A Stoned Throw Away

I took the longest drive after rehearsals…ok maybe not the longest drive, but I did take a couple wrong turns on purpose so I could drive longer.

I think I understand what Slightly Stoopid was referring to. High drives are my favorite (don’t harsh my mellow). The newly renovated house on the corner reminded me of the tooth paste bottle caps from that Willy Wonka movie, where eventually a house was built from them. The dad I think built some sort of sculpture, a replica of their house I think. The model was made from those same defective toothpaste caps, the awful the no good the unwanted discarded.

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I love catching moments of myself doing things I’ve done a million times. Remembering how awkward and different pushing a door open with my hip felt at first, and admiring the fluidity of the current moment. The “Inter-connectedness” of things and how knowledge carry’s is fascinating. I remember winnowing seeds for the first time and recognizing how similar it was to hand grinding weed. We hold the same postures completing tasks completely unrelated but physically similar in some way. No one taught us what would feel most natural to us—life experiences and instinct differ from individual to individual. 

The transference of physiological movement knowledge becomes unconscious at a certain point. I pick up a quarter differently than the next person. We know how to shift our weight and dexterity based upon the texture of a surface. It’s almost like having a fingerprint, or a type of walk, each of these things share their unique qualities that will never change and that are distinct to us.

The weight and active states of our bodies do also play an important role when regarding posture or weight bearing, or hunching. We become aware of the pure mass of things. After interacting with an object long enough we gather sufficient data which we store and remember. Those data tell us just how hard to kick open a cabinet, or a door, or the perfect angle to throw a bucket so that its contents spill out and propel the receptacle away. We just get used to things. This idea can be boiled down to muscle memory. We do a lot of things without thinking, and without telling ourselves to, but it’s because we are constantly just reacting, or adapting to our environments. When we become conscious of the way we behave we gain better control over ourselves and our surroundings.

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Connect on a human to human level—eco fascism is bad, do not simply shrug yourself into inaction.

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Things to remember to always have and keep: 

Love

Joy

Drugs 

And sex

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We fill the voids of silence with sounds that can be called words, called conversation. If the tail end of my last sentence falls with the intonation of gentility and quiet, I expect to receive just that. Introspection is peaceful, and often my mind can get clouded as I begin a silent meditation and it is interrupted with more speech. There is a version of me which exists only within my head and it’s calm there, the peaceful place of my own body: a temple. This mind palace has halls and corridors which I explore with a trailing hand, grazing the walls with my curiosity, peaking around each corner with anticipation. Something stops me from opening the next door…

“And where did you grow up?” 

I pull the answer from a different part of my brain. Respond. Talking again, having a conversation and I find my face forming a smile, my hands moving enthusiastically, my chest breathing out what sounds like a laugh. I finally catch up to my body and fill in the gaps. Instead of seeing myself from an internal perspective…the inside looking out, I take up the space where the external version of me exists. Here i begin see through my eyes and not from the side stage of my peripherals. It’s like I’m split into two: the intangible and the visceral. Within is where I find comfort yet simultaneously, I need to lose myself.

What’s It To Yuh?

 If everything made sense we wouldn’t ask as many questions. At least that’s what I thought. Now it’s more about what we don’t know and how much we are supposed to which provokes a conversation. I can tell you about why the keyboard is not alphabetized, (if you care, ask me in the comments). I can tell you about plants, the California native ones, and their functions. I can describe taxonomy to you and some historical facts. I can talk a little bit of music with you but don’t get too technical. We can talk about the feelings it evokes. I can talk about art, making art, being an artist, and fine art. I can talk about a lot of random things that sometimes make no sense. I can talk about the way the planets move and how stars form, and tides, and random literature. I know a lot of weird science facts, like about mountain goats and sea otters, and gorillas and death. There are endless things I can talk about.

I know plants have senses, not in an anthropomorphic way, but in a plant equivalent way. Plants can see based on these photoreceptors in their leaves which can distinguish between red and blue light which allows them to develop and bloom in time with the changing seasons and early moons. They were tested with flashes of blue and red light, and which ever light it saw last, even if for the briefest moment, would determine whether the bud of the flower would bloom or not. This is how we get carnations every year on Mother’s Day despite them not being the flower of the season.

Plants can smell, they excrete a hormone, ethylene, found in medicine like vapor rub or hot and cold packs, which encourage its own neighboring branches fruits to ripen. This is the reason putting a banana in a brown paper bag with an avocado will cause it to ripen. Or the reason the Egyptians would slice open a few figs within a batch in order to cause the whole basket to mature. The same goes for Chinese and pears within the wine cellar. This hormone will alert its neighboring branches of infection or danger (i.e. A broken branch, aphids and infestation, etc). This causes the warned branches to excrete another hormone, methylene, which acts as a defense against insects or animals that may be consuming it or brushing up against the plant. 

I know that hops, which is in beer, is in the cannabis family. The bacteria which ferments beer, yeast, is just a giant blob of gooey living organisms. I know that the fruit which we consider a strawberry is not actually the berry but in fact it is the receptacle and what we call the seeds are the true fruit called achenes. I learned once that aspens are the largest living organism in the world. This is due to the fact that they spread via rhizome. Basically, every stem shares a collective root system and every root system is about 80,000 years old (making them the oldest organisms in the world as well). This is the reason all the Aspen trees in Colorado or Utah change their colors all at once, because they are one…

I learned that spiritual growth does plateau if you do not continue to practice it. I learned that coyotes live on Bernal hill. I learned that Jupiter can only be seen from Earth every 100 years. I learned that Am is my favorite chord. That when you put Am F#m C and E7 together it makes the prettiest song. I learned that you can only make art you’re proud of when your heart is in it. When there isn’t a cloak weighing you down stifling your voice, that’s when the real artist shines through. In the words of Sheila Heti:

“An artist knows [themselves] to be an artist because of how [they] relate to [their] own sincerity”

No one wants to enjoy phony art, no one wants to read something because it is digestible, not because there is some inherent rule against doing so, but because something unshielded has more flavor. Something that provokes thought is what makes a piece historical…worth talking about. Our failures, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities serve as a connection to the world (as in the people within it). They signal to it: “I need you because I can’t do this by myself”. The shame and embarrassment we feel is the glue that binds us all together. It is within that experience that we can connect to everyone else. My mentor and best friend said to me today: “We are the universe as long as we don’t stop being true.” Whether or not we choose to recognize the serendipity and synchronicity within the universe, it remains there for the looking eye, for the seeing eye. I learned how to look. I learned how to spy…

I learned what Spain looks like. The way it feels to see a familiar face after days of being on a plane and in stuffy airport air. The feeling of summer was evident. I know how it feels to leave your heart at the threshold. I know what the German countryside looks like. I learned that the houses look like gingerbread houses and the forests are the healthiest shade of green. I know what silence sounds like. I know what being held feels like. I know how love feels.

I learned that Earth may have a consciousness, and that it hums at a frequency of 8 hertz, and that scientists can hear it from space. They call this the Schumann resonance. We live inside a ringing bell with two electrically charged heartbeats. Lightning clouds shoulder unreleased energy which somehow suggests that whatever goes down also must come up. Every sprite, lighting strike, and thunderstorm equally receives the same amount of energy it produces. This energy sits at the base of the ionosphere (where electrons and ions flow freely within a layer of our atmosphere). Earth has evolved, almost as though it were conscious, to produce a negative charge on land so as to balance the positive charge coming down from within a thunderstorm. Similarly, lightning occurs when the pressure and energy of hot condensation from the ground precipitates and rises to the top of a cloud compressing it against the cool ice crystals that exist there. This friction, like static, strips the molecules leaving the positive charged ions to float up and the negative charged ions to move down. Eventually, the pressure builds so much that it cracks with an intense energy, zinging with bright electricity, followed by the loud delayed boom of thunder. A bolt of blue. I know that lighting can hit the same spot more than once, for example, the Empire State Building gets struck 23 times a year.

I know that three major regions of the world help create the energy hum which can be heard from space. Those locations are: the America’s , Africa, and the Maritime Pacific (a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean), and the thunderstorms which occur are the cause for the 8 hertz resonance. It’s a natural thing.

I know that Alaska has a four to six month period of 23 hour darkness. The reason being its placement on the earth’s axis. This is the same reason why in the winter we get less sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere as opposed to summer days which are longer. Based on the Earth’s tilt we can measure the time of year by daylight length. Winter solstice is the celebration, or indication, that Earth is at its maximum tilt away from the sun, making it the shortest day of the year. The opposite event is the summer solstice, where we experience the shortest night of the year. Each (Summer and Winter) equinox indicates that the Earth is equal parts in both hemispheres which in succession, slowly leads to either longer or shorter days.

I know about longitude and latitude. How the Y axis is Longitudinal, beginning at the prime meridian (located in the UK, Europe, Algeria, Mali, Burkina, Faso, Tongo, and Ghana) separated by the East and West hemisphere measured from 0^-180^ E/W. The X axis, being Latitude, begins at the equator (located in various equatorial countries) separated by Northern and Southern Hemispheres from 0^-180^ N/S. These angular measurements not only allow us to navigate and travel to pinpointed locations on the surface of the Earth, but measure temperature. When we consider the latitudinal points of the globe we see equatorial/tropical regions (N: Tropic of Cancer, S: Tropic of Capricorn) which are measured from 0^ at the equator to approximately 23.5^ N/S. Subtropical regions follow from about 20^-40^ N/S (temperature is paralleled on both hemispheres). Succeeding these are the temperate regions 40^-60^ from the equator and lastly, the Arctic climates which begin at 60^ and end at each pole of the planet.

Each climactic region has its own characteristics, but I will nutshell them all.

Equatorial/Tropical regions: where the sun hits the longest and strongest. Eternal summer, never dropping below 64^

Tropic of Cancer/Tropic of Capricorn regions: temperate and subtropical, characterized by hot humid summers and mild chilly winters. (The US South West to the Mexican Plateau lie within these parameters).

Polar/Arctic: long cold winters and short cool summers. There is a large variability in climate across the Arctic, but all regions experience extremes of solar radiation in both summer and winter.

Somehow all of these things connect as we go about our lives, but we hardly spend our time consciously thinking about them. A good grounding technique might be to consider something outside of yourself and try to understand it. In my case, it helps to understand how much space my life truly takes up within the entire world. Once I gain perspective and understand that my internal monologue is not the most pressing matter in the universe I can slowly begin to quiet my mind. Of course there are days that this is more difficult than others, but lately, completing work that does not directly benefit me, and rather aids something or someone else, helps fulfill a sense of purpose from within which we all need in order to survive. As primates, we share 98% DNA with gorillas and therefore have primal urges. Therefore, as conscious beings we are unable to navigate our own biology, we interpret our instinctual need for fulfillment as anxiety and stress. Fulfillment comes from having a pack, a community, and working for the people within it to create strong ties and relationships with longevity. (These are the words of a self help book I read a year ago). Fulfillment comes from having a purpose, and a purpose can be found by having values and opinions and therefore enacting these beliefs by choosing a path that aligns with them. This is up to you reader, with introspection you will find the things which bring you passion. Start somewhere, and go.

I know that when I wake up I will have to blink one eye slowly open and then the other, assessing the feeling in my belly. Are the butterflies here today? Are my feet restless? Sometimes I wake up with few endorphins, and other days I wake up with all the endorphins I need. On the days I don’t have the tools I need to operate my body, I have to make some. Physical exercise helps boost serotonin, reward systems help as well, and finally affirmations and grounding techniques. An example of one is assessing the environment and all of my senses: what can I hear? What can I see? What can I feel? What can I hear? Once I go through each of these I go through again and again, paying close attention to what my body is physically doing at the present moment, and only in the present moment. Breathing in I know I am breathing in. Breathing out I know I am breathing out. Repeat this to yourself and do not control your breath. I know how to find the gratitude flow. List things you are grateful for aloud, then continue to list things, different things, with your eyes closed, and do that for a while until it comes easier and faster. Right before you think of something you are grateful for—stop. Allow that anticipation of positivity and gratitude to envelop you. This is the permanent state in which we want to remain.

I know that in order to understand you have to lend an ear to listen first. I know that Fernet is used as a bartenders secret liqueur for two reasons: it doesn’t leave an odor on the breath, and prohibition. Firstly, Fernet is not a brand of spirit, it is actually the way amaro is aged, Some Fernet’s are similar to mouth wash and others like a woody mint. Back during the prohibition era the Branca brothers had an idea to create an alcoholic beverage which could be used medicinally, like Jagermeister, and which contained many poignant herbs and spices, so as to be considered a digestif. Therefore, the Branca brothers set out to the pharmacies near and far, promoting their product as one that could be taken after meals to promote digestive fluidity.

So what? So what I know all these things? That’s just it. I know these things, more even, and yet I continue to tell myself I don’t know shit. Still, I can achieve what I want, what I think will fulfill that empty space, but my achievements will not make me happy if they’re only meant to fill a void. To fill a void created during childhood, or adulthood, but a dark shadow that nonetheless lives within me, within us all. Don’t fret! Shadows are a good thing, every day we must see them in the hallway and nod good morning, tip the brim of our hats to them, and remember that they are there…because they are apart of us. If they get suppressed they will be angry. When the shadow is angry it will come out during greatly inappropriate times. Someone may set off an unintentional trigger and anger may arise, but coooool it man and fall apart in my backyard. Our emotions are created by our brains in order to assign meaning to bodily sensations based on past experiences. When feeling offended ask yourself: Is this about me? Or is this just being spoken to me?

So it doesn’t matter how much you know, and maybe instead, within recognizing that there is more to learn we can finally find the beauty which comes with accepting that we may never know it all.

Don’t Trust The Cacophony

There are two tiny people running around as I write this, chasing each other. Tiny persons, tots, children.

They are more like little adults conversing in their own way which is why I describe them as little people. I guess I begin to wonder what occurs exactly when we go from being a baby to being considered an actual functioning member of society. The answer must lie somewhere within how much we can contribute to it. Therefore, in those moments I couldn’t help but to perceive them as a "little person" because the behavior they were displaying was so unlike children, and more of a "contributing to society" energy. As it goes, children endlessly inspire me. They are the most determined creatures I have ever observed. They have this willingness to fail and explore and experience. Toddlers communicate in a special way, and like the fascination I have for animals and their thoughts, I always wonder 'What the hell is going on inside there?' These complexities will remain as such until we somehow tap into the telekinetic world and read each others minds.

A scene: two small humans chasing each other between the garden lane, the tops of their heads barely reaching the undersides of the tables on either side of them. Back and forth, and back and forth, running through the puddles, shrieking with excitement. It is exciting! I could see it. They made it look so fun that I looked down at my own unmoving feet contemplating why I had stopped finding joy from mundane moments. My answer: repetition and exposure. I forget to appreciate things the more often I experience or indulge within them. Shavda's voice always pops into my head when I see a sight like this. "My greatest guru is actually my four year old granddaughter. She reminds me to walk gently upon the earth and appreciate its beauty with newness each time," she said to me while we were both tripping on shrooms. Shavda is my greatest guru. At 74 she is like a glowing orb of radiant childlike joy and light. Not only is her hair the starkest white that reflects the sun with brilliance, but her aura is white. Her smile heals, her eyes sparkle, her teeth gleam, her hands hold. Before this piece becomes a complete ode to Shavda, I must lastly state: she epitomizes childlike wonder and excitement.

While appreciating and acknowledging the little people running around my plant nursery I realized that despite my previous notion I was experiencing the world with new eyes, even if the lens was not mine. By observing the newness they were feeling I was led to remember my first time. The interconnectedness of experiences is what makes us relatable, which is how bonds and relationships form. Except until the moment familiarity sets in, it becomes far easier to find things redundant and dull. I tend to consume things, people, experiences with a type of infatuation until these things become absolutely repugnant. This characteristic could be a result of the undiagnosed ADHD my mother highly believes I have. The way my little thoughts work...I am beginning to believe her.

The cacophony of voices in my head like to lie. I know they do. Sometimes they are intuitive and can save me from a situation I should avoid. These days it has become rather difficult to silence their whisperings. Thoughts are like mind flowers which bloom and die with time. This restless and troubled mind runs circles around itself and it always has a problem with something. I then have to ask myself: Is this me and my thoughts or is this a result of my lifestyle lately? Sleep, diet, and substance consumption contribute to our mental health. I know this. I experienced the results of health negligence in Barcelona when I acknowledged that the panic attack I had was not induced by any real panic at hand, but rather by a chemical reaction occurring inside of me. My body was responding to what I had consumed, or more accurately, hadn't within 48 hours. As a result, I almost lost my fucking mind. On days like today I have to sit back and question how I have been treating my body.

What do you call it when you forget to eat? I don't mean: 'I am depressed and I cannot bring food to the threshold of my lips' kind of forget. It's more of a 'I am not hungry and will continue to go about my day until I get hungry.' But then the hunger does not come. Tack on my tobacco consumption which curbs appetite, and fasting until 1pm, a beer after work which fills me up, and soon enough it's 10pm and I've cooked up a perfect numbskull meal. I could find it "edgy" or even comical, but I am more mindful than that. I sit myself down and ask: 'what is wrong'...and then we think. It's been a week of this "diet". Last Sunday I acknowledged it only because the person I was speaking to was trembling with each drag of their cigarette. It could have been from the cold, or drugs, or being malnourished. But then I brought my own cigarette to my lips only to find a slight shake in my fingertips as well-and I was not cold or on drugs.

I found it inspiring and romantic, as a writer would, but there should be a point where my shakiness must be observed as a visceral sign...my body is trying to tell me something. Here I find myself, at the writing station again, using this outlet as a way to figure it out. When I woke up today I thought my problem was external, that the sadness was my reaction to a situation, or the weather, but I have found my hands resting on my heart and my belly several times throughout the day as a form of self soothing. I realize I am not O.K. As I said before, don't trust the cacophony because the voices will instinctively lie. Putting the blame on exterior factors and dereliction can ruin someone, be sure to take responsibility so as to facilitate a new perspective or outlook.

This blog is supposed to be honest, raw, and philosophical, but today I find it extremely hard to fulfill all of these prerequisites I have set for myself. This piece will not belong to me when it gets published, it will be for the world to use and interpret as it wants. I have spent so many hours writing this now, existing within my mind, and I keep looking at the time, seeing the hours pass, causing myself more turmoil and pain. Today time has been representative of my worth. What this means is that I have observed the amount of literal thought I have put into a person and the way it signifies my prioritization of them, where I then have been questioning how mutual that feeling is. As I step back from today and the emotions its brought, I can easily see how stupid my inner monologue has become, but the only way out is through. Therefore I have forced myself into a headspace in order to overcome the situation, be better, and change my attitude.

As a reminder for anyone who struggles with the intensity of their thoughts and emotions: You are valid. You are loved. Love yourself first and the rest will come easily. As a reminder to myself: I love you and I love my life. Be healthy to your body because if not it becomes increasingly difficult to heal yourself-inside and out. Walk gently and relinquish the tendency to stifle your inner child...because after all, despite what the cacophony says, life truly is so fucking beautiful.

Paying Off These Parking Tickets

As I lurched into my car this morning I saw an envelope on the floor of the driver's side. Within it lay a blue and white parking ticket folded up neatly, slightly water damaged from the beach mist. A rush of several thoughts came to mind, but with a sigh I finally said aloud: “FFFFFFFuuck”.

I began to think about the thousands of dollars I owed this city. Debts. The bleak idea of paying off my parking tickets was far easier to bear than the true act of doing so. In a few months, when the bills have stacked, or perhaps when I wake up to a boot on my car and then soon find myself looking up at the sky with anguish, because that was the last possible thing I could've handle that day, I might just begin to shovel out my money. Author, Mark Manson, wrote about the nihilist perspective. He described it as us finding comfort within our individualistic definition of life's insignificance and how on the contrary, it is exceptionally important to keep hope. In Manson's book, Everything is Fucked, he discusses hope and the ways we place value within something, whether it be ethically or emotionally, and how essentially, 'hope' is our own choice. In other words, we are unique in our ability to deem something more, or less, important than our peers, like our personal goals, which give us hope of a before and after story. We are able to see, by the results of our product, how successful we have been, and this success is personal, no one can decide when a work has fulfilled its duty, whether that duty was to help the world, or just help us.

In finding a "purpose", or rather, something we'd like to achieve, life begins to have a meaning, because we have something to work towards. These personal goals are ever changing, we must be mindful of this fact because the ability to change our minds does not equate to failure, or indecisiveness, despite us interpreting it that way, but do not fear. When we commence a project we are met with obstacles, sometimes that obstacle can be ourselves, when we do what feels good rather than what we should do (remember, what we decide is important is solely up to us...we don't have to do anything), and other times the obstacles are out of our control. We may run into health risks that tell us we can no longer work towards being the athlete we always wanted to be. We may live in a city that gets wiped out and flooded by an unprecedented veering river, forced to rebuild from scratch, putting present plans at a standstill. Remarkably, the human desire to survive, not just to survive but to live, forces us to stand up again after falling down 7 times, and this hope, our ability to want to achieve something, will be what drives us hardest. To put it simply: sometimes goals can be unattainable, out of our hands, and when this occurs it is important to be adaptable.

But in reading Manson's book I was not thinking about my goals as much as I was these parking tickets and how they will matter as a before-and-after scheme in my life (I have yet to find any beneficial outcomes). Therefore, I have deemed my debts to San Francisco 'insignificant' for two reasons:

One, this city has so much fucking public transport funding, SFMTA reported a yearly estimate of 90 million dollars in revenue, (which is hardly being used in the right way) that I do not feel the inclination to contribute to its corruption and misuse of my "hard earned tax dollars". Sorry, but the city does not need my money. We don't even know where it goes! The only thing allegedly for certain is that the people giving me the tickets are being compensated with the same money I was forced to cough up. Talk about life being a bitch.

Two, my silly hippy belief on how stupid money is. Currency amounts to something and is nothing. It is little numbers sitting within a virtual world changing from a 4 to a 5 with the swipe of a plastic card. I mean, there are wars happening, does my parking ticket matter to anyone besides myself and the meter maid who's decided they had had enough?

Similarly, I began to think about all of the people I was indebted to, but a different debt, the good kind. In creating a life with purpose it is important to live by a few principles: community, care (meaningfulness), and emotion. With indifference life degenerates. When we have no values or strong beliefs we begin to lack reason or rationality behind our decision making. Imperative to our interpersonal relationships, care and emotion help us create deeper connections and allows us to discover things about ourselves.

I finally learned how to delve deeper, whether that was through conversation, poetry, or personal growth, I began to coax myself out of the protective shell I had once created. I quickly found myself inspired by the people around me just by listening to their journey's and the tribulations they faced while on them. Life had opened up! I was given hope, and because of that I became capable of withdrawing myself from the bleak and cynical perspective I was so wrapped up in. Not to be confused with comparing myself with my peers, instead I realized my problems were my own, and based on my community's success approaching their own struggles, I learned alternative ways to do the same. Reader, the first step to self development is not telling yourself there is something wrong with you that must be erased. You are valuable, you are important as is. Instead it is by the desire to improve a characteristic within us which might have caused someone harm (yourself, or a loved one), and with this desire tough questions need to be asked; about the way we react, how accountable we hold ourselves to our mistakes, and most importantly: 'Am I wrong?'. After mastering this the world expands...and also shrinks.

The older we get the better we get at coping. We know what to expect when things go awry, and we get better at finding solutions faster. Problems get harder, we get stronger...smarter.

I'll pay off these parking tickets someday...but today the problem is that I want to do it tomorrow. As the famous pirate Jack Sparrow once said:

"The problem is not the problem, the problem is your problem with the problem...savvy?"

Quiet Please

We fill the voids of silence with sounds that can be called words, called conversation. To me it just sounds like noise.

If the tail end of my sentence falls with the intonation of gentility and quiet, I expect to receive just that. Introspection is peaceful, and often my mind can get clouded and begin a silent meditation and when it is interrupted with more speech, more words, I lose the thought. There is a version of me which exists only within my head and it's calm there, the peaceful place within my own body: a temple. This mind palace has halls and corridors which I explore with a trailing hand, grazing the walls with curiosity, peaking around each corner with anticipation. Something stops me from opening the next door...

"And where did you grow up?"

I pull the answer from a different part of my brain and try not to outwardly sigh. Respond. Talking again, having a conversation and I find my face forcing a smile, my hands moving enthusiastically, my chest breathing out what sounds like a laugh. I finally catch up to my body and fill in the gaps. Instead of seeing myself from an internal perspective...the inside looking out, I take up the space where the external version of me exists. Here I begin to see through my eyes and not from the side stage of my peripherals. It's like I'm split into two: the intangible and the visceral. Within is where I find comfort, yet I simultaneously desire the mere pleasure of losing myself within someone else.

Life’s Shitty First Drafts

Things do not change; we change.

Henry David Thoreau

What happened to us? Maybe it was a YP (your problem) and not a MP (my problem), but it could have also been that we simply outgrew each other.

I'm talking to you Marissa, Ike, Holly, Angel (one and two), Valerie, and Raymond, Charles, Elizabeth, and Justin, Zeke, (reader you aren't required to read or retain each name listed) Kaleb, Alice, Jean...

But maybe it's not that we have outgrown one another, and instead it is my self involvement that was a causal factor for our demise. The prioritization of my own happiness, enjoyment, or peace has led me on a long, lonely, nomadic path. We all had things in common, we once bonded, and might still do so, but to me keeping a friend is truly hard. I can't bring myself to blame adulthood (despite wanting to), or believe that the wages of aging and increasing responsibilities help contribute to our shitty friendship patterns. Frankly, I have not decided whether I love people or hate them, an opinion which is synchronized with my own internal self love/loathing. I can be cynical, I can be lighthearted and gentle, cruel or kind; I am capable of personifying all these traits: things I have learned from living and creating so many different friendships. We tend to unintentionally absorb characteristics from the world around us.

At the most pivotal moment of my life I made a choice which led to a lot of pain. At the time I did not foresee what the cause of my actions would be, but in two years flat I would begin to observe the results of a life I had obliviously built. By the same hand which writes this blog I fell victim to its alcoholic escapism and retrophiliac nature as the blow would make its way from the table into my nose and Janis Joplin's remastered version of Kosmic Blues played loudly in my ears. I let myself slip into the hands of two equally damaged and jarring individuals, being shaped into a sharp edged, kinda pudgy, awkward mold who stood there like a naked monkey: afraid and itching. Shifting my weight from one misshapen foot to the other, I restlessly lay myself into my grave each night, only to wake up with the moon again. How many years has it been?

Ten years of wanting somebody to love me. That movie love, "I got your back, call me anytime" love, mind reader love, tea on the back porch love love. Back then I just wanted someone to love me...enough. I thought I had finally achieved that, in some demented way, those two friends of mine were as sad and lost as me, but we were each lost in such different ways. I was battling crippling substance abuse which caused depression and guilt, we all were, but tack on our personal issues and a global pandemic: we were living in the shittiest self victimizing rom-com rock drama and we could not decide who the lead actor was. As a result, I just began to hate all my friends, as a projection of my own self loathing, but it made things easier. No one could tell, however, I silently suffered, like an animal of prey, falling more deeply into a toxic relationship with myself. I hear that blaming people for our own shortcomings is a sign of a lack of accountability and bitterness. I forgive You. I forgive me. I have chosen to let go and forget that feeling and shed the rotten skin which I was gifted, taken from a place of rotten souls, (as I write these words I know it's only for the sake of their poetic justice).

And yet, I waited...still longing to be loved back. I still long to be loved. I still long to be longed for, longed for by You, whoever that is at the moment of me publishing this. My mind whispers: "You cannot welcome love in if it does not exist within you." I love the Earth. In a nihilistic manner I am skeptic of my love for my parents, but I do love them. I love myself, and that sometimes comes with preconditions. My predispositions on self-love arise when I am alone, (sometimes not even then--I too often desire not being alone). I feel happiest when I am alone with tasks to occupy the space and time. I want to be in a room surrounded by people but I am tired. That's all. I am tired. Tired. Tired. Tired. Tired. Tired. I have written the word so many times it's begun to look like tried, losing its meaning.

This part of life sucks, with a capital S, and from what I gather, it gets slightly easier...to deal, but not less tiring. I wish I could be a tree, a plant, an animal, a blade of grass, something that only existed to exist. After all, our sole purpose is to nourish the land, despite the fact that we fail at this time and time again, however, we are not very different from the natural world. When we are all dead and gone the mychorrhizal fungi will envelop our brains, suck out the knowledge, transform it into nutrients, and give life back once more. Until one day "we" (nature not humanoids) are reborn from the same Earth we died upon. I guess when I put it that way we are a lot more like animals than previously perceived.

I vow to make the most of my regrets, never smothering my sorrow, but tending to it and cherishing it until it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

"...and the blue bird carries the sky on its back."