2001-10-02

This evening I had a profound realization on the way to the Laura Love concert. Jeff and I walked together, having just smoked and said good bye to Laura. So I was stoned. Could it have been just the pot or was it something more cosmic? It reminded me of the yin and yang experience, in that the realization struck me so deeply, and I was completely unable to speak of it with him. I only made a passing reference or two to it, as it happened, I spoke of it after laughing and throwing up my hands and exclaiming loudly and moaning with the movement in my mind.

To explain. I loitered outside the house for a while, waiting for Jeff and Laura to emerge from the house. While standing, walking ever so slowly, I observed the streets, trees and sidewalks around me. I grew very still and in my quieted mind, I saw beauty everywhere. I continued to walk very slowly, wanting to walk ever more slowly. Then suddenly, a small passing word or phrase wandered into my head without me thinking about it. It just appeared, and I swear it sounded like someone whispered it into my ear or like I overheard it or something. Suddenly, I seized upon that short phrase, which now is irrelevant as to what words they were, and I thought about the word, repeating it over and over in my mind. I pondered it, wondered about it, said it. Suddenly, I realized that that short phrase was the kind of thinking you are simply supposed to allow come in and go out without stopping to notice it during proper meditation. Instead of coming upon the passing word, you should hear it and note it and then go on listening, continually quieting the mind further. The reason why I was able to hear what I heard is that I quieted my mind long enough to see beauty. Shortly after my realization, however, my gait quickened and I walked with vigor along the sidewalks, wholly unable to speak of my revelation, saying to Jeff only that I was "contemplating contemplating."

I know what love feels like. It's a vast ocean of beauty that boils in your heart until you feel your heart is leaping out of your chest. I felt that in mornings and in evenings spent with him. I cup my hand over my heart and draw it away from my chest repeatedly. This is what it feels like to have him near me, in me. It feels like spiders bouncing around the impossible web of my fears. (They say spiderwebs are as tough as steel, as strong as intention.)

I think the reason why love fills me with fear is because I simply do not believe it is permanent. I assume that it will fall apart in the dismal hijacked airplane crash that is despair. And I do not want to go there. It is so much easier to walk away from love than to feel it. But as the ocean is, it is vast and fills you with much wonder and you sit there on the beach of your soul and your mouth hangs open in a wide gape as you try to grasp the impossibility of this immense hole in your heart that you call love. It's something you must enjoy for its own beauty. If you are afraid of it, will you not miss the beauty entirely? Fear is reason beauty and love exist, for in fear, love finds its birthplace and its enemy. Everything begins with these two states of being.

This is perhaps why the World Trade Center crashes could be hailed as a monumental step in the evolution of America, because it is making everyone in this present time take a step back and look at themselves and their society. It's forcing us all to look deeply into the nature of the present now, love and fear and anger and beauty, into politics and human lives. This is a war of the mind and spirit, not of body counts. So many people have had their eyes closed for so long, it hurts to have them opened again. It is with this in mind that I celebrate the passing of those martyred business-people clad in designer clothes as they burned, plummeted, and screamed to their deaths. For their deaths have brought us a new joy: the joy of being together and loving each other and educating each other. What this should teach us as a whole is that our country's agenda has been wrong for too long and that it's time for the society to rearrange itself so that money and war are not its two primary goals as a civilization. Instead, by focusing on education and compassion and human potential, we will really turn this bitter lemon into lemonade and learn, as a societal whole, that we re-educate not retaliate.

I've come to a grand realization recently involving light and energy. I wonder if anyone else has thought of it. This is: if our pure, spiritual essence is of light, then that means we are able to travel at light speed. Then: our civilization's explorers will be moving at the breakneck speed of light, the latest breakthoughs will be made only in the subjective, in the void of essence, in the boundless boundaries of no-time-space. We can visit Vega and Alpha Centauri only through our imagination and our soul. These bodies will weigh us down, make us immobile. Finding light will grant us the freedom we need to go anywhere, be anything, and know everything. But it requires the loosening of fear, the embracing of love. And we all know how difficult that can be. Perhaps even I know it too well. For there are times with Anthony that he is eating my mouth, my ears, my neck and I turn from him into the calm collective of my self. I turn away from him. I must not do this any more. I must embrace him with all the love I have. I must give him all my passion, and not simply during sex. I must give myself wholly, purely, honestly and with the fullest passion my body can muster. Only then will I be giving everything to him, and only then will I learn how to surrender to love rather than turn away from it in fear.

I will not fear love.

Love is God is Ocean is Everything is Nothing is Being is Non-being is Precipice is Solid Ground is Knowing is Foolishness is God is Love. The lesson learned is: be. Be now. Be here. Be not not. Be not fear. There should be no shoulds. There could be no coulds. There would be no woulds if it were not for fear.

I must tread mindfully and be present, observing everything. Only in the present will I feel love and fear it not. In the present there is no time for fear or anger, there is only time for being in the now.

I remember - there was something I was pondering earlier this morning, after surfing the web and reading an Edward Said essay on the terrorist attacks. (Thanks to helena.) I was thinking about how it must be to be a palestinian living in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and how they are confronted with terrorist attacks like 9.11.01 on a regular basis - like in the last year there have been people killed, massacres, almost once a week. They're almost routine. Same can be said for the Israelis. I try to imagine what it must be like to have that happen regular enough where every one of them is just more fuel for the fire. If we think our anger is deserved, how much more must their fury be deep, if we think we have lost our safety, how must it feel to live somewhere where there can be no safety, no bouyant economy to spend, spend, spend - we should be grateful for the economy we do have and not complain in the newspapers and go over and over and over about how the tourist industry in Hawaii is reeling and how the airlines are going to go under and how amtrak needs help from the federal government so they don't go bankrupt. Look at other countries - they have not had the chance to ....... We're hurt because we're spoiled. This is not right. Human beings aren't supposed to live like this. When have human beings ever been this globally dependant on an economy and market shares? What's more - we're so dominant that we've almost wiped out the existence of other societies with non-economy based systems. I wonder what it will be like to be an artist in a bad economy. I figure that artists are supposed to starve and die young and leave behind their accomplishments. They've attained enlightenment early. They can go home now. (I'm thinking of Jimi Hendrix as I write this.) But now I don't want to think about poor Charlie Parker and the skeletons in his closet. The closet needs to come swinging open. Why are we so afraid of the clothes we wear? Our personality is clad in the garments of our history and memory. But memory is a re-memory and it's something that's lived twice, once in the present and continually thereafter in the cineplex of your head. And memory is the way you see it not the way it ocurred. But this is known - this is common - this is joe's wisdom.

Today must be a mystical day. But it sure hasn't felt like it. Much of today was mundanity. As I was telling Jeff, most of my day was spent on the way to or in between something or on the way out. There was a moment, however, when something was learned, and then later on in the evening, there was some minor revelation as a result of seeing this video Jeff showed me. I was so sick (my nose being stuffed up, my throat hurting, spitting up mucous, feeling groggy) and tired (literally tired - I slept in until 10 and had a hard time moving around today.) I decided it would be too much energy to talk or think so I suggested we watch a video or a movie. We smoked a joint and watched an educational video about changes in thinking over time after breakthroughs ocurred. It ocurred to me that most of the amazing leaps in human evolution ocurred when some individual made an abstract leap, which meant they were probably somewhere inside their head, thinking about something - this thinking being a result of the imagination - and then boom! They're inspired and a revelation or an epiphany has come to home - they've had a revelation and they need to share it. It sends shockwaves through town, the nation, history, whatever. One of these abstract leaps was given to Europeans by the Arabs when the Christians destroyed Moorish Spain - the zero, as well as things about astronomy, physics and geometry. The Moors also had seasonal clothes, a market, dessert after dinner and music. They had a culture far advanced from the barbarians in Germany and England. Revelations from translated Arabic texts sent shockwaves through intellectual centers in Paris and Bologna, and the rational mind as we know it took its form in Europe. I really think it would be fascinating to study, research and write about this ancient Moorish society, as well as to travel through and around the Middle East, learn Arabic and be a person who knows a lot about Middle Eastern society. I would like to write a novel about the zero and create a main character based on me, and a best friend based on jeff. I feel inspired and excited about that kind of research. My time wouldn't be wasted. I could become an academic! (Unless the economic system collapsed over night and we were immediately plunged into the dark ages. In that case, I would probably live in a monastary - which sounds so good anyway since I wouldn't be contributing to the commodification of everything - especially ingenuity and creativity. But it seems like that's what we're really known for doing - commodifying everything, especially ingenuity. (I wish I could live without that blood on my hands.)) Nothing's ever going to change, is it? We can't really flee our society and political structure.

I'm going to Africa tomorrow.

So what if we live in a society with all the pleasures of the world - and with more art and information and security than we know what to do with. We probably have more musicians, painters, photographers, poets, writers, intellectuals, philosphists, theologians, mystics, freaks, physicists, astronomers, etc, than we need. There is so much art and things to consume, it's overwhelming. But what's more astonishing is that most of it is bunk. Most of it is derivative. A truly unique thought or a truly landmark contribution is significant. To be that creative and that pioneering is something to be - and that is something towards which all artists must aspire to. But they must follow their intuition and the spirits around them. I would hope that not everything I do is derivative. But as Jeff said of Da Vinci: I was able to see farther than others because I stood on the shoulders of so many others. Some people see very far into the nature of reality. To be there is to be accomplished.

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