1 Corinthians 13:8

it was a lovely final episode

in this chapter of the OB saga

and a saga it has been

joyful and adventurous

this moment reminiscent

of new warrior weekend rituals

yet this time at the church

when the big soup pot was carried in

on a wet december saturday morning

reverence did not need to be feigned

-----

albuquerque is a quiet place

relative to OB

one can sleep like a baby here

with the comfort of metallic protection

and a familiar old neighborhood

i highly recommend the southern route

for anyone traveling this way or that

the extra half hour

saves you all the stress of flag snow

phoenix insanity and those long mountain curves

plus offers the beauty of the chiricawas

where pink and powder blue sunsets

delighted me for what seemed like hours

i arrived with $10

and about 4 gallons to spare

enough to likely get me up the hill

for a santa fe christmas with old friends

if i somehow don't blow it all

on juicy tempting irresistable breakfast burritos

either way it is amazing how abundant one feels

the less one has

orlando said it best

and i trust is still is saying it to his jailers:

less is more

-----

i am in love with the world

and that is the whole point of the saga

i am grateful beyond words

to my mentors on this journey

for i am quite convinced

we are all headed down this road

here at the end of civilization

where the struggle has been long:

when the money runs out

what we find is not that we are crushed

but rather liberated

to the true choices we face

now as a global community

of human BEINGs

without the separations of our mortgaged compartments

and dwindling accounts

free now to care for one another

-----

my arrival here and now

is marked by a relaxation deeper

than i can describe

yet one feature begs to be declared:

i hadn't realized the catch

i had been living with for decades

a protective control worrying every move

projecting threat from authority

and other bullies

from a place near my physical core

a gripping that would arise in reaction

to all encounters

in the center of my belly

stopping the breath long enough

to generate the adrenalized fearful anger

destroying so many relationships

and too many of the moments

which this life grants

-----

i have seen 47 summers pass

how exquisite to at last realize

there is nowhere else i need to go

to break open this heart

into the unimagined splendor

of every moment here on this Earth

after tenderly moving an earthworm

out of harm's way amidst the growing soup line

my bliss overflowed into tears

as the organizer of that last OB meal

quoted scripture from the back

of their christmas pancake breakfast sign

a verse i had not before heard:

love never fails

stay leaving

it's an open question

every moment one decision

follows on another

i called my old boss

but do i really want to do it

and will i get there

and will he follow through

and will there be no glitches

guess it's time for tires

-----

yesterday was a lovely day

savoring slowed down time

upon preparing to leave

it is good to be free

immerse in 54 degree ocean

before a cold outdoor

shower and shampoo

bringing wine on a hike

and flirting with a beautiful companion

at the edge of a duck pond

eating beans at the coop

running into a woman

i briefly traveled with

when i first arrived

allowed me the spacious time

she so wanted then

but i sadly had no skill for

-----

maybe it is best to just stop doing

be the elder i am becoming

spend a year growing the beard

and say i'm working on the tour

the permaculture italian

mountain man music

empathy jubilee

i could even still apply at the coop here

for bucks

call the old accordian player

or the head shop currently hiring

-----

i just know i get

so many hugs when i'm leaving

that now i want to stay

or at least remember wherever i am

to stay leaving

bird water Tao

I have failed again, this time failing even to fail.

With money running out, and too many spins turning my mind to mush, I have done the unthinkable and asked my old boss in burque if he would consider rehiring me. It was an odd call from Love's truckstop in central California, but he thought they might have a place. So I have a meeting planned with him for Monday.

Much could go wrong with this plan yet. The front tires on the van are sketchy and worry me, and I do not have the money to replace them. At the moment I think I have the gas money to get to the interview, but need to check the math.

Ironies abound: I spent over a thousand bucks on the brother-in-law's Sebring which I continue to effort to sell for peanuts. That car also needs to be squared away one way or another by Saturday night. I don't think I have the fifty bucks to fed-ex the car title to Germany to get the sale done. So that's a mess.

It's possible I rent a parking spot for the van with all my stuff, and drive the Sebring back for the interview and vacation, fly back out in a month on a weekend to get the van with all my stuff. Or maybe sell the van tomorrow instead and throw everything I own in a dumpster. Or walk away from both vehicles and the interview and just sleep on the beach in the rain. Or just turn myself into a mental hospital now before the full blown psychosis hits.

I have tried smoking my way forward. It has been an amazing medicine for generating awareness of alternate strategies along the way the last couple months. I've also stopped a few times, when I have felt myself becoming confused--and this is one of those times. The alternate routes and the straight routes now completely diverge and neither makes any sense. And now smoking just leaves me with a big fat useless head I don't quite have a name for, but it's something in the realm of mania.

Today there is a picnic planned with a woman I adore, but at the moment it is raining. She is a former coworker, young, complex and living with someone, but there is something deeply honest and mutual between us. Neither of us know what it is exactly, but it feels a lot to me like full-blown and inconvenient love. In some alternate reality, she has followed through with her longing to travel with me to New Mexico, and anywhere we want to go.

On this plane, I am reminded of those few women I have had the big heart for, often in such circumstances. There is a magnetism generated from flying along on autonomously-powered chakras on the edge between adventure and disaster. And always to be true to the very passion that has helped kindle the connection, it seems I must also leave. That program needs to change, and it will--as I learn the capacity for commitment without disaster.

I am tired of leaving places. Leaving northern California family and beautiful mud the other day was hard. Leaving here--the ocean, community, huge learning, beautiful women I've been conversing with--is hard. My failing has been my inability to stop moving. If I could only accept that I deserve a space in society, despite not having a legitimate place to park, I could carry on with this path of watching the world crumble. But in regards to this holy path of non-participation with the evil of money, it turns out I have a couple of serious shortcomings: I do fear authority, and hate being broke. Most of all, I hate idleness.

The ocean does not need to force itself into activity when it is calm, and the birds do not permits to park--it is true, and this is the root of nearly all the problems in the world. The profit maximization which will neither allow the homeless to sleep outdoors, nor the Earth's oceans, forests and topsoil to regenerate.

Yet neither must the ocean force itself into idleness out of an ideal, when it in turn rages and surges with vital power. Hallelujah. And neither must the birds remain on the ground, scratching away at the same patch of sand: they insist on flying.

When I tried social work a couple years ago, I learned I am more anarchist than socialist. But here, I have learned how socialist I am, how European. I long for belonging, for order, and to be of service actively with the tasks of this life. I love work, when I can dictate the conditions of my labor amidst a mutual conversation: the exercise, the contribution, the appreciation, the free endorphins, the community, the challenges which wake up my proactive practices.

All these runaways doing little but smoking pot, waiting to be fed, and struggling to sleep: I relate to their ideals, their walking away from the societal violence, their return to the Earth. But as righteous as it all may be, I hate personal idleness as much as the genocidal violence and ecological catastrophe consuming the world.

I will thus find a way to fire up all of these chakras, remember I am more than this or that, and carry on. If you have ever watched a raven play, she is compelled to try new dives and spins to test her relation with the air currents, to see how it feels to fall in a new way. It is her freedom. For a moment she flutters in chaos, scrambling in absolute exertion so as not to crash on the rocks below.

Momentarily bedazzled, yet in the same dazzling instant, she is lifted up again, renewed and laughing, wiser for the experience. Shouting in delight: who is this wind that so moves me?

survival

i am noticing a hesitation
in returning to the streets

i have decided to see if i can overstay my welcome
with kind middle class family

enter hobo status officially

i see stresses in both arenas
the middle class are as stressed as the poor

in some ways more
they do not have the succor

of direct experience
with life's elements

-----

this sad dog and pony show
will hit the road again

soon
i am due in burque the 19th

have my overseas' bro-in-law's car
to sell in san diego

am tempted to stay around here
until the harvest work comes through

but more tempted to just head north
and see how far i can get

----------

it's all survival
we are no different than the animals around us

except in our longing for the nonviolence
which is also our nature

yet we have somehow forgotten
and i will tell you of such things

for life in balance
is 5% mating/meaning/birth and wonder

5% survival/struggle/death and horror
and 90% travel

in search of a good meal
with adventurous byproducts

the epiphenomena of the now

traveling rant

the world is moving so fast
i just had to quit

there was no longer any quality of life
in that runaround

as much as i miss trader joes
I say to the world now

my labor is mine to give

i will determine
the conditions of its giving

and if nothing else comes along
i will play music on the street
until they arrest me

-----

i awoke again today
to the abundance of life

once one knows what one really wants
and we let go of all notions of
deserving and shame

we are royalty all
you and me and the cleaning lady
and the dishwasher and the runaway

what is a prince or a queen
how dare the elites claim some special status

it is a lie and it is high time
it is exposed
to the light of
Divinity

we all belong here
and there is no enemy
but the ignorance born of
the illusion of our separation

tao

i am amazed at the leap into ridiculous speed the world has taken in recent weeks, suddenly everyone is so busy that email is obsolete, myspace is history, and nonlinearity has arrived

i continue to dance between two worlds, learning to enjoy the movement, it has been a twofold jolt to first try and slow down to the pace of actual life energy and social contact and connection to things natural, and then also to remember that i enjoy the exercise of running and movement and staying strong in the belly

cuz it's fun to manifest things magically, practice those new skills of vibrating positive proactive magnetic thoughts, empathically responding to the world, and just being

it's also fun to bike across town, run down newport, walk in the cold waves, work on business plans, play music, record the cd

-----

knowing that beauty also passes

i refute holding onto

any sense of purity of the moment's awareness

any worry of upsetting the imagined emergence

any demand that i surrender to the flow

vastly preferring

the dance of fearlessly tapping my feet on this earth

unselfconsciously taking action in the world

and allowing the world

to respond

to me