LINDA RONSTADT "Desperado" '77 Atlanta

Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Charles Bukowski

This post is for all of my friends who don't know what they're supposed to be doing. I don't know either, maybe because we're not supposed to be doing anything. The pressure to do something is coming from inside, and we all need to be aware of the chances the universe gives us. The chances are for us and us alone. Every moment, every new opportunity presented to us indirectly or directly, every person we meet...these are the chances we have to change our lives EVERY DAY. We are marvelous, deserving human beings, and we can do anything we want because we are the masters of our own destinies.

The gods are within us, and our entire beings are waiting for that moment when we finally choose the life that is the life for us, not the life whose path we can see. Because if we are seeing the path, then it isn't ours because our paths are created every day, with each step we take. We want to be individuals with stories, with histories worth telling about with heroes and action and suspense. That's what I want, at least. And a good character in a story has to want something, has to want one thing more than everything else with every action made to get closer to that one thing. When we know what that thing is, it will lead us for the rest of our lives.

And what do I want. What is the one desire that I will base the rest of my life off of? Right now, it's the desire not to have any desire. Because I want everything out of life, and I know it's up to me to get it all. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life chasing after an endless amount of treasure because then I will miss the treasure the universe presents to me every moment. Right now my treasure is the window in front of me with the view of Bellingham Bay. I love large bodies of water, they make me feel less trapped on land, in civilization. If I wanted, I could get on a boat right now and sail so far that I can't even see the lights from buildings; my view would be a timeless view, and I could be anyone in history.

Here is a beautiful, inspiring poem for you:

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadow and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new watermark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

Hafiz – 14th century Sufi mystic and poet


I really love this poem. My favorite part is the line that says "greet yourself in your thousand other forms as you mount the hidden tide and travel back home." I like to think of reincarnation as the idea that we, as humans, are more than we think we are; we come in thousands of forms and have so many dimensions deep within us and the potential for so many realizations that we aren't even aware of, so many different levels of consciousness. In The Power of Myth Joseph Campbell talks about the metaphor of people being reborn in different forms and conditions in order to have the experiences necessary for their minds to release attachments to the field of time. This doesn't mean that a person will be reborn as a rattlesnake; they will be reborn within in another dimension of the inner being, a dimension with less attachments, a form of themselves already within.

I feel that I am reborn as a different animal every day. Sometimes, this animal is vicious and fierce and can stand on its own without any help, and sometimes I hibernate within and don't come out of my cave all day because I choose to allow my fears to overtake my enthusiasm and passion for life. Some days I choose to ignore the sacred life force energy pulsing through me and remain in torpor for days at a time. These are the times when I seek comfort in the idea that this isn't my real life; it's temporary, and I don't need to be happy about it because it's going to end, and this isn't my home, and no one really knows much about me here, etc. Excuses to remain unhappy for no solid reason. But it's not about expecting more from my situation in life; it's about expecting more from myself. It's easy to blame shortcomings on my current location because I can put off the choice of whether I want to live and risk disappointment or put off living until my "real life" begins, even though this is real life.

I am alive. No more denying it. This is happening, everything is happening for real. I am an animal fighting to survive in my own crowded, dangerous mind. And on the outside, people really do see me. They hear me, too. They speak to me, as if I am one of their kind.

And some days, I am.

There's a place
for that kind of ache
in my back, maybe I am
paralyzed
I don't know myself
or my knees when I am
running from that place
on to another
I'll walk
home alone but there's a place
for my walk
to him
with frozen toes on the frozen lake
in the cold past
my fear I left in the fireplace
as it melted from my hands
now precipitated back into the same
lake and with you
gone
I walk on the concrete and designate a place
for each feeling my desire
in the blanket of moss on the rock outside
confusion
in between the blinds on the window
and all of my regret
contained in the lampshade
so that I can see the difference
between life in my mind
and visit those places
on the outside.

They say even the smallest light
keeps a human awake at night
the lowest rumbling
the voices of the living
and still I wake up and don't know
where I am
what I am
this is what they say, which state
are you from?
And I say I alter
between being awake and asleep
and a state of unrest
collecting in the corners of my thoughts
like dust particles in heating vents
but at least
they are warm when I
am not without anyone holding
them without
a thousand different people
crowding their minds shouting
shouting so that no one can even hear
the words
on the
outside