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.

Saudade

Midnight. Two hours ago is when I planned to go to sleep. My heart is pounding though and keeping me from it. From sugar. Two pieces of left over birthday cake. But for romance's sake we can leave that out maybe. Ah romance. Something I've lost a good deal of. I'm rebounding. I've dipped so heavily into that pool and have retracted so far from it. But in both extremes, I lose myself. My balance of encompassing them both.

It's funny- I often read over past writings of mine and think- Fuck, that was so good! That's so clearly expressed and pure. And what I've gotten since then is a good beating. A good dose of reality and experience that has eroded my rough edges smooth. And who has time for poetry and words to play with then there's a car to register and rent to pay and an article to write?

My mind hops around frantically- looking for something that will catch its attention. My attention so unrooted and free-floating. Reeling in outer space after having detached from the gravitational field of my love. Funny that term, "my love". The love being truly mine. And how true. Thinking back, hearing his voice or reading something he wrote to me, he is objectively unremarkable. And certainly embodies very few of the qualities that I would list as being things I seek out. Values we share. Yet, with all of my heart, I adored him. Maybe just because he let me and so few do. And that feeling- that- that is a feeling unlike any other.

For every electron in my body, normally stretching and pulling me in multiple directions at once, to stop. Align. And all move together in one. I had found direction, a purpose, and it took me off into the woods on a path I didn't expect. And ran me eventually into a brick wall over and over again until, through sheer will, I stepped back, looked up at the stars and wandered off into the darkness in hope of once again finding light.

I want something. So badly I yearn, I long, I grieve for something. But I have no idea what. Finding a treasure trove, I'm convinced, in which one is stocked with enough mystery to last a lifetime. Little pockets of unknown that can be unwrapped and discovered, a source to which any yearning can be attributed and thought to be tangible, is the key. To delude oneself, to mask oneself in a dillusion so grand and beautiful that incompletion becomes romance and failure becomes an art. A world in which every stroke plays into a picture, messy up close but grand from far away. That's the picture I want to paint. The bridge I want to look at.

In the face of the massive expanse of this crazy crazy world, every longing looks silly and every concern and excitement, insignificant and petty. So, in the name of beauty, in the name of romance, for god's sake, make your world a litte smaller. Put blinders on yoursef so, like a horse, you can rule out fear and keep onward.

The biggest heartbreak, the biggest source of emptiness and frustration, is not knowing what to long for. The longing will always be there. My longing however has no direction. I'm turning in circles trying to find a worthy cause, a green light, disoriented without it. Installing tangibles just to give myself a north star. Reeling and wallowing in my completion, desiring desire itself.

Here's the bottom line. You find meaning, everyone does, I certainly do, through love. Through lov-ing, the act of it. So never, at any turn, deprive yourself.

Time Bomb

I remember the first week we spent together. You dropped me off back at my house after and I remember walking up the stairs, returning to something without you, after having found you, and I felt, walking away, very distincty feeling like the root system, the pulp, had been pulled out from my form, leaving just the shell. The marrow had been pulled from my bones.

When I met you, over that first week or two we spent together, all the pieces came together in a way that made sense to me. My world glowed with life, I could see the stars during the day and the sun shone at night. My life had found a meaning so unbelievaby fulfilling and so effortlessly simple.

I'm still not sure what happend. I melted is the best way I can describe it. I fell to pieces and fell apart. Something which I still haven't recovered from fully. I'm fragmented. I can't quite see the things around me, as if, without you, without my vision imbued with that love I found for you, things are no longer worth seeing.

The strange thing is that I don't miss you. I don't want to go back, I don't want to share a bed with you, I don't miss your kiss. Although I remember the fullness of it so distinctly. With such relinquish and devotion you kissed me- like you were handing your soul and your spirit and your purpose over to me. Houdini's kiss-passed key, you treated me to life over and over. And I wanted it. So badly. I wanted to make a life with you. I wanted to make life with you. And you handed it all over to me so readily. I guess I couldn't hold it. I wasn't strong enough. And I fell apart under the weight of it. Maybe I didn't know how heavy it would be. Exactly what I was giving you permission to do.

It was never a matter of love. My love was never a question. I loved and still do love, absolutely every piece of you. I loved you with a mix of utter and unconditional adoration, comfort, desire and completion. You had held all of my softest parts. You completed and supported parts of me that I didn't even know were there. You introduced me to a love I never knew was possible, one I had longed for and seen in the distance but didn't know it was possible to attain. To be fully engulfed in. To swim in for months on end.

And now returning alone, my darling, I never thought I would be returning alone. My sweetheart. That word even is indelibly connected to you. How could I call you anything but? And doing so- returning alone- is like coming back to a shadow world.

This is all right. It's all the best and it's good to be here now and here alone, to be coming back around and painting color again between the outlines. Our timebomb expired, leaving nothing to return to. Life just breaks your heart in these ways, lessons coming in such compelling wrapping, interlaced with such beauty. It's time to move forward, and I'm happy to do so. But it will take someone big, my sweetheart, to fill your lovely shoes.

A Thread Runs Through

I just talked to an old boyfriend. The first boy I can say I really loved. Being reminded and looking back, my god I was so open then. So available. Now I have thick crunchy walls. Scabbed up skin that even I have to fight through. Interactions with others are far from connection, they're about survival. Even those I'm close to. Although distance is relative and my close friends, as close as they've ever been, now feel far away. As my cravings grow, my need for skin against me and another mind besides mine makes anything outside my skin feel far away. I can't always heat this body alone. Sometimes, and more often lately, it takes two of us, both your blood and mine. Spoken like this, like flashes of a dream, it comes back to me- how it felt to be then. Only a few years ago. But that's now, in this darkness, safe and alone. When the sun rises and there's light to create shadows again, I lose that recognition and become again, a stranger to myself. I'm terrified- terrified- of having lost that person. Who was able to love so purely, so simply.

Yet today, I unexpectedly ran into a man I knew two years ago who made me act like a fool and beat the steering wheel while driving alone. And in some ways, in my desire for him, I am the same. At least a thread runs through.

And when I step out of the shower, I dry myself off every time in the same way that I always have. I dry my face, then my shoulders and arms, chest and stomach, then I toss my hair in front of me to dry my back, dry each leg as I step out of the shower and then wrap my hair in the towel. And I will always do that exactly. Because it works and I've never had to think about it. It's just the way I move.

Tapping into the Love Cloud

My stomach flutters and holds its breath. I'm desperately in love. And you're the pretty face to which I attribute all I want to see. We don't like it when we can't put a name or face to something which is so obviously there in every inch of ourselves. So I'll do so and limit my view of the abyss to within your presence.
My body rocks and throbs with love and lust and I attribute it to your hair and eyes and stupid smile. And giving it a name and face, I delude myself into thinking that by being next to you, by being inside of you, I'm there. I am fully in tune with everything that encircles my body and leaves me awestruck.

While actually, you're not the epitome of my desires. You're not the manifestation of my love. You're a boy- a great one at that with a beautiful mind and open palms- I've always loved big hands. But what I'm feeling is something so much bigger. Something that has been here and will last so much longer than this night- this month- however long our lives will last. And the next morning, I'll stare silently at the ceiling and listen to you breath with no words in mind. And I'll feel strangely unsatisfied- more disconnected from you than ever. I am, after all, completely alone.

Me and the wind and the mountains and the frost- that's what I've got and you're a beautiful facet of it all- with a lovely face and the kind of arms that swallow me and hide my face in your chest- it feels so good. Like I'm safe and I stop and just feel the warmth and I forget what shoes I'm wearing and- for just a second but that's enough- I forget what color my hair is.

But attributing my own ability to come face to face with a power this big, to you- is a little deluded. And attributing all of that power to something in you that draws me in- well that's a little demeaning don't you think? Don't you think that assuming the fluxes, the forces, that literally rock my core, are only the effects of this thing we may have and the warm rough sensation of your hand against my back, is not quite giving it the credit it deserves?

Or maybe it's just the packaging of the same damn thing that laces everything I touch but this one makes sense to me, speaks my language, glues everything together in a way that's palatable, and fits into my notches seamlessly, like this was meant to be, and maybe it was.

But when I say I love you- and believe me I do- what I mean is that I love the way that vertebrae get slowly, gradually bigger as they work their way down. I love the way that skin stretches over the collar bone to create that little indent right above the bone, like it was draped over a clothes line. You could almost fill that little indent with sugar or, in a rainfall, it would pool with water and stay there for a day or two after the clouds clear. And when I say I love you, what I mean is that I love the way a cut heals- how one day, a little thin stretch of skin will span the tiny slit where I knicked myself and tore the ties. And how healing a wound is always a little bit of a leap of faith. But it worked. And it worked last time which is the only reason I'm still here and you're still beside me.

But one day- that leap of faith may not work and the wound will grow wider and skin is no longer strong enough to hold back the cleaving and will instead give in and melt away, and slowly fall apart.

I just want to stand next to you. I just want you to revel with me. Because my two eyes aren't always enough to take all of this in. And I'm not always strong enough to let myself fall. I want your hand pressed against my back, to be eased down in your arms. I just need hands to catch me as I fall.

Stoking this Fire

I scroll up and down a message you sent to me, for the third time. An email. How ridiculous. Looking up and down, admiring the spaces in between your words, measuring this one and comparing it to the next, your phrases, like I'm somehow caressing your back and your body by perusing these typed words. Looking for a way to find something more in this. To maybe turn it sideways as if some extra words will be hidden in a corner, feeling a freckle on your already perfect body that I haven't felt before, skimming my body down yours like if we keep moving, we'll keep growing closer into each other- exploring more and more, little cracks in.

My general concept of life- my religion, so to speak- although it's almost an anti-religion- a belief in a super-natural as opposed to a supra-natural- is, simply, “water flows downhill”. The world is in a constant process of melting and flowing into the cracks, oozing slowly, sloughing off and falling away, moving beautifully around the obstacles, blessing everything it collides with and rolls lazily off of, with this relinquish. This melting matrimony, powerless but irrevocable, swept up to fall down and regrow, regenerate. But you, my love, without even trying, I'm swept up and off my little world. Yet more connected than ever. My relinquishing this time has floated me up, lifted me up. By no means of my own, beyond means of my own, I've broken laws and my stream flows uphill, encircling itself, each other for the first time, growing closer and closer, forming compounds that never were before. This makes so much sense, redefining physics my dear, I had no idea.

These rules don't apply and now, just glimpsing this precipice of godly resignation, this completed, fully fulfilled striving, a striving to get inside through you, to access something through you, with you- my rubbing, my wrestling, this gliding towards each other- to get inside, to join, to fit and consummate... something. This pulsating exploration, my loving you, feeling you, this blissful blissful struggle as you hold my hands behind my head to come into me, contorting to find a closer way to hold me- I'll give myself to you completely, my love. I trust you beyond everything. I trust some part of you that you probably don't even see. That speaks my language on such a level, it's nothing even visible, just a shuffling under my feet, rooting me stronger, a sweet little jostling, holding me closer.

Who knew, rocks, the rubbing of two rocks, of two separate elements, would make this fire and heat us both. To heat the space in between. That quivering space- that I peruse, shake and test, explore around. This space we can caress but not overcome- heats us- it feeds us, heats us both- palpating divine, my love. Stay with me. Please stay with me. Keep stoking this fire.
 

My baby my baby my honey baby
This hunger I have for you can't be alleviated
Even your touch, even your body beside mine
Even when we can get no closer possibly
I still want you with hunger that I can't express
can barely satisfy
These pangs I get
of all my latent desire building up from a day
from all my wanting, of looking, of hoping
and dreaming of you- of someone like you- of passion like this
crops up- my desire, that building latent desire
or a little flash. A flash of recognition. I remember the way you laugh
or a little slant of the head
it crops up and builds against a floodgate- to come crashing crashing down.
I want to rage with every muscle in my body
To dissimulate, pixelate, disassociate and reform inside of you-
surrounded by, mingling amongst you
To squeeze you so hard- as if maybe that will make you pop and scatter
like glitter into a billowing cloud that maybe I can crawl inside of
take those particles and spread them in my pores.
I want you my darling my darling my darling
I want you. I want to fight with you and scream and crash
and make love, laugh with you, watch you and hear you think,
watch you puzzle, I want to pixelate,
for our mutual vulnerability to deform us-
strip us down naked and I want then
I want then to make love to you.
To feel all of you inside of and surrounding me.
Your arms around my back, my neck, my head and yours,
my thighs, my throat your hair and your back
your back, I love your back- I love your arms. Your chest against mine.

And this want- this need- is transcendent of now and you there, me way over here.
We pop up together, arise out of, opt out of- together- time and spatial orientation, coordinates
for a moment, or longer- that spot free floating above the right side of your lip
and that birth mark buried in the hair of your head right before your ear
the left one, right there, your right, you're so right.
Those are the only coordinates I need right now and the space- that tiny glimpse of eternity- that neverless gasp, the gape, of your breath- between your breaths. The pit, the spot, the cradle of time- that tiny little pause- the death of it and my thousand little deaths- between your breaths and mine- is all the time I need. I need I need its all the orientation I need.
I long for. I long for you so long for you, my baby my darling, my sweet sweet sweet.

My temper- I temper myself. I must- this is, that is what we do- we temper ourselves- pick the mid-spot- that's how we survive- to temper ourselves because there's eternity at either end and we live in the middle. Life is right in the middle.
This life of you and me, our lives, our life- exists right in the middle- tempered, mortal maybe, although a glimpse here and there, right there I saw it- a glimpse above like a keyhole- a puncture in the night sky. That little impossible luminescent dot shimmering through- fools, it fools me. And gives me faith- for a moment- a moment of chance. A possibility to be fooled, to live like that, to live creating for myself- a world out of those shimmers, those luminescent dots- sacrilege to even describe them as dots, those little spots, the freckles all over your body.
I choose to live believing in this.

Butter

All of a sudden, something has switched, a light has flicked on- not changing anything in the room, just casting a different light on it all.

Something happened. There was no way I could have known but like an asteroid on path- no question as to its bull's-eye route, imperceptibly, we pummeled gently into each other's paths and came to a slow, gradual halt face to face. Like a boat docking, sliding right into place, unaware of its path until it arrived, like butter, he slipped into my open hands.

Serendipity- upon arrival- transposes into fate. And genetics, wrapping, spindeling around each other in a sudden vacuum, when tapped into just right, lines up to reveal something worth having faith in, this godly languish, this limp, strangely empowered resignation.

Like a page torn off and placed in a puddle, the space behind the words I read, is saturated and dappling with my lovely lovely.

He finds his way into most crowds and the transcient opalescence, my diaphanous darling, of an embellished imagination outshines these charcoal sketches of skin. Reality plus one- my favored picture.

My first new leave was a welcomed respite. The smell of his aftershave was replaced by the completely different but equally pleasant smell of fresh sheets in a guest bed and the warm dead weight of the house's dog nestled between my legs. I stretched myself out, immediately absorbing the role of companionship. The very short time I spent laying in bed before falling asleep was kept in the best possible company by and amongst myself as I realized, again and again, that I am my favorite companion. Reconnecting with that after recontextualizing for a brief bit amongst someone else- laying on my side talking to him as if I were saying all these things out loud for the first time. My own thoughts sounded new and revealing as I took them out for him to see. That familiarity and comfort that my relationship with myself is blanketed by, is removed as I open up my own coveted ecosystem to this new stimulus to see if something new can be introduced without disrupting the current homeostatic balance.

It's an interesting challenge, a dissonance between wanting the company of someone else without losing the company of myself. I don't know how to emphasize enough the companionship I have with myself, how completed I feel alone. Maintaining that with someone else- keeping both relationships intimate and strong without compromising or withholding from either- integration not replacement.

I've never allowed someone in, found someone so close to me, tapping into me just right- cleaving me open in a straight clean cut from the outside in. It was never a question. It was never a choice. Those two relationships have never come face to face before, that boundary line never blurred. But blindly, I've stumbled upon the one chemical that is able to softly, sweetly erode my marble walls, sloughing off effortlessly like shudden sheets of tissue paper. And now I stare at the ceiling, the room breathing with me, goading me on, thinking, "What have I done?"

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Treatment

Here's my idea for a new method of therapy. It's called the Self- Fulfilling Prophecy treatment. People, I don't know if this reflects intelligence or stupidity, believe what they hear. We believe something if it comes from an external source, whether that's a Time magazine, a Cosmopolitan, a politician or a friend. People are especially inclined to believe something if they've spent money to hear it, deeming their usage of money a worthwhile investment. Crafting a therapy treatment around this knowledge isn't cheating or corrupt, it's just playing into people's psyches, understanding how people work and using that knowledge to further the a) success of a business and b) the effectiveness of a therapy treatment. With no knowledge whatsoever of a person's future and having only the social skills to understand the client's situation and ability to read them well enough to know what it is they want to hear, you too can become a highly successful therapist and change many lives for the better.

Here is the story of the genesis of this brilliant idea:
My mom is an acupuncturist. She and her husband share a practice. He teaches at a nearby acupuncture school and has a highly successful practice. He is one of the bigger names in acupuncture, especially in teaching because he practices a form of acupuncture not widely taught or practiced and is, supposedly, a fabulous teacher. My mom has been in practice for five years, although she rounds up to eight, and although she is devoutly adored by her patients, has a humble practice and no other major source of income. Money, for whatever reason, has never been either of my parents' forte.

To maintain her license, my mom needs a certain amount of 'continuing education units' a year, usually obtained through seminars and lectures. Dr Tan, an eastern medicinal healing superstar, was teaching a weekend class on Chinese astrology and diagnosis in Portland, Oregon. My mom jumped on the opportunity to soak up info from the great Dr Tan and, knowing well my love for wandering around yet unexplored cities, invited me to come along.

After the first day, my mom was a bit disappointed with the seminar. She was stuck in a hotel conference room all day, instead of exploring a city that I assured her is fantastic, and she was straining to listen to an old burnt-out Chinese man fumbling through a topic which, for a good reason, had never been taught to a white audience before.

"The textbooks he gave us, so we could follow what he was saying, are in Korean! You know that sheet or characters I was supposed to be familiar with? Those characters are supposed to let us get the important information out of the textbooks but even if I WAS familiar with those characters, how am I supposed to pick those out in an entire book full of the tings, written backwards, in tiny print... and they all look the same!"

The next day was slightly more successful. Because on the second day, Dr Tan read the horoscopes, the in-depth life paths of some of the audience members. After scrawling down her birth day, birth time, birth place, moon sign, sun sign, social security number and mother's maiden name on a slip of paper, my mom got her horoscope read. Over dinner, she gave me a detailed recounting of her life according to Dr Tan, the man we had just seen come out of a restaurant, can and take out bag on one arm, blonde 25 year old assistant in heels on the other.

"He said something really interesting. He said, not knowing anything about me or what's going on right now, that I will not, in my life, be supported by my partner. I was thinking about it and that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just what's lined up for me."

I chimed in. "Thats a good point. Because on your own, that's when you do best- when you have the most drive and energy and when you take the best care of yourself."

"And right now, the last few years have been in the wood sign for me which means, well I don't know, I forget but the next few blocks of years of my life are metal metal metal metal. Which means, money."

"Is that metaphorical? Success, abundance or something or does it literally mean cash money cash?"

"Literally, it means cash."

Seeing as how my mom paid good money and traveled halfway across the country to soak up all the info that Dr Tan had to dish out, when he told her she was going to make a ton of money, my mom of course believed him. But this prophecy begs a few questions: how; where is it all going to come from? So, knowing her past and having been given her future, my mom's only job is to fill in the gaps, examine her life and ask herself, is the path that I'm on now going to be the one that will lead me to all this cash in my future? Put in this context, immediately became apparent that no, continuing along with the way things are, will not bring about the buckets of lollie promised to her. So it will have to come from somewhere else.

"Maybe this cancer clinic idea I had. Oh speaking of which, I should call Dr. Pujet back. Or maybe my anti-sugar book is going to lead me somewhere. I should get to work on that actually. Maybe I'll dedicate the two hours between my patients today to writing."

And just like that, my mom has begun to craft and shape the future that she knows will be hers. All of the things that my mom knows will come to her, she's now began to work on reigning in. And will it work? Of course.

People believe what they hear, whether it's the findings of a study reporting that people living in Boulder, Colorado represent the happiest and healthiest population of any American city ("Ha- that's so true," I thought after reading the headline. "I eat great, am totally happy and do tons of sports. As a matter of fact, I think I'll go for a run right now.") or a psychiatrist telling her patient that he is ADD and cannot function normally without being medicated. People are so impressionable that they'll do the work necessary to live up to the image they hold for themselves. Unfortunately, that image, for most people, is not very good.

Skipping on the Brink

Its a Sunday and in Boulder, in January, its supposed to snow, they say but its raining, at an angle from the mountains west where there are storms and freezing temps to the plains east where tornadoes come here and there but in between, the valley of Boulder is safe from, or deprived of, either and both. We ride bikes and rock climb, we ski and six year olds break piggy banks to send tooth-faerie dollars to Haiti, simply because we dont live in the real world. Graffiti is of love, hearts and beauty. Its warm and pleasant always and when its cold, its freezing, the mercury strains to compress, and coats are worn- North face if youre from California, fur if youre from New York, sandals if your from Texas. Nobody's a local. We've all come from somewhere else because no one can be born in Boulder, no one conceived and death is just a voluntary return. Im from California but dont consider myself human so I wear Monte Belle. My other coat doesnt have a name or a brand but its red and warm and it fits me the best that any misfit material can- covering a body that's naked and will rebel against any covering by changing size, shape and hue- Coats are worn, the body shivers but the cold isnt really felt even, it doesnt matter at all.

Did I mention? I've always lived in a valley- LA at first for several years, where so much goes on that really nothing happens and now in Boulder, where so much is happening that nothing really has to go on. We're all floating to and fro in the tidal waves we've made in the bathtub, without having moved at all. I started rock climbing a month or two ago and now Ill climb anything, I decided to start running and just because I decided, I can run as fast as I want for as long as I want and it all feels the same. Swimming, we're pushed forward and reach our destination much faster than expected, not even knowing we were in a stream, the current pushing us where ever we choose to go. Strokes cant keep up with our progress so why not just lay and float, I say, and the rain outside pours on.

It gets louder and louder within the walls of this cafe, until it becomes unbearable and then I realize its silent. The coffee grinder breaks the din, turns on and turns off and turns out I AM still here. Not only that but my legs are crossed, my back is bent, my hand moving. The coffee I finished half an hour ago was free and the pastry a dollar twenty-five. I paid for it but my wallet doesn't miss anything. I ate it but I can't feel it anywhere inside my body.

The man sitting in front of my table to the left is watching, complacently, a slideshow of cold cuts on his computer and is grooving to some unheard tune. I'm meeting people for dinner, as if they'll show. as if six o'clock is universal. as if someone else is living a life too, just like mine maybe but the hair that falls in front of their face when they stoop is blond, maybe, not brown like mine.

Is it possible or is this it? Is it just one streaming immortal, amorphous cloud thats there whether or not we divide it up, divvy it out and assign characteristics to this one versus that. Just for fun.

Im hungry now. (How did I know?) I've been eating less, not as hungry as often, and I feel like more liquid comes out than I put in. But running my hands down from my ribs and onto my hips, there is still and always will be a little hump built up on top of the base of my belly. A little hump of warmth that is stollen from my freezing fingers and hands, just sitting there waiting to protect the baby that isn't there and won't be for many years still. Knowing that I have no control, no matter how much or little I eat, of my sole purpose, manifested and clearly stated by my anatomy, shape and purport, calms my mind and upon racking my brain (given much more credence and attention than it deserves) for solutions of who to be, what to do and how to live, reassures me that, by breathing, blinking and bleeding, I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing and am fully fulfilling my potential.

In the cafe, a pot breaks, plates clatter, a kid jabbers in an unbelievably high-pitched loud voice. The usually impeccable bathroom looks like a crime scene. A boy walks in with a sword in sheath hanging through the loops in his backpack next to his nalgene water bottle and I think. Is it possible that today is the day of every exception?

My phone buzzes across the table with the name of the restaurant and, looking at the time, the amorphous cloud of shapes and colors falls to the ground, compartmentalizing, and the pieces are assigned the sounds that were already there but are now rationalized. I recognize the song in the room and the familiarity spreads down from my ears until my hair and hands come back into my field of view and I can feel every part of my body, aware of what shoes I'm wearing based on the height of the arch and the comfortable pressure on the slope of my foot top.

A chilly bike ride and a warm wonderful dinner awaits but I can't, just not quite yet, know how that will feel.

Too Much of a Good Thing/ The Evolution of Insecurities

Sorry about the slow lead in. Bear with me here..

Why does society cater to incompetence? Is that what a society is? A system of support in which the strong take care of the weak in order to maintain our race? Its worked so far at least- tremendously well. The smart, able people have engineered products to compensate for idiots’ incompetence, reducing their impact, allowing them to function independently by either trashing and over utilizing their resources or by buying into the bureaucracy that provides the shortcuts necessary to bring lofty goals and complicated procedures down to the level of incompetent, unthinking people who can only thrive within the confines of structure, games and rules. And then becoming slaves to it. It’s worked. Despite the fact that we, as a society, structure, race, and people, have more problems and diseases and unhappiness as ever, there are also more people than ever, our systems are bigger, bureaucracies are more impenetrable and were able to get more things done faster than ever. Ah, sweet success. But what was our goal to begin with in creating this maze for ourselves? Were short sighted, maybe that’s the problem, creating quick fix solutions to problems that we’ve created by our own immediacy and laziness and then, just after we become fully dependent on our new creation, we realize that our new crutch is unsustainable, running out and has terrible backlashes.

Although this is often the kind of things I think about periodically, in the shower, putting away laundry, spacing out, this specific little impassioned rant was triggered by helping Keith clean his apartment to show to a potential renter. Keith’s not the subject matter here, Johnny is- the roommate whom three people are relocating in order to avoid. Our disbelief at the level of Johnny’s dependence lead me to ask what makes people this way. So here’s my attempt at an explanation.

People started by gathering. In families, tribes, near rivers- for transport, water, crops, connectivity, trade, then cities formed and grew and grew. Sticking up for yourself, your family was no longer enough. Now it was a society, you had to be a valuable member of society while still looking out for yourself- this survival tactic now based not on the maintenance of a closely-knit community where people felt confident and solid in their role, enough to lose a need for self- preservation and work instead for the maintenance of a way and a people one strongly believed in preserving. A then small-scale system in which you and everyone were necessary and vital components. But now in a city, a system, a society, moving as a unit of its own, unreliant on personal impact (every vote counts but not because we respect your opinion but because 1+1+1=3, times a few hundred thousand adds up, it all adds up, to maybe one point, which can win or lose an election), moving on its own, bolstered by and built upon a foundation of insecurities, inferiority and a desire to keep up with an impossible ideal. Now we’re lacking the reliance on one another that previously made up a society. Charity, then, made sense. Empathy and support because everything that happened to an individual effected the community. Here, an individual is no longer important in the bigger picture, just a number to add up to make a whole, a fraction of the bigger picture instead of being a microcosm for it.

In the good ol’ days, if your grand father and your father were barbers, you would be a barber too. Now, one has to find his own meaning instead of being born into it. You have a world of possibilities in front of you, hundreds of potential careers, lifestyles, relationships and if you choose wrong, it all comes back to point its fingers at you. What is masked as control over oneself is presented with such daunting possibilities and implications that it has the opposite effect and in turn, disempowers the individual. And if one day, for some reason, you’re a little discontent, its no longer just a bad day in the midst of a good life. It’s the result of thousands of personal choices that now, you must look back on, doubt and wish had been made differently in order to spare yourself from this impermanent unhappiness. So egos are considered, tried and fail. Within the privacy of your own home, out on the streets, a huge world is not comprehensible for us so we fragment it, create classes, races, stereotypes, groups, political parties and above all, watch out for numero uno! A safety in numbers (the dependence and personal responsibility one takes in a small scale community) morphs into the bystander effect where now, we’ve become so removed, that big world out there, its no longer our creation or even our land to walk on. It has a life of its own and is no longer ours, that a girl yelling for help on a street corner in New York has nothing to do with us, its not our problem, its just another struggle far off along with the thousands of problems and suffering brought to our attention and pinned on our backs as vague nagging responsibility, by a global community but not actually experienced, seen first hand, lived and felt.

In order to preserve ourselves, engage in our surroundings, we create false worlds based on distractions and creations- things we can process and tackle. The drama in tonight’s episode of Desperate Housewives is more manageable, more tangible, closer to home, than the warring sects in the Middle East, the governmental corruption in Somalia and Kenya and what that corruption is driving people to do. So our efforts to engage in hum-drum routines and trivial pleasures is really just an effort to regain a control over ourselves and our own lives that was lost when our worlds went from tribal familiarity and familial values to large-scale worldly knowledge, expectations and involvement- a task much too daunting for our small simple bodies to take on.

We’re stretching ourselves in order to move further and further away from animalistic, bodily-dependent simplicity and further and further towards matters of the mind. If we disconnect from our bodies (what do you mean my mood is affected by the processed food-like substance I just ate for lunch? Im a lawyer, I make 200 grand a year, Im a self actualized human being!), distance ourselves from the mortal world around us, falling leaves and springing buds, life cycles, water cycles, mortality, change, death and evolution, than maybe- at least consciously- we’re able to detach ourselves from the impermanence which everyone fears. Why? I don’t know, maybe because its one more threat to our control. Control-that’s the one thing here that sets us apart from any other animal. A mind so abstract that its mere engagement contradicts every cyclic, mortal force that plays on our lives. Opposable thumbs my ass. If we couldn’t open jars, we’d find a way around it. A way to justify our inability with a desperate, quivering ego-based superiority.

The ingenious of us have found that the number one way to market products is to strip perspective buyers of their last thread of control, instill a feeling of incompleteness and lacking, making them dependent on an outside source to regain that thread. If you tell girls enough that theyre bad at sex, they’ll rake for solutions and find an impermanent solution in the false promises of a Cosmopolitan magazine. And for 6.99 a pop, that’s not a bad price for a quick fix high. If you convince a homeowner that her cleaning methods don’t protect properly against a certain strain of bacteria she cant pronounce, she’ll spend her money on products manufactured not to improve the quality of her life but to turn her into a consumer- buying a fix here and a fix there until the dopamine is expended, regulators forced open and the high becomes the norm and the lacking becomes the painful, sweaty trembling crash. Addicted, dependent on products that support the maker‘s similar struggle to keep up, prioritizing immediate personal gain over sustainable betterment.

Dependence on something means that without it, you’re lacking. When people are taught that they’re incomplete or not good enough as is, they lose the confidence in themselves necessary to think for themselves, follow not what is forced down their throats but instead what they independently believe in. The loss of control over oneself strips people of the power to think critically, question authority and say- this is how I want to see the world and this is what Im going to do to see that through. So little power is given, or taken, over ones own life that people try in vain to bolster their failing egos by abusing the few aspects of control that they still feel they have. Teens desperately do everything they can to rebel against parents and every force bigger than them- drug problems, self mutilation, eating disorders- some of the few things in life they feel are in their hands- so who could pass up the chance to exploit that rare power?

Johnny, as described by his former roommates, is a fuck-up. To the extent that his mom flew in from the east coast to come check up on him, you know, clean his sheets, buy him toilet paper. If his own mom doesn’t have the faith in his abilities to manage his own life, who will? And then it all became clear. Maybe if his mom hadn’t flown a few thousand miles to help him with his life, he may have understood, after perhaps finding himself in the bathroom with no toilet paper a few times, that his power over his life extends an ability to find people who are willing to take care of him. And maybe then he would scrape the leftover lasagna off of his plate before balancing it on the tower of his unwashed dishes in the kitchen sink. Maybe then he would have the self-esteem to redirect the energy and money currently spent on constantly revamping his wardrobe (to once more get that dying high of false confidence instilled upon consumers by marketers who don’t mind adding to the whirlpool of dependence and disempowerment to get a slice of their pie) to the promotion of something he genuinely believes in, something that brings actual, sustained, real happiness.

I might be completely wrong, totally missing the mark about all of this, but if its true- if this kind of pathetic dependent incompetence is in fact just the manifestation of a desperate confused desire for empowerment, its hard to look at Johnny and feel anything but pity. But I can also see how after a year of living with the guy, being constantly bombarded by his pleas for attention and approval, and scraping crusted-on oatmeal off of abandoned bowls, pity might morph into pure resentment.

walking home one night. sent to my email by text. I dont really know anything- these are just guesses in an attempt to understand what I do.

I can give myself completely because once I have, that's just a layer for me that Ive sloughed off and although aspects of that, what I just revealed that is, leave a residue on my skin, they dont necessarily still (or maybe no longer) define me. Or maybe its just that I dont let anything (nothing that can be put to words at least) define me.
Or maybe there is nothing that is me. Nothing to me. Im not even let in on that. Im an observer to myself as much as I am to the rest of the world.
Im always on the outside, a shell, so theres no core of me to give (nothing to compromise or maintain). If you pour out my contents, Ill find something new. That change, defines me. That constant reshaping, revising, evolving. Im a host to whatever I let fill me and Im not the same now as I was yesterday.

There's a notion people have, have been taught, that they must look out for their safety at all times. Never let down their guard. Never miss a beat or slip up. And safety first: watch out for numero uno and thats good. I believe that. I do think that its healthy to meet ones own needs before trying to provide for others. But with that notion, has come an assumption that forgiveness is bad. That, by forgiving someone, you must compromise yourself. Compromising your own morals. And that, I dont agree with. And I think its okay to compromise ones own morals here and there. Relax. Stop trying to maintain yourself. Keeping this steady image of who you think you are: as something in your control that you can hold onto and rely on no matter what else happens. But I think thats the thing that must be most flexible. Staying true to oneself is not necessarily staying constant. People change. So dont limit yourself and restrain yourself by trying to stay true and constant to an image you want to maintain. Thats as superficial and out of touch as it gets.

I went to church with Seth one night and I think it backfired

God, for Seth, is an unsinkable tanker built up in the water that will stay afloat through the storms and that mutes all the waves and cold.
I have no protective tanker and Seth knows that. But what he doesnt know is that he doesnt have to look down on me, swimming in the water along side him and throw me a vest and pull me up into safety and sweet salvation. Not only does he not have to, I refuse it because- as easy as that would make things- I dont want anything to be muted for me. I want to feel every rise and fall and Im saturated and my skin is pruned but thats how I like it.
I dont need the horizon line to be off in the distance so I always will have something unattainable to grasp at. Im there, I set the horizon for myself and its not just a pretty view. Beauty for me, is not just beautiful because its bizarre, other wordly and unattainable. The reason why its beautiful is because when the sun sets, it comes down right on me and crushes me into the ground and I burst into orange light and pink rays and purple shadows and when it rises in the morning, it pushes me up with it, balancing and Im part of the sky. I can see clearly the whole sky looking up and the whole world looking down and it pushes me through the clouds for that moment. Im part of it all, not just watching from the shore. And I can feel every part of it and I wouldnt give that up for anything. I would never give that up for security and stability.

A forest cant always flourish and be lush and healthy. Every once in a while, theres a forest fire. And that forest fire has to happen. And then theres rotting wood and ash and that feeds the things that eat that stuff and strengthens the soil so it will be fertile for the next generation of trees and plants.
In Boulder, the hundred year flood is due. The local newspaper has mapped out flood plains and given advice on what to do when the flood happens, Y2K, 20/12. What if the flood happens, and we get out of the way and let it happen and then carry on? I used to be afraid of earthquakes, growing up in LA. The thing that cured me of my fear was when it occured to me that, without infrastructure (building freeway onramps, stacking people on top of each other in high rise apartements so there are four layers of beds and cabinets on a shoddy short-sighted foundation, just to tempt something to come and knock it all down), earthquakes would be no problem at all. Nobody would ever die from an earthquake! again!
All of this, all of these "natural disasters" are no big deal. Its fine. And people die and friends are lost and opportunities are passed by and its all okay.
Religion (providing that unsinkable tanker for people to hop onto when really, theyve just got to swim) is halting and limiting our evolution just as vaccinations are promoting an unnatural health, a fake immune system that can fight off the little guys just by forcing them to evolve into huge killers. And hell, its the same with the economy. Now, I know nothing about the economy but I do know that theres a boom and bust situation here, and its got to be the same thing.
Its time to let go