Greenwich Village is Dead

I swear this area was much more than just a nice place to shop.  There was vibrancy to the ideas and ways of being.  It permeated the air and filled it with possibility.  

Now it's only about the restaurants, cute cafes, in short:  all about consumerism.

I wish I was being too harsh, but no.  Many people would agree, but mostly those who were here before, who remember the vibrancy, the eclectic mix.  The Village was a place you went for Bohemia, to rebel and start a personal revolution.  It wasn't all expensive.  Somebody knew somebody, who knew somebody with a rent-controlled apartment on St. Marks Place.  There were so many artists, so many people claiming disability; rejects and casualties of the 60s.  

But its okay.  I will still eat here and shop.  But I do feel terribly sad doing it.  At least NYU is still around, though its been invaded by vapid Californians.  Oh and there is the Film Forum, and the occasional beatnik who wishes to carry on the Village tradition, without touching his trust fund.

Oh and those book sellers in front of Bobst library.  Who thought me more than school.  Whose two dollar books fed my soul.

Pretty soon it will all be gone.  Either by bomb or Wal-mart.  

  

Dylan Goes Electric

If you get caught up in socializing, being the clown and performer, you lose track of who you are.  Only working to clear your thoughts and beliefs in solitude can give you the strength to face up to who you are.  Most people never realize this, they live years without hearing that inner voice, trusting in themselves.  They give up, drink and smoke it away.    

Class clowns suffer at our expense.  They become popular but really don't spiritually progress because people egg on their hurts for laughter and acceptance.  

"People stopped listening to the music", the Beatles answer to the question of why they stopped touring.  They were not getting better.  They turned into a spectacle.  To get good again they needed to introspect, to go into the studio, to not tour and have fans. They needed to get back to the essence and purity of who they were and what they did.  And the music soared out.  

The same phenomenon with Pink Floyd and the Wall.  The crowd, after a while, made them worse, brought out the worse in them.  You start being devoured by the same people who you wanted to love you.  Like Patrick Suskand's "Perfume", you smell so good people eat you, rip you to pieces.  The more beautiful the peacock the more susceptible a prey.

People fear being alone.  They lose faith in the power of solitude.  But without speaking we really hear.  Without thinking we understand.  Without touch, feel.  It all comes back to us.  

Nature, let it kill us, let it heal us, it is perfect. 

Happiness, the quest for happiness will kill us.  That was so 1990s, to find meaning and fulfillment in what one does.  Now, everyone shut up and get to work.  So you spent your 20s, the best years of your life working for a dream that never came.  Boo-hoo.  Well, now its too late, because you got no hair and your erections are a bit less full.  Do you have enough testosterone in you to do something about it?  How about drinking yourself to death?  Do some coke, or something, fuck some bitches, you will feel a bit better about yourself.  

Your problem is that you seek happiness from the outside.  Or you thought you would become happy following the rules.  You were wrong.  While you scorned the adventurers, called them lazy, irresponsible, you diligently went on with your dull life.  You didn't realize you were playing a lottery, how many people get sick, break down, or if they win even, they've lost that fire.   

Just follow your heart, be not afraid of anything.  There isn't much time anyway so stop trying to make others happy.  

I want to write clearly and well so that my words may be read by the future.  I am part of that tradition of mystics and troublemakers who through charisma and intelligence am able to bring more magic and joy into the world.  

Parents, keep your children away from me.  Like Socrates I will corrupt them though I won't be as easily persecuted as he was, nor will I accept martyrdom.  

To what do I owe my clarity?  First and foremost to never succumbing to feelings of being rushed.  Then to fasting, not just with food but to everything I may develop an attachment towards.  We cannot be a slave to our senses.  

If we allow ourselves to be still and empty we realize that there is something inside us that warms and guides us, an energy within, constantly replenishing and healing, giving vitality and joy.  This world tries desperately to snuff this out.  It is that fire, that force, that can change the world.  If only we harness it, are not afraid of it and let it shine shine shine, on.  

So beautiful, I never want to lose sight of this truth that springs forth.

Tell all the people that you see, follow me, follow me down.  

a greenwich village original

After an evening in NYU's library, writing and studying, I went for a beer at the Belgian beer bar, a place I frequented during my Village days.  It hasn't changed though everything else has.  I felt out of place in the library, I don't recall during my time there as an undergrad seeing that many people there.  What is more striking is that everyone now has laptops and cellphones with them, something we never had.  I wondered if the students are better off with these gadgets.  Are they brighter, more loved, more equipped to take on the world than my generation?

I doubt it.  And then I wondered what a waste all that plastic and metal is if its not making smarter, better people out of it.  Its just an add on, a tool, but the essence of brilliance comes from somewhere else.  

It reminded me of my religious studies professor, back when I was 18 and fresh, who felt the same way about Microsoft word.  People expected the word processor to produce greater quantities of brilliance when all it did was produce greater mediocrity, the great novels came out at the same rate as before.  The same is true with the digital camera revolution, or blogs even.  There is a democratization of the media and higher access but quality is the same.  Fundamentally these tools don't help us become brilliant, they just make life easier for already brilliant people to be brilliant.  

Why is that?  What is it that makes for great students, great art?

I still believe its books, specifically literature.  

I sat there with my fancy 8 dollar beer and pondered what I am sure most people alone drinking ponder:  is this all there is?  There has to be something more, my mind said.  There has to be some meaning, some structure to all this jumbled madness.  Does it only have meaning if my mind makes it so?  What is the independent nature of the world without my mind looking, interpreting, making sense of it all?    

I get those moments where I feel like I am waiting to die.  As if my entire life is one big preparation for death, when everything will be clear, or perhaps it will be too late.  I do everything I can in my life to not die with any regret.  There is nothing I want to leave undone, no desire left unexpressed.  

I finished my beer, unable to even flirt with the bartender.  I walked over to Joe's pizza and asked for a slice of pizza and then went to my version of sunday church, the movies at film forum.  And like always I came out happier, elated, marveling at the exquisite detail of a great film from 1971, "Sunday Bloody Sunday".  It meandered just enough and took risks without falling apart because it moved with such confidence.  I don't know if movies can be made in similar spirit now.  Everyone wants you to quickly get to the point.  But there was a time when the narrative held, and waited while the story took turns for aesthetic pleasure, or to go deeper into some sub-conscious yearning.  

I like the film forum, its a salvation of sorts, but I will say the people who go there are all the NYU film student types with their panama hats, big plastic glasses, tight jeans.  Fucking homosexuals.  

On the way back I picked up a copy of the village voice and was appalled at how bad its gotten.  What the fuck is going on?  Did someone die there?  Too many commas, too much nonsense, a complete waste of time.  Or maybe I am getting old, I don't know, thankfully the Times is still alive and with it and makes me smile from time to time, especially because I know they have developed a love affair with Queens.  You can just tell.  

if you haven't read it already check out the article on Flushing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/arts/02expl.html

ex=1210392000&en=9fd2f7f9db1ba508&ei=5070&emc=eta1

We will always have Queens.  Not Paris, Queens, the times they are a changin and I am glad I am livin in it with you somewhere there reading this sweet heart.  WE will always have Queens and that seven train.  Fuck the village, the future is Jackson Heights.  

SAIS Commencement Speech 2008 by Gabo Arora

So finally this day is upon us, where in a
matter of minutes, we will have a degree from
Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International
Studies, one of the world's leading schools of
international relations.

In the wise words of Bob Dylan: HOW DOES IT
FEEL? To be out on your own? With no direction
home? A complete unknown? Like a rolling
stone? But don't worry, as we hurdle into the
unknown; be comforted by the fact that before us
there have been others.

We are joining a proud more than 60 year
tradition of graduates who went on to be experts
in a wide variety of fields, ranging from the
foreign service to the private sector,
Multilateral organizations to social
entrepreneurship. The diversity of our
pursuits, if the rich history of this school is
any gauge, will be startling.

Besides where we are headed, these two years
have also given us knowledge, experience and
friendships that will last. I am trying to
remember what life was like before SAIS; do you
remember?

There is an extraordinary difference in
perspective that SAIS provides. Before SAIS I
didn't even know there was such a thing as
Realism, I just thought Henry Kissinger was a
bad guy. Now I realize he' s not so bad, he's
just a realist.

Oh Realism, the ultimate aphrodisiac.

And it's not just the curriculum and super star
professors that have been enlightening. It's
been us, the students, each one of you, with
your own stories and experiences and passions.
The accomplishments of this class are
noteworthy.

It seems that no matter what part of the world
you think of, any issue, anything, there is a
SAIS student you can find passionately involved
in making his or her own unique contribution.

Whether its someone writing an op-ed piece for
the Wall Street journal, providing insightful
and humane analysis after their experience
monitoring Pakistani elections or the person who
manages the innovative NGO he founded in Panama
which works to improve the environmental impact
of Foreign Direct Investment on the rural poor,

We have amongst ourselves both the answers and
the questions that we will need as we go forward
into the world. Lets not forget each other
along the long and winding road ahead of us and
more importantly not forget why we came to SAIS
to begin with.

Do you remember why you came?

For me that there was a school where my burning
questions about the world could be acknowledged
and addressed felt like nothing short of
salvation.

Having spent two years working in human rights
in Colombia, South America, I had become jaded
and confused. Despite all diplomatic efforts,
people continued to be killed; the situation
went from bad to worse.

There were so many forces at work in the
conflict - economic, social, cultural,
historical, that I realized I needed more, to
understand more, to study more, to be better and
more effective and also to gain valuable
perspective from people who had worked in
similar situations.

And then I heard about SAIS and I felt that
inner feeling I can only name destiny, call me.

I knew it was a school for weird people. People
who wanted more than just the 9-5 and usual
comforts and trappings of a bourgeois life.
People who needed to believe in something, do
something meaningful and work for their ideals
and values.

We feel less alone at SAIS in each others'
company, knowing that we all are not like the
rest and that together we can forge a new
future.

But lets not forget how we got here to begin
with and all the support we have received from
our loved ones. Our weirdness is probably most
difficult for them, though they may not admit
it.

I remember when I told my mother about going to
Colombia, trying to explain to her I wasn't like
all the rest.

It's hard explaining that to an immigrant who
came to this country with very little. Who
worked hard to put her son through school only
to have him tell her that he is going to some
far off corner of the world to help other
people. An experience I am sure many of the
parents here can relate to.

I was surprised how well she took it at first
about my going to Colombia. She said it was
great, she even seemed happy. A couple of weeks
before leaving I asked her, wait, but mom, are
you sure, you' re not worried that I am going to
some of far off dangerous place? No no, why
would I be worried? She said. Harlem is not so
far and its a lot safer now, uptown Manhattan is
a great place to be, I am so happy, I always saw
you as the Ivy League type.

No mom, I said, Colombia as in the war torn
country, to which she then fainted. It was a
tough time for her I am sure, my being there.
As I am sure it will be tough for many of the
parents seated here, as their children move on
around the world, doing extraordinary work, but
providing great anguish to them as they worry
about their safety or just miss having them
close to home.

I want to thank the parents here for all your
support for our endeavors, and my mom,
especially, who when I told her I was coming
here to study at Johns Hopkins wanted to be
re-assured that Johns Hopkins wasn't also the
name of some other far off war torn country.
(Well, at least not yet) I guess what made her
suspicious again was the fact that instead of
going to Baltimore I was off to Bologna.

(The world is a strange beautiful place, isn't
it?)

There is something special, even magical about
what goes on here.

While we were on this SAIS journey it was easy
to lose sight of what we are part of, how
special and privileged our lives are. Now that
we near its end it's probably dawning on us:

While the rest of the world is engaged in
survival, trying to get through the day, we have
pondered and worked towards understanding the
world and how it works. We build up the
necessary skills to deal with some of the
world's most pressing problems. Global warming,
terrorism, poverty the scope and multi
disciplinary approach SAIS provides to these
topics is astounding. We use political theory,
economics, history, sociology and anthropology
freely and fluidly to make sense of it all.

We have come together from many different paths,
from all over the globe, to study together and
learn from each other.

Its an extraordinary achievement, a capstone to
our formal education and most certainly only the
beginning to a lifetime filled with learning,
questioning and endless conversation, all for
practical aims, to make policies and judgments
that will effect the lives of numerous people.

All to make the world a better place, right?
Isn't that what we all want?

But our caring and good intentions are not
enough. Dictators, totalitarian states, Islamic
Jihadists, all also want to make the world
better, too.

Who doesn't want to make the world a better
place? Everyone does but no one knows exactly
how. Most people lose interest because they
feel that their efforts will be in vain. That
anything they do will have no impact. Or they
become so involved in the daily struggle that
they lose track of what is best, what is good,
what is right – all to survive and make it
through the day.

Is it a luxury now in this world to care to make
the world better?

What does that even mean anymore, better? Your
better may be my worse and if I ask people
randomly "over your lifetime have things gotten
better or worse?" What a variety of stories you
will get depending who you talk to, an Indian, a
Ghanaian, A German, a Bosnian, an Iraqi, a rich
man, a poor woman, a holocaust survivor, or
Roberto Benigni who would say "La Vita E Bella".

They will say yes, no, maybe or perhaps both,
that it gets better and it gets worse. For how
can one distinguish between these stories to
know "A truth?" Is there "A truth?" If there
are many, who is right?

Before even thinking of what is right and wrong
perhaps it is better to first listen, observe,
understand. For to make the world a better
place first entails understanding all of our
stories, our values, judgments, interpretations,
the data, the facts. To make the world better
we first need to understand it.

When I reflect on what the SAIS experience is
about and have to come up with a simple
definition of what it does and what we have been
doing here it's "To understand how the world
works." I know that is a lofty goal and perhaps
impossible, but that is what we try to do here
and the effort, the process, is at times more
important than the outcomes.

Because rather than provide you with "A Truth"
as studying medicine or the law might teach you,
we are taught here to think for ourselves (and
more importantly to be skeptical), to know the
different perspectives, form an opinion and
defend it with gusto.

SAIS serves as the center where we debate and
discuss what "Truth" means to us. This
dialogue, this process, helps us understand the
world, which, when combined with our training in
economics and international relations, gives us
the tools to have better informed opinions and
ideas.

Its only at SAIS that a returned soldier from
Iraq can be seen discussing Trade theory late
into the night with someone who just spent
spring break digging latrines in rural
Guatemala. Where people have gone from
protesting the World Bank to working for it.

Where the prize for best-dressed couple at the
Halloween party is given to an Arab and a Jewish
student, each dressed up in each other's
respective ethnic garbs. The Arab dressed as a
Hasidic Jew, with those curls, and the Jewish
student dressed as Yasser Arafat, with a fake
rifle to boot.

As funny or perhaps blasphemous as that may have
been, I can't think of a more poignant metaphor
for what goes on here. We come together to try
on not only each others clothes but also our
ideas or ways of thinking, to laugh a little, to
test the boundaries of what we hold sacred, to
question the dogmas we have been brought up
with.

Because ideas matter, especially in this realm,
at a policy school in international affairs.
Allow me to paraphrase a quote from Keynes to
put into context the importance of what goes on
here:

"The ideas of economists and political
philosophers, both when they are right and when
they are wrong are more powerful than is
commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled
by little else. Practical men, who believe
themselves to be quite exempt from any
intellectual influence are usually just slaves
of some defunct philosopher."

So lets get it right, lets not lose the strength
to keep trying, lets continue the exercise of
experimentation and figure out what we believe
to be true, what others hold true and reflect on
it because much is at stake.

Because at the root of most battles is the
answer people give to the question: is the
world getting better or worse?

Is the world getting better or worse? What is
your answer? SAIS has been here for over 60
years helping young leaders figure it out and
thanks to the support of numerous people from
all over the globe, we will continue to be here,
to serve and make proud and be grateful for all
of our efforts in this process.

Grazie mille, Thank you all very much and
congratulations to us, class of 2008.

.

--

--

I Dream of Queens

I can't describe it but I get a deep sensation of calm in the neighborhoods of Queens.  The rumblings of the 7 train down Roosevelt Avenue interrupts the habitual thought processes of my mind.  If I happen to be in a conversation I pause to take in the meaning of it all.  I exhale, listen, wait, as the train rides by.  Its but one of the numerous pleasures of Queens living.  That one can walk in the midst of immigrants, hardworking people with no pretensions is a huge relief from the hipster life of manhattan.  

Queens is what manhattan once was.  Home to neighborhood new york, filled with bustling vibrancy and the humility and joy of having little but having the city to fill your heart.  If you don't like or know Queens than you don't understand New York and probably never wanted to live here.  You prefer to live in a gigantic mall which is what Manhattan has become.  New York City has always been a city for immigrants and its vibrancy has come from their neighborhoods mixed with the bohemia it attracted.  El barrio, Lower east side, Harlem, all over-flowing with Jane Jacobian social capital.  Where everybody knew your name.

Even my mother's building in Queens is a constant door bell ringing children playing, recipe trading, tea drinking madhouse.  Filled with colombians, afghanis, pakistanis and the Koreans.  There is no peace, or better, there is peace in no peace.  

Now there are only contrived experiences.  Cute cafes and restaurants where you can meet your yuppie friends for sunday brunch.  There is little that is cutting edge in manhattan and even Brooklyn is now played out.  Queens and the Bronx are the final frontier for all those gentrifiers.

May they never win.  

I feel bad for them in their bubble experiences, alienation, high priced entertainment.  They move in from their horrific suburban lives to live essentially the same way in the midst of what they think is culture.  There is no creativity in their endeavors, if anything, they become refined consumers and define their sophistication by what they take in not what they provide.  They are those couples who live off netflix and are busy planning and organizing more than doing and being.  They have masters degrees, where plastic glasses and are busy talking about great restaurants.  They have succeeded in killing all excitement and spirit by pursuing success.  They have never lived a day in their lives with any risk.  

But I am not worried about New York.  It will be back, as it has constantly gone through its ups and downs.  It will always be some sort of cosmic force.  

In the meanwhile we have Queens.  Go to jackson heights, even long island city, parts of it, like "Local Project", filled with latin artists, korean drag queens and people who still believe , everyday, that the Dream is alive.  

See you on the 7 train.  

AMERICAN GIRL - NUMB

I was with a an American Girl the other night.  She was from LA with money, pretty and relatively intelligent.  Despite all this there was a constant look of unsatisfaction in her eyes.  She needed bigger better faster more to keep her attention from wandering.  She spoke of her ideal man, good looking, full of mystery and many layers.  I told her it seemed she was describing India rather than a man.  

She wanted it all because her wealth and her experiences have accustomed her to the very best, to the extremes of sensations and experiences.  Why hold men to any less standard?  They are like amusement parks, or television shows or drug experiences, they are no longer people.  They are pleasure driven action packed movies.  As sweet as cotton candy and as soft as cashmere sweaters.  They are better than their therapists and much more life like then their vibrators.  

The one factor common to most of these girls is the necessity they have in their lives to be shocked.  Their extreme numbness, a result of the deadening of senses by over-stimulation, leaves them unable to access subtlety.  The only way they feel alive is when something big, vulgar and shocking knocks them out.  

That is why food is big.  Everything big, to finally feel.  Look around American society and you will see this one factor in everything.  Big, intense, extreme, all to make people feel, to shock them out of numbness.  

Look at their films.  Look at the cars.  Look at the what people proclaim to like.  Nietzhe said look to what people worship to better understand them.  

It is a sad state of affairs, American Girl.  You were wild and free once, full of wonder and innocence.  Look what they have done.  What have they done to you?  They ripped you and bit you and tore you to pieces.  Sold you and fenced you and stuffed you with chemicals.  But now, I am here to protect you and hold and destroy you to make you whole again.  We will start with your medicine cabinet and then your fridge.  We will make you feel again.  Take you to the river and wash away your sins.  Its not to late.  

Women!  We need each other to make the world go round.      

Real Change

Real Change

I am having moments of poignant absurdity strike me.  A girl next to me was eating cake from a zip lock bag as I saw crowds of cars filled each with one person, their own personal armor guiding them through the world.  They looked like children playing with big toys, all driven by  their own isolation.  If questioned I am sure all would answer the same:  Necessity.  What is one to do?  We need a car, and to eat fast food because of money and time constraints.  Necessity, that magical state of being that makes us do what we don't really want to do.  Thats the secret in enslaving people, make what you offer seem like a necessity and then all resistance vanishes.  

You need a lawyer, a doctor, an expert, a job, food.  What is truly necessary?

The first step to change is when we challenge what is necessary, think deeply on alternatives.    That takes strength, courage to take risks because you may be wrong along your journey of self-discovery.    

I am re-reading Nietzhe and am still struck by his call for strength in weak times.  The inversion of values is rampant, and single handedly he brought the moral order of the church down with his call of "god is dead".  We must not be slaves to that we have not questioned.

And even once you question it, you may not be able to bring it down, we are all not Neitzhe.  But we can at least try in small unromantic ways, though only if we try and are aware of the importance of ideas, both of ourselves and others.  

Thinking needs to be fashionable again, I agree with Leon Weisilteir's assessment that modern day American society is at its anti-philosophical zenith.  Its pointless to think for many people because they are busy organizing and planning just to survive.  Its astounding how much importance logistics have in our society.  Adolescent boys become high achievers at school merely by using their school planners better.  This is seen as an achievement by us.  But what about instilling in them the passion for what they do? 

We are all being herded for the big slaughter.

I voted for Hillary and now want Obama to win

To blog is to live.  I knew something wasn't right in my life and then I remembered: Yes, blogging.  Why did I stop?  Because I lost faith momentarily in you, dear reader.  I felt you only read these words, from time to time, to entertain yourself.  Like Jon Stewart's daily show you took in the laughter and the emotional fixes to then carry on drinking diet cokes and eating turkey sandwiches.  Popping your pills, shooting up people in malls, addicted to the internet, to your slavery, furthering the demise of manliness with your asexual, hipster, ironic, cynical fashion statements.  Confusing gender equality with gender similarity, becoming your girlfriend's girlfriend, gossiping and talking about her problems, talking about your problems, using all your cell phone minutes about how upset you are about how your father abused you.  Wake up!  Get over it, work, fight, love, and keep going strong.  No time to cry!  Its a war out there and not just in Iraq.  Its in your head, in the battle for the ideas in your head about how you explain the world to yourself.  You are what you believe.  Which is troubling given that I have been suffering a bout of nihilism lately, a nihilism that can only be cured by Obama.  

I have Obama - mania.  I will confess, I voted for Hillary in the New York primary.  I respect the Clinton's even if they are spineless politicians who do whatever it takes to get elected.  I won't even hold it against Hillary for her Iraq vote, for if we remember correctly, to have voted against the War back then would have been the political equivalent of suicide.  The political atmosphere was too contentious.  Look what happened to rep. Mckinney and Boxer and other politicians who stood up to the tide of groupthink that had overtaken the country post 9/11.  Their careers are over and Hillary, along with many others understood the necessity of the being for the war, regardless of how they may have personally felt about it.  Politics is a dirty game and survival is far more important than ideals and convictions.

Hillary understands just how centrist one needs to be to be effective.  This is what is her strength and her weakness and what people love and hate about her.  But she is a practical liberal, someone who feels power is more important than conviction and taking a stance.  This is a fine strategy and one employed by many of the politically savvy.  But it comes with risk.  Its a defensive strategy, one which doubts the inherent power to be a change-maker, someone who could shift the tide of opinion if only they stood up for what they felt was right.  Politics is the art of the possible and the difficulty is knowing just when you will be the change you wish to seek versus being left out in the cold.  I got burned with Nader in 2000.  I ignored all the practical people who told me that it was a wasted vote.  But I carried on because I felt I would be right, that Nader, with his third party politics, would be the change the system so desperately needed.  But I was I was wrong and this election season I was determined not to be duped again.  That is why I voted for the more prudent choice, Hillary, and ignored Obama's hope mongering.    

I voted for Hillary because of her viability, because I felt she was playing the game and when elected would be a voice of reason and change on issues that everyday American's face.  All of her pandering, her politicking I felt was a ply to just get the position and once in it, she would be different.  Its what successful politicians do, George W included who panders and promises, delivering mixed results, but his support base supports him because they understand the importance of compromise in politics.  Democrats, mistakenly, expect the world from their candidate, they want nothing but an outright saviour.  

We can't expect the president of the US to deliver us from all our problems.  That is not their role.  They are more CEO than king.  That is why I felt Hillary was a good conservative bet.  Since my vote, I have changed my opinion.  Obama, with his momentum and skillful organization has demonstrated his viability.  Who doesn't want Obama to be president?  To many of us he was a risky choice.  These past 8 years have been too difficult to warrant huge risks in November, costing the democratic party the election for its flirtations with idealism.  But since super tuesday things are different.  Obama is nothing short of a phenomenon.  And what was seen as his weakness, his race, is turning out to be his strength.

Hillary has insinuated that Republicans will have a field day in bashing Obama given his limited experience against their dirty tactics (think Karl Rove).  But its evident that its far easier to attack Hillary than Obama, for any attack on Obama is seen as being a bit unfair given his inherent underdog status and the danger that it will be misconstrued as racism.  His blackness is kryptonite to Republican tactics.  It provides him with a certain immunity that Hillary doesn't have.

Yes, Hillary has more experience, is more savvy and highly intelligent.  Her dismay at people falling for rhetoric and poetry over substance is understandable.  But I will say that in these troubled times, symbols and what they represent are more important than she may care to acknowledge.  Everyone wants to feel that they are "making" history.  Everyone wants to show the world that United States of America is the greatest country in the history of countries, that in can take a grandchild of a Kenyan sheep herder and exalt him to one of the most important jobs on the planet.  That has its own measured effects and is not just empty rhetoric.  And as far as substance goes, Obama is seasoned and supported enough to get good people around him.  One look at who advises him shows that he is not completely from out of space.  That part will take care of itself, what he provides as symbol is far more important at this moment in history.  He has become the more prudent choice, the better candidate and I am certain that if he is nominated by the Democratic party for President, in November, I will vote for him.      

Move Over Jhumpa Lahiri

My mother has only hit me once during my entire life. I was 7 and it
was early morning. We were on the way to the hospital to see my
father. I knew something was wrong but couldn't figure out why we were
in New York, alone, in an apartment with little furniture. I was
sitting on the dining table and my mother poured me a glass of hot
milk. i can still see the gray sky through the window overlooking the
fire escape. There was a safety gate on the window that made the
dining room feel like a cage. It was very different than our house in
Delhi which was open and free and filled with people to play with.
Here we were alone and I slept with my mother and I remember at night I
could only fall asleep if I rested my leg on hers. I don't remember
when I stopped this habit but I know that morning, in those times I was
still by my mother's side.

My mother was solemn and polite, not her usual alive self. I went to
grab the milk and spilled it and she slapped me. I started to cry and
then she broke down as well. It wasn't easy for her, I could tell, to
be all the way in this crazy city, not sure if my father would live or
die. My mother still tells me the story of waiting on the welfare line
and breaking down. We had gone from being very well to do; buying up
properties in delhi, to living in a one room apartment in Queens with
no money.

My father survived though he could no longer work because of his
health. He stayed at home and no longer had the strenght to pick me up
like he would everyday he came home from work. It became a ritual, I
would run to him and he would pick me up in his strong arms and give me
a present, a "surprise". it ranged from many silly gifts, plastic
tennis ball rackets and baseball cards. Every friday he would bring
home a box of ice cream cones. I had an obsession with ice cream cones
without ice cream. I usually ate them on his lap as he sat in his
favorite chair watching Peter Jennings. He would drink a coke with
ice, in a tall class that I would take sips from.

Now he had no strength and his hair had become all white. He would sit
in bed all day and I would pretend to play around him when I knew he
wasn't paying attention. Soon it was decided that my sister was to
come as well, from India, when it became clear we would not be
returning to Delhi. I longed for the trees. our garden and the park in
front of our house. It was that park which was the constant subject of
a recurring dream of mine. In the dream we would have a picnic, near a
gaping hole, and each time like clock work, I would be pushed into the
hole by my sister. From the bottom of the hole I would look up at her
as she laughed.

I have two sisters. Only one came, the one who didn't push me in that
hole. The other one stayed with my uncle, we called him daddy.
Growing up in a joint family uncles and aunts were daddy's and mummies.
My daddy did not have any children of his own. My father decided on a
whim to leave my sister, the one who throw me in the hole recurrently
in the dream, would stay back in india. My oldest sister was to come
to new york. I was young enough to have forgotten about her and when
she came I was over joyed to have someone to play while my mother was
away at work. She had taken a job as a clerk in an office. It was
little pay but great health insurance that paid for my father's
medicines.

My father started to improve, little by little. He decided he needed
to do something, though he couldn't work consistently. He decided to
open a clothing store, Big Apple Fashions. it was a peculair boutique
and quite a transformation for a civil engineer to re- invent himself
as a salesman of sequinced dresses for plus sized black ladies. They
adored him and with time, there was a following of big black women that
my father would cater to in his store. He had found his niche.

My sister started working in this store and it distracted her from
school. She spent all her afternoons after school there helping my
father. My sister soon developed an eye for big black fashion. I
remember clearly our trips to the fashion district in Manhattan, and
coming home in a sea of garish dresses. The shiny blues, and yellows.
The women would try on the dresses in the fitting rooms and when they
would come out transformed my father's eyes would come alive and I
would see again his spirit renew. He would tell them they looked
beautiful, he would help them accessorize, my sister would be his
little assistant, my mother, worked in the office and she would go
there on weekends and work the cash register.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK STAY TUNED

discipline makes things easier - fitter, happier, more productive

I took psycology in high school with expectation, feeling it could help
my adolescent problems. Like all beautiful things that encounter
formal instruction, school figured out a way to kill it. If sex was
introduced into the curriculum, the grading, competition and i am sure
the poor teaching would ruin it as well. It would turn us off from
fucking and make us dread it. The present day anxiety is bad enough,
with the advertisement and pop culture references that penetrate the
sub conscious.

Like this ad on the subway: Don't let erectile dysfunction ruin your
sex life.

Thats like saying: don't let your lost limb prevent you from having a
limb.

And it wasn't erectile dysfunction that ruined your sex life. It was
something else, don't blame the messenger.

There was one thing in that psychology class. When students complained
that if only school started later, not so early at 8am, people would be
on time. My teacher rightly said people would be late to school no
matter what time it opened for the simple reason that they hate it.

Discipline is often used to make us to do things we don't want to do.
And what about self-discipline? Why is it necessary? why do you need
to push ourselves to do something thats good for us?

All if our actions come from either love or fear. If you push
yourself, push yourself with love.

I sat in on a free group meditation on 42nd and 5th ave. Afterwards
there was time for sharing, questions and answers. This woman asked if
she could read a book on meditation. Such a new york fucking question.
umm, can you recommend a film, a documentary, a short story, a field
trip, that will outline and make me understand the path to
enlightenment? No. Thats what I wanted the teacher to say. And I
could tell thats what she wanted to say, but she didn't because she is
more empathetic than I am. The other people couldn't be aware, without
controlling, without judging. I had similar problems, and that is what
is most potent about meditation. It really makes us stop to realize
what we are doing.

At 42nd and 5th ave, the center of the world, in one of the most
important islands in the history of mankind, you have these people
struggling with their wealth, and problems, family and sufferings.

When the teacher asked me how it went for me. I said I kept
fantasizing, sexual fantasies, of course.

Gramsci 2008

"Living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a
citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism,
perversion, not life"

Antonio Gramsci

"I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides.
Those
who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan.
Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life.

That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference
operates with great power on history. The indifference operates
passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted
on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the
raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that
weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their
will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify,
and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve
the power.

The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is
the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who
consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as
the one who didn't know; the active as well as the indifferent.

Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few
ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have
happened? I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their
whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one
liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and
gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they
have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not
squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them. I am a
partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future
city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience.
And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what
happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the
intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the
window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan.
That is why I hate the ones that don't take sides, I hate the
indifferent".

Every morning I get my green tea on 42nd street at 5th avenue from a portly white guy with a big smile. I don't know if he is gay or what but the looks he gives me make me sheepish and deep down make me smile as well. He knows it. He knows that his smile and bright eyes flatter me and make me feel like a beautiful woman. Today I decided to look in him the eyes, but I couldn't, his love and admiration is so strong that it makes me want to hide. When I finish my tea, he always, without fail, says goodbye in his own flirtatious way.

He makes me feel like a movie star, like one of the pretty people in magazines, this guy.

The power we hold within us called love is enormous. What that man does every morning for me, why does it make me feel so uncomfortable yet so good? I look for him everytime now and when he is not there I smile at the other workers but nobody does it like he does it. He is not particularly attractive and perhaps he is autistic but I thank nature for making wonderous gems like him to shine in this deep dark night we call the world. People who do not give in to their circumstances and are shaped by something more than their environment. Their spirit and strenght comes from the past, will go into the future, will forever be with us no matter what happens to the human race.

It is untouchable. Hitler couldn't eradicate it and neither will brand America, or anything else. It will always be there waiting for us and hit us when we least expect it.

After my tea is over, I see the black circus shows in front of the library, our black youth break dancing for money, 40 years after the civil rights movement and I wonder about progress when black youth dance and jiggaboo for white midwestern audiences that smile and feel good that they saw the real authentic new york. They saw the black people dance. Good thing they are not in jail. Aren't they talented? I am not amused but then again what can I give them. They make their money and I am in awe of their muscular strong agile bodies. How did they get bodies like that eating mac and cheese with spam and kool aid.

Incredible strenght, charm and character, this world we live in takes the most superior of races and attacks it.

Lets just love then. Love is all we have in this world. Its the only revelation worth having. We can only love, each other, into the night. Let us come together and be true. You know how much I need you.

Waking up besides a sleeping woman, looking at her breasts and body and holding it tight, into the night.

Slow down

My refusal to run around, is it my strenght or weakness? It makes me
different. I move without moving, to the "unmoved mover's" beat.

True New Yorkers don't sit at home. Growing up we spent idle time
playing on the street, whistling to girls from the stoop, there was
always a constant air of conspiration.

In doing nothing you did a lot. Talk, watch, shout, bouncing balls,
making deals, contemplating the universe from the depths of the
concrete maze. Watching Kitty Genovese get mugged.

There is no inherent vibrancy and life to this city. Every tree in
central park is planned, a constructed work of art. All of lower
Manhattan is granite. The spirit that moves through Washington Square
comes from the native burial ground underneath.

How difficult to be indifferent to the city of love and love lost.

I roamed the streets weeping in fits of mental anguish and unemployment.

Growing up is always difficult, no matter where you are though no place
makes you as conscious of the camera, the cinema, the symphony of it
all than this maddened, jumbled dream.

I know many have written and spoken of, alluded to what I write.
Though it will never be enough, I will never get my fill of hearing,
understanding and feeling the power of the place.

This is Shiva's city, of destruction and creation, life and death on a
daily basis. Where only illusion can set you free. Where you long to
leave and never come back, knowing each passing day and night makes it
more difficult to adjust anywhere else.

I only sleep well on trains now or if my window is open to the noise of
the street. Aeroplanes and taxis and the rumble of people, everyday I
see my lover, my killer, judas, sometimes I see my father again.

He is carrying a suitcase and his thermos. His trench coat is open,
his russian hat sits lightly on his head. He eats his tomatoe and
cheese sandwich while looking out into the crowd. Between sips of tea
he whistles and smiles. The New York times under his arm, rushing home
to catch Peter Jennings on the 7pm news. Eating dinner, contemplating
life on his favorite chair. 11pm Ted Koppell on Nightline and then
1130 Johnny Carson, just his monologue and then good night sweet dreams
to do it all over again.

Sometimes my parents would stay up late to watch Benny Hill. Thats
when I knew that they were in love, from the start.

A review of I'm Not There - a parody of a self parody

Ironically, this film is sacrilege. It was tempting, I am sure, to
assume that one could make a film to represent Dylan, the way dylan
himself is: nothing sacred, constant flux, whirlwind genius, in sum,
an American enigma. But Todd haynes is not Dylan, nobody is, and any
attempt at imitation of the spirit of the that man trivializes. I
don't know whats worse, this movie or the first time I heard the
Beatles in a commercial jingle selling potatoe chips. The inner
sensation of violation is the same.

I saw it in Manhattan at the Film Forum and wanted to scream Judas to
the screen. Dylan proved everyone wrong, with time, but Todd haynes
won't. Because Todd Haynes is an imposter, a conscious artist trying
to do something big when with Dylan, the simple stories and songs are
enough. Scorcese's film is grander in this aspect and nothing can top
Don't Look Back in its understated simplicty with moments of poignancy.
I can't believe the NY times, the entire art scene gave this movie
such hype and credibility. Hyper- constructed art projects are
ridiculous, they are vain glorious, self referential, camp, and try to
hard. Susan Sontag is rolling over in her ashes. Did nobody read
Notes on Camp?

I re-read it last night in a fit of rage. The part of about the Jews
and the Gays is striking. How both groups looked to culture, to find a
niche within it, to gain acceptance in mainstream society. The Jews as
vanguards of morality, explaining their affinity to liberalism and
communism, while the Gays became vanguards of aesthetics, explaining,
well, explaing them. I have never put together how important the City
was for their existence and how without the urban enviroment they could
never survive in America.

The city the city, I am going down with this ship. I am getting office
space in the Freedom Tower.

Athens, Rome, New York.......

"You walk across the hall with that flower in your hair"

The importance of men to compliment the hysterics of women. The
father, strong and able to command discipline. The mother love. That
is the best dynamic a boy could ask for. Nature.

Many boys now have men for mothers and pansies for fathers. They grow
up confused.

I live and breath this city. I feel its deep secrets within me and now
understand its cruelties and gifts. It makes you then breaks you and
then puts you all back together again. ( Humpty dumpty)

It may be that after all my wanderings I will return here, the city of
my metaphysical birth, where my father took his last breath, where I
kissed my first German girl and we spent post-coitus smoking cigarettes
and talking of her Nazi grandfather. Where the staten island ferry is
the best poor man's first date. And also that day I found god on a
street corner in the west village fighting death, who had taken the
form of a homeless man.

It's all here for me. My poverty, my numerous weaknesses all have
dignity here. I can re-invent myself, let go of all my friends, my
name, my people, forget it all and start again.

I would see them occasionally ice skating in Central park, falling
down, they would offer a hand and pick me up and for a moment we would
look and recognize each other and then politely move on without saying
anything. They will understand, the overwhelming burden of history, of
love lost, the only way to survive is to pretend to forget.

This morning I read a story in the Times about 7 Saudi men who
descended upon a couple and raped them both, both man and woman,
repeatedly in an abandoned building. It turned me on, tremendously.
Fucked up, but true, like the rape scene in a Clockwork Orange, there
is something about sex and violence that is deeply rooted in our
collective psyche.

This Hobbesian state, this experiment in order, peace and tranquility,
i don't know anymore. Its as if we repress a potentiality, that spills
over in punctuated moments, engulfing us. Perhaps the obsessive
control, the obsessive desire to live in a utopia is what leads to
perversion and cruelty of the highest order. Prisons are the highest
representation of that, and the human spirit, breaks free, makes a leap
either called genius or insanity.

"it is impossible to describe what is necessary, to know what horror
means, horror has a face, you must make a friend of horror, if they are
not friends, they are enemies...

I remember when I was with special forces...we went into a camp to
inoculate children, we left the camp after we inoculated the children
for polio and then this old man came coming he was crying, and they had
come and hacked off every inoculated arm, there they were in a pile of
little arms, i remember, i cried, i wept, like some grandmother, i
wanted to tear my teeth out, i wanted to remember it, i never wanted to
forget, and then I realized, like I was shot by a diamond bullet
through my forehead, my god the genius of that, the will, perfect
genuine, crystal pure, and then I realized that they were stronger than
me, men who fought with their hearts, who had family and had children
and were full of love but they had the strength to do that. if I had
ten divisions of those men than are troubles would be over very
quickly. Utilize primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without
passion, without judgment because it is judgment that defeats us." -
Brando

God Bless Non-Judeo Christian Cultures

Befriending an Arab has made me aware in the difference in outlook of upbringings of mono-theistic cultures versus the rest of us pagans. I grew up in New York City, my Hindu background and my time in India, have influenced my psyche to a large degree. I am something new, unexplainable, not yet definable. I perplex both the western and eastern mind. Part new york part new age, mixed with indian, latin, jewish and black influences, my sense of self is fluid and in influx. I become a fat Elvis singing pre-Revolver Beatles with no hint of irony or self-pity. This bothers the monotheists. They want one person, one whole, a consistent ideology, they see lack of integrity where I see possibility and greater truth. The whore, the beggar, the thief, they are a part of all is us, we must transcend through them rather than avoid them. Evil has to be played with to diffuse it. My father, I remember, in a fit of trying to understand who I was asked whether I had a conscience. I was 13, burning mailboxes, stuffing pigeons in microwaves, torturing cats and starting forest fires on a routine basis. "Don't you have a voice inside you that tells you not to do things." I didn't know what he was talking about. My religion was Guns and fucking Roses. I stole money from my mother's purse to run to the store to buy appetite for destruction, my first album. I came home, pumped up the volume while my parents were away at work and thrashed the house with baby powder. There was baby powder everywhere. This inspired my mother to put plastic covers on our sofa, which destroyed any warmth one could feel on cold saturday mornings watching cartoons.

I don't have a voice inside me that tells me what to do. I do what a I feel like, when I feel like. I am a selfish, arrogant, rebellious person who doesn't give a shit about honor and pride. And when I meet people who do care about such arcane ideas, it gives me the creeps. I know right away that these people are capable of the worse human atrocities. Honorable persons kill and maim to much higher degrees. I just hurt people's feelings and disappoint them. I am much too much of a mercenary to kill someone for some idea, or ideal, like honor and pride. I have no people, no allegiances, I move with the wind and am just here to have a good time before the party is over. I want to taste all the food, sleep with all the women, make money and spend it, travel and see things, sing songs and care for the weak, all because it feels good.

I am talking about love, love your neighbor, till it hurts.

You, you with your ideals, your honor, dignity and pride. Go fuck yourself. Take your morality and die with your repression, may worms eat your insides away. You are a sinner against life. Sit in your office, take your drugs, pride yourself on your efficiency and talents. What good will it do you, perhaps it will give you 20 years of security but security never ever gave anyone life.

The illusion of safety is more dangerous than danger.

And this is to everyone who has gone to, has served or has had anything to do with the war in Iraq. You're all war criminals. Don't ask me to support you, to feel bad for you, or feel grateful that you carry the torch of imperialism. Whether you like it or not, you are complicit to murder in the name of who knows what. Shut up with your ideals, about freedom and our way of life. We are all slaves! To anxiety, to shopping, to bulimia, to small cock size, to fatness, to gasoline cars, walmart, tv, internet, can't get it up and can't take it down. How long are you gonna let them push you around! How long! I bet you like it, I bet you like getting shit on, I bet it gives you the kicks because you feel you deserve no better because they got your mommy and daddy in the 1950s and made them zombies and then you weren't breast fed and you were fed TV dinners and now you re-live it every week in therapy. And you cry and don't know why.

"American boy, American girl, most beautiful people in the world. Son of a frontier, indians swirl..."

There was such greatness. There was the great big open in front of us, we were free to be whatever we wanted. No government could control us, this was the land of plenty, the last great unknown. And rather than bravely face it, fear took over, and we lost our way and sheltered ourselves from our selves.

The earth will always be here, waiting for us to awaken out of our sickness. It waits indifferently, knowing in the end of all our running around we come back to the Mother. Don't be afraid to live, my brother. My jihad does not entail suicide bombers but people who LIVE and FIGHT and are bombs of light and knowledge and truth.

And it is more than just willing it, you have to have a regimen.

1. no tv

2. no pharm drugs

3. no deodorant

4. no sugar free gum

5. no fast food and sodas, consume NOTHING that is advertised. Its a simple and brilliant rule.

6. use libraries, if you can more than one, angels and homeless people are there, and they both will take care of you.

7. No cars, driving makes you dumber. (an exception is made for cross country American trips and trips in general into the wild)

Don't anything out of fear or obligation. Do it for the thing itself, consciously and with love.

And realize that there are no guarantees. Nothing is fair, there is no justice, just laws of nature, and like nature, that is so loving, it is also cruel and indifferent. Either way a life spent in HER is a life spent living. You can choose to be inside, to be in your POD, living anywhere, even mars, with your cute cafes, and food, and computer and all the rest of the nonsense. Do it, play with it, put it on as one would a shirt, but don't be attached to it, it is not essential, man. It is just an illusion. Deep down, it is simple, what makes goodness and greatness.

It is no contradiction to drive to the ANTI-car meeting. Do it because it is necessary. Just because something is necessary does not make it good. i.e Modern medicine, warfare, etc, etc.

The answer is not the WILD. Modern living cannot and should not be rejected. It gave us the city, and the Novel. No time before was better than now. Enough of the empty romantics. You just got to control it, and clear your mind. Its an illusion. The most striking of beauty is possible sometimes in what seem like hopeless situations. We let our guard down, and when you flow with it, the truth and beauty find you and fill you. There is no rule-book. No way to make it happen, though certain activities can make it more likely there is never a guarantee. We are in the most perfect of systems, there is a deeper harmony, if only we are not afraid and accept risk.

The wisdom of insecurity

When we compare human with animal desire we find many extraordinary differences. The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification. This is largely due to anxiety, to the knowledge that a constant supply of food is uncertain. Therefore eat as much as you can while you can. It is due, also, to the knowledge that, in an insecure world, pleasure is uncertain. Therefore the immediate pleasure of eating must be exploited to the full, even if it does violence to the digestion.

Human desire tends to be insatiable. We are so anxious for pleasure that we can never get enough of it. We stimulate our sense organs until they become insensitive, so that if pleasure is to continue they must have stronger and stronger stimulants. In self defense the body gets ill from the strain, but the brain wants to go on and on. The brain is in pursuit of happiness, and because the brain is much more concerned about the future than the present, it conceives happiness as the guarantee of an indefinitely long future of pleasures. Yet the brain also knows that it does not have an indefinitely long future, so that, to be happy, it must try to crowd all the pleasure of Paradise and eternity into the span of a few years.

Thus the brain designed to produce this happiness is a fantastic vicious cycle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or collapse-providing a constant titillation of the ears, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost inescapable noise and visual distractions. The perfect "subject" for the aims of this economy is the person who continuously itches his ears with the radio(or ipod), which goes with him at all hours and in all places. His eyes flit without rest from the television screen, to newspaper, to magazine, keeping him in a sort of orgasm-with-out-release through a series of teasing glimpses of shiny automobiles, shiny female bodies, and other sensuous surfaces, interspersed with such restorers of sensitivity-shock treatments-as "human interest" shots of criminals, mangled bodies. wrecked airplanes, prize fights, and burning buildings. The literature or discourse that goes along with this is similarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to replace every partial gratification with a new desire.

For this stream of stimulants is designed to produce cravings for more and more of the same, though louder and faster, and these cravings drive us to do work which is of no interest save for the money it pays - to buy more lavish ipods, sleeker cars, glossier magazines, and better TV sets, all of which will somehow conspire to persuade us that happiness lies just around the corner if we will buy one more.

It isn't that the people who submit to this kind of thing are immoral. It isn't that the people who provide it are wicked exploiters; most of them are of the same mind as the exploited, if only on a more expensive horse in this sorry-go-round. The real trouble is that they are all totally frustrated, for trying to please the brain is like trying to drink through your ears. Thus they are increasingly incapable of real pleasure, insensitive to the most acute and subtle joys of life which are in fact extremely common and simple.

Generally speaking, the civilized man does not know what he wants. He works for success, fame, a happy marriage, fun, to help other people, or to be a "real person." But these are not real wants because they are not actual things. They are the by-products, the flavors and atmospheres of real things - shadows which have no existence apart from some substance.

Jazz words - blessing to the almighty Coltrane

The below is best read when listening to "Afro Blues" by John Coltrane off his "Live at Birdland" album. Listen to it and read and feel. It was written during the song, and was what came from me as the song played in me. A form of spiritual meditation. Why don't you try it? if you don't have this song, take any coltrane song and listen and as you listen write what comes to you. Go with it, flow with it and just write, don't worry about anything. Post it in the comments. The power of coltrane. It will pull you through the deepest blue.


"In the beginning there was love. Powerful and all encompassing. It danced and made us dance. We played along with it and it played with us. There was harmony and beauty and then Love started playing wild and dared us to move and while Love moved we moved and we went out to the outer limits of our being. Then Love disappeared though we kept on dancing. It's the moment when your father takes you out for a bicycle ride. The training wheels are on and then he takes them off and he holds you as you peddle. All you have is the park and the morning sun, and that quiet, a deep quiet because everyone else is at work while you and your father struggle against time. Its time to fly and he holds on and then gently lets go and you are not sure if its your own strength that carries you or your fathers and then you fly because you realize its all one and the same. You are moving into the wind and the wind moves with you, carries you and the legs move, though the mind is at rest but the body moves. Father leaves and we fall. And we keep at it, we start finding another, another person to replace Love, the father, that hand that held us. and we work and there is playing but we don't listen to each other and then just patterns and repetition and chaos, and she keeps hitting the same key and then a thunder bolt; Love is screaming back, showing the way over powering our disharmony though now our disharmony is part of the harmony, Love can even take our disharmony and make it beautiful and right. Now that same key she kept playing is like the beating of my heart. Its the eternal beat of the Earth and the sax runs wild, and we all fade into its ecstasy. We play, though listen in wonder, our hands move though our mind is still, focused and rested on the divine, the light and its like the beginning though it isn't because this time we are conscious of our disharmony though grateful and humbled that the greater, the Love is making us a part of it and can take anything we do, forgive it and work with it to make greater Love and then we play, we play, we don't care, no more self consciousness, no more self, no more ego, we play and play and we go strong until when? Until the end, for the end surely comes, as Love always comes and goes. As we always come and then right before, just before, we all play the same tune we heard in the beginning, and Love , this time we carry Love, if just for a moment, before the end. And its over and when will it begin again? When did it end? (Applause) "