All the Lives I Have Lived

I was waking around the Bedford L-stop two nights ago when a flood of memories came roaring through me. I could feel myself walking down the street a few summers ago when I stayed with friends on North 11th. I had a big sign about rapping and a smaller sign about healing, and I would switch back and forth regarding which was on display. I remember romances with girls that I was enraptured with, many that I have not even spoken to in years and would not even know where to begin to get in contact with them (except maybe mental telegrams). I remember people I thought would stay in my life for a great deal of time who have moved on. I have necessarily accepted that they may not return to me in this life. It is the present "me" that needs to return to the eternal "me", so that I can free my self from myself, and strive to realize final liberation in this lifetime.

I have woken up in Charleston, Key West, San Francisco, hung out at greyhound stations... sometimes with real tickets and sometimes with fake ones made by a gutter-fab girl I used to know at SVA. Thank you, by the way, Michelle. You made possible a lot of amazing moments on my journey. And thank you to the greyhound bus drivers who allowed that one fake ticket, that looked quite inauspicious, pass at that moment so I would not be stuck in the purgatory that is a greyhound station in the middle of nowhere.

I think of hot summer days in Michigan. I think of all the girls I chased and all the chaos I caused, intentionally or unintentionally. I think of my old crew coach who used to call me a bull in the china shop, until I met an old Chinese man named Gabriel who helped get me started on the process of taming that bull, directing that energy inward towards the infinite source, which I prefer to call God. Perhaps that makes me old-fashioned, and yes, "God" makes people nervous, skeptical, fanatical, etc., but it is simply a word pointing to the inner experience, which expresses so much more.