No one inquired to purchase my alarm clock from craigslist. The ad read as follows:

I’m taking a year off to travel and am selling everything that I’m not taking with me.

This hideous machine maintains time in a crude light-emitting display. During the day it appears harmless enough, but in the early morning hours it will abruptly cry with a horrific series of beeps. I do not recommend being near it when this happens.

An otherwise delightful and peaceful sleep will be killed as this device bellows its vile sounds. This will continue until you ritualistically accept its demonic power and prematurely rise from your slumber. This “alarm” will persist until the demon has been appeased by feeding on your dreams, letting you sleep in a tortured sequence of 9 minute intervals… the demon euphemistically refers to the feeding as “snooze”.

With every beep your soul will slowly die. This process will continue until the demon has completely devoured your hopes and dreams, leaving you a lifeless husk– blindly waking without purpose. Once this process is complete you will feel no pain, only a vague sense of yearning for a life beyond the bounds of suffering.

Not a single reply. I ended up selling it to a nice young lady who was purchasing kitchenware and thought she could use this in her bathroom as nothing more than a clock, huh.

Try to look ahead and see where you’re heading. Often times the landscape stretches out for miles with no exits, other times there’s choices at every turn. It’s exhilarating as every moment you’ve made distance. You have an idea but you’re unsure where you’re going or what it will look like.

The only anxiety is that moment in between, where there is no distance, no direction– it’s ironic how the answer isn’t important, it doesn’t matter what direction, just go somewhere, anywhere.

Wake up early and make yourself known to the world

There is a simplicity to existence that conscious ego will not tolerate. Your existence just is. It is not planned nor intended. You are, simply as you are. The most basic truth is so clearly in front of your face– base and predictable: human, primate, mammal, life– the truth bores as it insults ego. Delusions are so much more interesting– God, soul, love– they are real in effect of our every action, but they are as malleable as any childish whim. We shape these delusions with every want and expectation. Try it. Expect love and find it. Want God and see! The filters of perception are yours to control– we are masters to this shared delusion we often confuse with reality.

These are simply ideals, and we breathe them as necessary as air. What a curious primate.

Unfiltered reality– what does that mean? Is it even possible? We sometimes speak of it as beautiful, seeing things as they truly are– but is not that beauty another delusion, another filter? Unfiltered reality, I imagine, would be too boring and too simple to comprehend. It would be data with no metaphor, no symbol system, and none of the artful abstractions that we thrive on.

So then, curious primate, what is it that you want? Anything that you consider worth comprehending is possible; but still you persist in wondering about this most basic thing. Do what you like, and let none be the judge, you cannot help to do otherwise.

We are masters to our own delusion. Do what you want and shape every filter. Let life happen. Make art, love, and offer people a reason for their existence to matter.

It is all poetry and art, and all blissfully useless.

and now on to Madame S Leather!

Do you ever wonder if that reflection looks back?
Fragments of who you are, multiple selves throughout
every facet of your life– your past, present, and
all possible futures

At some point, as perceptions collapse and reality
is seen as illusion– you are whole
The sum of your knowledge– all of you

In that moment, everything is as you have made it
And you, the whole of who you are, are responsible
Where you go from here…
That is the better question

The world is spinning
Disoriented? No.
Everything is, at it is
We orient ourselves into illusions
Filters on the world
Mere bubbles of existence
Hiding the nature of things
In a state of delirium we often see
Unfiltered reality
I don’t know how I got here
And it doesn’t matter, it just is

“work to live” I heard them say

I never really knew what to make of that. I understand the idea: that work is merely the means to do the things you really enjoy– and if you’re not sure what you want to do, then go out and discover what makes life worth living.

Simple, if not a bit cliche. Most people I meet seem to work with a sense of anxious worry, not really happy enough about their career to qualify for a “live to work” mantra– or any mantra at all. Work, to them, is just something they do to pay their bills (or so they tell me). This to me, is an intolerable hell and I salute anyone that lives under such precept without killing themselves.

These people are different from the “live to work” crowd. I’ve met very few people who really “live to work”. To everyone else, I ask:

“Why aren’t you working on important problems?”

No, really, why not? I mean, if you’re going to work– work on something interesting, something worth working on. Maybe “live to work” would make more sense if you were doing something important. And if you are “working to live”, that’s great that you have a life, but are you working on anything important? Work should not be something that distracts you from the things you care about.

I know people who “work to live” and they hate their jobs, or at best spend less time than they like doing the things they love. Think of times when you loved what you were working on, it’s a great feeling– the problem happens the moment you decide you’re too busy amidst all the various interesting projects to take time for yourself (to travel, to explore, go back to school, etc). You’ll soon start to envy the “work to live” crowd, but before you run off to wait tables in Paris, consider the logical fourth option.

Work not just to enable you to live, but simultaneously live such that it enables you to work. Explore the world and find projects worth working on, something worth devoting your time to– if you’re going to truly live, then your time and effort (that is, your “work”) should be towards those things that make life worth living. We all have an internal barometer, use it! The moment you feel the pressure to travel (or skydive, paint, etc), do it! And likewise the moment you feel that lifeless boredom take hold, go work on something interesting– put your hands into something important!

Idealistic, I know, but it’s something worth living and working towards

On the train
There is something out of place
And out of time
The world rushes past
You’re left with little to worry
And you realize that
Sometimes it’s good to ignore
That which can be ignored

Encinitas, California
Near the towering golden lotus blossoms there is something quietly surreal as you walk through the meditation gardens

It is man and nature in harmony