one day old fool, you gonna get this country in a war that they not gonna fight for ya, which means you gon' have to fight it yourself

on one hand i feel the compassion and the necessity for awareness in this freshly globalized world.  on the polar hand i find it such a disgrace that the united states of america so arrogantly informs its citizens through a single-minded media with the agenda of spreading fear and undeserved patriotism.  a fear based culture only perpetuates the thickening of boundries between us and encourages its people to manifest ignorance and anger towards other cultures.  it makes me really upset that the united states of american news only shows its people news from other coutries when there is an agenda to be spread if not the pollution of fear.  why it is that there are not laws against what is covered on the news is beyond me.  why cant it be that for every horror story they arrogantly cover they are not required to show something educational and culturally enriching?

i encourage you, and all of you, to travel both outward and inward.  explore this world to its fullest either by plane or by personal voyage into yourself and the history of the people you come from.  if you are from the united states and not a member of its native people you are the descendant of an immigrant and a revolutionist.  your people worked hard to build a country based on freedom of speech and religion and the gift of being free from dictactorship.  you have the right to vote for your leaders and you have the freedom to leave if you disagree with the policies of your country's leader; i did when that shitbag warmonger was in off from 2001 to 2009 without mentioning any names, and you can too - be thankful for that.  

your country has a potential that is drooled after by people of many (but of course not all) other nations.  you can build a life for you and your family from literally nothing but an idea and when you disagree with the way your country is being run you can vote and you can make a difference and have your voice heard without fear of persecution, but i still wonder when it came to be that these privelages were exchanged for ignorance.  the united states is by far one of the most potential countries to build your life but it is not (and i am sick of hearing) the greatest nation in the world by any term which i use to measure.  

please PLEASE take a journey into your self and into your deep consciousness into that realm of our existence that binds us all as humans.  see the damage you have done to this planet and the damage you have done to yourself.  ask yourself every day if you are making actions to better ourselves as a species or if we are just some fluke of evolution that future generations will remember as short-sighted and indulgent.  your country, your television and even your religion (all instances of all three) have an agenda to spread fear and disrupt the education of our people and if you dont believe me then go see the world for yourself.  

i trust not of what the masses have done to hide my eyes from.  i trust the artists who have trained their eyes to see the fine lines.  i trust the writers who have trained their ears how to listen.  i trust the teachers and the philosophers who train their brains to think and be open.  i trust the lovers who love without fear from the bottoms of their hearts with no regard to race or society.  i trust the poets and the dreamers, the travelers who travel well and open their ears, minds and hearts to the people they meet.

peace and love are both contagious and equally as effective as fear however they take more commitment.  nothing good comes easily.  please my brothers do something to better our species.

☮

stay up late and pay attention - because you may have been wrong about something

it's really cool to stay awake and just listen to the night.  where i live, life buzzes in strange ways that are so different to me sometimes that i lose myself in their randomness.  i listen and i remember being told to 'listen more carefully to life' yet i'm still marveled by the way life urges you to also 'keep on listening'.  i can feel the different winds in their reminding me that things are changing and things will always continue to change but now and especially now the winds are taking me in a different way.  

like the pages of my dear friend's book which somehow found a way to narrate my life i know feel a great story growing from within me.

all great stories begin with an amazing and seemingly otherworldly coincidence, or chance.  tonight i found myself locked out of my house and i sat for a long time on the dark curb out front in the company of cold dogs and foreboding shadows.  in an act of kindness to a single dog i found myself in the company of a kind stranger who took me in her house and shared a beer with me and her amazing boyfriend.  the energy of us three and the coincidences we shared brought me home eventually to my house to find great conversation and deep laughter.  this laughter and personal words brought me also into a connection with someone i live with who hadn't recently found a way to see me straight in the eyes.  

i feel it now, in this great hour of the night, that the winds are beginning to speak.  it is almost my time to leave this place and again something faraway is calling to me.  

two strange dreams i had

Gaia

sometimes i wonder if this world is ours to travel or if we are just living in a time that is something like a fluke of technology.  it's amazing to me that we have been around for millions of years yet only perhaps the last seventy or so have permitted us to wander so freely in strange patterns around the globe.  i've come so far.  i've seen both sides of the fishbowl and i've learned so much about what calls to me.  yet i dont know what it is that causes me such sadness at times.

it is a strange sadness.  it is no emptiness nor longing however some sort of melancholy like when one hears a beautiful song or sees the perfect sunset.  whatever it is, it's deep inside of me and it gives me that strange peacefulness of forever being comfortable with my sadness.  perhaps it is just familiar to me and like a hunger it pushes me to explore the world endlessly.

the world is pretty cool.  it's really big too.  however often i say it, it's nice to remind myself, 'peopel who say it is a small world live in a small world'.  i truly believe that we draw our connections to a minimal scale in order to make sense of them.  by viewing the world as a small place it seems to become palatable to us.  in fact there is so much beauty in the world that if we were to take it in too much we would be overburdened with sadness.. i think i just figured out my own problem.

the world is indeed a living organism (for we have few other things to compare it to).  long ago a dear friend of mine proposed an idea of a collective conciousness and although i never understood it i did not dismiss it as a possibility.  i liked the idea but perhaps i was too young and too selfish to see things this way.  i've made my own theories for how this could be but i still find it dificult to explain.  this is something i rather keep to myself and smile when i feel the parralels that embrace the planet.

can we feel the pain of others?  i've always felt that even though i dont personally believe in a higher power in any conventional sense, i do still believe in righteousness.  i do believe we have a responsibility as a species to be good to our planet and to each other as any divine power would surely be disappointed with the mess we've made.  i believe that if you steal then you have stolen from everybody and if you kill then you have made all people suffer.  i believe this is so because we are a collection of all acts of mankind both good and bad and it is our responsibility to improve ourselves and be good examples of people.

having said all of this, the eyes which i view my world around me are from those of a traveler.  i have visited many different countries and very obscure corners of the earth.  what i have learned is massive and sometimes i think my soul will explode if i ever try to cage the secrets of the earth which i have stumbled upon.

i've got a very cool trip coming up and i'd like to share a sneak preview into the next few months of my life.  i'm off to travel the western slice of this great continent i have washed ashore upon and i couldn't be more excited.  i'm in the middle of a (seemingly) long waiting period for my day to arrive when i will pack alice and leave this city.  i love it here but my feet are itchy.  i'll be back in a few months to the first city i've called home and my soul is aching to see the faces of my oldest and dearest friends.  i need their energy which they fill me with because i have this feeling deep down that somehow things are soon to reach a new level of conciousness and travel for me.. i'm going to the mother land..

intrepid love

i used to have this roommate from iran.  he was pretty intense and i enjoyed every minute of his company.  he was very passionate about his beliefs in love and universal kindness and we often stayed up very late arguing politely about the origins of the universe.  he was one of those people who believes all religions to be the same thing so long as they are on a path of righteousness and myself being as logical as i can be could not argue the benefits of love - something that many fear to be a dying practice of humanity.

i dont know when it got to be this way but i have some assumptions that paranoia may be to blame.  people get all of their information from the mass media, which does nothing to educate only frighten, and when bad situations occur we tend to forget about the acts of kindness which occur every day and go unnoticed.  i hate this.  i hate the news and i hate having to explain myself out of every question i'm asked about the cultures which i've spent so long getting to love only to hear about the bad things which have leaked into the news.  love is a practice and fear is a disease.  this disease grows inside of you and clouds your thoughts and many of us in this time have forgotten how to love things which we dont understand.

maybe it's a generation gap or perhaps the prejudices of one generation leaking upon the next but i believe we should embrace the great distances we've come as a species instead of building bigger walls between us.  i believe (and i did not create this notion but i love its boldness) if you are affraid of something then go there and see it for yourself.   imagine that.  imagine a world where it was required to travel to other cultures.  imagine one where the television was required by law to show both sides of the scary stories they haunt us with.

and if i'm wrong about all this then let it be.. i'll not stop playing my part for the better of humanity.  i'll not stop learning and loving.