'I Quietly Take To the Ship' — A 33 1/3 Retrospectacle

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

—Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”

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‘I am a desert creature.’

I was conceived at the crossing of two great rivers—born breathing that dry and motile air of the high desert—given water in the foothills of the mesa and under the aegis of the great mountains that separate the east and the west.

I am a westerner, myself.

If you saw me in that context—with my spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle—you’d not disagree.

‘For though I may have done some foolin’, this is why I never fell’—and while for three decades having lived and loved and wandered and plyed my trades all across the eastern reaches of our fine little nation…still, no Yank am I.

For further proof of this fact I would encourage you to see me in a pair of Dan Post roper boots with my sax held low at my side—don’t matter much what I do: you see the denim’s in my blood, baby. No New Englander is gonna strut with half the dusty spalt in their step that I inhaled off them mountains in just my first year.

See when I happened—roundabout midnite on the winter solstice of 1986—the mold got splintered and the salt began flowing. Something there calls me, even now…to that place full of choices and easy poker and gunfighters and rust; place where the appointment of water is life; place where, sometimes—with your nose pointed the right direction—the wind whips down from the mesa and brings with it fresh star-scent. Puts you in mind of the old feelings, and with ‘em the old ways…ways of the desert fathers and mothers. Ways of desert creatures since long before the flood. And as you breathe it all in together with the resinous earth—just for that small chance of an itty-bitty close encounter with the infinite—you’re back.

An’ it’s just like you never left (my home was special that way, you see…).

Here were outlaws and lawmen, and deadly meetings played out at high-noon…and here were the people who stayed in that tiny oasis of community—stayed and lived in a vast and arid and beautiful land.

At the Grand Junction of highways and byways sits the chief decussation of western Colorado—39° 4' 17.2020'' N by 108° 32' 59.0208'' W…that is, if ya wanted to know.

And that leads me to tonight. Now, half a continent and some odd few decades down the line, that makes today my 33 1/3rd birthday, and—wonders never cease!—it’s 3:33.

Very well, universe—I accept.

In honor of this little moment on this day-of-days that comes (sometimes) but once a life, the following includes a selection of choice observations of this long, strange trip and the occasional public service pronouncement thereupon:

1) Let the effortless potential for beauty resonate in all that we do.

2) In the face of adversity, seek (and find) gratitude.

3) Let us be judged by our judgements—and in every case, found guilty of high compassion.

4) By the light of Love—and Love alone—shall we navigate the dark places, both inside and out.

5) Let there be songs to fill the air.

6) Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and opened shall it be unto you.

7) Nothing invites a swifter or more profound wrath than speaking one's truth, yet therein lies real freedom. Though the speakers of truth act at great peril to themselves, still they know the greater cost of not doing so. Though they be treated to a banquet of fear and hate for their efforts, still they remain secure in their compassion, for beneath the auspices of truth they shall find, at the last, that there *is* no enemy...only themselves, and their choices. And surely that which cannot stand the withering heat of rational inquiry or grow beneath the unctions of our intuition was never worthy of our esteem to begin with.

May the truth-sayers be ever honored for their bravery—theirs is the joy and the weight of our age.

8) All one can do at any instant is their level best. We are loved and accepted, and in this moment we are enough just as we are. In the eyes of the divine—from whence we come and of which we most assuredly are all shining facets—our earnest and heartfelt *feeling* is met with grace, without exception. Redemption is ours; gratitude is ours; wholeness is OURS, *right now*. It has been designed such that we may access it, carte blanche. There will always be the opportunity for improvement. But there *is* peace, there *is* love, and there *is* community that fills up the present moment-vessel like a bottomless river of meaning, pure and swift.

Let us then drink our fill of it, whenever our souls thirst.

9) ‘Ain't nobody messing with you but you.’ —Robert Hunter, "Althea"

Put another way, fail—>fast-forward.

Put another way, ‘I make sure everything remains raw.’ —Busta Rhymes, "Everything Remains Raw"

10) Pride—above all things—is the death of empathy; its absence, the measure of a person's truest character. For in the abdication of pride dwells Love and tenderness, and joy, and peace—indeed, all good things. When the quality of one's persona outweighs the quality of one's person it's time to take a hard-ass look in the mirror.

Why save face when you can have grace?

11) Anger is energetic poison. We must never allow it to seduce us—not for even a moment, if we can discipline our minds to such a goal—for even as it attempts to rob those around us of their happiness and well-being, so also does it feed on our own. There can be no peace with such a serpent coiled around the heart.

‘You will not be punished for your anger—you will be punished by your anger.’ —Gautama Buddha

12) All problems have solutions—all dis-ease can be restored to balance; all afflictions healed; all suffering made whole, in this life or in the hereafter.

All effort is rewarded in kind. All things are possible.

Wherever we focus our will, there we instruct our lives accordingly. Therefore each one chooses their path—us, and no one else.

‘No man can walk so long in the Shadow that he cannot come again to the Light.’ —Robert Jordan, “The Wheel of Time”

‘Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say—but with intention. So go. Love intentionall, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.’ —L. R. Knost

13) Let there always be the provision for sudden and inexplicable crazy kitchen dance parties of one (or more)!

14) Thunderstorms, tho.

15) Everyone will forever tell you all the reasons why their sight is right, why their way is the only (or at least the best) way. Remember that everyone is the protagonist and underdog of their own narrative, and as such most people we'll meet have something of a hero complex—and that’s ok. We need heroes.

Be patient, bid them have their piece, and remember you're just as entitled to your own. In the end we all make our own choices, and we have enormous influence upon the pages of our own story, however we choose to write it.

Ours is the pen, and the ink, and the page.

16) It is a law of spiritual economics that what is best for the well-being of others is what is best for the well-being of the self. This truth is timeless and functions irregardless of identity—race, gender, cosmic orientation, social standing, culture, personal history and beliefs, or even favorite ice cream flavor. We all got what we got; the question is what we choose to do with it—and with one another's "it"—in this forever-moment.

17) No one owns the rights to suffering. Adversity is not the sole domain of one group, and many of us are ‘fighting the good fight’, etc.—’every man think his burden be the heaviest’, and all that. These days labels are very posh, you see—yet the point of life isn't to see who can out-suffer or out-check whom. Oppression is oppression is energetic terrorism, and the true fight is to not become the oppressor ourselves.

Therefore if you're suffering, I stand with you.

All for one and all 4 Love!

18) Remember: there is only offense if you choose to be offended.

19) ‘Once in a while you get shown the light

In the strangest of places if you look at it right.’ —Robert Hunter, “Scarlet Begonias”

20) ‘Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: is it true?—is it necessary?—is it kind?’

21) ‘Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind—always.’ —Robin Williams

‘Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it becomes. The daimon throws us down, makes us traitors to our ideals and cherished convictions—traitors to the selves we thought we were. In spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness—or perhaps because of this—the shadow is the seat of creativity. For some, it may be that the dark side of his being, his sinister shadow...represents the true spirit of life as against the arid scholar.’ —Carl Jung

22) Thinking that the world “is the way it is” and will be so regardless of your perception—thinking that what you see is objective truth—thinking in ideals, as an ideologue—all of these are as treacherous as they are self-sabotaging. The willful act of static perception denies oneself the opportunity to change one’s perspectives and denies the colors of friendship, beauty, and inter-connectivity in favor of the tepid palette of gray street. Gray is the color of drive-in identity politics, the color of disunderstanding, the color of fear.

23) Prayer is talking to Love; meditation is hearing its prayers to you.

24) Your peace is always too great a price to pay.

‘Don’t you let that deal go down.’

25) The most interesting people are the ones you almost didn’t meet—the ones whose encounter proves this whole game is stacked in your favor and the dice was loaded from the start.

‘There is a truth and it’s on our side.’ —José González, “Stay Alive”

26) Take the ancient wisdom to heart. It’s ancient for a reason.

‘History is a vast early-warning system.’ —Norman Cousins

27) To live as what the I Ching calls a ‘superior man’—that is, a person of awareness—one must control for an inordinate amount of bullshit. Always take into account where peeple are coming from ‘cause there’s no guarantee they can do that for you. It is always harder to build bridges than burn them. So do that.

28) ‘Free expression is the basis of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress the truth.’ —Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波)

29) Birthplace?—Earth. Race?—Human. Politics?—Freedom. Religion?—Love.

30) ‘Meaning is invisible, but the invisible is not contradictory of the visible: the visible itself has an invisible inner framework, and the in-visible is the secret counterpart of the visible.’ —M. Merleau-Ponty, "Working Notes"

31) ‘And you discover that this living thing that you're feeling...it's your own life. Because you can see very simply, that you would not understand the experience that you call “voluntary action and decision”—being in control and being your self—unless in opposition to that, there was something else. You couldn't realize self and control and will, unless there was something other, out-of-control, and instead of will...WON'T! It's the two together *only* that produces the sensation that you call having a personal identity.

Consciousness, you see, is a radar—one that is scanning the environment to look out for trouble...and the radar therefore does not notice the vast areas of space where there are no rocks or other ships. So in the same way, our eyes—or rather, the selective consciousness behind the eyes—only pays attention to what we think is important. We scan things over but we pay attention only to what our set of values tell us we ought to pay attention to...we screen out from attention anything that is not immediately important to a scanning system based on sensing danger.

But, quite obviously, you as a complete individual are much more than this scanning system. You are in a relationship with the “external” world that is on the whole incredibly harmonious.’ —Alan Watts

32) Every choice is a vote for union or division, Love or fear. There are those who take pleasure in serving their selves above all else, and before all others. Their egos go before and behind them; they are unmistakable. In my experience, the a vast majority of peeple one tend to encounter fall into this group. They are reactive, rather than responsive, and practice a vicious philosophy of "us vs. them" tribalism. Satisfy their perceived needs and they like you; threaten their sandcastle worldview and they do not.

So too, there are those who only take pleasure in serving others, but their practice is a compulsive "do you love me now" that both enables the selfish behaviors of the first group and demonstrates in their character the utter lack of self-love. They run from a fear they cannot name and quite often do not know exists—fear of their own potential—and thus their sense of personal value can only come from their external environment. Tell them they are useful and they are happy; tell them to tell themselves they are beautiful and they quiver in fear.

And finally, there are those who have felt the joys of having given service to others, yet who have learned, upon great reflection, to place value in offering this love to themselves first. They have found the Kingdom within, and they delight in sharing it with all those they deem ready to see it. Their world is pure magic: a reflection of this inner light.

The first group are like poorly raised children: spoiled and full of judgements, fickle, and unfamiliar with the truth that rests within the heart of unconditional love. The second group are melodramatic and self-flagellating: pariahs by choice, caught in the purgatorial feedback loops of insecurity.

But the last group—these fearless, selfless empaths—see and hold dear the fruits of Love. So give me those who honor their divinity and serve the Balance, those who hold the door with compassion. Give me patience; give me acceptance; give me sincerity. And in the light of that quiet, gentle love I will show you my personal best. Every damn time. #servantofthesecretfire

33) The further out on the rim you hang, the faster you go.

33.333) Make it count, ‘cause we will never have anything close to enough t—