OH my GOrD he's Writing a blog pOsT

Yes he is, ladies and gentlemen. He's hunting and pecking away at his little keyboard and pecking the wrong key twice in every five pecks and drumming on the backspace key more than anything else.

And now, ladies and gentlemen he's marched it all the way back to "hitting" and changed it to "drumming on" because, Holy Noodles Batman, he's a writer don't you know!

And he's living the dream. He stayed up ALL NIGHT because he knew there was no use trying to sleep. He did some championship level laundry in the early dawn gloom. OH YES boys and girls, the early dawn gloom! What a wordsmith. Unrivalled I tell you.

He crashed mightily come morning, awoke after an hour and a half, PROMPTLY FORGOT he slept an hour and a half and would later tell a filthy scheming evil lie about not even sleeping a second.

Oh and what's this? He's speaking in the third-person perspective now! Wait. Check the records. Check the.... the.... thing. Whaddaya call it? What the court reporter... transcript?? Let's say transcript. Okay, never mind. Turns out he's been speaking in the third person since the very beginning.

Now where was I? I mean, He.

So after a good bout of confusion where I almost cancelled the Big Outing I actually got together with The Ponderer. She picked me up; me freshly showered, Santa-nian beard trimmed way back, newish clothes, teeth brushed etcetera, in shoes even... And we hit the Dollarama for bread, some chili, some noodles... what Caramilk bars? Who said anything about Caramilk bars? Some crackers what will make my lonely cheese happy...

We went to Tim's for coffee, tea, hot chocolate and bagel-muffin food and talked about dead and dying people but in a good way and was reminded how much I love life and love my friends to pieces. The Ponderer of course and even the ones once close who I don't see anymore. Even the ones who I loved so dearly with all my heart, such that every day was either blissful or aching. I wonder sometimes if they read this blog even though they've had enough of me in person. Well, if you're reading... I still love you with all my heart, as I have every single day, even the days when you were sadly mistaken, and thought that I didn't.

Peace y'all.

Then they get you...

The bi-weekly dinner-and-reflection gatherings at the church where I am not a congregant but through whom I volunteer, have become virtual gatherings for the time being (of course). Here is the latest reflection:

"...You are invited to share an experience, observation or story where you felt a special connection to another, or others by reaching out or helping out;  or where you have been inspired or moved by the way others have reached out or helped out in a special way."

My response:

On the last day I left the house I ran into trouble with pain and mobility issues at the specialty grocery store. I used the shopping cart as a sort of walker and prepared to get through it. A cashier saw me as I approached and grabbed a chair and brought it to me, then took the cart with her, scanned my groceries, bagged them and returned them to me. I paid when I was ready and at the door another employee stopped me from pulling the bags from the cart and accompanied me to my car instead and brought the cart back to the store for me.

Then at the liquor store (ahem... I just go there to buy the gift bags; yeah that's the ticket) I waited in my car out front for 25 minutes for the store to open. In that time about 35 customers arrived and lined up, distanced, on the walkway. Then an employee emerged to gradually invite them in. The line kept refilling, and I began to wonder if I'd get in all day. The employee saw my parking tag and invited me in at once. I said "No but pick a spot down the line for me and then let me in when my time comes." Immediately all the people near the front of the line objected and insisted I go ahead. So I did.

As I struggled to carry out my bags a young man ran over and carried them out for me.

Arriving home there was no parking spot anywhere near my home but a neighbor saw me (I don't even know his name) and rushed over and said "Hang on. I'm going to move my car. Take my spot." I refused immediately but he wouldn't hear it and moved his car.

I have vowed to stop slamming the human race for a little while.

"Yeah, they're horrible but the problem with human beings is, as much as you may want to dislike or disapprove of them... then they just do one wonderful thing and they get you back in again. It's an abusive relationship."--Jerry Seinfeld (to Ellen DeGeneres; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee)

Untouchables

Hey hey… U guessed it. It’s U-day, and the fine upstanding, unsinkable, upbeat, uncensored (and unbalanced of late due to foot injury - oh and on that note, ulcerated and under-utilized) Urban Bard (a.k.a. the Flaming Liberal) has unleashed this upon us:

Restorative Justice

I know. I know. Only one U in there and it’s not even at the beginning. Also not much of a challenge since restorative justice is so ubiquitous in my life. But here’s a brief story which I think says something important:

Soul Man and I addressed a small class at Redeemer University. Let’s face it, it was his presentation and I was little more than his driver. On the trip there it occurred to me that I might be asked why it is I do what I do; volunteer my time with such pariahs of the community; such monsters. I gave it some brief thought and found no immediate answer and was distracted by something else.

After the presentation I was asked that very question, and by a particular girl who had been coming across as being perhaps less than comfortable with our perspectives. It was phrased “Why would you want to work with these people?”

The irony occurred to me immediately. This was Redeemer; as in Christ the Redeemer. Was redemption really a foreign concept here?

This may seem strange, but working in this community, in order to keep the greater community safe for children (for that IS the prime factor here) has not felt like the morbid chore that many people seem to assume. It in fact feels like a privilege!

In an environment that is draped in shadows of victimhood and flawed justice and brokenness and where great barriers loom against healing and trust and happiness and normal relationships and normal pursuits and mental well-being, where one of the nations largest institution flounders in vain attempts at insight and justice… where we celebrate each small victory with profound lovingness and where even in the rarer moments of failure and in the very rare moments of tragedy, all hands report on deck and immediately care for one another; and where the lines between offenders and volunteers have been made irrelevant…

… in a place where every day, humanity has all the cards stacked against it, it is a privilege to find in this place that somehow or another, every day, humanity wins.

Kindness

Okay, back to the A-to-Z where it’s K time, boys and girls. And the kind, knowledgeable, keen, kurious, kourageous, king of the kitchen; the kidneyless kid; the Earnest Chef has kicked in the following K word for our konsideration. Let’s do something with it:

Karma

I could write all day and night about this, which would not serve the A-Z enterprise well at all. Let me try to boil my thoughts down to their briefest essence.

When I have been most loving, not in specific moments but in periods of frequent moments, those are the same periods in which I needed little love in return. In fact when I have been most loving I have required NO love in return, yet in those same times I did receive the most love.

The give and take part sounds like Karma, eh?

But with the irony; that I received it when I did not need it, I can easily interpret the same causation which reveals that behavior and rewards can not be bought and sold. Religion seems to bribe you: Behave like an angel and you’ll be invited into paradise.

It doesn’t work. The universe can not be fooled. When illusions are defeated the freedom is real. ACTING nice can draw others into ACTING nice to you. This is lovely but it can be a counterfeit currency. Nothing compares to the reality.

Loving because your mind is so clear that there is no other option but to love, that is real. And in that state nothing fools you. There are literally no fears or problems of any consequence because they have no power of illusion over you.

There are so many religious, poetic, mystical ways of looking at this stuff but the scientific way is a valid, beautiful, comforting method which can encompass the other… umbrellas.

When we are pure - which can be done in moments! Do not despair that such an evolution is out of reach! - when we are pure, the integrity that is our natural process brings out harmony, kindness, selflessness and what we get in return - call it Karma if you want - is the other face of freedom. It’s the joy we get in the immense privilege to be human. The joyful reality of our circumstance is unveiled.

The flip side: When our clouded deluded ego-infested mind exudes the selfish lack of integrity and we put bad things into our community we pay the price - again, call it karma if you wish. We forbid ourselves from participating in real freedom and real joy.

Karma is not magic. It is ever so precisely a reality that is measurable in the scientific view. 

S is for Support

The Flaming Liberal has had a very rough go of things. Diabetes has crippled him, temporarily we believe, and knocked him out of the workforce. Christmas morning we went to the street mission for their holiday breakfast.

Pancakes with real butter and real Aunt Jemima’s Syrup, real bacon, sausages, eggs and yogurt. I think there was more but I had topped out at that point. The food was plentiful and surprisingly excellent; of better quality, quite frankly than the breakfast offerings of many Hamilton restaurants, many of which have very little business being in business.

The staff and volunteers were so sweet and gregarious and adept at meeting such a motley crew of marginalized benefactors at whatever mental landscapes they each presented; some certainly more difficult than others.

I could imagine myself among their ranks. It would be challenging. I don’t know if my physical limitations would rule me out. Certainly I am overextended enough as it is. I shouldn’t even be thinking about it.

Together

I’m noticing, over the last few days, how increased mindfulness (or wakefulness etc.) doesn’t only avail wisdom but also the simplest intelligence. I have had many meetings and social engagements lately and have been a little more on the ball and have noticed how much clearer I see the relationship dynamics without the nigglings - the wisps - of pride and paranoia twisting my perception. All these relationships look so much more joyful, beautiful and worthwhile and full of possibility through detached observation.

The word detachment seems to scare people off though. I’m talking about perception that is without these false filters of need; dependency; expectation. I find this hard to describe. For me it comes through organic trust in the lessons I have learned, first-hand, about the illusions spun by instinctive mind. For me detachment has no negative connotations. It is not about lack of love, for instance. In fact it avails so much more love.

I’m sure that Tolle or Buddhist literature would describe a different path for finding this detachment; a path or paths which I seem to have forgotten precisely. I recall these readings too dimly at the moment. For me it came through the habit of creative solitude and a bottomless fascination for truth; or more accurately it turned out, the absence of truth and the forensic study of its displacement. It is why, in my more powerful state of former years, I was strong in leveraging influence; nudging people more toward creativity, before I began faltering and eventually withdrawing, more intentionally of late.

I am reminded the advantages of clarity when one is not so self-interested in the dynamics of relationships. It is enough that we are all alive, human and imperfect together, and taking on this great drama together, as witnesses to the universe, and to our own potential as a creature of harmony; both internal and collectively.

The Ark

Fifty-four years ago a Frenchman named Vanier turned heads pulling two developmentally challenged adults out of a standard institution and bringing them to live with him in a small house. There they improved their lives, demonstrated their worth, and grew the community they called the Ark, building a workshop and art studio along the way.

Today there are Ark communities in forty countries including two hundred - significantly larger - homes in Canada; some forming the Scooterville chapter, where core members live under the same roof as the staff who are dedicated to helping them live productive lives.

To me, this represents harmony; the most laudable goal of humanity.

“Would you ever consider returning to the traditional workforce if the employer had goals compatible with your own?” World Citizen asked me a couple years ago.

“Of course,” I said, “If I were convinced it were true.”

Days ago I applied for a temporary part-time Admin Assistant position - not at an Ark home but at the Scooterville community office: two days a week for a year or so; a perfect arrangement to commit to in order to test a possibly integral component of my life-goals/income solution.

And given I am well-acquainted with the Scooterville community director - we volunteer together at Circles - I figured myself a shoo-in for an interview at least. I thus went light on the successes portion of the resume, preferring all that to come from my own mouth, and concentrated on a list of forty significant and relevant job skills which just about runs the gamut of the admin environment, and a bold, perfectly truthful mission statement:

To help manifest harmony wherever possible, through ongoing self-directed and charitable projects and if applicable: by working within a like-motivated organization.

I was surprised when they declined an interview, citing “many qualified applicants” and stating that “…sadly we will not be continuing at this time with your application…”

Well darn. I didn’t intend to make anyone sad! I’m certainly not. My goal was to help the Ark land the best new member for their team; myself if applicable. I did not want the job for myself regardless. There is no harmony in that. I just hope they haven’t made a mistake, passing me up prematurely.

I responded that I was actually happy that they had garnered excellent candidates (my word, not theirs, but the logical assumption).

At circles events I appropriately dress down in order to fit in with the membership and I do not go out of my way to shave. Does the director assume I would not groom appropriately for an office gig? Am I not the traditional shape or gender for such a role? I would assume a more forward thinking mindset here.

Was my objective perceived contrived? I am aware that my truthful circumstances are very unlikely. But the director has glimpsed many insights into my past when I’ve spoke at functions. Though I also wonder if she had nothing to do with my resume’s appraisal and too if our connection was not even known by the appraisers.

As I release more resumes must I dumb myself down a bit and produce something more normal?

Kindness

I had to climb the porch stairs in the dark in order to verify the address of the giant old house before returning to my New Old Clunker at the curb in order to fetch my big old offering and the remote control that goes with it.

“Does it have a built-in VHS player!” Muzic Wizard had messaged me upon seeing the ancient catalogue image I sent him.

“It does indeed,” I replied. “And I can’t promise there’s no cheesy 80’s porno tape jammed inside it.”

“Oh the porno tape would be a plus.”

So now I’m lugging the beast up a couple short flights of creaky stairs as the smell of pot grows stronger.

Muzic Wizard answers the apartment door barefoot and slit-eyed. “Cool!” he says and begins checking out the input/output ports at once. “Yeah, this’ll work.”

“Oh, a TV!” says his girlfriend, appearing in the doorway.

They are both grateful for this contribution to the nostalgic art installation they will construct for the 3-day In The Soil festival. But I am just as grateful for the opportunity to be rid of it. We are all happy.

I journey back to Scooterville, catch a short sleep and arrive at Grandma’s in time to get us to breakfast at the nearby diner where Uncle and Aunt and Aunt’s husband await and where I counted on using a $10 coupon as my contribution. Instead they whip out a stack of 2-for-1 coupons. I am teamed up with Aunt’s husband and he declares that he will pay our bargain bill.

“I must accept,” I say, and report to them these direst of employment circumstances. Ye Olde Security Company seems to have me down to seven shifts per month. I am getting aggressive in the search for a new or second employer - if I haven’t mentioned that.

As the gang departs I see that Aunt’s husband has left a mathematically-justified three dollar tip. I want five left instead but I have no toonie to add; just a single twenty dollar bill. I ask Aunt if she can make change.

“Hold on,” she says, and fetches the requisite small bills from the waitress in exchange for her own twenty. She gives them to me but refuses my own twenty in exchange. Again I have no choice but to accept. Then she reaches into her wallet.

“No!” I say, but she presses another $40 into my hands and I am too choked up to debate.

I then go to meet -- Damn. What excellent nickname do I have for the sight-challenged Circles program director who exudes kindness and sweet music everywhere he goes? Soul Man? That will do for now. I meet with Soul Man and drive him to his appointments for the afternoon and take part in them also. I do this for him one day a week. It’s unclear if I will ever begin to receive mileage reimbursement for this but it doesn’t matter. I track the miles for now and find ways to absorb charity which I convert into gas money for this purpose.

We wrap things up just after three PM which puts me at the Good Shepherd Centre just in time to rub elbows with Scooterville’s homeless and enjoy a free hot meal which today is weiners (premium jumbo weiners even!) and beans over rice with a simple salad and balsamic dressing. I skip the dessert and koolade and choose water.

I’m agog at the great many volunteers who are cooking, serving, busing and… shepherding. What a beautiful contribution. And at times surely a challenging or even dangerous one.

My role as a Circles volunteer has much expanded of late as has my health and financial deficits. It is with a special warmth that I find myself slipping into this alternative economy of the heart.

Afterimage

The Liaison, so far as I currently understand, had three basic categories of friends: Writing friends online from around the world, writing friends online who he met in person at various writing retreats and workshops, including some of the most committed and robust programs out there, and writing friends online who he also knew in person right here in Scooterville including myself, Sick Boy and Chess Champ, each of whom you might glimpse in the video below.

His dearest friend of all is the very sweet and deep-minded Cerulean Blue, a constant online companion from Europe, who has flown out here many times for extended vacations with him. She is a satellite member of our local NaNo chapter and our little year-long writing sub-group.

I sense that their companionship is of some special design of their own which they need explain to no one, and I sense that this was the only non-familial relationship of any significant intimacy in the Liaison’s living experience and I am very glad that he had it.

When Cerulean first appeared on the scene I was troubled by an email from her in which I sensed a pre-mature attachment to us and unwarranted worry over subtle interpretations of online encounters which I personally viewed as inconsequential. I thought it inappropriate that she would presume that we had some kind of deep friendship at stake when we’d never even met in person and I was not shy at the time to try to firmly inform her of this.

In the end, it appears that she was on the right track. I came to sense a special friendship between us and now I wonder why I have seen so little of her when she has spent most of her time here in Scooterville with brief returns to her home abroad, ever since November when the Liaison fell ill. The blame is surely my own.

Now that he’s gone and with her next return flight scheduled for the day after his funeral (in essence a coincidence) there remains for her a couple of free days and a couple of partly free days and no one for her to give constant care for.

Yesterday those of us available took her out for the afternoon, which slipped gently into the evening. We went exploring with no urgency or real agenda, with a strong bond in our hearts and common private thoughts on our minds - of a sweet boyish man whose hard-felt absence seems to have washed away the tensions of tentative friendship between we of very sensitive, but otherwise diverse personalities.

I will see Cerulean at least two more times before she goes away. Given the pain she has endured here, I doubt she will ever come back. And my own chances of ever getting to Europe are slim. It is with significant heaviness that I consider a likely-final farewell. I wonder how her life will change now, with such a significant absence, and how comfortably she might endure a continued online relationship with us, where triggers may abound.

Today the same gang will go hiking and what-not without me but with the excellent Healer and her canine companion Doctor Snuggles.

I hope they all feel the same love which I did yesterday and which I attempted to capture here:

Early Dawn

More than a week ago I found myself sprawled on my bed in the late evening, having worked my last night shift of the run and remaining dopily awake all day, half-engaged in all my main addictions including a massive multi-player video game which I accidentally fell into on Christmas Eve, not understanding what it was.

I’d eaten a ridiculously large, skanky meal from a ridiculously large skanky restaurant chain who charges far too much money for grotesquely cheap food in order to stuff corporate pockets. I used a gift card which Mom gave me for Christmas.

I lay there feeling ridiculous. I could have slept on this day and then risen and did some writing or any other productive endeavor on my massive list of joyful to-do’s. I might even have dusted my room or had a shower.

At this moment as I drained the last of the cheap wine and made a half-assed clearing of my bed so that I could finally go to sleep, I thought of Neo and Aqualad and even young Master Prism; people in my life with such bright qualities and strengths and so much potential but yet such burdensome apparent problems weighing them down; problems which to me should not be daunting.

Why!

Why have I not helped them through? Why have I not been more effective? Why have my strengths not been leveraged enough to the people around me that they would be more fully ahead of the game and not seemingly behind in some areas!

Why have I not been more helpful?

Looking at the stained wine glass, the twinkling coins on the lap top screen. Dusty bookshelf. The day’s clothes slung over the bedposts. My own ridiculous belly. Plastic containers (really?) of smelly bacon carbonara remnants; the crappiest goddam pasta in all of Scooterville; a half step up from Kraft Dinner, and also the most popular in all of Scooterville thanks to the unending plague of human insanity and the disease of corporate worship.

What in the fuck has become of me? How can I help other people when I have betrayed myself?

I felt a long cool wave of clarity as I prepared for sleep. I felt a deep, still sense of love. I felt a new certainty that changes were coming. I started making plans and then eased up. There was no great excitement here. No great hurry after all. Just a shift in the atmosphere.

And things have indeed been changing since then. Some small steps toward better health and weight loss. Small improvements in discipline. An exit strategy from this bewitching video game which has suddenly lost some luster.

Of greater impact: A wholesale change in online habits. Greater thoughtfulness and patience. Gentleness. My innate reactions have now been to pause; to deny the provocations of emotion; to trust in presence. And the presence has been coming and confirming the choices not to act out. Clarity hasn’t generally come quickly or perfectly, but it comes in its various forms.

I find myself pausing in parking lots to examine the sky and feeling really joyful at the miracle of this biosphere; this incredible privilege; these highly improbable tiny brilliant moments!

At work I have been watching the squirrels, talking to the rabbits. Pausing on the early morning patrol to stand and stare into the striking orange neon strip over the lake. What a heavenly planet this is!

I feel a renewed confidence with regard to writing craft, and a willingness; a keenness even - to jump back into projects without those former reservations.

On our hike the next morning The Healer nodded to all of this. “You have to have your own life in balance in order to help others achieve balance!” So the woo-woo tribe is on board.

It occurs to me that various figures – generally it’s hard to say to what degree they were real and to what degree fictional – who are credited with experiences similar to some of mine, have experienced a pattern it seems: progress, a fall backward, and then finally a greater progress.

It occurs to me that I might be on that type of path or I may not. I’m not excited about it at all. I’m not hopeful. I’m making no presumptions. It is only a curiosity. And academically I must admit that that in itself is a positive sign.

Too many vacations

“Why wouldn’t you?” said Neo.

These words ring in my mind probably every day. I think it has been a couple months at least. Or many months? I have almost no ability for tracking time.

Why wouldn’t I?

The answer I gave him was not fair. For some reason I did not approach it in a straight-forward way. Instead of explaining what I think the barrier is; I found myself trying to show him instead. It’s not that I wish to be tricky. Not at all. I deeply regard clarity. But the problem here is so very delicate. I think I tried to show him as a way to ask for help. I have long made a habit of underestimating him. We gathered weekly for so long and then, when our visits fell to monthly or bi-monthly, I failed to anticipate his swift maturation. Now on this occasion I gave him unlimited credit. I allowed that maybe he could be so brilliant as to see right through my problem. If indeed it is a problem.

Why wouldn’t I?

Why wouldn’t I want to cross that threshold? Why wouldn’t I want to further evolve? To perhaps embrace a permanently enlightened state, if indeed I was as close to such a state as I felt like I was those – what – five years ago? Ten?

I was so joyful and so at peace for so long that I told no one; only hinted. For no one would have believed me, or so I figured. And let’s face it: a lot of people have been tricked into such an apparent state by subscribing to other people’s programs built of compromised logic and puny scope. Born again or what not. People would have assumed that of me and I was in no mood to carefully explain the integrity, the courage and the patient wholeness of my journey. And I did not trust the submission of my ego enough to get into something that could become bragging. There is nothing to brag about. I have never forgotten the long roster of failures which allowed me to slide into such a rare space that reality became so easy to see. My story is not one of successes.

Why wouldn’t I?

Why wouldn’t I want to be genuinely enlightened? Permanently so?

In so many ways I have slipped backwards; too often impatient; too often tribal; too often unforgiving. Temporarily I mean. I always smarten up after some amount of time; seconds or minutes; perhaps hours rarely.

It seems I never lock the cell door anymore. My ego takes little parole vacations according to its own whims and on my own whims I say, “Hey fucker! Get back in your cell!”

I forget my goals. I am disloyal to my own plans.

Build the plan. Work the plan! The foundation of any enterprise. I suspect sometimes that I fail out of fear. If you work the plan and the plan fails, then what next? Working the plan invites possible failure and I don’t know what post-failure looks like. I don’t know what the new plan is. I know I should have more clarity than this. I’m not clear what is holding me back.

Why wouldn’t I?

I’m not sure I can express here, the difference between what I should have explained versus what I did say.

I think I’m afraid of losing my identity. My identity is dear to me despite its seductive torment. As it is with the child abuse survivor who refuses to give up being a child abuse survivor. I’m the guy who loves immensely and wants nothing but to show it and is always handcuffed from showing it; whose heart is always dangerously close to bursting.

“But when you’re enlightened you won’t care about that anymore,” says Neo.

I must presume that is true. But it is still unimaginable.

I worked so hard to get so far and then I paused and said, No, I can’t go any further because I’m leaving everyone behind. I can’t remember what it was like to be like them. I am losing my ability to relate! I must back up a bit so I can reach them; so I can communicate, so I can help them along! Why ever should I go on alone? If I can do this, anyone can and everyone can! I have achieved out of rare opportunities, not rare talents.

I took a long journey, a working journey, and I came to what I perceived was a gateway; another one-way gateway, for I’d lingered at such a structure before, prior to marching forward, when I’d understood the matrix and decided I had to leave it; that despite the terror there was no turning back. No blue pill after all. But here at this new gate I did turn back and I have been too often on vacation ever since.

It has to change.

The price for peace

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Good now that you’re here.” She wastes no time before exerting pressure. I know I’m the last visitor of the day. She won’t want me to leave.

I choose the visitor chair with no arms on it and don’t remain for long. She wants us arranged on the bed, side by side so that I can hold her and rub her back and such. I immediately regret it. I don’t want this level of intimacy with her, and now I’ve set an unhealthy precedent. Now I’ll loathe to come back again and face the unenviable choice of unwelcome intimacy versus an abandonment/anxiety attack reaction should I decline. The more she demands the more she alienates. Bad all around.

She reminds me she’s dying. She says she’s going home Monday (I doubt it). She tells the tale of the cancer-sick man who survived because all his friends and family put their lives on hold and stayed with him 24/7 and pulled him through. I’m a little skeptical. Pretty sure cancer doesn’t give a rat’s ass if your friends are holding your hand or not.

All she wants is love – or the illusion of love. Somewhere inside she probably perceives the difference and is willing to settle for the latter. But the constant demands erode lovability.

“Stay,” she wheezes breathlessly, “’Til midnight.” How real is she being? As always I don’t know. As always I am caught between mercy and sticking to my principles – which all boils down to: blind compassion versus genuine compassion. This night I am strong and tell her I must go and why, and that I will be thinking about her and how to be helpful to her.  

The next night there is an inner-circle meeting. The Liberal Theologian’s daughter; my other housemate, is the key participant. She hasn’t felt like a daughter for a long time now; more a constant nurse. She’s a sleepless estranged grieving wreck at twenty-four years old, and I haven’t been shy to point that out to people. Her girlfriend is there. We’d had a one-on-one prior to the meeting, solidifying our commitments as protectors of The Daughter.

LT’s best of friends are there: Dog Whisperer and Aqualad’s other mom, the Earth Writer. And the Priest Next Door is there and the Psychologist Next Door. Both of them speak eloquently. There words are a great comfort. And Dog Whisperer speaks passionately from a place of shared experience. She cared for the dying as a young woman too and paid tremendous costs which still she can’t escape.

I am greatly relieved to find that everyone shares my views about LT’s anxieties, fears, control issues and special brand of neediness. Some of my guilt concerning my own dark suspiciousness towards a terminally ill woman is beginning to evaporate.

We have branded ourselves the support group for The Daughter. And if necessary we will help her stand against the Circle at Large: LT’s other friends and extended family – should they take up a call to arms from LT and rally for a 24/7 home-care solution, which our little alliance is dead set against.

The next day there is a meeting between doctors and key parties from the inner and outer circles. Home-care is rejected. Hospice is the destination. And the prognosis has devolved:

“We’re looking at weeks,” says the oncologist, “Not months.”

I still can’t get my head around this; why this transparency is so welcome. Who, reading this, would wish to know, right now, their date of expiry? I can’t imagine you would. So why thrust it upon the terminal, I sometimes wonder. Why not let them wake each day unburdened by ticking time clocks? Yes I know all the practical reasons and I know that in the big picture, how critical such financial matters are not. It surprises me, is all. What are the ill thinking when they ask, how much time? Are they just praying for a nice big number? Is it a regret every time; to get the answer they gambled against?

Now that the time-frame has changed the math becomes interesting for me. If we’re talking weeks, then I could conceivably commit to weekend-only duty for a short while and so not be on-call, and pull 18 hours a day, Monday to Friday for LT, taking the lion’s share of care-giving coverage. Then we just need a couple of sisters and a couple old friends to each spend a weekend with LT. The library room could be converted to a guest room without considerable difficulty. And then five others to commit to a weekday evening each week; while I sleep. And The Daughter doesn’t have to partake at all. She can get on with being daughter.

I take these thoughts to Dog Whisperer. She and Earth Writer and Aqualad have been such a magnificent help and comfort to me this last month, it is astounding their impact on my life, especially of late. Not just their love and their hugs but their kind ears and wisdom have so reduced such otherwise lengthy internal mental processes. They have helped me cut to the hearts of the matters with every issue and spared me so much mental math, letting me find peace so much sooner. I love them to no end. I’d put my life on the line for any of them.

Of course Dog Whisper is more or less horrified at my ponderings and eager to derail my train of thought. The hospice is the better place for many reasons. She is tearful in her rebuttals, as I am tearful in my persistence that I must go through this exercise for my own sake. I have to know that I am not letting someone down in their greatest time of need, out of my own selfishness. I have to know that I have not been rationalizing; if I could make a difference.

I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

- Etienne de Grellet

Friday I visit LT and discover that she can barely manage a short walk with me and her walker. Such a struggle that I wonder was it her last walk; if its wheelchairs from now on. She talks of great plans for us. She wants to finish editing the remaining drafts of her fantasy saga. Only the last two books remain unpublished. And she wants to finish the late addition to the series; a supplemental novel, half-finished. And she wants to finish the murder mystery novel too and she wants my help with these things. And I am on board with that. Yes, I will help! But we try to talk about this for an hour and accomplish nothing. She can never complete a single thought without slipping into a vegetative state. I realize that none of this will happen. She is mentally breaking down from the cancer and the drugs. The reality is: the final books of the series will receive cursory edits from a small committee including myself, and published posthumously.

I fear that even “weeks” is optimistic. I feel like she is slipping daily. I really hope I’m wrong. The blessing is that all my former concerns have evaporated and I am truly at ease with her. There are suddenly no boundary issues. She doesn’t ask for hugs but I give them because I want to. It seems like the drugs or deterioration have left her mentality transparent. Gone are my reservations about control issues. I am comfortable, without having to shield my higher principles (or was it an ego thing all along; fear of being controlled?). She has become more fully lovable. In a sense she may get what she wanted all along, but at so terrible a price.

“Going down,” states the elevator voice with flat eloquence. So we are. I realize as I descend that this will be perhaps my most intimate dealings with death. Five grandparents were sad to lose; truly, but that is what all grandparents must do. Close friends; not so much. Not in my experience so far. I think about Biodad’s departure. That might have been intimate had we not so fully alienated each other well before or had I not fucked up a possible reunion.

The elevator door opens and there through the windows I see the other wing; the old bricks of the original section of hospital, once called Henderson. It was there I entered this world, born of Biodad’s mischief. I suppose I am grateful for that.

Happiness

Happiness is a neat idea. In a society where reputation is everything - even money is just a ledger of reputation if you think about it - and people are conditioned to judge themselves through the eye of the other instead of looking inward, I think a lot of people are playing a game. They believe themselves happy as long as they are succeeding in selling the image that they are happy.

I think a lot of people who kind of know they're not happy are at least content to interpret they're on a path to happiness or are at least fighting to get on that path. Of course the joke's on them if the things this society holds dear turn out to be charades.

I know I feel happy when I put my arms around someone beautiful - whether beautiful (by my appraisal) inwardly or outwardly or both. I know I'm happy with a steak on my plate and red wine in my glass; happier still when they get in my mouth - as long as I manage not to think of the cow, that is, otherwise I feel the guilt I deserve. And that's not bragging. The sinner who knows better is the worst sinner.

But there are things that trump happiness and here it gets hard to explain. Because when I start talking about freedom, harmony, peace and joy - that's where I imagine people stop listening. Because it sounds like religion or it sounds like people selling snake oil or it sounds like I'm deluded. But there are things I know well and I really wish more people would know more of them along with me.

Earth is a paradise and humans are magnificent with the rare (or unique) ability to evolve beyond the natural death-state of the universe. That alone gives us incredible joy which I experience regularly. But that miraculous evolution depends on the power of a healthy consciousness; one not fooled by the instinctive mind, and that is so very hard to find. Because consciousness is a new evolution. It's in its infancy by universal standards. It's power is a baby-power but we don't realize that. Because our conscious self is the only self we know, it feels like everything to us. It is our totality, and this illusion - of our baby consciousness being a master brain - is the chief illusion which stems all others. And all these illusions separate us from the joy of our existence. They hold us prisoner. We don't know ourselves. Our master brain is a stranger to us and we barely know it exists. Our master brain can not trust our baby consciousness by handing over the steering wheel. Our master brain can not trust our baby consciousness to adhere to our all-powerful survival instincts which almost all normal human activity can be easily logically mapped to.

I had to be courageous and patient and strong (qualities not easy for me to access) for a long time in order to decipher the truth of myself and to grow comfortable with it, and the rewards are magnificent. My master brain has witnessed the intentional (far from perfect or complete) evolution of my consciousness and has surrendered some degree of control.  Those things we call sins - the simple manifestations of survival (domination) instinct have been diminished to varying degrees. One of them obviously remains strong unfortunately (gluttony - its no secret) and another remains somewhat relevant though diminished (lust if you must know) and I have little doubt I might defeat them if I were to dedicate enough effort to it but... I'm not ready and may never be. That's a subject for another time.

As killer instincts are diminished, beautiful things happen. Illusions fall apart and reality is much more graspable and this reality - lo and behold - is the paradise. And it's so transparent how some religions refer to it and it really is a lovely joke how these religions over the centuries have misguidedly strayed from whatever beautiful poetic enlightenment either inspired them or was manipulated by them to their ends (the former I hope) and painted this paradise of reality as some place in the clouds you go to after you die. It is such a sad insanity really. To think you must die to find paradise when in fact  it is a mental journey you must take, one which in fact feels like a rebirth. The memory of my former self is growing more alien to me all the time.

When illusions fall the societal ills that are born of illusions fall with them:

depression
lonesomeness
embarrassment
jealousy
anger
guilt
anxiety
sadness
insult
suspicion (not skepticism)
betrayal
impatience...

I know there are many more on the list though they don't come immediately to mind - probably because I haven't experienced them, at all or but in small measure, for a long time now.

The result is freedom in many forms: freedom from so many ills and from circumstances dictating one's feelings. The result is joy. The result is clarity and strength of mind and desire for (and easy access to) integrity, honesty and generosity. The result is death to the eye of the other; falling out of the reputation game and being motivated only by your own courageous examination of yourself.

The result for me is lovingness; loving motivation instead of selfish motivation. The hitch is - will lovingness be the result for anyone who follows a similar path? That I can't be sure of just now. I don't even have a theory currently - how to figure that out. It isn't really on my to-do list.

There was a time in my life - years - where I suffered so much of these usual societal ills, which people sadly pass off as the normal (okay), unavoidable (wrong) side-effects of living, that I would routinely feel unease; a mild foreboding during solitary moments - usually when driving, and sometimes this unease would come over me in a vague way and I would have to poke around in my head for a moment to remember what thing or things were going on to feel bad about. And sometimes there was nothing bad going on and I would realize that I was only feeling vaguely bad out of habit: sad but a relief.

In more recent times I would find myself driving and forgetting why I felt so happy; an anticipation, and searching my brain, I would realize that there was nothing special going on to be delighted about; that it was just my habit to feel good. A very happy realization each occasion and not a disappointment!

These days I'm much accustomed to feeling good. It never surprises me anymore. I do still feel a full range of emotions but many of them are confined to moments of empathy. I will feel your sadness or your anger or your anxiety because my empathy touches you at your state of perception; not my own.

And I know that there are opportunities for me to feel better still. If I could rectify my self-inflicted health issues, sleep issues, energy level issues and thus productivity issues, I could accomplish more usefulness.

And maybe even evolve a little more: knock those remaining "sins" down a little.

A good use of time

Jazz Lion visited Saturday night. We had Shawarma and Flying Monkeys and hung out in my room from six in the evening until four in the morning.

We looked at his menu of personal services: drum circles, vision quests, instrument therapy, vibroacoustic healing, brainwave entrainment, music production, live music, and lessons in music theory, performance, production and composition - to name just a few. I will do some 'marketing' writing for him in exchange for services.

He put together a binaural beats brainwave entrainment track for me to regularly absorb; subsonic pulse patterns to relegate my brainwaves for optimal blood pressure recovery. Sounds like voodoo but Harvard and M.I.T. are among those behind the research.

We talked about his getting roughed up and injured to the point of income loss (permanent, I wonder?) by the police and healthcare goons for his being polite but not quick enough to cooperate with psyche ward internment process for the authorities' liking, after they received a tip that he may be suicidal (he's not) because he texted his just-come-ex girlfriend "Whatever - see you in heaven." Apparently if you think someone is suicidal, you can best help them by beating them up so that they can't perform their livelihood. That's how they feel the love, apparently.

Watch out for the long arm of the law, folks. There's a fist at the end.

We talked about the Liberal Theologian's cancer. We talked about directional love versus all-emanating lovingness, and generous love versus selfish love. We talked about the illusory nature of anger and other emotions. We talked about truth and its non-applicability in our society. We talked about dreams, India, fatherhood, latent paternal instinct, the anatomy of relationships and the validity of different approaches to relationships. We talked about his music and mine and Neo's music and Senegal Astroturf's music. We talked about general phenomena of vibration and its effects on us. We talked about the psychedelic experience; especially DMT which he recommends for me personally. I'm hesitant, not being a smoker.

We talked about heartbreak, discipline, repetition, the cosmic perspective, alchemy and the desire to vanish from this society; something we're both acquainted with. We talked about much and ten hours dried up in a hurry.

When I had found out that Liberal Theologian was finally coming out of the hospital on Friday I offered to cancel Jazz's visit but she wouldn't have it. It's very unfortunate that she felt, last-minute, that she could not take part in the visit. Jazz, as I have told him, is a very important spirit in this world, and a very important voice in this world. I have no wish to keep him to myself.

As for L.T.: I'd like nothing more than to see her living life to the fullest; making the most of each day. Saturday night there was a marvelous opportunity for her that did not happen.

*Flying Monkeys is beer.

Oneness

From time to time I read about the concept of oneness - most prominently in novel Siddhartha and in the Gita. I don't connect to the idea, either because I'm not clear what they mean about oneness or else it's something I just haven't thus far experienced.

It always comes up in a context where everything surrounding it rings familiar to me but just what are they trying to say about oneness?

I know what it's like to contemplate (and be moved to peacefulness by) connectedness; how every single element and action in the history of the world is inevitably and unarguably connected through the omnipotence and omnipresence of causality - something every human reliably witnesses - what? - a million times a day? Why this is pristinely obvious to some people while other brains apparently lack the functionality for this to register is a matter of some dismay. But I digress.

I know what it's like to feel bonded to every sentient creature on the planet by a state of lovingness (a legitimate word, yes); a state of love that is so overwhelming one must pull onto the shoulder of the road to recover because it is so powerful. It seizes like I imagine a heart attack would and it incapacitates. I imagine that the experience becomes more tolerable with practice.

I know what it's like to fully discover the horror of one's own duplicity; that there really is a devil lurking within us, but finally then to discover that no, we are really the angel lurking within the devil, waiting to fulfil the tide of human evolution which proposes a full and proper mutiny; a unity of consciousness and non-consciousness; of angel and devil; where we, currently the conscious angels, finally inherit the drivers' seat.

And I know what it is to feel drowned in in the eternal, to sense that the dust that is mistaken for "me" has been so for others before me and will be again for others still, when the illusion of me is gone.

Causal connectedness. Global lovingness. Unity of mind. The eternal. Do I know oneness? Or is there something else?


"You'll be in me and I'll be in you together in eternity. Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me."
- Bruce Cockburn