My muse is yearning for arousal, conjuring, carousal.
Bursting to surrender
to merriment, bathe in creativity, immerse in  edifying sensuousness.
Seeking the death
Of delusion, confusion, and all stifling trivialities.
Coveting the return
Of artistic succumbing, flamboyant brandishings, and ecstatic un-benumbings.
Pursuing most intrepidly
The genius epiphany, the guffawing hoot, the intangible booty.

Questing to tangiblize the intangible booty!

Oh, yes, the drunken Sun is shining.
The drunken Sun is shining and I’m awash in its indulgence.

Flare up, blaze away, deluge me endlessly with your eidetic photonic-simplicity,

O brilliant Illuminance, the hence and whence of life.

How small was xanga when I joined (year 2000)?

                       
Tens
to hundreds of bloggers just figuring things out.

                       
Many
of whom were “seeded” by xanga itself.

                       
You
could visit and comment on  practically
everyone everyday.

                       
There
were less than 200,000 bloggers worldwide.

How big is xanga now? 

Estimate:           8.2
million current xanga blogs.

                       
16,000
new xanga blogs (and growing) daily.
                        
               
        1,140 posts per minute (at noon today).

                       
12.3
million xanga blogs by year’s end.

                       
Represents
about 23% of entire 35.7 million blogs worldwide.

Interested in the history of the growth of blogging?  Look here.

Memorial Day brings more freedom to one of my cherished activities—running in Dreamland.  For upon this day Dreamland (Lake View Cemetery) postpones closing from 5:30 PM until “dusk” every evening until the end of summer.

I suppose the intent is to allow ghosts to roam out onto the streets later, somewhat less inhibited.  Or perhaps to allow lovers to wander in from the streets, find a warm, cozy pre-dusky secluded niche aside an old tombstone and also get less inhibited.

But I’ll mostly just run (10 miles today) and blog afterwards—as I’m doing now. 

Sitting mystic in the splendid sun-towards-set-light.

Memorial Day.  I’m a vet and alive probably because “my war” didn’t happen.  Other vets who, if alive, would be younger than me, are  buried here in Dreamland because their war did happen.  Or is happening at the moment.

It’s always been the case and, I believe that as long as America is great, it will always be the case that Americans will flock to join to serve our country in time of war—if it is a good war: a war worth dying for.

The malaise that is Iraq has dwindled new recruits in all the services severely of late.  Americans are voting by withholding their enlistments.  So by my logic, either America isn't great anymore or increasing numbers are coming to the realization that this isn’t a good war.  And I’m not giving up on America.  So there.

Where’s Osama bin Waldo?  Time again to revamp and redefine the battle. 

“You bled with Wallace.  Now bleed with me.”

Here, apparently, is the last Xanga entry just minutes before the blogger, ToTo247 (Simon Ng), was murdered.


Victim's E-journal Led To Slay Suspect reads the Front Page story.

Blogging couldn't save his life.  But it did solve the crime.

After having learned that birds are actually dinosaurs, I
cannot now eat chicken without marveling how good dinosaur meat tastes.

You can touch a keyboard, but you can’t really embrace
it.  And that, perhaps, sums up all
internet-blog romances:  You can touch
someone and be touched by someone by words online.  But embraces are reserved for bodies with
arms and faces.

Would you not agree that the greater tragedy is not to have
loved and lost but to become so hardened to loss so never to love again?

The mystic Merton once observed that “you become in the
image of the gods you worship.”  Hrmm…
Who is the god of running?  Mercury, the
fleet-footed messenger, no?   Tiny
planet.  One of my gods has a hot,
seemingly useless tiny planet named after him. 
That’s disrespectful!

If there was no such thing as a pharmaceutically produced
pill in this world, but all medicine instead was harbored in the inviolate
bodies of exotic insects which had to be ingested whole and alive o be
medicinally effective, would we be a society of insect-poppers?

I’m more than me.  I’m
the essence of the true American: though bound with responsibilities, I’m still
unpredictable and free.

It’s a shame.  But I guess if you drag a fan with a long enough electrical cord behind the ass of shitting dogs, sooner or later the blades will strike the shit.

Some scumpiece broke into my vehicle today while I was at work.  Broke the front passenger seat window entirely out and stole about $7 is spare change from the change cup between the two front seats.  My alarm must have been blaring as he reached in and grabbed that single or double handful of loose change.  Had I come upon him in that moment…ha!  You’d be reading about it in the news.

Instead, I returned to my vehicle after work,  resolute to run (in Dreamland Cemetery),  hopeful (to enjoy the evening fully), and intending (to pick up some side-cash handymanning for a pair of psychiatrists).

All dashed by the circumstances.  My awareness and response thereto.

Immediately I began detesting all victimizing imagined and unimaginable sorts of (in)humanity.

Then I settled into a if-I’m-going-to-be-stung-I’m going-to-sting-back mindset of retaliation.

And, finally, I was forced by someone to laugh about it, about everything, anything at all.

Imagine that: me forced to laugh.

After having moped and frowned over my perceived loss for hours and hours, that first smile hurt big-time.   But it was really, releasingly good.

Blessed are the smile-makers.  Proving once again that teeth are more than merely the precision insturments of predators.

On the basis of the pic above, would you categorize me as:

A predator

Or

Prey?

Dangerous

Or

Docile?

Forthright

Or

Deceptive?

If you know what’s best for you, you might not want to categorize me at all.

Here’s why.

Like Lt. Dan
in the movie Forrest Gump, I felt cheated out of duty and glory in not being
allowed to fight and, perhaps, die in a war I joined specifically to fight
in.  Except in my case, the “war” had yet
to happen—I joined months ahead in confident anticipation that the “new
President” would stand up to the tyrant and liberate our captive citizens
.  But upon Inauguration Day, the hostage
crisis in Iran
was resolved as the Iran-Contra connection secretly kicked-in. 

Suddenly, I was a warrior without a war, a samurai without a
sword.  So I did the next best thing: I
started running two to three times a day through the forests and around a
cemetery in the Isthmus of Panama—where I was
stationed.   I committed myself to staying fiercely
ready.  Psychically-attuned to the
warrior’s code to dive into action, with
ever-launchable personal energy, I prepared for any and every eventuality.    

Still, no war.  Like
Lt. Dan, I, too, had a ‘forest’ that delivered me.  The jungle and its mysteries became my
battleground.  Avoiding tree-dangling and
path-hugging poisonous snakes, influxes of killer bees, victimizing vampire
bats, and swarms of biting insects carrying deadly diseases constituted my
daily engagements with the enemy.

I didn’t have to run through the jungle.  None of my fellow-soldiers ever did.  They’d all be playing pool or comfortably
watching TV in the barracks as I did my laps around a jungle cemetery.  Or they’d be chowing down in the mess hall
for lunch as, forsaking food,  I instead ran
a half hour up and 15 minutes down a forested mountain in 90+ F. heat and 100%
humidity aback the compound. (Yes, I was always
entirely soaked emerging from the forest at hill-bottom.) 

My own frenzy of energy should have been enough to take any
country to battle.  But no-o-o way, Jose.

It’s always been that way. 
Whenever I want something really bad, all heaven and earth finds a way
to frustrate me. 

I’m now learning how to “seek no-want” and “engage nothing
in the pursuit of emptiness.”

Let’s see what heaven and earth does to frustrate that.

"The reason birds are so important to us is really a fact we weren't so aware of 10, 20 years ago is that birds are living dinosaurs. They're not just related to dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs.   They're a branch of dinosaurs, so conveniently enough dinosaurs didn't go completely extinct. One group, the birds, survived."

 -Curator of Paleontology,  American Museum of Natural History

The real reason birds are so important to us is because Avian Flu is about to go human pandemic.

Dinosaur Flu coming soon to a theater near you.

If the goal of blogging is to create as much controversy as possible, I’ve failed.

If the goal of living is to accumulate as much money as possible, I’ve failed.

If the goal of loving is to maximize one’s representation in the ongoing gene pool, I’ve failed.

But if the point of being is to be in the moment… hrmm, let me take a moment to think about that one.

I can still hear my sister reassuring me, like a prophecy deep-woven for eternity,
“O dear brother,  sweet brother, worry not.  If ever it is meant-to-be, you shall know her love again.”

And now it is the meant-to-be. 

Time has annealed, healed, re-revealed,

You to me.

And love has re-invented

Fuck sex.  An hour of brilliant conversation with a beautiful woman is so, so much better than an hour of unrelenting passion, endless kisses, and pleasure juices sucked up as fast as they’re emitted (with the same woman).  Ah…but both….?  Can one have both?

Here’s a just and fitting punishment for Newsweek magazine’s indiscretion in publishing a incredible, sourceless story (since retracted) about American troops desecrating the Koran by flushing it down the toilet:  Force them to change their name to Weaknews.   Oh.  And maybe force them to print their publication on toilet paper for a year.   So that we can subject it to the same purported Koran treatment that they appear to have invented.

If you had to suffer and live through it, what would be your preferred cataclysm?

A maga-tsunami (such as that launchable by the eventual catastrophic collapse into the Atlantic Ocean of the mountain called Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands) ?  Would take out the whole East Coast up to 20 miles inland.

A super-volcano (such as that underlying Yellowstone National Park—which already is 40,000 years overdue)?  Would take out the Western US and could lead to a worldwide nuclear winter.

An asteroid impact (such as the near earth object called 2004 MN4 which is now almost surely likely not to impact on its next closest pass on April 13, 2029—although it will actually fly under the orbit of geosynchronous satellites. But can not now be reliably predicted not to impact upon a great many Aprils in immediate years thereafter since its intimate first pass by the Earth will deflect its future orbit—due to gravity—in a not now entirely predictable manner.  Some suggest, the Earth could capture it for collision in 2030, 2031, 2032…who knows?).  Would take out a sizable region on Earth wherever it would strike.  Could cause a mega-tsunami if impacting in the ocean. Or could lead to nuclear winter by kicking up the earth.

My preferred cataclysm would be having sex but not brilliant conversation with the aforementioned beautiful woman.  It would be hell.  But I guess I’d live through it.

I just realized
that the Presidential theme song of “Hail To The Chief” degrades nicely into
Vader’s theme song of The Imperial March. 
Whistling both down downtown back alleys on the way to work this
morning, I found I could fluently transpose one into the other.

I had intended to
go to Dreamland (cemetery) yesterday to meditate after closing.  Instead, I landed in a bar and from there
visualized myself meditating in the cemetery. 
And I finally ‘saw’ all the bones.

Why do we bury
people lying down hands folded or with hands along their thighs?  Why not bury everyone facing and with their
right index finger pointing to the place on the horizon where the sun rises
upon the vernal equinox?  Bonehenge, I
say!   I know, I know, I know: repose.  Not pose. 
Repose.  But hey, the ancient Chinese
actually invented the compass and the art of fengshui in order to "(hinder
the) wind (and hoard the) water" and thus optimize “chi” (breath) around
the burial tomb.

As the Chinese Book of Burial  (where fengshui is first historically mentioned) reads:

The Dark Turtle hangs its head,

The Red Bird hovers in dance,

The Green Dragon coils sinuously,

The White Tiger crouches down.

What could be
simpler?!

When I was a child, my Aunt Jean used to often tell me that
the first thing “to go” on a man is his knees. 

Once, I asked as a rejoinder, “What’s the first thing ‘to go’ on a woman?”  And she shot me back a look of angry drilling
eye daggers.  “Women don’t discuss such
things with men…or boys,” was her response. 

I learned then that the world wasn’t a level playing field.  Some matters of knowing and intelligence
would become available only at a high premium, if at all.  So I had better keep my knees strong and
healthy.

I’ve completed my running for this week and have exceeded my
goal of 27 miles by a mile.  A couple of
weeks ago, I had a goal of 26 miles that I exceeded by a mile.  An “exceed by a mile” pattern appears to have
crept into my routines. 

But I’m suspicious of patterns that creep. 
Could they not suggest some sort of alien subliminal influence at
work?  Or at least a touch of remote
programming?  Beware.  Take care.  Ignore alien orders!

Examine your life.  Know your aspirations.  Strive to meet or exceed your goals.  But keep the aliens out.  And above all, keep your knees strong.  (This advice may not apply to women since I
never did learn what on them is the first “to go”.)

In our youth we planted a seed,
A seed of sinless love.
Before we grew conflicted and were driven apart
By a world that brutalized our innocence.

Ha. Thirty years now later.
And we’ve chanced upon our tree.
In a field of utter oblivion, unattended, yet it grew.
And now it bears this luscious fruit of rediscovered intimacy.

The goal of dreaming is to intend the energy body.

Let your energy body do it. To intend is to wish without wishing, to do without doing.

Accept the challenge of intending
. Put your silent determination, without a single thought, into
convincing yourself that you have reached your energy body and that you
are a dreamer .

When
you hear that—you have to convince yourself, you automatically become
more rational. How can you convince yourself you are a dreamer when you know you are not? Intending is both: the act of convincing yourself you are indeed a dreamer , although you have never dreamt before, and the act of being convinced.

I don't mean you have to tell yourself you are a dreamer and try your best to believe it. It isn't that.

Intending
is much simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than
that. It requires imagination, discipline, and purpose. In this case,
to intend means that you get an unquestionable bodily knowledge that you are a dreamer . You feel you are a dreamer with all the cells of your body.

  -Don Juan, The Art of Dreaming

Attached to a tree in Dreamland (cemetery). 

Presumably by a child.  Unless one of you wants to 'fess up.

Poor babies.  Best friends.

she is so sensuously pre-embattled
yet sumptuously well-woven
*down there*. 

as hard as an Amazon  well-warned of  a pretense to be imposed,
yet as soft as a caring look into a familiar’s revealing eyes. 

(of course, what have I ever really witnessed?
it is all clearly merely my own rich imaginative hearsay, after she sat but once,
maybe more? – imaginatively – yet lovingly, upon my lap). 

entirely bloomingly and beyond-daisy gorgeous and tensile is she.

how her coitals ripple above me, upon me,
arousing beyond repair, my flagrantly-expended quixotic hard flesh.

obvious now, in the aftermath, her such outbursts serve phantom purpose as…
both the accost of my insuppressible bestirring
and as her own self-limiting worn chastity belt.

she, not some suckling lord of the  beseeching lot,
decides, in the moment of the , whom to quench and
what lover to indulge. 

i, an improbable dreamland throw-thing, simply chastise myself in the gleam of our Sun, imagining (imagining!) myself someday just so worthy...
and her most intimate forever encounter.

Just remember when you go picking my apples that there's almost certainly a tree with lower fruit somewhere right around your yonder corner.

I almost wasted the whole, beautiful day.

Again.  What a fool I am sometimes.

Such profligacy must cease.

Tomorrow’s a new world golden.

I want to belong *there*.

And shed the damper of my self-disgust.

Nice is too numinous.

Dirty is too delicious.
Delicate is too dainty.
Lascivious is too lush.
Lovesome is too encompassing.
Naughty is too benumbing.
Rebellious is too much of a rush.
Devouring is too detailed.
Enchanting is too lofty.
Seductive is way too sensuous.

Impulsive is.

Just as you are.

The nipples protruding through her otherwise unobstructed fishnet top are so, so  obvious.
So I ask “Do you like fishing? What do like to catch?  Besides men.”

“I like deep-sea fishing,” she replies.

“Does that mean you float atop the water and fish deep?  Or dive deep and fish?”

She doesn’t reply, but simply flashes a smile while  weighing the dichotomy.

“I’d like to hunt shark with a knife,” I  lie.

No, this is not a short story.  Just an unimagined conversation.
Or not.

But regardless.

Her eroticism is the game of the name.

I set for myself the goal of running 26 miles this past week.  I finished with 27.

I became determined this week to break out of my own pleasant little prison dream.  A PLPD that my fantasies had fed, wherein, for the last several years, I’ve imagined more than I lived.  I’m resolved now to live more than I ever imagined.

I’ve finally gotten back this week to commenting about on Xanga as a form of adventure.  When I first came to blogging about four and a half years ago, discovering others “in the neighborhood” was the most incredible thing.  Yet over the last couple of years, I’ve cheapened the experience for myself by, more often than not, pushing out posts unidirectionally.  I gave.  My faithful readers took.  But damn it, I’m now on the take again!  (Wait. Does that sound right?!)

I’m now filled with as much positivity as the bumbler bee that’s buzz-buzzing the garden I’m sitting in.  The energy of life-affirming inquisitiveness justifies itself.  The world is abloom.  May no flower go unvisited.