I scared the living shit out of a group of about 5 teeenage boys as they were coming up over a steep (60° incline) hill and I was running atop the summit of that same hill in Dreamland (Lake View  Cemetery) 'after hours' last evening.  'After hours' implies that the cemetery was closed and, consequently, the band of boys expected to encounter no one except, perhaps in their unconsciences, their worst fanstasy nightmare.  So, the scout of the pack came up over the hill, saw me running somewhat toward/by him against a backdrop of tombstones, screamed and ran down the hill he had just scaled up and took the rest of his band down with him.  Boo.

The nfp-subconscience speaks:

I have a tremendous use for women. I simply don't have enough use of  women.

She had finally mastered the art of seduction.  She spent half of her day dressing.  And the rest of her day slowly undressing.

Happiness is never having to define what happiness is.

I am not always able to watch my own back.  But I am capable, at the most uncanny of times, of turning swiftly around and seeing surpise in the eyes of those nefariously gathered there.

Freedom.  It’s what I have.  Should this or any government ever try to deny me that for the sake of some tortured vision of security, I will destroy it (them, if plural).  I’m not merely a citizen to be managed, photographed, recorded, and controlled.  I am a warrior unbound by government. I am a defender of life-enabling culture and the enduring qualities of continuing civilization.  Any government, or anyone, that becomes obstructive or destructive of that which I defend is my enemy.  And my enemy is doomed.

I scale fences, I climb trees, I slap buildings, I punch trees (they adore it; and they abhor, by the way, placid hugs that convey to them no sense of gusto).  I sometimes fondle sculptures of the naked female form.   I live pretty much in the moment, dance away from the past, and ponder the future as if its my next breath.

I embrace friends wholeheartedly.  And now value friendship more than I have ever before in my life.  

I let go of false prophets, betrayers, and the unfree who would lure me into somnolence.  I have come to know people who are bitter.  I refuse to have anything more to do with them. 

I am looking forward to a new age and a new world coming.  Someday I will write sumptuous poetry in Chinese (Li-Po style), run bare-chested in a midnight marathon where the sun never sets (mid-Summer, Netherlands) , and cavort throughout the sporting night until the nascent Dawn of Man (swoosh!).

Ran 5 miles in Dreamland (kick-ass cemetery) yesterday.  And another 5 miles the day before.

I’ve determined that my post-run traditional and previously inspirational blogging spot (see profile pic) in Dreamland is inspirational no more.  So I need to find another spot.  I’m considering the following:

1) At the base of the largest obelisk in the whole cemetery, Rockefeller’s monument, where legend has it, if you leave a penny, you’ll some day become rich.

2) At a picnic table in an open field that is adjacent to two lovely ponds where ducks and geese abound.  I’d be open to the view of endless passerbys.  They’d be liable to witness a crazed blogger scribbling madly in cyberable glyphs for the endless Ages.

3) Upon an island plateau in a geographically-difficult (only access is up a steep, ungraded jeep trail) and nearly unvisted  (anymore) section of the cemetery.  Old bones there.   And I think there’s a dog’s grave, too, so dog bones to boot!

4) Upon the porch of Garfield’s Monument.  Flip back a few posts and you’ll see me there hanging upside-down on the rail leading upon to his tomb.  Upside: grandly architectural with an abiding sense of historicity.  Downside: Rock instead of earth under my butt. (Get it? Upside-down ...side.  Oh, forget it.)

5) Aside the Dreamland (easy-flowing) Stream in a scenic forested area accessible only by a woodchip path.   This is where I whispered to and petted a two-year-old wild wandering deer (recorded a few posts ago.).  If there are such things as nymphs and sprites and faeries (both light and dark), I believe they might come to convocate there.

6) Under the Evil Tree which sits upon a hill not far from my current (see profile pic) location.  I call it the Evil Tree because its foliage is symmetrically split: one half is lush (representing Life and fecundity), the other half is denuded/vanquished (representing a hangover), AND because, upon one Halloween nite when the moon was full and I was romping about in rare form (high, spirited, and poetic), it (the Evil Tree) beckoned me with a thousand voices to climb it and spend the whole night huddled upon one of its branches. (I politely declined.)

So what say you?  Or should I just do the rounds and visit each in a Hemingway-esque Movable Feast mode and serve up whatever inspirational instilling takes hold as a maryjanepourri?  

Is that a word?

Ah, thank you.  As a potpourri.

What fills the Sky?  Nothing. 
What fills your mind?  Nothing. 
Thus  you and the Sky are one.

I was so angry yesterday afternoon, I punched a tree.

It laughed at me. 

I ran 5 miles yesterday after punching that tree

and just before an agitated storm of thunder descended upon Dreamland.

Nearby was a Grecian-columned mausoleum.

 I took shelter from the meteorological threat upon the portico and under cover thereof.

Waiting out the storm, I found myself alone with Nature in a most intimate way.

Nature had  to keep me company. 

And I challenged Nature to instill in me a new infusion of creativity,

hoping that the creativity would strike before lightning would the ungrounded mausoleum.

What fills the Sky?  The Oceans merge into the Atmosphere which merges into the star-struck Universe.

What fills your mind?  Your thoughts flow from your dreams derived from an Awareness that laughs at the contrived notion of Time.

Time was so angry yesterday, it lashed out.
Awareness laughed as such foolishness.

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

Ever feel set-up to take some kind of a hit?

I was in a local neighborhood bar, in a pretty rough neighborhood—half ghetto, half-redneck—the other day when I feel I fell into a well-rehearsed trap.

I considered the girl tending bar to be a friend—we had been friends for awhile.And friendly, indeed, she was that day: downing Snakebite shots with me, teasing about how she had joined Xanga and would make an unmistakable impact with a comment on my site as soon as she located some signature profile pic to represent herself, taking my hand on an occasion, smiling at me with eye contact and more eye contact and more eye contact as she moved up and down the bar tending other customers.  There was a point when I started to indicate that I was about to leave, but she adamantly urged me to stay and have another beer.

So I stayed.

And then in strolled her boyfriend, taking a place at the bar beside me.

I went to shake his hand, but he refused.  I asked: “Don’t you want to shake?”  His answer: “I only want you to quit stalking my girlfriend.”

Of course, I was shocked and outraged by such a charge.  I had to take a stand.  I went into a warrior’s battle mode.

Accusing someone of stalking is 1) accusing the person of a crime, 2) accusing the person of deviant activity, and 3) in this case, accusing the person of deviant sexual activity.

Not only did I rightfully deny the charge and all its implications, I challenged “the boyfriend’s” truthfulness, intelligence, and manhood in making such a charge without being able to present any evidence whatsoever.

I called for him to take it outside the bar and settle it like men.  He refused to respond.  I called him a stupid fucking idiot making baseless charges.He failed to respond.  I told him he didn’t even measure up to my manhood and that I could cut his balls off with a knife and hand them to him before he realized what was happening.  He didn’t respond.  I looked deep inside him.  Saw hatred.  Saw drugs.  Saw his shock and indecision in my calling him out and calling him to war.  He returned my stare for some small multitude of silent seconds, but finally broke it off.  He couldn’t stare me down.  And I believe he feared (and had good reason to fear) what he saw in my eyes, the windows to my warrior-heart.

He just kept repeating “I want you to quit stalking my girlfriend,” as if an actor with a single line needing to nail his part in a staged scene.

I had said enough.  And finally I told him what I wanted.  I told him I wanted him not to talk to me anymore unless he wanted to go to war. 

And then I turned back to the bar only to hear him repeat again: “I want you to quit stalking my girlfriend.”

“Last time,” said I.  “No more talking unless you want to go to war.”

That’s when he turned to his girlfriend and petitioned her to tell me, in his words to her: “tell him to back off, tell him to quit stalking you, tell him how you called the cops…”

She had nothing to say.  Nothing at all.

In disgust at not being able to sway her to gang up on me, he left in a huff.

A buddy of mine came up to me and said “You’re the man, not him.He’s the one who left.”

But I wasn’t concerned with “being the man”.  I only sought clarification from her about whether she ever “called the cops” on me.  For if so, I would have desperately wanted to know why, for god’s sake, for certainly that odious charge of stalking was entirely ludicrous and baseless.  She said that she hadn’t, that there was only “some talk”.  But I supposed it was the same talk I had just witnessed: the boyfriend trying to cajole her into stabbing me in the back.

I felt reassured at the time that it was just her boyfriend who had flipped out.I left in a good mood, saying good night to her and other patrons.

Next day, I got an email from her:

“A lot was said last night and you should know I did have people check my house for cameras. Some things you said creeped me out. There were a lot of strange coincidences and I was getting uncomfortable. I think it would be best if you stayed away from me.  I don't want you to come into XXXXXwhile I'm there.  I don't want anymore contact with you.”

My response, in email, to her:

“As you wish, of course. 

It's just too bad you weren't more forthcoming with me - all of this could have been avoided so easily.  Funny how one moment last night you were taking my hand and talking about me recognizing you on Xanga when the moment would come, i.e., "you'll know it's me" and now this total estrangement flip to the other extreme.  Talk about creepy.  That's really creepy.

And cameras?  Oh my god, you have got to be kidding.  Not my style.  Not in my heart or being.   I would never disrespect you (or anyone else) so.  If you have a worry about surreptitious cameras or surveillance of your premises, then please stay wary for your own sake.  But you'd better look elsewhere for some other potential culprit.  I'm shocked, outraged, and disappointed that I would ever become implicated in your mind with such disgusting activity.

I wish you well.

Do me a favor (only if you care to) and wish everyone else 'there' well for me for I won't be returning under any circumstances.”

Now, several days later, I have a deep psychic postmonition that her flirting attentions (the persistent, rapid, repetitive eye contact) and her insistence that I have another beer (though I was preparing to part) were premeditated to keep me there until her boyfriend showed up to make “the scene” that was pre-rehearsed by him and her as some surreal, warped-world stab at psychological domination (perhaps, first me, others down the road).

I also feel that their “scene” went out the window when, instead of becoming some pickle in the middle, I stood my own ground prepared to do total battle for the truth and my own reputation.

I could be wrong.  But I have a deep psychic postmonition otherwise.

I’ve seen it before: some really cool people get warped into doing/saying strange things by the fling of a bizarre relationship.   It’s just a shame when good people cease to be real.

Just going to sit back, metaphorically, for awhile and enjoy the beauty around me. 

I could (instead) rant, rave, and make claim to ‘my share’ (totally contextual) at any and every given whim of need.  Or I could hit big on all the hotties I run into and make them all smile and get coy in deflecting my erotically meta-poetic advances.  Or I could concoct great elaborate schemes and promulgate them skillfully, taking some in with persuasion, making the rest shut-the-fuck-up in disbelief of my rat-tat-tat-tat eloquence.  Or I could ‘be the man’ and conjure excitement from the jaws of a yawning donkey exclaiming “boredom only exists in the minds of the boring.”  Or I could run around screaming “the world is whacked, the world is whacked, the world is whacked,” and probably win enough converts to my crusade to populate a newly-improvised mental institution.    Or I could study earthquake prediction and probably become so proficient at it that I could run a marathon and win, knowing beforehand that and where and just when a 9 on the Richter would release, and expecting everyone else in the race to desist-cease as I intrepidly jog along (hopping faults) to the finish line.  Or I could invent things in my mind that nobody’s ever thought of and amuse myself with them while laughing at the veritable truth that an unexpressed mind is a wonderful waste.  Or I could hack terrorist Muslim websites and deface their Allah-bingeing portals by proclaiming the Papacy as the unvirtual Dark Star that gravitously sucks all spirituality into its dooming slurp.  Or I could drive halfway around the world to find a Red Lobster Restaurant, don’t eat but imbibe suitable liquids copiously at the bar, flirt madly with the sexy bar girl, scream like a banshee when the penultimate premonition of imminent cosmic victory overcomes me, and then mop the floor at the end of the night to redeem myself in the eyes of the God-fearing.  Or I could just sit in the dreamy cemetery at sunset upon the steps to the tomb of the Unknown President  and imagine what nobody else could ever imagine, knowing that they are imagining me imagining what they believe they themselves never can.  Or I could “Or I could” nearly almost forever…

But I’m just going to sit back, metaphorically, for awhile and enjoy the beauty around me.  Instead. 

I was lounging inspirationally in Dreamland

under an incredible spring blue sky and dominant Sun,

upon a Whitmanesque expanse of uncountable blades of grass
(urging me to give witness with deep breaths and exaltations),

affront a massive granite obelisk soaring to the beyond,

about to compose a poem upon ‘Serious Play’,

when a girl in a pink thong and matching pink bra

came up to me to say: “Dream happy in Dreamland, baby.”

Considering that my thoughts about serious play

and the vision of a girl thonged-pinkly precisely overlapped

(sexual desire being the source of much playfulness,

attention to all the intricacies of pleasure requiring some seriousness),

I offered her a beer and beckoned her to stay

(never can too much of such inspiration ever get in the way).

“Would love to, baby.  Would love to…”
 Then, like a surge of cogent energy in rapid transit, she simply disappeared. 

(As quick as a text message on a cell phone flashes on, flashes off.)

Holy fuck.  I almost gave a beer to an apparition.

Yet her wishes of happy dreaming remained

as I drank her  beer and imagined her pink bra and thong cast

passionately aside upon luxuriant blades of grass.

(…Whitman himself would have roaringly admired

the resulting embracing lust of us.)

I don’t know what was naughtier—

the fact that you misbehaved with me so deliciously

serving me up my long-awaited taboo communion

or the fact that you laughed and boisterously recounted all

so immediately to all who took a listen (later at the bar)

when evidence of our panky was still fresh upon

our sated though unshowered bodies.

o baby, you rolled like a dancing dervish into this occasional tinsel town

and I was so surprised to see you I figuratively exclaimed “Fuck me!”

which you, literally, actually proceeded to do

and I was so thrilled by that  I allegorically shouted out “Fuck me!” again

which you, essentially,  factually arranged and when done proclaimed

“déjà vu”.

and when I said “I love you, baby.”
and you said “Shhhhh……

lust me now, love me when I’m gone.”

I right there then

decided I’d never love again

but just keep you around

as my belusted

(ever-lusting friend).

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.

No more awesome Spring have I witnessed in my lifetime than this one, this year.

Mid-seventies on the North Coast (Lake Erie) today in Dreamland  and already many of the blossoming fruit trees (the weeping cherry, for one) are giving up first petals to warm breezes and carpeting my running paths like a bridal aisle leading to an inevitability of a honeymooning marathon without a line of finish.

I lay about the fields of Dreamland, post-run, casting my heart-soul to the uncaptivation that is the freeness (and freshness) of Life.  Even now in late April, when showers should be about to bring the earliest of May flowers, the summery-like sunshine-heat is already pushing the May flowers (which danced like faces out of the ground in early April) aside and inducing summer wild things into precocious emergence.  That goes  not only for flowers, and buds, and bugs, but even asteroids falling out of the sky.  Or maybe this last mention was just the gimlet sighting of an alien spaceship with a fiery tale coming to Earth to check out the wicked pubescence of a Spring that’s already lost its virginity bigtime.

I’m playing my part: already running, yearning, howling like a (wannabe) madman entrained by the imminent march of a summertime orb Sun-Ra across this odyssey called Unleash-Me Sky.  Twenty miles fleet-footed (ran, in the common vernacular) over the last three days.  My feet are dancing, dancing.   And there is a spider orchid (Brassia) blooming somewhere observing from afar my most peculiar vivacity.

Are you doing your part?  Are you craving?  Are you crazed?  Are you pregurgitating the beach-baked pheromones of love?  Are you jolding (Spanish, for holding) hotly yet with the one that yearns (that you yearn) to jold (you) tight? 

Better in this accelerated season of effulgent life to be too alive to be scripted than predictably described as the one who methodically turns off the last house light at night.

written from Dreamland, mid-day April 30.