2024
I could pray to the Divine Mother, but what could I ask for? I have met her, and she is always with me. I could only want to do as she wills,
but she doesn't seem too interested either. She said to love everybody and tell the truth. Everything else will follow. What more could I want?
Carlos warned me of contentment, shoukd I go deeper, press for more? What's deeper, and should I yearn for it? I'm a human being this time around and
my responsibilities are currently fixed in this Earth, so here I'll be, here I am. But either way, my thoughts and actions are not my own.
I am in her hands, and anything I think is mine, I offer it up now, right now, to the Mother. Here, Kali, you take it. I am devoted to you alone.
The Mother will write it for me, like, "the red sun setting through a milky haze," just place the pencil in my hand and we'll see the transmutation
of glorious heartbreak into a perfect spiral of non-interest, something deeper emerges as if my body from a deep ocean I am drowned in - slowly I'll
come up for air as the Mother drains my insides and makes me float light with air inside or; same difference, opening my mouth and letting the
black ocean water suffuse my being absolutely so that there is no differentiation, I am the water and drowning body encased and infused with
Maya-illusion simultaneously nothing and empty, so either way words will come in their own, in their own as the Mother wills it I hand my life off to you, all to you, Mother.
Greensburg
Enjoying a fast-paced joy - shaking too much to even write straight or spell words right. Living out of a car is entirely feasible just have to
reorganize it on the third day so we have room to write songs on the road and record them into the cassette player - listen back to
last night's set, wondering who it was who played it, planning to change our lives forever. No time to meditate I am at the moment, it's infused
to an imperceptible stretching of trees I don't know the names of west to Pittsburgh then Detroit then the promised land of Kalamazoo.
Each night dipping just one more toe into the currents of disconnection. This is how it is: rising up from a yoga mat in a different room in a different city
and nothing is continuous except for the fact that
I am.
Ohio
Contemplating once agin the incandescent self-illumination of karmic cycling downhill and maybe taking my hands off the wheel and yes,
even closing my eyes to the fast-approaching pavement and giving it all up to God - or, the path of willpower, eyes wide slamming on the brakes and
tossing the bike aside, walking over my own self-imposed limitations. Yogananda says the stars exist to empower our own thirst for God, our own inhuman
drive to outwit the planets and humanity itself - Oh, I can't decide! I am intuitively drawn into the emptiness of it all - but maybe that's only an attachment to
something familiar: crude laziness, (God laziness?), absolutely absolute absolution, maybe a reality made unreal by my devotion to its reality.
Carlos warned me of contentment, should I seek God? I have memories of walking the path eyes wide and furious, who walked down the path with eyes wide and furious?
Eyes wide shut, maybe, maybe, maybe.
Should I keep reading? Either way I cannot shy away from the feeling that I am on my way home, step by step, picking up where I left off last time.
And if the stars deem me 4,000 more cycles, Oh, I don't care! I'm coming home + I won't outwit the stars to do so because they are coming with me.
Kalamazoo
I'm not sure if I feel too comforatable writing about how Now it all feels while I'm still here, but I still hold onto the fear that if I don't get this down quick
it'll fade into some deeper bliss - one I won't remember. One I won't be a part of. So while I've got it, while I'm young, here are some of those moments that are disconnected and proof of an
irreversible continuity: shuffling feet through a downpour in the vine, bug-out bags on our shoulders and bugged-out bags under our eyes it's close to three A.M. and Grayson at Doom City's waiting up for us to put down
in the basement, who's this? Your desk looks so familiar. I slept in my bag next to the pedals while Giacomo played an open-tuning and
Grayson upstairs told us to piss outside in the driveway, okay, so we did so and the next evening back in the same house Grayson is joyful and alive playing saxophone with MoE, we're cooking and
going in and out of doors and up and down stairs almost like we lived there, we did for two days, talking with Maya about Gary and Olivia about shirts, and Andrew, Evan, Conner, Max hugged me at the end of the night
like we'd never be kids ever again. It was Max, Andrew and I standing in the rain and maybe crying we couldn't see the tears or grimaces it was covered up by a
giggling familiarity us three siblings in Michigan, Andrew gave me a book after talking of astrology, I flipped it open that night under the desk where Grayson was reading The Artist's Way and the book said:
"I have brought myself to this moment for a reason, and so have you" I took some green grapes from a bowl + then I saw Andrew and asked if I could have some and he laughed, "Story of my life,
ask for the grapes after you grab 'em" and I couldn't forget about Joline and the blessings, blessings be to you all, blessed to meet you, have we met before? What about laughing with Louie and Gavin and Sisi
what about everything I've already forgotten, better write it down quick or you'll never forget it. Don't worry, this is it: You will never run out of time.
Though featured in many shows and all the advertisements and promotional material, I forgot to bring the mask on tour! Is it time then, to practice and
develop music & technique rather than appearances, showmanship, and miming? I disregarded the thought and bought another mask in Kalamazoo, 2 or 3 actually,
to have in store if I'm ever caught showing my face again- ..
Aledo
Sky is bleeding orange while a thunderstorm gathers all around it, but the light is definitely winning Illinois looks just like Connecticut if it was all corn fields
and one punk house in the middle of everything, or from nothing, sign points the way to Tennessee but we'll stay on 128 west to Carthage, looking ahead is the bleeding sky
but behind makes me feel like we're running away from the last stop. Running from the vertigo in the house a couple hours back - Aledo, a little drop of undefinition here in Illinois, in fields you can see 6
or 7 miles out before your eyes and behind them too. We listened to a few of his songs, I was irritable and depressed, thickness of cigarette decades parting the skin,
a dry mouth - some kid named Eli, polite, alarmed a little by this weird secret we all shared in a crumbling punk house in Aledo, Illinois. Will you hold this secret for me? Look into my eyes, tell me you'll keep it safe?
Missouri
I've lost track! Exactly as I planned it. Checking my wallet here and there for new polaroids, occasionally a house-shape I recognize, more often than not
a friend playing guitar beside corn-fields, or maybe my own face looking back at me - you of three days ago, where have you gone? (I fell asleep in Missouri watching the set from Meatlocker
and I dreamed I was floating above it all watching me sing and Devon filming in the doorway to the green room and what was it that made me gaze into the corner and offer
blessings to the disembodied beings present with us?) Moving on, moving on from the little library in Boonsville where we caught a breath after we caught a breath in Indiana Creek, somewhere Missouri,
and we slept under the actual milky way on the beach by the clear water where we swam in circles for hours and climbing rock walls and diving back in but I already forgot about Kansas City-
it was a skatepark show, I saw Parker playing in a bedroom pop band and Dot singing punk to the midwest crowd, happy ones, they said there's not much more west of here, besides Colorado
and don't smoke 20 feet that way - that's Kansas over there. But it wasn't really Parker and Dot they were Sid and maybe Jack, I'm not sure but it doesn't really matter, does it?
We're driving to the center of the country, it's only 2 hours away and all I've seen are affirmations, affirmations, affirmations, but I'm no metaphysicist, I'm a human being
and so are you, Sid, Kody, Macey, Harrison, the specifics become irrelevant when we're sitting in the glossy night the three of us in lotus position and the entire
universe upheaves its cosmic perspective pouring itself into and out of the gentle lake water lapping the sand which becomes sky which becomes water which becomes sand
spinning faster and faster but never have I been more rooted in the Earth, I thank God this feeling might not be mine alone.
Last night I dreamed of Babaji and I felt myself as a vessel for his unconditional love and I poured it through myself into my friends and I really loved them so much. I rose from
the mat in a daze and drunkenly wandered in the forest babbling like a baby from my lips saying "Babaji! Babaji!" I got lost and said "Babaji will show me the way" I got wet
and said "Babaji will keep me dry" Babaji..! There was an itch in my throat and I thought "Babaji will make me healthy" and I was healthy. I stumbled through spider webs
and thickets, small ponds and little rabbits darting in and out of bushes, God-intoxicated "I" melting, melting, melting away...
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti
Later
I quit my job so I could clean my room I stopped cooking cause I was making too much of a mess, specifically with the corn starch on my hands.
Now I'm at the library cause I don't want to be home - it's peaceful here and makes me feel like I can live the life I want to. Move away somewhere far, have a job somewhere, a few friends,
talk about poetry on the porch in the evenings and wander around the park in the day. Reading books and occasionally writing and letting my life pass like a cloud in the sky.
Spend nights meditating by candlelight, driving home for holidays and never having to use my phone. Not being afraid of starting a new page without much inspiration,
and always existing as if there's nothing else. At home in my personal universe, a quiet, peaceful, dharmic life.
Under the freeway
Under the freeway
It's a new same old song
from the corner,
a tripped on wire, bearded
man's guitar
Orange infused cool night
soft wind blowing in the tunnel
I just want to see you again
but I took your advice
Imagination is taking a break
outside the corner store
smoking a cigarette in the
light rain, a grand piano
ditched under the bridge
keys strewn about like
a bag of clothes the garbage
bag ripped right through your hands
and it's too sad to pick them
back up again
but I took your advice
and got a sturdy new suitcase
made of brown leather
and my father's travel tag
is sticking out
And I go down under the
freeway in the
now cold night and
retrace your steps
pick up all the keys again
and sort them into
new same old songs.
Yoga
Here begins the instruction on Yoga.
I am a long, long way from home. Nevertheless, inquiry into the link between internal and external has begun.
Gradually this practice will transform and purify me until, suddenly, without sequential logic, the bridge is crossed and burned.
Peering into my very soul, thoughts, memories, mind-stuff, links to the past and future begin to unravel.
Sutras begin to unravel me. I search for the right practice, and begin the finale of everything.
Reach... return to the breath.
South Tekanic Highway
From what I remember, it's driving alone in the dark, and the car's weak headlights - just a flashlight in the cave, reveal the presence of mountains
ahead and to the sides. The road is curving through post-reality, where mountains are blotted out by a conspiracy of clouds and by the planet's positioning.
No stars, no moon. No parents or Gods. Just my weak headlights to serve as a reminder, every so often, that there lie dominant forces
just beyond my vision. Not that the unseen mountains are threatening, just that I am small and how delicate it is.
I am an unbalanced force speeding
in the night
The mountains are.
I stand in opposition to a presence which knows itself even in complete darkness. I think I know myself only in relation
And in withdrawal
as fleeting memory.