Just like riding a bike.

"You've got to make your own fun."
- Kathy Bates, as Bettina

So I'm on vacation, two paid weeks from work, and what plans I had have changed. I won't be going to Chicago or New York. I won't be taking Shana to Cuba or Honduras. It's unlikely that I'll go camping.

In the past, I would devote time like this to working on my pad. Not now. I may get a second, throw-away, labourer job to make some extra cash and get a great workout, but I have a feeling that I'll be spending time in the next two weeks to milk Toronto for all she's worth. It's time to focus on goals and make some progress on the plans I keep procrastinating on.

So I bought an old Raleigh mountain bike and some necessary gear from Mountain Equipment Co-op, and just finished my first pleasure ride on my first bike since I was a kid. I'd borrowed a bike when I was living in New Brunswick (that's in New Jersey, you Canadians), but this old boy is mine, all mine. Acquiring it is a goal achieved, and that does my spirit good.

Now, off to Funhaus for my first fetish night in months.

The moon, the now, and a strawberry for the self.

...Know your seeking and yearning shall avail you (nothing) unless you know... that if that which you seek you find not within yourself, you will never find it without..."
- from The Charge


The key to lasting happiness is to find celebration and joy within, to harness and caress any lucid moment that reminds oneself that there is always something broader, more enriching, more sustaining, more beautiful than any of the inward pressures that would otherwise drag one into a mire. To smile more, to see the shaft of sunlight beside the road accident, to find divinity in the lingering of the broken kiss; this is the path toward celebrating the senses and the present moment. A fraction of a recognized, beautiful moment can free oneself from a day's worth of distress.

Happiness can occur with someone else, or even because of someone else, but once it occurs through someone else, one abdicates part of one's own power and ability to create and transform. We may choose to voluntarily abdicate some of this power as we nurture a personal relationship with another, but a healthy awareness requires that we remember that, in the end, our own happiness is entirely our own responsibility, doing, and celebration.

Sometimes there isn't much green to find.

My friend Alex hung himself. He's dead, and I recently found myself wanting to call him. I didn't. I wonder if, as in times before, I was feeling his need to talk. We seemed to share an energy awareness about when things in our lives were getting disrupted. He's dead, and it doesn't seem like anyone's looking to conduct a rite for him. Should I?

My mother's health is deteriorating, and I'm worried. I spent two days in New York, caring for her and making certain that all one of her home attendants had been stealing was only cash. It was, and to the tune of maybe a thousand dollars. My terror is that she will die, I will be in Ontario, my uncle will be in Florida, and it'll be Christmas morning for thieves in Brooklyn.

After nine months of constant daily contact and several trips to be together, things with Shana and I have ended. She broke it off because having a long-distance relationship was becoming too challenging, then begged to have me back, and tnot long after I fucked up in a spectacularly marvelous way. While I sensed some important differences between us, I also sensed more long-term potential with Shana than I have with any other woman since Cai. That in itself impresses me, but right now I'm a little distracted at what happened between my new best friend and I. I'm managing well (maybe 've learned something finally), but I love and miss her.

No, no greenery in all this. But I did lose ten pounds and bought a bike today.

More dukkha to do.

Rob sez:

"1. Critique and question and agitate the parts of yourself that are complacent or addicted to convenience. 2. Give help, sympathy, and encouragement to the parts of yourself that are off-centre or out-of-focus. 3. Shake up the static, habit-entranced situations you see around you. 4. Be generous and creative with those who are suffering."

Bread, circuses, and a little dough.

Of late, I've been reading in the newspaper how the CBC has been "excited" with the ditties its boardrooms have been tinkering with to replace the "Hockey Night In Canada" theme. In turn, I've been reading how Canadians across the country are heartbroken at the thought that this televised tune of 40+ years is going to be removed from hockey broadcasts. It seems that, in Canada, "the hockey song" is virtually a second national anthem, and some news reports have also cited how Canadians abroad would identify one another during spontaneous outbursts of singing it.

I think this demonstrates, once again, something tragic and important about the society we find ourselves in: that property-consciousness, corporate interests, ownership are more important than culture and what makes people happy. Further, despite clear displeasure, people are so constrained by the corporate hegemony that they (we) accept the change as a given, and so someone somwhere will likely be happy to accept the CBC's "bribe" of $100,000 to the person who submits the "best new hockey song." After all, if you're going to take something that someone loves away, once you give them money, everything is fine, right?

The socialists of old would say that this accepting public has succumbed to "commodity fetishism." I wonder if, on a cultural scale, we've just become too lazy, too bludgeoned, too punch-drunk, too tired of being hurt and seeing what we love packaged and sold as someone's else's property to really care about anything relevant to our happiness anymore. Perhaps this is why insulating entertainments like iPods and Wii become increasingly more popular, and fewer kids are playing hockey in the streets.

That is, if the municipalaties were permitting them to now. Insurance issues and safety, you know.