in my dream, i'm driving a car (that noise you're hearing right now is the snoring corpse of carl jung) and i have the omni-present dream-knowledge that god is in the back seat. i look in the rear view mirror. in my dream, god is hunter s. thompson and my hair is short. he doesn't say anything and i'm thinking how long it'll take for my hair to grow back.

in another dream, hunter s. thompson is sitting beside me in a theatre and he's showing me black and white films of what my life should look like. i don't remember the specifics, just a general feeling that most of his suggestions are either rediculous or describe some aspect of how my life already is.

the first one is simple. something about me is different and the better parts of my psyche — in this instance probably something in the way of a heavily independent reason, symbolized by thompson — is content to sit back and see where this is going.

while in the company of an incredibly intelligent and passionate person, a new friend, a couple of weeks ago i came to realize something very basic: i am not the center of known existence. not much, if anything, happens specifically for or because of me. in turn, the events and people that i experience are on loan to me from the universe. there is no ownership except for the ways i choose to be affected by those experiences. i have my time as a participant in the experience and it goes and i have no claim to lay on what has happened or especially on a person. what i do have is memory, cognitive and spiritual, and the sapience with which to internalize whatever useful lessons can be found.

i have no idea what to do with this, other than be ok with letting things go.

the second dream isn't as clear. tonight, i consulted my selectively useful tarot deck. without getting too detailed, it says i can have what i want, but i have to take conscious control, admit my personal limits, and stop chasing unrealistic goals. and i'm going to have to let something go.

like i said, selectively useful. on the bright side, in my forthcoming influences, i have a queen of wands.

just got back into the mundane world, after a 4-day weekend in the mountains with a very new group of friends. not knowing a single one of them, i packed on friday to go join a bunch of other pagans at a retreat and then less than 5 hours after i broke camp today and said goodbye to mostly everyone — i regretfully missed a couple of very special people — i'm back at work making a newspaper.

i went with no expectations. the real purpose for going was because it was something i'd never done and i'm on a mission to grow out of some of my limitations. not long ago, 4 days in a place i've never been with tons of people i've never met would've been unthinkable. and aside from sweat lodge, i'd never actively participated in group spiritual situations.

instantly striking was how open and welcoming everyone was. i kept meeting people and didn't shake a single hand — this bunch was big on hugging. and smiling. how wonderfully unique.

i really clicked with a small handful of people who have been coming to events with this group for a while, and their openness was contagious. i'm normally too reserved to tell a person i think they're beautiful — not just aesthetically, but intellectually and spiritually — and i found myself saying what i really thought more than once. i probably won't try to look them up out in the real world. like in fight club, even if i talked to them out here i don't think i'd be talking to the same person.

some things happened for me this weekend that i probably won't ever relate to another person, firing neurons like dreams i don't remember until i see what i dreamed play out. the only way i can describe it is that i saw stars burning so bright that they required the giving of no light to see. there are some tears you want to save in your freezer like a keepsake from the last snowfall you'll ever witness and you don't dare let them gather and exist on the other side of your memory because if you do, they'll fall and be lost.

one pretty profound event i don't mind putting into words — on the first night, at the revel fire, i was handed a drum. i joined the other drummers and watched while people danced. i have blisters on my hands from manifesting the thunder given to me by the gods with the drum i was playing. stepping in and out of a beat with other drummers, owning the sound collectively and then putting bits of myself in to make it momentarily unlike any sound that's ever been heard, was an incredibly meaningful experience. very soon, i need to buy a drum. that was a powerful kind of magic i've never felt and i have a deep desire to learn to make it a part of me.

like the way a woman's scent lingers on her pillow and slowly disappears, i'm going to miss the feel of the river that i bathed in once i make it home and take a proper shower.

i turned 26 this weekend, and all these events are the context for that. in the future when i think back to this year i started yesterday, those special people and that special place will top a list of immaterial, dear things that are irrevocably intertwined with it and the energy of the basis for everything that happened after.

i know i didn't put much effort into giving this a structure to make it flow well. it's more of a collection of thoughts than a genuine communique. sorry mom, sorry god.

last month i braved the flood waters of north arkansas and made my way up to the midwest to visit my future yankee bride. i got to meet a fantastic group of people she met during her last semester in college. these were the kind of people i should've been hanging out with in college. we met them all at a party, and there was drinking and revelry.

following a theme that's been pretty stong for me lately of breaking through old limitations , i danced at this party. i never dance. it was mr. blue sky, electric light orchestra, and you really can't not at least WANT to dance to that song.

at work, when everyone is complaining that something needs to be done, instead of waiting for a leader to follow i've been becoming the leader. at this party, instead of wanting to not be so self-conscious that i can't just let myself look like an idiot, i danced. actually, it was more like i imitated the act of dancing, pieced together from movies and other parties and the people directly around me. but it was so far outside my normal comfort zone and it was invigoratingly liberating. and it was a fitting goodbye to my youth.

i've heard of different criteria for when one's youth ends: when you realize you're going to die someday, when you finally see your parents as imperfect regular people and forgive them for it. i think mine, essentially, ended while i sat there later with my arms around my soul mate and i watch everyone else continue to dance after i finially called it quits. it occurred to me that even in the act of participating in that fun, they're at a place that i can never return to. for them, the real concerns of life are still ahead and their dancing and fun are much more free and natural while mine was re-enactment.

a very convincing facsimile, but a re-enactment still. i engage in that bahaviour and i'm escaping something i'm already engrossed in. even if their engaging in those same behaviours is a manner of escape, it's escape from something that doesn't have them yet and is still only nipping at their heels. that night, as liberated as i felt and as much as i enjoyed the rum and the conversations and the cigarettes shared out on the porch in the cold, i enjoyed it with a sense of nostalgia. my time for that degree of care-free love of life's experiences is gone, as are the people i shared — and i can't help feeling that i wasted, or maybe a better word is squandered — it with.

we get together when we can and remember collectively,mostly without speaking it, what we were like then. we talk and we play and we embrace and we sing, and it's all with a desire to rewind the tape and place ourselves at some point on the timeline that predates most of the history and pain of becoming real adults. we visit those places and we know none of us are the same people now and we're just beginning to get our own taste of the eternally handed-down bittersweetness in understanding that as much as we wish we could reverse or at least slow down, we have no other choice but to go forward and live our lives in whatever we find ahead. with the fact that we were young once down-graded to business class with other novel comforts that sometimes make up our daydreams.

wait! i can explain! oh, rockeh...

working at the library has all but killed what free time i used to have during the week. by the time my day at the paper ends just before midnight, all i want to do is go home and throw my tired ass in bed. so that's what i do. if i don't i get less than 5 hours to sleep before i have to wake up and go back to the library. so my blog here has taken a back seat, even though i think about it and the people i know here often.

in march, a friend of mine invited me to sweat lodge with his family. spending the whole day on indian time definitely took some getting used to, but the whole experience from setting up the lodge to starting the fire for the stones to the actual sweat itself was very enriching.

being inside the lodge reminded me of a visionary experience i once had in which i couldn't see but i could sense a host of other individual consciousnesses all huddled around me very close. i took that vision to be a validation of spiritual existence before life, since i what i experienced directly after was very much like birth and then infancy on all experiential levels. it made me wonder if that might be a secondary purpose of the sweat lodge — to simulate pre-birth both spiritually and (very much so) physically.

i was already familiar with a lot of their spiritual concepts, like the directions and corresponding colours and meanings, which made that aspect pretty eacy to flow into. i was very impressed by the idea that they acknowledged "the great mystery" as an element of their religion, and many of the prayers i bundled into cloth and wore around my wrist during the sweat were sent to the great mystery. and i prayed alound, too, which is something i never do. i prayed for guidance on my path and for the wellness of the two people who mean everything to me. i could feel a smile i wasn't consciously causing to happen, and i couldn't be sure because of all the, you know, sweat, but i think i might have cried at one point. like a relief kind of cry. like crying into bob's bitch tits at remaining men together.

a week later, i made a fire in my back yard and was laying next to it on the grass when i started seeing stars that aren't normally there. not like satellites. there were the normal always there stars, then there were literally thousands of stars pulsing on and off like birth and death and rebirth. maybe i was being shown cosmic history on fast forward. it actually reminded me a lot of when space ships in sci-fi movies are about to go into hyperspace and travel faster than light, the way the stars start that stretchy thing just before the ship and the universe get on the same page. this made me think i was on the cusp of some manner of long-distance travel of space, time, and/or dimension.

i haven't seen or felt anything like it since.

finding the mainstream media too limiting, a mild-mannered reporter takes his bitterness toward pop culture to the web.

we're still getting things assembled, but it's basically there. marvel as i capitalize proper nouns and obey other grammar rules!

if my drawing skills were what they used to be, i'd make a comic about a reporter who dresses up in a costume and goes out and commits massive acts of vandalism and poetic terrorism on slow news days so he'll have something to write about.

no work tomorrow, so tonight i'm staying up to paint. sometime i'd like to try a coast to coast a.m.-style experiment and co-ordinate a group of people to send me creative energy at a time when i know i'll be painting and see what happens. if you'd be down with that, let me know and i'll have my people call your people.