We're all mad here.

*sorry the font changes a bunch of times. I'm too lazy to do anything about it so..sorry*

I personally belive there are only two roads worth taking in life. A man of extremes fluctuates across the spectrum and there's only one way to go--The wise will heed warning to this and understand that the only way is...well...all the way...

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?

or...

Divinity and inner peace.

sort of a stupid question...

Two rivers that flow parallel. Similarities undeniable but worlds that couldn't be farther apart. shadow, persona. Love and hate. God and Satan. Duality. The further you push the boundary the closer you get to this internally projected externalization of yin and yang.

but what does it mean?

Is this a board game with a conclusive ending or a cheap fuck around with dead ends and gun wielding bandits behind each corner with an itchy trigger finger? Questions, confusion, and self-doubt.

The hilarious part behind all of this is that only the truly insane are confident in their sanity. Madness and civilization, the construction of normality and sanity...Intellectualize it and get your emotional approval...but live that shit and take a step into your beliefs...fuckin' scary man. One thing I don't find funny is mental illness.

Hunter Thompson said, "The edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

Whether or not thats true is debatable. However, I have found there is a ledge beyond the edge...as Bill Hicks said of Keith Richards...Thats another story though...Point in short though is you push the envelope so far you realize there is no envelope to push because there was never anyone pushing and its like..blank serenity...open hearted divinity...but if you can't deal with the truth...fear will eat you here and a empty god has no mercy, no judgement, no morality to speak of...The religious story of an egotistical father figure is a safety net to fall on when disturbance is overwhelming...Some scary but beautiful shit. Non-duality and the realization you were the blind contestant on your own game-show. Problem was you kept trying to fuck the host and manipulate the audience and you find...you reap what you sow...so die, reborn, die, reborn, die, reborn and after infinite times of love and peace being ripped from the fabric of your mind you begin to get tired of the game and call it quits when you already have everything you could ever ask for.

but im not there and you probably aren't either if you're reading this. The drama behind our lives is to much fun it would seem for right now. but theres only right now so why is it so fleeting?

but in real time, I went to church today and almost broke down crying. Not sure if that was because of my anxiety pushed to the limit or a wave of forgiveness coming over me and experiencing the realization that religion is nothing but a series of stories pertaining to the direct experience of the internal self...No one's guilty here despite the shit and maggots that surround us. Its a lot easier to hate than open your heart.

But whatever, its more like the realization of the self without transcedence...so I see it but I'm not free and its better than nothing. appreciate the legs you have.

Here we kind of venture into the musings of the occult and get into some dark, heady, and satanic shit that, well, for the sake of personal insecurity, I'll spare you of.

but its like, whatever you think you know about life, god, yourself and everything else you don't...or maybe i don't and im pushing it on you...but ill admit im twice as confused as all of you if not eight times...but its like, open your third eye using the easter eggs enough times and you realize something else is going on here that transcends the boundaries of self, other and whatever else choses to exist.

That one question will always persist in my head like a fucking insect gnawing through my bone: "WHAT WAS THAT???!!"

Telempthay? Insanity? The edge?

As if it matters...

I'm tired of all this shit. I'm tired of people in rags. I'm tired of insecurity. I'm tired of the haves and the have nots...I'm tired of wealth and decency. Social peace and all the corrupt bullshit that comes with it. People preaching justice and continuing to suck the rusty dick of the capitalist exhaust pipe while everything falls apart once more...Me. Me. Me. think about me.

I'm a reflection of my own greed and I can't stop bleeding green.

Proves that we are dirt. Pessimism. Eat me. Save the holy water, douse me gasoline and spread the wealth. A virus with shoes. Sneakers with lights in the heels. Rinse, wash, and repeat.

Killers, victims and bystanders...I roll across the spectrum covering evil enthusiasm and compassionate humanity...

1.) Life is suffering

2.) The root of suffering is desire

3.) There is a way to be free from suffering

4.) The eight-fold path is that way.

The way is the way is the fucking way.

Open you heart, open your mind. Open your heart, open your mind. Open your heart, open your mind. You are your own drill sergeant. Keep it in the back of your head like a fucking ice pick.

Watch it all melt away and don't flinch while I spill my guts onto the table.

for the record I wrote all this while I was drunk on kingfisher (Indian beer) so take it with a grain of salt and find peace in the moment if confused...

and now...One day later I return to sobriety and Delhi to finish writing this and wonder if I should make it public...

"Wrapping you up in an American flag

I fuck you for the glory
No complaints from my friends
They keep their fucking mouths shut
I couldn't care less
About the way that you see me
Something I will never be
I always get shit
I always get shit
For acknowledging perversity"

That probably fits much better for my last post but I like that song a lot and I wanted to include it.

This whole blog frustrates me every time I come to it. I feel like I have so much to say except when I sit down to write. It might not seem that way when reading it but the second I sit down whatever mental flow existed is extinguished.

Here is something I wrote while driving through Orissa:

Bagpipes and down-tuned angsty guitars while sailing the Orissan roads...Listening to Jon Davis sing about being raped and the emotional consequences that followed.

You fall apart, you put yourself back together. Re-arrange the pieces but you will never return to that place inside yourself you call home--at least it feels that way at times. Getting used to the internal swings is a real acceptance of--shit---here we go again...It passes...It feels like you're at the beach shoveling sand. With every heap you toss out, twice as much caves in from the wall, taking the place and more. After several grueling hours you've built a decent foxhole and then the tide comes in and floods the whole thing to shit.

Your home is now covered with salty water and aggressive crabs. Transitory nature. Life's a bitch but its also a beach. Duality, you know? Well, maybe you don't...Patience is the ultimate virtue so give it time.

Death is the theme of the Jungle--I read that somewhere. I didn't think of that. but it sounded cool and clever so i wanted to include it.

Everything in Orissa is rotting. In fact, much of India is this way. Even the upscale elitist stores of Khan market in Delhi fill with hundreds of bugs at night. The guards and their world war two rifles can do little to deter this reality.

So we went to Orissa first. Orissa is a jungle. Palm trees, muggy weather and the Bay of Bengal create the atmosphere. People live in grass huts submerged in the tropics but many of them have cell-phones so don't get the wrong idea.

Just driving through this place blew my mind. Very Asia. Very India. If you ever come to India and lose your romanticized view of a tropical, jungle paradise with Asian flavor visit Orissa and you will find you simply dropped that naive perspective here and low and behold there is some truth to it.

This trip is absurd. This place is absurd. What I'm doing is absurd right now. Look at this place. Look at these people. I am the epitome of an alien to them. Temples literally over a thousand years old....actually, compared to a lot of the stuff we've seen thats really not all that old...

and for a lot more reasons I can't even tell you all the half of this trip. Crazy man.

"ever falling"

We visit a massive temple dedicated to the sun god of Hinduism whose name escapes me and then drink fresh coconut milk, straight from the coconut. Some guy with machete stands there all day and chops these things and behind him are the shells of probably 2,000 coconuts. I don't know if I could do that everyday but it pays so whatever.

I wake up and decide to shower in the pool and as I begin to shampoo the Indian hotel staff member makes me get out of the pool with shampoo still in my hair and use the shower near the pool instead of the pool itself...didn't see the shower....

We walk down an amazingly chaotic and stunning street to a old British library that has probably only 50 books but they're all from the 1800s...stormji noted they probably haven't updated since the British left... anyway. we get VIP access to the roof overlooking a massive temple dedicated to Krishna next to us and the ruckus of the street below.

I step in cow shit...or maybe that was later...Idk but it happened and I'm including it here.

I'm having a hard time remembering everything we did....

We make it to Kolkata. This place is like New York City. Yellow cabs, big advertisements, green parks, lots of people and you can walk everywhere. Lots of art and history. Cultural epicenter. Remnants of the British are very clear. We visit a British graveyard that is tucked away from the city that looks like the jungle from orissa was dropped in the middle of it like you would do in sim city (excluding palm trees) and it has begun to overtake the tombs. Crazy place. I needed a gun and someone to do battle with like a final showdown in a bond movie or something. Dark, overgrown jungle covering massive 200 year old tombs. silence. gunshots ring out.

I loved Kolkata and Orissa.

I read today that the benefit of telling the truth is never having to remember what you said. Makes sense I guess.

My writing tutor's husband here in Delhi died two days ago from a heart attack. I talked to him several times about my Buddhist pilgrimage. He was a cool guy. He was 50 years old. Sucks. I think he smoked a lot of cigarettes. Its sad especially for our writing tutor, nami, i like her a lot and i can't really imagine what thats like for her. so it goes.

First Kurt Vonnegut reference if you don't count my previous addition of the serenity prayer.

The hotel we stayed at in Kolkata was run by Mrs. Smith who is a 90 year old Armenian lady whose been here since the 30s. She seems more alive than most people I meet who are a 1/3 her age. Really funny too.

The hotel is a trip. Its covered in shit. Paintings, pictures, mirrors, newspapers, and anything else you can imagine someone would accumulate over 90 years of existence is plastered on these bizarrely green walls. nice place though. 85% of the walls are covered in stuff..stuff...stuff...

"just the freedom was better than breathin' they said..."----that doesn't belong here but i like that line and the song was playing so here it is.

We go to several Jain temples that I would avoid taking acid at if you, for one reason or another, find yourself in such a situation while in Kolkata. Religion and the carnival fun house of a million infinite mirrors and dazzling, bedazzled, dazzling, dazzling...let me say "dazzling" one more time...dazzling...marble and colors that belong in a kaleidoscope. This place is bizarre.

this place is even more bizarre than the museum we visited in Orissa that has a 8 foot color fiber glass statue of minnie mouse in their unkept "monument (or statue) garden"...feelsweirdman...

I think theres a reason all the hippies came here after the 60s...

Its (Jain temple) like a Indian religious version of disneyland with more colors. Candy colors. Lucy in the sky with diamonds (bassnectar version) is playing right now by complete chance. Synchroncity. Super-dooper.

We go to a less twisted jain temple and a community celebration is going on and I'm lost in the internal amazement that I'm here and now in India. Looking at fifty plus women in traditional garb sitting at a temple shrine and chanting looking at me while i walk by in waterproof sandals, baggy khaki pants, gauged ears, a bandana, long unwashed greasy hair, and sunglasses that look more like space goggles with a decently heady hangover from the kingfisher of last night that makes me even more goofy than usual...

You get the picture? Western infection. I'm either a parasite or just a hilarious mind fuck for these people. They seem to like me though and everyone has been just swell...

India has such a rich history of cultural practices that spans across thousands of years while westerners celebrate the birthday of mickey mouse...Reminds me of what George Carlin said about this:

"Mickey Mouse's birthday being announced on the television news as if it were an actual event! I don't give a shit! If I cared about Mickey Mouse's birthday I would have memorized it years ago! And I'd send him a card, 'Dear Mickey, Happy Birthday, Love George'. I don't do that, why? Don't give a shit! Fuck Mickey Mouse! Fuck him in the ass with a big rubber dick! Then break it off and beat him with it! I hope Mickey dies. I do, I hope he goddamn dies. I hope he gets a hold of some tainted cheese, and dies lonely and forgotten in the bathroom of some bad building in a poor neighborhood, with his hand down Goofy's pants.

Mickey Mouse-- no wonder no one takes our country seriously, we waste valuable news time informing our citizens of the age of an imaginary rodent!"

I've been religiously listening to george carlin since I was around 8 or 9 so you can get a good idea of where my head is at this point in the game...not where it should be to say the least...

Kolkatta could be even more like New York City if not so many people bathed on the street corners. but I'm not going to lie, I love that about India. I think thats badass.

Its pretty awesome, you can piss anywhere, you can shit anywhere, you can bathe anywhere, you can spit anywhere (and in my case on anyone...me being the recipient...) no one gives a shit how old you are if you want to drink (the 25 drinking age is not enforced) and cigarettes are a dollar a pack. My one complaint the beer sucks here. Someone send me a case of magic hat before I mail bomb the kingfisher plant. take that one with a grain of salt.

Sidenote: I just remembered i gave a twelve year old kid a cigarette when I was in Varnassi...He smoked already though and was dipping that heavy nicotein beetlejuice shit all the rickshaw drivers rot their teeth with. This kid was chilling with us and he lit the matches better than I did so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I just thought it was kind of a funny thing to publicly announce that I've given cigarettes to children.

I'm a role model in training.

Back to public bathing. I fit right in here. I swim and have even bathed in my garbage can back home in Virginia (seriously) so if anything this is pretty mild for me. If you ever drive by my house and wonder why our garbage can is always overflowing water with the hose in it thats why. Except their aren't parasitic worms in the water in virginia so maybe its just more extreme on the surface.

I haven't publicly bathed though. But I think I'm going to go back to the Sikh temple and take a dip in their public bathing pool that holds the large goldfish. I didn't have the balls to bathe in the ganges but I wasn't really trying to get my left foot amputated due to the chemicals and body parts so yeah, whatever.

Of course thats fun and all but the reality is people live this way here because the standard of living is so much lower than it is in the United States. Things like rules, regulations, safety standards, and basic luxuries we take for granted back in the states don't exist here. Its cool in one way because its radical cultural shock that expands consciousness like no other but at the same time its a hard life for a lot of these people and it makes the disparity of the world very in your face. Lots of intense emotions. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Empathy. I want to help but I can't give you money or at least I'm not going to for a number of reasons--mainly the prostitutionalizaton of begging that exists here. Guilt isn't constructive and a lot of people can be critical of someone such as myself for being in privileged position and feeling this way but I still felt this way and I have found that feelings/emotions just sort of come at you like waves regardless of what you believe or think about the situation at hand. judge not lest you be judged first.

However, at the same time, and this is what I'm loving about this trip and what it is that I'm loving is how goddamn layered everything is. The complexity of social structures and how your perceive the world is brought into question on so many more levels when traveling like this.

First of all, the more I've seen in India the less I see these people as victims of poverty and really just living a different way than we do in America. They don't have much in comparison but i don't think it makes them any less happy. Its more simple. Simple is good if note better in a lot of ways....I'm not referring directly to beggars here but more the population as a whole. I would argue that relationships with others are the primary source of happiness for most people on a universal level and material possessions aren't going to do it for you.

In America, I have always found it bizarre how big the homes are and how separated people are from each other. Of course this is a generalization limited to specific areas I've been, but a lot of the country is like this. People get to know their television and computers better than the people living around them. Then there's this nation wide confusion as to why everyone is trying to balance themselves out with SSRI medications for a slew of psychological disorders.

This reminds me of this youtube clip on Jerry Rubin. He wasn't perfect and he certainly broke from his core values as he got older but regardless, I think he makes some really valid points in this talk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58U8QSO0bto

The best part is towards the end when he speaks to the students. He pretty much says how the individual need to visit the psychotherapist and discuss personal issues was eradicated when students banned together to protest and tear down the educational infrastructure proving that these issues were not individual sicknesses but a sickness of the collective, of the tribe and it was a group issue to be sorted out together.

so next time you feel blue go light town hall on fire or throw a Molotov cocktail through your schools window. Of course, action without thought is as effective as thought without action....I don't know, life is very confusing. As George Carlin said, "if we could just find out whose in charge we could kill him!"

But I have the sneaking suspicion no one really is...

Back to poverty/wealth comparison:

The whole thing, like everything else, is double sided. Less wealth, simpler life. But poverty is poverty and it's fucked. But in more ways than one life here isn't worse its just different. But I, of course, am an outsider and have no feeling whats its like to live on a street corner or be forced to publicly bathe (they aren't naked when they do this just an FYI) in the streets. But then again, I feel like if I did that everyday you would probably form close bonds with the people around you...

I would like to switch feelings, emotions, and insecurities with some of the Indian people I pass by on the street for a day or so to see how the appearance of material wealth and external happiness that I may or may not exude depending on who is looking holds up in comparison. I don't know if I would be better off. I can make a good argument to say I'm worse in some ways and better in others so its like...confusion...

We had lunch in Kolkata and stormji has roughed it enough (been living in India since 1982) that she eats well and as a result, we eat well. We go to a 5 star restaurant (SIT picked up the bill) and she, knowing my carnivorous habits, suggests I get the surf and turf. So I get a beef steak with shrimp and mushroom sauce and then she orders us two bottles of white wine. I'm not going to complain but it feels like a little much.

I've had beef in India before I've had pork. I felt really bizarre during this meal for a number of reasons. Wealth. The have and the have nots.

But the more I climb down the rabbit hole the more I see how empty a lot of this is. Hopeless also comes to mind. Keep holding on to things outside yourself to avoid looking inward. I've done a lot of both and I'm sort caught between worlds but I imagine a time will come when a choice will be made between truth and all the hollow temptations of maya (term for the illusion of external reality).

Letting go of the drama of your life. I was thinking about this intensely in Bodh Gaya the other week. I'm always following the story of Jerry Walsh. Doing things Jerry would do and say. Trying to paint a picture of how Jerry is and I'm always so self-absorbed in creating my identity that I miss how fleeting and futile it is. This is either an epiphany or the on set of depersonalization disorder. The thing is though, I may have spoken of this in the past, is that divinity and mental illness are very closely linked. The same parts of the brain and consciousness that will reveal god to you are also the ones that will whisper murderous thoughts into your impressionable psyche so here we are back to HST's edge wondering which side to jump over to for safety.

sidenote: my professor saw Jimi Hendrix live in San Francisco at Monterey pop festival

On free will: You are given a set of cards. How you play the hand is up to you.

Why these cards though and why does that person not even have hands and fingers to hold cards? Some people tell me its all part of a plan, others say I willed it, others say its all bullshit and it just happened. Meanwhile I'm stuck trying to sort out the answer to whether or not I will find peace through hedonistic compulsion (which, for the record, I know I won't) or monastic devotion (which, for the record, sounds hard).

But if I don't achieve enlightenment during my Buddhist pilgrimage in the next three weeks (which is a very real possibility) then its all good because I see how the Universe is playing out. I come back to Denison to graduate and finish school after trekking through South India, the Himalayas, and some other absurd places during the summer and then it will be what? Spring of 2012? So then I make one final pilgrimage to the Amazon to drink holy ayahuasca with the shamans. I liberate my awareness from the confines of my closed heart and crown chakra and the galactic cycle of Samsara is put to infinite eternal peace and rest. All beings are liberated and the echoing screams of seemingly endless suffering fall forever silent.

If you think that was weird you don't know the half of it, seriously.

but if that doesn't happen...I'll just keep traveling and maybe join the peace corps or at least do something where I can give back a lot of what has been given to me. I'll keep a travel blog so don't worry you can still listen to me yell about things that probably aren't really all that important.

Peace.

Aeriels by System of a Down:

Life is a waterfall
We’re one in the river
And one again after the fall
Swimming through the void
We hear the word
We lose ourselves
But we find it all....
Cause we are the ones that want to play
Always want to go
But you never want to stay
And we are the ones that want to choose
Always want to play
But you never want to lose
Aerials, in the sky
When you lose small mind
You free your life
Life is a waterfall
We drink from the river
Then we turn around and put up our walls
Swimming through the void
We hear the word
We lose ourselves
But we find it all...
Cause we are the ones that want to play
Always want to go
But you never want to stay
And we are the ones that want to choose
Always want to play
But you never want to lose
Aerials, in the sky
When you lose small mind
You free your life
Aerials, so up high
When you free your eyes eternal prize
Aerials, in the sky
When you lose small mind
You free your life
Aerials, so up high
When you free your eyes eternal prize