Fifty Years Old

On this day, I turn fifty.
I have reached an age where the arrogance of youth is tolerated, brushed aside and not challenged.

There is no Pope as we speak. I'm pulling for the Meskin. I wanted a brother, but an hermano is close enough. There's a German in the runnning whose name sounss like Rapsinger. That would be close to a brother but no cigar.

Black smoke drifts from the chimney. The Cardinals wear red, sort of the same texture and level of comfort as Hugh Hefner's pajamas.

I am still younger than Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. I'm 15 years away from officially being old, according to social security.

I know of businessmen who waited until their fifties before leaving their wives for their mid-life crisis and younger women.

I have no noticeable gray hair. I have no country. I have divorced my family.

I own three cats, maybe a fourth--while jogging through Mishrif--an upscale neighborhood in Kuwait, I pulled a desperately lost and hungry 4-week old kitten from under a hedge row. I immediately named her Mishka. She is nearly blind in one eye. Friendly but very scared. I'm going to nurse her back to health and try to find her a home. Yeah.Right.
Happy birthday to me.

That cycle thing

The inner lives of all the small, ceaseless chatter surrounding me and the concepts I cannot now express.

This is my life, completely mine and completely unique

If I could begin to understand about me what I am convinced I understand in another, then I might just pass from this world having learned something useful.

Non-Nuclear Family Fusion

I read what she had to say and said to myself," Usually what we have to say is said to make some point.

Often the point we learn is this: "Bring me a mustard seed from the village of the sane." Of course, the Buddha ends up sans mustard seed. But that is the point to of the story.

Julia writes, "I know it's "all part of growing up" and it's pretty cool to be able to actually notice my brain changing and expanding and getting to those higher levels that I didn't even know existed a year or two ago, but I've been beginning to feel like a lot of who I am, inside, when you dissect every little tiny piece of my mind apart, is crazy."

I'm paraphrasing Rodney Dangerfield here: "The only sane people are the ones you don't know."

She's lucky to learn early that we all have that devilkin internal dialogue going on, non-stop.
If it were only as easy as naming those devilkins, like the seven sins. On one level it's greed. On another it's lust. On another its lust, pride and so on.

Julia--it's all of those things and more. We have our angels too. Our Swamis. Our guides.

Pride, by the way, is a cross-dresser, the proverbial baby in the bath water.

She goes on to say, ". I'm sorry if anything I say doesn't make any sense. I'm never good with saying what I mean in words when it comes to any sort of stuff beyond the surface, if that even makes any sense. "

It makes complete sense. What you have to say can only be suggested with words and most of us are hard of hearing. That is to say, those devilkin voices drown out most of what people are trying to say.

"I know I'll probably regret it tomorrow, but in June or July 2003 I started taking bass lessons with Sandy, a 50-some odd guy who works for my piano teacher. My piano teacher is the Music Director at this" creative learning center" type place…all music teachers there are under him, and then Sandy left and the job was filled by Jai. . .Jai was one of those people that you meet and you know you'll never meet again in any other person, who is so vibrant and full of life and is just all-around, even in the simplest settings, an amazing person, though not everyone would see it that way. "

He has charisma. He is real and full of life and majesty; he is enchanting, enticing.

By the way, charisma is an anagram for several ways to express what you saw in him. He "is a charm". I "am his arch" A "chasm" of blithe "air.

"Come April 04 Jai and I actually established (something) nothing more than friends) and then I had a lesson with him on a Thursday, and the next Monday he never showed up . . . disappeared into thin air. Just like that, no goodbye and no warning, just poof. Well, in hindsight, one warning might've been that the last time I saw him, he told me not to worry about love at my age and not to trust men." To say the least, this upset me quite a bit. So now that I've actually STARTED somewhere, that triggered (and has been the backbone of) this mental and emotional "big bang. . . over the past almost-year, and I've just recently started to realize that something, or somethings, have escalated so much that I'm completely lost in some aspects, not in the growing-up sense, but in the sense that I don' 't even know, I mean I do know but I'm lost or I'm lost in something like what's who or who's what, in whatever part of my mind. It's all gone and I can't pinpoint anything because I don't even know if there is one point to pin."

You naturally write using a narrative stream of conscious, a choral of devilkin voices seven part harmony. When you use your words in this way, your entire story becomes the point. In telling a story which seems to make no sense, your point may just be that--nothing makes sense. Not for long anyway.

She goes on to say, "I've just recently started to realize that something has escalated so much that I'm completely lost in some aspects (not in the growing-up sense) but in the sense that when I actually try and think about where I'm lost or what I'm lost in or even what's who or who's what, in whatever part of my mind, it's all gone and I can't pinpoint anything because I don't even know if there is one point to pin."

There was. But now it's gone. In his twenties, Mick Jagger has a lot more to say than he did in his forties. As for love or beauty, or truth or the pearls we cast at swine, in the end "Our love is like our music. It's here and then it's gone. So take me to the airport and put me on the plane I've got no expectations to pas through here again."

She closes by saying, I'm really sorry if I've caught you off guard, or if I'm making no sense to you, or if I'm alarming you in any way, because I don't mean to. "

I say, "Don't be alarmed when I say, I hear your love." When Jagger says in the song "No Expectations", he addresses himself, his duality; he was at the height of his experimental androgynous phase. His loves songs were from him to him. When he says "you, he means I or me.
When he says your, he means mine.
He says, "You heart is like a diamond. You throw your pearls at swine and as I watch you leaving me, you pack my peace of mind


Julia writes, "I don't even know anymore. I feel fine most of the time, and then when I get by myself, I can just tell. I know it's not all "crazy"-type stuff, I mean the average person is pretty weird. "

In Repo man Harry Dean Stanton's delivers a line that should carved on his tombstone. Quickly we learn in the movie that the most normal people in this world of grunge, rock, and drugs are marginalized, and after Stanton's had a few beers he sees a group of preppies. He turns to Emilio Estevez, his protégé and says "Normal people. I hate them"

Later, one of the punk rockers self combusts and a by-stander quips: Just remember. “It happens sometimes. People just explode.”


I'm really sorry; I don't even know what I'm trying to say. I can feel it, but I can't say it, I know what it is, but I don't know how to put it into anything tangible. (Even though tangible isn't technically the right word.) (I think you mean complete crystallization of thought

"I'm really sorry if I've caught you off guard, or if I'm making nonsense to you, or if I'm alarming you in any way, because I don't mean to. It seemed like there was a definite purpose. . ."
There was and I got it.

I think DH Lawrence says on one hand what I want to say:
"Something else is necessary for polarization to be alleviated or discharged. You must be able to focus; that is that the left and right, the north and south, all the opposites within you must find a point - a place, a wall, a curtain in front of you, upon which you can focus this polarization. This place can be, by coincidence, you canvas...falling changes into suspension...the canvas is no longer being worked on. The canvas, or rather the place that coincides with the canvas, is working on you. You are being worked. If you fail to respond in this way, you cannot remain suspended; you fall. It is the suspension of individuality...."

If you weren't where you are or who you are, you could go to NCS and get a degree in education. Where you're going, you will find out that words are often the frames we put around our canvases in order to let people know that although you have more to say, for now, you needed to say something and have people stop to listen. Suspension of your will which has dominated your young nature is now the only way to heal your own separation from that once, forgotten and future will.

University will be the place where you can, by coincidence, find your canvas. Your canvas is no longer being worked on. The canvas, or rather the place that coincides with the canvas, will working on you. You are being worked my darling Julia. If you try to work it, you cannot remain there will fail. It is now your time to embrace your the suspension of conformity.

Even when you sometimes he feel the need to go home, stay where you are because you are getting back to the original garden.

You are not in a state of diffusion.

The Rose of Tehran Meets An American Ruse

He comes from a nation where a lack of interest in overcoming grounds for divorce is a source of personal pride; it is an individual's protected rightht to avoid intimacy, a right celebrated in song and on film, family relations include fathers, mothers, step-fathers, step-mothers, live-in boyfriend fathers and mothers, non-blood line Dads who raise someone else's kids, somewhere in the middle of nowhere.


Now she comes from the original Aryan nation where it is customary to have family members as best friends.

In her mother country people are capable of respecting a hierarchy of family members.

In her country people remember their best friends as eternal friends; friends of one family member become friends of the entire family. Friends made yesterday, become old friends today.

In her country, they naturally have many social contacts. They know their neighbors. Their neighbors are people who welcome the chance to can make telephone calls to help their neighbors find God . It's all that people seem to want to talk about.

The Simplest Presence

Everyday I drive past an expanse of sea.
The simple present in English asserts our daily truths.

In Latin it indicates a belief which is felt to be true but not necessarily at the moment in time when the speaker speaks his piece.

Everyday I (am capable of) driving past an expanse of sea.

The simple present in Hindi like all Hindi tenses indicates more than what is believed in the moment--time is only one consideration of a Hindi verb tense.

I drive past an expanse of sea, and I suppose I do this everyday. But what is important to me at this moment is that today--as on all days--I drove past that expanse of sea again.

In Arabic, first off there is no "be", no "I am." The simplest expression of what we feel, think, hear, believe, know, love and hate can only be expressed as a continuation from this moment on and into the future, as though to say "I believe in God" is not sufficient for this moment, like no moment can be pinned down. I believe is "I believing". The "be" verb is superfluous, perhaps blasphemous. Like Hebrew, there is an auxiliary form, but it is only comes off the bench to emphasize a point.

Today I drove past an expanse of sea due to the grace of God as I did yesterday and God willing tomorrow.

I can define what it means to use the simple present in English--it defines and consecrates our habits, our comfortable routines, our believes--which to others are just opinions; it announces our immediate experience of the senses.

What I can't say is what it means to me to live in the simple present.

Like Latin, I can tell you how I feel and believe, love and know, think and hear at this moment--perhaps it is similar to the past, but it might not actually be --at this moment.

Like Hindi, what I tell you I believe right now is only the rock rolled in front of the tomb. It would take something greater than myself to roll the rock away. Hebrew, like Arabic, what is in this moment I feel to be my truth, could just as wel be untrue, because even as I speak it, that truth is running.


In the holy places I have been to--that is to say, in the Hindu temples, the Islamic Mosques, the synagogues, the revivals in circus tents, in the rooms where I go and listen to the experiences, the strengths and hopes of people who have been allows been able to feel more than many can bear, so they try to live in the moment because they, like me, have always lived in their --ings, in continual movement away from their "truths".--

I go to learn in Buddhist temples during Catholic masses to try to understand how to live in not only the simple present, but know the Simplest Presence. We don't say in all these rooms--the domed, the steepled, the smoke filled basements when weon our knees, our become procumbent, our sometimes sitting cross legged in a folding chair chugging coffee that we believe--we say whether we admit it or not that we WANT to believe--and many of us settle this. . .this willingness to believe.

I go to these rooms in Seoul, in Jeddah, in Kathmandu, in Bangkok,in Baker, Louisiana, in St. Louis' cathedral in the Vieux Carre,in Notre dame in ashrams, in AA meetings, NA meetings only to ask that maybe one day I will get It.

I have gone there looking for miracles and have often found them without knowing it until years later.

I have gone when I needed a new employer, a new sex life, to dry tears, to eat free finger sandwiches, to keep my doomed cat from suffering throughout another night, to ask that my mother experience a moment of pure joy before she dies; I have gone to become less and less me and to become more assured of some Presence.

I have gone to learn tolerance, patience and how to not only give but how to receive without asking a hundred befuddling questions beginning with why do good things always happen to you, why bad things to me?.

I go to find out what it is like to be a reasonable man.
Now is not the time to think that somehow I willed all of this to happen.

In the past, yes, every success was an assurance that my human will can be triumphant.
I have a lot of things to be grateful for. I want to remember them on a daily basis.


Today, after I drove past an expanse of sea,, I went to a mall and I encountered a Nepali guard whom I've met before and talked to before, who, when he sees me, exchanges a "Namaste" , using the appropriate hand gestures. He is a slight man, unassuming, tough steely eyed, and extremely mindful of all that happens around him. Still, when he sees me coming, he recognizes a Divine Presence in me--the same presence in all of us, as I seein him.

So we clasp our hands together, bow our heads slightly and whisper, "Namaste."