"Too often of late I've indulged my taste buds for the thrill of sensual experience. I realize this is largely due to loneliness and laziness and apathy and a loss of hope, but it still feels wonderful to pig out on my favorite foods and flavors. Just thinking about a buffet is a rush. I don't experience guilt, for I enjoy my choices, but there is the realization of imbalance and longing for other sensory pleasures.

A fair question about now might be, so why not fulfill the other longings.

Surely I am attractive, I am hit on enough to be secure in that. I have no aversion, moral or ethical, to sex. I do not require monogamy or marriage or promises of forever (as much as I would like that).

The answer is because food does not betray and people do. I want to believe in people. I want to believe that some people can be trusted and depended on. But I am not putting any energy into finding new friends or lovers because I am tired of the lies people tell to themselves and the fears that govern their lives. People settling for the compromise of looking the other way when something is not quite right about sharing, when completely open honesty is just too much to ask for. That's not good enough for me.

I'd rather be lonely than lied to. I'd rather be lonely than pretend partial sharing is enough. I'd rather be lonely than play games."

yeah... and a song line, lie to me (I believe it's Sheryl Crow), plays in my head and I smile a wry smile knowing it's just not my way, but the temptation is so there when loneliness aches... would I live a lie just to stay close to someone I love?... just to have them in my bed most nights and be able to call them my partner?...

no...

there's no gray area or room for compromise in that answer... I'd much rather be alone than with someone in a pretend relationship... and like the person who wrote the words quoted above, I am comfortable with compromise and secure in the fact that I could find someone if I wanted to enough... and I do enjoy food...

I seem to be at an extended pause in my quest for true love... it is not that I do not wantto fall in love... it is not that I fear the possible failures of love or betrayals of trust... I've proven all to well to myself that I can survive anything...

it seems that I am tired of the games... tired of the waiting period... tired of the meandering road most people take toward trusting and loving each other... the subconscious tests... the unspoken limits... the baggage full of fear that prevents honesty...

everybody?...

I sure hope not... I mean, we've all got hurts, wounds, sore spots... at least I think everybody has at least a few... I have a whole crapload of them and I sure would like some tender loving care wrapped around them now and then... and I have some healing to do, still...

the difference between me and everyone I meet is that I don't pretend I don't have hurts and I am not afraid to put my heart in someone else's hands... I am not afraid to trust unconditionally, even after experiencing very personally many great reasons not to trust... I don't empower the fear or the negativity of the past... I embrace it and expose it and do not concern myself with how it looks...

if I am not cool, that's cool with me... I am real... real is the best cool... everybody knows it deep down, but so rarely does anyone have the guts to do it... so I dare you, anybody, step right up in my face and get real... be yourself... dump your shit on my doorstep... if you want help cleaning it up, great, trust me to help... if you care to help me with mine, better, maybe we can be friends... if you just dump and run, oh well, missed opportunity... I've got a hose...

I forgot the link just now, but there's a website where someone asks you to send them your secrets (not post secret), more specifically your hurts, your pains, your sorrows... she asks people to write them down and send them to her and then she makes a ritual fire and burns the hurts and stuff you wrote down and photographs the process and puts it on her site... great idea...

but so relatively safe... so anonymous, even... and I wonder how much of healing or catharsis or resolution it is... maybe it is closure and maybe it works, but what about real life, what about the mirror and the person looking back... what about the people you live with, talk to, touch, and share life with each day?...

if it is enough to write down troubles and send them to someone else to burn, if that is a spiritual cleansing and enough of an act of trust, then great... but when it isn't - what then?... what do you do to release your demons, to resolve your differences, to overcome your fears...

when you're down and trouble and you need some love and care, do you have a friend?... and when you're really down, when only a soul mate or life partner can satisfy the hunger for love and nurturing, what then?... you have someone?... bless you if you do, but what about the rest of us?...

what stops us from giving what we want most, the unconditional trust... what fear can be so important or real that it prevents you from getting what life is about?...

I don't know...

maybe it's a matter of priorities... maybe it's a matter of choosing one fear over another... is a fear of missing out on the greatest experience of life less powerful than the fear of making a mistake in judgment or losing the greatest experience in life?...

there's the old question... is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?... I think the old Bard missed the point - or maybe we did... isn't it trust, the unconditional trust that creates the falling in love feeling, that is most at risk?... if you could lose the love, it wouldn't hurt... you keep loving, that's not the problem... it's the trust you risk...

so if we ask the question

is it better to trust and be betrayed
than never to have trusted at all?

how does that effect the answer?... is it just a matter of semantics?... or can we understand the difference and realize that we sacrifice love out of fear of trusting... love is giving, expecting nothing in return... get it right, love has no obligations attached... love needs no reciprocation, no validation, no reason... isn't that what you read your holy books for?... isn't that what they say?...

we've confused love with trust for so long that it's become a topic and experience upon which we fear to tread... we've forgotten that love and trust are two different feelings, two different gifts... we've made love possessive, obligatory, complicated... no wonder there's so little true love in this world these days and most of us dream of it only in fairy tales and movies...

I think this is the secret to my success, the reason I feel peace and happiness and security almost all the time... even at my lowest, even at my most hurt, even when I lost trust, I still knew the passion and promise, the power and glory, the wondrous feeling of love...

I live in love, flying, falling, strolling through the time and space of this life... the energy of love is free and there's an endless supply in me (it's everywhere, you've just got to see it, open yourself to it, accept it, feel it, believe in it)...

sheesh, is this turning into a sermon?... I laugh and mock myself as I know many will because it is no great revelation for me... it's just an expression of the constant within me... and all it requires is the energy of hope to spill out like this...

but trust, trust is what is waiting in the wings... or is it?... am I trusting you by pouring myself into words here each day?... if you want to, for any reason, you can find me... you have my number, my name, my location... you could easily find where I live... you could come by and do what you will and have the advantage of knowing much much more about me than I know about you... and you don't even have to tell me, increasing your advantage...

so what do I risk?... my life?... I could die at any moment... something pops in my brain or heart and flat line... I could be walking down the street and a block of frozen piss could fall from a plane right through my skull... cars are deadly, I drive every day... I could eat a bad clam... I could caught a stray bullet... or even one meant for me...

do I stop living life to it's fullest because I could die?... no, I do not throw the baby out with the bathwater... I do not give up on moment of this life because it may be the last moment I've got... remember what Nicolas Cage says at the very end of City of Angels... one...

and maybe I am not as open as I appear in words... maybe in the daily physical world I am more repressed, more depressed, more reserved...

I don't know...

I think I am less aggressive... I think I take little initiative... I think I am more passive... I observe... I see people walking about, rushing about, and I look for contact... I look for their eyes and so rarely do I find someone who does not turn away if they happen to glance into my eyes... and more often than not I find the glance never happens, they just rush on past to wherever they are going...

I'm going nowhere...

I'm just here waiting for someone who might want to share a moment... waiting for Godot, perhaps, but most of the time I am open to anything, looking for eyes, looking for contact... perhaps too quietly, but I do not want to meet someone who is looking for someone who is advertising and I sure do not want to find someone who is looking for a spectacle...

I can make a spectacle of myself and enjoy it from time to time, but that is not the moment I want to meet someone, that is the moment I want an audience... I do not want someone to come out of the audience while I am on stage, I want to find someone on equal footing, someone who is just living their life open to the love around them... someone not afraid to feel and share and experience life...

someone not afraid to love...

and most of all, someone who dares to trust no matter how scary it is because trust is the fall, trust is the romance, trust is the magic of love and yes it is better to trust and lose than never to trust at all...

it is better to live and die than never to have lived at all...

if you don't believe that, then what are you still doing here?...

afraid to die?... to conquer death you only have to die... fear of death is one more of those throwing the baby out with the bathwater tricks of a lazy mind... if you believe in heaven and hell, what are you afraid of?... your belief system is all about forgiveness, right?... you really think that no matter how stupidly you might have lived your life, no matter how many rules you broke or sins you committed that you'd be dumb enough to say you are not sorry when you come to that moment when you know there's no going back, when your life is over and you have to choose between heaven and hell?...

it is your choice, you know... repent and you are saved, that's the whole point of the book... so what are you afraid of?...

and if you're not sure about heaven or hell or whatever, if you are thinking that maybe there's nothing after this life but nothing, no God, no pearly gates, no happy place, no bunch of virgins waiting for you, no nothing at all, then what's there to be afraid of?...

you won't be there, you won't exist, nothing is nothing... no consciousness, no feeling, no being, nothing...

what am I missing in this?...

I do not want to die because I am enjoying life and hope to do more enjoying no matter what might comes next... but to be so afraid to die that you choose to die before you die?... I mean, you stop taking chances, pass up opportunities, get so conservative and complacent and pathetically apathetic about the true pleasures of learning and exploring and living and changing that life is all about that you lock yourself into some status quo dungeon filled with whatever you consider treasures and wait to stop breathing?...

would it bug you much if I chose a different path?...

I am not suggesting we abandon all we know and live hedonistic lives... I am not suggesting that we all jump into extreme sports or stop using seat belts... I am not suggesting we ask the next stranger on the street to watch our kids for a few days...

I am suggesting that we can be less afraid of living, of loving, and most of all, less afraid of trusting... not to abandon our senses, but to use our senses to look around, look at people, look into their eyes... listen to what people say, watch the way they move, by open to the possibility that the next person you pass on the street might be your friend or even someone who fits your desire for a life partner...

give yourself a chance to live before you die...

and indulge yourself, but find a balance... don't be afraid (or too tired) to try something new... to explore all your interests and desires...

and mostly to me: give people another chance... stop settling for the lovely meal, the sweet snack, the comfort food when you could talk a walk in the park, remember where the gym is, remember how good other physical pleasures feel... there's more to me than a mouth, after all... exercise stimulates and invigorates and feels just as euphoric as a favorite pig out at a local buffet... finding new music at a music store, a new book at a book store, some new way of phrasing the same old song and dance... all fun, rewarding, and physically satisfying... and who knows, if I keep looking for someone's eyes, maybe somebody will finally look back... I won't know if I stop looking too...

what do I have to lose?... somebody might wave back J

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)