I can only be who I am

I can only be who I am
I can’t be anyone else
Can only experience my pleasures
Can only suffer through my hells

Sometimes I long in envy
To have all that you do
But no matter how much I want to
I just cannot ever be you


Yes - no picture to paste in today as these are my own words - although I may not have been the only one to think them, or even say them necessarily, or maybe somebody else has said them not quite in that order or in that way - but as they came to me and I did not copy them word for word I can call them mine. I think of ideas floating around in a collective pool and in that pool they are there for the taking to be borrowed and re-stated, but nobody is the one sole author of them.

I held out okay in the later part of the fall - normally a difficult time for me - I was quite creative in doing so - imagining the light when the light was not there, feeding off the lights of the Christmas holiday that I normally find offensive - I did pretty well. January essentially kicked my ass - but that is nothing new - January always seems to do that. I concede losing January - which has carried inevitably over to February, but I'll be back to pick up my momentum. I haven't hit the gym in over two weeks and my ability to tap into the pool through my music has been somewhat restricted these days as this ugly cold I am fighting - now in lethargic cough your brains out mode - has been lingering over two weeks now. The snow has just kept coming and coming - up until now anyways - and the one month when sunlight has been in short supply has finally kicked me down somewhat, but knowing it is temporary seems to at least diminish the suicidal thoughts, or at least let me push them away when they inevitably come back for a re-visit. I will know I have won when they are gone altogether, but the fact that they don't stick around too long any more when they do come is a victory I will claim for now.

I acknolwedge the duality between the world I want to believe in - and the "real world" which inevitably is out there - the world I find out about when reading about a pretty 19 year old somewhat local college student - Briana Dennison - (plenty out there on line if you don't already know the story) - who appartently was a great kid - a beautiful girl - who was grabbed away from the house she was in at 4 AM near the Univeristy of Nevada Reno, raped and most likely murdered - and the whole community is searching for her - almost 3 weeks later when hope is looking pretty bleak. Her mother or relative asks how can such a horrible thing happen to a girl who has brought so much good into the world. This is the same world where you read about ethnic cleansing involving the use of machete attacks, systematic rape and genital mutilations in parts of South Africa, brutal suicide bombings, the same world where millions of people are being beaten, starved, tortured and abused in prisons and camps in North Korea and China, the same world where the Holocaust took place 60 years ago and the images still live on in my mind - reading on Wikipedia that before the gas chamber, when the Jews came off the trains after being starved and deprived of food/water for countless horrific hours on a cattle train- hungry and thirsty - would ask for something to drink and were told in response a nice hot cup of coffee was waiting fot them as soon as they came out of the gas chamber disguised as shower. Greed and overconsumption continue to take place, global warming is inevitably leading to changes in the weather, droughts, famines and floods. Our culture's infatuation with material possession is now biting us on the ass as the cost of obtaining these possessions - through an infinite loop of borrowing - is now becoming evident that we are all in tons of fucking debt and nobody actually has any money. I am only just getting started on all this shit - but what I am getting at is there is plenty to get down and out about on the collective level - this is the world I live in - I don't like any of these things - and yet they can and will continue to happen.

So how can I be optimistic knowing this is the world I live in? And look at my personal world - the out of pocket medical bills keep piling up in a never-ending heap. Just when I think I have paid off a batch, a new pile arrives. I work hard but have nothing to show for it. The house which at once had made money, now thanks to the housing market plunge - I would be lucky to even break even if I sold it. The carpet is shot, the cabinets are falling apart, the house can easily use a 20,000 dollar face lift but the money can't be found for it to happen - every day I am greeted to the new spot that the dog puked on or had an accident on, so much needs to be done - our home is a wreck, my wife is a constant overpressured, depressed and resentful insomniac who doesn't want to be where she lives, who is not happy with her life - including my part in it. Even the friends of my wife - whose United States residency - let's just say - is a little bit in question - have nicer shit and a neater home than we do. Everybody seems to be achieving something, my little brother has a higher degree than I do and his first book is due to hit the printing press soon, and probably make him a household name - as my wife states last night - he has the "spark" that none of us have to drive himself to higher education, fame, fortune, and artistic recognition - the same spark that drives my brother in law to be approaching his Phd.

So with all that said - the answer to all this is to be like the cornerback who just got burned for a touchdown by a faster wide receiver and forget it all and put it all behind him and start over again. In other words - FUCK ALL THAT! I am not saying none of it is true - I am not denying all these things are happening - but the question I ask myself - kind of a continuation of my last post showing Mavis Staples to a certain degree - is - do I identify myself by my level of status, by my chain on the pecking order, the trophy wife, the trophy house, the trophy educational level, the trophy job, the trophy bank account - once I have this great big hard-on I can show off to the world - does that define and justify my life? Absolutely not. How about all those horrible violent events that happen - and one of them any day and time could happen to me - how can I be optimistic living in that world. Well - going back to a lecture I saw by one of my heroes - Ram Dass (who by the way became the great spirtual being he was after he walked away from the tenured professor trip and gave up all of that status shit) - he talked about the duality of accetping the world and the karma and fate of one's place in the world, even when certain aspects of it - such as ethnic cleansing - purely suck. I don't like all these thing happening, I don't like hearing about them on the news, I can't deny they are happening - but if I am going to let it pull me down into defeated cynicism than what will I be able to do to put forth the energy that will possibly and hopefully change that world?

I see the world as a collective pool of "Every Single Soul". It is all energy and consciousness, and I admit a lof the energy is negative - hence the violence, pain, and hurt that takes place around us. But there is the flip side argument as well. What keeps the world from being a universal mayhem of war, chaos, starvation and violence? I know it happens - but if we are purely dark creatures - why isn't it happening everywhere? Why have we not nuked ourselves into oblivion already? See - for all the darkness taking place in the world, there is a lot of lightness balancing it out. I think all of the prayers for peace, enlightenment, the folks who walk the "higher path" so to speak of love, tolerance, and compassion - my heroes - heroes who do this regardless of their educational accomplishments, I think we are the ones holding it together and keeping it from being a helluva lot worse than it is. Every one of our souls makes up every cell of the human race - and you put all the cells together and we are one. And then - when you realize we are all tied in it together, "I am he as you are me as you are we and we are altogether" as John Lennon said in I am The Walrus - then individual accomplishments and places in society - ego level stuff - doesn't really mean that much in perspective. Than it is not a matter of how big your dick is, how big your ego is, and what can be listed on the back of your resume and more a matter of what kind of energy are you putting out there to make the world better than it is now for all of us. Money has not a fucking thing to do with it - I mean I need to eat and give my body what it needs, but having a three story custom house up at Lake Tahoe as a second home - means that place is just another place - and if the entire world is my home, than I own that house as a visitor just as much as I own the house which is listed on the title with my name on it that I may payoff in the course of my lifetime should I be so lucky.

I know when I am really getting off on my spiritual trip - when I am out there playing my notes and every note is just ringing out and regardless of mistakes of the voice or guitar, it is perfect, even if faulty - when I feel like some beautiful spiritual entity is right there with me - I can feel her - she is alive - she is with me - embracing me - she is the great creator Mother Earth manifest to me as an individual spirit form - and even though a rigid logical scientist will never see her in a laboratory, and can probably logically proove that she does not exist - and whether or not she does exist in the "real world" at some point almost becomes a moot point - and yes this is a FUCKING run-on sentence - but don't worry - the end of it is approaching - what I am saying is at these moments I realize that is not about me as much as it is about my place in the world surrounding me - one small but beautiful part of it - and me as this one cell - my purpose is to lift it higher and do my part in counteracting the events that happen as the result of the more primitive, violent, hateful consciousness. See - I told you that sentence would end.

So I cannot claim anything as my own, but it is all our own and I am a part of it. Congratultions on your PHD - except it is not yours - it is ours - I am sharing it with you. If not for the collective world of ideas - that I am a part of and you are as well - that I contribute to, you couldn't have obtained it. So give me why 1/5,000,0000,0000,000th share of it that I am entitled to while you are at it. People tell me I should write a book. Thanks for the compliment - but why and for what? Do I want or need name recognition? No. I am already writing now - isn't that good enough? It is for me. Do I need to write to eat? Thankfully no - it actually gives me a lot of freedom not to have to do that. Although I appreciate the positive feedback, do I really need 100's of thousands of people to acknowledge me? At one point I thought I did, but now - no - hey I know I write, sing and play beautiful stuff - it is beautiful to me - and that is good enough for me. If I am not my biggest fan already, than thousands of fans will mean nothing, but once I am, I don't really need thousands of fans. As far as needing to get "the message" out there, there are already plenty of people out there who are doing a pretty good job of it and are commercially successful, that is good enough for me.

I remember once coming down from a pretty heavy feel good psychedlic trip at a Grateful Dead show I came up with thought "it is and it is becoming". What I think I meant by that - as it still - of all of my thoughts I have once written from way back when - still rings out now - is that collective consciousness, along with the humans who think the collective thoughts, continues to evolve. I am not necessarily referring to Darwin evolution - survival of the fittest - dog eat dog competition - although it could fit to a point, but more the evolution of the human mind to realize that love, compassion, tolerance, and seeing one's place in the world surrounding is more important than the one individual alone. To be part of the world is higher than to conquer the world. To love your neighbor is better than beating his or her head with a machete, or raping a female that appears desirable to satisfy an urge. It is better and higher to sacrifice your own immediate wishes or desires if the effects of those are going to hurt another. On a bigger challenge, the burning shadow hate and anger that leads to murder, brutalization, even genocide - is a personal battle to be overcome within the walls of one's consciousness, and has no solution with the brutal murder of hundreds of thousands of people who happen to be a part of the demonized race or group of people. In other words, to re-claim your shadow and to pull out from that hate is to own your demons for yourself, rather than place them onto another so that the only apparent solution is to kill them, or a group of them, to feel peace. The peace must happen from within, and peace is no peace when murder of another entity appears to be the only way to claim it. These are the collective lessons that we are learning, that we continue to need to learn, and unfortunately many hundreds, thousands, of millions have died brutally in the evolutionary process, but in my mind the light at the end of the tunnel is they will not have died in vain if the high consciousness finally wins out over the lower consciousness, and the human consciousness evolves to the point where these things no longer have to happen any more. To me that is real evolution, when the mind collectively can realize what I am realizing individually, that to live life in love and harmony with the world around is so much better than to live in complete hatred of those that appear to be in the way of perceived love and happiness. I am working my way toward this - I admit I am not completely successful, but still further along than I once was - so I have to pat myself on the back for what I have done.

If I can do it alone - with all the adversity that has come my way, than it is my hope and desire that there are more like me who can do it now - and who knows - maybe this world can start evolving and changing into a better place - and maybe I will even have the miraculous fortune to see it happen while I am alive. Maybe it is even happening now, in a subtle way, while I am still alive and my own one in 5-6 billion human consciousnesses is making it happen, in my own small and large way simultaneously. I have to keep on encouraging myself and those around me - keep on believing in myself. I laughed when my wife said my brother was the only one with the spark in the family - maybe she meant the drive to accomplish higher education to be equated with the spark - but still the use of the word "spark" and saying he was the only one that had it made me laugh - because I know for a fact there is a burning spark and spirit within me. It is there even when I am feeling sick, tired, grouchy, and just want to lie down after a day filled with exhaustion and no sunlight to lift me. It is burning up within me on a beautiful summer evening in the mountains when everything around me is alive and seems to be speaking to me in its own magical language. It is the miracle that this once self-proclaimed cynic who thought it was all hopeless for many years, is one who is now an optimist in the face of overwhelming odds. I believe in myself, even though I have hated myself for years and still do from time to time inevitably. I have to keep on working at it, practicing affirmations of love, even at times when the tendency is to revert back to the familiar self-hate. I believe in who I am, what I am, what I have done and continue to do and if in spite of all odds I can do that, I can believe in the world around me as well, and believe that she can accomplish collectively what I have done within the walls of my own soul. She, like me, is evolving, she is beautiful - and yes she is becoming.