“Love is to die
Love is to not die
Love is to dance
Love is to die
Love is not die
Why don’t you not die
Why don’t you dance”
Yes, let’s dance.
The actual lyrics may be a little different; no money back.
I awake, activated. In the night, through dreams, from a location in spacetime – if it’s even that – I know not, arrives new instructions.
I blend in. As best I can. With blue and purple hair. I’m practically invisible.
Things aren’t okay, but I’m still at a sort of peace. I get some juice. I get some agriculturally-sourced and factory-processed vegetarian meat.
I’m not in the city I call my home, yet the entire solar system, the entire galaxy, and yes the entire universe is home. Unless you want to get into the center of the sun, or the dark side of Charon. Or some shit like that.
I’m waking up into the my mission. This is no time for dogmatism. Everyone is so friendly at the workplace. Maximize productivity. But part of my mission is to do my work well. I analyze and advise.
I can’t be okay with it, anymore. These creeper militant drones have marked me for life. It’s all in paperwork, but it’s in the readouts when I scan my card, my passport, apply for a job. It’s through some careful SE that I have a decent one. So sure, now, I really have something to lose. Well, do I? I never felt that I had anything to lose. Except I see freedom being lost when I don’t exercise it. But now they’ve got me hooked up to tests. Tests that measure the levels of drugs in my body. Some are allowed; some aren’t.
By afternoon, the assaults have begun. Friendly on teh outside, unbridled happiness on the inside. And for what? The people’s agendas shrouded in the company’s goals and milestones. It’s the same for miles around.
Imagine the lights going out. What do you do? One should not scream and shout and lose one’s presence of mind. Rather, take a deep breath, let your eyes adjust, and take in what’s there – even if all you have is the beat of your heart and the affirming support of the ground beneath you. Then, take a step, and another step.
The analog to communicate, if it’s not obvious. We sometimes so rely on outside affirmation, and yet, being guided by our own compass and communication with our self is so key to better living.
So when the wires of communication are crossed with the outside world, let’s take the chance to re-calibrate our own communication, which begins with listening to our own signals and focusing on that ever-important internal conversation.
First, I was on my way somewhere with a just a few other people. It was night. There were those mercury vapor street lights. We were walking down alley ways, behind the kinds of apartments in Santa Monica, California and the Westside of Los Angeles. The apartments themselves are built above the carports. Ironic, since it’s the land of earthquakes. I walked with a couple of other people down these alleys and on sidewalks, and along quiet, deserted even, main streets. We came to a portable building, you know, a trailer. We walked up the ramp like you do and into the portable and back out the other side into a flood light-illuminated playground, where some children were playing and some were working on art projects, just painting and what-not. The kids doing the art projects were just finishing up. Now, I was their teacher.
I don’t remember the kids with me, but I am moving through some suburbs again. Reminds me of the San Gabriel valley. When I was about 6 or so, I made friends with someone who my grandparents contracted to put bars on their house. We rode bikes together, and I stayed at his house one day, and we rode from his house into the hills. There were these fire roads, and I thought it was the coolest thing that we could ride on those roads, and the roads were all ours. Only if there was a fire would the fire department reclaim them, and then, they would be our roads and the fire department’s roads. The  suburban area of those roads are like the area that I’m traveling through in the dream.
There are spillways, walls, fences – many obstacles to get where we’re going. Nothing too crazy to keep moving, but sometimes we have to go around, sometimes over, sometimes underneath. And it feels like we’re not making any progress. Until, that is, we’re there.
There is a small shack, an out-building of sorts. We go into the small building, where a card table is set up, and two people are sitting there. Reminds me of people collecting money for entrance, except they’re not collecting money. People I know are there, in the back. I haven’t seen these people in years.
Symbols, themes: being reunited with old friends. Teaching the next generation how to live in and under the conditions of life, today.
I just forgot an appointment I had with someone I have never met in person. And I know that could be a fatal move for even a relationship with people that we have met and know.
I feel awful.
But here’s the thing: I can say I forgive myself, even knowing that the other person has said with her own mouth, “Let it go.” But thinking it and saying it don’t make it happen, though they may help lead to that feeling-place, eventually.
But I do have one tool that really packs a wallop. Meditation helps me feel better about these little things that could otherwise pile up and weigh me down. Okay, going to practice my truth.
I’m a bit tired. I stayed up late, my roommate fiddled with the TV through the night, and yes, we are in the same room. Long story, not interested in telling it, right now.
My neurons are scattered across the continent.
Somehow, I open my mouth – a second time – not the first, usually. And that’s when I say something. Stupid. must be. But I’m no junk. So why do I keep expecting different results, given the same behavior on my part.
And I want to be more *productive*. wtf. Do more damage, is more like it.
What’s wrong with -looking- for love? SO many things, so so many things./ (Perhaps I will write a list, one day)
everyone’s perspective is totally theirs to own. and this is mine: that night changed my life. may not have been the best event ever, but it was a special one for me. Wee! this was the first LA massive I ever attended. and one of the last, too, considering that I never took to enjoying massives in the city all that much. But I will never forget getting into the event, finding this music I had never heard before, looking around and everyone was doing their own thing. People didn’t seem to care about much besides listening to the music and moving. I had found my home, a place where people may be dressed up, but for a few moments seemed to be more interested in having a good time than impressing other people. Maybe it was just an illusion. And if it was, I’m okay with that. It’s an illusion that helped me see the real nature of existence for me a lot more clearly. I remember moving more effortlessly than ever before. That’s where a very important door opened for me. And since I went there by myself that eve, I’ve never had a chance to say THANK YOU to the other people with whom I shared that evening with. To this day, I remember the conversations I had, the people I got micro-crushes on, and when I left, things were really different. For one, there had been some crazy wind that night, and tons of trees had been knocked down. After visiting the beach and sitting in the sand and watching the waves for who knows how long, I remember falling asleep with a big kick-drum soundtrack, still running through my head. Thanks for posting that ticket stub; I don’t know when I lost track of that, but that certainly brings back a lot of memories.
Last night, a submarine was safely returned to its port.
Then, some people invited me into the submarine.
They left the port without telling anyone.
I was with these folks, and they were hijacking a big submarine.
I didn’t mind.
We were going to another dimension.
From the submarine, you could launch helicopters.
I thought it was pretty cool.
I was born in a car on a freeway going faster than the speed limit. It was 8am in the morning, on what would be a clear November day, in spite of the smog.
I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the deserts of southern California, along the beaches, and in the mountains. Celebrities don’t intrigue me. But I’m enamored by cute girls, make-up, and bleach. Go figure. It’s in my blood, along with hundreds of other synthetic chemicals.
At the end of August 1995, a precocious junior high school friend invited me to Madison, Wisconsin. I arrived in the morning and apparently too early in the morning for her. When she picked me up from the airport, we returned to her place, and she promptly returned to her room, going back to sleep. Apparently she was rejoining her bedmate, which I didn’t realize until a male occupying her room slipped out, just before she later got up.
Having delivered me to her apartment in a foreign, humid, but green town, I wondered what the hell I was going to do with myself that day, but I ended up drifting back to sleep halfway inside a sleeping bag in the middle of the living room.
I’m not sure how much time had passed when a bomb exploded, and I swear I jumped up onto my feet, somehow leaving the sleeping bag neatly arranged on the floor. Immediately, a downpour ensured unlike anything I had ever witnessed. As a child and young person always sensitive to environmental cues indicating presence of the spirit and deeper significance, this certainly reminded me that unexpected should be expected. And at all times.
And I had been reminded for more than a week to expect the unexpected. Already, as so often becomes travels, so many new sights and sounds get loaded into a traveling souls consciousness far exceeding that of the routine images and interactions one has in one’s daily life. I had seen the Cape, I had visited a tiny island in Maine. I had visited New York City for 24 hours. I had run along abandoned railroad tracks. I had walked along Newbury Street. I had slept in a house older than any I probably had ever visited, although the homestead house in Arkansas might have been older.
Once my friend roused from her companion-vacated bed, we began to piece some of our connections back together. How could I have ever imagined that the next day, I would strain to put threads back togethr that only time could reconnect.
We went out, into downtown Madison. We passed her school. A music store was a highlight. Always loved music stores. After she had shown me around the downtown area, I began to dread the possibility that I was going to be bored out of my mind for the next few days. Then, just as we were about to return to her place, we ran into some people whose energy certainly raised my eyebrows. Thinking back, if I had just known to ask, I would have thought to myself, “What are they on?” I had nothing to reference that their eyes gleamed with the excitement of past dancefloors, projecting into anticipated moments of the night to come.
One, a curly blond-haired guy had procured some tickets to a dance party at an ice rink. Someone else was there I vaguely remember, but I was shy and the exchange was brief. Little did I know the primed condition of their neurons anticipating the sights and sounds to be sensed at the party, a rave. Lady Miss Kier would be there, headlining. Deelight, oh yeah, I knew of them. It was near Chicago. The crew charged up like the tickets were radioactive trailed off in a blur. As we walked back to her place, my friend and I considered the possibility of going out there. The alternative was a play, and it didn’t sound as much fun. She took a nap. I’m not sure what I did. I remembered several new year’s eves from then that some friends took LSD, but I got what I needed from the contact high, the glimmer of the city lights through the dark desert night.
She made dinner for us. It featured pasta and some freezer-burned green beans with mushrooms. I forced myself to eat it. During that conversation, I asked about the likelihood of there being LSD at the event. She said that that’s what the lights and sounds all were designed to make better, the trip. After telling her that I would be interested, I didn’t bring it up again until we got to the party.
I don’t remember the drive there. Apparently, Chicago is 2.5 hours away from Madison. I think someone rode with us. A cute blond girl with a labret piercing. A week later I would get my tongue pierced for the first time. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
When we arrived, I must have been sleeping. I don’t even remember getting off the freeway, but I do remember a guy with overalls and hat like one made famous by the cat in the hat. We went in. I was wearing an orange Sonic Youth T-shirt I had gotten at a Lollapalooza in Denver, Colorado, weeks earlier and some Nike running shoes.
We got inside. Music was blaring, and there were quite a few people there already. Some in the bleachers. Some walking around the outside of the rink, some people on the rink. There were a few people dressed up like robots. I really had never heard music like that music before. Thinking back, it was late 1995. It was old school techno, music that was “old school” even when it was fresh. And it was.
We walked around, split up, did whatever. It seemed like hours had passed. I was getting tired. I had asked my friend if she had found anything, and she said no. I think I started to hint about getting tired. I didn’t want to be a party pooper, but was I supposed to just find a place and crash? We split up again. I would give it a little longer before I was going to have to insist to go home.
I ran into her again. Before I could tell her I was ready, she told me she had found something. She brought me to this muscular guy with a shaved head. He said, “Put out your hand.” He had lost his patience with me before he had met me. “No, put your hand like this.” He motioned for me to make a flat surface with the web of my thumb and forefinger. He dropped a few drops of something on my hand. “Lick it,” my friend said. I licked it.
There was a moment when I knew something was different. I was looking at people in the faces. I was looking at people in the eyes. To this day, I consider that one of the greatest gifts. Maybe you can’t appreciate it because you never were taught *not* to appreciate the beauty in people’s eyes and faces. But even, now, when I look people in the faces on the street, I’m reminded of the gift of having a peak behind what was deeply ingrained and learned behavior. And effortlessly. With a little drop.
Even now, so many images from that night remain with me. They aren’t flashbacks. They are memories. I think of sitting in the bleachers and overhearing some freaks talk about their lives. I tripped out, imaging my going home with them and living in a house with them all, just partying and doing whatever we wanted. This was in stark contrast to my life of studying in a sleepy suburb at a tiny liberal arts college, keeping my grades up, and enduring another year of school. That is nearly what I did, but with a twist.
Maybe it’s chance, maybe it’s fate. A week later, I met someone who would be a partner in psychonautic exploration for years. Within weeks, I would find myself in an environment that would be a home of self-discovery, learning, and tremendous growth from 1995 to 2011.
And we go underground, once more, like cockroaches. Heyhey, I said cock and roaches. Here’s a little of this; pass me some of that.
I’m brainstorming what will be the big issues/interests to me and people like me for the next 10 to 20 years.
I’m calling them “Megatrends” reclaiming the term for me and my peeps.
Ones that matter to me: Privacy technology. Festivals, freedom of assembly, and gatherings. Electronic media. Drug law reform. Biotechnology. Living in a changing environment.
What’s your favorite (something that sounds like a) megatrend?