Saturday night. 9:57 pm, (11:03 now) I just got back from a BBQ for Jeffrey Plaman. I chatted up some friends, Lee said I was being aggressive; I didn’t see it, but he could be right. I “watched” my kids, but really I hung out with friends. Drank Prosecco and beer and ate, chips, cookies and veggie burgers. I burned a few of them- the burgers, but mostly they were good. People drooled over the belly of a pig and devoured its ribs, but I felt good in knowing that this practice felt wrong and gross to me. I tried not to be self-righteous about it, but really if you stop and think about it, eating flesh seems so backwards and nasty. I mean that meat was a living thing at one point and now it is dead and on your grill and in your mouth. How is this not disgusting? To each his/her own.
No judgment though. Enjoy your pork friends. Enjoy you dead pigs.
A friend in California was posting videos from her night at The Cure show, so I am blasting 1989’s Disintegration and the opening of Pictures of You is on full blast and it is as close to heaven as I will get this year. I can almost taste my mom’s lipstick that I used to wear as I danced to this song alone in my room at the start of high school. Fully aware that I was not gay, but wondering what it meant that I needed to feel so deeply wearing make up and twirling about on my own, while hours earlier I was hidden in full football pads swimming in testosterone and confusion.
The Cure allowed me so many windows into who I needed to be when I was pretending to be so many other people, and now years later, slightly buzzed and the sound of the guitars and keyboards takes me back to those innocent times of self-discovery. Why is it that we men, are so afraid of simply being ourselves? I hid so many parts of myself for most of my life, afraid that somehow if I was exposed for being my true self I would have to explain some kind of latent homosexuality I didn’t feel or understand. But now at 41, Saturday night, Closedown is pretty sick, loud and all encompassing.
…
And now for Vesak day (The Buddha’s Birthday) it’s time for some B-boys and Ill Communication:
Who Brought Down The Darma For Sisters And Brothers
I Give Thanks For This World As A Place To Learn
And For This Human Body That I Know I've Earned
And My Deepest Thanks To All Sentient Beings
For Without Them There Would Be No Place To Learn What I'm Seeing
There's Nothing Here That's Not Been Said Before
But I Put It Down Now So I'll Be Sure
To Solidify My Own Views And I'll Be Glad If It Helps
Anyone Else Out Too
The word “bodhisattva” is a compound word formed from bohdi (spiritual awakening, enlightenment) and sattva (a being, essence, spirit).The word can then be translated as “A being set upon enlightenment,” “One whose essence is perfect knowledge,” or “A being whose essence is enlightenment.”
I am a bodhisattva. I have been since before I was born in this body and I will be when this body fades and dies and rots in the ground. I was a bodhisattva when I was nineteen alone in my apartment on Fourth street with Anthony, with the clean white carpets and the back-porch wheel chairs. The long shifts at the Petite Cafe and the video game battles. The deep Jack Kerouac expeditions into Big Sur and the dharma…”I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
I was a bodhisattva on my trips to Green Gulch and years later in the cold train rides home reading Thich Nhat Hanh- “There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.”
The rolling guitars of Sabotage and the fluid prose of On The Road. “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. ” Shunryu Suzuki.
A life time of searching in and out of bottles, sobriety, fatherhood, teaching, learning, creating and consuming..getting it together. The phone is ringing. Oh my god.
My brain is roamin….I don’t know where it’s goin’…..
All I Ever Really Want To Do Is Get Nice
Get Loose And Goof My Little Slice Of Life
Sendin' Out Love To All Corners Of The Land
I Jump Up On The Stage And Take The Mic
In My Hand Not Playin' The Roll Just Being Who I Am
And If You Try To Dis Me I Couldn't Give A Damn
'Cause I'm Rockin'
I remember the mornings before dawn. When it was just you and me and Live at Pj’s. Everyone else was asleep, but there was one more glass of wine, one more smoke, one more song. “This one’s for you and you and you,” but it was only me and you. “Get real nice y’all.”
…
There is nothing more than garbled up noise and then an empty silence I cannot seem to ever find. How does it feel? It feels blind.
No judgment though. Enjoy your pork friends. Enjoy you dead pigs.
A friend in California was posting videos from her night at The Cure show, so I am blasting 1989’s Disintegration and the opening of Pictures of You is on full blast and it is as close to heaven as I will get this year. I can almost taste my mom’s lipstick that I used to wear as I danced to this song alone in my room at the start of high school. Fully aware that I was not gay, but wondering what it meant that I needed to feel so deeply wearing make up and twirling about on my own, while hours earlier I was hidden in full football pads swimming in testosterone and confusion.
The Cure allowed me so many windows into who I needed to be when I was pretending to be so many other people, and now years later, slightly buzzed and the sound of the guitars and keyboards takes me back to those innocent times of self-discovery. Why is it that we men, are so afraid of simply being ourselves? I hid so many parts of myself for most of my life, afraid that somehow if I was exposed for being my true self I would have to explain some kind of latent homosexuality I didn’t feel or understand. But now at 41, Saturday night, Closedown is pretty sick, loud and all encompassing.
…
And now for Vesak day (The Buddha’s Birthday) it’s time for some B-boys and Ill Communication:
Who Brought Down The Darma For Sisters And Brothers
I Give Thanks For This World As A Place To Learn
And For This Human Body That I Know I've Earned
And My Deepest Thanks To All Sentient Beings
For Without Them There Would Be No Place To Learn What I'm Seeing
There's Nothing Here That's Not Been Said Before
But I Put It Down Now So I'll Be Sure
To Solidify My Own Views And I'll Be Glad If It Helps
Anyone Else Out Too
The word “bodhisattva” is a compound word formed from bohdi (spiritual awakening, enlightenment) and sattva (a being, essence, spirit).The word can then be translated as “A being set upon enlightenment,” “One whose essence is perfect knowledge,” or “A being whose essence is enlightenment.”
I am a bodhisattva. I have been since before I was born in this body and I will be when this body fades and dies and rots in the ground. I was a bodhisattva when I was nineteen alone in my apartment on Fourth street with Anthony, with the clean white carpets and the back-porch wheel chairs. The long shifts at the Petite Cafe and the video game battles. The deep Jack Kerouac expeditions into Big Sur and the dharma…”I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
I was a bodhisattva on my trips to Green Gulch and years later in the cold train rides home reading Thich Nhat Hanh- “There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.”
The rolling guitars of Sabotage and the fluid prose of On The Road. “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. ” Shunryu Suzuki.
A life time of searching in and out of bottles, sobriety, fatherhood, teaching, learning, creating and consuming..getting it together. The phone is ringing. Oh my god.
My brain is roamin….I don’t know where it’s goin’…..
All I Ever Really Want To Do Is Get Nice
Get Loose And Goof My Little Slice Of Life
Sendin' Out Love To All Corners Of The Land
I Jump Up On The Stage And Take The Mic
In My Hand Not Playin' The Roll Just Being Who I Am
And If You Try To Dis Me I Couldn't Give A Damn
'Cause I'm Rockin'
I remember the mornings before dawn. When it was just you and me and Live at Pj’s. Everyone else was asleep, but there was one more glass of wine, one more smoke, one more song. “This one’s for you and you and you,” but it was only me and you. “Get real nice y’all.”
…
There is nothing more than garbled up noise and then an empty silence I cannot seem to ever find. How does it feel? It feels blind.
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