if I am pausing, it is because I have the sensation of pulled apart in many different directions; wanting to write, having things to speak, having things to say, wanting the words to get out there, rawly and freely, improvising to see how they emerge, yet at the same time, wanting to speak the truth. for this reason, I often believe that the truth emerges when I do not know yet what I am about to say; I type and stumble over my words, linearly, let it all tumble out onto the ground, catching on the corners of the blankets, shaking it out. what's here? what has fell? in what order? no matter; there's usually a logic to it that emerges afterwards. or a non-logic. what is present is present.

I have so much to say. so many words, choked in my throat, or in my fingers. the task of articulation, of letting it flow through, is something that I wish to do more, of finding spaces for it. finding spaces for honesty. what is honesty? honesty is what happens when I am speaking from my center of gravity. when I am grounded. (sometimes I imagine that I am speaking from my asshole, my sphincter; there's something earthly and centered there. sometimes I can tell that I am speaking from my chest, my solar plexus, a simmering searing warm-hot core in the center of my chest, burbling and waiting. I know I can speak from the throat; that sounds like anger; I can speak from the eyes; that's sometimes about sadness, I think. but groundedness is in the asshole. this is your asshole speaking; we are landing, or taking off, 이륙, 착륙, aft lavatory, fasten seatbelts, wake up in the middle of the night to that jet engine hum.)

honesty is about ... listening to myself, and listening to what reverberates. what emerges in the moment? what do I sense? and do I want to share it (why not?) I think there is a way to share that is an opening, a revealing, rather than a gesture of help. here it is. and the strings that vibrate, the particular harmonic compositions that resonate... (I have an image in my head that is so clear, I am too tired to try to translate it into words; reverberation, resonance, sound waves turned into vibration, vibration turned into sound waves. actually; vibration is vibration.) honesty is about this. what bubbles up for me? what sits in my stomach? if I listen then it arises. from whence does it come? I do not know, but when I don't know, then that's usually how exploration happens..

let me be honest here.

this has been: a season of heartbreak. of longing. of desire. of sadness. of hurt. of anger. of disappointment. of resentment. of sorrow. of grief. of shifting changes. the world is a-turning, I feel. I am separating, separated, individuating, the tendrils of connection shifting and altering as who i am gradually comes more into being. tendrils are severed, suspended, perhaps flitting around independently; I imagine two amoeba detatching, a kind of re-mitosis; or actually it's many amoeba detatching, boundaries becoming more circular, like ripping a piece of bread bun from a square formulation, the voronoi edges becoming curved again, letting our boundaries and our self-definitions inflate back into center. who am I? who are we? am I truly becoming myself? one thing is for certain; I am coming back to rest, to a point of return, circularly tipping around my center of gravity, a bottle tipped playfully with a finger, swirling about on the table, increasingly oscillating faster as it hovers and trembles around its central place of rest.... and then, a rest.

I am circling around this description, I am moving around it, rounding a bend. seeing myself. K says, 'false desire is when I feel like I have to do something'. L says: 'give time to time'. L says: 'it's a process'. L holds deep kinship, knowing, connection, casual care, longevity, ritual, frustration, friendship. K is present, holding, patient, listening, attentive, an honest mirror that asks me to be me, a hard but honest and very special practice. J gives me food, listens deeply, so deeply, cares in the spirit of personal and wordly committment. C shares perspective, puts everything in the light of a tragicomedy, holds the mindspace of meaning and articulation. D is caring, chaotic, energetic, trying earnestly, meaning well. P is fiercely protective, fully themselves, an honest set of water currents and wind breezes. Y speaks another language, in the wisdom of energies, letting it pass through, like the bottom of a toilet on the trans-siberian train; opening directly onto the passing tracks on a bright summer day, sunlight shitter shining. M holds complexity while gardening, labor and listening, grounded while real. M, a stranger, asks me questions with such generosity and good faith. L is balanced, understanding, measured, trying to be neutral, thank god. M asks hard questions, because it's all part of the fam, a shared quest for us to all understand. P is sparkling, chaotic, warm, buzzing, honest, kind, healing.

D/T/P is trying, yearning, feeling fully, earnest, scared and fearful, sometimes a tree in the wind balancing overrigidity vs overyielding; trying to be supple but honest. returning to center. roots in the ground. sometimes there are moments of joy and beauty and happiness, unexpectedly, not because it's not sad, which it is, but perhaps because it is. sometimes D/T/P is angry, fiercely and deeply so, almost livid, hurt and angry, a raging fireplace, a hot gas flame roiling a cauldron to a boil, powering that steam engine; underneath this is an anger, a deep anger, and what's underneath that? pick up the layer of parchment paper, and there's hurt, deep hurt, historical and contemporary and modern and new age and worldly and pop and rock hurt, shoegaze hurt, house hurt, techno-hurt, shoegaze hurt, ambient droney mellow hurt, math rock hurt, high school indie hurt. said like this, it's kind of a medley, lots of lessons here, much sorrows.

perhaps this is why drones sound great; droning, ambient, sustain tones; to dwell inside of a sound, to have it be enveloping, holding, being.

is this too much hurt? can we go too far with dwelling in hurt? I think now the honest answer is yes, or rather, there's a distinction between filling out a map, and locating one's self; I can know the landscape of the self, but choosing to inhabit it is another question, and because of this map in which objects are always closer than they seem, it's possible to feel like I am enveloped wheras, in fact, there are other neighborhoods and cities and continents that are so worldly. just like travel. is new york city the world? not at all. does it sometimes feel like it to me, now? yes.

so let's travel for a bit, leave our home. where shall we go? lift our eyes off of this map. I say, to the chorus of selves. there's hurt but there's also joy, and belonging, and happiness, and groundedness, and learning, and settled, and speaking from the heart, and newness, and presentness, and awareness. can you feel it? and I can ask myself, and myself can answer: yes, I can, I can feel it in the air, actually, now that you point it out, I can taste it, the thing that connects us all, that gives our lives meaning, that is the substance of relation and community, but also inquiry and meaning, I can feel it a bit now, and will taste and smell it in other forms in the future, the feeling in my mouth, the sensation of tasting the sky. "don't go without being able to taste this", I want to say, "find your kin who can also smell this smell", I want to say, and I know that's been true; the smellers, tasters of the air, to really feel what's here amidst it all, to name it, to hold it between us in a bowl made out of our hands. here we are. do you know what I mean? I cannot articulate but with gestures. but these aren't analogies. it's always around us, it's present, it's here. this taste, of the present. is that it? the present? is this the present? am I tasting the present? am I?

--

(I imagine myself saying, gently, you know, I think we've always had permission, all of us permission is constructed when we avoid fears permission is the navigation of avoidances, seeking permission is an act that reifies, solidifies the fear permission creates the permitter, and the permitted where we could all be the considerate and boundaried actor the trying actor, the listening being, the understanding body in movement, trusting our bodies, picking each other up when we slip and fall.

yeah. it is the way to live.)