Escape Plans Unlimited

Choosing sides in fake-ass battles does not excite me. Watching people who vomit media feeds all over each other, however, does excite me. The near-total faith in elections, electoral politics, and media “coverage,” astonishes me every single day.

Today at the local health food store here in Carlsbad, most folks at the checkout engaged each other in dialogue about specific election ephemera. Strong emotions danced through each of them, as they plead some politician’s case to one another.  Where did they learn how to do this? The most infinite and hilarious Mullah Nasrudin observed about monkeys,

“What a monkey sees, a monkey does.”

I find it horrifying when the talking heads on television speak their mind through the mouths of people in the grocery store, on the street, at work, and at home. Ghosts, possessed with a diseased perception that forces them to conceive of their entire existence as an endless series of issues and politicians that they must know and understand and believe in and make decisions based upon the information presented to them by the same sources who created the initial way of thinking that made the ghosts believe they had to perceive reality as some ultimate choice between two dudes who want to make rules for people they have never met, based on their own personal agendas.

Do you follow me? None of that shit matters, people. None of it. Well, some part of it matters. The part that matters sits in front a screen, reading this right now. No, not the idea of you, the actual physical body that sits looking at this screen. You are more than some endless chain of memories. Each of those memories is but a snapshot of a river, of a flow of experience or magic carpet upon which YOU are now and have always been the rider.

To stop and judge yourself and other people, and to regret and worry and live in fear, these ways of thinking get programmed into us humans from education, from parents, TV, and other accidents.  We can just as easily lay aside these ways of thinking about ourselves, and instead watch reality as we make decisions and create and seek great beauty in every single eternal moment while you sit there in the midst of it, right now.

Lay it aside.

Today, I went through my stack of  captured moment notecards from yesterday’s just because club activity. The next activity concerning these cards had me go back through and add a fact or two to each and every card. What I just remembered right now is an email I got from Claude Needham himself a few days ago in which he wrote that perhaps the way out is found by going in more deeply. What he actually wrote was,

“Some say that looking for the way in is the surest way out.”

Well, tonight I added those facts to all of the cards. Again, that tremendous flowing river of memory nearly drown me under its crashing and pounding rapids. The temptation to regret this and relive that, lament this and redo that, all so overwhelming and expansive. It never ends. Until I finish with the cards and wrap them up again in foil.

So, for your delight, I will repost the first 5 cards that I draw at random from the stack. Here they are. If I had a scanner, I would give them to you that way, alas, not right now.

1. Sitting in Brad’s house, downloading music, stoney, smoking cigs. On a computer Brad built on dialup modem. I was a student at U of MN. 2322 NE 2nd. St. Minneapolis. I downloaded hundreds of Grateful Dead songs on Napster.

2. Hide and Go Seek in Fridley neighborhood, buried under leaf pile in Joey’s vast backyard on Lucia Ln. Playing with Phil and Sean and other kids.

3. Nudie Rock in Eugene, meeting Richard. In the year 2000, on wild mushrooms. He said things and did naked yoga in the water. I was reading, “The War at Home.” [amazon-product]0896083497[/amazon-product]

4. Underground caves with Keith. In Minneapolis (actually underneath Minneapolis), we had a flask and smoked and drank under the streets.

5. Huge Redwing, MN cemetery with Brian and Kerry (my cousins). I took pics with my new 35mm camera, I think I still have some of the pics. We opened a garage of shovels. We explored the whole place for hours. I remember a strong spirit of exploration with very little mental chatter.

There you have it. Of course, each of these memories leads to another 23 memories, and those each connect to 111 more, and it just goes on and on and on, it reminds me of a song,

“On and on it goes, the world it just keeps spinning…”

So tonight, I “close my eyes and start again anew…”
Love, wildness, chaos, and joy….they permeate everything.

-GTD