sects and farming

I get moments of lucidity lately. A passing flash where this place is completely unreal and it feels like a dream. I’m awake in the dream and I lift my head above the water to breathe. It’s easy to tell you aren’t a tree or a bush, it’s not as easy to tell you aren’t like the other humans wandering around dreaming. Maybe you’re a bunny and just can’t see your own tail.

Here I am again about to talk about the things that the guy who ruined my whole life told me it would be better to kill myself than talk about. Isn’t that funny? It’s funny because it isn’t real. It’s so ridiculous, it can’t be taken seriously. Getting grabbed by that guy when I was a kid while I was trying to pretend to be a journalist, not real. Bringing a bag of clothes to legitimate crack whores, not real. Bringing pizza to a couple of hobos while they flew a sign and sat on a curb, not real. Getting kicked out of college with one class left of my degree, not real. The owls swooping at the car I was in with the sociopath trying to ruin my son’s life, not real. Sleeping on the ground in the open at Lorry State Park hoping an animal didn’t get me, not real. And this too, the tapes that play in the background of my mind while I do my time in bumcluck farm country, not real.

I started watching a movie about pirates starring Tom Hanks. It’s fun to imagine being that clever. Clever enough to defeat a group of men with machine guns who are trying to steal from you, with nothing but your wits. I’ve also been binge watching Jerseylicious. I don’t know why I get obsessed with the Jersey shows but when the vibe is like this, nothing better will do. All the hair and pretty people and family, family, family and I pretend I have family too. Where, by God, do they get all the money for such things. Family. People who have successful businesses make it look so easy. But I know this place isn’t real and everything on the surface hides the true story underneath.

If the laws of physics were described in terms of what emotions they represented, we might have turned into Star Trek explorers by now not only visiting planets but creating them. Desire, grief, love are all represented by physics equations they pretend to be too stupid to know so they don’t have to tell you. If you could create a whole planet, what parts of earth would you include? Would you include foxes and birds?

Spirituality teaches me that I am not in control of anything and to find peace I should stop trying to get out of the chinese finger prison by maintaining stillness and figure out how to escape samsara by realizing that everything I take for real, isn’t real. Spirituality also teaches me that I am in control of everything and I only need to wish for what I want and use my will power to create it. Spirituality also teaches me of karma and evil and saviors and magicians and that money is the root of all evil but not what to do when all the evil people have all the money. It teaches me that drugs are bad and pain is all in your mind and poverty is a sign of laziness and sloth. But it also teaches that there is and isn’t a creator who loves and doesn’t love and I might be being punished but I also just might not be trying hard enough.

So which is it? Nothing and everything and chaos and bliss. Fragility and wishful thinking. Sex and farming. To say they/we worship idols is hiding the real truth. They worship themselves, we worship ourselves and we’re never sure if we should and we wonder about the people who are sure and we think very highly of ourselves for wondering that. So we create something to believe in that is not ourselves and worship that. And think about how awesome we are for doing that. We’ll probably get rewarded. And so on and so on and so on.