Sotce, when I’m anxious my heart beats so fast for hours on end. I want to treat my heart with kindness, but I think it’s hard when my emotions cause it to race. Do you have any words of advice?

Slow ur breath and lie in the bathtub or under ur blankets. Dip ur face in a bowl of cold water, hold ur breath and stay there for 30 seconds. A cold shower would have the same effect. Drink a glass of sparkling ice cold water with lemon. Take a fast walk around the block and call a friend. Sit on a bench and fixate on a pigeon. Push your toes into the grass until you feel dirt. Brush your hair slowly and completely. Knead dough for bread. I like this a lot, the sensory nature of it, the reward that comes with its completion. Stretch to a yoga video. Hold an ice cube on a pimple while you recite mantras.

Sotce, I feel like I’m slipping into a dark whole that I will never come out of. I panic all the time and I don’t know why, this has happened before and I always come back from it but this time feels different.

Take a moment to exhale into your toes and your bones. You owe yourself this stillness, this visit. Your mind in its natural state is still like a pool of water with ripples and flickers on the surface. There is nothing more than that. what’s the worst that could happen to you here? Life is a long dream. just try to be kind to your loved ones, eat good food and be kind and do not fear the unknown and you will be carried thru, I swear there is nothing more that you have to do.

Sotce. I struggle going outside. Don’t get me wrong, I love nature, I love the woods. but I live in a big city and it’s winter and I get so insanely anxious about going outside. the people, the dirtiness, the rush of everything maybe.

What scares you, what bad thing could happen? On a hike of sorts once someone someone knew said focus on where you want to go, don’t focus on where you don’t want to go. You might want to take this method as far as you can. You might note how none of the bad outcomes are actually that bad, how none of them are beyond your scope of strength and tenacity. In the right mindset it seems like nothing in this world is much of a big deal. you lose your keys you get some new ones. you faint in the snow you wake up in a quiet room. You are attacked then you were attacked. these things happen to people. of course i do not wish these things for anyone, but they happen. They happen every day and people go through them and move beyond them. trust your path. trust what moves you, what has moved you this far. your fate lies in front of you, and though it is beyond you, allow it to carry you like a baby bird. believe in this path. you can believe in this path more than you believe in yourself. Fear is a killer.

Sotce do you have any advice for flight anxiety? I have to go on a flight early tomorrow and the fear is so hard to deal with. I’m so scared.

The opposite to fear I think is faith, is trust. Can you trust that whatever happens to you is right? Can you sigh into a higher power or a greater intelligence than the dense little human world you occupy? Could you smile to a goddess and say I trust you, I really do, I trust that everything is in order, everything is as it is supposed to be, everything is for the highest good.

Below are some questions I have received that I believe you could answer better than me. Take your time with them. Become their friend. If you don’t feel like answering, maybe you can take them, and ask them to someone else. Maybe you can write your answer and bury it in the garden. I think they are safer with you.

1) How do I know if i’m a bad person?

2) What do you do when your body feels too heavy to live and move and exist, but you don’t want to sit in that feeling?

3) How would you describe the girl you are right now in 3 words?

(｡﹏｡”)

read my entire diary

sorry if you know this or suspect this or have gleaned an amalgamation of this from or through me but here we go with the context. i live in new york about half the year, almost only always during the busy seasons. busy seasons because there are campaigns being shot and magazine articles being slotted and brand dinners and capsule activations and books and movie premieres and talking to do and places to be. then after running for the money and fame and feeling sort of delirious and far from oneself it only seems objectively earned to then spend the money made on rehabilitating somewhere far away. for me at least this is what keeps the balance in continuum. this business occurs fall and spring and the beginning of summer and the end of winter. then hibernate and have pure ideas and in my case even be so lucky to study with my teachers in rolling hills of far away.

my teachers are all i have ever had. and my new york is sort of different. i wear nice clothes and i live alone next to a park. i move money and my heart beats like a rabbit. to be clear there is no fund, hardly any family, nothing beneath me besides the yoga mat and the floor. my outputs and the freedom they allow for. and when there is no camera i am in pajamas and i am eating on the floor. that sincerity charms, the innate childishness of someone who has a lot of questions and clearly no destination conjunct with being born in a time that wants me to look the way i do, and allows me to connect with the teachings of the buddha.

Let me give you one night. Go out to this and that i am invited to and so and so dresses me and i am forty minutes late on accident because it is so hard for me to get off the phone or get anywhere and everyone else knows each other since birth. and somehow i am rushing to the afters in someone else’s car and have drinks and talk to so and so in the corner about their work, my work, the work. Car home get up those stairs five emails scheduled and sleep in my makeup. Meditate on the floor with a timer on half panicked and then immediately to meetings, edits, photos, fittings, so and so is coming over to help me film such a thing as internet momentum. this fifty times over, with little variation, with any time left over to organize the closet or hold an onion at the grocery store.

it’s a funny thing. i am popular girl although i never wanted it and don’t do it. Law of attraction. i am in complete submission. i swear i wear what they tell me. i smile and i lie. i have not watched tv in years. i would love to watch tv. i would love to want something just for me. but i think if i keep going with what has taken me so far it might launch me out of its mouth.

if i do it right, and the right people help me, and the stars continue to support me, and i last through this moment, and the next one, then i really might be able to disappear into those teachings. there’s a foot pressing on the gas and it’s getting so far from itself and bifurcated and quick to the point where when i enter the other world the first one closes its mouth and vanishes. to the point where when i return to the first world, my birth world, the world i inherited and do commerce within it seems completely precarious and devoid of meaning.

When i am not in New York i am only not in New York. when i am not in new york i am nothing and everywhere. When i am in New York i have to remember that real people exist, real people who know me and love me still. in new york we all deserve better. we are playing a shit game we defaulted into. and so nobody wants what they think they do.

a teacher told me recently that when you are off your path you can just correct it. No big deal. just straighten up, and correct. But maybe a lot of the time we are surviving too hard to focus on the aerial view.

to appear in order to disappear.

to veer off in order to get on track.

to sleep in order to wake up.

i understand that being normal may just be less focused on interrogating reality and more so trusting in the given sequence that in its essence is very kind and generous. and maybe i am just broken? I dunno is that boring? To just be broken?

o how beautiful you were when your teeth shined in the night. we didn’t have much to say from our hearts until we came to the topic of both hating so and so and then how everything they stand for we are against and how much they offered for whatever. if i had to explain cigarettes to an alien i would say they are dried leaves rolled into thin tubes of paper and you burn them and inhale the smoke and it makes your insides feel a type of way and alien would understand. beautiful alien would say do you smoke? and i would say i do not, although i have, and i will again. and alien would tilt his head never knowing and i would distract with my hands or phone. if i am not distracted i am confused. And what does it mean to be wrong when you are the best at getting towards your wanting. But i resist the urge to tie everything in a neat little bow. languish in the discomfort, the unknowing.

if i had to be in mideval times i wouldn’t want to be a knight, or a princess. i’d like to have a big beautiful pumpkin patch. anyone who wanted pumpkins would know to come to me. and nobody would ever again tell me how i am or what i should be doing. before fame n fortune dream i had another. I wanted to be kind of like healing people on the floor surrounded by crystals and chakra posters. I didn’t want to write about myself. signs pointed towards being a podiatrist.

I do love writing. I am excited to have it with me for some time and i am curious what my efforts to know will amount to. curious is something. And i hope my second world continues to smooth my voice into something sonorous and clear.

trust my will.

s0t☾€

he was fit and wearing college kid clothes. he had a black eye and a busted lip that were seventy percent healed.

“i noticed you in security,” he said, still smiling at her. “i liked your glasses.”

she smiled at that. nobody liked her glasses. everyone said they were too big for her face. which she took to mean that her face was too small. she liked the glasses because they looked like glasses. and it made her sad to think that some things in this world didn’t suit her, and thus weren’t for her.

it was one of those cheap flights. no beverages. the attendants were angry to be there and went up and down the aisle hawking credit cards.

he suggested that she sleep on him the second the lights dimmed. she hesitated for a moment, like she had been taught to. but there was nothing to resist. so she burrowed into his neck and hoodie. he smelled like snow. ever so gently and slowly his hands were on her stomach and chest.

“a man who loves women touches their stomach first,” a friend had told her.

only she was wearing a bombshell bra, and a thick pad. like a kewpie doll. she thought this, and then giggled. he giggled too, but not because he knew.

“are you from the city?” she finally asked him.

“yes.” he said. “i sell gold there with my family. but really i’m a fighter.” he pulled up a video on his phone that was him punching a guy in the face, over and over and over again, in a boxing ring, into a pink and red mash.

she felt a twinge in her stomach.

“is this real gold?” she asked, holding up her necklace. he took the pendant in his fingers.

“no.” he said, smiling.

the first time she went in a boy’s mind was her little brother’s, and was an accident. she noticed that when he was sleeping, if she put her head against his, she could feel as he felt, and see as he saw.

it worked on all boys and about half of girls. and she had to be in that hazy in between place with them. and it had never worked on someone over forty. she could make the boundaries so loose that she floated in. no difference between here or there. her last boyfriend had often dreamt of evil things. and she would be there then, stuck with him inside of it.

his mind was so open to her that she felt her heart breaking around it. but she only saw a few things that needed fixing. a drawer that should be closed. an old sponge by the sink that needed to be thrown out.

“your family loves you very much,” she cooed after, feeling the center part of their venn diagram.

he nodded, and paused for more.

“you are a good boy. you will have a good life.”

he was in tears.

they slept in shifts the rest of the flight. when they began the descent she felt his body tense.

“don’t worry,” she said. “it’s our secret completely.”

“i wont even look at you.” she told him.

once they landed she got up, and he did, and he acted like he didn’t know her.

but he approached her by the water fountain in baggage claim, holding a pen and paper.

“can you give me your address?” he said. “i want to send you a bracelet.”

five days later a small package arrived in the mail.

have that funny little feeling since this morning like i might have to crawl inside of an old shoe and die. when i feel this way i tend to reach for contact with something that i deem SAFE. for example, institutional recognition is SAFE. brands are SAFE. people who work with me, who work in offices at desks that rise up and down when they hold down a button, are SAFE.

life long thing. if something SAFE is willing to brush against me, then so help me god i will live another day. getting good grades and wearing clean clothes and brushing my hair one hundred times on each side. often i have to tell myself, that i am not in trouble. that i do not have any reason to run, hide. because if i wake up with that funny feeling, like i am not SAFE or like something inside of me is fundamentally cracked and snapped, then I will go out looking for SAFE. imagine that. I go out looking. i think some people do heroin for this reason. i did science fair and do pilates. i don’t even get high.

girls remember how things make them feel. sometimes people are nice in person and then their art work makes me feel like someone is touching me with wet hands under my shirt. or like i am being pinned down and yelled at for no reason. or like they are begging me to see them as something other than what they are. i am sure my artwork is not exempt from conditions. but i work all day and night to keep my spillage clean. and when people love me back they giggle and whisper it to me like little bells.

૮꒰ྀི⸝⸝> . <⸝⸝꒱ྀིა……….. they are young and tall. and they are vegetarian, but they ate lamb chops last night………

not everyone wants to or has to listen, i know. listening makes you love. and we have to be discerning about our love these days, don’t we? im not sure if anyone would be able to love me without some expectation of control. my picky eating and eclectic way of dressing. my proverbial sense of duty.

i have been extraordinary lucky or maybe ruined to have gotten deep immersion in at just the right time. those secret years gave me the faith and foundation that i function from the well of. it was a leap of faith but it was so easy. i never had money back then but i had so much time. not everyone has time and so i understand that not everyone can follow a distant arrow for years of their lives. although now that i am talking to myself the thought arises that you have time for whatever you have time for, and all you have is time.

this is not to say that i don’t have my bitchy moments. i try to chirp all day long, emphasis on try, but I really do, try to clear my cache, and try to do my stretches in the right sequence in order to then cry it and write it and meditate it and know myself know myself. know myself so well, operate from so deep in my body that it is scary to behold. and then also apologize easily and listen fully. and i am a human but i play a special character. and when it’s time to give 50k ppl a ping in their inbox i do my best to make it fresh and sweet.

anyway i could not take one step in this direction without religion. not one single step. i exist in an egg. i can’t look someone in the eye unless i love them. religion has led me like a lamb in my egg towards loving them. it is by definition a prescription for building a good and meaningful life. i have always been obedient. i also don’t think if I was left to my own devices that i could carve an honest path through spiritualism and monotheistic guidelines. i think the whole point is that you can’t pick and choose. you have to vow to be something entirely.

i can’t do anything by myself. i owe everything to others, and so i owe everything to everyone. i have enough humility to know that i can’t choose what to do and how to do it. maybe you can, but i think that is what is ruining us. is that we assume we are capable. well i assume i will get lost. and so i submit. and so i have the strength of angels behind me. i have a code of right and wrong that doesn’t change based on my convenience. due to religion. i have endless courage, and so much purpose that i forget that a lot of people are still out looking for theirs.

along my way a couple of men have noted how this instinct to serve actually would suit me better if it belonged to them. if i belonged to them. but to be honest the same men said they would hang my curtains. and here we are after these years with no curtains. which is a funny thing because i live high enough that no one can see in. i really have a lovely apartment too. they wanted the curtains. and didn’t get the curtains.

my grandma asked me recently why i don’t front my accomplishments. i tried to tell her it’s because i live in an egg. i have nothing to show. i want to be on my knees begging. at all times, i am on my knees begging. i just have read Andrea dworkin, and so I don’t even like typing those phrases out for lecherous eyes. and so that boundless devotion has to express itself a little broadly. through the science fairs and well mannered behavior and such.

maybe you are wondering what happens in the off chance that nothing SAFE is able to touch me. if you are wondering like this then you might be missing my point. as far as i know, my point is there is propensity for safety in every breath, and a million ancient techniques that will happily orient you back towards that. I can pray even if i’m a vegetable. i don’t need anything else. not really. i don’t even need you to accept me. i know better than to care about that. although i still would really like it if you did.

below the paywall is my testimony regarding the retreat i did two weeks ago in which i didn’t speak or eat or drink water for three days. a little extreme. an in depth analysis of the experience will be available later this week on patreon but below this point I am explaining the context and training that went into it.

things are getting real!

luv from ur sotce :*

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i sat next to a woman on a flight today who was going to los angeles by herself to see the hollywood sign. she was so excited for her trip and kept taking pictures out the plane window.

understand that i asked her a million questions, offered to take her picture, and then cried when we deboarded.

we are supposed to take care of each other. if you have the vantage point to make fun of someone, that means that you are supposed to protect them.

because their lives are as difficult, if not more difficult than yours. even at the apex of happiness life is strange and uncomfortable and society has clearly ushered agreeable people who may deserve better into lines. do you know why they wait in those lines also? because it’s fucking free. imagine talking to your friend for an hour and at the end of the rainbow you get a dollop of frozen yogurt or a lip balm. some ppl read substack, some ppl wait in a line. some ppl have vintage denim and read books by dead people. and really we all die

i wish parasocial things didn’t have that shame around them. where i live rn there is no nature to reasonably retreat into away from the drum of consumerism and all the little personal places that you visualize visiting in a city to forget your uniquely mundane circumstances for awhile have closed their doors in favor of more profitable outcomes and most people in america can’t afford to go for a nice lunch and then it’s supposedly a bad thing if someone feels empathy for the people on their phone, who make regular appearances in the free and infinite scroll of entertainment we all engage with for countless hours of our lives.

i can only speak for the zeitgeist i represent of course. but it seems like a lot of players are missing in action.

i wish there was a guy hanging around who was a little weird but he’s alright once you get to know him and everyone lets him come. only he can’t come because the drinks are eighteen dollars, and he’s festered into some niche creepiness that has left him ostracized, and he has to live away from society in the suburbs with his parents because he can’t find something he likes and is good at that can pay him enough to have a normal adult life.

i wonder if i have a superiority complex. we all share one mind and soul but some people receive more lucrative qualities for their lifetime. and of course our own subjective experience is the most rich and deep perspective we can access. for example my birthday is in july, and i think that july is the perfect month to have a birthday. but surely anyone born in any month thinks their birthday month is best.

i know i am on the upper hand of a certain ecosystem because i have been carried into some made up accolades.

and i think a lot about the version of me who didn’t get that way out of the lines, for whatever reason, and if she is okay. i don’t think she is dead in a ditch per se. but i wonder what she longs for, and where she lives, and what she does in her free time.

i know that every day i have to fight to live in a way that feels meaningful and precious and like i am making use of all that has been given. when i am sad, or tired, or discouraged, i can so easily live for nothing. and reader sometimes i am sad or tired until i forget to be.

the most genuine push i see against the regretful languid nature of our time is to be as kind to others as humanly possible. yes i’ll say it. kindness not where ur jeans are from. of course kindness is different from protecting oneself. but when i remember how everything sucks i try to be so friendly, so helpful and accommodating and earnest and encouraging that it makes people confused, or uncomfortable.

helping someone you don’t know figure out the subway system like you are their guardian angel. lurching to pick up something a stranger drops. smiling. asking the people in line what they are in line for. is my beauty secret.

and it lights me up to watch someone slowly realizes that i like them and am not trying to take anything from them.

if you have a minute, would you comment or message what you care about. be honest because i want to know. what do you spend the most time thinking about every day? what gives you fear and rage and hope? is your birthday month the best? i have a feeling of the answers but i have also been surprised before.

maybe no one is getting sicker.

maybe i am getting sicker.

maybe everything is as it should be.

i am posting this late at night depending where you are. i am about to start a silent retreat that involves no drinking water or eating for three days. i will tell you all about it the next time i write to you.

xo

paul came through right when it started. and i didn’t want to be made to feel better. i just kept saying to him please go away, go away, please let me have this.

let’s get really quiet now. let’s go low to the ground so our ears are touching the soil. you just breathe there and i promise i won’t tell you anything stupid. i won’t say anything stupid and i won’t tell a single lie. in the end all the lies are only to protect. and by stupid i mean i won’t make this into a show. took me forever to find a way to lay this down. and it’s going to happen to you too. i guess some people do die under a lucky star. they just close their eyes one night and don’t wake up in the morning. but even with the best money and science, it is usually brutal and ugly.

she passed a certain threshold and it felt as though a coin had fallen from the fortieth floor and landed on my sternum. but also like it had been pressing there all along. because how had i not noticed sooner. that she wasn’t getting better.

there was a day around then where my keys fell from my hand and clattered onto the sidewalk and i just stood staring at them for awhile until i walked away. and at some point it started raining, and the heat was loud in my ears like i was under a wave.

when another girl, my age but seeming so much younger, learned a similar piece of news, i was on the couch, and she burst out crying, big sobs howling and contorted. i was wearing a white dress. i tried to be polite and leave her to it. but really i was fascinated by something hard to say. that she had all of that to give it right away. and how it meant, somehow, that hers would quickly recover. and mine wouldn’t.

first her skin got all crepey. she always had the softest skin. that was something people said to her when they touched her. not that people often touched her. she was difficult to touch. but when someone brushed against her skin they’d remark upon it and she’d say yes, i know, very curtly and with her eyes cast down.

then it was the occasional call, the occasional bad spell, where a medicine would change or a procedure would require revolving caution and care. and the bad spells would compound.

she would go out every night in her nightshirt and pot around the planters. it was all mossy and shaded, but she managed to grow great big geraniums. she told me she had seen something otherworldly out there. she was hesitant to say. blacker than tar and silky like a ribbon. it had been living in the bottom of the planter. i’m telling you, because you’ll believe me, she said. when it noticed her watching it, it curled up and then slithered away.

she’s a good person, everyone keeps saying. and it’s true, that she is good, although i’m not sure what good is. she isn’t nice but she is so nice. she isn’t nice but she is kind. when she was really in the throes of it i asked her if she wanted a wheelchair, so that she could be outside, and she looked at me and said try that amelia, like it was a threat. try that and see what happens to you. when i came to her i brought her a bar of soap shaped like an alligator. she couldn’t walk but the alligator was in the soap dish by dinner.

when i wake up now the night is so black i could drop a pin in it and it would echo forever, wobble forever, and a certain feeling comes over me that something is so lodged, so stuck in me, so tightly wound that i will spend forever unraveling it. does she feel the night like this, I wonder. thats the trouble about darkness. in light i know where i am and where you begin, and we are separate. and in dark we are all one.

lord i no longer believe. it feels childish, foolish, boring, to ever consider whether you might be wanting more than you deserve. to consider any path besides being as close to each other as we possibly can. trust me we get so much less than we deserve. and then every thought moves me towards that magnet. such as when the horse guy said you don’t want to use my headphones, they’re all gross and waxy, and i said i don’t mind them, and i meant it, because we’re bodies. or when you told me that you had been depressed, and i had a feeling like how could someone like you get depressed, no, no, never you, and then i made you eat five pierogis with little green peas.

a gray sky erupting with crows. a black snake in the garden. when we checked her fever last night her voice sounded like a little girl’s. i remember we had nothing. every room was an unfinished drawing. you used to draw me all the time. i would give anything to be back there, having nothing except you.

:D

i am healthy. i haven’t experienced too much violence. i get a lot of stuff in the mail and my friends are pretty. there was a time when things weren’t this way but it’s not really relevant anymore. unless I decide that it is, which i don’t. so i don’t complain. i just want everyone to know that I am real, or was.

though there isn’t any real reason to be. at least not in the circles I dally or with the people who are inclined to give me money. realness can be selfish. always poking at the cavity instead of making things nice. still I show up. i do my phone work until my retinas burn. i do advanced bridge pose and order bleach on the computer. the texture has been sanded down to a methodical hum where you actually can get the whole cake and eat it too. only it’s made of sawdust and glucose. and you head towards the next one, which might be different, or better, and dodge the blobs of your psyche.

sometimes i hear a story where someone is so brave, and so true, that all the light rises up into my chest. but usually the people with these stories aren’t allowed to hang around.

as everything drones along half of the time I am not listening. because when I listen deeply I have to be alone. and then my animal body starts writhing and really I cannot fly off with it.

i am certain that a good hearted person is also the most sincerely evil. trauma carves depth like a crater and you are left blinking and wallowing if you don’t get ur ass on the train. i know a kindergarten teacher who likes being choked until there are stars in her eyes. in my case i am using other people’s money to buy a pretentious comb.

i am trying to say that a lot of lucky ones have requilinquished (sorry idk how to spell) the humility of accepting their unfashionable parts. when i see that stuff in someone (rude, lisp, crazy haircut, crying in public) i only ever feel kindly towards them. but the lucky ones ascend the humanness. and I do wonder if their hearts are looking everywhere for something or if they have numbed all the way out. and if I ask them they say they surely have their hearts and cannot find them.

still I wonder how the comb betrays everything. i used to laugh in the face of beauty, because I knew that there was nothing there. now I still know but it feels good to be smooth and clean. and I like how shiny it makes my hair.

not longing to be consumed necessarily but more like the feeling of climbing a tree, the fear and rush of scraping a knee, a little of that all the time. doing it for a reason. what love feels like, or doing something that really matters. i don’t want to say i’m depressed cuz i like looking at butterflies and flowers. and i stay scrupulous in my routines and organize my mind and nobody knows when i don’t want to exit the bed in the morning because i do get up eventually and i don’t tell anybody that i didn’t want to. who would I tell that to and what would it do? i guess i tell you.

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or visit the diary which may not be valid for much longer

i had to pee walking back from the park so i went into a restaurant that hadn’t started dinner service. there was a girl working the bathroom who didn’t speak english. after I peed she started washing my hands for me, like how they do in clubs. and it was the first time someone had touched me like that in a really long time. and I kind of liked how she felt weird about it and so did i. and i kind of didn’t. i don’t know. I have to go.

below- ten places in manhattan when you want to feel human shaped and miserable. and i don’t like going to some weird organic wine bar either, i like to be really alone.

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More than a lamb I am a small green snake or a series of frustrating questions about one. More than not I answer questions without actually giving anything. My grandma taught me how to do that. My slipper comes off in the rain. My slow blinks are as coy as a bride’s. My button falls off my blouse and rolls into the sewer. Maybe you can help me find my button. Maybe I am tactful. Much of today lacks tact. Many miss their fathers. Maple syrup makes me uninhibited by the way. Makes me take off my stockings and walk into traffic. Makes me fall asleep drooling on the wood chips.

Most people need their solid world. Many say, why don’t you have a lamp, or a chair. Maybe this is protection. Maybe not. Man tells another man that I’m an influencer for mentally ill girls. Mentally ill girls! Man tells another man that I’m working on my novel. Man says I’m an artist. Man says I’m an actress. Man squeezed my hand so hard during hand shaking that tears sprung from my eyes as if they had been waiting there. Maybe the feeling is that someone somewhere must owe me something, because there must be more than this. Make me pancakes please. Maple syrup me. Make me my medicine. Might be something good for me.

My neighbor said an untoward thing and now we are not friendly. My neighbor told a man that she made me so many matchas. Made me so many matchas and I never made her any. Malicious because she liked him and he liked me. Man was like, and poor susie made you all those matches. lol. Mornings she would just text me and ask me if I wanted one. Maybe I don’t even like matcha.

Moon is in Leo. Marigolds slowly opening across the room as I rewrite this. Maybe this is the good part. Man who wants me in Paris. Man who takes my picture. Man who wants me doing Ngöndro. Man who wants me niche. Man who wants me uptown. Mostly everyone needs a companion. Maybe most of them want me to be always near and just sit and smile pleasantly. Mostly all of them want me to make them food so that then they don’t eat it. Mostly all of them want to run towards freedom with the caveat being me watching from the doorway.

Maybe don’t come down if it’s such an imposition. Make all your time about your mission. Martyr me so you can carry on towards that grand story that I am simply too pretty to understand. Maybe some people benefit from my simplicity.

Melancholic to bring up this tale again. Man lives while girl waits. Miserable appendage. Might wait forever. Mortal urges are embarrassing. Matrimony is whoever caves first. Movies are nice but they’re too long. Malls are fun when the day won’t end. Massage improves sleep. My heart is the same heart as yours, you know. Muscles and ligaments. Mom and dad.

Maybe I feel stupid to want just like everyone else. Maybe I am too petulant to crawl for the obvious. Maybe I feel entitled to find something that goes beyond my humanness. Man seems to sneer at any promise. Modernity expects me to know better.

My question for you is the same as it was when I was 16, 17, 3, 11, 12, 21. My beating heart. My little void. My body which has a cavern built into it you know. Make me a mommy. Make more money. Make a miracle of the unmentionable. Make tremendous timeless work. Meditate. Make me into someone. Make me worthy of being someone’s someone. Magnetism. Modeling. Magical thinking. Maybe I reserve the truth for the one who is never to lie to me. Maybe what’s really stuck in there is kind of predictable, and uninteresting. Man waits for no one, obviously. Man’s whole thing is that he waits for no one.

Xo

Many of you know that i have a meditation practice. meditation is hard to write about, and delicate and specific. I see yoga as a side to meditation, a meatier and more expressive path to finding the secret inner space. of course it is not the same as sitting in a formal fixed position, but they are related to one another. cousins. not the same but similar.

yoga became a real practice for me through my good fortune of finding good teachers. a good teacher follows a calling to support you. and an activity becomes a practice when the method of doing it begins to inform who you are.

you cannot repay a good teacher’s kindness in a thousand lifetimes. the way my mind submits to the asanas, the way my body learns through breathing in these regal ancient postures, has given me a gift that I thought I would never find. you see, when I lock in and hold the pose I am completely beautiful. I am beautiful and safe.

i am nearing the apex of my career. I say that to relativize the speed at which I’m moving. I don’t have days where people don’t need things from me. I was on four flights this past week. I do things nobody I know really knows how to do. So many shiny moving things above my head, all of them threatening to fall and crash if I step out of line. Constant pushing and performance and I did cry on the phone with my accountant last week. have you ever cried in front of someone who does not love you, and wants you to stop?

Sometimes dinner is a block of tofu. i have around six agents. i don’t have much family. some of them send me to scary parties. the network runs deep. and i can’t stop to tell if I’m falling or flying.

If I didn’t have yoga, the goodness of it, the grace and safety it allows me to touch, I would be in a lot of danger. truly. I am protected in all ecosystems by a quiet core feeling that wraps me up like velvet. before I learned to love yoga I was kind of sick. now I am not very sick, and my world is more sick, but I feel okay, I am calm and steady.

below - a complete list of everywhere I have ever practiced yoga ✿

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i know you have been suffering since you were a teenager. you want love and money basically, and new shoes and a haircut, and vacation ,and to be understood. i think you are suffering so acutely because you have no idea who you are. i think a million people try to tell you who you are, and you absorb the fall out of that and then act kind of deranged. and I get it I get it we are inundated with lifeless comprehension. walk into the drugstore and its hard not to feel schizo. i think you feel like there is something you are deserving, that you are not getting. but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.

i have been misunderstood too. i have historically thought through things in a different way than people around me. taking lopsided paths that felt more personal. it wasn’t malicious, or even conscious. and nobody was exactly evil or wrong. but when someone sees something in someone that they don’t understand, they usually get angry.

people beat perspective out of girls real quick. there is a sentiment that you are better off with an empty head. you have an easier life, a prettier life, if you go with the flow. but then the consequence of that is that you are functionally boring, and hollow. and the aftermath to passively numbing out is that a little animal part of you searches far and wide for a feeling. your brown sugar iced lattes are tinged with primordial desperation. you make a pencil drawing of a flower. and everyone likes it but nobody is moved.

we can all look at the same view, and if we really look at it, if we are clear and honest about what we see, we can all see different things. and showing yourself is a very loving thing to do. because it lets other people see you, and love you. and in turn they might have the courage to show themselves more, too. and all that we see is promised to us. similarly everyone has their idea of you. they have decided who you are and why you are that way without you ever having to show yourself. maybe they like you and so you are happy. but if they don’t, and if you don’t have your own idea, of what you are to you, your own secure and calcified concept of who you are, then you will just be whatever they want you to be. you will just be what they say you are.

or even worse, you will think and act and write in a way that proves what you want to think you are. instead of thinking/acting/writing as a practice to uncover what you are really thinking deep down. as a way to be clear on new rooms of unlimited secret thoughts. even worse you will edit yourself into something palatable and calculated and unremarkable. and everyone might like you but you are forgetting that your body is a channel. you are parroting what you think is good for you to be, and you are betraying yourself. listen honey, your body is the holland tunnel. name everything that moves through the tunnel. let ferraris and elephants and shooting stars churn through it.

i was in nepal in october to recite the teachings of the buddha. a long time follower of mine was there waiting for me. her name was analise and she was perfect. so smart and brave and well read and funny. we were hanging out in all of our free time, because besides us it was mostly boys and crotchety people.

one of those days analise was talking to me and i said wow, you know you are very wise for your age. i really think that you are wise. i feel like i am talking to a mirror when i talk to you. and she said amelia, that’s because i am you.

i am you. i have followed you for years and read you and listened to you and watched you. and now we are in nepal and i am you.

i want to tell you what this feels like. it is a unique situation that is occurring, that not too many people who have experienced have been able to articulate. and no you are not the enemy. you have never been my enemy. there is nothing wrong with you. there is nothing wrong with me. we don’t need to change anything. we can just sink deeper and deeper into ourselves.

every day, people read me, and watch me, and think about me. they do this on days where i feel private and shy. they do this when I say dumb stuff. they do this even on days when i am not sure what i am saying. they do this because I refuse to be wrapped up with a little bow. I extremely refuse to write about dating advice, or shopping advice. it feels disproportionate to my voice and body. and I wonder what is over the horizon. I am impatient to see it. it is not like i am doing brain surgery. i am just precocious and slightly well read.

we both have the same enemy, which is doubt. I think it is from evolution, hoarding nuts like a squirrel in case the hunters don’t come back. but we are safe now. if no one likes you just buy kefir and dried mango on your way home.

i’ve had a few instances of men who in quasi intimate settings have kind of grabbed my wrist after a conversation of me going off about trains or nato or mongolia. they lock into me and say something like, don’t lose that thing you have. you have your own view, your own voice. don’t lose that thing you do. i think this is funny to say to someone. and they say it with a kind of gravity too, as though it is already in the process of being lost.

:*

merch

it is so easy to long to be something other than what you are. but do try to remember what you are. you are many things i'm sure but most literally you are in the body of a human girl who is very much tied to this earth. our tiedness is a lot of what gives us shape and dimension; it is the way we love others, what we place in their hands, it is the choices we make that stack into months and years, it is how we choose to spend our precious lives. what holds you to this earth is what you eat. this is an ancient biological agreement we've made with the trees. that we will eat and we will eat to complete cycles and we will live here. in this way eating is your birthright.

it can feel exhilarating to push those limits, i know this, but in my opinion it is not a very interesting use of your time here. i'm not sure exactly what your work is on earth but you and i both know that there is a lot to do. so i hope you will give yourself fuel to complete your missions and i hope you will take up space and i think that even if the path forward isn't so straight and simple you will build a beautiful life.

sotce

i found air india quite nice despite taking the shittiest flights possible. two layovers, nearly thirty hours of transit. i wanted to see if i could do it. seeing if i could do it would make me denser and more human, i thought. the flights were half full, of people who were going home. what is the end of a war besides going home? that is a quote from a book i haven’t read and cannot name. when turbulence hit over the ocean nobody cried out. everyone stayed hushed and seated. the quieter we got, the more the plane seemed to shake in the sky. i thought about praying at one point, but i didn’t know what i would ask for. i tend to never ask for anything, since i figure i will get what is coming.

i had picked the north of india because I had wanted those hills and that clean cold air. i had picked a hotel that looked like a place for evil women to hide out and detox after they make a lot of dirty money in the western cities. something like this. by the time i arrived i felt small and dirty and frightened. wished that someone could drag my bag down the unfinished road. cows standing still, illuminated by the street lights. big cow eyes watching me drag my bag.

inside the hotel, a stammer over language differences, a room change, a key difficulty, and then a deep and jilted sleep.

he glided past me in the morning. i was lounging in a chair shaped like an egg, shades on listening to lana. breakfast too good, too rich and heavy. dirty still as a result of not understanding the fancy shower. too many shops and alley ways and too many options outside, too many river rides and hikes and arts and crafts and yoga workshops and massages. something about this gliding of his felt personal. something so steady in it, so still and assured, like a ship breaking through ice. it was as though everyone in the breakfast patio looked towards him and took courage. something about his clothes too, the way they flowed. his tattoo above his eyebrow said “bullshit.” i knew it was only a matter of time.

he asked if i wanted tea.

“what?” i said, taking my headphones out, although i had fully heard him. i often need more time to understand, and buy it with my confusion.

“do you want tea?” he said.

“what does your tattoo mean?” i asked over the tea. “it means nothing.” he said, smiling. his teeth were broken. “everything is bullshit.”

“do you want to go to yoga with me?” i asked. “it starts in twenty minutes.”

we lurched there on his bike. he drove like crazy. i held onto the backseat. i refused to touch him.

“you drive like crazy.” i said into the dust.

“what?” he said, fully turning around. i turned his bullshit face back to the road.

the teacher waited for others to come but they didn’t. then he twisted us into unfathomable shapes.

something about the prayer that the body naturally holds. when you hit the ancient tried and true shape and it feels like a poem.

“i’m leaving for nepal tomorrow,” i told him after yoga, at dinner. “i’m meeting my cult group there.”

“how are you going?” he asked.

“driver,” i said.

“my visa is almost up. i’ll come with you.” he said. “i’ll keep you safe.”

i might need you at the border, i thought. i might need you in general, to garnish my misery. and yes being alone with a driver is no bueno for me. or at least that was the world i had chosen. because i am always in my dream logic, it seems. veering away from normalcy, nodding into the most bifurcated and extreme roles. sleeping into danger. when did everything get so serious?

“i want you to try this app,” i said, sliding my phone towards him. i want to know if we are worth each other’s time. these busy precious lives. your time and mine. coming, going. future glimmering on the horizon if we even make it there. octopi live for just three years, you know. they explode their eggs and then they die.

maybe that is the best way to meet though. when the point at which our paths cross is nowhere.

“what is this?” he said, typing in his name and birthday. this app is called mirror.

“it’s something girls like,” i told him. something girls like, he repeated.

i considered the data. born in the tiger year, scorpio sun with a heavy moon. libra rising chameleon. a six path like mine. an eleven life like mine. so he must be lost here. here without reason, swallowed by the nicety of it all. nothing to do with his special time but kill it somewhere pretty. he might have money that he doesn’t understand. obviously we were never different. i let this shape around our reality, and felt our time tilt into a pinhole.

the joke was that we had no destination. that night we ran barefoot around our respective rooms. i went through his things. he threw t-shirts at me.

“take them.” he said. “i don’t want them. i don’t care.”

he told me he was sick in the head. mine too, my eleven head said. he had been a refugee, and then he had started a company. i held his head and took the sick out of it.

it was too exact to feel sexual. too precise for us to fuss. it has taken me a while to understand the ways that i can be close to a man. how i can trust him and believe in him and that doesn’t mean that we are promised.

two eleven six sick cancer moons who decided on each other and crossed the border. they barely spoke the same language. sixes indulging in six rare hours. tatted on his feet, too.

in border patrol i told him that others were waiting for me. academic others, from my group, who have looked after me since the end of my childhood. who would carry my bags and whisk me into their structure.

“where will you go?” i asked him.

“don’t worry about me. i’m an adult.” he said.

“don’t worry about me baby. you owe nothing.”

that was strange. because usually they tell me how much i owe them. how they do everything for me. and how helpless and weak i am without them. how i was born with a debt to pay.

so i was chewing on that, him saying that, and then he was gone. just like that, and he was gone. i want to say that he vanished. i looked out for him in the lobby, in the parking lot, ushered into my group activities.

he was gone.

i had to remind myself that i had wanted it like that.

• completely fiction & based on the flow of “ellis island and other stories” by mark helprin

  

let’s just be amazing for a second. every time i see a raindrop on the window I can feel you. when i see someone sleeping on the bus i feel you too. me i have neptune on my so and so. every astrologer reminds me of this. neptune very murky misty dreamy, they say, makes you an invisible girl. nobody can get you out of that mist. you neptune on his **** until he projects on you!

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he got her from the airport like he always did. any time she went somewhere he would take her there, as far as he could go with her, to the last door of the train or whatever. she liked how unyielding he was. how he followed everything, even to the end.

when he found her in the arrivals he kissed her. she kissed him back but it was always hard for her, to kiss in public.

from there they went through the metro, on the train, to the streets, towards the airbnb. he carried everything. he watched her face from every angle. he was doing all the watching and walking and mapping and talking. so that she could exist so deeply.

the edges of the buildings were sharp. she thought she might bleed if she touched them.

he took her through the lobby and the elevator and into the room. where there was a big white bed looking like a cloud. she took off all her clothes and got in it.

this was how they were the best. when he was feeling every leaf turn, noting every bend and sway and shake and she was completely unthinking, unflinching and biting like a dolphin.

when she woke he had washed her clothes and he had a chicken sandwich from the konbini that was wrapped in a parcel of wax. and then he had been sitting there waiting for her to wake up, to give her the sandwich, waiting and watching her sleep with his headphones in.

she put the whole sandwich in her mouth.

when she was ready they left for the part of the town that sold used books.

he kissed her shoulder on the metro. he kissed it so often. that she would feel cruelty flicker when he didn’t.

after three bookstores it was getting late outside. and he was getting jumpy, or nervous. he wanted to sit in the dark and smoke. i don’t know how to look at books, he said. i only know how to read them.

one more, she said, feeling her way to it. just this last one.

this last one was lit up like a church. it had that reverence and hush, like it was a quiet place. it smelled of metal bookshelves and office binders and paper piles.

all of them were photos, of one girl.

some of the pictures were hentai style. some had her boobs looking as big as balloons. but most of them she just looked pretty in. posed wearing school clothes, a nurse’s outfit, a party dress against a backdrop. laughing by the water fountain with her friends.

what do they like about this one? she asked him, pointing to the water fountain. he said, maybe they like when she’s happy.

fifty thousand photos of her for sale in there. pictures too of the baby hairs on her neck. a close up on the soft part of her arm. her eyelids. her fingers and toes. and one picture just of her pubic hair. the size to fit in a wallet. the back of it said life size.

every costume, and photo shoot in the world. for a girl with a secret past, and secret future.

as she fell asleep on him that night she had a feeling like she was falling, falling.

and even an attempt to omit it speaks to it.

note to self: everything has already been said.

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this is the longest i have ever gone without talking to you, since we’ve met. Of course people have come and gone and so on, but I have Just been here. So there is a constant heartbeat and feeling that i have been in touch with. Maybe that is funny, or maybe that is sad. Maybe it’s pretty in the way that things are beautiful now: like a kind of distended photocopy, a distorted memory that is winking with its own kind of wisdom. That i have just been here. For three years i have been posting to u every day. Thinking about u and what to post to u every day. Maybe ten days between a post max, if i have been sick or in some great distress. And sometimes it gets a bit weird, u know. I am only human. But this time it has been weeks with no contact. With no explanation or preparation on my end. Maybe three weeks but definitely at least two. The farthest i have ever gone on my own, without you. 

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in november i stayed in finland for two weeks in an old school house. during that time i wrote a novel that came out of me really fast. i knew what the story was going to be, and that i was going to write it, but writing it felt as though i just had to listen to the woods, and they would usher me into completion. I enjoy having a relationship with nature, and going where it tells me to. And at that time in that schoolhouse, I was able to hear nature deeply. i think because it was remote, and because I had allowed myself the space for it. Because i was in a tree house, surrounded by trees, heated by trees, writing on trees with trees.

These particular trees were very ancient and alive. I would like to facilitate an experience for others to have there. It will be midsummer, so the sun will not set. The days will blend into each other. The forest will swarm with flowers and bees. There is a lake to swim in, and a sauna. There is a loose schedule of activities that I’ve designed to support you in whatever your mission is. It features bodily alignment, and grounding in nature, and walks and swims, and creative writing, and herbalism, and sleeping on mats, and eating nourishing meals.

this will be private, and personal, and a way for a group of us to connect in a deep and unusual way. I incur a bit of a risk in having a real life experience. it would be easier to sequester myself to the internet. But this is getting boring. And I am sad that we weren’t alive for Woodstock.

The yoga instructor is my friend. The cook is my friend, and the hosts are my friends. The schoolhouse is cozy, and humble, and simple. It will be clean and comfortable. The nature will be beautiful. I am not necessarily trying to start a cult. I am more erring on the side of hanging out.

there will be two sessions, both in June, of about seven or eight people.

This is the kind of thing i wanted when i was little. to find the others, and a space for us.

Together we have had many visions. The application will close as soon as we have found the right people. So if you have some free time this summer, do considering joining me:

summer camp application

I am in Bali right now. It is nice in the way you’d imagine. I am learning many things. I went off to do that because I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. It is very hot here. I am next to the pool reading this over. On the other side of the wall a child is crying violently. A lot of the animals cry like that too. The little critters and birdies and geckos. They make noise that is tragic and shuttering like they are shaking an old cage.

Ayurveda is a traditional system of medicine from India. It takes the balance of our bodily systems into account. It views them clinically, and as a whole. This framework helps me take a real look at myself— my body, my feelings, my relationships, my path— from the cool distance and authority of scientific reasoning.

When I feel something real, I am so inside of it, that I am swimming. Swimming in the sensation of it. So I cannot always make sense of it, when I am in it. I wonder often. Is it better to be inside of it, or outside? Because outside is more controlled. Inside is more passionate. This is why the ancestors have left us with systems, and traditions. So that we are not alone in how we take a look at ourselves. Because we have a long lineage of methods to reference and apply.

In Ayurveda there is the physical body, which relies on food and water and air. Then outside of it, beyond what our eyeballs can see, there is the pranic body, the mind body, the intellectual body, and finally, furthest out, the bliss body.

But I won’t take you farther than the Prana body today. Prana is the life that flows through us. It comes from the sun. It autocorrects to “Prada” on my iPad. It is the energy that fills our physical body, making us breathe air and think and exist. When Prana is gone from us we are dead.

I am considering feelings, because I have them. In New York it was cold and gray. I would get dressed and act right but I felt like I wasn’t real. Real feelings are the currents that propel me towards my natal promise. When I feel something I know how to follow it. I think I would follow a feeling anywhere.

When I am happy or sad or fearful or excited, I feel like I am dying.

Tshirts ♡

I am inundated with sensations like these. As we all are. And I find a story, which I decide on amongst the colors and the lights, a story about who I am and what it all means, and I follow it.

The deeper it goes, the darker it gets.

Some of these feelings are so deep and dark that when they arise, I hop away from them on instinct. I decide I should not be feeling them before I have even felt. I try to keep myself neat and ordinary. Reflect the same internal experience I see others carrying.

When something arises powerfully within you, it colors your entire world. A striking feeling can emerge unexpectedly, from a surface level interaction or a simple motion. This intensity points to our deepest attachments. To something that pains us primordially, woven into the mundane. Something that you won’t let go of, or can’t let go of. Something that could challenge your story and the reality that makes you choose to live.

It is hard for me to write about her because I feel like I will get in trouble.

The feelings I have around her are tangled with my fear of getting in trouble. My wish to avoid it, my urge to challenge it, my instinct to flee from it.

No matter who she is, who she is to me and who she is to herself and who she really is, or who I really am, we are shaped by a reality where for me, speaking out of turn, or defying what she believes is right, means facing some sort of wrath.

People often punish the runt of the litter. Which is not to say that I am weak or fragile. But I am agreeable by default. I agree and forgive people who would not agree or forgive me.

Which is not her fault either.

That she was born powerful and I was born… truthful? I want to say “truthful” but that might be a lie. I was born to speak at least.

She was my best friend for two months. I knew it wouldn’t last, because I was too avoidant of feeling in trouble to feel comfortable, or to act like myself. I spent most of my time with her nodding and reflecting. What upsets me is that I did it because everyone wanted me to. It made a pretty picture for everyone if the two of us were best friends. But to be best friends I had to do as she said. It felt like a betrayal of my own realness. Which was what I couldn’t let go of in the end.

I don’t look back. But now I face something similar again. Because I am on this yoga retreat. I am moving my body in planes that open new rooms in my mind, open the windows to them, let the air into them. And suddenly I get emails from my agents, about a deal that is unfolding. A deal that would send me right back to the New York ways.

I feel like Malibu Barbie sitting on the yoga mat with my heart begging me for this thing. I cannot explain it. I am not supposed to want it. And before that, I was sitting in my apartment with my heart begging for the softness, and the closeness, and the distant spaces between choices.

My life would be easier if she and I were still friends. Others would be more generous to me, if I had been more generous to her.

My life had just already demanded more generosity than I was happy with. I did not want to give any more. I reject the ethos that your good energy reflects the world’s energy or something. That there is some scale of fairness. That god will be angry at you if you don’t pretend to be other than what you are. That you aren’t allowed to be mean. Or selfish. That you don’t deserve happiness, or at least you don’t deserve your wishes, and your instincts, if you do not behave in a certain way.

Am I being vague?

This month we are looking at real feelings. Please tell me, in messages and comments, what feels real to you? What moves you so deeply and irrevocably that you cannot reason with it?

Ultimately I think it is beautiful to listen to your deepest current. To go where you can, and then follow. We were born to feel the way we do, and to let it unfold accordingly.

At least, we are born for that as much as we want to be.

Sotce

But knowing the end, let’s be sure that we are where we are. Here, in the beautiful living of it. 

Beneath all of the solid things– the identities we are born into, the ones we take on, the choices we make to guard them, or leave them behind– undercutting all of this, are the patterns. Think of the patterns like the ripples after a large explosion, the aftershock that reverberates through time. This is what the scientists study. The wrinkles in wood, or in jade. The rhythms of your period. The cycle of health, and what it reveals about you. The turbulence and buoyancy and decay. 

I feel so softly towards her that it is hard for me to write about it. 

I went to her house late last night, because I couldn’t bear to think of her alone there, the way she is. Maybe it cuts like it does because she will be me too. She is in her last years. She looked so beautiful standing there, so regal and delicate in her nightgown, her hair pinned up in translucent coils. She tried to give me one of her hair pins. I didn’t know how to use it. It didn’t fit into my living. I left it with her. 

She led me upstairs to her room. She wanted me to take down a painting she had made, depicting the Kosovo War. A cluster of refugees stood around the tree of life, their faces turning expectantly to the viewer. 

“Look at all of them,” She said, breathing life into the canvas again. Her colors were so rich that they seemed almost childish. “They were just like you and me, regular people in regular clothes.”

There were boys wearing sweatshirts and baseball caps, and women wearing lipstick and earrings. Them being ordinary made them look real. 

She wanted me to take the painting down, so that she could take a picture of it for her friend. 

There was a small cup sitting next to her bed, a yogurt container. She eats the good kind, with the red letters, from Bulgaria. And she eats the big containers with the vanilla cow on it too. She told me matter-of-factly that when she has to throw up at night, she can’t always get out of her big bed. So she keeps the empty yogurt cup on the nightstand for when she needs to. 

I heard once that when you break up with someone, you experience the process of separating as the person you are, and the person you are with. 

In the same way, you will die as you lived. If you want to know what death will be like, then look to how you are living. 

Not that she is exactly dying yet. But she sees the grand opening unfolding towards her, the threshold, and she waits for it as she always has. Except now much of her life has paled in comparison to the end. She waits for it as she always has. Very prettily and quietly. Sweet and unassuming and weak and careful. What a thing to wait so patiently for. 

Old age is beyond many of us for now. We don’t know its weight, its textures. There are patterns that still have not revealed themselves , but it is still something to consider. The way that you will remain yourself through all of it. How life does not strip you of who you are, but rather unfolds you into it. How it is a series of journeys and how you are the person you become as you take them. 

There is a central experience of our being that articulates itself outwards, that forms itself through the details of our days. This drawing is a map of how we try to live. And this is where I want to meet you today and always. Not in understanding, because I don’t think we are meant to understand, but by opening room for perception, articulating the depths of our experience through how it manifests in every moment. 

I try to live that way. It’s funny to have this platform when I know so many people without one that are better at that kind of living than I am. The kind of living that is seeing everything with my eyes clear and open, and keeping them open, feeling the subtle waves for what they are. My practice is not deceiving myself. Seeing everything, without looking away. 

As usual I have not solved the great cosmogenic myth. But as is my way, I suppose, I have treaded lightly around it. 

I feel that when I can write about something beautifully, when I can decorate a God in pictures and sweet imaginative visions, that I am loving it. And maybe in loving it, I am loving myself.

And loving you. 

And understanding in the way that I am meant to.

At the bottom of this texts, you’ll find my responses to thirty-ish questions about “being.” I don’t know if I’ve actually answered any of them, because the dialogue is ongoing. Because unfortunately for me I am a participant in all of this being as much as anyone else. 

But I felt I had gotten us somewhere by the end of it. 

One question I cannot answer:

Does the circle end? 

-sotce

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I am a very private person and sometimes i feel guilty for not sharing more of myself with my friends. I like to think that what i have been through doesn't define me, but sometimes it feels like all i am and i wonder if it is possible for someone

to know me without knowing of these problems i carry with me. I want to think that my …

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