Is It the Shoes?

Okay, I was writing from a tired place so I had to take a nap. I should be able to bring it with the half-full now.

I've been having dreams about cross-country races recently and I figured out what that was today. It's me swinging (as fast as I can) to the other world that's right in front of us. The world of being, right brainedness, feeling--the world of half-full.

The world of constant blessings and overwhelming gratitude.

I was at the gym today and I remembered how much I love basketball. There's nothing like jumping back a little and letting it fly with a full follow through and watching it hit the net. Except maybe great love. And like great love, a great shot makes you want to take another. And another.

Which is only a problem is you've got 40 year old knees.

The world of being, which we inhabit, but I'd say don't fully enjoy as a tribe, is about coming from the center. About having your spring wound and just springing a little of it at a time. And winding it down more--returning to your center even more essentially--before you give any more of it up.

I personally would associate this form of being more essentially (although certainly not exclusively) with: the back (especially the lower), the lower half of your body, more sexiness, more immediacy, feeling, the great unknown, belief, letting go, and a whole range of other manifestations. Including, probably women and black folks, although I don't feel particularly credentialed to speak for or about them, being decidedly male and white.

It's also important to note that I don't think that this mode is more important, more holy or more valuable than the left brain's rationality--the dominant mode of expression and understanding in the Western world that I inhabit. I myself wouldn't choose to live a minute with much worse-built cars, more wasteful and expensive distribution systems, more erroneous accounting, less rule of law.

But I do think we have to have one be dominant--be the primary mode that we make decision from. And from what I can discern, that mode--the bigger, the more vital mode is the spiritual, the Eastern, the feminine, the abstract. It took me a long time to admit this, and my hand was basically forced on the matter, (and I still think the male, the Western, the concrete, and the rational are of extreme importance and value), but that is my current thinking. My current being.

And I make that viewpoint concrete by lifting weights and correcting my posture.

And, perhaps most important of all. Breathing in before I breathe out. Breathing in on the one and out on the two. And thinking as background or last resort. NOT, I repeat, not, as I was born to do: thinking/judging/knowing on the one, breathing out on the two and breathing in as a last resort.

I got there pretty good today. At the gym all my challenges come together. I'm under physical duress, possibly tired, maybe a little self-conscious, and surrounded by mirrors. Everyone is trying, and we all have our successes and shortcomings. My inclination is to create a pecking order and work my way up it.

But I really don't love this way of being. And in a very real sense, I know that's just what control wants us to all do. I used to think love wanted me to go up and talk to everyone, but I think it just wants me to be--not in control--and go from there.

Over the last few years I've worked my way up from totally skinny and insecure to feeling comfortable in the free weight room and doing my thing. I no longer look like I showed up yesterday most likely.

But part of my strength has manifested itself as "above" strength. Or "apart" strength. Part of me has taken on the folk on the gym who may or may not be about pecking order--on their terms. Which probably aren't even necessarily "their" terms, just the background ether and testosterone.

For a while, this was probably helpful. When I first got to the gym I was so hungry that I would have probably tried to be best friends with half the people there. Which can be quite difficult to maintain when you go three times a week and each session is punctuated with a set of repetitions every 30 seconds or so.

And in the case of women, downright distracting and weird, as I learned when the one woman I asked out there ended up becoming a trainer.

But this is one reason why I don't disparage the ego--it has lots of helpful and protective aspects to it.

It's just no way to live.

Plus, when you're constantly sizing people up, gathering information and forming opinions, you realize you're spending an awful lot of time with folks you may not even know--time not being yourself, away from love and devaluing your own stock. Not to mention looking more con-stern-ated all the time.

And this all may have even been necessary when I had wack shoes, but now that I have dope shoes, it just feels/looks/is corny.

--That sure sounds superficial.

And I am. I'm everything. I'm superficial and deep. And have plenty of mid-range too. I think that if you're aligned, it's banging on all fronts. I think it should be visible from a block away--to those who'll never even know ya. And powerfully whisper quiet and beyond inspiring to those who know you best.

I think it should be beautiful. It should look like the best. It should feel like the best, smell the best, and taste the best. And maybe not be the most eye-catching, but reward endlessly upon continued inspection and daily reflection.

I say this because for years and years I thought that my worst fear was true: that there was no way that I had enough authority to know who I should love. That what I was attracted to, what I wanted, was unholy, wrong. And that somewhere, somehow, some committee, some group of more than one, that wasn't comprised entirely of white men (as I was), some community process knew what was right for me, the individual.

This fear had me split right down the middle. And love, in my belief, was instant and guaranteed pain because it was either wanting what was wrong for you or holding your nose and eating what was "good" for you.

[And I should note here that I eat what's "good" for me to an extent that many seem to find extreme. Including broccoli, quinoa and ground beef pretty much every morning for breakfast. In fact, one of my deep seated fears when I started to get healthy was that the nature of love reflected the nature of food--that is what you liked most to eat was what was worst for you. And that real love wasn't a down and dirty, grind it our affair but something to be appreciated like some damn Art History class I took in college.]

I don't want to appreciate anything. I want to love the things I love, and feel them, and I'll do whatever is necessary, discipline-wise, to make that a solid and lasting reality.

What I've come to find, after eating a largely restricted diet for years; drinking primarily triple process filtered water; going to bed early; giving up caffeine, alcohol and sugar--including honey and most fruit sugar; and plunging forward into emotional, personal and career risk after risk; is that this just may be the price of entry to live a life unbounded by normal conventions. Conventions like work sucks, everyone feels this way on Monday morning; like no one has time for making love after a baby/two years/they get married. Conventions like life is hard. Like weekend nights are fun and the rest is so-so.

These type of disciplines (and there are other significant ones that I employ) may actually be the foundation for the type of life that we think of rock stars as living. (And if you've ever spent any time with rock stars, you know that the likelihood that they are feeling this type of life, however they're living, are slim.

I'm sure this is starting to sound a little arrogant, especially because I'm getting into comparisons, but I do have one more point to make. When I gave up cocaine, when I gave up alcohol, when I gave up smoking and sugar, an income, and pretty much all the things I gave up, I never stopped looking for the feeling, for the state of being that I was looking for when I had bleached hair, four piercings, a chain wallet and a 40 ouncer of Country Club in my hand.

Or the time I took ecstasy with four beautiful women and ended up at their place on someone's bed (you'll have to read The Love Artist book for more details, but I promise it doesn't hold a candle to real life).

I never stopped looking for what I was looking for, I was just able, by will or grace, to keep discarding the promising things that didn't work. And I threw out a lot. More than I wanted to, certainly. I went kicking and screaming. The last thing I wanted to be was alone.

And if I have found anything, and if what I have found every feeds me, it is because I have applied this method ruthlessly. What works stays, what doesn't gets axed. And even very truthy things--the bible, a great self-help book, a dream, whatever--have a part that will contaminate the whole--for you--if you don't slice it out. Even the best guru will only be 89% right for you in the end.

Because you're the truth. You're 100%, and even having access to all the information we have access to, there's going to be something missing if there isn't a radical, whole, probably "difficult" part of you up in there. (You can read "difficult" as something that will get your ass kicked out of the ashram/church/scene/club.)

But today I got past all of this and just felt it all. It really is a miracle we're alive. Even the guys flexing at the gym. And the guy parked in the middle of the street (belatedly).

And I got to this point, as I was mentioning before, because I was wearing my shoes.

My pink and red shoes.

Which make my gym outfit complete.

And I'm not sure I've gotten there as easily before--because I wasn't wearing my shoes. Wasn't 100% committed to bringing to bear exactly what I want on this earth.

Was shorting my shot. And so needed someone to blame.

Now the question is am I ready? Am I there just to say I'm there, or am I there and ready to play?