This is an old, old lil' piece I wrote long ago after a certain dream I had that has been fresh on my mind of late. Hippie at heart and always a fan of recycling, I thought that I'd go ahead and repost it here.

On Love

I had a dream the other night that I fell madly in love (and it was the good reciprocal kind of love) with some foolish geeky boy in a popular band.

I don't know what band it was, or what kind of band. It wasn't a real band or referencing a real band. The boy wasn't anyone I know, nor have I ever seen. He was a purely invented dream character. He wasn't that attractive or anything, but for some reason he was crazy about me, and I was crazy about him.

It was doomed from the start. The first time I saw him in the dream he was asleep in a bed with a 15 year old girl. He went on tours and had groupies and all that shit. I knew this. I didn't care. And it wasn't the "not caring" of the blind denial and defiance variety (i.e. this is fucked but maybe, maybe, maybe he'll change and/or it'll work out this time fucking insanity) but the not caring of full awareness, acceptance, and a two-fisted embrace of the Moment. I knew it was only gonna last for a little while, and that was okay. In the dream, I knew we had two weeks. And this was good enough. It was worth it. I wasn't concerned with tomorrow or the future or what it means and will we get married and how will it work. When he showed up in the dream, I was overjoyed and it was fun and wonderful. When he went away, the dream went on in other directions. I wasn't forlorn and lonely and scared and suspicious and fearful... I was simply doing whatever I was doing.

It was a good dream.

Permission was granted to be in love for a while last night, in my sleep. It was one of the greatest dreams I've had in a long time. Simple. The magical thing about it was the feeling. It was so good. I got to have that feeling you get when you're just crazy about somebody, and you know they're crazy about you, and you're not sweating the future of what it means or what it will be. You're just filled with light, and letting the love out with total abandon and there's a feeling of so much fucking joy you think you'll burst. The feeling was so fragile and vulnerable, but in a playful way. Like a shining wet bubble, it had a short but glorious life span, and the whole thing just passed by like the sound of a distant giggle on the breeze. A most glorious dream.

I've been working a lot on cultivating fearlessness when it comes to matters of the heart. I'm sick and tired of feeling shame, shame, shame. All the time, for no reason, or for good reason. Whatever the reason, I'm done.

I asked Jesus in George Marshall chatbot what love was... and this is what that AI muthafucka had to say:

"Sometimes I think love is just a biological urge. Other times it seems like a spiritual quality. Love, unlike energy or matter, seems limitless."

I love this world. And it feels kinda like this:




Taken on a blue blue bad blue day... in a mall in Valencia, California, USA.

I love this world... however...

I am reaching a wall, a serious roadblock, in my ability to communicate and my fear of intimacy with the world at large. I hide. I have been having strong desires to place my head in a door jam and slam the door on my head until it is a bloody mess. I'm not kidding. I am hungry for the real and am doubting everything in my mind... I have got to get through this fear. Fear of being an idiot, fear of having nothing to say, fear of opening my mouth and having nothing to offer but puke and farting noises. It must be okay. Fail better, more, with joy. Fail. Shamelessly.

My physicist friend says that I lack faith. Faith that there is something for me here, now... in this dimension.

Belief in Transcendence is an insult to what is.

I am a big phony and I hide behind revolutionary and dangerous SOUNDING ideas that I am very comfortable with... just as I became a master of self-derogatory humor to pull off the seeming appearance of Radical Honesty without having to get to close to my true self. I have built walls around my thoughts and feelings and I am working on busting 'em up. I need help. I need correspondence. And I need to stop having any desire to impress others in any way, so I will admit, up front, that I am a fool. And I'm not saying that to be cool. I am a selfish ass. I know this.

I also suffer from profound spiritual hunger. But I am too much of a coward to sacrifice myself completely to the immolating flames of humility. The smashing of ego is the most painful prospect ever... August Strindberg described it as "spiritual suicide."

What was it you said that was so gall-darn brilliant?
I’d give anything to remember how you put it so beautifully!
I just can’t seem to remember any of the wonderful
things you say! gee, that’s funny!

You have the most interesting way of seeing things!
Imagine! Approaching the whole world like a cold toilet!
I can’t remember exactly how you worded it at the time,
but I have the distinct impression of paying close
attention. like a child does…

there is no pain greater than your pain there is no
laughter greater than your laughter there is no reason
to believe that what you are doing is not the greatest
act there is no person I’d rather fumble about with
these are only some of the things in discovering in
learning

how is it when I see you coming I am not struck down
dead trampled on killed a hundred times by my own purple
meanness baseness eaten and my flesh pecked off by birds?
Why is that? I think you told me once.

(Gordy Amede)

The poetic version is that what was once a beautiful and organic process of two lives existing in relation to each other and two people moving along a common path solidified and became an inorganic struture of obligation and rules and regulations, and I revolted.

Truth is, things got fucked up. I hated what I became. I hated what I was doing. It's a long story.

The short version, I suppose, is that he became more of my friend than my lover, and I didn't ever want to see the look in his eyes when the shit hit the fan. So I left.

Truth is, the relationship was heavily codependent; we lived together for 7 years, from the time I was 17 to 24. In a lot of ways I never grew up. Then one day I wanted to find out who I was. The day I left, I moved up to my grad school campus and sat in the woods that night, crying and shrieking. The realization of how alone and unknown I was, to my very own self was disturbing. I didn't know what kind of food I liked. I didn't know what I liked to do. I didn't know anything. I was a stranger to myself.

So, I've been spending the last few years trying to figure out who I am, when I am not the dancing monkey, entertaining for peanuts and personal validation.

Ooohh ahhh... dramatic.

The lame version: things got ugly and I split. We're still friends. He thinks I'm way too hard on myself. He still loves me, I still love him. He wishes I wouldn't be so hard on myself.

So... after all that:

Love is?

Anyone?

Anyone?

"The Silent Yes"

Last night's dream:

I was working undercover and entered into a huge game being played by thousands of youth world-wide called "The Silent Yes", the purpose of which was to weed out fascistic tendencies in the youth and to test their decision-making powers in complex situations.

First I entered a locker room decorated with propaganda posters celebrating the winning teams, shunning the losers, and advertising missing children. The posters were all red and white and had "YES/NO" and "YES OR NO?" emblazoned upon them, along with graphics of planes dropping bombs, people screaming, or flowers and puppies and peace signs. Every decision within the game was a Catch-22; situations in which some population stood to suffer whatever the decision would be... such as, a plague would be released on a neighboring village if residents of the already-infected village was not exterminated quickly... WHAT DO YOU DO? Whatever the youth teams decided would actually happen. Genocides, wars, etc.

I was given a new name (my sister's name, Jaimee) and some money to get started in the game. Before I'd even entered the playing field, I made my first mistake and made eye contact with a more advanced player. Eye contact with any player who had been in the game longer than you was against the rules, so it was safest to never make eye contact with anyone, ever. This of course made it very difficult to solve a crime within the game, due to the fact that I couldn't identify anyone very well without risking "losing".

"Losing" was awful. There were these pixie-like creatures that were about 1 foot high, reddish colored, and rather beautiful. They had elegant, delicate hands with long, slender fingers and incredibly sharp nails. Whenever anyone broke the rules, a Pixies would be released on them and while a gentle wave of their hands their sharp nails would literally split the "loser" right open. The Pixies would playfully swat at the bodies in innocent glee while skin and guts spewed everywhere and the person was instantly killed in an incredibly gory manner.

Whenever someone had a "birthday" there would be a huge party in which all of their best game moves would be shown in a cinematic montage on a giant movie screen. Every single thing that anyone did was videotaped.

The point of the game truly was to find the few pure, peaceful souls in the world that could make the right peaceful, loving decisions even in the face of tremendous pressures and hardships. Only these people would have the ability to speak The Silent Yes... and it was the Silent Yes that could save us all.

And after all that..

I dreamed that my tortoise died. :-(

Inspired by David Hurlin's latest entry on his Dynamics of the Drum blog:

"where telepathy fosters the radiance of self sufficiency"

that is the place! the placeless place. the where its at, with it being nothing at all. the hole. the void. the empty room.

all day i have felt like crying. "who's pain is this?" i ask. methinks i am like a sponge, soaking up the feelings of others.

last night i dreamed of exploring a deep cave half-filled with crystal water. we were wading through. something in me knew that the water was sorrow. beautiful, perfect, perpetually flowing sorrow.

i also dreamed of being bitten by an adorable vampire puppy.

of what will we dream tonight, friends?