flipsides

Design your own program. G-d doesn't judge. Just be good. If you want to find what you're looking for. Stop looking for it. Oops, there it is.

Enjoyment

So I took the little black dog down to the Canarsie pier at the southern tip of Brooklyn. He needed a swim. There was bad traffic on the way down I must say. But I did take a wrong turn. I also don’t advise taking the Williamsburg bridge into Manhattan at the moment. Construction. Slow. Down at the beach next to the Canarsie pier, we found a coconut. Kingston thoroughly enjoyed swimming. He just swam and swam. Wouldn’t barely come out of the water. He swam so much in fact that when he did come out he squatted for a deuce, and brown water poured out his ass in a fountain. Gross, I know. Only the facts Jack. Jordan was my witness. Jordan and his brother were healthy young boys. They were weighty souls. But happy. They really loved the dog and had a super time playing with him. Good old Jordan asked me “do you have a mother?” I said yes. “Do you have a dad?” I said yes. I told Kingston to sit in my strong voice. The kid said “you have to be nice.” He’s right. I may not have to be nice, but I want to be nice.

I saw two big marine helicopters flying by down by the Canarsie pier. Up toward Manahatta. They had those big American Flags on. I thought “damn, is the president coming to town for some reason?” Turned out he was. Taking the wife to a Broadway show. Right on Barack Obama. Right on buddy. I’m sure the conservatives had something bad to say about it, tax payer dollars and all. They should fuck off. Obama took his wife out on a date. Presidential style. Right on Mr. President. Men, take your wives out. Right on. Enjoy. We’re incarnate!

Here's a bright idea.

I think Clown is going to be the best career path for me.

Let's see Maybe.

Well, I just have to add, as I have written a bit about this girl who my heart followed to NYC with me following behind like a reluctant dumb waiter, my odds are not good. Tonight I ate Chinese delivery using two pens as chopsticks because I don't have silver wear yet, and they didn't put a plastic fork or chopsticks in the bag. That was slippery. So I wanted to make a point about the unlikelihood of anything actually happening with this girl Jenn. She's a woman now, I don't know why I call her a girl. I guess I'm still just a boy. I may really be in New York City to let go of this girl, rather than unite with her as a woman. Maybe I had to follow my heart to let the chords finally be cut and let the spirit go free. We'll see. There is a strong conviction, fed by the molecular stimulants to be sure, that I'm somehow meant for this girl. But I don't think she's interested. In fact I've put plenty of nails in the coffin of any "normal" relationship with Jenn. It's coming up on the 10 year anniversary of me calling her up from the psych ward in hysterics, or maybe it was rehab. I can't really be sure. I was crazy at the time after all. And whenever I go crazy, I go bonkers for this girl. And that's not to say that the love is not always just right there under the surface and ready to ripple its madness, not that I don't think about her every day even when I'm not having the revelations. I thought I had let the girl go. I want her to be happy, I want her to be free. I have to imagine she must be. And she certainly does not need me. And a gayer little rhyme has never been seen. So what am I doing in New York? I'm learning to be me. But I'm fooling myself if I think the process is done. The girl, who I've called the Jew because she is Jewish and once asked me if I would think of converting to Judaism if I married a Jew, is the one really teaching me. She's like my little guardian angel in an alternate universe. The odds of us getting together are probably about 1 in a trillion, maybe 1 in 7 billion, well maybe slightly better than that, but either way they are probably close to the same odds that we are living on this planet, conscious beings experiencing our own deaths, orbiting around the sun in an infinite universe, talking on cellular phones, shooting ourselves through the sky at 500 miles an hour and launching ourselves into outer space in rockets, and communicating with our kin in a digital world of 0s and 1s. How apt that my new zip code is 10001. I'm just a slow learner. At the time I told Jenn that I'd never be a Jew, I had opinions. There was no way I was going to convert to Judaism for any damn thing. I can't remember why. I've had to hate all religions and deconstruct it all and be a nothing in order to come full circle, back to my Episcopalian roots as a child, back to my Jewish roots before that, I mean you did have to be a Jew to be a Christian originally, and back to my African roots before that, because we did all walk out of Africa, all our ancestors are there, and back to my primordial oozeness before that, in order to discover again that in the Nothing, it is all true. I can be it all, as long as I am nothing. And everyone else can be just as much whatever they are as they are. It's all good. So I may have to marry a blond German, Uberales. Who knows. The point is that I have ceased thinking that I really have a choice in the matter. It's like my old self, the self that I identified with as a separate entity, an Andrew, who had been wounded and needed something to complete me, that selfish entity striving to be a self, separate, individual, the Ayn Rand prototype human, it's like that Andrew has died. I have become, or am striving to become, a nothing. I renounce the illusion of control. One thing is for damn sure. I love my dog. I'm just doing this thing. I have no clue what the hell I'm doing. I'm a servant. That's the work of love, the work of the nothing. Maybe Jenn floated, maybe I drowned. It doesn't matter. We all die. We all live forever. The helix. The spiral intertwined, the orbits, the circles. Life. I guess I'm just insane. I'm not manic. I don't have any answers, just an utterly strong conviction in my belief that I don't know. Behind I don't know, my truth is interconnectedness. My faith is in the Human race, one people, one love. But that's so cheesy. Only don't know. That's my motto. It certainly makes life a bit more of a trip. Just a slight move can really change a mans perspective. We get what we need. We appear and reappear and disapear. We die, and are reborn. Namaste. Aloha. Good night.

Nowhere. Now, here. HERE NOW. NOW HERE

yesterday, right near Astor Place, red playing card sitting face down on the side walk. Top of the card says "The Game of Life & How to Play it." So I pick it up and turn it over. Not your average playing card. Bottom says Perfect Self-expression pg. 82. Message on card "Infinite Spirit, give me a definite lead, reveal to me my perfect self-expression, show me which talent I am to make use of now." I'm here.

Green-glowing monkeys have green-glowing babies

The Cruise

I'm just cruising onward. Watching the movie. Seeing where it goes. Getting the apt looking nice. Getting it done. On the Way. Already here. As it is. Let the will of the All be done. Tune tune tune.

Just in case we don't seem like quite enough of an asshole. 5/21/2009. Here's the update on reality, 10 years after my head first exploded in my ass.

Don't forget I am the Reverend Andrew Scott, the Goose Wrangler; an ordained minister, ordained by the Universal Life Church Monastery. I'm bonafied. A bonafied disaster of love fueled madness on wheels. What do I want to do with my life, a model who has known she wanted to be a model and a singer since whe was 13, asked me. I told her I don't know. I've wanted to be a husband and a father since I was 16. That's my high aspiration. Beyond that, I guess I just want to save the world. She laughed. Well shit, I laugh at myself. A real man of faith knows the world doesn't need saving. What the heck kind of reverend does that make me?

See, there are many different levels of reality. At one level everything is fucked and humanity is wreaking havoc and destruction on each other and other life on this planet, and the fastest way to cut your carbon emissions is to just lay on down and die. In that light, all the real environmentalists should just freaking kill ourselves because we'll just never ever be perfect angels. But maybe we already are. I suppose that is really the question of faith.

Beyond that frequency of an angry god, manifested through our own ego and guilt, is the perfection of the All, the Great Is that lies behind our illusions of free will and the idea that we have control over our destiny. We are all, all of us temporary matter, the rocks and trees, the lizards and monkeys, we're all just orbiting around the sun, right? Floating in the midst of infinities of universes, trapped in time, and the illusion of separateness? So we whipsaw and jabberwalk and complain; and build spaceships and sell bottled water. And Why? Maybe because we had to. Maybe we had to do everything we did. Maybe we had to make all the mistakes we made. Maybe we had to go insane. Maybe we had to hate ourselves and each other. Maybe. Was there any other way?

Because of what is, how can it not be? That's the power many call God. It can be a just God, an angry God, a loving God, a perfect God, an imperfect God. We can define It with all the human attributes we want. It just is what it is brothers and sisters. It is what it is. Here we are. We are the Winterberries, witnessing the past fall away, as we fall.

Faith is not a bad thing. It combats many frequencies of madness. It is a soothing medication, but it has its own dangers. It causes its own frequencies of madness when left unchecked. It is the madness of belief, of faith, which causes more war and pain than any of its rival psychotic states. The rules of the open mind are designed to combat this insanity.

What are the rules of the open mind, and how can they combat the psychosis of unchecked belief in a limited form of reality which causes the blindness of men, and hides ourselves from our own true nature? I don't know. That's the first and maybe the only rule. I'm human, I'm infinite energy in a temporary body; a part of the organism of life, a part of the Great Is, yet small and powerless in the midst of greatness. All our religions teach humility, but how can we call ourselves humble if we claim to actually know the nature of reality?

Man, in trying to define God, is at his most insane. And also we are at our most insane when we define ourselves as different or separate from God and from each other because of what we believe, what nation we think we're from, or what color we are. Here is conscious creation in the thick of delusion. But at the same time, can it be any other way?

The truth will catch up. We are already one human family, we are one blood, one people, one human race. We just don't all know it yet, even though we do. If there was a Garden of Eden, an Adam and Eve, the first people. They were the ancestors of us all. We all walked out of Africa on our own two feet, and the ones that stayed behind are still our brothers and sisters. If there is a tribe of Israel, God's chosen people, then we are all those people. We are all Jews. We are all Muslims, we are all what we are: perfect and imperfect, yin and yang, empty, whole. At the end of the day there is always the night, but the Sun never stops shining. It's the sun that lights the moon.

So welcome to the Church of the Open Mind. We can have our own beliefs, and believe them devoutly, and still know we don't have a clue. We're all in the game. We're all just watching our movies. We're the stars of our own little movies in the midst of this bigger movie called life and death, in the midst of a bigger movie called infinity. It's all going to be alright. It has to be, because it is.

The Madman Eats the Loaf

So I lost the game. Sometimes destiny has bigger plans. I’m outside in the great adventure. I’m deep in the frequencies of the unknown, in the massive flow of energy that is New York, 10 million monkeys living in an expansive, thriving hive. It’s a massive monkey jungle they call the Big Apple. Can you imagine how many people are having sex at any one time in this pulsing little creation? There is a lot of sex here, which in some strange way may mean you need less of it. I’m not sure about that quite yet, but I am still distracted by one who I may very well not ever need to see again. She turned on a light in me, so bright that it has taken 29 years to get a hold on. Nothing to complain about there. I guess it took this long to be ready for this place. However long we longed for that gal we call the Jew, that angel who turned on my love light, as long as I can still see light in the day, I will want for her happiness. There is no need for her to be in my life just wishes for her well being. There is still something in my heart that seeks her on the streets, and wants to connect, without any expectations for what will come. But the future makes its own plans. I'm happy to be in this jungle of humanity. It's just a whole lot of us looking out at ourselves through each others eyes in this miracle of creation. One big human family.
Aloha

naked

claws of this world
the giant clam inside the computer
the flimsy flaky slime of matter
the dirty little game

The Dillema between the big apartment on 25th between 7th and 8th, which could be awkward, or the place the real party wants at Spring and Mulburry

So what's my biggest complaint? Looking for love in New York City now that I know I've already let this cat out of the bag on this B-L-O-G? And how stupid does that sound? Well, that's about as stupid as it seems. Here we are, trying to find ways to say hi in a shortened form. That's text messaging for you. Screwed up spelling just makes you seem smarter. Text messaging is pure genius. You can waste your time endlessly. Wait, let me just spark another joint. And that pretty much makes me feel retarded. So now I feel like I can't say anything more. Well, I could say how much more I would like to say how happy I am that I'm crazy I could maybe talk about how happy I am to be alive. Life has given me great gifts. There were hardships, but they were overcome. At 29 years old, to feel truly grateful to be alive, is a great gift. I am grateful to be alive. If I were to die tomorrow, I would know that I have lived a life. I have lived a full life, in the midst of friends who have supported me, and been my friends, though I have been gone from them, many moons. And that reminds me of a joke I know. A guy walks into a bar, and he says to the bartender, hey! “Let me get a big handy on the rocks,” but he really needs to drop a deuce. So he goes into the bar and he says “hey, let me get a big handy baby, and it’s time for me to use the old porcelain lady.” After that I would step into the old ladies room and put it all up there. After that, we all know the game. So this guys goes into the bathroom, and he goes into this toilet because he needs to go, and as he’s sitting there, pausing for his deuce, he looks down into the toilet bowl. He sees a little Indian down there. The Indian looks up and waves at him with his little headdress on. The guy is looking down and he says to the Indian: “hey, how long have you been down there?” The little Indian looks up at him with a long, forlorn look on his face, sweeps his hand over his head in a rainbow with his arm and says: “many moons.”

The First Days and Enlightenment over a hamburger

Small Chieftans disappearing into the Andean stream
Walking softly through the French parade
Dreaming about spring
Rejoicing in fields of Jesus colored wheat
Hair fading into the grasses
Drinking blood that tastes suspiciously like wine
Every evening the illusion and the little hearts made of felt
Inflate themselves
and the farm animals shuffle about looking for sex
A million lemmings march off the launching at Niagra Falls
We don't know where we're going
We know where we've been
That place is the same
That's just the same place
There is no negative or positive in the beyond
In the secrets of the beyond
Not the tai ji But the wu ji
Everything is one at the source
What comes
Cannot not come

Oh the Idiot on Parade

So the lunatic up and runs to New York, all because he can’t get this girl out of his head, but he has come to the point of submission. He no longer knows which way is up or down, the lunacy finally beat him. The opinions mean nothing anymore and faith is replacing questions. OK, here I am. Drove in through the Holland tunnel at about 7:30 am, having left Louisville Kentucky the day before later than expected, about 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. Drove through the night, medicated with only coffee and red bulls. The Denver to Louisville route was more energetic but that all ran out in a little Kentucky bar with my friend who has the fondest taste for heroin. Couldn’t even get a Screwdriver on arrival this morning. The Aspen snob has found this reputedly high class establishment less than satisfactory. Went to sleep around 9 am, woke around 1 and took the dog on a long walk around the down town area. Searching for elusive dog parks we took a stroll down into Battery Park City. Kingston just wanted to jump in the river. I was given directions to 3 or 4 different dog parks. “Just two blocks up there and 1 block down,” “yea there’s a big one just down there, just walk up that ramp and it’s right there.” I didn’t find any of them, but it was one of the most perfect days I’ve ever seen in the city. I’ve been lucky that way in NYC. The temperature was soft, warm but not quite warm enough for sun bathing, just a touch of cool wind for freshness. There was not a cloud in the sky. The dog and I walked for hours. Had a few glasses of wine and a sandwich and risotto at Oniels on Grand. I think I may have spent the larger part of an evening there a few years ago. Talked to Tim the art collector, a very nice fellow who made many recommendations for my potential living situation. I went back to the hotel and slept for the late afternoon, maybe fell off to the dreams around 6:30, woke around 11 pm. About 11:45 pm it was time for another walk with the dog, we’re getting used to the city, and poor little guy, there’s just not much privacy for his business now. I can’t just slide the back door open anymore and let him roam down to the river and run with the elk, foxes and bears. But I’m a man after all, and there are many men in this city, and many dogs. Kingston found the stimulations most satisfactory. There was no friction. His friendliness was apparent to all, and New Yorkers seem to like the little black dog just fine. As we left the room for the late night walk, the lobby of the Tribeca Grand was bumping bass music and as we walked out the elevator, and past the bar area, I was aware of my alien nature. I’ve never seen these levels of fakeness before, as if there is such a thing, but I’ve never seen Chachi like this, even in Aspen. After a nice little walk, the young dog was brought back to his room, and the Reverend Scott took another stroll. I walked downstairs again, thinking that maybe something would change if I just gave the place another try, and besides the guy at reception had given me a couple free drink tickets. I couldn’t even approach the bar, free drinks or not, I scrambled out onto the street and into the night air. Not my scene. So I just walked. Walked into SOHO, passed the SOHO Grand on my left, that’s how I knew I was in SOHO. Then I recognized fading yellow paint, a bar on my right, and a bright lit sign that I may have last seen on a morning a few years previous. The Cupping Room, a restaurant. I walked in. It was a nice scene. No Jenn. Was this where we had breakfast the last time we saw each other? I believe it was. I didn’t sit down for a drink, and I missed the band. So I walked out, and down the street a little farther and thought back. It was morning, another blue sky day, and she walked off down the street with her dark hair blowing in the wind. The heart has its reasons whereas reason knows nothing. At least, that’s what they say. Was it Pascal, translated from French? I’m trying to forgive my heart. We go where the winds blow us. Here I am. What, expecting to run into the girl on the street? It’s about 1:30 am now, and I walk to a little grocery store and buy a sushi roll in a plastic box, some sliced mango, and a Kombucha, walk back to the hotel, through the pounding music, through the loud, stylishly dressed look-alikes, the beautiful girls, and I’m just not interested. I’m in New York, and my heart led me here. I’m looking for this girl who has a little cabin in my chest. We may have met in another universe, or our molecules danced once for an afternoon. I may have been chasing her for lifetimes, watching her walk away, as she turns and smiles over her shoulder, with her dark hair blowing in the wind. It’s a nice image anyway. Good night winterberries. Pray for the will of the All.

25 Tao Te Ching-Wilhelm version

There is one thing that is invariably complete.
Before Heaven and Earth were, it is already there:
so still, so lonely.
Alone it stands and does not change.
It turns in a circle and does not endanger itself.
One may call it 'the mother of the world'.
I do not know its name.
I call it DAO.
Painfully giving it a name
I call it 'great'.
Great: that means 'always in motion'.
'Always in motion' means 'far away'.
'Far away' means 'returning'.
Thus DAO is great, Heaven is great, Earth is great,
and Man too is great.
There are in space four Great Ones,
and Man is one of them.
Man conforms to Earth.
Earth conforms to Heaven.
Heaven conforms to DAO.
DAO conforms to itself.

There is a lone howler monkey outside in the darkening evening singing a melancholy song of despair. He seems to have been abandoned by his tribe, and is perched alone at the top of a desolate tree. I told him it was going to be alright, to keep the faith, to never give up hope. I can hear him whimpering, he no longer howls in his old grunting virile way. He is a humble monkey now, begging for forgiveness, begging not to be alone. I wanted to stand there and talk to him, to give him company and love. He was quiet when I spoke. In the silence he began his sad prostrations again. I invited him over for bananas, a little something to make him feel better, to take his thoughts of worry away, if only for a moment. But alas, I don't think he spoke English.

New Swine in Aspen

How convenient it is that the Swine flu outbreak should arrive just in time for the Aspen mayoral election. The sickness is here, rearing its ugly head like a savage birthing duckling. Our Mayor, Mick Ireland may not be perfect, but the calls for change from every direction are deceptive. The swineherds are licking their lips on the sidelines, and they have a new representative. Her taste for the grease of Fat City is fresh and desperate. Do not listen to the spin. There is a tourist running for mayor, and her name is Marylin Marks. She’s just passing through, unless we allow her and her porky ilk to successfully finalize their take over of our little mountain town. Slowly but surely Aspen has become less and less affordable for the people who actually live here. When we elected Mick Ireland, we didn’t elect a politician, or someone who wanted to be mayor so he could get a few years of fame. We elected an educated working guy who walks the walk, and rides his bike to work every day, who has tried to defend Aspen’s right to be vaguely livable for people who can only afford one home. Then Marilyn Marks came, she saw, and she started to complain. She dropped her little Red Ant right into our pants, and started moaning about the way we do things from the day she arrived. She thinks Mick Ireland is failing us by being slightly less friendly to second, third, fourth, 5th, 6th, and 7th home owners, with a few time share holders in the back field. These are her constituents. And she is out there to make them feel good about their investments. She told us she had no interest in running for office. Now she says she is willing to work for free. Clearly she wants the celebrity of being the mayor of Aspen, even at the expense of those who would suffer the charity mayor. Aspen can afford to pay its mayor, but thank you anyway. Mick Ireland is not perfect, but he understands the soft heart of our beautiful town. This whole crew of candidates, running on the platform of change, are trying to get rid of Mick, possibly because Mick is not a greedy little land grubber sucking at the fat of the land, and the new Aspen Plan is an insidious play for greed and madness, dressed as usual, in the cloak of change. What are these candidates for change, really going to change? For one thing, they are going to encourage the Aspen Police to do undercover drug operations “under necessary circumstances.” This is not a good policy, and Mick Ireland understands the Aspen Brand enough to not mess with an ethos that we have held dear since the 1970’s. He is the only candidate who said he would continue our policy of no undercover activities by police. These operations are dishonest and wrong. Aspen is not supposed to be uptight, and this has only helped our success, even as a high end resort. Undercover drug busts are bad for business. Marks, Kole, and Erspamer don’t get it. You can’t do wrong in the name of doing right. Telling a drug dealer that you want to buy drugs and then arresting them for giving you what you asked for is just plain wrong. We want locals and tourists alike to feel safe and secure in our town. We just don’t want the tourists to forget to go home at the end of their stay. Marks represents the type of newcomer Aspen elite who have made Aspen a check mark for people who just want another exclusive resort home to add to their list. She is a retired business executive, a savage whiner, a woman after my own heart. She may be giving Aspen the full play now, but it will begin to bore her. Before long she’ll be just like the rest. They spend a few days in their home around new years, then they host lots of lavish parties during Food and Wine and Ideas festival, they feel important, and that’s nice. But while they may employ a caretaker and a maid while they are gone, they are not frequenting restaurants, shopping in our shops, and most importantly they are inflating real estate prices and creating huge swaths of empty livable space where people who actually want to live in Aspen, can’t live. We don’t need a mayor who is going to be more friendly to these people. Mick is nice enough. A representative government doesn’t just represent people who only spend two months a year in their outrageously huge energy sucking houses which sit vacant most of the year when they could be housing 4 families of working locals if the space was utilized by something other than a conspicuously consumptive waste of livable square footage. We need to keep our hotels full, and so we need to encourage these high end clients to come and visit, but we need to create disincentives against them buying or building homes that will sit vacant most of the year. The Marks platform is the opposite of what Aspen needs. If we want to fix the entrance to Aspen issue, all we have to do is eliminate the line of cars that comes all the way into our town every day all the way from Rifle, and out the same way. That means making living in Aspen affordable enough for people who work in Aspen. When I was a kid, the West End wasn’t a ghost town most of the year like it is today. There were children running around the streets and lights on in the homes. Making Aspen more friendly to its workers can only help us as a high end tourist destination. True 5 star service only comes from employees who are comfortable in their situation, who aren’t worried about their hour long commute at the end of the day, or the second or third job they are going to be heading to when they finish serving your fettuccini. Great service is difficult when businesses are dependent on transient workers like many of our hotels and Skico are presently. We don’t need to become a budget destination. We should leave the lift lines in Vail, and continue to welcome the pits of the Ritz, but we need to foster a community of working people who feel they can afford to fall in love, have kids, buy a home that can appreciate at free market value, and not just work and drink themselves into oblivion before they move somewhere they can afford to have more than a ski bum life. The Ferrari driving geriatrics will still of course be welcomed, but if they own a home, our government could do something like encourage them to provide at least 1000 square feet of housing for the working population for every 7000 square feet of living space that they own and do not live in at least 10 months a year. Just an idea. As for Marilyn Marks, Andrew Kole, and LJ Erspamer, put the fat in the fire and vote for Mick. He’ll keep Aspen peddling in the right direction. As for paying too much for the BMC land parcel, it’s just a right of passage. Anyone who has ever bought land in Aspen has paid too much. Shouldn’t’ the city of Aspen pay too much as well?