So, what am I scared of? Failure? Every failure, every rejection is simply rock marking the path you should be on. Blocking you from getting lost in the wilderness, like the forestry department lining the trail with boulders and tree limbs to show you the way Each failure, each misstep in your life I should be thankful for. Each time you cross one as you are now pointed in a better direction. The problem is we all come to points in the path where we seem encircled in markers and there is nowhere to turn and just as Dante we can not turn back the way we came as the leopard of incontinence or the she-wolf of perverted desire blocks the way and has driven us off the path in the first place falling back will just get you further lost in the dark woods of life. This is just a point where you should simply look on the place you are, notice what’s around you and how you arrived there, reflect and a path will open. I would be weary though if Virgil comes to show you the way, one thing I have come to recognize in the few months here the great guides here don’t lead you down a path but only give you the opportunity to find it. So your path is lined with many rocks. After spending the past week in the wilderness getting up to this mountain I have come to realize all problems can be solved with a rock, need anything, a wheel, knife for hunting, a cup to drink from, just about anything. You can find a rock that suits the task, some one is doing something you don’t like hit’em with it, need some companionship get a pet rock, it never talks back, it’s a great listener and never disagrees. I’ve found some problems that a rock can’t fix though, so you know what I do with those problems? I take one rock carve out the problem on another rock and go to the highest point I can find and simply throw it off the edge because if there’s a problem a rock can’t fix its not really a problem so just throw it away.

Today (2006) I met up with a couple from Germany who where headed to (….) which I was too un-benounced to me. I have a general direction of heading towards Mt. Kalish the mountain seat of Shiva in the Hindu religion but I’ve definitely not been taking the most direct rout. The couple Ferdy and Aldona spoke a little English and even more Tibetan but where definitely not fluent in either. It was nice to travel for a bit with some one who could at least read the road markers. Something I’ve found in traveling that no matter how far away something is if you at least know it’s a set distance it makes its seem closer, within grasp at least. Its like waiting at the DMV if you have your number and you can hear the G-128 to window ten even if your G-567 you know your at least one step closer to your turn it makes the wait some how bearable, can you imagine if you never knew how long it was going to take could be 5min could be 5 hours, at least if you know its 5 hours you can go outside get a smoke or really set in for a cat nap on the hard plastic chair. It’s the not knowing or worst to know it will never end, not ever seeing the goal thus no way to gauge your progress that causes the most struggle. The continual joy of reaching a hill top or the point where you can see around the bend only to be again disappointed when your destination is not there and it must be over the next hill top way off in the distance and no matter how hard you try and tell yourself not to get excited that it may be just around the next corner some how your still are disappointed when its not. Many things in life are this way especially this enlightenment thing I heard so much about in the western world. I had convinced my self that certain people where enlightened and if I read the same books, visited the same places I would be too and granted I didn’t do a lot of research or anything but some how I thought I would come to this country and find the little known monastery way up in the hills with a giant stone stair case to climb and once there some wise old Asian dude would tell me the secret or some montage of training would flash before my eyes and there it would be yet I’m still walking down this ice covered dirt road looking but don’t worry you’ll be the first to know if I find it.
So at dusk was coming upon myself and Ferdy and Aldona had reached another small plateau which even with Ferdy to tell me we had another 20miles or so before we’d reach the next village I still some how was at least a bit disappointed not to see it but was quickly subsided by what I can only call shock! There was a naked man sitting on a rock pointing upward! I simply looked at my two companions and back at the man again. I mean I’m not homophobic and it wasn’t the site of a naked man that shocked me nor was it that there was a man sitting on a rock in essentially the middle of no where, we had seen a few jeeps on the road that day so it wasn’t completely deserted but the combination of both was a bit surreal. The man was a little, elderly and there where quite a few gray hairs in his matted dread locked mane as well as his bread was nearly completely gray so he looked to be in his fifty’s or so and took no notice of us at all. Aldona did say something in when I looked back to them that I didn’t understand at the time but now know as Namaste a greeting used more in India than Tibet although we where in the general region I guess which means to my under standing something like “the light in me shines on the light in you”. Ferdy had suggested that it was getting dark so we should set up camp there on the road side with (I want to say our new friend but he hadn’t even looked in our direction yet so wasn’t really sure if friend would be the best term to use) anyway I was completely Ok with it after a short what I can only call logical mulling over of whether or not to camp next to a naked an LA city looking vagrant type was a wise choice but figured it was a different county so what the heck I don’t know any better why not, could be good for some laughs at the very least . Although Aldona didn’t seem to keen on the idea and who could blame her not only was she hiking and now camping with a complete stranger (me) even if they had been hiking with me all day with their broken English and my complete lack of German we really hadn’t said much to each other but now we where going to add another motley misfit to the crew for the night and this one was a naked native, well probably not native as he looked more Indian but at least more native then we where and I only assume that because if you feel comfortable to walk around naked in another mans country then if you not native you better at least have family that lives there. I could tell from the discussion my companions where having with gesturing for us to go further down the road that the idea of sleeping there was one she was a bit uncomfortable with. Even though I had no clue what they where saying but me and my male bravado decided to pull out a length of rope from my bag along with my best game of charades and tried to explain there where three of us and only one of him so if he got out of line we could just ties his ass to that rock and we had nothing to worry about so with that she agreed I’m guessing as much because Ferdy walked over to the man and said something in Tibetan I’m assuming asking if we could join him there for the night so with that we made camp. The man just sat there as we made camp and got the fire going as the night overcame us he did finally come over and joined us at the fire. We each sat and made some dinner which was quite good actually but that might have been simply because I didn’t know how long I’d be on the road and had packed mostly nutrition survivalist bars which are bad enough the first time you try one but after the 10th day are horrendous. I did have some rice as well and Aldona had added it to what they where making which was some vegetable curie stew like stuff that was great. (if your reading this Aldona thanks again best camp fire food I had the whole trip) Ferdy spoke to the man and did a bit of translating in both German and English for me and aldona. His responses from what I gathered he too was on some sort of spiritual pilgrimage or coming back from one as he was headed the opposite direction that we where, he was a guru of sorts in his village and was traveling quite far. The conversation some how got around to our decision to camp there with him for the night as the man picked up the rope I had pulled out of my bag earlier and was now sitting next to it by the fire. I hope Ferdy didn’t mention my comment about tying his ass up if he got out of line but never the less he began using the rope as if as mime might if they used props and pretended to climb it. Ferdy explained to me that he had chosen to stay there because he had hardly noticed the man on the rock not to mention that he was naked! What he was noticing as we topped the hill was the beauty of the evening sky and the first star peaking out of the purple evening above that the man was pointing at not the man at all. How the man was explaining that trying to show a person the way to enlightenment was as futile as trying to use my rope to climb to the havens. I realized at that moment that it is our fear that distracts us, fear works like a magician. The magician makes you fixate in one direction while the magic is going on in the other and if you can not allow your self to be distracted and simply look at what’s going one right in front of you may catch a glimpse of the magic, you may even be able to train your self to see it every time and see it for what it really is, a slight of hand. Enlightenment is no magic trick its seeing the beauty of the world, the reality of what really is even if you don’t catch it or understand it every time. I was so shocked at seeing a man living without fear, just naked in the world that I was missing the beauty, the realty right above my head. (I later discovered that there are certain sects of hindu/budist that believe that clothing is a excess in life that is not required.)

I’m constantly running I realize, distracting myself from what I’m afraid is a sad truth. That’s why I like film so much. A good film keeps me from thinking yet a really good film makes me think but not about whatever it is I’m running from but a great film makes me think about just what I’m running from but from outside the context of my own life in that of the characters. I read to escape also, I like to read but reading only works in short burst like watching a TV show then a comical comes on and my mind drifts just like reading, every few pages my thoughts drift. What am I running from? What am I distracting my self from? Just stop and think damit!, why do I feel the need to continually keep my mind occupied? I feel emptiness, loneliness. So is it a relationship I desire, another person? I’ve had that and it works for awhile but then back to the bleak emptiness again so that’s not it. I constantly feel like I’m not doing anything, like I’m wasting my life, wasting my time. Why do I feel the need to struggle to be smarter, to learn, to not be board? I heard some where that’s the problem with people today their all board, we’ve had the universe explained to us and we’re board with it. So unless it beeps and flashes in a million different Technicolor shades and feel like tits, we’re board. (Look I know I’ve made more than a few remarks that can seem sexist but I honestly believe that breasts feel wonderful too both sexes regardless of the persons orientation. We all have had mothers, most of us where breast feed its ingrain in to each of us.) With us we’re all just running around tiring not to be board and no matter how depraved or extreme it may seem as long as it keeps our mind off of our boredom, we’re fine with it and I’m no different. If I’m not distracted and I’m not struggling in futile attempts to better my self in some way, because I don’t feel like I’m good enough, smart enough, successful enough what ever that is this week I’m gagging success as. That’s why I love sex or even the lesser watching a skin flick (lesser as in lesser of the loves because I’ve probable viewed porn more often than I’ve had sex) because for a few moments I’m focused and not empty. I probably should spend more time doing what I think is going to better my self rather than watching some lame art film trying to dissect what unconscious undertones the director was trying to express in his choice of lighting. Yet even when I do focus (on a positive distraction that is) it’s a constant battle to move forward and there’s no end to it. So I give up and just slip back in to another distraction. Even writing this, I tell my self it’s to reflect, to have some sort of sense of accomplishment but I’m afraid it’s just another distraction.

Frankenstein’s monster went to the artic when his creator denied him companionship. I guess I should count my self lucky it’s not that cold even if it feels such some nights. I’ve always identified with Frank’s monster and I’ll bet you’ve got more in common than you think. Whether you equate the monster to some biblical story of Adam or maybe Satan him self in Milton’s Paradise lost each are fitting. Adam as in the stories of genesis or other such historys has shown that god has left us to fend for ourselves, to learn and wonder about the numerous unknowns, only to turn in frustration on our creator in anger and destructive behaviors. The creature like Satan him self once beloved by his creator is cast out and much the same as the monster, Satan is set on vengeance against his creator in the only way he knows how hurting those closest to him. The numerable interpretation of Mary Shelly’s story and the many adaptations on its bases, all pinned to the cosmic themes of the limits of man and the omniscience of god which extends to man emulating god. The disturbing parallels between both the characters of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster and us/me, I’ve always identified with the creature more than Dr.Frank though. I have no desire of a Faustino concept of the ambitious man who momentarily knows gods thoughts and is thus driven mad because of it. Even the theme of duality’s in the divided self of each the creator and the creature that is part of the human psyche as told in many much more ancient stories falls short. I’ve felt more as the simple fool who craves love and understanding yet chooses violent and destructiveness because of the lack of compassion and fear of others. Frustration and rejection turn to self hatred and shame vented only through selfish as malicious intentions, insecurities masked in arrogance. When you look at the creature’s growth and desire, one can not help but find parables in ones own life which is fairly obvious in his sympathetic identification in most adaptations, his desires for companionship with his creator finding rejection due to his ugliness. We all have our ugliness our “zero states” most find it much deeper than physical and probably have a few too many memories of actions our ugliness has caused, memories we wish we could alter yet there’s no plastic surgeon that can do the “Extreme Make Over: Soul addition” short of maybe a Nurse Ratchet recommended lobotomy. Thus with a rejection from his creator the monster turns to humanity to fulfill his wants, tries ever so hard, locating the lovely family and attempting to provide for them, cutting fire wood, shoveling snow from the path doing what he can. Yet eventually they see his ugliness also and he is chased from the village. This is how I feel granted I don’t think there are any pitch fork caring mobs coming for me but I am driven by circumstance from my on failed attempts at compassion and denial of an equal other, yet of my own design rather than that of my creator. You ever felt as if you met your soul mate but you’ve blown it and now there’s nothing left or like you’ve all ready had the happiest moment of your life and for the rest of your days you’ll just be chasing that dragon?

Once on a few tabs of acid as a teenager I realized how our solar system was so similar to the diagrams of an atom in science class yet the planets circled the sun in a set orbit where as the electrons and neurons seem to circle in any thing but however I’ll bet if you sped up the set orbits of our solar system to a billion trillion times a second it would look as if it was erratic thus discovering that every alt reality, every choice that can be made will be made all instantaneously on a blade of grass and if time is indeed infinitive then mathematically it must repeat. Kind of took the magic out of it to think I’ve been in this very spot before doing this very thing and every other thing that’s possible thus needing to repeat in the infinities of time but still once the trip was over and I still had get up for class on Monday and deal with the jock assholes in gym and all the other trivial crap that consumed my life had not changed, no poof of calm and Zen. I realized it was just another fantasy and was board with it. If it doesn’t light up, flash or have a new jamming baseline in it or feel like two huge breasts, I’m board with it and even if it does I’m still board with it. I mean isn’t that really why I’m up here in the mountains, cold freezing my balls off walking around because I was board and for some reason that escapes me now I thought I’d find something up here that would make me be ok with what I already knew and that is there are no answers. I didn’t come here to find them, I came because I had this idea about “enlightenment” that if I came up here like some spaghetti western style kung-foo flick I’d find some old man in a cave or at some mountain top monastery that could make it ok.

Life sucks! And that’s the absolute of it, so instinctually we just try to avoid it but if you do avoid it that just makes the time you can’t even more unbearable. Yes it would be great to just search for moments of bliss spend your life on some heroin induced cloud but then when your not the pain is only equaled the bliss you felt. I would love to just fill this with insightful clichéd Zen like parables (clichéd term are only cliché because there’s some universal truth we all recognize which is a bit cliché in of it’s self) of how we are like the wood on the fire of life to be continually started each night as the chill of reality creeps in or some beautiful words like god is in the rain and reality/truth puddles at your feet as some hardcore Zen monk said but if I may paraphrase its more like god is what you eat to sustain life and truth is what you crap out four hours later and that’s the reality of it life is shit! Take a whiff and learn to love it. So why not just off your self? Why is there life? Would it not be great to just join the cosmic energies of the universe and all become one. To actually join some Jungian collective consciousness and let go of our own ego, to reach some enlightened state where a bolt of lightning would strike and vaporize the physical world of duality and suffering, yeah wouldn’t that be great! Well no, that would suck too because then with out suffering there’d be no joy, nothing to understand, no one to talk to, nothing to experience as you’d know it all, you’d be it all and that would be fucking boring right and isn’t that the problem now I’m freaking board! I’ve had the physical body explained to me and I’m board with it. I’ve had the laws of the universe explained to me on both a quantum and sub-quantum levels, I get it three families of partials with three fundamental forces acting on them but I’m board with it. There is no underlining singularity, no binding logic, no cosmic law of unification or if there is and Einstein’s couldn’t find it and String theory falls short then men much smarter than my self can keep looking as for me physics never really mattered in my day to day struggle even if the lack of understanding it is the root cause. No answer ever felt like I was getting closer, although a few did point me in the right direction.

I sit here writing watching the camp fire burn. I ‘am like the wood, I burn with struggle, burn with love, burn with desire, with want and just as I feel I have reached a fevered pitch and the warmth is consuming me it fades and goes out eventually. All I’m left is ash. I am the wood, I am the ash but they are not the same, one can not be the other there is no way to be both, each has its place and in the fire of life wood becomes ash but I can not burn long before becoming such.
The tree the ultimate symbol of life so many things can be said of a tree are true of a person, A tree go’s through storms and it strengthen roots hold or it would not grow as tall as it could or even if it did a small breeze may blow it down so it is with a person. The storms of life help us achieve our potential yet we all wish to be trees in the Garden of Eden where no storm can reach. Why is it we must suffer to grow, I seen it propose yet not the point.
I lay here on the edge of this lake looking out of my tent at the base of that mountain wondering why I felt it was necessary to take this trip and I think of a book I read or some one else did and told me about it. The bases of my recollection is that this ecologist or psychologist or maybe it was a sociologist yeah I think that was it. Heck maybe the author was all three but the theory was that humanity, that people on the whole need nature. That nature is something that is part of the human psyche, not just part of the biological necessity of nature, food, air and such but nature is actually part of a person psychological and sociological makeup. The author had sited a number of studies to back this up but the one I found most interesting was a study that was conducted with inner city teenagers. They would take a group of inner city kids out to spend a weekend or field trips out to some national forest whether it was just for the day or over night or the frequency of these trip I do not recall but then watch these kid grow up for a few years and compared them with other kids from the same geographical area and economic status in such things as education, criminal activity, gangs activity and other such sociological aspects. The teenagers that where exposed to the nature consistently scored better on scholastic test, had a 1/3rd reduction in violent behaviors and arrest. I do understand that there or a number of mitigating factor such as how the children where chosen as I’m sure parent approval was required for the trip thus a strong parental influence and other such things that would biases the results although I assume being a research study steps to minimize such things where taken. Waking up in this place looking out over a lake of consciousness and the mountain of realization I understand why I had to make this trip and don’t doubt those finding at all. I’ve come here to learn compassion, to find connection, I think of Nietzsche’s uberman and the allegory of being alone naked in the desert and always associated it with finding strength in loneliness, throwing off any social shackles the world has put on you as it very well may be just that but I see the strength in loneliness comes from finding the connection with yourself and the environment around you. Yet as Nietzsche was not himself a nihilist, he understood that nihilism is not the end of the journey only one of the base camps on the way to the summit.

Yester day I started out for Mt.Kailash....
Today as I spent trudging up this icy and snow covered path my thoughts drifted to the horror of my life that is just too much, as this road is too hard to climb and my own insignificance in this world, looking back on the abyss of time the thousands of people who have walked this pass, the struggle and slipping on the ice they encountered and I am now and the many more that will after me. I began to look up to the clouds rather than the road at my feet and my thoughts shifted to my Beatrice, the way she moved, her smile, her breast like that of the billowing clouds over head. The spot where her legs end and the ripple of her buttocks begins on the back of her inner thigh, were her pale flesh meets again like the clouds folding in to each other, where I wanted to be to be, enveloped in her warmth. I heard namaste and for a moment thought god her self was speaking to me but realized it was a group of pilgrims stopped for a rest on the road side. As I looked down from the clouds I realized I was at the peak of the path not with her as I had been day dreaming. I realized I was colder than ever as my blood flow had shifted with my thoughts. I was merely a man walking this path alone staring at the sky, isolated with a hard on for the clouds. (I wonder if that sweet old lady that greeted me noticed the tent I had pitched in my pants) As a teenager I felt as if sex was a power I held, I think it was a power issue, a concurring, having women submit to my will, boosted my ego. Like one of the numerous the lame teen movies where the football team is trying to sleep with a girl for every letter of the alphabet or something, was the mentality I held. I wouldnt say I was that much of a pig but essentially I had the same attitude toward sex. I had a few girls I really fell for but it wasnt about sex, I never had a problem getting some when I wanted but after falling in love a few times I began to realize that I was womanizing and it was not only hurting others but me too. But now as Im older I feel like the pyridine has shifted. The only thing that has changed is who holds the power though. How many women is it going to take, how far I have to fall before I can realize my behavior is an attempt to exert some control over what Im allowing to control me. I see lust as a weakness that women can and do exploit. That giving in to such desire is a degradation of the hero (hero is used here as the ideal self that is with in us all not like the super power kind) with in me, now it is I that must submit to her will to fulfill my depraved desires. She is now in control and picks and chooses, where as when. When I was younger I felt as if I was in control, why the shift in my perception? I believe it has to do with age? Younger women have not had their delusions of romance and love tarnished so as such desire that above all else, which men can thus exploit and use in control. Where as with age, men begin to realize that compassion and love are indeed more important than sex and women have learned their power over men regarding their sexuality. Men only know how to use sex to find the love and compassion that they now so desire as its the only thing that has lead to the glimpse of it. I do not know why I have slipped in to using terms such as men and woman as I am not talking in generalities but of myself directly. I do realize that gender rolls and the dominate traits of the Anima & Animus very regardless of physical make up of the person. I do not know if these terms of men and women are the same assumption and experience you or most have had but only my own. I guess it is just easier to think in terms of generalities than to become clouded by the emotions of the individual experiences that have caused me to make such assumptions so please understand that even if Im speaking of the world or in terms of others I am truly only speaking of my self and my world not yours as reality is all subjective as the wonderful particle tests done at CERN and the great minds of quantum physics has proved.
I wish for simple things, I wish to sleep with out nightmares to live without tension, without suffering. I have taken this journey to eliminate what I saw as the sources of stress in my life. I have no work, no home, no wife to fight with, no children to rise, I have no stress. Yet my isolation is now my prison. It seems all great man spend their days alone yet I have no desire to be great. I as Nietzsche have built a foot bridge to others and unlike him I have no problem in submitting and crossing the bridge yet once built. I chip a way at my own structure until it collapse under both our feet causing great pain and I am tired of this repetitive action. I have failed at being an emotional structural engineer and Im left stranded on this island alone with not even Wilson to keep my company.
The minute you stop thinking theres someone out there for you, its over isnt it? If you give up on finding companion, what is there left? I look to the things that have driven me in life or at least the things Ive done. Ive spent so much time driven to get an education, so I could get a better job, so I could get more money, so I could have nicer stuff, Why? Well Im a typical guy so first thing that comes to mind is I do these thing to get laid. Even reading some obscure philosophy book just to feed my ego so I could say I know this, waiting hoping someone could come up and ask what I was reading and impress them or so I could come up with some witty conversation to impress a girl or anything, it all seems to boil down to that just to get laid. Any ambition Ive had, I reflect on it and wonder why did I ever care about this or that and it seems I did because I thought someone else did. So if I did (care about what ever it is money, cars, knowledge what ever) they/her would like me, respect me, admire me but its more than just the physical desire to get laid. Although at times I may have mistaken paradise for a pair of great knockers. I mean really why do I want to get laid so much the biological release can be taken care of with a few flicks of the wrist so why do I want more? I want companionship, friendship, love I want some one to accept me, look up to me, someone I can look up too, learn from and take care of. Yet Why? why do I need that, why do I want that and why is it that, when I do have that the love, the companionship, respect and getting laid, why Im I not satisfied. Why do I still focus on the other ambitions, like work or money or what not rather than building a better relationship. I think Im building a better relationship doing A, B and C yet I end up loosing sight of why Im doing A, B and C in the first place and just end up fucking it off. I have found in my relationships with women I need to be the bread winner the provider in the cave man cents of it. It took me a few relationships to realize that rolls play a big part. It�s not just paying the bills, its being the provider in a much larger sense of the word. There are a lot of needs a relationship has, just as many if not more than each person in the relationship have, a emotional provider, a spiritual provider an educational provider on and on granted one person cant fulfill all the needs a relationship has if you could it wouldnt be a relationship itd be you sitting alone out on a pumpkin like Thoreau. However as the male I feel compelled to or as if some how its my duty to and I want to take care of someone, I want to guide and be looked to as wearing the pants in the relationship if you will. The provider, the masculine stereotypical roll of the relationship it feeds my ego, it gives me a cense of entitlement and power but it also makes me feel like I have purpose and a point to going to work each day or what ever the day to day toil of my life is at that time. Yet when I have that in a relationship, a relationship where the person has fallen in to the subservient place or the traditional feminine roll in the relationship I begin to resent my position, why do I have to work all the time, why I am I the one that has to stress over decisions because its my fault if it�s the wrong one and I begin to resent all the other things that placing my self in that position requires. Thus Ive found I begin to abuse the �power of the position as my resentment grows so does my entitlement which begin to chip away at the relationship and piece by piece brick by brick, Id like to think unconsciously I destroy it. I have reflected on my past relationships and see I have assumed both rolls with different people even at different stages with the same person. I believe in these rolls as they are a necessity not with only romantic relationship but all interaction but dont get me wrong yes I do realize that in a perfect utopian relationship they would not be required. Yet we do not live in that reality. There is all ways a constant shift in one way or the other in the relationship even if one has shall we say assumed the position. In this world of dualitys that governs not only our physical world but this bond, these series of interaction we call a relationship. All one can hope to do is continue the struggle. Because if you simply subside the power shifts to one side too much and tips over crumbling down to obtain balance one must find a person to struggle opposite of. Its all one can hope for. Yet like the guy that has the great life, wife, job all that jazz but cheats on his wife or drinks him self out of a job or what ever. You know that guy you see and go if I had his life Id be happy, If I had his hot wife Id never stray, If I had his job Id be a model employee Then you see he had what he wanted. Why would he do that. (by the way Im that guy) not that i ve ever been married but I have destroyed relationships I thought where perfect, and lost good jobs because of intoxicated choices, even one time did them both in one night. As Im sure most people with common sense know not to drink too much and get caught in the coat room with the bosss wife. Anyway, Ive accepted Im not ready for or cant handle or cant hold onto is a better word to use, yeah I cant hold onto what I truly desire hence have given up finding it thus being lost in a void of purposes in life, a vacuum of existentialisms.

Out of the wild and in to the wilderness
I have spent a few days now wondering around Lhasa looking at the beautiful temples listening to the monks chant in the mornings. Although at first I felt it very hard to breathe, the beauty of the area, the silence of the monasteries is literally suffocating. Yes literally I don’t mean some metaphorical “silence is like a chokehold on my mind” or suffocating sense of scenery deprivation, I mean I can’t freaking breath and if I don’t sit down from exhaustion and being lightheaded every once in a while and simply focus on my breathing I fear I’ll pass out. Its no wonder so many meditation techniques are based around simply focusing on your breathing, there’s not enough oxygen in the air at this altitude. Coming from the depths of a valley covered in the smog and decadence blown over from the cost to settle and thrive in the valley of Vegas to now being on the roof top of the world it’s a wonder its not more than altitude sickness that’s been my biggest concern. I thought for sure the culture shock would kill me. It’s weird though it’s not totally alien I’ve seen a few monks with Nikes on, kid with a bjork t-shirt not to mention the tourist are even easier to spot than in a down town casino at 3am. The first few nights I slept on the streets but found a hostel where I get a bunk in kind of a barrack’s type room for only $4 a night and I need a shower too so I took it. I’m afraid all I’ve done is knocked my self further down Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs, now rather than running in an endless 9-5 rat maze cycle of work so I have food and a place to sleep so I can go to work again and being unsatisfied. Hoping and striving for some relationship, some social connection to build a family and friends, which I continually fail at always, hurting the ones I love unable to sustain any lasting connection with out losing myself and sabotaging the situation with some self defeating, destructive behavior to now just striving for food and a place to sleep. I’ve come half way around the world to find myself and I find most of my time is spent trying to stay warm. I’m so preoccupied with my own comfort, to come from sleeping on scientifically engineered space foam from NASA with a ergonomic shaped pillow between my thigh’s and the heater, or more often the air conditioner blasting and reading some semi-obscure passage in a book so I can try and impress the cute girl at the office tomorrow which is unlikely because she’s more interested in the casino executive she met last weekend at the club and getting her hair done than any sudo-intellectual statements I could make, to now sleeping on a damp rock in below freezing temperatures with nothing to eat in the past 3 days other than the survivalist bars I packed and some yaks milk the monks handed out last morning. They say the only thing worst than a warm cup of yak milk in the morning is the second one, a truer statement could not be made. I’ve come here to find enlightenment and some point, some purpose, to escape the struggle not simply be consumed by another.
I saw a child in the street crying today. I cried when I would hear a story on the news or some other forum where the guy jumped in front of a moving car to save the disable women, or ran in to a burning build the save the kids. I remember a few years back a guy had fallen on to the subway tracks in New York in some sort of epileptic seizer or something and the train was coming, every one just stood there but one person. This one guy jumped down on the track and lay over the guy on the tracks pinning him down until the train passed saving his life. The life saver guy was doing interviews and even on Letterman and I would cry. It took me really thinking about why these types of stories affected me like that to figure it out as it wasn’t sad no one died. I mean I’m not going to say I never cry like I’m some mister tough guy but you’ll rarely ever see me cry at a movie or something so trivial well not trivial but something so far removed from myself. Although I have been known cry at a film once or twice and that time at “free wilily” doesn’t count I was trying to detox cold turkey from Zoloft. I was forced to take and any one who’s ever just simply quite taking some anti-depressant after you’ve been on one for a short time its definitely causes a chemical imbalance to say the least. Anyway its not that one person is a hero and how sad they gave their life for another, or at least risked it, its not that I’m so happy this person I don’t know has been saved from some horrible demise. I cry because I’m jealous and not simply for the obvious reason of being labeled a courageous person and a hero or simply having the respect of others but because that person found a point, a purpose in the quick moment in that flash of time that person found a reason for their birth no matter what happens from that point on they can always look back and go well maybe that’s why I was put here to do that one act. For most of us though we spend a life time if we’re lucky looking for that moment and for most its not just a moment either. For most of us it’s that struggle of finding the point that is the purpose, it is in the search and it’s a life time of struggle.

On the Run to Enlightenment

I have debated over and over in my head when to start this and I suppose now is good a time as any. Writing as I sit here on a plane knowing that in just over 30 days a warrant will be issued for my arrest and hoping that the long arm of the Nevada state judicial system wont bother to reach as high at the Himalayas to bring me back before I can attain my own summit. As I start this journey I look up to the highest points on earth to find salvation. Realizing even now spirituality is not about raising your head up and looking for god in the heavens but bowing your head down in humility and truth. The person who can survive a hike to the top of a mountain is not one who looks to the peak and seeks to reach it. The one who makes it to the summit is the one who keeps his head down and only watches his next step and his proper footing.
The key to telling a good story is knowing how it ends unfortunately I know all too well the ending. Ive found the ending to the story of my life and it ended with my suicide. Yet before it does Ive decided that Id like to add a few more chapters even if I have no clue where Ill end up or where I hope to. Its seems my own eschatology will be ongoing after all. As I write this I wonder who Im writing to, as any basic writing class teaches you to know your audience yet like every thing in this life Im not sure. Do I write to those who knew me, do I write as a legacy of sorts to my daughter, do I write to my personal Beatrice or perhaps one of the individual women who have come to make up Dantas symbol of love thats just out of reach? Yet I know my words can only fall far short of sonnet 47, so why bother. Do I simply write to myself, a journal of sorts for personal refection? I suppose Im writing to you the reader, or the abstract idea of such, a stranger yet I suppose some passages are more prevalent to the aforementioned yet I will leave that to them to recognize. This is a long flight and I have considered taking the time to give a summarized autobiography as much as I want to believe this is the beginning of a journey which it is, as is every day in some aspect but this is a journey that began a long time before the plane ever left the ground. I suppose I even started writing this a few months back, it started more as a suicide note than it did as a journal, the ideas and beliefs just came into clarity and made this possible. I realized the reason I was so unhappy is because I wasnt living the life I wanted to. I have tried to go over and over in my mind looking for a defining moment in my life, a moment where it all went wrong so to speak, was it the day I got my teeth knocked out in t-ball that caused me to withdraw from sports thus ostracizing me in the future with other children my age and seeking out the other outcasts which subsequently lead me to trying drugs for the first time and a mired of other juvenile troubles or was it even earlier possibly when my father lost his leg in a car accident and me losing him to pain pills and a bottle for so many of my influential years, or was it some suppressed memory of an even earlier traumatic child abuse, was it any one thing at all, was it all theses things or was it none. I honestly believe that Ive had a pretty average life and up bringing as normal as the next person. I think weve all felt the same emotions and we all go through the same defining moments in life. The individual circumstances may very and change but the emotions are the same so theres no need for me to go over my individual trials and tribunals, no need for me to tell you things you all ready know just so you can say I relate. We all relate as much as each person differs and as hard as it is to imagine that my self and some pillar of the community have had the same experiences in life or as easy as it is to see Ted Bundys childhood in my own. I realize that none of us are all that different, an All American Manic I like to say or in my case American Psycho maybe a better fit. Some times this can be difficult to admit none of us want to identify with someone who has committed some horrendous act yet each of us does on some level or another. As the emotions and desires that drive a serial killer are the same in your life as well as his (or hers wouldnt want to leave out Aileen Wuornos.)
I can see the glow of the Vegas neon fade but still like staring at the sun I wonder if I havent scared my retina. As Ive spent the last 20 years, my entire adult life staring at those lights and now Im not sure they will ever go away or simply leave some blacked spot on my soul. Sometimes I feel like my third eye must have some form of spiritual cataracts, I have scared my self with experiences that I cant seem to see through. Im temped to talk of my adolescence growing up in Vegas the many years spent 4 up and 3 down, the drug filled times with a punk rock soundtrack playing against the back drop of subterranean casino corridors and vacant facades, the desert bonfires down old pipe line road, the endless weekends drinking 40tys in the parking lot of the Huntridge, that is before the roof caved in on it all. Having projectile vomiting contest, we used to say every toilet needs a good flushing. We would drink till we puked and not the oh Im so sick, the rooms spinning, make it stop kind of sick but pounding beers for the point of puking if not the only reason to use the curb like a long jumper does his mark and simply see who could get the most mass the furthest and believe it or not there really is some technique to it. One must arch the back, tilt the head up and lunge forward just as the vomit swells in your throat. You could be in mid-sentence of some drunken discussion of sex, violence, philosophy or any other of the few things that preoccupied the juvenile mind but had to make it to the jump marker, get into position and be able to lunge forward with out coming off the curb. I tell you it was all about timing every thing had to be just right and you might just make it the two or three car lengths out of the parking lot into on coming traffic which was the punk rock equivalent of hitting a fast ball in to the stands at Yankee stadium. Even years later at times I felt I had pulled my self out of the middle class hood of Pitmen and learned the ropes of Vegas or better put how to get around the velvet ropes and the money people with more money than ego will give you for showing them around. I tried to live a normal life, a young beautiful model girl friend, going to premiers, casino and restaurants openings with the stars, VIP treatment at all the hottest clubs and for a while I thought I was happy yet the same way a happy drunk doesnt usually mean a happy person just a distracted one. I see now I wasnt happy at all. I just kept myself distracted as I have been most of my life. Growing up in Las Vegas its easy to loose your self in the distractions of life, they are the same distractions youll find in any city anywhere I assume but dont know as Ive never really spent more than a few days any where else. Yet once youve found (usually by falling in) the pit falls of each vice and different addiction when the drugs are gone, the bottle is empty, the 3rd car smashed, the umpteenth girl friend has left to become a striper as every remotely attractive women Ive loved in this town does, Im left alone and realized I wanted out. I want to unplug from the pulsating, life sucking neon breast of this city that Ive been attached to. Yet I cant, unplugged the cat45 cable and disable the wireless, cancel the cable and turn off the radio yet the streets of this town are paved in pornography quite literally with handouts and advertisements for escorts, the freeways are lined with billboards for strip clubs and theres an adult superstore (the wal-mart of porn) on every other off ramp. Even the true unofficial motto from advertisements the city visitors authority paid thousands to pound in to American culture what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas Ha what a lie what happen in Vegas can scar you, make you jaded but god I hope its true because Im finally getting as far away a place I can think of. I want to reconnect with myself and humanity as a whole yet the more I want, the more I become emotionally distant from my self; the intellect not only separates the body from the mind but the soul from the spirit. Ive lived my life thinking Im gonna do this, Im gonna do that. If I could just get this and I could just finish that. Whether its getting my degree or finishing off my parole with out incident, or getting a good job or making more money. I will, I just have to do this one more thing and that other then I can do this and that.. Im tired of waiting for this and that. Im tried of having to do this before I do what I wantfuck it Im just going to do it and hope for the best. I just have to figure out what it is. People always say just follow your dreams you can do any thing but really you cant there always some obligation or some safety net you need to get up first. You see or read about stories or watch a movie of people who have lived these extraordinary adventures, done these amazing things in their life. Ive always just found some detail different than my own life usually its the fact that they had more money or they must have had a family to fall back on if it didnt work, so thats why they could do it and I cant. And then there are those people who didnt have either, money or a family and still threw caution in to the wind and followed their dream but more times than not they really didnt have much to loose anyways but for most of us though, we live life somewhere in-between the two. We dont have enough to just live life care free and follow our dreams but we also dont want to loose what we do have either, whether thats a house, wife, kids or merely a decent job and good friends. Ive heard it said that the man in the tightest of restraints is the freest of all and I never really understood that, being a guy who has spent his fair share of nights locked in a cell it really didnt make cents but I think I get it now when your locked inside your self, when the options seem to be removed, when your forced to go where you dont want to, be who you dont want to be, you realize that you have nothing left and the world becomes wide open. When I started this a few months ago as I think I said it started as a suicide note and a summation of what I had learned and what brought me to this point. I realized as I was bringing it to a close if I was really going to do this (kill myself) was there anything left for me to do or say? Yes, hell if Im going to die today then thats a huge weight off my shoulder, I dont have to worry about finishing my masters degree, working to pay off the $100k in student loans, all the other life crap I had piled on my self. It sounds so cheesy and full of shit when Ive heard people say stuff like live life as if each day is your last as if, you could. If you lived your whole life like you where going to die tomorrow youd never accomplish shit. I mean if you think of any thing that seems worth doing, any thing that has any lasting pay off, eating right, working out, saving money or working at all for that matter no one wants too but anything that Ive ever had any lasting benefits from, anything I was truly proud of it was because it was fucking hard to accomplish, if you choose the easy choice its probably easy because it was the wrong one and it will come back around on you like credit card interest. Hard work pays off in the future, slacking pays off now. Well. I dont know why a person cant just live for today though, I was going to say people dont live their life for today, to be comfortable, you know work so you have food, eat right to be healthy but usually its to be more comfortable tomorrow rather than to be so today and this has been my existence living for tomorrow. The guy living on the streets wants a card board box, guy with a box wants a room, guy with a room wants his own apartment, got an apartment then a house then a bigger one. Im just tired of wanting. To be honest though, Im scared as Ive live a pretty comfortable life never had to do anything so terribly hard even if it seemed like it was at the time. I remember thinking high school was the worst now look back at the good old days. Ive live in middle class comforts, one summer I spent it homeless living on the roof of caf Coupeeo bumming change for food and miller 32 ounces (wed call them the super big gulp of beers as they cost around the same as a big gulp and same size) but that wasnt so hard as the cafe was right across the street from the collage and you could earn enough for the day in 3 or 4 hours panhandling. Being the crust punks my group of friends and I were it was pretty easy to get up $10 -$15 in no time. I think as I look at my own time spent in collage, years latter cramming for test with midnight runs to the 7/11 getting red bulls for the study group passing a new group of kids standing there I found my self envying my own wasted youth. I was happy to givem my spare change. Plus when I was living on the streets there before the cafe was fire bombed all the cute gothic girls hung at the cafe so it was the life living on that roof top. Yet when it got cold I knew I could always go back to my room at mom and dads house. Now Im on a plane to a country Ive never been to and only a few dollars soon to be yen (or some other currency not sure what it is) in my pocket and I cant just call mommy to come pick me up. Im scared, have I made the right choice? One thing I will say that Ive found though is no matter how bad a situation gets, no matter how much you think theres no way I could do that its really is amazing what you can do when youre forced to. I learned that after a few months in prison. Think about the people who have lived through some insane ordeal whether its living 2 weeks at sea alone in a rubber boat, or on a iceberg in the artic and hiking hundreds of mile to civilization, you think if you asked any of those people a year before it happened if they could live through something like that of course no one would be so cocky as to say oh yeah I could do that and if there is some one who would say that hed probably be the first one to drop but my point is that no matter how bad a situation gets when the only way out of it is death most of us would live through it and sometimes death isnt even an option thats when it really gets hard, when you have no choice there is truly no escape and theres no turning back now. Im tired of waiting, Im jumping in, and Im going off the cliff with no shoot. Ive tried to over come these scares, they say the Buddha didnt achieve enlightenment till 35, Christ transcended his body and was crucified at 34 well I cant wait, It seems I can not break free of the reality I have put my self in. So I can only hope that going to the far end of the earth or at least the furthest place I can think of from the decadence of the city thats razed me will be my escape.
As the plane starts its decent I can feel my heart rate climb as we come in to the landing I find my self wishing for some catastrophe, wanting to be released from this ball and chain of flesh imprisonment hoping that some how just the act of getting on the plane was enough. I dont fear death, now dont get me wrong I do fear drowning, choking, bullets or some mangled runway tragedy and any other method of dieing. I just dont fear being dead actually look forward to it. I saw my father commit suicide as a lonely, sick old man alone in the desert. I wonder to what end his life achieved; I evaluate my own existence and see no point in waiting. The search for answers to the point has come full circle, "the man who knows he knows nothing knows the most of all" To understand the absurdist was an idea put forth in the beginning of the philosophic quest. I have reached this end not from any Nihilistic point of view or because miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible and thus subsequently advocating suicide, but from understanding that there is more and trapped here I can not reach it. I reach this end not because I believe in any one philosophy, religion or understanding but because I have lost the path or understand that the path is lost and with out finding a path or simply picking one Im destine to jump from path to path never getting anywhere only going over in circles. Compassion eludes me, creating eludes me, I have been sucked in to an Existential vacuum in my search for meaning and unlike the teacher of Ecclesiastes search or the great Zen masters such as Dogen Im not able to find contentment in the truth of the reality of my day to day life and the beauty in a tangerine, even understanding there is nothing more.
I can feel my heart pounding in my chest like some alien creature clawing at my breast plate trying to be free; I take slow deep breaths as I sit waiting for the other passengers to exit the plane so care free and me attempting to hold it together. I think this is how a drug mule must feel, sphincter clenched tight with balloons of what not up his ass. Maybe hoping a small leak will happen to give the ever so needed fix, just a little to calm the nerves yet I know Im not smuggling any contraband and Ive learned no fix other than possible ODing can subside my hunger, Life in the physical world trapped in this flesh is a struggle Ive come to find pointless theres always a front to back, a left to right, theres always one or the other there is no middle path to happiness the world is a power and control issue, theres always a give for every take and to live is to suffer in this struggle. Not to suffer one must simply stop trying not to suffer you must accept life is suffering. There will always be something more, you will always get hungry no matter how long youve spent well feed. For a hungry soul Ive not found a fix that can satisfies yet, Ive tried all I can think of, Ive done mass amounts of hallucinogens to try and jolt me into a state of understanding to force open the DOOR'S to perception, like a rope trying to pull me across the stream but only to give out before I could make it to the other side. Like Bill Hicks said a lot of the greatest musician, and artist, creators were real high and to create is happiness
If all we truly know of god is the word god Then what is the word as there is nothing if you dont have a word for it to translate the word god in all languages means the creator or simply creation so if all we know of god is creation then to get closer to god or understand god one must create! (Which Ill bet has something to do with our innate desire to procreate as well) We must then look at what is created us, the world, everything and what is everything, how is it made, what is it made of, atoms and what holds atoms together, how are they created well its a neurons and electrons bouncing off each other around a nucleus held together by electromagnetism, an infinite amount of power or electricity and what am I but just a mass of flesh and tissue with a small eclectic pulse firing in my brian the releases different chemicals to make me think and feel thus acting a certain way. So I guess god is in all of us in everything. If you look at Nero-electrical activity in the brain Ill bet the highest amount is generated when a person is in the midst of creating, painting, music, design, even sports. So to know gods thoughts, to be closer to god, to be happy one must create! Even understanding the key to happiness and knowing where to find it doesnt mean you can ever reach it and if you do find it as we all do in moments, there lies the problem. Its all just moments and the suffering of loosing it, the suffering of wanting to find it. In my own search at times Ive given up and spent years not even trying, wasting time, trying to only find comfort, most of it just spent in excess addicted to one thing or another. Ive over come addictions, tried to live a healthy life, work out, eat right all that but found I had just become this American psycho with no cense of self just an empty facade of what I was told was the thing to do, this image that wasnt dependent on a self image but what I thought you wanted, what I thought she wanted. How did Palahniuk put it self improvement is masturbation but self destruction is the answer but Ive found no answer, no key in either. I once spent a summer attending different religious organization each week from Buddhist temple to Baptist church, from Orthodox Greek to Thelemic lodge, all centers of town Kabala to Zen, so much over lap, so many things the same. I guess it was a spiritual walk about if you will, but finding no answers. So here I am attempting to smuggle my soul to the eternal or at least smuggling my mind to the roof top of the world in hopes that from here Ill have a better view.