Can I be both the observer and the author? Inside and outside of my own mind and body? Can I calculate the indifference of nature? Blood and bone, I breathe and suffer, long for, strive again and again. I have no respect for the indifference of the world. I sing and soar to new heights daily, like a red-tailed hawk rising in the hot air of a Texas summer afternoon.
I am rising. Rising still. Some resurrection is at hand. I cannot be sure it’s not a crucifixion. I am laid bare at this moment, brought back to the necessities of shelter and food. Love will come later. I am consumed by my own desire. Random and various, I poke my head and heart into the heat of sexual desire to see what the outcome might be. I am fluid. Alone. Aspiring to be loved by everyone. Adored.
First. Myself. Reborn. Alive. Struggling with life and my place in it. But that’s not true. I have found my voice in D H Lawrence, in Anais Nin writing about Lawrence in her personal biography and psychological dissection of what makes his writing sublime.
I am aiming for the sublime. I want to feel deeply enough to cut my fellow traveller to the bone. Laid bare, together, I want to ask questions of myself and listen for answers from the universe. The cold heart of space looming in the night sky. Both loving and cold. Infinite. Boundless. Humbling.
I often lie on my back on the concrete driveway to my house. My house, what a gift. Thanks, Mom. I ask of the night sky, “May I do god’s will and let go of my own selfish ego. Ego is all I have. And heart. I listen with deep intention. I ask the question, “How is your day?” in a way that seems to invite your return inquiry. I appreciate the flow between us. Some electrified by sexual energy, some humble human dignity. I want to respect my fellow man. Want to understand their ignorance and faith.
I don’t dwell on others much. I am more interested in examining my own navel. Filming my own life story to give a glimpse into the man. The me. The “this.”
Here I am world, take notice.
I am still baffled by the need for a comma or the flow of losing most commas. I strive for a faster and more visceral language. A pace that feels more Kerouac and Thomson, out of control, chaotic, raw, unvarnished and incomplete. I will let my guard down and give as much access as I can to my proclivities, passions, missteps, and mostly joy. I am attempting to bring joy. Illuminate joy. Understand joy. What makes me happy, what activities encourage and support that idea? What makes me joyful. How I am pulling apart the two ideas: joy and happiness.
Joy is the inner light. A radiant belief in god, the universe, the sun, the stars, and the cartoon, Peanuts.
Happiness is the result of right actions and the positive aspirations of my life. I am aimed at a noble goal. Pointed inward. Heartward. The night sky above. Twinkling. Anticipating. Bringing me what I most want in life. To be loved.
One is my engine and the other is my goal. I also need an idea of my “life’s work.” What I am becoming. What I want to become. How I stand on the Earth and crow like a big cock in his own front yard. Planting trees for privacy while lighting signal fires for acclaim. My impatience is put in check. The work ahead is vast, unending, unknown. I am spooling out a ball of blue yarn, weaving some story from the fabric of my memories. I invite you to come along, trying to resist the disappointment when you don’t.
In the end, in most time on Earth, we leave behind all others and sit alone in the room of our thoughts. What I am saying to myself is my reality. If I am lamenting my lack of money, fame, or partner, I am missing the point. It is not to arrive. The point of this entire spin around the globe of life, is to find my purpose and dedicate my life to its fruition. Giving birth to something greater than myself. More important than my selfish life. Inspiration for others. Flow of prose and poetry and song into something resembling Whitman’s Song of Myself. He is my muse.
Even in his nineties, Whitman was celebrated as the greatest American poet. He no longer entered the auditoriums with swagger but in a wheelchair somewhat degraded in his physical body. His spiritual body, revealed in his writing, is what people were cheering. Are still cheering today. Hanging on the quiet, unsteady whispers of the poet of the soul, laboring to be great, to share his own take on living among men and, most importantly, women. The singer of the universal truth: we are all one. God is god, for everyone.
We humans have a hard time letting go of our exceptionalism. Perhaps that’s part of my issue. I believe my passions and creations to be exceptional. Nature does not care. Nature wants birth, death, love making, raw unadulterated passion. The keyboard attempts to become my cartographic electron microscope. Heart to bone to breath to this word on a page shared between me and you.
How Anais Nin unfolds Lawrence in her personal assessment, how she and Henry Miller celebrated, fucked, and cried in Lawrence’s honor, at the magnificent work, loving women, giving voice to the feminine within his interwoven passions as a man. He is fluid. Nothing is off the table with him. Or with Nin and Miller. Fuck who you need to fuck to get the juice of the universe all over your face, hands, and cock. Believe in your cocksure direction and never look back, don’t put too much weight on the recognition of others, and keep going. Rilke said it best, “Write because you can’t not write.” (In German, of course.)
This moment, then, is the flux. Up and downs of a creative life. Longing for recognition, yet pausing at the gates, questioning, unsure of what fame might bring. What would fuck up my life more is no longer a consideration. Amazingly attractive women with like-minded sexual appetites are hard to find. I am finding her first inside myself. Asking for her hand in my hand, “I’ll lead,” to dance together. She me we.
I am one with god at the moment. In fact, we all are. Few are paying attention. Most have their minds and eyes on base desires. Scrolling, swiping, and entertaining ourselves to death. I am the entertainment. In my own life I am the narrator, the confessional priest, and the scribe. I have been lifting my eyes up off the ground my entire life. The world crashing down around us, my mom shouted to keep me from falling into the abyss of my father’s gravitational pull. She gave me an escape path but not the velocity to break free. Until now.
This is it. I cracked some code in my own life. The world is a struggle, all is suffering, and this… here… this… writing… may just be my bliss. The flux of the universal nature is to crush the weak, silence the dead, and celebrate the young. I am here for that. I row my boat toward the falls. Abandon all sadness. Free fall into …
