The idea behind most meditaion techniques is self discovery. But not always of the most convenient kind. Today I felt it necessary to explore a darker avenue of my psyche as a way to clear out some mental baggage.

This form of meditation is called Tonglen. The practice of taking on the suffering of others. (Or exploring your own). The concept is to breathe in “dirty energy” and push all positivity and comfort away with the out-breath as opposed to any other form of meditation.

Although overbearing, fear eventually shows itself as an old brick building with thick, abrasive walls tucked away behind the welcome mats of one’s eyes. It is a terrible omnipresent hotel and some of us hold the most sickening tenants.

I spent close to an hour forcing myself to tresspass in this ethereal structure with my skin crawling and my stomach sick. But, the overbearing emotions slowly begin to radiate outwards and dissipate. Like placing your hand on scolding hot leather thats been sitting in the sun. It is nearly impossible at first, but if you stay with it and endure the pain it slowly cools as it adjusts to the tempature of your touch.

The after effects of panic create such a deep tranquility: The calm silence after a terribly destructive storm. The brain gives in to complete exhaustion and I feel drained and absolutely serene. I feel like I just wrestled a goliath although in reality I was sitting still in a quite beautiful environment overlooking the water.

Today my hotel has a few less tenants.

Good fucking riddance.

I guess its like reading the lyrics of a song without ever hearing it. It usually creates a jarring, unkempt mess unsuitable for any ear or tongue.

But once you hear it, once you lay down in a dark room with it and focus on its nuances and all the tedium that went into creating what is laying there next to you, telling you about the scar on thier stomach or that time up in the Georgia mountains a few summers ago, its often hard to distinguish anything else from it ever again. And even if you do ever run into that jarring mess of words, sounds and actions again, maybe at a party or some bar downtown, its quite difficult to read what they are saying now without hearing that same melody and those alluring nuances. Even after a few years worth of other unsuitable, bland melodies.

And I guess that’s what I’d consider love. Not that im anyone to even utter a word on the subject, but there is quite a few brilliant, complex symphonies that play out occasionally in my head when I see her and one day, I’d like for someone to hear something unmistakable like that when I speak.

It’s so funny to me how we know exactly how to live our lives correctly and still we refuse. Sometimes I arrive home after certain nights and I laugh to myself.
Because in truth, we know exactly how to live properly and yet we want nothing of it. We know what our body and minds expect and prefer from us… To eat well and exercise. To not poison ourselves with intoxicants, to live cautiously, and to have discipline and dedication in love and hard work….. We are aware that these practices are proven – and yet we want nothing of it. Because a long, healthy life is a travesty and that makes us howl with laughter at times. I find it comical that the very essence of life is a rebellion against itself. That this is how one truly feels “alive” – by challenging his own world. His own common sense. His own existence.

We don’t want boring schedules worked in boring offices, boring sex in boring homes, boring food served at boring tables. We are drawn to wild nights and wild relationships for the very same reason that when we climb to the highest towers, we cant help but look down no matter how it turns out stomachs. We cannot help ourselves. We cannot shake the temptation. The excitement. Taking care of our own lives is not what makes us feel alive. We live life by dragging it by its very own chains behind us as we run, naked and relentless through the city streets.

Life is so predictably compared to a book over and over. They will pull you into thier offices and thier classrooms and confession booths and they will ask you, “if your life was a book, would anyone read it?” and you laugh because a perfect book is one that has never been touched – never been read – and the book of your life is dirty and its pages are bent and stained because the universe just cant seem to put it down.

If an idealistic society is the bookshelf to which each of our stories belong, then let us be the ones who should never collect dust.

Through my habitual late night wanderings over the years, I have collectively stumbled upon every quality of human life imaginable. From the most wondrous to the most lowly and detestable. The latter and most sobering of thw the two, is also the most important to me at this moment, because as I sit here writing this I am feeling quite privileged.
There are those who have been left qualifying as something just shy of humanity due to either substance abuse, ineptitude, bad evolution or possibly all three …..
Those unpredictable wretches who wish to hurt you for very little and hurt themselves daily for even less….
Those whos ignorance and misfortune work in tandem to perpetuate one another day in and day out….
Those types of despicable fools create a humbling example in my mind, for just as surely as they are all someone’s sons or daughters, they are mothers and fathers. And that’s even more frightening because those kids dont stand a chance.

What I’m getting at is although we can chose whos blood we spill, we cannot chose whos blood we share. My family is odd and we are far from perfect but I was raised with manners, common sense, a good work ethic and respect for those who respect those I love. I could have born just as easily to any of these sad sacks mentioned above. But I was born to two very admirable people who would hurt in order to make sure that I don’t have to, as opposed to those who I see regularly disguarding their own kin in order to pursue thier own selfish, often self-abusive desires.
I was not born into that. In fact, my parents worked hard to protect me from even having to see that and so on days like today, when I think of my encounters with the very bottom of humanity, my gratitude is insurmountable.

I don’t remember the last time my arms have been properly at my side. There’s too much to pick at. Too much to fix. Too many raised surfaces and burn marks. You show me a man who won’t pick at his scabs and I will show you a lunatic. The ability to sit and let things things be and not move a muscle must be the most evil thing in the entire world. I don’t think I can imagine a life without the insufferable right to damage everything around me.

One can only begin to comprehend the instinctual desire to pick things apart. To alter what’s doing just fine by itself. To pick my face and hands til they bleed. To peel wrappers off candy and cigarettes. Wax and glue. You must admit to the inherent need to destroy and change our surroundings no matter where your spiritual beliefs lie. No matter how lovely,  Everything on earth must crumble and be picked apart piece-by-piece to make room for everything else. I’d like to find the most beautiful thing in the world and leave teeth marks. I’d like to sit at my father’s grave and tell him what I’ve done. I’d like to tell you I’m sorry and not mean a single word.   
The same way my pant legs and shoe laces gather seeds to fall off and grow elsewhere…
The same way the wind rips branches and roofs with no relent….
The same way the Earth opens up and swallows us whole. ….

Everything is picked apart, used, damaged and trampled into dirt to grow something better and the cycle goes on…

Maybe its control…..
A fear of losing it. A fear of being under it. Yeah, that’s probably it. But I guess you could say that somewhere along the lines I fell madly in love with the idea of  “anywhere else”.  I could spend the rest of my life there. You know, anywhere else.  On rooftops high above the city lights or in tunnels under the rest of the world. I guess I have a deep affinity for places I dont belong. Maybe it’s the silence. The most quiet I’ve ever felt.
….And nothing moves unless I break it.
….And nothing dies unless I kill it.
….And nothing takes a single breath without my lips.

Here in this place, the mouths all chatter so relentlessly, and I stay close enough to hear voices, but far enough to not make out any of the words – like the vague humming of hymns from outside cathedrals. It all sounds so gorgeous out of context, but to take part would rob it of all its beauty due to the simple fact that the truth that lies behind most anything, is hardly as fantastic as the surface. Like how bright green, beautifully landscaped graveyards with marble and ivory placed so perfectly makes us forget the rot placed below.

I suggest you go for more walks.

Theres an invaluable wisdom there that I think more people need to be exposed to.
It forces you to slow down and pay attention to things you normally wouldn’t. Like how most of the stains in the road are actually blood from various animals. But theres so many wooden crosses lining the road that theres a good possibility that some of these dark spots arent from animals. Or how the 10 year old up the street is ALWAYS outside. But hes not playing or exploring, hes just afraid of what goes on inside. You know this because you can hear some of it as you walk by. He probably sees the police more than he sees his father. Or how many people are sleeping behind the building you watched a lady raise hell in yesterday because they raised the price on her soda .35 cents.

It makes you feel weak and incredibly strong at the same time. It humbles you. Life goes by so fucking fast. You should pay more attention to it. You should go for more walks.

I do not visit my fathers ashes. I have yet to visit the wall they are placed behind. I hate the bleakness of that place. I hate the dark nostalgia that encompasses it. That place has an repugnant power. The power to condense the entirety of a father an son into a single metaphor: a wall.

I went to the cemetery today with the the intention to visit the wall and confront my cognitive dissonance. As if this morning my own obsessive fear and discomfort of mortality invited the memories of my childhood to a romantic dinner for two. My future was flirting with my past.

I walked out into the green field and kneeled down by an old bench with a small eulogy engraved to a small child. The humor wasnt lost on me since I felt as if I came here to lay my inner child to rest. I stared off for a moment at the tombstones resembling stalagmites rising up from the earth and the dark storm clouds resembled a giant, abrasive paw. A paw eternally raking ethereal dirt over these graves.

I look at the old, delapitated houses around the border of the cemetary and found it comfortably symbolic; The body is a suitable home temporarily and when its occupant moves on, the house still stands ground and slowly crumbles. Giving it a sort of charming character in the most morbid, decrepid sense. The brick foundation of the skin and the old rotten wood cabinets of the torso and lonely, abandoned furniture of the internal organs. I soon felt that this is not a graveyard, this is an abandoned neighborhood. With strict deed restrictions against the still occupied houses such as my own. My fathers house stood up around a small concrete walkway down a small set of stairs by the water and it had burnt down a few years back. My father died with no money and although cremation was highly against his beliefs, the state imposed arson as a way to get him into this neighborhood in accordance to the eternal lease. They let him move in, under the condition that his house shall be burnt down and its embers should be placed in a wall. Just as physical as it is metaphorical, this wall is an obtrusive eyesore in an otherwise decent, low key neighborhood. This wall represents the lower class. This wall represents the low income housing of the graveyard. The less fortunate. Ill forever hate that wall and I couldnt bear to stand infront of and accept the role of an lowly worm trying to scale a monolith.

The poet Khalil Gibran wrote: “A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, “I will have a camel for lunch today.” And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again-and he said, “A mouse will do.”

Today I am the fox and at sunrise this morning, my fathers ashes were a camel I realized as I turned to head home. At noon I settled for the mouse of merely stolling through that old abandoned neighborhood.. I still have not visted my fathers ashes.