In my recent time traveling adventure, I arrived upon the calm shores of an ocean under a deep midnight blue sky. A lighthouse shone into the night. Sitting on the beach was an old man. Well, to be fair, he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties.

It was me.

He turned to look over his shoulder at someone out of my view. He had a wild, warm look in his eye.

I wasn’t alone.

In the end, the Tower becomes a lighthouse and I am contented to look out at the mystery of the ocean.

And I am okay.

It took a lot of mucking about in space-time to come out the other side with a new real thing: I love my friends and our connection is important. Chances are, you are one of my friends. Hello. I didn’t appreciate the connection we have and how things I do have an impact on your life and vice versa. But now I do.

I guess this’ll teach me not to read “The Invisibles” and “The Lathe of Heaven” simultaneously while having an existential crisis.

The language is always going to be an issue. As I learned from The Invisibles, we’ve only been taught half the letters of the true alphabet. This entire experience is created in language and there are things I have no words for. Read the rest of this entry »

[I originally posted this on Facebook, but I also want it recorded here.]

First of all, this is a genuine inquiry on a fundamental human level. Not an intellectual exercise, not a platform for theological discourse, but a sincere examination of something that spins constantly in my mind. Secondly, I am not here to indite your beliefs or ask you to defend anything you believe. I do, however, want you to explain *why* you believe. Honestly, as a human being. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing it down doesn’t matter so much any more, but I keep doing it for some reason. Perhaps it is an X on a tree I’m passing, so if I see another X I will recognize the path.

I’ve discovered that describing what is happening to me only makes it worse and is sometimes actually harmful. So let’s just say I am discontented on a deep, fundamental level. And I am alone in this. It is something for me to figure out on my own.

There is nothing to be understood here. It has been my experience that people want to do or say something to “make it better”. If you wonder if there is something you can do: you are already doing it. I have already made arrangements with you, but you may not have recognized them as such.

Trust me, you are all doing a fantastic job.

I walked outside, carrying my laundry basket and it hit me. The wind was blowing and a cat romped in the vibrant green grass and it astonished me. For just a moment I had it. I knew that being alive was enough and the simplicity of existence was something I had unlearned. Every other meaning, every desperate grasp at what I thought was important, was something I had grafted on to life. I felt a heart inside the thing I called my heart. A secret heart that could barely take in the fact that trees exist.

And then it was gone and I had to do my laundry.

Sometimes I wish I could just date. Sometimes I wish I could just be the person she needed, whoever “she” happened to be at the time. Sometimes I want to ignore the extra layer of information I see superimposed over the world, my soul’s HUD for navigating waking life. But the pull of that silver path is too strong. And I want to follow it, even if it leads to my nemesis. No one wants to face rejection because of an aetheric arrow. No one wants to hear about time out of phase. My criteria is beyond unreasonable and I find this offends those who hear it. Simply put: She lights up. And I … ignite.

So this is an apology to all of the wonderful women who just seem so right, who just make so much sense. I’m sorry. Just think of me as a visitor to your planet, bound by alien directives and customs. It will be easier to explain my behavior that way. I’m sorry. You did not stand a chance against the avatar, the one I am moving toward as the sun moves toward the sea. I don’t want you to save me.

Historically, December is a difficult month for me, the darkest part of a yearly cycle. My wonderful friend Kristina, who practices Oriental medicine, decided to make a preemptive strike on this low season by prescribing some herbs. The Chinese name is Chai Hu Long Gu Mu Li Wan, but the more exciting, Potions class name for it is Bupleurum Dragonbone Oyster Shell. Already the herbs are taking the edge off.

I typically feel anxiety which rapidly snowballs into paranoia. Fantastical ideas about the people I know and their dark plots against me bloom in my mind. I realize how their supposed friendship was all just an elaborate ruse engineered to destroy me. No one actually cares about me and indeed they wish me harm. So I must be wary and watchful, striking first if I can. I peer out at the world from behind a veil, sensing that some unprecedented event is imminent. I fear that I will fall up into the sky or fly apart into my component molecules. The world fills with weird angles and indictments emanate from magazine ads and YouTube videos.

That’s how it usually goes. But in these past few years of doing actual work on these issues, they haven’t disappeared so much as become familiar monsters which I know how to handle. Having help in these times is an unexpected joy. I typically just go it alone, re-emerging on the other side. So I am very thankful for her.

I’m driving the BMW to Trader Joe’s. Beth is next to me. I notice that the experience of the car is transformed by who is handling it, much that of a gun or violin. Here the vehicle is purely utilitarian, getting us to where we need to go. I don’t care what it looks like or what it is and I only think about it in terms of how the BMW is not like my own car.

We’re talking about relationships and online dating. I haven’t given Beth the backstory of the avatar, so the things I say apparently horrify her on some level. I haven’t encountered many people who are comfortable with the rhetoric of the quirkyalone. Listening to myself, I know it sounds like I have excluded the entire world save one person.

I’m pushing the shopping cart at Trader Joe’s and reality has gone wobbly for me. I start to lose focus on where I am and suddenly I am in several different stores at once. Beth is asking me something about the grocery list, which has suddenly become indecipherable, the scrawled prescription from a mad chef. I answer noncommittally as the aisles telescope and emotions tumble down the shelves.

We manage to collect the ingredients for guacamole and hummus, dips which Beth insists must never be purchased, always made by hand. Later she would demonstrate her Shaolin avacado cutting style. She has resolved to eat an avacado a day while in California. I also found the frozen chocolate dipped bananas I had been craving.

The ride back is just like the ride there, only in reverse. Which is to say, completely unfamiliar.