first city we have record of after the Great Flood, etc.), and for the next couple of hours after

-~4a - began the coming-down process  - rest of the evening progressed relatively "normally" - nothing unexpected or unusual - eventually drifted off to sleep about 6a - no dreams I could recall



-in hindsight, I don't think I made it INTO the Dreamlands that night - but something was definitely different - maybe I was skirting the edge of our Dream? - what happened? - perhaps I lost the path somewhere along the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber?  was I not judged worthy in the Cavern of Flame? - either seems possible/plausible

-CONCLUSION:  this experiment must be repeated - try a different path for the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber? - try the same path but follow it to its conclusion this time, now that I know where it goes? - what do I need to do to ensure worthiness at the Cavern of Flame? - READ DREAMLANDS STORIES - STUDY DREAMLANDS!

Gibbering in the Dark...

Journal - Saturday, 5.22.10

Why do they keep coming at me through her??

Going to bed last night, about 3a; wife had gone to bed a couple hours earlier. Room was dark, just a few shafts of sickly green-yellow light from the streetlamps outside peeking in through the closed slats covering our windows, casting everything I could see in the room a dark purplish-black. I was standing next to the bed, getting undressed, and I heard my sleeping wife behind me... giggle.

Slightly startled, I turned to see if she was awake, but she seemed to be sleeping peacefully, just as I'd expected. I turned back around and finished getting undressed, when I heard that soft giggling from behind me again. I turned back around and leaned over the bed to get a closer look at her face this time.

It's hard to describe. The dark was playing tricks on my eyes, for sure, but I also know what I saw. There were two faces, and it kept switching back and forth between the two. It was as if, every time my eyes would adjust to the darkness and register what I was seeing, her face would change again and my eyes would have to adjust again. And it kept going back and forth that way, so that my eyes seemed to be constantly trying to adjust and register, and her face seemed to continually shift back and forth between two very different visages.

The first was exactly what I would expect - her peaceful, sleeping face. But the other one... Her eyes were half-open, and she was looking up at me from under those heavy lids. Her face was split nearly in half by a huge, toothy grin. Picture Jack Nicholson in The Shining ("Heeere's Johnny!"), and you've got a bit of an idea what I was seeing last night.

Haltingly, I asked, "Are you awake?"

"Ur sidge a sumber gu bik cha verml."

"What did you say?"

"Ur. Sidge. A. Sumber. Gu. Bik. Cha. Verml." She/it spoke slowly and loudly, enunciating each syllable as though talking to a retarded child, or a foreigner from another land. As though she/it was actually saying something. But it was just gibberish! Nonsense.

Right?

Then she giggled again.

At this point I (hesitantly, I'm not afraid to admit) took my Silver Key from my nightstand, secured it around my wrist with the key in the palm of my hand, made the Sign of Kish, and climbed into bed next to her.

There were two more moments before I feel asleep. At one point I was terribly startled by a short, sharp, very loud sound like a small girl giving a quick cry of pain or fear from behind me, sounding like it came from directly next to my bed. No clue what that was. And then shortly after that, my wife began to snore very resonantly (which she never does). I wasn't disturbed by her snoring, but after a while, I started to hear...something...in the "echo" or resonance of the snores. I don't know the correct word for what I'm trying to describe here, but it wasn't the sound itself that she was making, but in the short seconds after the sound as it was reverberating around the room. (Perhaps aided by the resonance coming from our whirring ceiling fan?)

I didn't want to hear it. I tried not to. Oh, gods I tried. But once I first recognized it, suddenly it was as if I couldn't hear anything else.

I swear to you, in the echoing snores of my wife reverberating through the dark of our bedroom, I heard... whispering.

My Silver Key...

Journal - Thursday, 5.20.10

One of the very first group-rituals I ever performed was a Dreamlands pathworking, in which Nyarlat-hotep gave to each of us our own Silver Key to the Gate of Dreams. Since that night, my Silver Key has become one of the most used fetishes of my magickal career.

Last night, I took my Silver Key from my altar and wore it to bed. And dreamt for the first time in recent memory. (I don't usually remember any dreaming I do. Sleep is a short blankness in between periods of consciousness for me. My own petit morte, if you will.)

It was a nightmare. Incredibly vivid. Again, it wasn't the typical eldritch horrors I've come to expect, but it still left me feeling quite unsettled.

It started with the discovery that my wife had been cheating on me for a quite a while. When I confronted her about this she sneered, "Well, sometimes I need it in the fucking ass and he can do that for me!" (I don't think my wife has ever actually sneered at anything her entire life.) The rest of the dream was the slow, dawning realization that my wife was nothing like the person I've always thought she was. My wife is a sweet, patient, compassionate, and very loving woman - in the dream she was a raging coke-whore. She was constantly yelling at me and calling me names, or alternately ignoring me completely, throwing tantrums, and more than once she laughed to the point of tears at the pain and anguish she was causing me. I spent most of the dream chasing her around, trying to get her to stop... being that way, but the more I pleaded with her, the worse she got.

I remember, towards the end of the dream, finding her in a flop-house down the block from our apartment building, sucking off a group of guys for some crystal. When I dragged her out of there, she shoved the crystal into my hand. (Just a bunch of loose crystal, no baggie, like trying to hold onto a handful of crushed glass shards.) When we got back to our building, there were a bunch of cops hanging around the entryway for some reason, and I had to sneak by them with the crystal in my hand, terrified the entire time that she was going to tell them and get me arrested.

I also remember that our building was *off*, somehow. It was definitely our apartment building from waking life, but nothing about it was exactly the way it really is. Some things were a bit bigger than they were supposed to be, some a bit smaller; some things weren't pointed in quite the same direction they really are; some doors and windows that were supposed to be there weren't, and there were doors and windows that were only there in the dream, as well. There was nothing I could point to and say "There! That is not supposed to be like that - it's supposed to be like this!" But the whole place, normally so comfortable and familiar, felt slightly strange and alien.

So, again, it wasn't getting eaten by a giant, tentacled alien, or being transported to another plane of existence by a grey-skinned, faceless man with bat-wings, but I would still definitely consider this a mythos-colored dream. I was forced to confront the madness of having the thing most precious to me in this life taken and twisted into a monster before my eyes. I woke up very agitated by the experience, and I've remained slightly nervous and anxious and just generally unsettled all morning because of it.

My wife's kisses somehow just didn't seem as sweet this morning.

May Day Dawn Hippie Magick...

I've always had a fascination with the ocean.  And for me, the sight of the Sun rising out of the ocean at dawn is one of the most beautiful and magickal experiences a person can have.  Every vacation as a kid, I would try to get up early enough (or stay up late enough) on at least one day just so I could see it.  It's simply amazing.  Witnessing that majestic sight, it's easy to understand how we came up with an idea like "god."

This year, my Temple was lucky enough to be able to host the IOT's North American section's annual national meeting at the beach.  As soon as I found that out, I knew I had to present a Sun-rising-from-the-ocean ritual of some kind.  When I found out that the meeting would fall during the Walpurgisnacht (MayEve)/May Day holiday, I had my idea.

Solar rituals are, kind of by definition, pretty hippie-dippie.  And so's the beach; just something about being at the beach makes you want to light a campfire, grab a drum, and pass a doobie.  So, almost by necessity, the ritual I wrote was pretty hippie-dippie, too.  But I really, really fucking enjoyed it.  Not all sorcery is about black robes, midnight, and demons, and it's good for us to remember that from time-to-time.

Normally, I'm not very happy with the rituals I bring to the national meetings, but this time I was so pleased with it, I felt I needed to share it with my you, my readers.  Both of you.  ;-)

I hope you enjoy reading it even 1/10th as much as I enjoyed performing it.

May Day Dawn Ritual.  (Google Docs)

April 20th is NOT a "holiday"...

I know I'm in the minority, but I tend to take the word "holiday" in its literal interpretation, as a "holy day."  There is something special about that day that separates it from the rest of the regular calendar.  We give it a higher estimation in our reckoning of our time here in these bodies.  Also, "holidays" are always celebrations of something Good.  The Bad things we commemorate with "memorials" or "rememberances", but never with holy days.

And because of my peculiarly literal take on the concept, I have always had a hard time celebrating 4/20 as a holy day, even when I was regularly meditating at the altar of The Bowl, The Bong, and The Cannabinoid.  It just seems so...base, to me.  It'd be like having an "Eat Junk Food and Jerk Off" day and calling it "holy" or "special".  Just seems wrong, somehow.  Admittedly, of all the different ways of poisoning ourselves for pleasure, that really is the only one that could even come close to deserving it's own holiday.  (Can you imagine a Smack, Crack & Crystal holiday?  How about a Nicotine day?  Though I do tend to always be sure to have a drink on Repellation Day.)  ;-)  It's definitely the least of all of those evils, but it's still technically an evil, so why would we want to celebrate it?

But I still do celebrate it.  (Though I celebrate in a different way now than I used to.)  I celebrate it because a "hippie holiday" of getting stoned and laughing your tits off is SO MUCH BETTER than all of the other things this day represents to so many people.

Hitler was born on April 20th, and so this is a holy day, indeed, to thousands and thousands of monsters with human faces who poison our species with violence and hatred.  Taking their holiday away from them, as the catholics took xmas from the heathens, can only be a Goodness.

Two of those monsters in particular chose this day eleven years ago to stage a massacre at a Colorado high school.  They brutally murdered children, and they had fun doing it.  And they were just children themselves.  And they chose this day specifically because it was Hitler's birthday AND because it was the "hippie holiday;" they wanted to attack the "peace & Love" crowd that they despised so much, and they wanted to re-brand the day and turn it into something horrifying.  And, unfortunately, they succeeded in doing just that for hundreds of families.  I don't want to give them the satisfaction of doing it to me, too.

So, no, it's not a true "holiday."  But I don't think that matters much, in the end.  Taking a day of tragedy and horror and turning it into a celebration of joy, even self-destructive joy, is still a Goodness, and one that I will continue to take part in, for as long as I can.

"Sicilians are great liars..."

Oddly enough, "Drug addict" and "President of the United States" share one thing in common. Both titles, once earned, are yours forever, and can never be disowned.

I am a drug addict. Whether I use or not, I will always be a drug addict. The only difference between me and the sad sacks you see on shows like Intervention, is that I'm good at it. I am a smart, and successful drug addict. Those unfortunate people are ignorant, and weak, and they just seem to run headlong off the deep-end as quickly as possible. They don't have the knowledge or the will to keep from being completely consumed by their addiction, so they just go straight up in flames. It's not their fault (usually); it's just how things turned out for them. But I'm smart, and strong. And I have the intuitive understanding of addiction that can only come from being raised by a family of drug addicts. I am a GREAT fucking drug addict.

I'm still killing myself. Obviously. No different from those pathetic zombies on the TV; not in the end. But see, I know what I'm doing. I know how to make it laaaast. I know how to keep it from killing me too quickly, so that I can continue to use. Make it take as long as possible so that I can suck every single molecule of meaningless, masturbatory bio-pharmacological bliss out of it before it inevitably kills me.

THAT is the mark of a great addict. Exerting only just enough control to keep it going, to make it last, but not enough to stop. "We called him 'Mother Superior' on account of the length of his habit." Too much control and you quit, and the fun's over, and you live a long, boring life of wishing you could get high; too little, and you end up dying of the DT's in the gutter before you ever even get to live.

I want to live as long as possible. But I also want to feel good as much of that life as I possibly can. I know, in the end, that I'll die screaming. But will I regret the choices that brought me there? I mean, honestly - doesn't everyone scream when they die? Still, the greatest addict who ever lived, was still just a fucking junkie when you get right down to it. How am I any different?

We're defined by how we live, not how we die. (Unless you end up winning a Darwin award.) I never felt a need to be great. Never had any desire to change the world, or "leave my mark" for future generations. I just want to live my life with as little pain, and as much pleasure, as I possibly can. And so, every day, I get up and walk that line between living well and dying young.

I'm not sure where it's leading me, but the view is breath-taking. On both sides.

If it doesn't hurt, it isn't Love...

If someone cannot devastate you, then you don't Love them.

Ok, you might love them a little, as in liking-them-more-than-anyone-else, but you don't really *Love* them. Not reflexively-die-for-them Love. Not opening-yourself-completely or trusting-absolutely Love. That kind of Love, what all the poets call "true" Love, can only exist along with the possibility of extreme emotional distress.

Once you lay yourself open like that, losing yourself completely in someone else, then you have handed that person the power to completely devastate you. That's a huge part of what Love is: laying your heart in someone else's hands and trusting that they won't hurt it. And when they give you their heart in return? Well then you can begin to understand how a bunch of balding monkeys rutting in the dirt could come up with an idea like "Heaven."

Or, less poetically, Loving someone is, in large part, about giving them a portion of the responsibility for your emotional well-being, and trusting that they won't abuse that power or otherwise fuck it up and hurt you. And the totally absurd thing is, THEY ALWAYS DO.

It's inevitable. There's no way to avoid it. Once we fall in Love, that person IS, inevitably, at some point, going to torture us in ways that we could never have imagined before. It's not necessarily intentional. (Sometimes it is. Some people are assholes. Hell, some fish are assholes. Just simply a fact of life as sure as the turning of worlds.) It's just that, as with pretty much everything other than "food good" and "pain bad", we aren't born knowing what to do. If we're lucky, by the time we fall in Love we've managed to figure out how to basically work our own hearts without too much difficulty. But how the fuck can we know how to handle someone else's safely? We've never done it before. And everyone's heart is different! There's no way we can get it right on the first shot. We have to learn how to take care of that heart, specifically. And we can't do that without learning what's Right and what's Wrong for that heart. We've got to make mistakes in order to figure out how to NOT make mistakes.

And those learning-mistakes to us, are emotional traumas to the ones we Love; leaving life-long emotional scars in the person we cherish more than any other human being alive. And by Loving them in return, by opening ourselves up to them and making ourselves completely vulnerable and open as only truly-Loving another person absolutely can, we allow them to scar us in the same way. Sometimes worse.

But funny enough, we don't seem to care. We keep putting ourselves in the same situation over-and-over-again, anyways. Ever since we invented the word "Love", we have sought it out obsessively and without reason, and regardless of consequence. Is it just biology? Are we just crazy? Is it something more? Or less? Is it some basic make-up in our psychology that demands to be expressed, or is it simply that the chemicals in our brains that shape our bodies into a particular binary form somehow demand to be exercised? (I.e., testosterone + estrogen = orgasm.) Fuck, I don't know, maybe it's just me. I've been slit-my-wrists, suck-a-gun-barrel miserable for about 80% of the last month because of Her. (If we go back 3-6 months, up that to 90%.) But that other 20%? Oh, gods, what a 20%! There's never been a greater fifth of a whole in all of man's experience! And I would die a tortuous death a thousand times before I let you take that 20% away from me. Just the memory of the seemingly endless joys Her Love brings me makes it feel as though any amount of pain is more than a fair price to pay.

And I think that's what it comes down to. At least for me, anyways.

In the end, 20% of Heaven, is worth 80% of Hell.

And then some.