My Saga: Cling to the Electrons in My Brain Life is this phenomenal force; a river flowing through our veins
it comes and goes as a fleetingly timeless sequence of moments
We experience these moments, and we change with each moment,
we are a progression; a work in progress
continually amassing experiences and memories until we are a masterpiece, finished,
and upon one last gasp we die.
Many moments have happened to me when I was alone that no one else could see or feel,
and so they will never be experienced by any other individual; they are my own.
The day after I first saw American Beauty, I was driving home and from the back seat I saw a robin flying in the air above for just a split second and in that split second I realized exactly what Rickie Fitts had seen when he videotaped the plastic bag.
In a flash of light I saw Absolute Beauty-- the Cosmic Universe in its whole--
I saw god.
What reason is there to have faith in something you can’t, see, hear, or feel?
Society tells us that there is a god, but I didn’t believe it
until I could feel it.
I don’t have faith, my belief is founded in
The beauty that I see, the music that I hear, and the harmony that I feel.
Seeing that robin was when I first felt unity with the higher power.
Not seeing that robin would have altered my course in life. I would have had different experiences, and also would have missed a bunch of amazing experiences that came later.
Like that time I was listening to “All Along the Watchtower”
and I closed my eyes and flew across the sky and above the entire universe
and Jimi was singing: “We gotta find some kind of way out of here / said the joker to the thief / there’s so much confusion / I can’t get no relief”
and his guitar accompanied his voice; a hedonic revolution within my mind
and I was… floating, flying, like a bird, like a god. And there was this time I coaxed a beetle to climb onto a stick, which I then dangled high above the ground. I watched the beetle scamper about the stick in desperation for its life, at which point it stared up at me as if I was its god and it flung its arms at me and begged for its life.
And I wonder,
all the times I have thrown my hands into the air and begged for some slight favor that would make my life tremendously easier,
All the times I have begged for some trifle of an action from whatever higher force it is that interconnects us all…
all those times that I did the begging, was I that beetle, at my own level?
Do you even believe me?
Nobody believes that humans can fly at the level of a god;
Nobody believes that a beetle would beg, personified at the level of a human;
It does not correspond to our perspective.
So instead they just think I’m some crazy druggie kid who should stop smoking so much pot or popping so many pills or using so much of whatever drug it is my parents tell me I’m on despite a month’s worth of drug tests to tell them otherwise…
And if you approached me tomorrow to tell me that you had, on a whim, jumped out your window, become one with the universe, and had a real trippy time, would I believe you?
I would.
Scientists can make calculations to establish the laws of physics
to prove what isn’t possible,
but if we are uninhibited by these laws, then we can defy the laws of physics,
we can prove what is possible
We can prove that reality is a state of mind no more fixed or substantial than any other.
For each member of reality, there is an alternate world in their mind
Some extreme realists do not acknowledge the existence of any world besides reality,
Some extreme psychotics are not aware of the existence of any world besides their own
I’m a bit closer to the psychotic extreme,
for I have an abstract, escapist personality and I am very in touch with myself,
but I am in touch with reality too (although I take it with a grain of salt)
and I can interact with other members of reality and make my mark upon our world.
The difference between reality and the trippy warped world inside my own brain is that:
all of us in reality are experiencing reality, but it is only me who experiences my world.
Likewise, it is only you who experiences your own world.
But lack of population does not mean that individual worlds are not worlds.
They exist; they are very beautiful, in fact.
In my world, the sky is purple, and it rains raw heads of cold wet crunchy cabbage all day long. I spend my time hugging trees and tantrically dancing to Jimi Hendrix as I chant Hare Krishna prayers. I eat rhubarb pie. I often serve rhubarb pie for two, but nobody ever joins me for pie because I am all alone, having no partner to accompany me and indulge with me in my idiosyncrasies.
But this loneliness does not plague me, for I can just as soon choose to immerse myself for some time in reality,
with all of you, all of us, all of them, all my friends. I have some good friends.
They have taught me that human interaction is an awesome experience in its own right.
Like the time I brought a lightning storm over the Cape Cod area with a pair of plastic spatulas, did I ever tell you about that?
I was hiking with a group of 10 people, and in my hands I carried two plastic spatulas.
We were all feeling very in touch with nature at the time, and my friends wished it would rain a little. I told them I could make it rain, and they challenged me to do so.
And so I caused the heavens to open the clouds and let loose wet rain;
I beat my spatulas in a downward motion, dancing as I did this, and led everybody in singing “No Rain”.
“All I can say is that my life is pretty plain / I like watching the puddles gather rain / and all I can do is just pour some tea for two / and speak my point of view / but it’s not sane”
Sure enough, it began to rain. The rain became very great, and still they wanted more! They wanted lightning! I slashed my spatulas left and right, clashed them ‘ntogether,
and I severed
the laws of physics
just by the power of being in touch with nature and having spatulas at my command
thunder rumbled and lightning struck; crying streaks of electricity ripped through the sky.
I brought a lightning storm over Cape Cod with a pair of plastic spatulas.
You ever had one of those times when you were at your best, and your life was at its best, and you felt utterly invincible?
When I brought a lightning storm over Cape Cod with a pair of plastic spatulas, it is safe to say that is the way I felt.
There have been many more amazing experiences, of course.
Every time I’ve been chilling with my friends and there were those vibes,
you know how you just get on a wavelength,
and regardless of whether we say anything to each other, we are on top of the world,
and whatever we do say to each other, it is perfectly intelligent, insightful, & intuitive.
I can recount one such time, at my summer camp. My manic-depressive friend Tristan had almost hung himself the night before. Jeff Loddo and I had just entered the bunk, and he wasn’t there. A few hours ago he had expressed a desire to drown himself, so we ran down to the waterfront, afraid for what we may find but knowing that we absolutely had to check to see if he was dead, or if he was safe, or if he was alive but needing rescue.
Thankfully, he wasn’t drowning himself. He wasn’t even at the waterfront. We eventually found him in the main building watching a movie with all the other campers. He seemed very distressed. The three of us had never enjoyed the movie nights, so Jeff and I told him to come chill back at the bunk with us.
That’s just what we did; we chilled. Didn’t lecture each other, criticize each other, enlighten each other… we just chilled.
Talked. Vented. Understood. Quintessential human interaction.
And we listened to music, of course, for the three of us are deeply obsessed with good music, and how could anyone not be?
When the door to the bunk opened and everybody returned from the movie, we were listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody”. The second the door opened corresponded perfectly to the second that the guitar breaks out, and Freddie Mercury cries:
“so you think you can stop me and spit in my eye / so you think you can love me and leave me to die / oh baby can you listen to me baby / I just gotta get out just gotta get right out of here”
I am glad Tristan isn’t dead. He was glad to know we’d worried about him. That we’d cared about him. That we’d gone out of our way to check the waterfront for him. “That’s friendship right there-- thank you, guys.”
Friendship. That must be what it’s all about… the reason this world that we share exists.
It exists so that we can experience life, love, and friendship together,
we can care for each other, be there for each other, and always take time to just chill.
Soon, we all had to go to sleep. So I slipped back into my own happy surreal world, a rest from all the energy reality requires and the stress it inevitably brings… until I awoke the next day to continue the saga of my sequence of experience…