For Sontag

Susan Sontag is a powerhouse. Reading her gives clarity and vision to my pursuits. I immediately am reminded of the "why" in everything I do, the importance of words, thinking and feeling. Feeling and floating intensely through her mind. I run to her when I feel disordered, when the words don't work, when there is no harmony.

It is never as clear with other people of the magnitude, the
responsibility and seriousness writing, art brings to the world. I
read her into the night last night before bed. The experience, the
thrill in reading an essay on pornography, things I always felt and
became true only when she put them to words. She placed them gently in
me, slowly diffusing through my mind, body, my heart and soul. She
makes essays rock and roll. She would make a philosopher king trade
his kingdom for her paragraphs.

How her words opened me to new possibilities of being. How a woman at
some time in the 60s in her New York City apartment with her pen
reached to touch me last night in my solitude, is the true mystery of
life. That it happened, if only once, gives me enough strength to keep
going on awake and aware, not wasting the dawn, nor counting on any
eternal reward. She's enough. She's the one.

We all go through this though only some really move. She moved. She
moves. She moves through us.

"On keeping a journal. Superficial to understand the journal as just a
receptacle for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who
is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express
myself more openly than I could any person: I create myself." - S.
Sontag

There is no hope only love

In my difficult moments I remember to remember to feel blessed. I
realized that in the last few pages of "The Stranger" by Camus, the
benign indifference of the universe. The death of god made me more
religious. Knowing I could pray to something that would never or could
never exist made me happy. It made prayer worth it and more valuable
when one knew that nothing would ever come of it. The universe would
be indifferent, it would move and kill, give and take life and pleasure
with no order and reason. In such a static world there was no place
for morality, no one to hear your prayers, no help or mercy you were
alone and you better get used to it. A prayer with a guarantee is not
a prayer but a business relationship. One has to pray for the sake of
praying.

And I remind myself that I was born alone and will die the same, though
there have always been people along the way who have held me. My
mother, beautiful women, what would I do without them? Oh just hold me
before I go back into the that deep big black where your caresses and
the sunday afternoon sun won't warm our sea bathed bodies. But the
spirit rebels and wants to hold on to the beauty forever though the
more I try the more it eludes me, and the less I try the more it
spirals out of control. And I can't give up can't give in as I walk
the tightrope to your heart. Let me fall into you. Come on love.
Come on love. Just one more time before the flowers burst their life
in us.

If everyday I was reminded of the fragility and finite in the infinity
maybe I could finally live. Instead I am forced and pushed and pulled
and the more I try to figure out the more arrogant I become because I
think yes, I figured it out. And the more I know the less I know
because I realize that I am just a part of the harmony that my moments
of joy is when I flow in stream into the greater rhythm that
continuously hums around me. You got to float without sinking
and swim without trying and then you hit it and you really hit it.

Don't give up just yet. There is still much much more. Many more
characters to play and much more to feel before we leave. And we all
leave, that is the one constant the one truth: death. I miss biji and
I can't believe she is gone though she is gone. I called her before
she passed and I said "I love you" and she said "I love you too beta"
and she said it again with emphasis, with all the energy a dying woman
could have. It broke my heart though sometimes you need to break
things to put them back together again. Love to the spirit that
surrounds and guides us.