time... just another formula for inZANIty

what is time?

a question i've asked a hundred times....
to myself...
to my parents...
to my teachers...
to the sky...

i hear myself saying quite often "Has it really been _____ long since i _____?"

a rhetorical question with no short answer.

Einstein said that time only exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once.

Einsten was a Pantheist.


Has it really been 3 months since the last time we spoke?
Has it really been 10 years since the summer before my senior year in high school?
Has it really been 2 hours since i've been sitting here staring at the waves in a trance?
Has it really been so long since i've read Keruoac's 'On the Road'?

I love this book.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is in this book.

"The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to talk. Mad to live. Mad to be saved. Derisous of everything. Who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the sky. And in the center you see the blue centerlight pop and everyone goes Ahhhhh."

But as i read On the Road again (not to be confused with Willie Nelson's On The Road Again, which should be the soundtrack).... i find so many quotes i love and cherish and roll over and must write down.

I keep a book of quotes... things said in conversations, books, movies or song lyrics that tickle the inside of my rib cage.

"The madness of Dean has blossomed into a weird flower."

I mean... how GOOD is that?

I just love words when they slide together in a particularly tantilizing way...
SO i record it.
I lock it in time, because i will forget it existsted when the next arrives.

i stay in the moment and get pulled from one moment straight into the next, riding a string of words that have collapsed together and taken me away from the last.
I fall in love with it. consumed, infautated, obsessed... for five minutes.
and then i somehow forget it existed.
always.
with pretty much everything.

but i live like my father does and i fall in love 100 times a day.
with everything and everyone.


Today I sat next to my favorite palm tree on the island.
I know... I know... i am not supposed to sit next to coconut trees because they can fall and knock you out.
But i chanted.

"Lokah samastha sukhino bhavantu" - May the entire world know love and peace.

... somehow i believe that if i am chanting, nature won't possibly hurt me.
I chant when i'm paddling around the island and get scared of sharks too.
I think to myself
'well... there is no way that the story would go "and then as i was blessing the sea, a shark bit me."... nope. no way."

That's my irrational rationale and i'm sticking to it.

Anyways - i sat under this tree.
Its the same tree i gave massages underneath last week sometime.
I had set up the massage table dressed in cabernet colored cotton right beside the turquoise waves...
and i did some magical body work.

I know this (that it was magical) because 3 of the 6 men were changed. Altered.
I can't explain it and i'm honestly not sharing this to toot my own horn.
Sometimes i just stare out into the universe and my hands do stuff... the same way when i am teaching yoga and words spill out and i think to myself "who thought THAT up!?"
It's like I trance out and all this wonderful energy comes pouring through me.

I gotta figure out how to put a floor on this vessel and be a container of this good stuff for myself.

But ya... people say strangely often, unrelated and unprovoked, after body work from me that "the colors look brighter"

Every new person that says this floors me.

So... apparently i know how to do this.

This does not suck.

Ha. that was such a josh hogan way of thinking!

So anyways this tree is extremely awesome and magical and i love it...

I sat beneath it and i pondered and i chanted.

I tried to climb it but i couldn't. John E did for us and sent down coconuts.

Me & Haven (our new favorite) who is staying in Bungalow 2 and really should move here because he just belongs... well, we sat under that tree drawing in the sand and talking about the cosmos, metaphysics and the power of peace, prayer & surrender.

Ya... i told you. HE belongs here. He speaks our language and his heart beats at the tempo of this island. He sees art in driftwood and sees more then a wave to surf on when he looks out at the sea.



We created moon salutations the other night with our ankles in the night sea facing towards the enormous orange moon that seemed to be clutched by a claw of black shadowy clouds.

I felt a drop and my instinctive thought was that it must be ink from the black sky above us that was dripping on me.

the stars that night seemed to melt in an arc over the island and one jumped out and skipped across the ink black night just as i said the words

"the journey is the gift... the prize is the path..."
...powerful, timeless words a fire essence spirit guide shared with me back in Santa Monica in my apartment... which OH MY GOD... was that REALLY 2 years ago? jeez.

these words....
these words that still make my skin goosebump and stars fall out of the sky like a sighing, fainting, southern belle seeing a handsome man that takes her breath away... shooting stars more like swooning stars.

Towards the start of "On The Road" crazy-ass Dean and Carlo have a standing agreement. A date every night to sit on a bed crossed-legged and look straight at eachother and talk about abstract ideas and bizarrities.

"We're trying to communicate with absolute honesty and absolute completeness, everything that's on our minds."

I love this.

In Venice Beach, i have spent many nights doing exactly this.

One susch night that comes to mind often, was at the LOVE compound on Westminster, where a bunch of my most beautiful friends live.... and i found myself lessentially living in the month before i left for Asia.

Aaron Glass, Amber & I sat on the back on Native American inspired blankets from the OM home.... A fire was taking its last breaths as we lay back, our heads resting on the soft wood planks i sat on so many times.

We talked beneath that blanket of Californian stars until they began to fade and dawn broke above us.

This was not unusual in Venice.... watching the stars fade and the sun rise as words continued to spill out into the morning air.

Here on this island i watch the sunrise in silence, emerging from my sleep where i danced alone with my imagination for a solid sleep of 7 or 8 hours.

But what does time do in sleep?
Is it faster or slower?
Is there evolution in dreams?
Or is this "reality" all just a waking dream anyways?


When i start to have thoughts like this, i feel like everything is about to start breaking open... I feel my breath pool a little deeper in my lungs and the clouds seem to separate overhead like a cotton ball being stretched out finely across the sky.
It ALWAYS does this.
breaks apart like that when i think like this.
On days when my thoughts and my breath go deep...
I always look up to see the broken, thin layer of clouds spread out and i try to take a snapshot, but of course my i-thing is broken...

(p.s. point to ponder - the word aWan - means clouds... the word aMan means safety.... not far off... especially when you think about the fact that coral releases an endorpphine or something into the air to create a CLOUD layer above the reef to keep it SAFE from the strong sunlight. BAM.)

anyways.... I'm protesting the internet right now anyways... Ignoring the FOMO that i might be missing out on my emails or skype dates or god forbid someone were to post a hideous inappropriate photo i need to do damage control and prompty untag.

How long has it been since i have gone a day without opening a laptop?

It's been really nice.

I suggest trying it.

(this piece i wrote on a scrap of paper and plan to transcribe it later.)

i just did.

that was then.
this is now.
but when you read this this will be then that i wrote this.

please read the following poem i wrote last year (which was now, back then.)... i think it makes more sense of this time thing then i can right now (which is now back then, for you now)

aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

a formula for insanity
it's all coming undone in its perfectly imperfect chaos...
shaking loose the satin strings of attachment that bind us to one another.

the free falling, wild, flailing peace rips perfect seams through my spine...
and the agonizing burn warms my nearing hypothermic heart.

i dont ask that you stop or start, come or go, press or ease away...
just that you be exactly who you are...
and sit in the seat of your soul so i can sit in the seat of mine.

i will watch the leaves turn red...
and the sun go black with the smoke of a blazing forest fire.

i will watch the autumn come and pass me by again as i flutter down to an icy snow-covered hill.

my swollen eyes will gaze again at the glacier glowing blue in the moonlight...
among those that speak the language of love

and the days will get longer.

the yellow daffodiles will spring to life overnight to greet us with their crisp, spirit shaking essence...
as if to slap my rosy cheek and bring me back to the present moment.

i am not in a garden where swans dwindle and canopies of flowers hang over head.

that life is a life that was.

...but einstein said that "time only exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once."

so i cant help but wonder if i am still here...
or if i was going to be there...
or if i will be where i was...

and you wrote that then, but i say it now...

so my mind can't help but to spin circles like a kaleidoscope splattering confusing colorful shapes against the wall..
shapes that draw me in with their perfectly imperfect chaos.

and i realize that i have no choice but to sit in the bosom of this lotus flower...
and gaze towards the light in the sky...
and surrender
to not knowing.

surrender to the jumbled memories and dreams that morph you all together in this current backwards line i draw in the sand...

my breath will guide the falcon that floats above my left eye...
the falcon that will sweep my lifeless body through the air and drop me on a cliff i recognize from somewhere...
and i wont know whether to jump or fall until i arrive.