Xangamnesia.  Yes, I completely forgot about Xanga.  (So sorry to those who absolutely hang-on-xang.)

So the question is: Was I living completely in the Real World?  Or Another Reality? 

To me, the real world is another reality.  And, now that I've finally had a taste of it, I find it quite an exciting other rarity.

For example:  I just went shopping in a major chain supermarket and saw, took in, and consumerically absorbed absolutely everything and every body.  I went there to buy nothing and I consumed everything.  I was the supreme black-hole consumer.  My shopping hunger ingested salads; wine racks; clam bakes; toilet paper; generic and brand-name cat food; overly tall and thin business-type housewives; cute and petite girls out poking red, raw cuts of beef; dirty vents on the ceiling--some dirtier than others; a child saying "blah, blah, blah" and the mother agreeing that the person of interest to the child was, indeed, dressed funny;  cheese - both the cheapest and the most expensively aged; blue-eyes, blond-haired, and seductively effervescent: sxy; at least 40 varieties of mushrooms; a spare bug still flying around in this summery post-summer indoor stomach-trap; a cop that I noticed precisely while the store speakers blared the song "I fought the Law, and the Law won"; fish balloons; 26 check-out cashiers and bag-packers all at one common-fated, corporate-dictated, yet individually-rebellious once, once once; coffee creamer; only three whole turkeys in a freezer; a businessman whose tie was swingless; no shoplifters but plenty of security cameras; blood-death-meat inviting me to stare at it; juicy-juice; life-eyes-brown purposely avoiding my gaze; sxy, sxy, sxy - but where were the flowers? ; the honey?

I didn't spend even a penny. 

But I supremely unleashed my hunger and perfectly consumed it all.

For one brief shining moment, my spirit encountered pure commodities and their seekers.

Yet, still I wonder what I missed. 

Who among us truly knows what it's like to run with the wind...

     like the wind...

          as the wind?

Dwell not like death amidst the dead.  That's what, and perhaps all, I know.

Instead, dwell like life amidst the living...

          dwell as life.

Despite the looming gloom of doom and unforseen crises waiting to pounce, I am yet in awe of all the beauty in this world.

And take it, henceforth, as my duty to attempt to describe, perpetuate and celebrate it all.

And after describing the merriment of chasing the first and last leaf to fall in the already Autumn, take in the magnificence of the first snowflake of an oncoming season colliding ever so lazily with the outreach of a young child's tongue.

Oh my God.

What, if i suddenly and mystical-mysteriously dream-realized that i held the ultimate leash on all the life-affirming, muse-yearning, nature-nurturing yet entirley captively repressed female psychic energy in our dear world earth? 

And all i had to do to bestow paradigm-changing liberation to the ever-loving, ever-ready matriarchal hyper-pulse is . . . 

Release.

And i decide to . . . simply Release. 

And even if i later find my "realization" to be entirely delusional and self-confusional, at least, given my state of mind, i tell myself  "i did the right thing."  Right?

Thank goddess i'm not besieged by gender-tainted megalomania.

This isn't really a post. 

It's just a constructed niche.

Something stuffed with the filler of a few words.

A few words that will later be replaced with other words.

Such purported other words hopefully to consist of an inspired vision of other worlds.

Or maybe just a simple expression of joy in partaking of earthlife.

I'm flu-sick.  But mending.  Waiting for the head-fog to dissipate.  And waiting for this small adventure called me to resume its irregular non-scheduled non-program - forever in progress.

There once was a golden, unfailing tomorrow that was pledged and oh-so promised.  I thought it was promised to me. But, perhaps, I was the promiser.  Or were we co-promisers pledging one to the other?  Did you find your tomorrow?  Did it come through?  Did it come true?  Perhaps my pledge was just a cry in your wilderness.  A cry heard by others - with you, attended to.   Perhaps my wilderness was just a projection of my dreams - with the cry I heard just the fleeting, teasing witness of that ole Coyote.

My poor tomorrow.  It crept like a lame-feigning runner toward a distant, already-abandoned finish line.  It crept like a social coward away from a mess of interpersonal confrontation.  It crept like a night crawler into a dark place untouched by a sunrise of illuminating fruitions.  My poor tomorrow, alas, couldn't (especially) keep a good (wo)man down.

So, what's up, buttercup?   Whad'ya say?  It's time to kick some tomorrow-kissing ass.  Warrior-style today.

I am sunset over  Dreamland.

Dreamland, the enchanted cemetery.

(see profile pic.  also: background is a japanese maple in autumn in Dreamland)

emphasize the over .

I am over  Dreamland.

By the way, though it appears I was taking a pic of the Sun in the profile, the Sun was actually assimilating me.  My journey was never with Dreamland, but through  Dreamland.  I journey, as all Earth creatues do consciously or otherwise, with the Sun.

May you, too, soar through your own Dreamland toward/ into your vision of the Golden Eternity.  Or the Matrix.  Whatever.

I am SO lonely in some mysterious way.  Ha.  I've never felt this way before.

But instead of thinking that I need immediate human intimacy, something (perhaps, the Collective Unconscious) screams the Great Mother.

You ask, "What does that mean?"

What, indeed.  I once read of the Great Mother in the Tao Te Ching,  But there was no screaming then.  Only a re-initiation into the mystical.

Supremehood.  Golden Eternity.  The Dream of the Earth.  The Patient Dance of the Cosmos. 

"If the human is microscosmos, the cosmos is macroanthropos. We are each the cosmic person, the Mahapurusha, the Great Person of Hindu India, expressed in the universe itself."  - Thomas Berry

Oh yes,  And something (perhaps, the Collective Christian Conscience) shouts Jesus.  But Jesus only whispers of his love.  I don't like screaming and shouting.  I wish I could just whisper my love like Jesus does his and accept life's mysteries as quiet nurturing moments of the Great Mother.

I have a serious character defect.  It's called "having a predilection for avoidance behavior".  But I don't want to talk about it.

"Leona Helmsley's dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum. But two of Helmsley's grandchildren got nothing from the late luxury hotelier and real estate billionaire's estate.  Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court."  -CNN

This is disgusting.  She was a billionaire and she's leaving only $12 million to her dog?  Beloved my ass.  Her dog was on her million dollar shit list.  I wouldn't at all be surprised if she left a cool billion or two to some yak put up in a Hemsley resort in Peru.  Some yak named Disaster, no doubt.  If I were Trouble, I'd fight the extradition to her side in the mausoleum after I died.  In fact, if I were Trouble, I think I'd go visit that mausoleum right now and lift my leg and pee on it.  Or if I were female Trouble, just squat on it and pee.  Yeah, I'd give her trouble for all the trouble leaving me only $12 million is going to make for me.  I'd take some of the $12 million, establish my own mausoleum in a pet cemetery, and craft a will that would have her exhumed and buried under the steps to my mausoleum after I  died.  Then I'd have my survivors given the rest of my measly millions only if they would visit my mausoleum at least once a year and pee on the steps.  

Our culture is in so many ways just pathetic.  For instance, only a pathetic culture has an erectile dysfunction industry.  A vibrant culture would have no need of such an industry - the vibrations of the culture itself would provide enough additional stimulation to make such dysfunction rarer and certainly not industry-fixatable.  And a truly high-driving, libido-liberating culture might well have an erectile hyperfunction problem.  Imagine a culture with a multi-billion-dollar industry that markets a drug or a treatment to lessen the manly hyperdrive.

I will divulge a secret I've never shared before.  Much of my adult life I have been naturally erectile hyperfunctional.  I was familiar with the term and condition called priapism long before it reached the airwaves on advertisements for Cialis and such.  There were days and days and days when I'd go about constantly sexually ever-excited.  Not merely excitable, but fully excited.  Well, I lived in a truly high-driving, libido-liberating culture, you might say.  Even if that culture was just my own personal mindset, my own idiosyncratic world outlook.  But perhaps it wasn't just merely  a world of my own sexual projections.  I could also speak of erotic psychic undulations and mysterious sexual inundations that ripped a hole for me in our common and consensualized notion of 'reality'.  Preternatural influxes, real enough (that is, distinctly non-imaginary), that hyper-sexualized my life for a long time in this world.  I could.  But I'm still a little too close timewise to that crazy multisensory energy to put it into properly reflecting words.

The good news is that I'm now merely properly and normally functional.  Not hyper, not dys.  Just a normal guy, finally.  It's so great to be normal.  So great.  I can hardly believe that I can now truthfully brag that I'm just a normal guy.  What a relief!

I'm going to have to disappoint the world.

And not succomb.  And not self-destruct.  And not fade-away.  And not lose my soul.  And not not lead the way.

As if, the fate of humanity depended on it.  As if, my decision to disappoint will stave of  Brahma's next birthday (death's earthday).  As if, I ride upon a horse and feel every stretch of every sinew beneath me.

I have broken the code of the intellect.  And the code of base desire, too.  Broken, not as in violate (though surely I'm not exemptable of such charges), but broken as in broken though.  C.G. Jung provided me the game plan.  America, the gameday.  MVP was the slogan "Let Freedom ring."   Done rung the bell.  ding-a-ling.  ding-a-ling.  Gone straight to the heart - where all thoughts are feelings, and all feelings, thoughts.

"Red Rover, Red Rover, let Stephen come over!"

Let, indeed.  But don't try to restrain me.  I've no desire.  Nor intent to either join or hurt you.

In other news...

I am well.  Still a running fool.  Feel like I'm trapped in a twenty-something body.  But I'll get over that.

Work is good.  Overwhelming in quantity but not in scope.  I've the the scope in tow.  So I'm not getting it all done, but what I accomplish is Qual.  If I were the simplest of men, I'd throw myself entirely into my work and be happy ever after.  Such simplicity I yet strive for.

Financially, I'm near ruined.  But I see that as an opportunity to acquire the nickname of 'the Comeback Kid'.

My daughter is more beautiful than ever and is a warrior-princess. 

My wife is a born-again-Christian whose constant mantra is that Satan release his hold on me.

I've lost almost all my friends.  Perhaps, it had to be.  Such a perilous journey have I been.  Too perilous to expect company.  Some say I've driven my friends off.  I've no response to that.  Except to say, if I yet had friends, I'd love them too much to have them stay true to me.  Alas, I am your American Odyssey.

Love is.  Love is all around. Though I am unmoved, may love leap and joy abound.

"Don't be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him."
    -Jelaluddin Rumi 

Only the madman fears the end of madness.

Only the addict fears the end of addiction.

Only the covetous fear the end of "things".

"The end of madness?   Impossible."

"The end of addiction?  Impossible."

"The end of  covetous 'things'?  Impossible."

But it is only the lost ones who fear "the impossible".

A mountain man was once asked if he ever got lost.  "No," he answered, "I've never been lost.  But sometimes for a week, a month, or even a longer spell or two, I didn't know how to get where I was going."

The true explorer finds himself not uncomfortably cast into the unknown while seeking bearings.

It is better to embrace a truly glorious destination that sometimes seems impossible to reach than to trudge in the well-trudged ruts of madness, addiction, and "things" that lead the multitudes nowhere with nothing to hope for.

Update:  Ha!  John has truly humbled me by his response to my post below.  I'll provide his response, then you can see the glaring mis-assumptions I made.  Sorry, John.

"Incidentally, DoSomething.org is a non profit devoted to helping young people volunteer and do good in the world. We are donating our time and traffic to their cause, because it seemed like the right thing to do."

- John

John is the corporate CEO-type for Xanga.  In certain past times, I have been both a confidante and friends with him.  And I have also been, at certain past times, his greatest on-Xanga nemesis.  I'm feeling a bit nemesisal now with Xanga.  (yes, nemesisal  is a new word that I just coined and not in any dictionaries.  But you know what I mean.  So who needs dictionaries?!)  And feeling so, I left this comment on a recent John blog:

Do you know what I really need?

If you do and care to oblige, don't bother commenting.  Just show up and deign somehow to fulfill.

Ha ha.

Of course, all <above> is just bullshit.

For,  "nothin' is plenty for me."  Remember that song: "I've got plenty of nothing..." ?  I keep sinking more deeply into the cast of those brilliant lyrics.  " Nothin' is plenty for me."   I repeat: Nothin.

is plenty for me.

Well, perhaps (we'll see), that, in fact, we're off to see the Wizard.  Or, perhaps alternately, we're on the road to the Blue Scout that Carlos Casteneda invoked in his exploration of "The Art of Dreaming".  (yes, I'm unclearly feighning here a measure of academic esotericism comparable, if not exceeding, that of Ezra Pound in his authoring of the historically controversial Cantos.)

We're off... Game on.  I do believe that every flag (American or otherwise) waving in the wind (that ever blows where it pleases - T. Merton) at this very nowness of instance waves uniquely in a way that no other flag has ever done or ever could or ever will.

And if a flag can be so, how beyond description thus every one of you.

I just said "I love you." in a few too many words.

Amendfully (Amanda-fully? Amanita-fully?), always lovin ya (beyond question.) 

For the first 18 years of my life, though a creature, I loved books more than other non-family creatures.  And all that I dreamed about was becoming a creature that would someday write a book.

But creatures are made for other creatures. 

I've never read a book with another creature.  Other than with my mom who read to me at a very young age.

Someday I'd love to just sit leisurely and read a good book with a good friend.  And discover our selves through that shared enjoyment.

Life is always so strange and always so funny.  But this I know: when I run, every step brings a new mind set - there is no 'static' in my life, no 'given' filter that mediates the rawness of the constant flow of our fully ungraspable existence.  I take allness in, as best as I can, as allness presents  itself to me.  And then I exhale. (I have not forgotten yet.)  As such I am an inventor.  And I invent the each and every changing infusion of now in every quarking quake of our passage in these our myriad dimensions of sustained spirithood (sisterhood, yes, sisterhood!).

I suck at business.  I suck with money.  I'm just a romantic.  But I'm the most dangerous romantic that's ever engaged in romance.  Ha!  

Me to myself:, thinking about today and yesterday:  "Things are going to be different now ."

Myself to me, reflecting on yesterday: "But weren't they different then ?

My higher power ( no not Freud's 'superego' - but maybe a vision of a native american spirit-eagle - Paracelsus - the Holy Spirit ): "No they are the same ."

Oh, by the way, this is the most meaningful and the most important post that I've ever blogged.

And I've been here for 7 years. (Time for Spock to have sex?)

I've been deluged with psychic stirrings lately and have had convincingly concommitant phenomenal corroboration of their concurrence with the experiential world.

In other words, I'm dream-envisioning again.  And the visions are right on.

Given yourself and what you know about yourself, when last have you had the sense of being at your most "intense self"?  In the movies in the '30s and '40s, plots often depicted "heavies" - James Cagney types - who were always the most damned intense of characters.  Now, few of us are "heavies" in that sense, but given the full gamut of your personal self-expression, there certainly are times when you are "heavier" and even the "heaviest " you.  Is not the "heaviest" you your most "intense self"? 

Examining my whole life, I'm now feeling very comparatively intense.  And I only expect the intensity to grow.  But I'm also feeling most relaxed just now.  Relaxation in action.  Let it go.

For the longest time of my adulthood, I have had a sense of my life as consisting of an unrelenting challenge and quest of true epic proportions: an odyssey.  And consistent with that sense, I have conducted myself boldly, intrepidly, fearlessly, even at times recklessly - attempting to be equal to the quest, worthy of my great calling.

But what was this great calling?

Success? Achievement?  Discovery?  Of what?

William Blake provided us both the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience.  My odyssey definitely has always seemed to be a song from the latter song book: dark, mysterious, dangerous, ongoing.

Imagine a child who has a wondrous life.  This is, perhaps, not so hard for many of us, I believe, have recollections of childhood wondrousness.  Imagine this child a prodigy.  Or genius.  Or, perhaps, a borderline genius or quasi-prodigy.  Bright.  Perhaps the child is just bright!  In any case, what makes this child's life wondrous is her realization that the world is magical and transcendent - and, as such, ineffable.  Moreover, there is a vital niche in this wondrous world for this child - and she has found it.  It is, simply, just for the living. And living is breathing.  And living is loving.

A day comes in this child's life, however, when the child realizes that, though the magic and transcendence will never depart, her awareness and being-in-touch with its manifest wondrousness must go hidden.  Go hidden: you set down the Songs of Innocence and learn of the the Tyger burning bright in the night - with what immortal hands and eyes framing fearful symmetries.  But as the child goes hidden, she extracts a promise from her 'future self' to someday rediscover 'her' and the wondrousness of this being-in-touch, this living as magical as loving.  To rediscover the 'before-going-hidden' after the Songs of Experience have been sung out and it is time to traverse to the excitement of the next song book.

But what is the next book of songs?  Blake gave us Innocence and Experience.  What follows that?  Or is there a synthesis of these two?

It cannot be the re-experience of Innocence.  That's merely the fantasy of reliving one's childhood.  Fun, but futile.

It cannot be the Experience of re-innocence.  That's merely the fantasy of the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Captivating and de-clawing.

I now view both as merely recipe books.  The Songs of Innocence providing a recipe for frosting, the Songs of Experience providing a recipe for cake.  Children are more enarmoured of the sweet, adults more concerned with the substrate.  Learn of both and take from both: then bake a cake and frost it. And lick the frosting off the frosting spoon (for the child extracted a promise from his 'future self'.  And this 'future self', coming into the now, rediscovers the wondrousness of being a being-in-touch.). Then have a piece of your own frosted cake.  Let Innocence and Experience become synchronous: enjoy the overlap and the underlap in the same moment.  And realize that any odyssey is just a piece of (future)(frosted) cake.

I've been hotdogging-out lately.  That is, eating too many hotdogs and developing a reputation at work for such.

Just remember you become in the image of the god you worship.

On the financial front, I've just gotten some good news.  Which is notable only because of the endless string of bad financial news that had beset me for a long time.

I just spent a month in a hospital facility.  It was needed and I am much better now.  I ran 5 miles everyday and got a decent suntan in the outdoor confines of that medical land. 

"The true repo man repos himself above all else."    - Tao Te ChaChing$$

So I find myself once again transformed-reborn-revamped.

Hold on...  let me switch to simple talk. 

That's better.

I'm just sitting around and watching my cat clean itself.  I've never seen a cat lick its own butt, nor am I currently viewing that.   I've seen dogs do that--but never a cat.  Am I observationally deprived or is this a valid conclusion?

Anyway, I now realize I've been ignorant for a long time of my own ignorance.  Such arose from a world-view that I had adopted that was less than all-inclusive.  What was omitted?  The tenderest of all concerns: imaginative empathy for all sentient beings.  'All' being the keyword.  And even more: an inability to recognize and truly appreciate empathy in others, especially when intended for me.  Poor notforprophet.  Much less impoverished now with this knowledge of my previous ignorance.

In one corner, sex, romance, money, and drugs.

And in the other corner, truth and compassion.

It seems that I've switched corners.  SRMD is just old and so hypely oversold.

I'm now heading out of the house for a 40 minute T&C training run.  That's right: I've broken out of my habituated Dreamland (Cemetery) running ground routine and am running among the living once again.  Oh, Dreamland running is still available to me - I actually ran 5.3 miles there yesterday.  I've simply just expanded my potential running course to include the rest of the world.  Now if only the cars, trucks, and buses will stay out of my way....

I have been stripped by the lie-lashing winds, washed by the septic-banishing rains, and dried by the truth of the Sun.

Thus cleansed, I have come back into the essential arena of sobriety once again -  after so many rip-van-winkle years.

I am once again fully awakened.

Finally, I am ready for this quest of everlasting love and the challenge of immediate combat.

Though evil might yet deign to doom, I find the looseness of being-in-the-world most becoming.

I have learned this lesson: to whisper sweetly and genuinely to the deers, while yet howling earnestly like a wolf seeking wolfdom :: Treat all with compassion, strive for truth.

To paraphrase (with poetic license) a now much-forgotten thinker:

"You have nothing to lose but your chains.  And you have a world to win."

As a youth, I thoroughly despised that thinker. And I attempted to crush his every claim with the weapon of my sharp and witty intellect.   But now I find that my poetically-licensed paraphase from the end of his manifesto - if taken out of its old and discredited political context and applied solely to my current personal context - rings most elegantly true.

Ponder the sound of one hand clapping celebrating the occasion of one link snapping.

Over the last 9 months, I have downgraded my blogging from a rage of ever-manic prance and prowl - of outrageous and intrepid poetic burstforths - to pretty much just droll plebian utterances.   And I have noticed that you have noticed by not taking much notice.  You see, I have intentionally slipped and slided away, so that you won't miss me when I'm gone.  And by the response lately, I judge that my strategy has, indeed, been masterful. 

How fascinating it has been to mix into this (our) Oblivion (yes, the oblivious shall inherit post-doomsday, and post-doomsday shall inherit the fruit on that other tree: the hyper-visonary, meta-eroticized, extra-insalivating, delve-into-the-post-deluvian-deluge {why didn't Eve wait until sunrise when the sighting for plucking would have been better?} Permitted Fruit.

I love you all.

Will see ya in that other Dreamland - the land of numinously non-evanescent, refreshingly effervescent, unimaginably everlasting, yet undeniably evershining Golden Eternities.  

Ready or not.  Here I go.

Happy galactic fortune-hunting to all of you.

And thanks for all the fish.

I have tried for many years to get into trouble.  Big-time-go-ahead-and-fuck-me trouble.

But fuck my silver-wish-upon-a-supernova spoon.

I have tried so fucking hard, harder than I even ever ran a marathon or the equivalent challenge up and down the glacial uplifts of Dreamland for hours and hours in 100 degree Fahrenheit heat.

But did I ever get into trouble?  Despite how hard I tried?

Fuck no.

And why not?

I don't expect you to know, so I'll provide you the answer to which I'm most privy and others are to various degrees ambivalently party:  The powers abounding have kept me out of trouble. Every incredibly unexcusable time.  I should have been hammered at, and busted, and institutionalized at least a hundred times absolutely and another hundred times on mere, but warranted, suspicion.  But I  always, always, always got excused, exonerated, overlooked, passed-over, another-chanced.  

Why? 

Because.  Because they (the powers deservingly devious and delirious and destiny-protecting yet obscure and ubiquitously abounding) expect me to lead. 

Lead?   E Pb unum?

Leeeaaaad.  And soon.   Us (me, too, and et. al...) intrepidly out of this involute conundrum of America...going...going...gone. 

What an insane expectation.  Really.  But regardless.

And  lead how?

If I told you,  you'd have to kill me.

Oh, yes, and by the way, I'm incredibly well-off.  Haven't always been so - only for the last 24 years.  Unimaginably wealthy.  In possession of treasures beyond estimation.

The above declaration is irrepressibly true.  However, it's  truth value hinges critically on what standard you use to measure wealth. 

Do you remember that one brief shining moment of bliss in your life?
(What do you mean "which one"?  You've had more than one ??)
Hey, but if you can't, don't fret. 
Better days are yet
(pre-eternity)
to come.

I promise.

Blogging every-driven-unavoidable day is just fine? 

Anyone who blog's less than that is blog-dispossessed? 

Blog-bondage, anyone?

Bondage?  Bondage of any sort?  Even sexual (which I've never experienced) ? 

No thank you.

I'd rather be free.

I'd rather be me.

You can court calamity to avoid disaster. 

Or you can ride the roller coaster at the amusement park.

Which choose you?

I once loved the most beautiful woman - so radiant, were you my dear, and so alive. 
It was for then, and it was forever.  
(awesome you were, as awesome as the mortal-I could so impossibly come to remotely imagine.)
Such was the wildest of my wild soaring dreams.
But, looking back, I now believe.  I now believe.  I now believe.

"Hey you bastards, I'm still here!"

     - Papillon

I wish...

I just wish...

And then I wish some more.

I used to believe that true love and romance could be discovered and fluently facilitated  via web, blog, and online communities.  I don't anymore (and not merely for myself, but in a broader social sense.)

I still do believe that adroit use of web, blog, and online communities can promote romantic thrusts.  But I also believe the failure rate of such becoming lasting and true is much greater than those otherwise arranged. 

Deceit is endemic to the web and all its bloggy-type offsprings.

You know the old saying: "What a wicked web we weave when we first practice to deceive"?

Well, with regards to romance and love at least, I do believe that WWW really stands for World Wicked Web.

My spirit and imagination are soaring once again.  And thus a new journey begins.  It kind of makes me want to instantly reinvent myself.  But too late.  So I'll go just as I am.  And make adjustments along the way.

I have the feeling that I'm traveling the world around though I've actually gone nowhere yet .  Ancient Chinese Taoists called this condition that of being the "unmoved mover" and being "the hub at the center of the wheel".  There are many cosmologies to explain such a phenomenon.  And they are all equally valid.  But not all equally simple.  Shared public knowledge always clamors for the simplest explanation.  Invoking Occam's Razor is what they call it. (But that Razor has been used so much, it certainly must be dull by now!)  Yet in the depths of your soul, you need not submit to such a demand for simplicity if an equally valid but more complex cosmology truly becomes you. 

And so complexity has become me.  And so I soar once again.  And I'm traveling the world precisely as the world travels around.

What greater adventure is there than to encounter the next door to unfolding consciouness and be offered passage hence?

I have been running and writing all winter.  Running and writing,  But not blogging.

I have finished the tale of Rumya, the eternal loving nymph of Dreamland.  And so I am finished with Dreamland.  The book is closed.

What was my thing with Dreamland, running in Dreamland, writing in Dreamland, dreaming of cavorting in Dreamland, you may ask?

Denying Death with every step.   Being the essence of Life and denying Death.

But I have finished my leg of that baton race.

Who will now take the baton from me? 

Take it smoothly like an arrow slipping off a Zen master's bow.

As if I have to post something here in order to be patent and manifest...

As if I have to comment around here in order to approach ubiquity...

Ha.

Don't you understand?  I am now in the underfabric of it all.  I am part of the 'Sign In' button you click when you log in.  I am part of the 'Save Changes' button you hover over as you ponder submitting a blog.  Every eprop issued is carried partly along through my vascular system.  Every  posted in graphic form correlates with a thump of my heart.  I am here.  Everywhere.  I am panxangic.

                                                                  ***

Buddha appeared to me the other day in majestic apparitonal form and informed me that, upon my next incarnation, I would be, first, an instantial Boddhisattva and then, by middle age, a full Buddha, the very Buddha, too.

"No thanks," I replied to his luminous revelations.

"No thanks?" said he.  "What's wrong?"

I observed the obvious: "Sir, you simply are not worthy."

I almost posted something.

But it is not yet the time.

The monkey is off of my back.

And I don't care any more.

Don't care that there's not one woman in this world that cares or attends to my sexual needs and desires.

I used to care.  I used to spend much too much of my devotable spirit/soul/mind pondering 'my dillemma'.

I used to.

And that was my monkey.

I think the monkey was on drugs.

It still probably is.

But it is now off my back.

So I simply don't care anymore.

About that.

***on another note***

Did you hear the battle call?

I heard it this morning.

Far and distant.

A far and distant call that sparks a fire in one's belly.

Better far and distant than perilously near.

It is better to hear it quixotically afar than Jericholly a'blaring at your door.

Well, it's an indisputable call for me to return to battlemode.

The damn thing is that I'm now in better shape (for battlemode) than I've been for the last 20 years.

I am indisputably in the best shape I have been in for over 20 years.

And I dare any one of my incarnated (sometimes inflated) warrior-selves of the last 20 years to challenge my fully-defensible boast.

Double-dog-dare-ya.  Go ahead.  The Master has returned to the Cave.

Some things transpired in this life of mine as of late:

I've lost 19 pounds since mid-summer.  I'm now officially back to my military (jungle fighting) weight.  And making use of clothes I haven't worn for years.

I recently won an award for hacking.  Ethical hacking,  Yeah, believe it or not, the industry considers some forms of hacking (by the 'good guys') as 'ethical hacking'.  Enough said about that. 

I've quit drinking coffee entirely.  Nor is beer any longer an adjunct to my daily activities.

I have discovered that I can actually stop running for awhile and not only get along but thrive.

I have rediscovered the joy of sleeping.

I have grown younger in desire, spirit, and mind.

I still have some severe personal handicaps hindering me from attaining even a greater degree of self-betterment, but I've got a plan for enslaving them and selling them on the world vice-slave market.

Now for the good news.  I feel like I'm about to make a great discovery.  No, don't ask me what.  It's just a feeling.  But it feels like one of those feelings that for me has always rung true.  This is self-fulfilling!  At worst, I'll discover that those feelings that for me have always rung true don't anymore.  ha!

I have come to the conclusion that truly living and blogging are inverse correlates.

So guess what I have been doing lately.

Still, there's a magic world here.  I have buried my treasues in it deeply.  Now to draw a map of it and secure it for future return ventures.

O, what does the future hold?   Can you tell me, please.

Will I be here tomorrow?  Will you?

Willing!

There is something I must do. 

Though I've been lost of late,  I've finally found my way back to my path, the path of the warrior.

Now I must slay myself.

I must crash and burn.

Can I not, like a phoenix, arise from my own ashes?   

I do believe that.  And I intend that.

For I am mindful that success awaits those who truly  intend.

I have always considered the following to be e.e.cumming's most simply expressed, richly-imaged, and starkly-beautiful poem.

I guess I'm mostly posting this for me: to get myself back into a poetry-writing mood.  I used to write and post poems here, you know.  But it's been a good, long time since the last one.

You see, it works like this:  When I see a moving, living poem (of another) up here on my blog, I begin thinking "I could have written that!"  And then, having fallen into such a self-delusional mood, I proceed more often than not, self-encouraged, to start writing my own poetry again. 

It has worked for me before.  Here's hoping it works again...

All in green my love went riding

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrows sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

So Xanga can live without me.  And I without it.  (Knowledge of new freedom is refreshing.) 

But things weren't always so.

Once upon a time, I couldn't live without Xanga.  Nor it without me (and assorted other xangarelics).  Yes, the latter claim is as true as the first one.  Or as false. 

It was grand to be part of the early Xanga experiment.  Yes, an experiment it was back in 2000-2002 when it morphed and spammed and adventured its way into the cyber-yearning hearts of us who were so amazed to see and be a part of such a sight (site). 

And now?  Xanga's a friggin institution of portentous social/financial proportions..  Insurance, insurance and more insurance lawyers law enforcement liaisons babysitting kiddie-bloggers possible takeovers forensic investigations of cybercrime controlled content constant media coverage and posturings for federation into the future Internet Hall of Fame.  If you take a moment here early in the morning, you can actually smell the freshly-wafting odor of the institutional-strength cleaner that the contracted cleaning crew uses to scrub the Xanga office toilet bowls squeaky clean.  That's a huge step up from that old Xanga office where they had to waddle across the street to the service station, borrow a key, and pee into the scummy stanky commodes that might or might not flush.  Hey, institutions have their advantages, too.

However, institutions are never magically adventuresome.   Not like Xanga used to be. 

No fault of John and the xangagods though.  They've done their best to keep it surreal. 

I wonder if anyone has named their newborn 'Eprop' yet?

shhh.  It's quiet here.   A good place to nurture thoughts in solitude.

Should I say it's good to be back on the blog ... or back in the blog again?

Probably references whether you consider the blog to be a block or a hood.  Back on the block.  Back in the hood.

I've been on many blocks and in many hoods of late.  Much too many not to lose my way.  Dark, dire, forsaken, hopeless blocks and hoods.  Lost stations halfway between the twilight of Life and the sunrise of Death.  Predators abounding, scavengers unrelenting, the fallen tossed out into cold alleys, the helpless huddling in shadows, a few bright souls passing by ever so seldom but never lingering long.  And I, watching, absorbing, learning, embracing all. 

I should have heeded the warnings: "Don't get too close."  "Don't get involved."  "You'll become what they are."

I didn't believe.  Or rather, I did believe, but also believed that I could 'unbecome' what they were - and what I might become - at the snap of my fingers. 

But I didn't realize that their fingers didn't snap.  And, if I became what they were, my fingers would no longer snap either.

To sink into a real otherworld and be sucked out of a contrived trance of non-visionary hyperthought.  Don't think, just sink.  Lower.  And lower.  Still lower.  Until the Sun rises in the land of the Dead.  And Shadows cast bodies upon the ground.

In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan?

Just don't linger too long at such a sight.  Or forget how to snap your fingers.  That or learn how to snap anew in that parallel yet darkly awful world that draws ever-closer seeking the everlasting likes of me ... and you.

My Wish

May I die in the passionate hot pursuit of all I truly believe in.

There are days when I forget to eat.  Days when I forget to run.  Days when I forget. Such forgetfulness is compelled by a fate awaiting.  The calm of forgetfulness before the storm of involvement.

Morning.  Get up and have a cup of coffee.  Watch Robin&Company on CNN News.  No, not watching the news.  Watching Robin.  And that's the Philosopher's Stone to understanding.  "The Internet", "websites", "blogs", etc. are all ridiculous fallacies.  If such fantasial constructs impact one's awareness in any pragmatic manner, then one is watching the news and not Robin.  Watch Robin.  Watch you.  Watch out - the Internet and its subdirectories are just Snake Oil Wagons from which Snake Oil is pimped.  But the Snake Oil Salesman - ah, that's a fine act to study.

Twenty six years ago today I earned an Expert Weapons Qualification Badge in the military.  Twenty six years ago today John Lennon was assassinated.  Twenty six years ago today my fascination with guns ceased.   Give me arrows and a bow.  Give me for a target an apple.  Smashing an apple at ______ (you fill in the yards) with a 4-blade razor broadhead is pure animal.

Imagine: there's no Internet.  No websites.  And no blogs too. 

Just Robins.  And arrows.  And animals.  Oh my.

The battle has ended.  That which had striven to destoy me must now seek other means.

I have become more mysterious, obscurely.

And, for now, the Tiger has my tongue.