Dreams and awake

Out into the night with cicadas and brush the darkness is rolling against red and pink sunsets.

Everywhere palms are swaying and the Ocean is dark and rolling. Not in a frame rate strategy, it is literally moving and pushing on your mind directly. You are searching for something like an answer you used to know. Its hidden and when you find it everything you used to know will seem like a wiser answer. So what is this dream that has trapped you? Your definable illusion? Your control? How did you happen here? How did you happen there, before? If you’re not certain now, were you certain then? You are meant to ask nothing, seek something while your aware everything is something it no longer is.

There is a realization that your understanding of things has increased exponentially while at the same time normal activities seem fragmented in a past. It feels like a foot is in the past and another is either without time or a thousand years forward. Everyone you come into contact with seems to know you or knew you were coming. Old friends seem unsurprised by your arrival and disjointed that your even there. There’s an idea that your fighting with yourself. There’s an idea everyone is you. Theres an idea everyone is an illusion that you can touch. You hear people saying things about others and they are secretly giving you directions. Your not an egotist so you don’t understand why its so. At the beginning you were instructed on Zen, then you were told you may wander, then you were told to find your passion, then you were held in escrow, then you were given what you asked for, your family, but they looked of the past and spoke in the future.

So you said ok to everything. And you still sit in nothing/everything. Which is were you started. Which may well be where you end up. And all of it feels like a torture. And all of it feels like a righteous, beautiful, powerful, wordless happening that is sublime. And all of it fleets and twists and you must slap the impulse out of yourself to live in the brief rushes of anger that push up harder than they ever did before. And it gets easier to breath out of things. And things that never bothered you make you twist more. And there are ideas that live or have been given such a highlighting that your aware your mind has been leapt upon. And you must not raise your head. You must not raise your hand. You must not be the thing you used to be. And it feels stupid. And if feels awesome. And it feels that you are lucky. And it feels like it was all for something. And it feels like it isn’t for nothing. And the duel in the duel is the duel. And you don’t want it and everywhere you look they do. They want to push you out of who you are. And its exhausting. But it feels like it won’t stop. So it feels like the constant questions you used to ask have made you unable to ask anything else because everything is hyperized and everything is possible and everything is failing and everything is wonderous and everything is something away from you. Inside of you and pushed, twisted and pulled. And everyone around you speaks to you without saying a word. And your questions are now a comedy. And your answers are whatever they might be. And time seems like it could always be so beautiful. You question what you’d want if you could have anything. Would this feeling still be your friend around your neck? Every time I look someone, or something tells me I’m not ok. I have been telling myself I am ok for 9 months. When are you going to listen? Why are you holding me under water? Go ahead…read it. Write me into a book. Wake up. Who are you. Thank you for today.

In the morning the sheets are white and the sliding glass doors are just a little fogged. Your naked. You roll onto your side and look out. The beach is within sight maybe 300 meters away. Its mildly overcast so there’s a little bit of an echoing of white/gray. It makes the green of the palm leaves lively. The blues and whites of the water are salty from where you lay. You can taste them. Each day on this trip you must remember to say thank you or you wont reach where you sit now. You get your instant coffee together for Danielle and slip on your sandals. You will ride today around an Island in the sun in the middle of an ocean 4 hours from land by boat. It will rain a little. You will eat “tropical” fruits for breakfast and lunch will be spicy. You will take a shower and think about spiders. You will think about your family. You will think about nothing. You will think about why your doing anything. You will look at the beauty surrounding you. You will say thank you more than once today. Where you sit now you shout at yourself to shout it as loud as you can. You shake yourself and scream in your face. Your egoless ego isn’t good enough. It doesn’t love loud enough. Your going to get a send off you fool. Then you truly will be the fool. For there will be no questioning. And nothing will be relatable. And you will be you around everything you aren’t. And you will be you around everything you are. And it will be what you said it would be at the beginning. And you will have to fight yourself instead of thinking there was another opponent. And when you used to hear this…you’ll know that people where actually telling you something special. And you will tell yourself each day, thank you. Thank you for your fight. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your commitment to losing the duality of you. Thank you for shining. And you will see the mirror of divinity in everything. And it will hurt to know someone makes choices. And it will hurt to know that everything is one. And it will hurt to wander and wonder and remember. It will still feel like everything is possible. It will also be a blink in an eye of something you can’t define. And it will be your duty to be numb and love at the same time. To lose all the parts of you that you were given again. Somewhere along the line you will try to make choices even though in the beginning you regarded everything as out of your hands. You will realize most of the time that it should be. You will be told that you need to let it be. You will say ok. You will find things you think you can or should be or do. You won’t know if they come or go. There will be something pushing you. When you write do you think your writing from yourself? Do you dry yourself off? Or is it just an opening to a beginning.

She will blow your mind. I still haven’t been able to explain why she hurts so much. I haven’t tried. She came out of divinity. Right up to you on the sidewalk like it was absolutely meant for you. When I look back at that now I know it was what it should be. So beautiful, the totality.

As you twist in your now, the past and its string looks so perfectly beautiful. Shimmering. There was smallness but the bigness was radiant before even now. And now the radiant is nuclear. What do you take away? So that, in regard, takes the bottom away. It makes me reconsider a middle and I don’t know where to put the top. Because I see what I see why do I see what I see?

I remember all of the lines on your neck. Each little millimeter to your ear. The way your hair smelled. The way your arms felt. I remember your neck with my lips. I remember your eyes. Those days in bed were not enough. I wanted to be close enough to you to spend all day…without a word. Just lay there and absorb you. Not love…not that word…I wanted to feel your laughter, light, the things I felt in my mind. I wanted to feel them with you like I did. But all day…in bed…without thinking. Just take everything else away but us and silence without our running thoughts. I want to hold you there. Like my spirit breaking in lightning.

Raw earth, the dark dirt, blood, sweat, sex

Men, women before you put on your clothes

Your shower & deodorant

Think about before

When were you last an animal?

When did you ____ all day without worrying?

When were you exhausted?

When wasn’t there a “what’s next”?

I heard chickens screaming at 5am

Under the basket cage

In the dirt, claws and beaded eyes

Ants running a lined path from spring to settlement

In the tropical green, tiger lily, husks and banana

Fruit mouthed in the dirt, sweating for the goddess of more

Or a goddess of humor, so smiling through the day

Like paths of light, currents and waves, sun always sun

It’s a creation of laughter, from one to you; the same

I watched as all the rain from all the time slowly warmed into a beautiful blossom of smell and power

Everywhere a hum of silver sharp edge and gold gloss

Marble veins

On my back I would listen to what the leaves in the trees sounded like in my head

It’s the same as the river on rocks

Towards the end of the week, as the weather rose, mist would flood the flood light at night

Water vapor

The earth in its cycle, one seldom seen, except on hot days in Spring

And…well…anytime you see mist, with some exceptions

I remember everything

Like a deep breath that closes my eyes

Gives me warmth in my smile

Floods my body whole

And races in bright sunlight

With clouds their most beautiful; the respective hue blue behind

I wasn’t aware while I made those memories that they would fill me with a whole other dimension to float softly on

I was not thinking about looking back

Years and years to walk through

I’m full of laughter seeing my friends then

And full of love for them

Wayward soul, where have you built yourself before

What did you fight and love for? Did you disappear without knowing or did you sit like now?

When I thought of us before us I thought of you still

As I often do still

Back in my younger years I thought of a riddle…

If you had to do the same thing over, exactly the same, every breath and step and blink, would you?

I told the listener if you chose not to the other option was nothingness, which is not thinkable (because nothingness is still something).

Almost everyone chose to do it over again, without thinking, they said yes. Even when they stop to think they said yes. Then I said…what if every time you came to this question posed you said yes. If knowing that would you still say yes? Of the 3 people I asked they continued to say yes. The summarization: We were all incredibly lucky to have lived at all.

I built my life from a history I was taught. My ideas, my identity, what I worked towards. The way I interacted with my surroundings, the people I trusted. What I thought was beauty was from somewhere else. The music I enjoyed or was drawn towards was from somewhere else. The food I enjoyed was from somewhere else. I built my life after the first teaching. Off a history that I learned. In a system I learned. What if I imagined my own history? What if I built another idea? What if that’s what I’m supposed to do now? What if that is the book I write? Can I pull that through myself? If at all, the thought is a receiving. For you reside in the ultimate creation.

My creation, if with my knowledge you may call it that, is a creation in a world created by creation. My limited mind may recognize and conceive what it is given to perceive.

If you recognize that there is creation in you as you are present in these moments and you also are observing creation around you then why do you separate yourself from all that surrounds you. You feel the difference but it should not be so.

On duality: There is no duality in you, you are constant in your existence.

The universal that is does not see itself as separate from itself for it is. There is no opposites in force. It is all one action. Polarity isn’t made of a positive vs a negative. Two opposing positions still constitute one whole theory or form. If you have a push and a pull they are still one force. Without one you could not have the other so they exist as one. Nothing is in opposition to anything else, things just are. There is just an is.

Why does fire exist? Because it should

Why does the science of fire exist? Because it should

Out the window the houses were gray. There were red brick notes. The layover in Germany afforded a cigarette and coffee. The milk on the latte was disgusting. It made me think, for one of the first times, that things like milk were different in different parts of the world. It made me think if something as big and far reaching as milk can be different what else is. Out the window the sky was overcast and the reds stood out. I ordered a vodka on the rocks when the flight crew asked if I wanted anything before landing. They said “its 6:30 a.m.” in a dialect I couldn’t place and kept walking. I think now that I responded “not where I’m from” but its likely I just thought it. Either way, I was a bit distraught about not getting the vodka. I must have been a bit of a drinker in my previous life to drink so intently at 19. On European flights people are not asking for your ID.

I remember telling Monika I didn’t love her and that I shouldn’t have come. I remember waking up to see her on the couch. I remember feeling like I was someone else. A man in the bar the night before had shook my hand. I had been drunk and he was a man several times my height and size. He kept shaking my hand. I couldn’t understand Czech and he was mumbling. I just kept smiling and looking him in the eye. Later I was told that initially that man was going to split my head open and by the time our 5 minutes was up I had reminded him of the son he had lost. That night the walk home was swaying cobblestone and hardly enough light to see. The town was small and beautiful. The air was summer. Discotheque in Czech.

The buildings were gray on approach. There were yellows, it was overcast and December. I had ordered a coffee. I had brought a toothbrush and toothpaste to brush my teeth so I could kiss my wife fresh off the plane when landing at about 11:00 a.m. She jumped on my neck. It was cold in Bulgaria. From the other side of a room I see myself standing with my blankness. The table has found itself specifically out of a song quote rather flipped. The final jeopardy melody is rattling as is Stevie Wonder. It seems as though I have enacted these terms to our movie because my co-star is failing in her affectionate overtones. I can tell already. Do you know when you can tell that something isn’t right and it is a feeling and instead of not having words you drink so much that your instinct gets the better of you and shows the other person that you know they are lying about who they are saying they are. Later, because I looked, I saw a menstrual cycle chart. I will tell you a secret, if you look hard at things you will see what you expect, always. If you go into a hobble hut of an outdoor bathroom in Asia in the middle of nowhere borderline jungle just do your business. Don’t look around. Don’t look for what could be there, or it will be. Just go in, do your business and be glad your there in that moment doing those things. Love is a bit different especially if you start by telling the women that you love that you just would like to “see what happens.” This approach for the one woman in the world who you wanted to try your hardest with is not a good approach. So then, when you find yourself in a position to be tossed about like a dog chew toy you must wonder “should I had been clearer about what I truly wanted with this one special women.” As I look back, I know she was a gift

It had been a hassle. The lead up to the day after the beginning. For over two weeks the bed had been made and the shoes tied tightly. The shirt had been pressed, the car put in reverse and the doors open and shut curtly. People had received what they ordered. Checks had been split, smiles loftily assembled on the patio. Teas brewed and lemons wedged. The cloths laid on the tables. The trays filled and the steps walked. Mornings saw humidity and salt with yellow lemon light on mirror lakes of air. It was a presence of anticipation and the want of change, again. The day arrived to click a few buttons that would purchase the ticket to somewhere I knew nothing about. There were no expectations only a sense of exhilaration from my brown couch, with my brown carpeted room. Click click click click.

With these few ambles an itinerary was born. Of course in the fashion of a normal celebration a celebration was in order. A few days later everything was on its head and gone. The job, the idea of success, the apartment, the money, the life I had attempted to build. In 3 days I felt as though it had all left. I shook, body sick and mind finally back to itself drumming and thundering. More pieces always more pieces.

It turns out I was offered to pick them up with humility. So I did. And I left a few months later.

I don’t remember the flight. I don’t remember much actually. Its melded into a feeling. A walk in high heat to a riverside eatery to burn my mouth with the hottest fruits. A night of overindulgence eating and drinking. The lights that pulsed vertically in the trees that didn’t exist until that night. The fog of walking in a mall somewhere and being led by a ray of light I called my friend. His place in my world is there and in my heart. A trip South to a weekend of Jazz on a beach. I remember hearing for about 2 minutes around a crowd. Swimming at night with the moon as the path back to the hotel was obstructed with water. Defensive thoughts about other tourists for no reason. A first foot rub. A cultural explosion with that one act, not known at the time but felt only 10 years later. The thought of that one first foot rub and how it echoed for years.

All of those firsts that echoed for years. 10 years of echoes still echoing. A monkey on a roof when we left the hotel overlooking the bay at Hua Hin. The first fish tanks and shrimp tanks and exotic seafood of Phuket before Phuket was Phuket. And 10 years before I experienced it Phuket was even more Phuket and so on 10 years farther back. Art everywhere, bright sharp colors with bright sharp eating. Bright sharp smiles and bright sharp sun and heat. Long tails in a land before time on aqua and greens from dreams. But real. Jumping from the boat, a walk through a little jungle area to come to a beach from a movie. Lucky. A tank of fish on my feet with my friend getting our drinks taken away one after another and laughing because it finally felt like feeling. The sickness of returning from 5 days of drinking, needing raw salmon and having someone get it for me. Midnight at train stations for tickets not used. It being ok to go get train tickets at midnight drunk on a Tuesday in a city of 10 million. Feeling very safe with these beautiful people every time I was around them. And somewhere in there the realization that I could do this alone, without my friend showing me how to do everything.

I remember being lost on the first trip. Only for 15 minutes after our dinner of curry crab and individual motorcy taxis and getting off at the wrong stop. I had to ask for a phone to call Nico and he came to get me. This is before everything technology gave us. The number was on a small piece of paper wrinkled up and stuffed in my wallet. A local shop keeper was good enough to dial the number for me and have him come, without which I would have been lost and struggling alone. Ah Nico, what a guide. I’m sorry you are gone and replaced with someone you are not. You will never be anything to me except the divine light that gave me a home and the ability to go back to that home alone. You gave me an entirely new branch of life and for that I am ever indebted. I remember riding the train to Chaing Mai and it being midnight and you smoking in between cars and opening the door and saying…who…who will ever give you this? The answer was nobody else, not like that. You are so hard to let go of. All your faults made you, you. Its hard to see you. You’ve let the faults take away from the light. You’re in descent and I don’t want to remember you like this. I feel like we aren’t supposed to be descending yet. I am probably delusional or greedy for more adventure or not able to imagine I won’t ride into the dark again with wonder. I don’t want to give everything up. I feel handicapped or struck just below the knees, so I have to beg for everything now. It used to be work but it used to seem as though it was a struggle and creation. I look outside and around me and I still see the beauty. I must live away from the falseness of the new reality that I feel like I cannot except. I did love and I wasn’t afraid ever and it was magic without magic. It was pure and hard and so wonderful.

It was and still is a gift. The beautiful thing of looking back is that you see the whole as the gift that it is. Sometimes I cannot believe what I have been given & still am given. It drops my jaw. More than that. There are no words to utter. It distracts from how very much I have loved this life, this gift. I have tried to say thank you to everyone who touched my life but it is impossible to describe what the word thank you means. I was given so very much from so many. Thank you for sharing time with me.