i am large, i contain multitudes...

Today is a big day for me.  Six months of sobriety.

Well, six months without a drink anyway--more sober moments than not, which is pretty cool.

There's no way to describe how different things are now.

Not Pollyanna perfect by any means, but slowly I'm feeling comfortable in my own skin.  I wake up most days glad to be me, astonished and grateful to have the life that I have.

I'm still terribly self-absorbed.  My inner monologue gets so whiny sometimes even I can't stand it.  All in all, though, things balance out on the peaceful side.

I was thinking earlier tonight about the Tao te Ching--what an incredible book of wisdom that is!  The Stephen Mitchell translation is phenomenal...

I was thinking how for me, life is all about balance.  Ebb and flow.  Returning to center. 

Dualism seems to exist everywhere: good and bad, beautiful and ugly, black and white...  For me, though, I find my days run on a continuum.  I travel between poles.  I can obsess and get stuck at one end or the other, but to find peace, I have to rest at my balance point.  The center.  The place all things arise from and all things return to.  The place where I connect most clearly with my higher power.

In the week since I wrote my last post, I've found when I let go of wrestling with philosophy and theology, with 'right answers' and 'wrong answers', things suddenly become very simple and clear. 

My spirituality seems to be about discovering and returning to my center.  About resting there, at one with the heartbeat of the Universe.

You see, my soul is ecstatic not ascetic.  I feel just like Papa Walt, "I am large. I contain multitudes..."

All those polarities--hot/cold, young/old, smart/stupid, happy/sad--I contain them all.  All the waves in the ocean, all the stars in the sky, all the beautiful boys that make me smile as they pass by--I am made of all these things.

Maybe that's what I'm trying to get to (or remember) at the end of this long, rambling post:

After six months of trying to face each day honestly with an open heart, I'm starting slowly to get it:

Life is a love song.  An amazing, complex, mesmerizing, challenging, soul-stirring love song.

And what's more, some very kind people have gently reminded me I can sing...

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time... 

step back

This morning in a meeting, I heard something I needed to hear:

"Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved."

That's so important for me to remember.  You see, I'm always looking for the solution, the instructions, the script.  If I can just figure out [insert whatever here] then I'll get it, and life will start working the way I want it to.

For me, it always comes back to control.  I want to run the show.  I need to call the shots...

You know, it's strange.  Some days I feel like I've got it all together, and then the next moment I derail into a big wreck of anxiety and emotion.

I need to cut myself some slack.  I'm still new at this recovery thing.

So new, I still get caught up--before I even realize it--in some crazy head trip about how I must get it all figured out.  How I'm going too slow.  How I'm not doing enough.  How I'm going to package and market my higher power to myself.  How I'm going to label myself so I know how to act, what to do next...

It's all about getting control.  It's all about fear constricting my world, shutting down my heart.

If I've learned anything so far on this amazing journey, it's that life works best if you stay present with an open heart.

My tendency is to grab, to rein in, to shut down, to criticize, to refuse, to supress, to repress, to freeze.  Or I'll run away, keep moving, work harder, work longer, read something, check email--again.

It's very tricky for someone as intellectual, rebellious, and skeptical as I am, to concede the control of my life to a higher power simply on faith.  Even with a (literally) miraculous stack of evidence of how well things go in my life when I do just that.

I remember how the religion of my youth gave me such moral certainty.  There was a very rigid, strict, and confined way of living, but it was easy to know if you were doing it wrong or right. 

Maybe that's why I've got this mad restlessness in my spirit.  I'm looking for assurances.  I'm looking for guarantees. 

You know what it is--I'm still looking, without alcohol, without cigarettes, for some way not to have to live my life, to feel my emotions, some way to skip the work and get to the fun part...

I'm such a drunk!

Because the reality is, it's not that hard.  In the few weeks I've been sober, I know if I just relax, let go, and let life unfold as it will, then things are fine.  I intuitively know what to do next, and I feel intimately connected with my higher power.  It's when I try to get ahead of myself, it's when I get self-absorbed that I run in to trouble.

Think about dancing or running or playing an instrument.  You know how to do it, but then suddenly you start thinking about how you do it.  You become aware of the mechanics, and you start thinking about doing it instead of just doing it.  You loose your rhythm, you trip, or your hit the wrong note.

That's exactly what I do in my recovery.

But stumbling, staggering, or striding along, I'm making it.  Making it sober and more sane than not.  That, my friends, is an incredible thing.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

in dreams awake

One of the things I love about Kentucky is that we have a very hillbilly reputation around the world, softened only by the elegance of the Kentucky Derby.  For those of us who live here, though, it's a place of amazing beauty.

There's actually a rich, serious art scene here.  Fantastic music.  And what I like to call "snake country" spiritual energy that's very primal, pagan, penecostal, and raw.  You can't help but be affected by the land when you live in a place like Kentucky.  Even in a "city" like mine, everywhere you go is so informed by the countryside around it.

Last night I saw a documentary, made by folks from here, about an artist who lived and worked here when he wasn't farming and bedding cute boys.  William "Bill" Petrie was his name, and he died unexpectedly from a pharmacological mistake a dozen years ago.

Bill, who I met for the first time last night through the stories told by his friends and lovers, was a free spirit with a big heart, who welcomed all with love into his home and onto his land.

The documentary itself was a work of love.  A celebration of passion for life, love of art, and living well.

I was actually quite moved by the film, but oddly enough it made me very meloncholic and sad.  It touched several spots in me that are sore and tender at the moment--loss of a love, beauty and freedom of living simply and with an open heart, passionate engagement with life and art...

I absorb things I encounter in the world--even stories I hear or read--deep into myself, and try to relate them to my own experience, or make myself relate to them.  I take things in, hold them in my mouth, digest them slowly.

So much of what I aspire to in life was expressed through Bill's story, although circumstances and particulars are different.  I'm slowly finding the bravery and courage to live that sort of life, where he seemed to have had the gift from birth.

At any rate, I encourage anyone who is interested in art, in gay art, in sexy, frisky gay art, in spiritual, moving, gay art, in love, in life, in gay rural life, or any combination thereof, to check out the film for yourself.  It may be so compelling to me because I know many of the people and places in the film (strangely enough with the exception of the main character).  I think, though, it's more a reverie on love and art and land that extends an open invitation to join in.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

everything is beautiful

I flipped on the television, and there it was.  A scene so surreal it made me do a double take--the Dalai Lama and George Bush side by side laughing and smiling--to my eye it was like a before-and-after shot of ego.

The image flashed like a Tarot card before me:

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

The bad man, who symbolizes self-righteousness, arrogance, recklessness, and greed sits next to the good man, who symbolizes compassion, transcendence, and spiritual freedom.  They laugh, and suddenly both of them are just men laughing.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

ecstatic response

Just watched RIZE, a documentary by David LaChapelle, who coincedentally was one of the first artists who got me really interested in contemporary photography.

The film's about clowning and krumping--emerging (or probably passé already) dance styles in South LA.

Electrifying moves--tense, taught, tribal.  These kids turned me on. 

Instinctual emotion whipping, without hesitation, through arms, hips, legs, and thighs. 

I saw in them that god-energy that has been haunting me lately.  The buzz of a Divine Presence that is tired of hanging out on the ceilings of chapels and Who wants to get it on with all creation...

Let's dance!

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

hypnerotomachia poliphili

Reaching out from a swollen place of desire, touch the fresh, open face of experience.

Experiment with each moment. 

Resist habit for the sake of authenticity.

Follow your bliss...

Thought is too slow. 

Identity is already too late.

Raw ecstasy is now. 

Its expression: art.

Images, words--fingers and tongues sensing the world.

If you slow down just a little, the whole universe gets horny.  And when god gets off...expect miracles.

I'm all here tonight--fragments and pieces, feelings and flotsam, all of it in slow orbit around a center that won't ever hold.

I want to breathe with every pore of my skin.

I want your skin pressed against mine, pores lined up, mouths-on-mouths, exchanging breath.

Throw another ego on the fire.  Let it burn, baby, let it burn...

coming together

As I approach six months of sobriety, I realize I have been having an absolutely amazing spiritual awakening.

I am such a different person than I was way back in April (so long ago).  My life has been totally transformed.  And ironically I'm more myself than I've ever been...

I've recently been reading a book that has served as a strange catalyst to bring all my previous pondering about and experiences of spirituality into a simple, clear point of synthesis. 

That book is Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love by Daniel Odier.

Now, perhaps you're expecting me to say that upon reading this fine text, all the pieces fell into place and I understood all the secrets of the universe.  That's not the case.  Thankfully.  I'd be insufferable...

What did click, though, what did open up inside of me, is a deep comprehension of the unfettered freedom that can come from living one day at a time in communion with the higher power of my understanding.

I've been getting all these flashes of insight, understanding, intuition, knowing.  It's like there's a crack in my defenses and mystic love and insight is beginning to trickle in.

All I can tell you is this--whatever is happening is dangerous.

I'm changing, shifting, somewhere deep.  Every day, regardless of what's happening in my life, I'm gaining more and more serenity. 

All my theological/philosophical questions, ponderings, frustrations, seem to be resolving themselves and dissolving.  I'm beginning to 'get it' in my gut, in my heart, in my breath.

Oddly enough this book, which has opened such a door for me, is framed in heterosexual proto-Hindu cosmology, which I would normally find of little interest. Nevertheless, the truth in the book is deep, clear, and unencumbered.

Of course, you might read the thing and wonder what the hell I'm talking about.  More than likely my strong reaction comes from the fact that this book and I found each other when we needed to.

That doesn't mean I'm off to become a yogi or tantrika either...  For me that's one of the worst things I could do.

I guess more than anything, it's an indication that I'm headed in the right direction for now; a reminder of how far I've come in such a short time; an affirmation of the power of living life on life's terms.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--one day at a time...

let peace begin with me

A lot of it's been internal.  In fact, I've been conscious that I have this hornet-buzz of anger arising seemingly from nowhere.

Of course I can't 'just be angry'.  I have to attach the feeling to some person or relationship or situation in my vicinity.  It would be just awful for me not to visit this emotion of anger I'm feeling on someone else...

I've concluded my general irritability is probably due to the fact that I've recently quit the drugs that were making it easy for me to quit smoking (20 days today--yea!!!).  Plus, I no longer have my instant smoke screen to hide behind when the world doesn't spin exactly the way I think it should.  The root emotion there is anxiety, and anxiety of course is just free-form fear.

Last night, though, I was in a contentious dicussion that generated 'legitimate', 'righteous' anger in me. 

It also generated resentment.  And "resentment is the number one offender".  And "resentment...kills".

After spending an evening replaying and obsessing arguments and scenarios, and then waking up to pick up right where I left off, I realized I needed to ask for some guidance.

Anger is insidious.  It's perhaps the most difficult human emotion to work with.

Anger is simply a response to fear.  We arch up our backs and hiss to defend our 'self'.  It's an animal instinct (useful for protecting against sharp-toothed predators)  that we humans have adopted as a way of life.

I know, from my brief time in recovery, that healing only occurs when you can move past anger and resentment and meet your fear face to face.

The thing is, there is no 'legitimate', 'righteous' anger.  Anger is an emotion.  It doesn't have moral value. 

The anger emanating from the conversation last night had to do with positions of right and wrong.  I believed I was in the right, so it pissed me off that other people were contradicting me or had other opinions.  I realized when I woke up this morning, I was still at war with those people.  I was carrying the war in my head and my heart.  And war, ideological or military, is no more or no less than violence.

To recap: my fears--of not being right, of not being able to control the opinions and beliefs of others--had generated in me anger and resentment.  I kept playing with that anger and resentment, getting it all over myself, until it wound up filling my heart and head with war--my ego against yours.  And war is violence.

My fear led me to have violence in my heart.  Wow.  I don't want to live a life fueled by anger and violence.  At the same time, though, there are things I feel strongly, even passionately about.

Thankfully, my higher power saw fit to remind me that there is an extraordinary fellow who spent his lifetime trying to seek truth and justice without anger or violence:

"You must be the change you want to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi

As so often happens, when I need help and ask for it, the universe provides:

“The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts--that is where the battle should be fought...” – M. K. Gandhi

1.  Respect
    I vow to respect others and the interconnectedness of all life.

2.  Understanding
    I vow to understand the 'why's behind the behavior, for myself and for others.

3.  Acceptance
    Out of respect and understanding, I vow to accept the differences of others.

4.  Appreciating Differences
    I seek to move beyond acceptance into appreciation and celebration of difference.

5.  Truth and Truthfulness
    I commit to be truthful and authentic and to confront untruth wherever I find it.

6.  Absorbing Suffering
    I take on without complaint any suffering that results from my confrontation with untruth. I also accept that all forms of violence cannot be totally eliminated.

7.  Non-violence toward my Adversaries
    I vow to help my adversary avoid all suffering, especially from our confrontation.

8.  Trusteeship and Constructive Action
    Beyond personal necessities, I see myself as God’s trustee over my possessions and talents. I promise to use them to empower others and make things fair for all.

I guess when you deal with anger, you have to pull out the big guns... 

Turning it all over--all sides of the conflict, your position and the other person's--that's essential.

And it's important for me to remember anger isn't "solvable", it's an emotion just like any other.  It's something that makes me vulnerable, human, humble. 

I'm sure I'll deal with anger again, because I'm sure I'll be fearful again.

I can't fix, manage, or control the arising of my anger, but I can choose to embrace it, let it be, and not react to it impulsively or thoughtlessly.

Except when I do, which I will, and it will still be okay.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--life is short...

you'll never see it my way because you're not me

I swore I was never going to write a post about Britney Spears.  I was wrong...

I am not a fan of Ms. Spears.  Other than "Oops, I Did it Again" (apparently her life's theme song) and the fantastic video where she duel danced with Madonna, I couldn't tell you a thing about her work.

With all due respect to Chris Crocker, I don't think Ms. Spears approaches anywhere near the pantheon of "greatest singers who've ever lived'.

She most certainly is, though, a woman who is lost and suffering deeply. 

In my crowd we talk about 'hitting bottom'.  Most of us have horrifying, embarassing, gut-wrenching stories of the self-destructive antics that got us to the point where we had to admit we were powerless over the substances in our lives.

How surreal it must be--beyond the expected surreality of celebrity--to hit bottom and have every flash bulb and gossip rag in the country documenting every smack, whack, and tumble.

We tend to be a pretty hypocritical nation of 'tsk-tsk'-ers.  I'm sure there are lots of people--probably a lot of young girls, unfortunately--who are asking themselves "why doesn't Britney just pull it together?"

Those of us who know the answer to that question also know you don't find it until you've gone all the way to the bottom of your particular barrel and licked cork...

Ironically, I don't have pity for Ms. Spears, for her lost esteem, her teetering career, her court-siezed children.  I'm sure at this point she's got a great deal of pity for herself, which should tide her over until she decides to start taking responsibility for her life and her choices.

What I do have is compassion.  It's not been that long for me since I was very close to where she is now (albeit not on a national stage).

I remember the viscious nightmare carousel feeling that comes near the end.  The world won't stop.  Everything is falling apart.  Nothing works out the way it's supposed to...  Everything that used to be fun and exciting, everything that used to feel good turns into nothing more than motion and noise.  The world gets more and more distorted, like carnival mirrors, until distortion really begins to feel like reality.  You get twisted, and the pain doesn't come and go anymore, it just hangs out all day like a toothache.

God, please never let me forget that...

The title of this post is a quote from Ms. Spears' "coming soon" new web page. 

Very telling that perspective of isolation, 'specialness'...

And this other oddity from the 'official' web page:

Britney is asking her most die-hard fans for some assistance in order to name her upcoming album. Possible Album Titles:

1. Omg is Like Lindsay Lohan Like Okay Like
2. What if the Joke is on You
3. Down boy
4. Integrity
5. Dignity

So again, although I never thought I'd write a post about Britney Spears, here it is. 

Some say celebrities have replaced gods and heroes in the mythology of our post-modern world.  We understand our own human drama by idenitfying with their experiences, which almost always seem to happen in a big way in glamorous locales.  Now I don't know if Ms. Spears has the poetic grace of an Icarus or a Persephone, but she's certainly taking her own little trip through the underworld.

I wish her safe passage and a light home. 

Not just her, but all of us.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--life is short...