The Basics

1. Decide to lift up the rock. Find a hundred a thousand worms of self pity, self loathing, pouts.

2. Cancel the song "Stranded in the Jungle" 

3. How do you know you still have a place in this world? Because you are still breathing on it? Because you have not been destroyed? 

4. Try to destroy yourself anyhow. 

5. Four years in LA, four years of sad sunsets, a handful of bike rides over uneven pavement, spilling coffee on desks, stains on screens, cut hedges, small flowering blueberry bushes, early morning downtown walks, wondering about money and why can't this money build a small bright city. 

6. The only thing you have is your mind, grandma said don't lose your mind.

7. Cheese and crackers, Shark Coochie 

8. Looking at all of the women and still having a layer a sheen a silly shirt not quite sure how to be in your body not quite sure how to be old or a human or a sexual being, all of this uncertainty and why don't you love it yet?

9. A tenderness. Break your heart over and over again and make mistakes. Climb and be strong watch yourself become a gorilla just like you wanted to.

10. Sell the house. Sell the filth. Sell the dream. Sell the song. Sell the tears. 

11. What is?

12. I don't know anything about stories anymore but I got rid of a typewriter and there's nothing useful here at all. I don't have much to say but maybe I will. I lived the American Dream. 

13. What I want is ease. 

14. And love.

15. The game I play called I Will Never Love Again is a game that makes me laugh and cry but not love 

16. Laughing and crying are kinds of loving

17. Laugh-crying is my love language.

18. The selfish worm, the one in the apple. 

19. I can't let go of that 

20. Dream

21. But what if

22. I could 

In No Particular Order

1. Consider the thick droplets of water on the faces of your lovers and healers
2. Play Witch in the rain, know you can cackle if you want, choose not to cackle, but take note in case you want to upgrade from chuckle
3. Read about the symbolism of the egg, crack the egg with its veins, use three hands as one, watch the yolk burst in the rain
4. Unearth the soil
5. We are the weirdos, Mister
6. The breath, the vibration, the warmth, the weight, the skin, the bark, the leaves, the taste of your lover the tree your lover the friend your lover the one you fear, the one who loves you without tender words the one who loves you far away loves you
7. My love language is laughter, Wild laughter, whispered laughter, inappropriate laughter, unashamed laughter, belly laughter, laughter between kisses, handshakes, high fives, free laughter, infinite all the time laughter, memories of laughter, solemn space in between
7b. My love language is the Sacred Pause
8. My love language is the tree, a quiet steady moment of security, no need to move or prove or apologize or keep up, the quiet moments holding hands side by side hand in hand in green, the quiet moment of being and witnessing being. Of seeing and being seen.
9. The walk and the hop
10. The relief
11. Litty Liddy Littie
12. Jerome go home come back when you've grown
13. Be in prison only when you are in prison
14. Be proud of us for what we might call shame but choose to call pride this moment is liberation empowerment embracing the love that belongs to us the joy the sensuality that belongs to us the live that belongs to us the world that belongs to us the breath that belongs to us
15. I. Stay. With. Me.

Just When You Forgot How to Play Games There Are More Games

1. Look at somebody else's life/website and ache because that is the life you are supposed to be living. Repeat indefinitely.
2. Fall asleep
3. Play songs
4. Fart a lot.
5a. Let a year and a few weeks pass by.
5b. Find this blog entry about a year and a half later, laugh because it's very funny, and go ahead and post it.
6. Stop staring at things that aren't yours
7. Be in the body and the moment that are yours and only yours
8. Time to yourself
9. Pocket to yourself
10. Give to yourself so you can give to others.
11. Turn it off, turn it all off.
12. Love the way the keyboard feels. Old keyboard, old computer
13. Yes there are too many things but those things will start to burn away
14. Like Notre Dame
15. Too soon
16. Quote from The Hunchback of Notre Dame: "Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable."
17. Love unreasonably.

Yes I Am Alive and Please and Thank You

1. Meet a friend who gives you three German names (Max Weber / Karl Marx / Emile Durkheim) and add it to your list of People to know or forget or crawl on or suck on like a lozenge. Brain lozenge. And/or.
2. I want to be honest, but I am scared you will think I am Wrong.
3. Take note of what The Schedule means to you: The whip of 2018, the bones of 2018, the foundation of 2018, the energetic worms of 2018, the life raft. But is there a need for the life raft anymore when I see my Galleon on the horizon? I am swimming to you. 
4. Answer questions in the voice you never knew you had, tell stories in a voice you don't think about
5. There are a million stories to tell, he said. Let go of the old ones. What's the story, Anne Bogart?
6. Swim and don't be afraid.
7. Show and tell your eraser collection with as much joy as you did when you were a little girl.
8. Where are you in the 7-year cycle of energetic worm degredation? The worms are calling out for more.
9. This was made for you.
10. Sit in your chair, remember the rain, the sky is so heavy these days, crisp with snow.
11. Make room for your cat in your lap.
12. Walk amongst witches and heathens and artists and mystics and gurus and saints and devils and demons and dybbuks and slap their booties as you pass them by, with a wink, all of this sex magick stuff is well and good until somebody OD's on coke, and I can only laugh for a bit, everything makes me laugh because I don't understand it, is it anger or sadness?  Humor or hubris?
13. Dreamt you were a preacher and I was proud of you, speaking in front of the crowd. Nobody cheered for me, they cheered for you. I was proud proud proud to be so quiet. I had never felt so whole and humble.
14. Trust your words, yes?
15. I don't think they are either or, they are slipping through a dragon's eye.
16. The project of your mouth. Your small chin and the smudge growing around your teeth. The way you look at me, with your dragon eyes and whiskers. The smudge growing around your eyes. The age growing in your stride.
17. This is for You. I don't see it but you do, I don't see me but you do. I want to see me.
18. No more bathwater, but keep the baby. Keep the baby.
19. Yum yum vs Penis
20. I want to be Wrong.
21. Make the most of what they got. Games. Play therapy.
22. Sit. Smile. Breathe.
23. Some crystalline structure has grown here, unnoticed. Something fragile.
24. Firmly in the Flow and the Universe says YESSSS YESSSSS YESSSSSSSSSSSS you are alive you are alive you are alive and it cries and I cry and we cry together and she says thank you and I say thank you and sit and sit and sit and smile and smile and smile and today's intention is
25. Look for messages
26. The truck spraying water, or gas. Truck juice.
27. I am at ease and I can, and today I put things together
28. Watch the neighbor read his giant bible. Invite him for dinner?
29. Reaching out with your heart tendrils full of love, wanting to declare love to the girl with a flat face and flat voice as she gets on her bike, it's her hat really
30. Moldy hats outside. Can you wash moldy hats? Don't be a waste of a hat.
31. Pick up every piece of trash you see because you never know which piece of trash in the grass by the retirement home will be a photograph of the sea, you never know which piece of discarded trash will be a picture of you from the future, you never know which piece of trash you pick up will be the phone number of your Truest love, your Truest Mirror, you never know what may or may not effect a dolphin's choice to leave his pod. Fission-fusion society. They join and leave several pods over a lifetime.

It Takes A Long Time to Change So Give Me A Year At Least

1. Maiden, mother, crone. Count on your fingers until your fingers are gone.
2. Maiden you are not going easily, are you? Pretty o pretty o pretty one
3. "Speak, O Toothless One."
4. Everything You Said Was True
5. Today when every accomplishment feels like dull cuts with a butterknife
6. Cut With a Kitchen Knife is not just the name of your google doc of words, it is also a work of art by Hannah Hoch, female dadaist
7. Remember how to make your lists, they are lifesavers
8. David Whyte says everything will break your heart
9. In the arena
10. Vulnerable
11. Until what I am offering just looks too sinewy, too muddled, too confused
12. And is that okay.
13. It is not minimalist, or pleasing to the eye
12. It is maximalist, and messy
13. Can you love your mess?
12. Can you notice where you are stuck?
13. Where are you stuck?
14. You are stuck where you are not on your knees saying "I Can't."
15. Every moment say, "I Can't, I Can."
16. The limits of what you can and can't, what you are and aren't.
17. If I could see me through your eyes at every moment, I would say all of these things
18. Good job, beautiful.
19. Give me til Monday, beautiful.
20. You are beautiful and your voice is beautiful.
21. You don't need to stay indoors
22. It is not always safe by yourself indoors
23. That is not always what you need
24. What you need is a slippery fish
25. "This fish is pungent."
26. All of the things I laughed at, I cry at, because they are Beautiful
27. Wake me up inside
28. I want us all to succeed
29. And make it to heaven
30. I guess if I am loving myself the best I can today, that's enough. Messy room, clean car.
31. It's enough
32. The homage to myself is too much self
33. For it is by self forgetting we find
34. It is by dying we awaken to eternal life

The Unflattening (Winding Like Roses)

1. Wake up blearily and vaguely recall the dream of Desi Arnaz, your true love disappearing, experimental films, blood clots. Mix up days, all the dreams bleed together.
2. Memories of mangoworms and the heroes who squeeze them out of puppy paws. Do not think of the dying puppy's porous jaws, do not think of it, look up "trypophobia," know each hole is a button you press, know each worm is trying to survive in its tiny way, and it enjoys mangos just like you. You have a lot in common.
3. Everything is cancelled. Talk to women who care about you. They will remind you that the only goal is to tear down barriers to love.
4. Look at social media, the colors of hair and the smiling faces and the lipstick and the quickness.
5. Walk outside to the pharmacy and belong to the day.
6. Belong to the day.
7. Belong to the melted trash can.
8. Belong to the neighbors you greet as though you belong here, as though this is where you have lived and will always live.
9. Greet the pitbull, the chihuahua, the porcelain garden lambs.
10. Enjoy the stripes everybody is wearing
11. Try to understand systems, promise yourself your brain is still functional
12. Find something to love, something to embrace.
13. Interact lightly with a friend and feel the ease of all of the shadows lifting.
14. The Bodhi Tree. I sit with red clown hair present to all experience. Here for the stillness.
15. Make an orderly outline, the one you have made so many times, and laugh. Maybe you are not checking anything off the list, maybe just tracing the same spiral, walking on the Escher staircase.
16. Know the system is just beyond your reach and you are part of it but never ever able to see its machinery
17. Approximate the machinery
18. Tell the machinery in list form that it will emerge organically
19. The machinery is the winding roses curving around the grey white house
20. Just stand in front of that place in your neighborhood you never noticed before, on a breezy afternoon, and let yourself cry. Because that is more beautiful than anything. And become unflattened.
21. Make your own choices, your own mistakes, your own lists, your own words, your own smiles, your own loves, your own approval, your own love, Like a Woman.

Things To Say To Your Reflection (And Other Public Transport Games)

1. Look it right in its flaming eye, in the subway glass, and say I WILL FIND YOU with determination, there is determination above those dark circles.
2. Distract it and the memory of it by making a scavenger hunt for the following things: the reddest lips, the nicest nails, the best boots, the strongest child, the purplest hair, the most starving artist, the sick man with the pirate patch, the teenager who looks most like Prince, the quietest heart, the friendliest smile, the most suspicious eye
3. Just remember as a statement how many mirrors there are, and be somebody's mirror, like that Velvet Underground song
4. Say to it, "The time for palm readers, tarot cards, wishes, and kings is over. Now is the time to sit by the brook and hear it babble. That babble of train track clickety clack."
5. The Fool's Journey
6. you have Nerves like weeds
7. you grow Patience like poppies
8. "Yes you have given me all the reasons why not, but what about all of the reasons why? This is why not. This is why. Why? Why not?" either liberating or profoundly not.
9. Leaves clues in places, in the shape of a cloud of perfume
10. There is enough room for all of us. Allow me to disappear and reappear several times.
11. Yours is not mine is mine is yours