"I choose wisely/as if nothing ever suprise me"

About four years ago, when I was living in a miniscule apartment (300 sq feet) in Seattle, and subsisting on a minimum of human contact, wondering and working to deal with this book I had written and how to put it out given that it seemed to cement the fact that I would never again be part of what I felt was going on, I hit upon an idea.

At the time I was in a state of near constant panic. Evenings saw it subside to something closer to just plain old disease. But there it was, just staring at me.

It was usually in my seriously tiny bathroom that the idea hit me. Usually while I was brushing my teeth in the shaving mirror.

"What if we never panicked ever?"

Or, "what if--assumming we're here to get/be enlightened--at some point we will have to become permanently relaxed and enter a state of constant enjoyment? And, if we'll have to start this being present/never panicking/relaxed state at some point, why not now? Why not feel every step, see every color, hear every siren and let it go immediately starting right now?"

Why wait?

I wasn't quite ready to go straight there as I had a bunch to learn still from my panic and fear--mostly that I didn't want it and it hadn't done me a lick of good my whole life--but I held on to the idea. If we are going to get better, happier, enlightened, calm, BE IN LOVE, it will have to start at some point, probably when it doesn't feel quite right, and develop into a pattern.

When I started staring down my worst fears, I had a lot of opinions on the matter. I was primarily afraid that taking this turn was irrevokable, and would render me not only unemployable but also way out, yo.

I was afraid that if I turned off that voice of "concern" in my brain I would forget things. I would be a worse person. I would hurt people. I would get dumber.

And most of these have turned out to be true in some fashion, but also nothing to worry about. One of the things I learned in my undertaking was that it wasn't the fear, or the anxiety, or the hate that was the problem, but the response to it. The fear of fear, the anxiety caused by feeling anxiety, etc. These create a feedback loop not unlike sticking a microphone into a speaker--it gets horrible very quickly.

I bring this up because after years of what essentially amounts to training, I'm starting to feel the results of my decisions. I'm starting to fall in love.

I had to get a bunch of me out of the way first, and then I had to strengthen my body enough to handle it, and I still have enough to do that I don't envision being bored, but for the first time in my life I can see, can feel, what it is like to walk around being love. Being in love. Appreciating everything. Not in a corny or superficial way, and not just striving for nice, but appreciating that all this out here is real. And how real it is.

And how relaxedly it moves. And how deep it goes. And how caring it is. And how related , and overlapping and connected, etc. Not in a my ceiling is your floor way, but in a radical march of the souls way. In a every question has as much to do with me as you way. In a you can't really go wrong way.

If you couldn't go wrong, what would you do? Slow down? Speed up? Shift gears? Shut it down? Open it up? Get into it? Drop it?

And not being able to go wrong is not the same perfection as always being right. We do have complete choice as to what we do, with who we do it (whom?), and when. And, of course, the biggest, best, baddest baller on the block--how.

As you may or may not know, I'm selling stuff on eBay to get together money to go into the studio right now. I'm pretty much a hustler frrom birth (at different times closeted do differing degrees), so I can wheel and deal, but I've never really found a way to get my money on the same page as my art, as my belief. It took too much faith.

But recently, I've been getting deeper into it.

Putting my book out at $120 was a huge leap of faith. And one I took despite almost everyone I know's advice. I'm sure once it pops people will try to paint me as greedy or it as a marketing ploy (even some of my acquaintances have questioned me on this), but I can assure you, the money side of me wanted to give the books away. Wanted to ingratiate myself to the book powers that be. Wanted to go along to get along. You grovel and supplicate.

See--just now I thought I was being distracted by an email and a couple phone calls--and even a piece of spam. But then I decided to actually look at what was there and the spam said--Get Longer Orgasms!--and I realized I'm so proper I could talk about this all day and never get to the root.

The root of this, the root of our existence is our union. Coming together to procreate. That's the reason we're all here (literally) and if we get honest about it, the reason we're all here (in various forms of love--self-love, sex, intimacy, friendship, etc). We're here to get love, be love, do love. To love love.

So why isn't this life one big love bath?

What if I told you it was, even if you don't feel it. What if I told you it couldn't be anything else and that you had/have the choice to feel it/be a part of it/enjoy it every day or opt out. What if I told you the world was perfect. And getting moreso?

If you can see it as a metaphor, we might as well talk about sex. Cause that's the root of the root.

For mutual satisfaction, which I would argue is necessary for even self-satisfaction, a man must give up on his desire to be done with it, to sleep, to give up. He must work and sweat and relax. He must resist joining with a woman he desparately wants to andf resist relaxing when the payoff is greater than anything he has known. When he does this, he gets called a man. And, similarly, those called men, are assummed to have this trait. A man must be in control, and most so when he least wants to be.

You know what, this is all bullshit. I could throw it away, but I might as well let you see the mnistakes as well. I think this is just taking me away from what I want to be doing. (Which right now could even be eating lunch). A lot of this is true, and even necessary, but still writing it down is, at best, ---