Fun

While watching an infomercial for some home gym apparatus, I found myself flabbergasted by one particular hosanna offered as testimony by an attractive woman, and I quote, "I'm wearing clothes I haven't worn in over twenty years". Needless to say, I quickly searched my own wardrobe for items that old, and outside of a few pairs of underwear, I couldn't find any (thank god that boxer shorts haven't gone out of style). This led me to realize that women actually keep clothes for over twenty years, and I found myself, once again delighted by the things I do not know.

For instance, I learned the other day that it is possible, if you have gobs of money, to buy eternal life, at least it will be within the next 15-20 years. Yes, my friends, through the wonders of genetic splicing, you will be able to live forever, thereby greatly increasing your odds of having an erection that lasts for over four hours. Of course, this also means that you should have roughly three million dollars in your IRA to cover the cost of an eternal prescription for Viagra, providing you can find a woman who wants to sleep with a really old man (thank you, baby). Of course, this is what has prompted Ray Kurzweil, who hopes to last another 15 years and far exceed the lifespans of his father and grandfather, to adopt a life of green tea (8 cups a day), vitamin supplements and alkaline water, not to mention a vigorous exercise regimen. Yes. folks, the man dubbed the "Thomas Edison of the modern era" can espouse his market-driven, technological prognostications till the end of time. Unfortunately, he is missing the point.

Gobs of money can buy you lots of other things too. You can genetically engineer the offspring you desire; you can even add a few 'superpowers' if you want. And while I don't necessarily see the benefits of tasting music, or withstanding freezing cold water hour upon hour, there are some 'rabbit' traits I would consider. Dr. Sum Ting Chan is currently engineering super mice, and while I'm all for smarter mice, I also fall firmly on the side of smarter cats. But, it is his vision of a possible future that is disconcerting. He contends that it is possible that the human species could split, no longer stratified in economic terms, but rather biologically differentiated; 'super' humans and some lower subspecies. Will both be subject to military conscription? That's a question for smarter ethicists than me.

And of course, within forty years, computers will be smarter than we are. The paradigm shifts that will emerge in the next half a century are mind boggling, and it is apparent, even to a subhuman like myself, that we are not ready. I have my own vision...of a world where everyone lives forever, disease is eradicated, and 'natural' evolution leaves us with no one to pick up the garbage. Fill in your own blanks, dear reader.

Now, I'm no Arthur C. Clarke (then again, neither is he), but let's not forget where he died. For all his vision, he spent his end of days seeking a better way of life in India. And I presume, fairly or unfairly, that he came to realize that here is better than there. And that is indeed the crux of the matter. We spend our lives, individually and as a species, scarred by our past, desperately believing that we have to get 'there'; that if we can work our way past 'what was', we can arrive at a much better 'will be'. Happy, like love, just is. We cannot create it 'there'. 'Better' is right here, right now; ever facing the invisible, oncoming bus. Our vision of future is at best fallacious, and at worst, the greatest, egoic lie; the ego that 'was' projecting the ego that 'will be'.

There is wonder in the future, but magic exists only in this instant. And why does magic delight us so? The answer is quite simple. Because we don't comprehend it. Right alongside magic is where fun resides, standing next to her eternal partner, happy. So, I am going to revel in everything I don't know, or rather don't know 'there'. Because what I know 'here' is why my life is still full of magic and fun.

And so, Ray, I will "go gently into that good, good night", whenever that arrives, because 'here', I don't seem to need more, not even fifteen years of maybe.

Faith

Here. She and I sit here and wonder pacific. It was not a hard climb, easier than the first, yet still filled with trepidation. I am afraid of my fall from grace. She stands here like a terran clitoris, rigid with heat long lost, a black memory of her once volcanic orgasm; unresponsive to the massage of scrambling hand and foot. Only the swirl of spray and foam offer a sign of dormant glow. It is the first time in four days that we left the house; left the comfort of blanket and scarf, belt and tie; left the trust of blindfold and candle and ice; left the delight of filled, vacant crave. Holy secrets have been revealed and shared, dancing within us, without us, whirled to ecstatic frenzy in the rhythm of hinted music and noisy smiles. There is quiet here, the quiet of goddess whispers interspersed with violent prayer and purge. The sun, nearly fallen, warms her soft curve, out beyond the edge where storms conspire; where pink, cloudy light fades to dark, favorite, twilight violet blue. It is here that god finds me, reveals to eyes closed wide.

(She is as real as real can be...allowing me...wrapping me...in all that I am...in all that I can be...in all that I want to be.....climbing volcanic spires oceanside...dancing free on the beach to music she hears in everything...in a light that outshines everything...she binds me...she frees me...she loves me, LOVES me, LOVES ME...in grander ways than I ever imagined....

I am expanding....exploding...overflowing...dissolving. I am full of grace...full of faith...filled with god...I am god)

Here. The sun sits just above the horizon, yet it still warms the wind, the rain, the sea, the earth. Her light flows out, outracing time and space, and touches all of it. Her light flows out, in directions unfathomed. It is there for all to feel. Her music flows out. We can all hear it, carried on wind and tide. She dances open, feet and arms and hair and smile flailing to her primal beat, to the symphony that she recieves in the swirl. And I, not quite as receptive, hear the same music. Sharps and flats, augmenting and suspending, flying past G-clefs on ethereal staffs, funneled through her totality to my yearning ears. And again, her light, fading to the dark of blue, reflects back to me on the lunar ascent. Her light, ablaze and darkened, cascades through long locked treasure chests, rusted locks springing open, rubies and emeralds and doubloons floating on the neap and ebb, filling my deepest pockets. As we slide down moistened crag and crevice, bruised and cut by the rough of it, joyed and pained in the salted sand and air, I lead her through the dunes, lead her on the path home, lit within.

(She is as real as real can be...and her light...her music...dancing me to skinless. She is purely here...just as the sky..the earth...the sea...the sun and moon...the spirits are here....clearly visible...visibly clear...if you just close your eyes. She is so close...close enough to see...to smell...to taste...to touch. Reach out...reach in...and she will let you find her.

And I...I am god...as god is your witness)

Here. I stand and watch as tidal surge meets ancient rock, sea crashes and towers into sprays of foam riding unseen thermals to heaven. And she calls me to come chase the fresh water rills dancing to salt through the sandy fronds and terrestrial capillaries; like the to and from of earthen heart bringing red and blue to the brackish womb, filled with kelp torn free and anchored starfish; everything where it belongs. And I stop, and know, that as sure as the earth spins, and circles the sun...as the sun circles the milky center, as the center caroms toward Andromeda at speeds driven in mystery....I know that this spot...this time...this moment...this love...is grander than I, yet not as grand yet...and that ever, existing in this instant, is never long enough, never too long...just perfectly and fleetingly caressed. And as I turn to find her, i see her dancing, eyes closed, ecstatically elated..her smile casting moonbeams and pixie dust to everything...her light washing it all...bigger than ocean and sky. There can be no other way. There can be no other shore. She is my ocean...filling you and me with the light and music of right now, right here...watching the dog star rise, zooming to the Pleiades.

(She is as real as real can be....she is the siren...the sybil...drawing me in...singing to me...kissing my sleeping eyelids to see. And I...I reveal the god that I have always been...the god she has seen...the god that she has tumbled from Olympus...and set on this shore.

I release her...as she sets me free...and we wait, in the warmth of the setting sun, in the reflection of the rising moon, for you to join us...The three wait...she...I....the unity...for you to accept the invitation.)

The Buddhist Nun Trilogy

Fucking the Buddhist Nun

I wandered in here, at her invitation, into this place with no walls, no floor, no ceiling or sky. The buddhist nun, she invited me, although at the time before coming here, I did not know who she was. I had dreamed of here, painting it in my heart a thousand colors, sculpting it in the stone of my mind, tasting it, like sugar dissolving in my gut, but, in all honesty, I was never sure I could find my way here, never walked down that road, or any of the detours.

I must have left my luggage at the door, although I don't recall packing for the trip, and whatever clothes I was wearing when I got here, wore away in what seemed an instant. I am different here. I am stronger, fierce sometimes; the armor of my doubts and fears has melted away; the chain mail I wrought so exquisitely in the course of my life fell away like Puff's scales. I am naked, but I am intrepid.

I lay down, she invites me down. She coos and chants, dances and swirls. She strokes my hair, runs her fingers through it. She is not at all as I imagined at first, not at all the enlightened supplicant. She coos and chants me soft. Then she dances, and pecks at my flesh, like a meth-addicted mourning dove. She ignites me in her passion, she sleeps me in her calm. She tenderizes me with a gentle maul, tills me with unpainted nails, dips me in flour and egg, crumbs me in rye and romano, and sautes me over high heat, in butter and basil, yet I emerge raw. I am just me again. Not the me you know, ............... just me,...... playing and dancing in all my glory.

And then, of all things, I take her. Take her as my own. Take her as my guru, take her as my whore. Tear off her robes, and demand her gifts. And then, she laughs and giggles and smiles, she moans and quivers, and surrenders to me; admits and surrenders to needing me, to desiring me, to lusting for me, to loving me. Her spirit needs me to be all that, and I need her. And we embrace our needs, of the spirit and the flesh. The need is clean, it is original. Here, sinner and saint are the same, just as right and wrong are the same, happy and sad, love and hate and on and off and on and on and on and on. It's all the same in the energetic swirl, just as it started.

And the most amazing thing happened. I looked inside and found that my brain and heart and gut had just melted together in the fire. All functioning properly, offering their parts of the gift, but merged into some sort of giant organ thing, all sharing and creating and being the joy of it all. The fuck is constant, the joy is constant. The fucking joy is constant.

I am drowning with the buddhist nun in holy buddhist water, in my deepest waters and in hers. The swirl of the maelstrom is pulling us down, open to the deep, and I am going to float and dance and swirl and fuck all the way there.

Dripping Wet

I lie, naked and cold on the bathroom floor, as you emerge from the hot shower of loneliness. The steam of this room tickles my skin, goosebumps me, beckons my sweat from within. You drop your orange towel to the floor. Hotter places await your absorption. I rise to greet you. As your face finds the void between shoulder and heart, my fingers entwine in your hair, and invite your waters to drip over all of me. A trickle wraps our joined nipples, a rivulet lakes atop my cock, birthing a new river. Rain dances on my toes as the thunderhead grows, darker and mightier. Flash floods tear down your back finding my fingers dancing in the sacral temple. Your tears tease my tongue as they flow among us, between us, coursing to the salty source. Our waters mingle and merge as sweat droplets, born of my heart, pool and release at the open, breastbone door.

Lay me down, my sweet buddhist nun. Lay me down on the cold bottom. Let the hot and cold melt my ice; calve my icebergs; sever the fractal, crystalline tendrils that bind their release: free them. Watch as the thunderhead rolls o'er the fronds of desire and releases its deluge. Offer your mouth to catch its waters, and dissolve the salt I bring and offer to you. Watch as my leaves turn skyward to absorb you, dancing on the breezes of lust. Feel the unevenness of the winds, surging and ebbing as we moisten in the swirl.

Let your mouth rhumba in the suck, let cunt and tongue tango, let the arch and squirm hip-hop in the ecstasy. Let our waters merge and torrent behind the crumbling dam. Let our waters cascade and erode as they flow down to the abyss, upward to the ether, carrying our heart, and our hearts to the yearning desert. Let waves crash and typhoons rage as our brackish waters reach the welcoming ocean.

We are always here, my love, fucking, joined and unjoined, together and solitary. All the rest will jump in and bathe in our waters. We are always dripping wet.

Last Chants of Buddha

Fuck you hard, love you tender.

Fuck me tender, tend me hard.

The last responsive chant in the temple echoes between us, drumstick mallet pounding tom tom lotus, as we transform, responsively. She, dervishing radiance. I, tempering steel. We dance through the gates, gongs and didgeridoos commanding tempo and tone, her hand following my caress, my hand, firmly at the plunge, taking her to cha cha cha. Behind us, the temple mists and dissipates in our morphing wake, as salty pillars begin to tower in not looking back. We one, two, one, two, three in wanton unison, as then and now become the same. The whitecaps on the dead ahead sea beckon us to their dance floor.

She is the white squall, cycloning toward all of you in the dead calm. I am the ocean dancer, waterspouting with wind and wave, conquering and owning their power in my vacuum eye.

She appears in a moment, destroys in an instant...disappears. I am present at her emergence, the chanting birth, as I too emerge. She is as destined to appear to me as breath. I stand in awe of her raw and immense power, and then, in the same instant, I listen to my heart's delighted giggle. As she rises, she gathers and carries everything in her rogue wave; the beat and downbeat, the roll and roil, the resurrecting gasp and the final drown. All is the same in her rough and tumble. She bears the seeds of everything in her tumult- complements, dissonants, opposites undifferentiated-the slithering and the eel, the quarter note and the augmented fourth, the desired and the needed, the collide and the distant miss, the spark and the extinguish. She craves it all, as she dances and nourishes on roars drawn up from the deep. She craves it all-not just sea, but sky and moon-but crests too low or too high, the surge too frenetic or too fluid. Other times she collapses in the foam of detritus and lonely, repulsed by sandbar or shore, music silent and dischordant.

She resists me, as I leap and dart; tries to bowl me over with sheer force, or swallow me in the crashing fold, as I surf the crest of her tsunami. I push her down and smooth her in the downflow of sheering wind; I launch her skyward, pull her up in the suck of vacuum, or soar her up in the thermal vortex. Her shape and mood are mine to choose, as I lightly fandango along her cheek and neck, delicately draw the funnel cloud tip to her misting spray of tears, or take her into the dead calm of surrender.

I am the ocean dancer, the sashay forward to her backward bend, the fulcrum of her twirl, the hard tending floor for her dance.

Elementals, Shooting for the Moon

I have found a place. Actually, it may have found me, but it is inviting me to dwell in it; inviting me to dwell here. It is different than you think. It has no walls, no floor, no sky, no ground. It is a place that is just here. And I am just here. She just is, here when she can be, yet always here. I have dreamed of this place often, but could never really find it. No directions will lead you here. No vehicle will bear you. It's like the place where elephants go to die. You know it's there, but you can't go there until the time is right. It is not a place you live in, like a house or a yurt, but it is a place you want to be. In fact, be is all you can do here. I am here.

While I am here, she is asking me to stay, and to go back there at the same time. Going back there is the hard part, because it feels so right here. But I am free here, so going back doesn't feel like a job; it feels more like homework you want to do, like building Nemo's submarine from papier mache. So I go back there, trying to find my first choice, chocolate or vanilla; or rather trying to find that 'back there' when it mattered which I chose, when it really mattered--before I drizzled my chocolate on my orange sherbet--before I mixed all the choices up. Back there, I made the choice. Me, the original me, before the me I became. And it really did matter back there, because if I hadn't made that original choice for the original reasons, I would never have found the here to go back there from.

You can't stay here, or rather, there's no reason to stay here, if you haven't gone back there. Because until you know why it mattered back there, and who it was that it mattered to, there's really no way to know what matters here, or, at least, become the person who knows what matters here. That original choice is the launching pad of your life, before it got carbon-ed and crispified in the exhaust gasses of your life.

So, I went back there, and then, I came back here, and she asked me why I wanted to stay here. She insisted on reminding me that she could not always be here, that we could not always be here; I could always be here, or try, but here only lasts a moment, and the forever of a moment is fleeting. Sometimes, when you're really here, you can come back here the next moment, and the moment after that. Most times, you have to find here again, but it can be hard to step in the same river twice. You can never be in the same here twice, but, as she listed some of them, I knew that there are an infinite number of heres to live in.

So, I sat in that question awhile, and found my answer.

In here is where love swirls. Only in here does love swirl, does love tumble, does love dance. In fact, here is the only place love exists; at least the kind I want, the original kind. Whether or not I can be here all the time, or whether or not we can be here all the time, or at all, here is where I want to be, swirling and tumbling and dancing.

Elementals, Branch of my River

I am obsessing today, but mostly I am flowing. While, as of yet, I am not a lotus position person, I have been 'meditating' on a particular phrase, and since this phrase relates to my yesterday and my tomorrow, I'm going to share it, and then, ramble on about it.

You can't step in the same river twice

We all, myself included, like to delude ourselves into thinking that we are masters of our own destiny. Nothing is further from the truth. The very nature of the universe, not to mention the infinity of it, precludes us from having much of an effect. It's that tiny speck of sand in a vast ocean thing. Since I accept the premise that we are all connected, receptive in varying degrees to the universal swirl of energy and possibility, it follows for me that all we can really master is ourselves. If you don't accept either of these statements, there's no point in reading on.

What we do, to a certain extent, have control of is what we do with the containers we are given and their accompanying primal instincts. We can choose when to eat, when to work, when to fuck, when to shower, when to kill and when to heal, but the fallacy of caring for the container is that we will never find happiness, or even satisfaction, by caring for it. It is strictly a mechanism for surviving, but not thriving. I'm all for the pleasures of the physical world, but they don't take us where we (or, at least I) want to go. How can they? These giant fuel and waste containers we call bodies, are simply the vehicles provided for carrying around all the shit we acquire in the course of a lifetime. So we fill them up with traumas and tragedies, fears and expectations, hopes and dreams, and carry, and deal with all that baggage as if it still existed. It does not. It is all in the past, and the past is gone, just a moment ago. All it gets us is war, the rape of our planet, divorce, sadness and rage- a whole world of unhappy. You can put makeup on a trashcan, but it's still a trashcan.

What we are given, in the original uncondition, is the 'river', that turbulent and chaotic stream of mostly disconnected moments, minuscule specks of space time that we are aware of, but do not embrace. Our lives flow in this slipstream, sometimes connecting, sometimes cascading, sometimes evaporating, but the stream is dynamic, and no matter how much we want to, we can't hold it, or stop it, or own it. It just keeps changing, elusive as pure black.

So, that's all we get you ask? The chaotic slipstream of happenstance and potentials, everchanging and unpredictable with no promise of permanent or forever. Yup, that's it! That's what the universe offers us once we emerge, but we are gifted with one other thing in the original uncondition, the blank slate of the clean spirit, where love shines its own light, unfiltered and pure. Every rule, every expectation, every condition, every fear entangles and dims that light. Unless you explode that container, empty it, you will never live as you're supposed to, never find happiness or satisfaction. It is only when the box is empty, when the spirit re-emerges clean, when love is unconditional, that we are fully able to embrace each fleeting moment of our lives, to live.

Is it possible? I don't know. But I do know it's the only dream worth having, the only thing worth striving for. I have been gifted, in my recent life, with glimpses of all my moments, flashes of light, many which strung together in a shared flow, and bore me, for a time, on my original river. Eventually, the container refilled, closed the sluice, and my spirit drowned, lost consciousness, but did not die. I don't know how yet to reconcile the spirit with the life, but I am going to find my answers, and live. I want every moment, embraced by my spirit, open in light. After all, 'I' might not be here in the next.................

Elementals, Part?D

I remember, when I was a boy, eating sixteen cheeseburgers at a family barbecue; I remember shooting at passing cars with my BB gun, jumping off the garage roof, hitting my only Little League home run. I remember trampolines on the beach, inflatable whales, and a cardboard spaceship, a small pink teddy bear before the cremation, my father's bicycle and stealing comic books at the Washington Park Pharmacy.


I also remember the softness of Gramps' eyes, and Nanny's sniffs, in lieu of kisses, for fear she would suck the life out of me. I remember playing under my grandparents' dining room table, trips to the G&G deli, and walks to the carousel at Franklin Park. I remember so much more.


Memories from my childhood are clean and open because I hadn't yet learned to pollute and tarnish them with the learned conditions of my life. They cannot rust in the absence of judgement. I can never see them in any light but the light in a young boy's eyes.


These memories are still vivid today, some fifty years later, because I hold on to them; hold them to remind me that my spirit was free then, unconditioned, and it jettisoned me on the natural path of play and wonder, magic and awe. Not quite. The memories are vivid because my spirit holds onto them; my spirit holds on, despite its current residence in this dark, ironclad ship that I call my life. I should have walked the plank of this ship long ago, and set myself free, floating on my endless sea.


Oddly enough, I don't remember the first time I was afraid.

Fear is the single greatest disease of humankind; a disease so covert that even House can't fix it, metastasized to the dying spirit, it slowly kills. It is ironic, given the transitory limits of the body, that we allow ourselves to be crippled out of the moment; that I allow myself to be frozen scared. Would I rather die scared or happy? That choice might present itself any time.

Play is the antidote to fear. Is there any greater joy than playing in love? I don't mean pretending, I MEAN playing--playing, laughing, smiling, imagining, creating, touching, giving--and letting your spirit run free. And I don't mean 'love', as in wife, girlfriend, significant other. I mean LOVE, the kind you were born with, the kind before you conditioned it, the kind before you made it into something else, the kind before you 'knew' what it is.

I was born with a playful spirit, and, to my detriment, my greatest fear is losing it. The greatest irony of all is that fearing loss will create loss. It will manifest the opposite. Endless pattern.

Fear is the mechanism that is supposed to warn us, to keep us safe. Fear of god, fear of failure, fear of looking foolish, fear of losing, more fears than you can shake a stick at. But the truth is, beyond the illusions, is that there is no safety, and no matter how much we yearn for it, it doesn't exist. It does not exist in life and, like the 47 virgins, it does not exist in paradise. Give up our need for safety, and we give up our fear, and the spirit can become again.

Come dance with me on the thin ice. Let's play!

Elementals, Part?C

In light of recent (at least, universally speaking) revelations, that we, as humans, share close genetic code with the common sea slug, and that spirit and purpose are culled individually from an infinite swirl of chaotic, inter-universal energy, it has become clear to this writer that we, individually, and as a species, have taken the wrong fork in the road of evolution. I will endeavor to explore how we might correct this, and how I personally have made an enormous mess of it all.

It all began in a dream for me, although I'm not certain that I was actually asleep, so it might be more correctly called a revelation. It will be difficult to describe, but I will do my best with the modicum of prosaic talent I possess. In the dream, I was simply immersed in the chaotic swirl, undirected, dropped in without instruction. Tentacles of unknown colors kissed my heart, licking me with the gentleness of a flame, or the light tickle of a snowflake, gently excising layer upon layer of learned conditions from my tattered spirit. I was filled with an elemental joy, like a baby seeing his mother for the first time. I was unconstrained, in a corporeal sense, and able to intuit all the joy and sadness and possibility of the whole and the one, without benefit of the five human senses, although they were present. For the first time in my 'conscious' life, I was empty and full at the same time, at peace with my existence. But please, dear reader, don't assume that I was isolated or detached in any way. No, I was connected through the whole continuum of 'original uncondition'.

Waking, re-entering the 'alive' state, came as a shock, like a slap in the face from an angry nun; pulled unwillingly from a state of reverie, forced to face the mistakes of my life, required to take my 'first' steps, trying for the first time to live in that energy and let my spirit manifest.

What does it all mean? I can only speak for myself, but part of the answer lies in the very dichotomy of life with which I had been struggling--Is life about what you accomplish, or what you become? The answer, of course, is neither one, although it is closer to the second, but can be found through the first. For instance, take the death of a child. If the answer to either of these questions is "yes", then that child's life had no meaning--no accomplish, no become. Yet surely, no one would argue that this child's life had no value. It is in this example that the answer lies however. By simply being, being a child in any given moment, that child offered herself to the world, and her world gladly received her without judgement. This in a nutshell is the meaning of life---Offer yourself as a child would, and your world will receive you. Live, love and laugh while guided by the spirit of your 'child'.

I forgot who I am for a while, and now, my best friend won't talk to me. It is my fault. I stopped being my child, in any moment, and clung to my conditions. The 'child' never worries about losing things--they are either there, or they're not. Feel free to include 'life' as one of those things, for it is the most fleeting 'toy' of all.

So, there you have it. I offer this as a gift. You may unwrap it if you want, or send it to your aunt next Christmas. But me, I am going to embrace all the facets of my child. Love, selfishness, temper tantrums, like, play, fun and pink---every single part of my spirit, every part of my 'child' that I have denied through condition and expectation. Not all of you are going to like me, but I am going to like me. It is, after all, all about me.

I will fail, at times. I will run from my essence. I will try things, and not be able to do them, and I will cry. I will fall off my new 'bicycle' and scrape my knee. But I promise you, I will take every 'failure' and learn from it. If it is part of my child, I will try again. If it isn't, I'll discard it. But, I will continue to play.

Come play with me if you'd like. I may steal your barbie doll, but when my spirit moves me, I will give it back. The child always gives back, but not always when you want him to. After all, sometimes you're the slug, sometimes you're the boy, sometimes the bonobo, sometimes the girl. It's all part of this game of life. We are all connected--sometimes in the double helix, sometimes in the swirl. But you can't play if you're not in the game.