Pages torn from a hustler's journal: 6

The time travel in music continues to fuel my love for the unknown bond. To never meet or speak to someone, but feel into their sorrow, their hope, their loss and relief and be reached by them, to be them for a moment, outside of the confines of life but in the state of any possibility and the only one that lives is something so inescapably powerful, so gripping that you can’t exist as anything but the music.    
 
   
Don’t try to be a unicorn. The perfect partner, or the party favor to a couple, the whipped cream on top is such a high value target that you’ll be idealized, vilified. Serve and go but when you do, serve from an insulated place where you can decide what the boundaries are, what you’ll take and what you won’t. When you move with power and grace you get to own yourself and not be a slave to your tools or your desires. The unicorn is a dreamer, a fresh plate, nearly blank slate who barely understands the power they wield with sexual choice and that ephemeral moment in the value state. Icarus took a dive. Just as well, egos swell when cats get educated but never learn to take the L. I swore when I fell up I’d swell my melon on getting farther like water was my All-Father. That’s why I bother to do things right, distinguish and don’t sell yourself short. You don’t bring it all, you’re not everyone’s cup of tea. But for those who you do please? For those you do reach? You bring a lot. You please a lot. You reach a lot. You’re special in that. Those you do reach stay reached. That makes you gold. Do not depreciate your gold. Don’t try to be a unicorn.
   
 
To the here and now. Joker was a cerebral movie, a descent into madness and a story that easily could have happened to any of us. I always preferred my villains to be 2 dimensional foils, easy to digest and understand. Once you start to relate to the villain and sympathize with them, root for them is when you see aspects of that in yourself, or potential for that in yourself. That’s what I’m afraid to look at in scenes of desperation and misery. There’s so many moments of pale reflection and grim self honesty, and so the movie served its purpose and took me to a further place than I had been before. Everyone has some Joker inside of them and he’s a compelling glimpse into the dark side of humanity. Prick the balloon of civilization and that’s what laughs back at you. That demented joy in violent reverie is just beneath the surface. I don’t want to kill anyone, or ruin anyone’s life, but I have this deep understanding of why someone would. Being able to clarify that from a movie is paramount to my enjoyment of fiction. In this world we constantly divide things into order and chaos, and impose order on the world or separate ourselves from the forms or the formless that doesn’t represent the function, the state of order we see fit. The whole world is shaped by our opinions and we lean in or away from everything. So it is with fiction that the thought experiment can run wild, the “what if” can be explored and we can decide what we relate to, what we are and what we aren’t and the more lines are drawn, the finer the points are made, the deeper our understanding of the whole. Ultimately the whole functions regardless of the minutiae, but those ideas leak into our lives, in individual nodes of consciousness. It’s important to see ourselves paralleled.  
 
 
I sent a text forgiving Robyn, apologizing for a hard break-up. She didn’t know how to take it, having not grown up with forgiveness, compassion or apologies and not understanding how they work or why they function. I wasn’t expecting any response from her and would not have flinched had a negative response been sent. I forgave Robyn not just in my heart, in my mind, silently, but actively and extended the olive branch in order to settle any hostilities. If she still feels angry, hostile, that’s her journey but I will not die with a heart full of misery and anger. If I forgive someone I want to extend my hand to them and forgive them, wish them well and be a grown man, loving and living and flowing forward everyday. Today I ran into Sam outside the dispensary and wished him well, extended my hand to him. He retracted and scooted away, looking shook, making many grimacing faces. He looked gaunt, frail, broken. The years have been hard on him and he has not taken care of his mind or body. Apparently like Robyn, Sam still lives in the same emotional space and never confronted his forward self. We owe a debt to our future selves, the 5 years from now self, the 10 years from now self, the oldest version of you, the you that breathes their last breath. We owe a debt to our forward self and that debt is to be fully present and not be dragging the past into the future. To do that requires living today in the present, today to the fullest, today with joy and compassion, wonder, and love. I want to keep living that love regardless of how others might want to receive it. I don’t have to extend further contact with anyone. I don’t need validation. I’m not gonna’ reach out again or expect anything. Most people become older versions of their laziest selves. That’s conditioning and change is a struggle. But the struggle is real and that’s what we do. Rise and climb. Strive and grind. Stay alive and flip the paradigm.  
   
   
If every culture has legends about dragons is it because dragons once existed or is the concept embedded in our epigenetic memory from a time before we were present-day humans? Could it be left-over memory from early simian days? Do we remember anything from before we were civilized? If the lizard brain is older than the executive problem solving center, if the amygdala is ancient and powerful and knows how to run the show, how much are we missing from not listening? How deep does that brain go and what other senses did we have to sacrifice in order to delve into our logical center so far?  
   
   
To invent something before there’s a need for it is ahead of your time, or insanity, or silliness. But in any case it’s an expression of possibility tested against obstacles, it’s freedom flexed. We need puzzles to solve, traps to escape, locks to pick. We need to be carving out new territory and extending the reach of our understanding because growing is what things do. When we do the things that benefit the SuperOrganism it feels most natural, and rewarding. There’s chemical rewards for everything that contributes to the evolution of the Consciousness Borg, the Gestalt. In pair bonding, in innovation, in grappling, in love-making, in freestyle, in riddles, in dance there’s the oxytocin rush, the dopamine boost, the lecithin drip, the pineal gland activation, the reticular nervous system being boosted, the activation of mirror neurons which stimulates neurogenesis, reverses telomere shrinkage and hastens cellular senescence. Efficiency of the machine is important. Why we’re supposed to keep moving, keep growing stronger, smarter, lean into the discomfort and stress. Mother Nature is efficient tragedy glorified. The salmon never gets to eat the Eagle because Mother Nature doesn’t want equality. Sometimes you can achieve equity for a little while, but Nature wants conflict and resolution in order that the entire system can self-replicate with changes in order to evolve the entire system, to render the algorithm more efficient. All living systems have their elliptical growth cycles, with the large macro rungs being supported. Universe is full of moving shit to stack the ziggurat and keep the rhythm flowing. Entropy always increases? Sure. So does complexity. The beat goes on.  
    
   
What rises up can simmer. / Flies like cinders / Eyes see glimmers / Wired to burst / Desire is dessert / But a berserk needs dinner / Just text me when you’re off / Leave the door unlocked / Silent ritual / Sacred space / Held in nowhere place / I can smell you from the bottom of your stairs / But then you can smell me when I stare / Feels naked from here / First time taking you in felt like fear / Beast told me to disappear / Keep my clothes on, turn you jelly / Leave a sticky pond / Move on / Word is bond I tried to leave it there / I needed to hear you moan / Needed to ravage you / To be alone, / To explore with you / To bite, to bone / To release and go again / Casual, like fuck-friends / But damn, as woman and man / So primal / So divine and touching you blind / So… undefinable / Except that tantra doesn’t hold a candle so / Something special in our kind of flow. / The kind of sex that just knows.