Well Goodness Gracious.

Big crazy night last night. Took Kingston for a walk this morning in Central Park. The no leashes before 9 am rule is the greatest. He actually gets to be a dog a little bit. So i'm tired. I'm hungover. And i'm happy. I'm happy that i'm in New York, and it seems like maybe I had to come all this way to get freedom from this attachment i've had to this idea of a girl I just couldn't get over. I was raised all over the world, never really had a home. Didn't meet my dad till I was 16. Mom left me with grandparents when I was 2, then they sent me to England to be with her maybe a year or so later, then my grandparents took me back when I was like 4. Then I got shipped off to boarding school when I was 12. It's really not a very sad story. It's the story of a family with too many resources financially, and not enough resources emotionally. But hey, these are tales of luxury problems. But anyways. I guess the whole adventure left me with some serious abandonment issues. I could not be with the people I loved, no matter how hard I longed to or tried. Dad in Greece, Mom in England, Grandparents in Aspen till they divorced, and then it was Aspen, Hawaii, Greece, Houston, England. I could never be in enough places at once. But they were all nice places to be. The whole world is a pretty nice place to be. So anyhoo. When I was 18 I fell in love with a girl who lived far away. And it was the same old story. I couldn't be with her, and I guess that just made me want it all the more. I always seem to fall when there is distance involved. But there was just this one girl who never left my heart. Her name was Jenn. She lived in NY. It took me ten years of longing, desperation, and madness, wanting her to somehow change her life or come to me, or whatever odd insanity. And then it dawned on me. It was like a bolt of lightening. Go to New York. So I did. But i'm starting to think that was the destiny, and the girl just got me here. Now that i'm here I don't really even want to see her. I'm here now. It's over. The trip is done. The circle is complete. There are so many wonderful women, and I feel like loving Jenn has taught my heart to love freely, it has expanded my love into the universe. Now i'm ready to give my love again. Now I'm free. I'm gonna go get a burger. Aloha.

These are the Words the President Said-(click here to read entire speech)

Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer

B.H. OBAMA

38 of the Dao De Jing -Wilhelm Edition. Straight from the Monkeys Mouth... comfort for the insane

Whosoever cherishes Life
does not know about Life
therefore he has Life.
Whosoever does not cherish Life
seeks not to lose Life:
therefore he has no Life.
Whosoever cherishes Life
does not act and has no designs.
Whosoever does not cherish Life
acts and has designs.
Whosoever cherishes love acts but has no designs.
Whosoever cherishes justice acts and has designs.
Whosoever cherishes morality acts
and if someone does not respond to him
he waves his arms about and pulls him up.
Therefore: If DAO is lost, then Life.
If love is lost, then justice.
If justice is lost, then morality.
Morality is the penury of faith and trust
and the beginning of confusion.
Foreknowledge is the sham of DAO
and the beginning of folly.
Therefore the right man abides with fullness
and not with penury.
He lives in being, not in sham.
He puts the other away and adheres to this.

Ferris Lives

I am the nothing that creeps in the night.
I am the place where it doesn't exist.
Behind the illusion
Behind the truth
Everything
Nothing
Nothing
Everything
the illusion
the truth
the clarity
the fog
the dust
the life
I am the nothing
Ain't we all
Future man?

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?

Pliant Earth

Same old dreams
The sanity sings its empty song
Lizards crawl frantically through the stream beds
and the strawberries
The wild Indians are dancing,
The vegetables ripe in the icebox
Gelatin in the sink
Nothing left under the microscope
Another reason to drink

The Hooker-Beating ShamWow Guy Is a Renegade Ex-Scientologist

Another French Horizon, and the Jews said a prayer for the Sun.

It’s quiet here in Aspen and everything is the color of mud. The time shrimp are disappearing and the endless whispers of the moon are beginning to appear. This mud is going to melt all the snow early, and maybe cause flooding. Later, there may be drought. All because of mud. Mud can be a terrible thing. But it can also be fun to play in. I haven’t seen anyone playing in this mud lately; but it has been cold. That’s about all there is to say these days, what with all the shrimp heads and the hand grenades. I figure it’s about time to take a break. Things are getting weird around here. I don’t think Marilyn Marx was wearing a one piece out there on Highlands closing day. Aspen may be getting ants in its pants, and the laundry is in the oven. Maybe it’s time to get a little more education, then let’s make a comeback and run for mayor. We could make this A-town again, where you don’t have to spend half your wages for a room in a three- bedroom house. We’ve got to make sure we don’t let them turn the beloved Popcorn Wagon into something out of Monster Garage. OK, they already did that, but there are other things to be done, or undone. I hope somebody gets on it. Goose Wrangler is off to the city. Over and out. I hear you loud and clear boss. Come in Honolulu. Do you read me? Over.

Love

Words the mixed confection
Of crisp slow dilapidation
In the midst of now

Woman calls 911 over lack of shrimp in fried rice

Life is Strange

Moves of the heart are a mystery
Twisted grooves of symmetry
Senseless dreams of whispered fate
The hearts wings fly their way
Clouds beating against the breast
The soft horizon
Pulls

Guest Check

Plop
The French lisp drops
Down the horizon
And the icy crisp
Loosens its loins
And falls gently to the ground
Waiting for the morning
Eighteen french polyps
Give their smile to the day
But they all make a wish
And send their wishes
To the future

Disturbing.

I really don't have a clue, or even an opinion, when it comes to the middle east, the disturbances between Muslims and Jews, or any dispute between any religions. Does the fact that this report is from Al Jazeera mean it's biased? I don't know. But it's all a major bummer. Why human beings have such a hard time treating each other as if we were all human beings, I don't know. If someone is a Jew, we are all Jews, if someone is a Muslim, we are all Muslims, we are all Christians, we are all Buddhists, we are all Hindus, we are all nothing. We are all Everything. What is God? Can I buy a vowel please?

Three Cheers for the Kid who gets it

Same old lines
I've been scribbling
All this time
Hocus
Interconnected
Pocus
Under water
Sleeping
Running through dreams
Empty spaceships
Waiting for the sleeping pills to kick in
One foot off the wagon
Practicing early Metamucil
Hiding from despair

I got nothin (I mean I'm posting the twelve steps of Kabbalah, clearly things are becoming desperate). Groovy videos for a change.

The 12 steps of Kabbalah--- short and sweet

Flossing monkeys 'proof' animals teach tool use

every day more evidence that we are not the only smart monkey.

Study: Belligerent chimp proves animals make plans

hungry jack

The dilapidated sand castles melt cautiously into themselves becoming sand again. The whole wide emptiness of things orbit each other, dreaming. Out here in the deep infinity of faces, of moons, of halos, stars, and planets, here we are, looking out at each other through our starry planet orbs of eyes. Planets of atoms and nuclei pop and jive and dance in our giant molecules of body. Life, that sweet dream, and only interrupted by consciousness, when we are ripped away from pure being. Suddenly there is yesterday and tomorrow and me and you and them and us. Madness begins to envelope the perfect moment, the now, the interconnectivity field, where it all just is. That’s a bummer. It just blows the whole trip that’s just always already there waiting for us to commune. It’s like it’s saying comm-on-in. In an Om Mani Padme Hum sort of way, if you know what I mean. Or like liposurgury as my whole body tingles cause it’s falling asleep.

There is no Difference

There is nothing going on here. I disappear. I am silence. There is so much action out there. It’s endless. Should I go bowling? What’s the difference? There is conversation and there is interaction. But it’s out there. It’s always out there. What does it mean to sit alone in pure nothing, without drugs, without alcohol, with nothing but the bewildered self? Is it the same as being out there? I’m here. I’m in here. Am I missing something? Or am I missing something when I’m out there? Am I trying to hide from myself when I converse and interact and consume? Yum yum yum, can I please have another one? Let me tell you what I think, or what I think I think, or what I want you to think I think. Let me demonstrate the me I think I want you to see. Who is the me who is trying to be? It’s empty, time passes, and there is only nothing alone, and that’s all there is. Nothing. Until we depart again and interact, return to the bouncing, spinning, magical illusion of particle collision. Here I am. Nothing becomes something in the eyes of the other. Two nothings create each other. But here I am, alone, interacting with a keyboard, pretending myself in solitude.

Update on Modernity

I scratched my new goggles cleaning them with seemingly safe goggle cleaning material. What’s wrong with a cotton shirt or even the soft glasses case that came built in with my new high-tech jacket? I mean seriously, old sunglasses or goggles didn’t just scratch up at the slightest touch. Modern technology sucks; except for jet-packs, heat seeking hand-grenades, and Ipods when they’re working. Some poor woman in aspen was just arrested for dealing Xanax, which is clearly because she did not have the prized letters, d and r, before her name. No, there is no shortage of new news in our wonderful world of dumb. Man still seems to be looking for love in all the wrong places. Two satellites collide in space in a burst of passionate debris, which will orbit, twinkling stars of trash, for eons. Or the nuclear submarines the other day, whose metal tips kissed dangerously in the depths, giving a whole new meaning to British-French relations. How exactly does having these giant underwater dildos carrying nuclear WMDs, many times more dangerous than your average STDs, patrolling the waters of the earth, make us any safer? Or how about the woman in Connecticut with the pet chimp? They slept and bathed together, she dressed him in cute little outfits, allowed him to sit at the dinner table, and he even used silver wear and brushed his teeth, which is more than can be said of many husbands out there. It actually sounds like a pretty healthy relationship. Straight people should be able to marry, gay people should be allowed to marry, and both straight and gay people should be allowed to marry a chimp. Let’s get the Aspen City Council on this right away. We can even put this item in front of that proposed main street median they wisely backed away from. At least the chimp didn’t abuse his own woman, just her jive talking friend. Who wouldn’t have just ripped her face off? I mean she was trying to get him to move and he was enjoying a good Xanax buzz (no connection to the alleged Aspen dealer as far as I know). Now that we’ve gotten the chimpanzees out of the way, let’s get onto Eric Holder, our new attorney general who isn’t satisfied with how the races are mixing on weekends. I was also convinced that our country was still pretty damned racist beneath our salad bowl facade, but then we elected a black president, which made me blink, maybe Holder didn’t notice the color of the man he’s working for, who was raised mostly by a white woman, who I imagine he spent many of his weekends with. Furthermore, there are many tan white people who are blacker than Eric Holder and his little Inspector Clouseau mustache. Not that we aren’t cowards, though, he may be right about that, but I think he needs to ease up on the race thing because it shouldn’t matter what color we are since we are all the human race. If we are all the human race then those of us who have taken an introductory anthropology course know that we are all African Americans around here, even the Native Americans. Our ancestors are all from Africa, where they started walking on two feet and got handy with tools, millions of years ago. Let’s not forget the discoveries at Olduvai Gorge, and one of them they named Lucy, not Shaniqua, contrary to popular opinion. OK, so now that we’ve established that we’re all Africans, it really shouldn’t matter what color Africans, black, white, green, yellow, or red, we are dining with on weekends, or whether we are eating watermelon, fried chicken, burritos, Pad Thai, or caviar with Fiji water. Which brings us back to our cowardice, our inferiority complexes, our rocket propelled grenades, and our giant nuclear dildos sliding quietly beneath the seas as we launch giant flaming phalluses into the sky.

Signs

Tired old coot with a silk trombone
Tired and alone
Just bought my last pack of cigarettes again
Threw it away
Was the best 6 dollars I ever spent
Pulled into the grocery store
Used to be open till midnight
Before that it was open 24/7
Must be the recession
11:45 pm it was closed
Sign said new hours
Seven to eleven
Damn
99 Luftballoons on the radio
Jumped back into the car
99 red balloons go by
Valentines day 2009
No cigarettes for me at city market
Wasn’t gonna smoke
There’s the gas station
Need more toothpaste
Pull in with car running
It’s open
Only toothpaste is travel size with mini toothbrush included
And a pack of American Spirits in the yellow box please
Unwrap them
Back in the car
Window’s frozen again as I’m pulling out a smoke for the drive home
Take a left onto main street and immediately run a red light
At which point I take note of the song that is playing on the radio
Sign Sign
Everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery
Breaking my mind
Do this don’t do that
Can’t you read the sign!?
Window won’t roll down
Pack of cigarettes in my hand

Threw them in the trash when I got home
Can’t barely walk tonight
Cause I worked all day
When I say I worked all day, I mean I worked all day
8 AM till 11:40 PM
That’s a 16 and a half hour day
Longest damn day I ever worked
And my feet hurt
I was born with the silver spoons
But I spent a good part of today just cleaning them
Hand wash em up real nice
Then polish them with the gloves on
Somebody else’s Silver
Somebody else’s stuff
Got to be that fly on the wall
Serving wine and listening
Our China’s all disappearing
Bunch of idiots in the family done lost it all
I’m just another one
Sign Sign everywhere a sign
Bunch a fucking drunks out stupid all the time
These billionaire Jews don’t drink like us
They have a damn good inventory of all their expensive shit
They have responsible help
Hold them accountable
I’m an undercover butler
Shining somebody else’s silver
I’ve watched the waves roll in
Watched the water pull back
Sucking off the shine and leaving sand
Drying in the sun

The Circles

In my right hand
This is freedom
Over here
In my left
This is addiction
Freedom is not always fun
But addiction sure can be
We don’t keep hitting the button
Unless the pleasure membrane
Gets its kick
Feeding the ego bubbles
Until the I behind the I
Completely disappears
Writhing in the mire
Of the delusion of separation
As we descend
And another circle
Runs its course
To here
Underground
At the roots of freedom

A little Ford Taurus creeps down the road
With a mystery driver
Satellites collide in orbit over Siberia
The middle of February and cold
Washing dishes and polishing silver in a mansion
Owned by bottled water magnates
Simple life in the butlers pantry next to a large kitchen
With laughing chefs
Picking up coffee beans
Wasting votive candles
Criticizing china
Nuevo richer versus nuevo poorer
Laughing at the absurdity of existence
Drinking water shipped from a distant island
The Jamaican dog trapped alone in an empty room
Good night

Farewell to the Chief

2/16/03

Sinking
Sadness in the ocean
A bank of empty hand-grenades
Trampolines and spaceships
The selective earth salon
Tears
Aphrodite washed downstream
Empty households lash out over seas
Spaceships and trampolines
The red-neck war troubadors
Flotation
Humanity submerged
Society: constructed emptiness
Spaceships and trampolines

2/18/03

What is this i'm doing here?
This incoherent mumbling,
this self-centered mumbo-jumbo
this silliness
This is unregulated, unthoughtful
I write from the hip
sudden, blastful thing

Let's clear the air
here
I like writing better when I write so fast I can barely read the words
this fastness
This thought protrusion
this is some type of poetry? this is free flowing blastocystic creation
This is zygotic, some profoundly, yea, somewhat prokaryotic creation
like a volcanic explosion
Some wrecklessness that appears in the organization of this foolish life
Not how it should or should not be, but what is real
Real is this sudden creation of the prokaryotic cell
and yet here we are
and we ask "what was God thinking?"
And the answer that seems most logical is that God
The creationist
The being that created the possibility of the eukaryote
The unsupposed inevitability of the meeting between the sex cells that results in the zygote
The logical answer is that there was no thought of this
The prokaryote was created, fine, but in that creation was the possibility for evolution
That possibility lies in the fact of imperfection
The fact that change could occur in the reproduction of the cell
And here we are
mutated to such an extent that we are a trillion cells working together to allow some moving mess of universal matter to lie in a dead room and reflect on the unthoughtfullness of form, of creation
We are a result of possibility
If the creator had meant to make us exactly as we are, then this creationist would have made us exactly as we are, or were made to be
But instead we are a result of change and continue to change
there is no constant being
If we were created in an image
we would all look the same
we are a creation of possibility
a result of change
We're just a huge complex erector set project
and furthermore we're just a blip on the timeline of change
we may even take our evolution into our own hands
take the reigns of possibility and press the pause button
or orchestrate some control of this evolution of which we have been powerless under
We are already doing this
We are results of possibility of the creation of something more simple than one of our one trillion cells
and yet we are trying to harness the power of possibility
the movement of change
Our existence is the result of random mutation, variation, change, and yet we are hell bent on controlling that which we are most afraid of,
that which created us,
God

More felch from one of the old journals

The God of Abraham and Isaac is a fallacy of separation, all human beings are offspring of one father who is not a father, one mother who is not a mother, we are children of possibility, a taproot without sex. We are born of infinite possibility, in which exists an acting mind that performs miracles of love.

an old poem I think I wrote in Greece

Chickens in the kitchen cleaning dishes
Sombreros hang as heads from the ceiling
Slaves built the temples of the ancient Greeks
Plaid armchair is a cross eyed monster
A curved road weaves through right angled houses
Behind a clay pot in a charcoal picture

Some Shunryu Suzuki

"Zuikan was as Zen master who always used to address himself. "Zuikan?" he would call. And then he would answer. "Yes!" "Zuikan?" "Yes!" Of course he was living all alone in his small zendo, and of course he knew who he was, but sometimes he lost himself. And whenever he lost himself, he would address himself, "Zuikan?" "Yes!"

The Melting

round and around and around she goes
tacos and burritos and purple pantyhose
My nose is unbroken
My hair unkempt
It's a toss pot circus
and it's not my first attempt
The lights are bright stupid
A fairy tale grove
Ain't nothing new in it since we hired Karl Rove
The filth has built up
We'll use it real nice
We can run the whole world on recycled vice
Shall we build another bomb?
I need to shut my trap
I don't have any answers man,
I lose it when I do.
I'm just another weak fella
Who likes to eat, sleep, and screw
I had the realization and I shouted all day
I have the answer man!
But they locked me away
I'd been drugging myself
They just drugged me more
I slept a lot and drifted out to shore
Let's go have a cocktail

15th Step

Go back to step 1, do not collect 200 dollars

14th step

Relapse

She Walked up the Hill in Sandals

Sometimes the dream is too powerful for the illusions of life
We don't know whether it's the heart talking
Or the mind
Maybe sometimes they speak with the same voice
Maybe sometimes it's best not to ignore the voices from the heart
When the dream makes you smile
While she dances in the wind
Her smile makes your heart bounce
Call it insanity
Beautiful
Sanity is boring anyway
And love floats everlasting through the universe

The Poha Song

Blowrag dish towel
Beef chow main
Tickle my balls
In the pouring rain

Nights out singing
Drunk on life
Blow out the candles
On Chinese delight

More dripping shrimp heads
Fall along the way
Praying for poha berries
Have a nice day

Wrote about a clawrag
On a crazy ass trip
Tapped into mind head
Ate a french dip

Woke up before Christmas
Hungover too
Diddling a stewardess
Out of life made stew

So we clawed out gently
As the night turned gray
Turning pages on acid
Children yesterday

sense

This brain is insane
Wet desires floating past
In a soft parade

Quietly shifting
Sanity Insanity
Nothing left to feel

Biscuits drift in wine
Flabbergasted decisions
Waft and dissapear

Ah for a sweet drink
Comfort in the illusion
Rejoice and relief

But it's not to be
Not today another day
Or when the snow melts

responding to Joe

There is no summit hermano
only the sky
Besides
up is down and down up, no?
And then we die

Another Hawbag

Pain, what is pain?
If I am you and you are me,
the same eyes looking out of different faces,
taking ourselves too seriously?
Is Hell just another face of a mixed up Confucius?
Nothing everything, everything nothing
As time quivers around the base of the mountain

The dope committee sat in outer space
with the soul of Joe behind bars
Angry that he'd abused their sacred power

Medicating life
Darkening what was pure light
Needed no medication

The lines on the asphalt faded
What we had created
Faded
Everything
Faded
Nothing

The spiritual aspect of life?
What part of the basketball isn't round,
asked the legendary Joan
as she ranted about synthetic dog biscuits

Listen to this genius... Joe the Plumber gives us the straight scoop about media bias and our Israeli soldiers. This guy's not helping their cause.

What a loser!

So I have nothing exiting to report, and I used to have a plan to write a movie review website, it was going to be called drewsreviews.com, but somebody else did it, and I never thought of another name, so never followed through on the movie review idea, which is fine since there are any number of movie review websites out there, and this run on sentence is really getting spectacular, so I’m going to continue it by saying that as I am entering a really boring period of my life, in which I am attempting to cut out the many medications which for the past 4 years I have utilized to find peace and serenity in this very sane world of ours, I find it appropriate here to suggest three movies that I have seen recently which finely entertained me and offered brief distraction from my craving for wine. The first of these films was The Wrestler, starring a very buff, puffy faced, 56 year old Mickey Rourke as a washed up wrestler (as you may have guessed) who, like the insane alcoholic who keeps going back the seed of his destruction, cannot seem to break out of his pattern of behavior even when the redemptive power of love is staring him in the face. Sometimes we just can’t seem to say no to those fireman boots! The second film on my distraction list is Slumdog Millionaire, which I think has gotten enough attention to make any sort of summation pointless, but is worth mentioning anyway because it’s a beautiful, very well made movie, even though Danny Boyle’s nod-to-Bollywood dance scene finale was a bit retarded, and added nothing to the potent themes of the film. The number three film on my list, which may have been the most intense of them all, I just saw this evening after one of those secret basement get-togethers for jaywalkers, and was Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. I saw the advertisement for this movie and it made me laugh. Watching an old man Eastwood with his most potent angry smirk and gruff, grumpy, glare, was enough to make me want to see the movie, yet it still took me three nights of making plans to go see it, to finally get there, and it would be an understatement to say that it did not disappoint. I got plenty of laughs throughout because Clint’s character was so outrageously blunt in his racism, yet the further into the film we got, the more was revealed about the American melting pot being more of a salad bowl with all the different colors retaining their own flavor, potency, and idiocy. If ever a bad motherfucker could play deep chords on our heart strings it was Walt Kowalski, Eastwood’s hard-edged, hard-assed character who is wrenchingly revealed as a poster of humanity and virtue next door to beautiful and loving Hmong hill tribe neighbors, and a bunch of assholes of every color. This movie has a lot to say about the misshapen values of today (which is not to say that what we should be going for is to be found somewhere in the past). So go see those movies ya’ll. I’m a boring ass fella, just for today, up here on my wagon, no trees melting, no drunken sex in the kitchen snorting powders off fake granite, no watching myself disintegrate in the bathroom mirror doing yoga poses, no hangover tomorrow. Aloha.

a life

I watched the trees breathe
Drank from the pure nothingness
The seasons walked past

ripples

and then winter came
left before the dish towel
wiggling gently

Let it go

Let the claw win
Give up the illusion of control
and then you will not be defeated
"But how?" said the Woodjay
as he bounced along amidst the yams and cherry blossoms and cocaine
Aha, these wicked lips he licked
and walked into the circle smelling his fingers
Ooh the little stools he saw
and wondered at loneliness without medication
But he pointed his rifle quietly
and shot the Woodjay through the chest
in a burst of flaming feathers that scattered to the floor
and then he looked and saw an empty barstool
and calmly walked away.

Invading Gaza

Pow.
Bash.
KaBang!

Let's all go insane!

Machine gun fire

Let the sun come up,
the bombs make the sky line look like sunrise.

Quietly the jagged competition between Muslims and Jews

This land is my land,
This land is my land,

This land is my land go Fuck Off

This land was made for you and I

Bang
Pow
Kaboom

once again

As to the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty, I would like to remind us, there is no glass.

Bombs in the Bubble!

It may or may not have been because Paris Hilton was in town..., but one of our old locals decided to finally drop the bomb on us. Thankfully we didn't blow up, and who knows, as my good friend Danny recently pointed out, there could still be simmering explosives somewhere in our fine little mountain village. Anyways, pity that Gucci and all the other fine luxury stores of ours made it through unscathed. Well at least nobody was hurt. Jim Blanning, the perpetrator of this crime, poor man, couldn't seem to accept the greedhead takeover of his little hometown. It seems to have driven him insane. Guess he never got that acceptance thing. I'm working on it myself. No point being pissed off. It is what it is. Decided to jump off the train that goes around in circles, along the base of the great mountain. Time to get on the stair-master, the escalator, time to start climbing again. Let's trudge. Aloha.

Merry Christmas

These hearts that we breath with
This infinite solitude of perfect symmetry and connectedness
The source of truth
The field of nothing
From where existence grew
The manifested form
Particles
Pebbles falling into the sea
and the battle with Maya can only be won by admitting complete defeat
With medicine too powerful
Curing a disease which does not exist
The cures the causes of the maladies they fix
What is there to fix if there is nothing wrong?
Like water flowing down stream
There is no resistance
The water has nowhere to go

Here we are
The winterberries
Falling
We have nowhere to go

Where am I?
Here
What time is it?
Now

Good morning winterberries
Hello to the dingbats
Children of the earth
Children of the universe
Children of the lie
As the petals fall
Inifinite potential

There was the void
But the void was whole
and so were we
Crushed by the insanity
Of the illusions of our creations
When there was nothing to do
Do was all we did
and we did what we had to do

God bless the winterberries
As we fall

HOLIDAY CHEER!!!

Searching around in cirles, looking for cigarrettes. The girl is sleeping, but I am wide awake. Almost like old times of natural sleeplessness, yet this one involves outside issues. Sometimes it’s nice to have a cold beer on ice at 6:30 in the morning when it’s cold and snowy outside, and you know that in two hours it’s wake-up time, because despite your best aspirations, and dreams, you are not Hunter S. Thompson, and it has gotten weird enough for you, and you want to go skiing in the morning like a spoiled unemployed person does. But it’s Saturday, so who really cares? I’m just out there with everybody. Isn’t that how it is? All us folks, cruising around in weirdo land. We’re just a bunch of lunatics. Get a bunch of lunatics together in an agreeable bunch and you get a bunch of lunatics spouting off the same limited perspective. Which is great. People relate and there is happiness, joy, unity, and anger at “them,” the dirtbag breed, whether in Land Rovers or in dilapidated Datsuns. There is something different about them. They think they are normal. We know they are not. And so it goes, with the bullshit collecting on main street, and all the little animals squirreling along for their next nugget of consume. How am I not myself? Another consumer? You betchA. There should be a whole worldwide support group for everybody, a new AA. It’s called Assholes Anonymous. Cause we are all just a bunch of assholes. But I mean that in the most wonderful Way. WE ARE ASSHOLES BUT WE ARE ALSO GOD. WE ARE THE INFINITE POTENTIALITY OF THE UNIVERSE. BUT WE DON’T PAY ATTENTION. WE DON’T TAKE THE HELP. WE ALLOW OUR ADDICTIONS TO KEEP US CIRCLING THE REDUNDENT LOOP AROUND THE BOTTOM OF THE MOUNTAIN OF ENLIGHTENMENT. WE JUST KEEP GOING ROUND AND ROUND. AND IT AIN’T ALL BAD. SHOW ME A MAN WHO IS NOT ADDICTED TO SOMETHING. TRY TAKING MEDITATION AWAY FROM A BUDDHIST MONK AND SEE THAT HE’S JUST AS ADDICTED TO IT AS ARE YOU WITH YOUR WHATEVER IT IS. THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT HIS ADDICTION MOVES HIM UP THE MOUNTAIN. MEDITATION OR MEDICATION… THAT IS THE QUESTION.

ICE COLD BEER

I love this guy!

Bush shakes hands with himself then does a little dance. How he loves to make us laugh!

Dogshit...

What I wrote before, forget it. Kingston already decided to take a dump in the office! How the hell did that happen? Also I climbed inside a giant industrial trash compactor to dig out a girls purse tonight. Just doing my part.

Don't write at 2:20 in the morning.

You don’t train the dog, the dog trains you; at least that’s what they say. Tonight my dog is making me feel like the luckiest guy in the world. He just spent almost 30 days in doggie treatment. In terms of Mr. Kingston, doggie treatment is the Cottonwood Kennels and Ranch, where he received training, in addition to day and evening care. I had to leave and I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone? Kingston came home a man. I think it was hard for him, and I’m not sure what tricks Ted the trainer used, but Kingston got to hang out with other dogs and chase pheasants, elk, and deer on a beautiful ranch about 11 miles outside of Paonia, Colorado. He came home a new man. He’s chewing his bone, and I feel like trying to flim the rhyme zone. So I waft anew. The apple pie blossom in bloom. Our little black dog, just another man, chilling in the room.

That is absolutely terrible writing. It is neither good poetry, nor prose. It’s smells stinky in my nose.

I’m going to stop now, but I think I’ll just post this anyway, as a demonstration of a potential for humility, and an ability to laugh at the corndog felch that I am capable of.

the crushingness

Aloha
The salty pure whispers take their time
Purifying the little tear drops
Down the line
Nothing was ever there
Nothing to hold onto
Nothing in the mirror
The purity of the obsolete
Slicing onions and forgetting yesterday
Another saturday night
Always climbing down these scary stairs
In dreams

Ramana Maharshi said what?

Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present, the future will take care of itself.

You couldn't even wait till Christmas?!!!

What is the deal these days, give me a break, I mean, how many times do we need to watch the universe melt? When do we say enough with all these illusions? Whatever it is in here, that we’ve been putting in this glass, to give our little lips the dry perfume of infinity, at some point we really just have to realize that it’s all the same. It’s just this pure line. It’s nothing. It’s everything. Fine. Great. Big deal. Stop getting drunk all the time.

Croissant Rouge

Another crackly flip top rolls along the edges
As the jelly begins to bounce
And the field mice scatter
Their home of rotten plywood
Where they lived harmoniously with centipedes
Is violently ripped away
And the little camouflage warriors
And tuxedo clad maestros
Attack each other with empty perceptions
The realities of their existence dug up
Obliterated by sutras

In a smudged glass display case
A number of pastries sit patiently
Waiting for their sweetness to be tasted
Or simply waste away
And Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Expounds on the emptiness of all the forms
And all their aggregates
As the perceiver looks into the pastry case
Watching the girl behind the counter
Place croissants in paper coffins
Offering her prayers to the sentient beings
And cleaning the glass shelves
With a wet green rag

navigating emptiness-the beginning

A stairway is not such a difficult thing to navigate, at least on the way up. There may be many steps to take, but if one is young, healthy, and vigorous, he has a good chance of climbing to the highest precipices. The stairway of life begins with birth; but from here, there is an infinite prismatic galaxy of different stairways leading in the multitude of directions, this labyrinth, with trap doors and passageways, diseases, addictions, abuses, madness, loves, family, dissolution, and certain death. Which way do we go? Our parents are generally quite important in this passage. One poor family keeps their offspring in their native land, in the face of adversity and struggle, and one gives up their child in adoption to a rich couple up north, who can’t conceive. These stairways lead in different directions, but what with all the unknown factors, there is no telling with any certainty that the child adopted into wealth will fair better than the one who is raised in physical poverty.
We climb these steps blind, as a rule, which is seldom rewarding, though every once in awhile we trip into an upward spiral by the turns of Fortuna’s wheel. We beat the game many times as we expand and disintegrate. We climb these stairs in the dark, in passion, in drunkenness, or we see just before us, but the stairs begin to curve, and we can’t see around the corner. Up and up we go, before we turn and look behind us, at what we have left in our wake. What passageways have we followed, and which have we passed by? Have we reached a cliff, with nowhere left behind us to go back to, must we step into the abyss, with all its mysteries?
How does one find the emptiness in this world of illusion, which begins the journey toward self-discovery, the emptiness which is preceded by the dissolution of the aggregate I’s we are to disintegrate in order to find our center in the wholeness of the universe, when we are aware of the hallucinations of our reality, created in our perceiving minds, and find One? Heavy question, loud walkman. Got my ear-pierced when I was 12, wore a gold playboy bunny in there, and felt pretty damn good about it, with my crystal pendant necklace and a burgeoning taste for smoking grass.
Before that, I threw grandmas cigarettes away, trying to get her to quit, then I just started stealing them and enjoying the mint fresh smokiness of the long black Moore’s in the green soft pack. Early lesson: if you can’t beat them, join them. We take lessons all the time, yet few of them, it seems, are setting us up for deep serenity, a peaceful mind, and a compassionate love of our fellow man. So we follow the steps laid before us by our circumstances and our decisions, conscious or unconscious. Even for the Atheist, this is a step of faith, but it’s alternative is often suicide, so it is a faith many take blindly.

TBC
ACS

waking the beast.

Watch out for that first step. It's a doozie.

so much depends

October 22, 2008

Shattered broken species
Shivering on the edge of the great abyss
Afraid, Aware, confused
Senseless in the stream
Of Barbarian advertisements
Bombarded by the unshakable force of what it is
Reality
Utopia of mass consumption
Corporate mania
Under the carpet
The destruction of life

Get a JOB MAN
You lazy slob
What are you doing?

Find a wife
Have some kids

The bull shit lies there quietly in the grass
Staring up
The uncaring bastard

Son!
Be a success.
Get paid to afford to get old

Believe in the resurrection
Eternal life awaits as the rainforest burns

Walk to the bar sonny boy
Swallow another claw and go back to sleep

I watched my Grandfather riding a tricycle around in circles in the bright sun
In Khaki shorts with pale, fragile legs.

He had a phone number once
But that's all over now
As he smiles and rides along
Laughing in the humor of the cosmic tide

I was in my spaceship, all safe and encapsulated in a sea of beautiful illusion. I was asleep inside, busy chasing demons without and trying to control the Great Is. I sucked tolerance from chemicals and enjoyed unconsciousness and the temporary blessings of blind wisdom, an ego fed righteousness thrashing around the ether. I buried myself. I bury myself. You put your right foot in and you shake it all about. Shake it all about. Shake it all about. Shake it all about.

Drugs

That mindstem
Ripped off and broken in the midst of some
Disappearing line
Falling all the way down into the repetition of fake bliss
Figuring it out
Over and over and over
Again
IT'S PERFECT!!!
Then gone,
As the illusions wear off and the little addictions start poking us again
Offering their small giddy smiles
While the asphalt carves holes in our souls and rips us sideways
Throwing us back on the train
Going round and round in circles
As it makes its rounds
Hugging the edges
At the base of the great mountain.

OK Fuck it. It could be time to just write and let it be. All the stupidity. Why not just play this game of unedited drivel. Another post on the web, unseen impulsiveness, trickling into obscurity. Infinite work just passed passed on down the line. No crowns for perfection. Just blather and the frisk hot welts of filterlessness, and a right to destroy your lungs with cigarettes for just one day more. Oh foolishness. I don't remember what i was getting at.

Another step on the journey to nowhere.

Well, i'm finally tearing the store down, so now we'll have to catch the website up with the closing store, as opposed to clothing store. I have given everything to charity. The Basalt Thrift store is happy, and they will be putting all the proceeds from their venture into building permaculture and greenhouse capabilities for the valley. It was always supposed to be for something good. So yellow, in the end, did turn out to be green. How exactly getting out of the lease is going to work, I am not yet sure, but they say the cut-your-losses decision is the most difficult to make in business, so at least i've gotten that out of the way. Our little store is closed. Aloha, ciao, adios.

Soft Landing for Democracy

It’s a big night for the USA. America is on the verge of curing a deep cynicism which has coated me like an oily secretion since George W. Bush won a majority of our vote in 2004. At this moment, watching an old wooden television, I’m looking at an American flag with only 42 stars on it. It was my grandfathers. Maybe his grandfather gave it to him; and maybe I should buy a flat-screen TV because living with vintage memorabilia everywhere is starting to freak me out, and I’m starting to wonder whether modernity is really not so bad. I hear a voice, like a deep comforting voice, like a combination of the voices of James Earl Jones and Anderson Cooper. I hear a voice. “Barack Obama.” I hear more voices, drowning out the sarcasm and disbelief of Bill O’Reilly. “Barack Obama, Barack Obama.” I hear thousands voices, of people waiting to celebrate his election in Grant Park Chicago, “OBAMA. OBAMA. OBAMA.” I hear the victorious, passionate premonition of Reverend Jeremiah Wright when he roared: “Barack Hussein Obama!!” Have we had the premonition for years that we were moving in the wrong direction, that America was a force for pain and suffering around the world, with our culture of consumption, resource wasting extravagance, and aggressive exportation of a mindless, presumptive way of life. I have not been a proud American. But here we are, preparing to celebrate a new Age, preparing to view our fellow Americans in a new way, to feel a new connection to our Country. Tomorrow we will meet the citizens of the rest of the world with fresh eyes, without the defensive posture of the past, instantly ready to make them understand that we do not support the crimes of our government, the horrors on which our Nation were built: the slavery, the genocide, the patriarchy, and violence. Obama does represent change. Everything changes. Thomas Jefferson, one of the geniuses of American history, and of the world, is sitting up in Heaven (yes he was forgiven for being a slave owning liberal Christian who had to keep his copy of the Koran under his bed) looking down on us, and it has just suddenly dawned on him that we were not totally hopeless after all. He is looking down and imagining that our remarkable Constitution, which he did so much to create, may finally be bringing good tidings, and its gifts may be ready for long overdue delivery, as we, Americans, have taken the moment in our hands and elected the future. Barack Hussein Obama will be our President. I’m going to celebrate this moment with some fellow human beings, with a bunch of happy, future looking Americans. What a wonderful moment to be standing in a crowd of our countrymen, in Times Square, on Hollywood Boulevard, or on the sidewalk in Main Street USA. What a moment to be standing anywhere, even in the grass alone, in the midst of the great wide open. This is a moment when a man’s confidence in his species can be restored, a moment when we can say goodbye to the past, to the blame, the repetitive mistakes, the selfishness, the mindlessness, the destruction and presumption. Let’s take a moment to collectively wave at what is behind us as we look in the rearview mirror and say goodbye. Ooh, I see a little George Bush in the rearview mirror. Bye George.

An article by this Fella Jonathan....

My wife made me canvass for Obama; here's what I learned


By Jonathan Curley Jonathan Curley – Mon Nov 3, 3:00 am ET
More from Christian Science Monitor:


Charlotte, N.C. – There has been a lot of speculation that Barack Obama might win the election due to his better "ground game" and superior campaign organization.

I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.

Let me make it clear: I'm pretty conservative. I grew up in the suburbs. I voted for George H.W. Bush twice, and his son once. I was disappointed when Bill Clinton won, and disappointed he couldn't run again.

I encouraged my son to join the military. I was proud of him in Afghanistan, and happy when he came home, and angry when he was recalled because of the invasion of Iraq. I'm white, 55, I live in the South and I'm definitely going to get a bigger tax bill if Obama wins.

I am the dreaded swing voter.

So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.

At the Obama headquarters, we stood in a group to receive our instructions. I wasn't the oldest, but close, and the youngest was maybe in high school. I watched a campaign organizer match up a young black man who looked to be college age with a white guy about my age to canvas together. It should not have been a big thing, but the beauty of the image did not escape me.

Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.

We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?"

"We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.

Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.

Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.

We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day's work.

I learned in just those three hours that this election is not about what we think of as the "big things."

It's not about taxes. I'm pretty sure mine are going to go up no matter who is elected.

It's not about foreign policy. I think we'll figure out a way to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan no matter which party controls the White House, mostly because the people who live there don't want us there anymore.

I don't see either of the candidates as having all the answers.

I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.

My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.

10/29/08

There is no going back.
No reverse to the right decision
When the devil within has worked his sabotage
We cannot rewind the savage machine
How can one mind move in so many directions?
How can it be so cruel to the vulnerable self?
When the reckoning comes
Only one stands trial
His own judge and jury,
and the cruelest punisher of his own mistakes
In the blink of consciousness
When he slept
And his devil took the helm
Readying the whip of delusion
Preparing a bed of vipers
To greet consciousness when he wakes
And all the flowers of delusion wilt and fall away
Leaving a cracked stem shaking in the cold

train

There is a train in the brain that goes around in circles and never gets anywhere. It has ideas with meaning, but they don´t make sense, like heroin addiction, or an obsession for something that isn´t there. Reality is what makes the most sense in a world of consciousness which doesn´t make sense. Different people build different looking sand castles, and clay is soft and hard, cracking in dry emptiness as it walks into the dark and says goodbye to dreams.

The Cazador

Oh Cazador, the Cazador
Running around mountain pastures chasing little wild pigs
You fool, decrepidating mass of flesh
Distracted by the flashing screens
Inhabiting the hinterlands
Ever on the outside looking in
You rode through the town of Vasilikos in your clattering machine
Chasing a white horse made of clay
Covering yourself with muck and clawing around as if it meant something
Making promises you wanted to believe
Then came the emptiness you had rejoiced
Then was your way blocked by waving steel bars as the flys descended upon you
The Cazador
Who was outside looking in
Flailing and ranting fool
Who fell roughly from your perch, to crawl in the filth of your blindness
Suddenly your sadness turns to anger
Your anger to madness
Cazador, they disapear
Covered in muck, oh Cazador
Dribbling all over yourself
Too sane for life, and too many dreams to cure the sadness
Just turn the anger inward, with a blast to your forehead and clear it all out
A clean slate
Cazador?
So sad you want to die?
Too many of us oh Cazador
One must be the first to go
The anger raging out is the cruelty of what you've done within
The madness began with love
As everything
Will be destroyed by love
Cazador

a few quotes from the Teaching of Buddha which I am reading, and remain most certainly unenlightened...

An unenlightened life rises from a mind that is bewildered by its own world of delusion. If we learn that there is no world of delusion outside the mind, the bewildered mind becomes clear; and because we cease to create impure surroundings, we attain enlightenment. [Bewildered for sure]

All things are primarily controlled and ruled by the mind and are created up by the mind. As the wheels follow the ox that draws the cart, so does suffering follow the person who speaks and acts with an impure mind.

things are like illusions, they can be said neither to be existent, or non-existent.

A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it were real, so he escapes the suffering. [I´m totally fucked on this one, and there is a band marching by outside this little cafe in Tarifa, Spain, the closest you can get to Africa while still in Europe]

Two extremes to avoid, first is extreme indulgence in the desires of the body, second is the opposite extreme of ascetic discipline, torturing one´s body and mind unreasonably. [who´s with me on the second being less of a problem than the first?]

Things neither exist nor do not exist.

Namu Amida Butsu [in case you don´t say this often anyway, according to this Japanese understanding of Buddhism, make sure to say this before you die, as it could end up being the difference between you being born repeatedly in the sufferings of your mistakes, or being reborn in the pure beautiful land of the Buddha. I´m assuming we´d rather the latter]

what is the meaning of this madness?

The masked avenger sits idly in Andalucia, waiting for a bus to Tarrifa after only a fitful hour of sleep on the plane, after a reunion with the Belgian in the Barcelona night, which ended with a taxi to the airport at 6 in the morning. An hour and a half to wait for the bus departure. Too many questions left unanswered, the end of an age. The pleasure of luxury problems, watching the markets tumble and regretting not pulling it all out 2 months ago. It´s like the difference between a pregnant girl and a light bulb. You can unscrew the lightbulb. Se la vie.

blah blah blah

Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, blah blah blah. Barack Obama, George W Bush, John McCain, blah blah blah. Sarah Palin, blah. Economic crisis, blah blah blah. Markets tumbling, blah blah blah. Bailout plan not working, blah, the American consumers aren't going to be spending like they're supposed to if they can't spend the funny money with their little plastic cards, blah. They aren't going to buy houses and cars without those low interest loans which were thrown at their feet like plush red carpets, saying "come on down!" Blah blah blah. People really are losing jobs, banks really are going under, these are real problems. Trillions of dollars are evaporating out of the stock market, likely to pay off loans on yachts, private planes, and houses in Aspen. Blah blah blah. A new generation of minds, engulfed in flames of madness. Oprah Winfrey, blah blah blah. Important presidential election, and an economic crisis that is helping Obama's numbers in the polls; if he's in a real race with anything in this one, it's racism itself, not that stiff war mongering automaton and his I Love Lucy sidekick, blah blah blah. William Carlos dear, what's interesting about this picture here, is that the wheelbarrow is a green one, with bright white trim, sitting beside a nuclear bomb, with an old gray hen pecking at the seeds around it.