When I say I’m dying inside, I don’t want anybody to tell me everything will be alright. I already cotdam know everything is going to be all right. They haven’t ever ended up no other kind of way so ain’t nobody got to tell me different. But when I open my veins up and let the blood pour out, what I’m saying is, look at your blood. This is your blood. Same color as mine. And you can call me the sad guy, call me a philosopher or a big head up in the clouds, but these longings and these agonies are yours too.

See, I don’t want sympathy from the condemned and I don’t want to pretend that there’s some soapbox I can stand on without falling off. I am so severely screwed up, but so is everyone else, and that’s all I mean. Even the people who aren’t screwed up are all screwed up because they think they’re OK in a society that’s gone to hell. The things we believe. The things we don’t. Yeah, sure, I’m dying inside – from the inside out – just like everyone. It’s these blues that don’t wash out. They just don’t wash clean.

The best food for writing is discomfort. When I am content, I have nothing to say. But when I suffer from a surplus of happiness or misery, I find it impossible to shut up my brain. I have to write down what’s agitating me. Or I have to write something. I have to give my fingers and brain something to do or else the things my subconscious throws back up at me would terrify a Nazi.

When it comes to intensity of emotion, I don’t know if there’s really any distinction between positive and negative. Too much love is madness and too much hate is just the same. Wandering between ice and fire, you’re only gonna get burned or froze. The middle ground of balmy contentment is what it is. You don’t write home to mom about it. You don’t notice anything at all. Not until a flood or a hurricane or a forest fire.

Then you will call out. Then you will yell for help. Or space. Or just to hear something beyond the wailing of your miserable cunt of a soul.

The best part about growing up was leaving my mom’s house and being on my own. When I got my first apartment sophmore year of high school it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I felt liberated. No more when to wash the dishes, no more when to pick up clothes, no more when to do anything. I was finally and completely on my own time.

Then you sizzle through your twenties, relishing the freedom, until the freedom starts to feel like loneliness. You find someone equally lonely and willing to say so and you hook up. You get married or have babies or some equally pedestrian thing. You realize you’re in love and that it means you want to make this woman happier than yourself because you’re so grateful. And just like that you’re right back to living with your mom.

When to wash the dishes, when to take out the trash, when to watch the baby, what to wear, how to drive, how to get there… An endless litany of shit to do. If you’re gullible then this is probably what you’ve been taught your entire life to believe love is.

But you don’t complain. You rise to the challenge. You go get a job even though it tastes like death and you put aside your plans to travel the world for a few decades and you become Dad. You become twice the man you ever expected yourself to be. You lay to waste all the psycho crap your parents laid on you and start making it happen. In a few years, you almost have yourself convinced that it’s OK, that this is it. And maybe it is.

But it is not enough. It is never enough.

It isn’t enough to stop her tears, it isn’t enough to prevent the arguments, it isn’t enough to be happy, it just isn’t ever enough.

It makes you want to cry inside. It makes you want to lay down and die. You want to hurt someone and say something that’ll leave a mark. Maybe you do. Maybe you only wish you did.

Then it hits you like a gas-powered bus. You miss your mom.

I don’t understand profit and interest.

I got something you need, you got something I need.

You decide what you need is less valuable than what I need so you say you need a little something extra.

This makes sense if it’s more difficult to make what I need than what you need.

This makes no sense if it’s easier and becomes totally ludicrous when applied to money.

For instance, if I need $100 and you got $100, then how does it make sense that I should reciprocate your $100 with, say, $110 for interest earned? What effort on your part was it to part with $100?

Let’s try and justify it another way. Let’s say that you earned $100 building a house with your bare hands I earn money watching a parking lot. Now does the $100 you earn building a house stand for more than the $100 I could make watching a parking lot?

That doesn’t make any sense at all. Either money is equal in value or it’s useless. But how do you determine who’s effort is more valuable?

Is the interest because of the risk? Because I might not give you the $100 back, so because of this temporary inconvenience, you are entitled to 10% of your insecurity’s monetary value? Dread as a service?

Or take profit. You make a widget that costs $10 in materials, $10/hr in labor and $10 in shipping. If you were using regular math, you would say that item is equal to $30 in monetary value. But it isn’t $30. At the store, it’s $60 because the retailer can’t make any money selling it for the $30 it actually costs to make it. This is because they retailer isn’t buying it for $30 – they’re buying it for $40 so that the manufacturer can earn more than the stuff is actually worth. The retailer then marks it up to $80 so that they can make a %100 profit. This is because the retailer has to pay for the space and labor of the store.

Space costs money because somebody else has to get paid for the service of owning the land. Or the government has to get paid its taxes.

Everyone has a hand out and is arbitrarily marking up the monetary value of shit in order to inflate their own accounts. This is allowed because money has no intrinsic value. It’s an imaginary value that can be moved around at will. It’s free so nothing else can be.

Being liked is just another survival mechanism. You have to be liked in order to be accepted into the tribe. The tribe offers security from enemies and the elements. You do whatever you can in order to be liked by the tribe. You kill whatever parts of yourself are taboo. You annihilate what is forbidden. You barricade yourself behind a hedge and tremble for fear of sin.

This is what you do when you want to survive. What kills me, though, is how the survival of the body so often leads to the demise of the spirit. Whatever the spirit is. For whatever reason we cherish it.

There is the soul and there is the soul of man and some men share in the soul of mankind and some men dwell in their own souls. Whatever these things mean, for whatever reason these things matter. I do not know if there is anything that counts. I don’t know what differentiates these things or even if there is anything.

I know that it is forbidden to dwell on these things. It is not allowed to question why we persist. You can save the life of a baby Hitler, but you cannot question why all babies should be saved, why anyone should be saved, why our goodness outweighs our evil, why our nobility outweighs our bestiality.

I know it is forbidden to deny the world’s goodness. The world is right, the ways of the world are right, they are the only way. It is forbidden to deny the importance of being a part of humanity. It is forbidden to break the magnetic chain of humanity. We can loathe people, but we cannot reject them. We can love people, but we cannot save them.

I know it is forbidden to question the meaning of my child’s existence. There is a sword of fire and I must not cross. I may love, but I may not wonder. I may dream, but I may not doubt. I know these things and because I know this, I cannot accept.

I find myself going back to the first angel. Why could everyone else see the perfection of what God had made and not him? Why was he made so wrong? Why would God do that? When I think about it like this, I don’t like God very much. I don’t hate him, I just don’t care about him or what he wants. He so obviously doesn’t care about what we think of him. He isn’t concerned with being liked. He doesn’t have to survive. He doesn’t have to do anything.

And if we are made in his image… well, these questions are not allowed.

There are prime numbers that cannot be divided by anything but themselves and the One. I think there are prime people.

From the beginning of time, there have been those among us who have shifted the balance, who have initiated tipping points. Shamans, mystics, geniuses, stars – we call them all sorts of things.

I believe in prime people. I like prime people. I am always on the lookout for people who are prime, who are shifting the balance and making things happen. I think it’s cool.

You know it just occurred to me that snake they were talking about in Genesis was actually a penis. Adam and Eve is the first story of infidelity. Adam begs God to make him a companion. God, in one of His moments of inspired humor, creates a woman.
The woman falls for a snake in the grass and gets involved with its cockamamie plan to usurp God. When Eve comes to Adam, having eaten the fruit, he is ashamed of being a punk and eats it too to prove his machismo. Then all hell breaks loose. God shows up, half-eaten fruit in Hand, and demands an explanation: what is all this tom foolery going down in My garden? When all is sussed, the snake ends up being sentenced to crawl on its belly forever, which pisses it off to to no end and makes it the enemy of man for all time. Adam and Eve are evicted and the garden is sealed off by a SWAT team of angels wielding fiery swords.

It just occurred to me that snake is a cock and the story is about how following the snake always brings human beings down. But in bringing us down, it also brings us to life, to the real world, to the drama of loyalty and betrayal.

Too often, living in Los Babylon, I forget the fundamentals of being a human. Rule number one – acknowledge supreme power, be filled with awe, and be grateful for what you can’t provide for yourself. Rule Number Two – remember rule Number One.

But how do you constantly remember to be grateful for your heartbeat and for the automatic influx of oxygen into your lungs? How to be constantly mindful that we did not wake ourselves up this morning? Moreso, how to remember in difficulty, when our health is bad, when our money is screwed up, when our family relationships are out of whack – how then do we remember our gratitude?

It isn’t a new concept, but is a technology perfected over generations – the art and science of prayer.

But what is prayer? Is it words we say or beliefs we express? Is it listening to the divine voice or beseeching universal providence?

Sometimes it is one of these things, sometimes it is all of them. But what prayer is always is the desire to commune with the unknowable. In coming before the presence of what cannot be known, we lay down our assumptions about everything. It’s a vulnerable, spiritual nudity that can be unpleasant to people with strong egos.

In submitting to a power that cannot be intellectualized or manipulated, we abandon our false belief in our own supreme power and achieve intimacy with the ever-present moment in which God always is.

The art of prayer is the mode in which you pray. Be it Islamic, Judaic, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan or whatever other path you select. The art of prayer is the outward form of drawing closer to the divine, it is the exterior vessel. Within the vessel is the substance of our yearning and desire. It is poured into us from without and drawn out of us from within, seeking an eternal equilibrium. Do not be distracted by the art of prayer. Master whatever version you like and apply it rigorously, joyously.

The science of prayer is what follows. Science is the art of positing and verification. We state our desire, we confirm its results through prayer. In our prayer, we reveal ourselves as we truly are, without pretense, without affectation. The reward for our honesty with the all-being is a clearer understanding of our place and purpose in the cosmic scheme. This is what I mean by practicing the art and science of prayer.

One of the ideas I have for a book is a Quest for Fire style adventure set in modern times. The tribe would be an advertising agency led by a charismatic but idealistc creative director obsessed with maintaining control over Fire (the symbol of inspiration and cool) and how the tribe’s quest for supremacy leads he and his tribe through trials and tribulations, victories and celebrations ending, hopefully, in the promised land. The story would illustrate the taboos, strictures and intense social interactions of this tight-knit group. We would examine how the barbaric and the sophisticated collide in this group of modern day Berbers and how the individual is crushed and elevated in the vortex of the tribe’s never-ending rites of passage.

In other words, nonfiction.

My friend Allen once told me a story about he and his dog.

Upon moving into his new neighborhood in West Hollywood a few years back, every day he would run into an old Armenian man who would chastise him to “vatch yer dawg.” Everyday, the old man would tell him this, no matter what pains Allen took to prevent a confrontation between the old man and the dog. Mind you, the dog never actually did anything to the old man.

Nevertheless, with cartoon accuracy, everyday the man would appear bearing his perplexing and entirely unprompted warning.

“Vatch yer dawg.”

Then one day Allen sees the old man coming up to him with a piece of paper rolled up in his hands. Allen thinks to himself, “No way is this old guy about to hit my dog for nothing!” But before he can assume a defensive stance, the old man holds out the paper to Allen to take. Allen unrolls the paper.

It’s an ad. For a dog wash. His niece’s it turns out.

Vatch your dawg. Wash your dog.

Yeah, sometimes I feel like that. Like when I assume people are piling up on me and trying to make my life hell, when in reality they are trying to give me hand, be my friend, and help me wash my damn dog.