You Know, This Isn't All Sunshine and Orgasms

I've been trying to stay positive. I've been trying to write positive. Most of the time it's pretty easy. A lot of this traveling and writing and living on faith and the renunciation of the importance of earthly attachment is amazing. Miracles are easy to see when all you're doing is looking for them. They are everywhere.

Every now and then, though, the day gets gray and rainy. The future becomes unclear. The wolves start to close in around us and the idea that the universe has our back slips out of our mind. Danger and fear become real players again. We start to lose our balance.

I left New York last night and drifted. I ended up on a bus to Pittsburgh instead of Philadelphia. They are the same place, right? After a moment of fear, I realized that it was a blessing in disguise. It was raining all night in Phily and I would have had to walk around in it. New town. New night excursions. But instead, I rested on the bus until almost noon. By the time I was rolling back into the City of Brotherly Love, the fog and rain were so thick I thought that the bus would careen into an embankment for sure. After the drift of the morning, it was unsettling to have my surroundings seem to blur and disappear without much regard to foresight or a bigger picture of any kind. But once I started walking, and even though it was long and my feet hurt, Philadelphia unfolded in front of me easily and welcomingly. This town is not as unforgiving and relentless as Manhattan. There are maps and directions. The homeless people are less aggressive. The crowds are smaller. I saw the Liberty Bell and looked for the resistance. I hobbled up the steps that Stallone made famous. Just keep trying, they say. The statue of Rocky is at the bottom and a print of a Kahlo self-portrait is at the top.

Just keep trying.

I wanted to know where we were. I want to know what is going to happen. I do not have faith that everything is going to be alright when I can't see an easy series of possible events that adds up to an outcome that is acceptable to me. I didn't know that last night would work out. I don't know how tonight will work out. I don't know where I will be in two days. When I think of these things, my mind gets caught in loops of anxiety and worry. I fall out of the moment. When I do that, I forget that all I have to do is my part. The rest isn't up to me. So, instead of worrying and trying to figure it out, I open my laptop and I write to you. I do my part, in its small way. Things work out. Things do not always end up the way I want them, but they end up how they should.

We are going to do it this year. We are going to shed the attachments that hold us back. If I had a New Year's resolution, that would be it. Let's do it together, me and you. I will catch my bus, fog or not, my bus or not, and I will step confidently into the unknown. You do the same, however your task presents itself. I know that your part in it is just as important (whatever that means) as mine. We will both kill this motherfucker. We are heading towards a fist fight. A brawl. These monsters that make us afraid. These tasks that overpower us and crush our resolve to step out, away from our comfort. They do not exist.

There is no darkness. There is no 'next challenge', there is only the illusions that we create in order to keep ourselves active, so that we can suffer, because that is what we feel we deserve. That's what we feel life is.  ugh. We don't. It isn't. I have to remember that in these moments more than in the moments where it is easy. Then, the fight is not a fight at all.