Religion is for People Who Don't Believe in God

---Sorry about the blunt beginning. I don't know how to start out any other way--- Organized religion is not spirituality. Religion is a business which brings its patrons to faith. Both serve their purpose and have their place but connecting the dots of 'the church' and 'faith' or spirituality, is a mistake. Unlike spirituality, religion does not foster personal growth, it fosters dependence. If you need a leg brace and shackles to fix your crippled leg then so be it. It's worth the time restricted for the resulting healthy leg. But you would think that once the leg is healed, the shackles could come off. This however, is not how a hierarchal power- based institution like organized religion works. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day (and come back begging for more). Teach him how to fish and he'll feed himself for a lifetime (and no longer patronize the fisherman). The church is a successful institution because it creates a framework around faith which brings spirituality (a very desirable and marketable product) down to the unspiritual, whose faith is only maintainable within the shackles of rules, stories and dogmatic ritual. This constant need for spiritual upkeep, unnecessary for those who find their own path to faith, creates a dependence on the church which defies the basis of "faith". Yet the dependence it instills has kept the church around and in power since it was created to justify the power hungry crusades of early governments. The word faith means believing or trusting something not based on proof or reason. This however, is incredibly difficult to wholeheartedly do and maintain. So religion took the manifested concepts of faith, whatever your version of it is, its all the same really, and gave it a name- God. Now that is had a name, even a face for some, it was already more attainable and easier to comprehend. And then, the church came up with a series of stories and a biased interpretation of history to justify and explain the unexplainable for those of us who are afraid of what's beyond our comprehension and lacks reason. Those who base their belief in God on (and try to inflict it on others with) the proven evidence of his existence (Jesus lived! What about these miracles??) are thereby deprived of the growing process of finding their own spirituality- trusting in something unfounded in anything but ones own true faith. This process creates such a strong foundation for the few true believers because the journey there is unaided by external support or even rational thought. And in my opinion (as if this whole thing hasn't been a bombardment of my opinions), living amongst the uncertainty and impermanence which religion denies, and being present and accepting it, is the most powerful thing one could do for oneself. Last night, my very Christian friend who I adore asked me what I think it takes for someone to be truly happy. And I think it's releasing control. We're not in control, or at least we're in control of much less than our minds would like. So striving for that control (partially by attempting to explain and justify every time a puppy dies or a hurricane hits) will unquestionable lead to a life of fighting everything that comes and goes. And that's kind of silly, isn't it.

Fashion's Half-Life

---You can get closer and closer, but you will never actually get there--- Last night, around midnight, I had a Miley Cyrus music video binge. I youtubed all her videos trying to grasp a hint of what people find at all appealing in her. The most recent video is called "Who Owns My Heart" and the music video is a series of Miley in her underwear gyrating in different settings and wearing different clothing. That led to interviews and videos of people talking about her and videos talking about people talking about her. One female Fox reporter- with curled blond hair, a very conscious outfit, rehearsed facial expressions and an inch of makeup- interviewed a man who took the 'concerned parental' stance. Miley is a 17 year old girl (not even old enough to be in the clubs whose floors she's writhing on) who is inappropriately oversexualizing herself. The Fox reporter took the stance that Miley looks and acts like a woman, not a girl, so maybe she is not overstepping her bounds and should be able to present and advertise herself as a woman. They went back and forth in a totally useless and painfully obvious discussion about when and why girls gain permission to advertise themselves as worthless sex bags without ever asking: Miley's age aside, is "worthless sex bag" a healthy image for anyone to put forward at all, especially in the context of a song that has absolutely nothing to do with sex. Despite the moronic and totally lame lyrics, naive perspective, and annoyingly uncatchy beat, the song is about a girl questioning her passions in life: love for another versus dedication to an art. The other question that should be asked is, if the lyrics are not clever, the beat not catchy and the melody unoriginal and STILL bad, why are people listening to this song? Because girls (and teenaged girls are the only people who really listen to Miley Cyrus by the way. Which is funny because the market for the video is very obviously horny boys) want to be just like Miley. And boys like her because she's happy to teeter around in heels and underwear and do pretty much whatever the fuck else they want to have done. It's a lust based image. Which is fine, lust has never been a bad thing as long as it's used appropriately. But somewhere down the road (and come to think of it, I have no idea where) the line between lust and beauty, and a girl and a woman (and by woman, I dont mean just a female after a certain age) got smudged, and in many cases, all-together erased. Why is it that beauty for girls involves incompetence, childish naivety, and the undiscerning "down to fuck" attitude manifested as cheap n' easy. (Which is also what we look for in possessions, food and solutions to our ever-increasing problems... coincidence?) So it sounds like, in terms of beauty, we have a little obsession with youth here. Why. Would a grown man be attracted (sexually not paternally) to a child? Perhaps a faltering ego which needs the reassurance of superiority and authority? Whether or not Miley Cyrus is sexy in her new video "Who Owns My Heart?" (fight, fight fight!, pandering public!) seems petty until you look at the far-reaching and universally permeating ramifications of an unhealthy and confined self-image and the expectations of society for it to be upheld by its members, the problem gains merit. But still the only solution I see is to stop playing the game altogether. The more you try to outdo someone or reinvent the image, the more you're playing the game. The game is not about winning, it's about perpetually falling behind. As long as you're playing under someone else's set of rules- a set of rules that doesnt apply to you- you're lining yourself up to be compared to and judged alongside them. But if you create your own set of rules for your own game, you can choose how you will be perceived and against whom you will be compared. You can only win the game when you give up trying to outdo all of the people you hate.

Raising our Standards

People take what's given, they eat what's put in front of them and they do what they see being done. People will adapt to their surroundings whether that means lowering their standards and dumbing themselves down or stretching what's possible to meet an expectation that's way above them. People's capabilities are dependent on what's required of them.

Which is why its disappointing that at the women health free teen clinic that Im at right now, the waiting room is piled with Cosmopolitan, Vogue, People, Us and 5 other celebrity gossip crap magazines.

There's not one Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, any of the magazines I'd normally expect to find in a waiting room catering to a wider demographic; magazines that if provided, I guarantee would be read or at least flipped through. If you are waiting in this waiting room, you basically have no choice but to read Cosmo's 20 Tips to Tingling Full-Body Sexy Sex or People's Fashion Face-Off 'Who Wore it Better?' in which two celebrities are pictured wearing the same outfit and you choose which one looks better. Cool. Tell me there's not a single girl in this waiting room who wouldn't look at a Time magazine headline about the oil spill in the gulf and pick it up thinking, 'Hmm I really have no idea what's going on with that but I've heard so much about it that I'd like to know.'

People have to stop underestimating each other and themselves, start doing what they believe in and genuinely enjoy and expect the same in others. People have to stop catering to the lowest common denominator. It stifles the rest of us and holds back those who are being catered to from growing.

You Know the Feeling

If I were in bed staring up into the dark, I would have tossed and turned, mind spinning. But I wasn't. I was in the middle of a pack of intoxicated festivarians, dancing to a trippy tranced-out bluegrass band on the dewy grass under the moon.

Next to me, me mom danced barefoot and next to her, a man passed a joint and took a sloppy gulp of beer out of a plastic cup. To my other side, my friend Peter danced and feigned interest in everything around him as conversation fodder with the teenage girl in front of him. After everything he said, she laughed and flipped her hair back and forth as her head turned from the stage to him and back to the stage.

They danced as close to each other as possible without actually touching. They hovered cautiously along the line between flirtation and platonic indifference, staying safe from exposure. Despite their tunnel-vision one-track minds, it wasn't clear to me whether or not they were just warm bodies to each other, used to alleviate their boredom by playing this little game. They thought, Im sure, that their separate mini romances (having very little to do with the actual guts and brains of the little dream case along side them) were well hidden but, just being aware of it, I could feel every tingle their own bodies must have felt with each flush of warmth and accidental brushing of hands.
And I wished there was someone pushing through the crowd in my direction whose hand tingled as it touched my back, sending waves of chilly heat out from the spot, catching my breath as he looked back, said excuse me and smiled, letting a line fall into the water, disturbing the surface stillness, waiting for a tug.

Turtle Head

This guy who inhabits a cafe that I frequent is the biggest fucking tool I've ever met. For our purposes, and because I don't know his name, we'll call him Turtle Head. He goes to Naropa- the little alternative hippy college that sits like a shining beacon of ill-informed hope at the bottom of the hill to CU Boulder : the top party-ranking ski-bumming college that I go to.
Everyone at Naropa has a Mac and can easily be identified by the yoga mat which has earned a consecrated spot in their thermo-molded, gortex-blend REI day packs, complete with dual drink-tube exit ports for ultimate on-the-go hydration. They adamently deconstruct gender binaries and challenge society's view of beauty with their deliberately indecorous hair choices. Women choose not to shave their legs and arms but make up for it by shaving their heads, ivory spiral earrings wedged into gaged earlobes. Men have ponytails or immense mountain-man facial hair or the especially arogant of the lot just let their hair go wild. Pantene Pro-V, chamomile and shea butter voluminizing product and endless grooming apparently all come together to create the perfected and painfully conscious image which falls somewhere in between ''I just had multiple orgasms'' and ''I don't give a fuck, I'm just beautiful''. Naropa folk live in yoga studios and cafes and subsist mainly on maté, green tea, gluten-free pastries and over-priced salads.
This man in particular used to sport pigtail braids. He's short and slightly chubby but he's perfected the sustained eye contact and soft touch which is supposed to signify his sensitivity. I call it narcicism but whatever. Either way, it does absolutely nothing to get him laid which is undeniably the underlying motivation behind 80 percent of his actions. The remaining 20 percent goes into trying to assert his intellectual dominance to all who become subjected to his presence.
Naropians bloviate to each other about incredibly important things (that everyone should be thinking about) in order to win their comrades' approval. ''We're all one bro,'' says Turtle Head to his equally hairy cafe table-mate. But, as TH has not realized, while he's making transcendently insightful observations about the state of the world, his convo-bud is listening just enough to follow it with a witty and infinitely transcendent-er response.
Turtle Head loses his train of precious thought as he glances up at a bleached-blond boobed-up bimbo in that gorgeous pair of Prana® pilates pants that are supposed to allow for ultimate flexation-action and are made of that one new synthetic that is built to whick any nearby moisture. She sits down next to him, her pants instantly whick away his maté but he doesn't notice. She can sense a kindred spirit. He's entranced in their impromptu convo about her new yoga iphone app. She very conveniently displays her touch screen right below the horizon line of her cleavage and she's flattered by how intently Turtle Head listens.
''He has inner beauty'', she tells her swooning girlfriends which is code for both ''he's kind of ugly'' and ''he is willing to put up with my shit because he is so desperate to fondle my tits'' simultaneously. Insecurities compliment each other in that sad sick way.
These people pity those who value money because ''there are so many more important things in life than a carreer''. But their money conveniently comes in monthly wires from Carmel and is somehow gone at the end of each month, putting them in the lowest tax-bracket and affording them the title of bohemian or ''starving artist'' which they traips around town proudly only because it's not true. Starvation is so flattering when it's voluntary.
My thoughts, these observations. They're so fucking deep. You have no idea. They're unclassifyable. How could they even fit in a square room with your limitations and definitions and. grammar rules don't: APPLY. My words transcend punctuation I refuse your endmarks and a period is not needed here it can't be placed here as if this were a complete thought you don't even know I'm so deep Dont Limit me with your rules and standardizations because I don't apply they don't apply to me to this this is beyond what you know what you understand beyond your rules my thoughts my jots

OUT.

Namaste bitch.

Something about his small sharp eyes, the way he throws his head back and laughs a deep belly laugh. Just out of delight. Makes me want to dig into him. Excavate. The sky could be purple outside and I wouldn't see it if I walked out under it. My focus lies pinpointed, in him, whether it's favorable, charmed or unsure. Yet this is not a love story. He entices me, catches a corner as I pull away, longing. I know this game, and I'll pull away further. After maybe just one night.

The sky it turns out, the color it turns as day fades and sets, light skewed through atmosphere to create my spectacle, is the connection I can't sacrifice. I have before, gone for months on end, unable to see the stars, forgetting entirely that they were there, on our ceiling that is, not just transposed onto his body, constellations of freckles as my north star. Unable to feel the grass beneath my bare feet, fingers hungrily running instead through hair, my seasons ebbed and flowed between haircuts and postures, the sun setting as I mourned his momentary losses: leaving for work as I went to hibernate, fall asleep quickly and the sooner you'll wake.

I forgot entirely the majesty of a darkened sky. How, out underneath it, walking alone, how bright it actually is still. I've walked before at night, picking out shapes, navigating perfectly and fully embraced alone in that vaccuous womb, my trust realigning, expanding, wiggle-room forged between my subsets, the value to hold it all in place collapsing sweetly, and thinking "is it really in fact night? Where is this light coming from? Who, now, is illuminating my path?"

I'll never again return indoors or flick on an artificial light, squinting over text obscured by barriers when it's provided for, and in such abundance, just two feet away, just one window pane's separation. I might dream of you, but I can't return. You must understand, you hold yourself elsewhere, too deeply hidden, that to conjoin, I'd have to journey inwards and forego the changing sky I've become so attached to. And which asks for nothing in return. No door can be closed in my face, no corridors blocked from my view and footprints where there is no plaster and frames.

My home, where things make the only sense to me, is in the expanse. This I can navigate, here I can see where abandoned bones go and how roots grow. This I can navigate. But I will come in if you invite me. For a night. Because warmth, even from a furnace, still heats my skin.

This cycle ends, as others do, as a welcome respite and a clean slate. My chalice tips and spills its wine, a reminder to let down the weights loosen my grip and loosen my tights. To lose hold of the responsibility to uphold life. This I can witness, these cycles I can witness not as deaths and births, losses and burdens but as cycles, a mere rotation. And far from the last or the only, although a different meaning can be derived from saturation, a subsuming more tangible, so a pruning of the fingers can be seen and felt more clearly. Diving into a pool that can be dried to echo a pool larger it's easier to forget. This cycle ends, as the others do, to expose itself as just that. A reminder that I can partake without generating, live exist and feel without producing, speaking and creating. My contribution is irrevocable. In my anatomy and my potential is the sole purpose to create, at some point to say something, inevitable day light allowing me to bask and languish in the dark. Expand, exhale. And drain.