The water
The water didn't realize
Its dangerous size
The mountain
The mountain came to recognize
Its steep and rocky sides
More than realized

I pursue no objectives, no system, no tendency; I have no programme, no style, no direction.

I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes, or variations that lead to mastery.

I steer clear of definitions.

I don't know what I want.

I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive;

I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty.

Other qualities may be conducive to achievement, publicity, success; but they are all outworn-

as outworn as ideologies, opinions, concepts, and names for things.

Now that there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world.

That is the only thing that interests me.







Gerhard Richter

The abortion debate is made into a polarizing issue in order to keep people divided and occupied with an issue that will continue to run in circles. Meanwhile amidst all of this those in power can be assured that we will not pay close attention to what is going on. This is why issues are presented as polar by the media, we see the same thing with gay marriage debates. If we are given a rational approach to such issues, where the shades of gray are allowed the opportunity to be presented, then people would have a much more sober and moderate stance on such things. This would mean that those in power would no longer have an issue to keep people running on the mouse wheel over. This is exactly what they fear most: a mass of citizenry that is not preoccupied with artificially polarized debate. Or rather, a mass of citizenry that is not preoccupied with anything trivial for that matter. Because if we are not preoccupied by whatever it may be, our jobs, our kids, our toys and games and phones and computers, celebrities, our looks, our cars......then you have the recipe for something like a revolution?
But getting back to the abortion debate. This has been weighing on my mind for most of this past month.
A woman's right to choose has absolutely nothing to do with being "pro-death" or "anti-life." But it has everything to do with keeping a male majority government out of our personal lives, choices, and off of our bodies. The abortion debate has nothing to do with the "sanctity of life" which the holier-than-thou moralistic ones like to dish out to inflate their sense of importance. If sanctity of life has anything to do with this, then these ultra-conservatives would recognize their hypocrisy when they support the death penalty, gorge themselves with meat and animal products, and profess their love of guns and thirst for war. Even more hypocritically, these NEOCONS proclaim how the government should stay as far away as possible from their personal lives, and stay out of the market etc etc...yet they support ending abortion rights which is putting the government in direct relation to a woman's decision to give birth and raise a child. Through not supporting a woman's right to choose, one is supporting a system of oppression. If women are no longer allowed to decide what they can do with their own bodies, and are effectively forced by the government to have a child without planning, then this is a system in which women relinquish their personal ambition and countless opportunities for education and careers- because now children are dependent upon them for survival. Although women are capable of working and raising children, it is extremely hard when the woman may not be in the best position to do so. Instituting BY LAW a system such as this effectively keeps women oppressed because it makes it harder for women to go beyond being mothers and housewives. It keeps women from having the same opportunities as men. This is oppression, and I don't see how that fits into what we like to think America stands for.
Just like with abstinence only education, do people really believe that kids are not going to have sex? They certainly are, and now they are doing it without knowledge of disease and how to use contraception. Outlawing abortion will not keep abortions from occurring--it only drives up the instances of hackjob procedures which threaten women's health and lives. Ignorance is the key formula for atrocities to be committed down the line. It is a slow insidious process of keeping people divided, ignorant, and women pregnant and out of intellectual society. But I suppose I'm just being a nagging bitch right now, and should go find some dishes to wash and not think too hard.

im sick of always going back and forth with feeling like there is something wrong with me. like i came off the assembly line flawed and defunct, yet i continue to stumble through life finding meaning in things i swear its not appropriate to find meaning in. honestly. why is it that i cant get myself to care about "making" my life into something. or should i say "making something of myself." to please whom?? im fine just enjoying the flow of life around me, i dont feel compelled to try and manage and control my life. or in other words, instead of living life, im much more drawn to letting life live through me.
this is why i turn into a fussy baby over the millions of bullshit things life consists of. i spent a large part of the afternoon today watching a show about parking officers who give tickets and tow vehicles all around the merry little streets of philadelphia. so people get ticketed and go to the parking authority center and bitch through a windowpane at the person on the other side who has to find all sorts of numbers and forms and yaddayaddayadda.
i dont even want a car--seriously in my abstract mind i just think about things like that, why do we even NEED a car, its just another thing to give you problems and another way to be tracked down. and i use the car thing as an example because i understand how a vehicle plays a huge role in experiencing life. but it is really true that the more crap you own, the more your crap owns you. i struggle with the concept of bureaucracy and how necessary it is when you have a population, of really any size. it makes sense that in order to treat everyone fairly and equally, there has to be a standardized system of order. this is supposed to reduce corruption and inequality, but does it really do that in America? or have we just gone off course and now deal with a system that thrives off of petty bullshit to make money? is it really fair that a father trying to take care of his one month old baby and can hardly afford diapers has to pay what would have been the money for diapers because he parked in a "no parking" zone? aren't we becoming ridiculous; and actually in our effort to be "fair" we are actually becoming more and more unfair...since we are failing to recognize that people are in fact, human. thats the biggest problem and probably the only one i have with the bureaucratic machines we see in all sectors of society, that they do not recognize the individual human being.
i cant help but see the industrial world we have built as utterly meaningless and pointless. i dont even want anything to do with it really...but what does this mean that i must go live in the forest and talk to myself and gather berries? no because thats pretty strange, and im not sure i would even enjoy that, because what i truly value in life is time spent with the ones i love around me, having a good time. its all this bullshit that gets in the way of those things. institutions and laws are all subjective, they are made up of the people who do the work, everyday people who love their families and friends too. yet these institutions and laws also have the ability to drastically interfere and change the way your life gets to go.
i cant be too overboard here because i have to accept that everything in life has positive and negative, and there is no use trying to live life trying to dodge the negative all the time. its just hard for me to find value when i see how pointless a lot of the things we do are in the big scheme of things. people waste their whole lives keeping busy, and acting out of their own fears. people build their lives around their fears; through only doing what is comfortable you are in some ways living out of fear. people spend their lives doing whatever it is to "get by."
too often family members judge me for sounding like i dont want to work i just want to float around in la la land. i know the value of hard work, i like to work, but only if i really feel like its meaningful to me. i guess this depends on what i decide to find meaning in, because yeah i work at a cash register at a garden center, but i guess i can look at things as i am helping people most often find flowers and decorations that bring them happiness at home, and people who come in looking for flowers to put at gravesites. there is human-ness buried somewhere in there, in between the opening and closing of the cash drawer.
moving into my dads house i know that i dont share the same views as family here, but its a learning lesson for me to not be so quick to speak but rather quick to understand. listening to the conversation at dinner tonight they managed to in discreet ways touch on a few subjects that irked me: mocking the religion of Islam, insinuating that the only "civilized" black man in our neighborhood is the one who lives behind us, and proclaiming how lovely meat is.
I know I still eat meat, but its because i dont seem to have the balls to not because i just dont even want to feel like i stick out. and thats entirely stupid. i go through periods where i seem to have the fight in me and when id rather just run away.
i understand why people in the U.S. do not have a kind view of Islamic culture and religion, but whether its mocking that or mocking Catholics, Christians, Jews, essentially its all the same mocking. its all the same disrespect for people who are different than you. same with racism, none of us know any of the other neighbors yet its acceptable to just decide that they are lesser people? intolerance continues to be passed on, in the smallest of ways, at dinner tables across the world.
but i had a moment of thought when the conversation revolved around different meat dishes my stepmom loves and grew up with....veal, which is the cruelest of meats, was one she spoke of particularly fondly. and i understood why that is the case, because its valued to her, its part of her family experience growing up in an Italian family, food is central to human connection. i do not discredit this in anyway, food is a sharing experience that brings everybody happiness. i know that my stepmom or my dad would not actually be keen on killing a baby cow, but when the meat is already chopped up and ready, then what the hell it tastes good right?
and i thought that all i can do is be the person i am, and not worry about what others are thinking, because every person's actions and being has a ripple effect on those around them. we cannot change anybody's minds, but we can change our own, and usually spark others to change their own as well.
its a slow process, but i think it is the most effective. i could have got everything riled up but i do believe it would wind up working against me, yet i struggle because the quieter i am, the more i am a part of the problem and not the solution, some may say. i suppose i have to work on the confronting thing when it comes to politics but thats the part of politics i loathe the most, the confrontational part. everyone's always in each others faces trying to tell them that "im right, you're wrong" and we know that it gets nowhere. id rather lead by quiet example. it requires a lot of patience and perseverance.

why i'm hesitant about relationships.

In the early stages of many so-called romantic relationships, role-playing is quite common in order to attract and keep whoever is perceived by the ego as the one who is going to "make me happy, make me feel special, and fulfill all my needs." "I'll play who you want me to be and you'll play who I want you to be." That's the unspoken and unconscious agreement. However, role-playing is hard work, and so those roles cannot be sustained indefinitely, especially once you start living together. When those roles slip, what do you see? Unfortunately, in most cases, not yet the true essence of that being, but that which covers up the true essence: the raw ego divested of its roles, with its pain-body, and its thwarted wanting which now turns into anger, most likely directed at the spouse or partner for having failed to remove the underlying fear and sense of lack that is an intrinsic part of the egoic sense of self.
What is commonly called "falling in love" is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.

- A New Earth Eckhart Tolle

The Joy of Being

Here is an excerpt from Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth.

Unhappiness or negativity is a disease on our planet. What pollution is on the outer level is negativity on the inner. It is everywhere, not just in places where people don't have enough, but even more so where they have more than enough. The affluent world is even more deeply identified with form, more lost in content, more trapped in ego.
People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness, that is to say, dependent on form. They don't realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn't have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that is always already here, that lies beyond what is happening or not happening, beyond form.
Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.
The joy of being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event--through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.


This all makes the most sense to me, because it does not stem from any doctrine and suggests that we already possess the happiness we spend our lives seeking. The hard part is learning how to get in touch with true happiness again.

Experience Your Life

A woman is running from tigers. She runs and she runs, and the tigers are getting closer and closer. She comes to the edge of a cliff. She sees a vine there, so she climbs down and holds on to it. Then she looks down and sees that there are tigers below her as well. At the same time, she notices a little mouse gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries emerging from a nearby clump of grass. She looks up, she looks down, and she looks at the mouse. Then she picks a strawberry, pops it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.
Tigers above, tigers below. This is the predicament we are always in. We are born and sooner or later we die. Each moment is just what it is. Resentment, bitterness, and holding a grudge prevent us from seeing and hearing and tasting and delighting. This might be the only strawberry we'll ever eat. We could feel depressed about this or we could finally appreciate it. We could delight in the preciousness of every single moment.