what do you love more than love?
january 7th, 2001

Greetings, radio listeners.

I'm feeling much better today. Or tonight. And I have for a while. There's 
something immensely relieving about letting everything off your chest. But 
that's not all - there are quite a few ingredients for my feel-good cure. 
Which may include some (if not all) of the following:

    * A long bath with your child. Stick all of her toys in the tub. Make her 
laugh as you take her fingerpaint-soap and pretend to be Jackson Pollock with 
the bathtub walls. It washes off, it makes her happy, and deep inside you've 
always been an abstract expressionist anyway.

    * Clean house. Play old and forgotten mp3s on your computer, take out the 
rags and the soap and the vacuum, and attack your house. Your inner self may 
take a hint from the order you are creating around you.

    * Make Alestar send you an email. And in this email, have her say, "You're 
not always going to be kind/inspired/driven/attentive. If you were, you 
wouldn't be human, and you would freak people out and they might shoot at 
you." Let her tell you it's okay to let your claws show. Print out this email 
and frame it. Look at it every single time you feel bad about yourself from 
now on.

    * Do lots of web design. Then show it off. (And make a note to tell Meghan 
that you did not steal her color scheme on purpose, it just sort of fell 
together that way.)

    * Enjoy your grandmother's big, extra-special taco dip. Eat as many chips 
as you can.

    * Write love songs in your head.

    * Let your daughter ride around on your back as if you were a horse for a 
while.

    * Muster up enough courage to submit some piece of writing to this 
magazine.

    * Let yourself get really hungry and enjoy how much better food tastes 
when you are really hungry for it.

    * Make a nest out of comforters and read books on Taoism.

    * Watch your New Year's documentary again because it makes you smile.

    * Remember that you are flawed, and loved anyway - so doesn't that make it 
better, really?



So, yes, I'm feeling better. And I'm off to be more creative now. Into the 
Wild Blue Yonder.


understand the tao
january 7th, 2001

I've been reading before I go to sleep. Three books, a chapter at a time. 
Scribbling down quotes that speak to me in the little purple journal I got at 
Atlantis in Johnson City. Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual 
Fulfillment in Everyday Life, The Great Way of All Beings: Renderings of Lao 
Tzu, and Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. With the spirit of synchronicity 
always at work in my life, I pick up Chop Wood, Carry Water, begin the first 
chapter, and find the reassurance I was looking for.

"In order to approach this system seriously, people must be dissapointed, 
first of all in themselves, that is to say in their powers, and secondly, in 
all the old ways."

"Times of growth are beset with difficulties. They resemble a first birth. But 
these difficulties arise from the very profusion of all that is struggling to 
attain form. Everything is in motion: therefore, if one perseveres there is a 
prospect of great success."

It explained how the road to 'enlightenment' is often like a rollercoaster 
ride, with tremendous highs and tremendous lows, and that this causes a great 
deal of discouragement to travellers along such a path. It also explains that 
when you see yourself more clearly, the person you *really* are, then your 
flaws seem even more gross and pronounced. It explains that a journey on such 
a spiritual path is often brought about by a 'peak experience', a feeling of 
intense happiness or joy, which i feel happened to me right about here. Just 
having it all written down somewhere made me feel a lot better (even though 
Alestar's email had already helped me immense amounts.)

"It is a simple act, but only by this simple act - seeing where we are rather 
than imagining where we would like to be - can we begin the process of 
transforming all those things we usually consider stumbling blocks into the 
stepping stones they really are."

The other really neat thing about reading this, is that this was evident in my 
life just these past few days. There I was, in this slump, so I took that 
energy and created something with it, and realized the importance of such 
slumps. Closer to understanding the Tao, when the downs and the ups are all 
really the same thing.

But anyway. I'm sure I'm boring you talking about this. So I'm going to finish 
cleaning my house now.