Freedom Fighters

Feb 1

Auroville, India

Does God hear our prayers?

The crumpled bone bag of a man holds out a tin cup for change, his knees jutting out at sharp angles as he sits cross legged on the filthy asphalt street. I walk past him. Suhkasana we call that pose in yoga class; easy seated posture. I heard his voice crying for money, but I looked straight ahead. The hunger is too great to be fed and giving money to street beggars is like feeding oil to a fire, it flares up and spreads dangerously, unexpectedly. I cringe at the thought of all the beggars rushing at me, pulling my clothes and hair. I cringe too, as I walk away, nothing today brother, I say to myself as I look blindly ahead.

We have gone to Puducherry to get books and incense and see the Sri Aurobindu and Mothers ashram.

Earlier this morning I took a kalari class with Lakshman and Vinod and after fell asleep for a long nap with the sounds of the wet jungle and the cries of gecko lizards calling to each other that sound as loud as birds. We are staying in a beautiful European style house owned by a german man named Igor. There are brown tile floors, refreshingly white washed ceilings and light lemon yellow walls in the living room with a small colonial fireplace. Dark wood doors with mosquito netting and window panes covered with lacy black-iron designs. There is something elegant and delightful about a house like this being dropped in the middle of the jungle. The smell of honey-musk from the jasmine trees lays like a heavy carpet and makes the air thick and sensuous to breath. A lot of the trees here are broken in half, the thick trunks snapped like toothpicks from the cyclone that hit this area a month ago. An Indian friend told us, “Now there will be a lot of suicides from the farmers. The cashew tree takes thirty years to make fruit”. A blight on this otherwise beautiful paradise. The dogs howled in the dark jungle last night, a mourning or a warning.

I can’t tell whether I am dreaming or awake in India a lot of the time, this state of confusion is one of the things I come for.

Am I awake or dreaming? Who is awake and who is dreaming? Is this all a dream? Who am I?

They had a puja last night after dinner. We went up to the top room in the house where they had laid out all the objects for worship. I was so sleepy, I didn’t know if I could stay awake for hours, but they said, “It is a tantra puja, you lay down if you like”. Meaning that tantriks aren’t big on formality and rules, thank God for that.

I sit up for the first part of the ritual. The rain has made the electricity go out and candles light the room as the pujari recites mantras and offers flowers to the sri chakra statue. He passes us small cups filled with amrit, one of the five forbidden things that tantriks use in worship. The pujari says we should have real skull cups, like the Buddhist paintings where the dakini holds the cap of a human skull to drink the ambrosia from. I feel sleepy so I lay down, I feel as if my whole body is being stung by mosquitos. I have felt this way before, I think it is surges of electricity in my body when kundalini is being activated, it puts me in an agitated trance. I fall asleep, or an almost sleeping state, Gabe lays down too and I hear the steady rhythms of his breath so I know he has fallen asleep. We are both curled up like zygotes in Mothers womb on the straw floor mats. I feel the energy move between us, mother and son as we dream a new dream for our lives, undoing the karmas of our ancestors in this altered state of consciousness.

At the end of the ritual I sit up, they give us plates of food to eat with fried fish, bits of chicken, breads and a boiled egg. I eat as much as I can so late at night and wash it down with one more cupful of liquor. I wake up gabe and we walk through the dense jungle to the house we are sleeping in. lakshman goes with us because he says there are a lot of snakes. “Snakes, peacocks and monkeys”. The peacocks can eat the snakes, can eat the poisonous cobra. Before the puja Laksman said, “the amrit (nectar of immortality) is inside the poison. The snake has poison, but the poison is also one of the best medicines in ayurveda”. To separate the nectar from the poison is the alchemy of tantra.

“I’ll fucking kill you!”

Gabe wakes me up by accidentally hitting me with a flailing arm in his sleep.

“Sorry, I was having a bad dream”.

In the morning he says the puja gave him the bad dream by bringing his fears to him. “I think you have to confront your worst fears to conquor them” he says. He is starting to understand tantra. His hands are still scarred from where the doctor in Chennai did surgery on them and I take them to inspect, the brown and dark dried blood red scabs are still deep pockmarks in his skin. But I can see they are healing and in a few weeks all the scabs will be gone. In a few months the scars left from the scabs will be gone too.

In Puducherry, I stop at an ATM on a crowded street, the sky keeps opening grey clouds in sputtering afternoon rain that leaves my skin moist and the exaughst fumes of the auto rickshaws, motorcycles and rare luxery german cars cling to my skin in the humidity. We turn a corner onto a wide, clean street with green trees lining the sidewalks and hardly any traffic. We are off the main Indian thoroughfare and near the French quarter of old Pondicherry where all the European tourists are.

This is the area surrounding Sri Aurobindu and the Mother’s ashram. The Mother herself was French. Sri Aurobindu was an Indian freedom fighter who resisted the British and was imprisoned for a year. He came out of his imprisonment a changed man, a new soul. He refused to rejoin the freedom fighting movement when his friends urged him back. He said it was not the way for him anymore, he had seen the Absolute Truth and had to live for that. The ashram was built around his awakening. The Mother was a French woman who came to visit Pondicherry with her husband, she had been a mystic since a child, and she left her husband to stay with Aurobindu as his spiritual partner. Their relationship is still shrouded in mystery, but it is clear that she represented for him the sacred feminine principal that manifests grace.

We go in the ashram, there is a deep peace and silence in the atmosphere there. We follow lakshman to the Samadhi, the grave where the saints body rests. It is a long rectangle of marble with colorful fresh flowers floating on the top, arranged like beautiful tile designs. I kneel down and put my forehead on the cool white and grey marble edge. I feel silence and prayer rise up inside me. Gabe kneels and places his forehead next to mine. I pray without words to the God I have always known, to the God I knew when I was a little girl before I stopped believing. It does not matter what I prayed, it only matters that I prayed, that I felt something unsayable.

My child, here beside me, God this is my child. A few months ago I was so afraid for him. Afraid he would do heroin with his friends. An old prayer echoes inside me, I remember kneeling in church and repeating after the priest, Lord hear my prayer. Yes Lord. Lord hear my prayer. I look at my child and he is the most fragile thing, whose flame could be damaged or extinguished by chance, by choice, by fate. I look at my child and he is the most enduring thing, who will live like a ribbon of legacy long beyond me. I pray to the Gods of every nation and name, “Hear my prayer, feel my love and protection for my son”.

“Prayer is the smaller Mother praying the the bigger Mother, it is one Mother talking to herself”. One of the books inside the ashram shop explains that prayer is just the One who has broken itself to become many praying back to Itself. Relating the this One as the Mother is a way to personalize and feel close. Does God hear my prayers? Do I hear the deepest desires of my own heart?

The night spreads her dark wings over the humid twilight as the three of us walk along the beach. There is a giant statue of Mahatma Gandhi with an orange marigold mala around his black polished stone neck. We stop for pizza and ice cream. Gabe goes up to a little stand with sodas, toilet paper, tooth brushes and biscuits. He asks the older Indian man with a tilak on his forehead to buy a loose cigarette. The old man says, “Six rupees”. I step up to the counter to pay in silver coins I dig out of the bottom of my purse. Gabe asks for matches and lights up. The old man makes a funny face and Lakshman laughs. He says, “Never in India will you see a mother buying her son a cigarette”.

“That’s because in Indian cuture the children behave one way around their families and another way in society. I prefer freedom and honesty”.

I point to the moon, “Ardha Chanra, half moon” I say to Lakshman.

“No, it is five-sixths moon I think”.

He would know, he counts the days by the phases of the moon.

On the rickshaw ride home in the inky night as thick as water our little tuk tuk passes through the las vegas lights of the city to bravely bumpety-bumps on the unpaved dirt road home.

Gabe says, “I’m lucky, I can get you to teach me meditation. You’re a great teacher”.

“Thanks”

“You know it’s funny, ten years ago I wouldn’t have been able to say you were a great teacher, or even a good mother, sorry”.

“That’s okay, it’s true”

“but now you are a great teacher and ones of the best mothers in the world”

“I’ve worked hard on myself in ten years”

“what made you work so hard, you said before it was because you got suicidal?”

“yes. I had a lot of suffering. I couldn’t just fit in the world. I worked hard to find something that I wanted to live for besides being a mother. I knew your dad would come back when you were a teenager and I wanted to be able to let you go, to have your own life without clinging and making you feel guilty for me. You know, a lot of moms tell their kids they love them and they live for them and it should nice, but it also makes a cage out of the love. Makes the child feel guilty if they want to separate from their mother. I wanted to have something I loved so I wasn’t so desperate”.

Maybe I was selfish too.

“but you did make me feel bad at first when I went to live with my dad”

“yea, well, it was a hard time. A lot of hard karmas to live out. You were the child of two teenage runaway high school dropouts, a child of rebellion, revolution, suffering and hope. That’s what I would remind myself when you were in trouble. What else did I expect from the way we were living when you were conceived? It’s like watching history play out through your kid, but maybe things can get better”

“like you made your bed, so lay in it?”

“kinda. Or more like you made your bed so don’t be surprised who is sleeping next to you”

punk rock yoga

february 6

auroville, india

the graveyard

all he wanted was to get some pot, so he had to go to the graveyard, because that's where you get pot in india, and now he was watching a body burn before his eyes. the skinny, dark, dirty little man who was one of the keepers at the smashan, graveyard, had recognized him from when he came with my group of yoga students to meditate the week before. gabe said the keeper got the pot and put it in the clay chillum pipe and motioned for him to say a prayer and take a hit and then watch the body in flames as the plant hit his brain. he said he saw waves of energy coming off the burning corpse. the arms shot up and had to be pushed back into the fire. where does our spirit live?

"bom bom bole, ah key uh kolay" means "great lord shiva, open my eyes".
the shaivites, worshippers of shiva say this prayer before they take a hit of hash off their chillum pipe. they say life is maya, illusion of shakti, the primal feminine force of creation. the hash is a strong dose of shakti. they smoke the maya to see through the maya.

there is a statue of shiva in the smashan, bright blue with a leopard loincloth, his lips rosebud pink and his dreadlocks piled on top of his head with a crescent moon in his hair. he is painted as bright as a disneyland attraction and when i pointed him out to gabe, he thought it was a woman god at first. trani- shiva. god of the graveyards because he is a corpse himself, he represents awareness watching the dance of his female partner shakti as she dances the lila of maya, weaving the filmy sheets of illusion before our eyes like a great bellydancer, keeping us enticed but never revealing too much at once.

after that day, gabe said everything started moving. when he would sit and stare, energy would start moving off the trees. the southern jungle can swallow you up like a technicolor malaria dream, time slows down until it eats itself and you half expect a dinosaur to come walking through the dusty red earth and green palm trees. i guess if you are used to using drugs to escape the suffering of reality, it is a strange day when they start waking you up to a bigger reality. i was worried he wouldn't like india, but he loves it. he walks around the ashram skipping my yoga classes with the village girls following him around like a movie star. he slept through and missed dinner one night, so the girls brought him dinner to his room the next night. one of them peeled his hard boiled egg once when is was too hot for him to touch, now that's admiration. he hasn't had a haircut since we left america, so his brown hair is puffed up like a pompadour. mostly he has been hanging out, getting stoned and meditating sitting under the trees like a nineteen year old cross between james dean, sid vicious and the buddha.

that's my son, a son of shiva. the god of the low caste, outcast and the original punk rocker. shiva sits in the formless void watching the world dance, the world burn, the world of form shifting forms. through death we are born. the tantriks say "die before you die" to exceed the power of other mortals who fear death and so only half live.

i have missed my son for years. for the six years i have been coming to india, most of my prayers have been for god, for the creator, to watch over him when we have been apart. i came to india the first time right after he moved in with his dad at fourteen, we had always been together before that, like a mama kangaroo with her baby in her pouch. i had been such a young mother, pregnant at seventeen, that i had struggled to survive and to scratch and fight in this world for a place to keep us. i made a lot of mistakes. i had a lot of regrets. there is nothing more painful than being a parent looking at your childs pain that you know comes from your choices. after he moved in with his dad he stopped talking to me for a year. i circled holy temples and mountains repeating my prayers. on the outside i was halfway around the world. on the inside, i was circling the innermost sanctuary of my heart.

god help me to heal the pain i carry from my family. god help me to not cause my son the same pain. sandwiched between fate and free will, the things i can change and the things i cannot. i close the distance between the two with prayer and acceptance. just a little over a month ago i wasn't sure he would come. i picked him up drunk drinking bottles of cheap alcohol with his friends in a bad part of town when a few gang members pulled up. for a minute, it looked like things could have gone horribly wrong. god get us out of here alive, i prayed. and here we are, in india together.

LOVE + PAIN

friday, dec 9
riverside, ca

‎"love is pain" my son said when he was 18. like all the jail tattoos the gangsters have. sometimes yes, it is. and sometimes it feels better than anything you imagined was possible to experience and sometimes worse than anything you think you have the strength to live through.

i am sitting parked in my truck outside a liquor store with my son and a pack of his teenage friends drinking 40s of cheap beer leaning against the hood. They make jokes, push each other around, slur their words a little more. they get louder and prouder as the drink adds up.
i am talking to the director of the documentary we are making in India about the work i have been doing there to teach yoga to women sex workers in sonagachi, the red light district of india. most of them are mothers too. i look in their eyes and see my own worry and pain reflected back in bottomless black eyes, wet with almost-tears. people tell me that "i am doing god's work". i wonder if they would imagine this crusader sitting and watching my own son get fucked up on a friday night.

i dropped out of high school too. i slept in makeshift shelters and flirted with disaster, played out being a homeless hobo. maybe it is the blessing-curse of the spanish gypsy ancestors. i hear empty glass bottles rolling on the asphalt from the ones they have finished, the rickety sound of things getting a little too loose.

a bigger kid walks up to my sons group, he is dressed like a cholo. i keep talking on my cell phone to anka about our details for the next trip to india. I see things are heating up outside my truck. the bigger boy is getting angry, he is talking to one of my sons friends, who is about half his size. his arms are waving to emphasize something. i hold my breath. this is not a good part of town and there are gangs here, and this kid definately looks like he's in a gang. suddenly, he lifts his shirt up, does he have a weapon? it is possible to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. he is showing a tattoo on the side of his torso. the smaller boy is holding his ground. then the bigger one starts laughing and shakes the smaller ones hand. everybody relaxes and i realize all the other boys had been standing frozen too, waiting to see if things were going to jump off. i breath again.

i wait awhile longer, letting my son spend time with the friends he doesn't see much anymore. i am looking out my windshield my eyes lock with the big cholo. he tilts his chin up in an acknowledgment and i tilt my chin back at him. respect. he says, "who's girl is that?" and walks over to my window.

"these your kids?" he says.
"only one of em" i say. "i drove out from joshua tree to pick him up".
a moment of silence as he stands at my window.
"it's a full moon eclipse" i say and point at the moon in the middle of the sky above us.
"what's that?" he says.
"well, the moon goes blood red and dark, you should watch it"
he stares up looking contemplative at the white disc in the sky.
he has a friend he came with parked on the other side of my car. the friend looks like an older gangster.
"what are you looking at?" the friend says. he is wearing a plaid shirt and has a moustache.
the cholo laughs and ealks away from my window to his friends car.
i tell my son i want to go and he and his friends pile in my truck, reeking of cheap beer. they are laughing and telling jokes. my son says when we first pulled up one of his friends was like, "you got a girl with a nice whip". "no, that's my mom's car". one of the boys said the kid who stood at my window just got out of jail for 13 months for stabbing someone. shit gets real. this is normal life here.

i drop off the friends and drive my son stinking ad reeking and passed out in the passengers seat under a full moon in the rolling desert. it feels like we are driving through the isolated, rocky terrain of mars. we get lost and i stop at a gas station. i look around at the beat up cars in the parking lot, the teenagers in clusters around the gas pumps waiting for the next party. it looks like the kind of town where everyone is missing teeth from doing too much home made meth. my son is beligerant now and wants some weed. so he goes to one of the teenagers and talks to him. the teenager looks at his cell phone. i am getting pissed in the car, i am not waiting for some bullshit hook up at this gas station in some devil's asshole town. i pull my car around with the engine running and roll my window down. i want him to feel me waiting, pissed. i take a deep breath. patience. he gets in and we leave. i shake my head at the lump passed out next to me in the passengers seat. patience.

the next morning we have breakfast and a good talk and go for a hike.

sometimes i think, it's just a part of life, we all evolve, teenagers on the cusp of adulthood have a lot of wildness to get out. and sometimes i don't know how i am able to help so many people, but feel so helpless with my own son. it's a great gypsy joke, and somewhere the gods, who must be crazy, are laughing even when i cry. my son makes me so happy-sad. so proud-worried.

love is pain. love is bliss. love is love. it cannot be weighed, measured or contained in a word. love is a riddle, a koan, one word that you will spend your life unraveling. to get to the the meaty heart of the matter, the meaty, bloody, beautiful, throbbing heart of the heart. to the love of the love. the egyptians said when you die, the gods will weigh your heart against a feather. how much does my heart weigh? is my love lighter than a feather?

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”-Jim Morrison

Warrior-lunatics of LOVE

when i feel overwhelmed, i ask myself, "what would cesar do?"
waking up to survey the theater, the battle field, to fulfill his role in the play?
i bet some days he was like, "damn, this is impossible" or,
"look at all the armies mounted against me"

it's like that sometimes...there is too much to do, too many people asking for answers, needing attention, too many particles of maya screaming and dancing, pulling in different directions...
i think to myself, "cesar must have felt this way".
and yet you serve your dharma. so i may die today? just another day on the battlefield. so i may fail, i will live to fight another day. and in times of peace, i will eat drink and be merry, but i will not shrink like a coward from the theater battle field of life for i am a warrior of love...

like a kamikaze pilot
i just might strap into a love bomb of my immanent destruction
take aim at what i love
and blow the fuck up
you'll find scraps of me- of this love lunacy- in every cup of coffee

warrior-lunatics of LOVE
i need you to throw down your non-refundable love, money and pride onto the poker table of life and belly up to the Mother in the tavern of lunatic lovers...
She deals the cards in your hands
She says you better risk something if you wanna be a player
otherwise go back with all the other sheep sleepwalking through life with fast food religion and drive thru sex
it's time to lay your love on the line- like a tightrope walker - not a gawker- i walk the line

Breaking Taboo, Opening Sexual Secrecy

Breaking Taboo, Opening Sexual Secrecy
I am sitting down to write a book, to share my experiences, to share what I know...

Sexuality has strong code of secrecy in both the mainstream culture and in the Tantric lineage I am a teacher of. Sometimes the secrecy is good, in that it allows a sense of privacy, a place where our spirit is free from the world life and the energy is ours alone, secrecy can be a tool for individuation that is healthy.

Often though, sexual secrecy has come from a deep shadow of fear. There are sexual secrets that are hidden because wrong has been done, it is best to open and air these wounds so all can evolve. In the path of Tantra, there has been secrecy for fear of judgement and punishment. Many tantriks and mystics from all over the world, all cultures, have been punished, sometimes by death, for practicing. I have seen my own death in past lives for carrying this energy as a woman and practicing and teaching. I am thankful that in this day and age they cannot drown me, burn me, cut out my tongue or lock me up for heresy or insanity. Knock on wood. I have had people close to me try to have me put in a mental institution "for my own safety and good". I have also been diagnosed as mentally ill and taken medications before I remembered who I was, what I came to do. The world is crazy, so if you feel out of step and crazy, you just might be sane.

I hope that this book serves as a map for others to find their way back to the Goddess and themselves in this confusing world. We have forgotten so much, we choose to be sleepwalkers in someone else dream. Wake up sleeping soul, wake up! May the unconditional love of the Mother Goddess comfort you and you find harmony of the sacred energies and great spirits that have created us. May we remember our place in the great Wheel of Life and play our parts well. May you find joy in your suffering and re-birth in your death, May we all remember we are ONE and act accordingly.

Gu-ru is a word that means teacher, but it is a coyote word, it means many things. It means light and darkness, so that we can understand that we are not only light, but also dark and that it is the mysterious womb of darkness which holds the light of the stars. A teacher will show us our darkness as well as our light. Guru also means "one who points the way". No one can walk the path for us, but we can see teachers and they can point to a way, we all fumble our own ecstasy to get where our hearts and should deeper longings call us to.

I am a Kali devotee, she is the Mother of Bliss, she gives bliss and liberation by making us face what we fear to become whole. Her face in the full moon is Lalitha, the Goddess of Sri Vidya Tantra, she heals by offering us sugarcane and pleasure, beauty and love. For my initiations into these godesses and this path through my guru, Sri Amritanada, I have been truly blessed.

As a woman, I also teach Vama Marga, the left hand path of taboo, so it is not surprising that I would break taboo of lineage custom in sharing secret practices openly. I have my teachers blessings in our lineage to do so. Many teachers have hidden their practices and have been brought down because of it. It is time for a new paradigm in teachers being more open, more authentic and human. The powers that be are still at work even if we, as teachers, unmask ourselves.

May this book and the opening of sexual secrecy into a more open inquiry bring more self-awareness, healing and empowerment for us all.

Eating pain

"what is the purpose?" my 19-year old son says
"of what?" i ask. we have been talking about him getting a job.
"of everything" he says and his jaw is working back and forth, his black eyes are shining with anger. "sometimes i think the world would be better off without me"
or i would be better off without the world, i think to myself

i sigh heavily, i feel very old and tired
"i don't know" i say. "i feel like that too sometimes"

i look out the window of the ihop restaurant in a strip mall, somewhere in nowheresville, california. cars go by. this world, this life. the way we live, the way we treat each other. there is an elderly black waitress shuttling around plates and people's orders, she seems too old to do the job, but happy to be doing it.

i shake more salt on the french fries and watch the little white particles sift and fall through the cracks. i flip the ketchup bottle open and pour the bright red sauce on the chipped plate next to the fries. i shake a little of the bright orange hot sauce on top. i dip a fry into the spicy-ketchup mixture. repeat. i am not really hungry but it is hard to be with my son when he is expressing his pain. i know it is good for him to let it out, but it's hard to hear. it tugs at my sadness, anger, shame and guilt. this is not any disenfranchised youth, it's mine. the product of my upbringing.

i eat the pain, as if the spongy potatoes will absorb the excess karma, the quivering of my cells in the face of hopelessness. at least i can shit out the fries tomorrow. probably not all of the pain.

after he works himself up, he works himself down and says he feels better. opening the wound we don't have answers for somehow still feels better than holding it all in.

"i like people like that waitress" he says. we both smile. somehow she is a beacon of light, of someone making the best of their circumstances.

Writing, Fighting, Fucking and Self Doubt...

friday, dec 2
joshua tree, ca

i hate it when people say they don't get stuck writing. that it just flows "spontaneously". well yes, if you let creativity just give you a little blow job, a little breeze under skirts, a small poem is sure to emerge from the tickling.

but i am talking about commitment not whimsy. when you commit to write something and to finish it. a book, a screenplay, a thesis. commitment of any kind acts as a magnifying glass to expose all the hidden warts and blackheads we wouldn't notice otherwise. commitment is serious business.

just yesterday morning i was teaching a yoga class and one of my students rolled over and did a somersault when i was pushing her into an adjustment. we fell on the floor together laughing. it is good to stay relaxed and go with the fall once you are falling, but sometimes it's harder to hold your ground than go with the flow.

like sitting down to begin writing my tantra book. suddenly i feel very inspired to go for a hike, to do yoga, to catch up with friends. to even pay my bills! that's the siren call of distraction from the task i have set before myself. will i succeed or will i fail? because failure is possible. even though God won't judge me for it when i face the pearly gates, i could fail to finish this book in the 14 days i have allotted for myself, a pressure cooker i have put myself in, a crock pot of creativity. ride or die.

i had a tae kwon do teacher who studied in korea. one of his masters said to him, "satori (sublime awakening) is in the moment of getting hit while sparring". know yourself, know your opponent. because it is the truth, it is the power of now. you can dance around and think you are a lot of things, but in the moment of contact you know exactly who you are. i am the jaw that was hit. i am the skin that stings and will bruise. i am the lungs on fire gasping for breath. i had another woman in a martial arts class say to me once, "you aren't afraid of getting hit then?" she shrugged her shoulders when she said it, a small judgement passed on my gonzo sparring nature. i thought how i kinda like the smack of skin, the crunch of bone, the taste of being alive. contact makes me high, it's why i like sex so much.

everytime i sit down to write in discipline (not inspiration)...i wonder, "do i have anything of worth to say?" does any of this matter? and the existential abyss yawns open and threatens to swallow the small, flickering candle flame of my purpose with it's sulphuric breath. that smell? that's the smell of self-doubt. smell your armpits. yes that's the sweat of fear. fear is the cutting edge of excitement. i jab with this sentence. i round house kick with that paragraph. who am i sparring? the blind and invisible universe from whom i must wrestle my words. say my name universe, say my name.