I have been living in fear of  tumor for about two weeks now.  It has been spooky and while I am not afraid to die, since I meditate on it a lot, and am preparing myself for it, as is the custom of my practice, I am afraid to die without singing, loving, friending, and gigging again, and also to make a few things right while In still breathe.  It’s been a very heady six months.
Happily, I can proclaim that I am the proud owner of two shiny brand  new cataracts, one in each eye, which require  some pretty major surgery, Which is far better than an inoperable brain tumor, which as been known to exist in some of my family members on my mothers side, according to my grandmother. I experienced sudden vision loss for the first time in my life.

I was rushed to emergency after an optometrist got nervous about my description of how quickly  it happened,  and my symptoms of headaches and sudden vision loss had everyone, including myself on alert for bad news. Much to the credit of Kaiser, they had me in a CT scan machine in under 20 minutes. The large loopy, donut looking apparatus,  reminded me of a Klingon torture device from Star trek.

I got to see my brain for the first time in several years, with their brand spanking new high res, CAT scan image, and it’s funny, (no pun intended) that it looks just like a clown to me.

Aside from being the humiliation of being made to wear a really girly hospital robe, (why don’t these things come in black yet?) I was treated very well by the staff.

I came out knowing that I don’t have a brain tumor, and also the dilating agent they put in my eyes, made Piedmont Ave  look like a magical lighted wonderland with brighter colors, and rainbows and arcs, and it was really cool.

So, soon, I will have to undergo cataract surgery or I will go blind.  I don’t like that prospect of that, and I had a series of dreams months ago, that I was blind. weird.
I think I have emotional blind spots too, now knowing what is really going on sometimes, and. The metaphor is powerful more than ever now.
I am visiting with my mother for the first time in years, in a few days, and beginning steps in a spiritual practice I have been attracted to for over three decades.

Last night I awoke in the middle of the night to hear myself saying softly, “I miss you so much. I miss the person who cared about me. I miss who I was when I  trusted you”
There was no crying. Just the statement of my emotion, and  I have never spoken in my sleep that way, to the best of my knowledge. Maybe they heard me. Maybe they were in sync, and maybe not. It doesn’t matter. I sighed and went back to sleep, and think more will be revealed, and one day I will know what this is all about, even if I am not here in earthly form at that time. I am being shadowed by ravens constantly, my timekeepers, and they help a little with my blind spot.

Love to you all on this rainy December, post-apocalyptic evening.

Piero

I am coming to have a healthy respect and even  an admiration for what we humans commonly call “chaos”

Things come together and collide, and then explode, often with no reason we can detect, atoms, spirits, relationships, businesses,  everything in creation. which is the byproduct of destruction in the first place,  is subject to chaos in one form or another. Nothing remains stationary, and noting remains unchanged as a result.
In the arena of human interactions this is particularly relevant to me tonight, a I review the year, the decade, and my life in general. I was born from chaos, and have lived in it, and now am finally coming to terms with it.

I see the benefit of chaos to the universe, even when it does not work well for me, or maybe it does.
The friendships and relationships that explode, scatter people and emotions out into the world, where they interact with other friendships and relationships, creating more chaos, and then more scattering. You could say there is a subtle perfection in the design of it. I am only adverse to it when it cause me pain, or destroys something I have come to love.
However, even then, all in all the really good stuff comes from chaos. It is the ultimate pot stirrer, redistributing energy  to places where it grows  and changes, and morphs into all sorts of unexpected shapes and forms.

I think of it now as a cosmic recycling program, destroying established things, pulverizing them and then using the remains to fertilize the world with more chance, change, and new designs.

This past decade has been a shrine to so many things I once believed in that were destroyed, or simply self destructed, leaving me with empty space, a spiritual vacuum, where new beliefs or ideas are taking hold. This might just be me, or the aging process, but I feel the end of an era of a particular way of thought fast approaching like a comet.
I am not sure I believe in romantic love anymore, though it is a nice fantasy thought. I think leadership, something I have avoided most of my life, is  now a responsibility. I think ethics must be a daily meditation and constant practice,  and that omission of information, or non-disclosure of information that can affect others negatively,  is flat-out lying with a prettier name. I believe that hard drugs are far more dangerous to your personal ethics and self-respect, than they are to your body.
My idols, beliefs I had for years, for a decade or longer, have been smashed, and it has made me a far more critical person than I ever was. By the same token, I also believe that with discipline, and study, that you can create whatever kind of life you choose, or very close to it, and that how you live, and who you are is a choice, and that whatever your situation,  as an adult, you choose what kind of person you are, and how you treat others, and you cannot claim that anything is “Just happening”. You chose what you do. And everything you do, has consequences, regardless of what you think, and the energy and intention you send out into the universe, without fail, always boomerangs back at you.

Knowing this to be a reality,  one I have tested extensively, and experienced  first-hand for over 45 years,  makes me consider  every interaction I have with anyone, and what my motives are and what theirs are, and how things might turn out. It’s not too mental really, and takes about one fifth of a second, but it happens constantly. Once I have decided or reviewed my intentions, then I have only to act, let go, and expect some chaos to takes its course on each and every plan, dream, design, and idea I put out into the universe. I am scattered seed in the soil of chaos, and also recycled star material to begin with, and I create some chaos too, just by merely existing, so I think it makes a great deal of sense that the process should  continue on all levels of reality at all times.
A few days ago, I went to bed and awoke with a serious banging headache, and the vision on my left eye, has been pretty much gone into a dark, dull blur ever since. An optometrist, after examining my eyes, said I should go at once and get a CAT scan for a possible tumor behind the optical nerve, or other neurological anomalies.
I am going in for said scan tomorrow, and the past couple of days have had me meditating on death, and the destruction of my body by time, and natural causes. I have prepared myself for years now for the eventuality of death, or rather the absolute certainty of it, and while it spooks some of my friends not schooled in chaos  (actually they are schooled in chaos they just don’t know it)  my meditations on it, have me feeling pretty relaxed about the possibility of having cancer in my brain, should that come to be the case. It could be anything at this point, but it’s been years since I had a CAT scan, and losing your sight suddenly is unnerving.

But so far all the chaos has taught me that physically, emotionally, spiritually,  and socially, I am merely material for the universe to recycle and scatter.
So I can content myself with the knowledge that all is proceeding to some kind of design, one that I need not know the ultimate goal or end of,  to appreciate it.  I so appreciate it. Even when it destroys things I love and even when it destroys me., which it will in the end, a date I have no idea about. I just know that I will be gone, gone, gone from here, and  there will no recourse for me or anyone else, and that is the way of it. Maybe I’ll be absorbed into the soil near my father’s grave. Or maybe some of my ashes will float away on the warm air, to find homes in bird’s nests, and high pine trees.  Or maybe a flood will come and wash the remaining particles of me into a river that will let out to the sea.
It’s makes no difference. Chaos will reign, and I will comply.

Meanwhile, I will still endeavor in life, as though there actually is a tomorrow, which I have no proof of, or a past I have no clear record or understanding of,  and my human affairs, my life, my loves, my music, my words and my desires, and spiritual inclinations,  will all continue taking their places in the theater and play of my life, where I am allowed only slight revisions to the script that the universe has composed. I am a single note in the opera of the communal metaphysical soul,  trying to find my place in the chord, and melody of time.

Pardon my overly poetic post, and it’s overly cosmic contents.  Death is knocking, and even if it does not enter, such events always stir me to be as clear and as concise as I can. I have loved my people, and  they have loved me and I really cannot ask more from this life.  This is me, preparing for chaos, which is the most delicious irony of all.:
Chaos is the most perfectly working thing in the universe. yuck yuck, hardy har har. Lol
Joke’s on me.

You are loved tonight, my chaotic people. Wonderful scatterlings. Seeds of chance.
Agents of chaos each and every one of you. I salute your perfect function .

I want to take time tonight to say that I am in gratitude for all the good things that have happened in my life, and for all the things that have happened to bring clarity and reality into my life, even if they were painful or unexpected.
Everyone’s days are numbered, and I am no exception. My days are numbered. I can feel it now at this age.And it’s not the age that makes me feel that way, but the emotional sensitivity that comes with it, that allows me to feel things more deeply, and I feel death, and the other side very deeply these days. Not being morbid, just real. My dead grandmother has spoken to me,  and said I get to be with her and my father soon, which could mean in five seconds after I finish this blog, or at age 92, like my she was when she passed. either way, I feel the temporal nature of my existence like never before Especially after these past months.

I have something important to say. Hear this and know this, and tell everyone I said it if they ask how I felt, and what I thought.  If there was any question about us, and what I thought us to be.

I love you.

I love all the people who helped me, and a lot of you that didn’t. I love my enemies tonight (doesn’t happen every night) Maybe they were not really enemies in the traditional sense, but personal challenges to the development of my moral and ethical character, which has always been a work in progress, and a series of strong lessons, to be sure.
I am glad you were or are, in my life. More than a series of random moments, now, life appears to have a very real design, and fabric, of which each human life is a part expressed as a single thread. When one is removed, the entire fabric of reality is affected, like ripples on a pond. Some of you knew this, others don’t think that way, and that is fine. No one needs to think like me to earn or keep my respect. In fact I love it when people disagree and teach me something I didn’t know, which is just about everything.

I Love all my living family, To possess The courage, and fortitude to have survived what we have survived, is a testament to the power, and integrity of the human spirit. Especially my siblings, each one an island into themselves, all of whom are experts in spiritual warfare, and our even being alive after what happened with my mother, and how we were “raised”, (I am using this term very loosely) says a lot about my family. I love you all, and think of you all the time.
News flash: we won. we’re still here and that is winning.
I love all my former band members, and fellow musicians who have made my life the most amazing series of musical interludes a human could ever hope for.
I love all the friends who supported me, and have offered counsel, warmth, friendship, and shared their lives and dinner tables with me.

I love all my exes, and especially that one woman I have been endlessly talking about, because under it all, I still love her terribly and miss her all the time.  I love you no matter what happened between us. We’ll probably meet next lifetime for more crazy adventures, you zany nut, you. Darn it.   You are constantly missed. Now get outta here. (JK)

I Love the twin cities of Berkeley and Oakland, my running ground, and hideout, from 108th near Durant manor, all the way to Solano avenue on the border of Albany. I walked it all, and fought for mine. And made hundreds of friends, from all classes, who all greeted me with integrity and fortitude regardless of whether were fighting one another,  eating crumpets at lavish garden parties, or stealing milk to survive, or crashing in the park or playing our way to the very top of the bay area music scene.  I miss and pray for them, and this entire place on the Bay that I Love so very much.  These cities are me,. I am them. I am Oakland. I am Berkeley. That is the truth of it.

I LOVE my family in AA and NA and Al-Anon who saved me and taught me how to live and gave me a life that was astonishing. The life I was meant to have. Some people with what has been called “high vibrating energy” (A term usually I loathe, but must use here) simply are not meant to live life under the influence, and for us, it causes pain, and discord with all we love when we do. I thank you for teaching me how to stay sober, and realize my full spiritual potential.
I Love all my teachers and mother and father figures, for patiently teaching me to see gray, (like Jackie) and how to fight and navigate life, (Like Butch Haynes) and my dead godfathers, Benny, and Andres who both died violently when I was young,. I especially love  my own father, whose presence I now feel daily for the first time in my life. I have cried a lot lately for him too, not realizing how badly I have missed him, and the big brown face with nappy hair that would come and nuzzle my cheek, with the deep warm voice who smelled like old spice after shave and tres flores. I miss my father so much.
This might be why Ifa, and Ifa based religions have appealed to me so much, and also maybe why  many members and practitioners through my life  have told me I was destined to practice Le Regla de Ocha in one form or another. I resisted this all my life and am now reconsidering it, but have not made any firm decision about it, because I am already connected to The Orisha by virtue of surviving alone in the streets since I was five, under conditions so hostile that they killed three out of five of my peers before age 30,. I survived through  my connection with The Orisha.  I always listened to them when they spoke in the form of the wind, rain, lightning, death, love, and war, and in the form of people and circumstances that simply cannot be explained any other way other way than to attribute them to The Orisha.   My personal relationship with the Orisha, is street tested, and while it doesn’t demand that I become initiated into a Ile’ or Munanso, (houses) I do believe it is time for me to learn proper etiquette  in the practice from a Babalawo or Iyanifa (Priest or priestess) and to show full respect to the Orisha who have most obviously protected me and cared for me. I love them dearly, and always have since I was a child. hey were more my parents than my mother ever was.
I love the Orisha and everything they have blessed me with.

And about her, My mother. This stranger who I have never really known, and who has been an enigma to me my entire life, I love her too, but it does not flow easily. But it’s there. She gave me life, and hard lessons, and according to my beliefs and also according to my dead, that was all she was slated to do this lifetime, and it’s not my business to question it any more. I love my mom too

And for my part. To all the people I have ever hurt, or damaged, the ones I confused with my intensity, or the heartbreak I have caused, and the impact I have had on people this lifetime that was negative for them, I am most profusely sorry, and wish I could  make things better between us. I feel great remorse for my foolish and angry actions. I have always been, and styled myself to be  a feared and loyal retainer (bodyguard-protector) for my family, and thought of myself in feudal terms, and lived by the sword. This was most certainly not appropriate in a lot of circumstances. This hurt a lot of people who didn’t need that kind of hard violent justice-obsessed male energy, and probably thought I was being mean for no reason. I was just scared. I am most sincerely wishing to be accountable for all this, If I have offended you, Let’s talk.

I hear the raven calling my name a lot these days, telling me my time is short here,  and while I have no plans whoever of leaving prematurely, it is not really in my hands, as witnessed by todays encounter with my personal angel, who drew me back from getting sent to the beyond. If I should go, let there be no confusion about how I felt about all of you.
All of you. Listen:
I love you. dearly. deeply. magically, universally, timelessly, endlessly. The candle I burn tonight will be for you and I, for us all on this ship of fate, bound for, literally, God knows where.
See you there.
But first you will see some more of me here, I think. You ain’t getting rid of me until god takes me, so there.
Aggravating aren’t I? And I got way more practical jokes for all your asses. So be warned. Especially now.
Like lightning, we all strike only once the same way per lifetime.

This is my testimony.

Piero Amadeo Infante,

December 15th, 2012.

this evening, I was given a quick refresher course on how sudden death can occur in a person’s everyday life.

After walking around Berkeley and Oakland   singing, which is how I write and practice, I was headed home, and crossing an intersection near where I live. I waited for the light, and heard a noise on my right and instinctively looked that way as I stepped off the curb.

Big mistake.
Suddenly I felt someone grabbing me by the collar and yanking me back, and had my hand on my knife  before my butt even landed on the sidewalk, and I felt something brushing the front of my jacket, something moving very fast. It was a bicyclist, moving faster than I have ever seen one in my neighborhood at night. He was in all black, and had no lights, ninja style. And he shot past me and plowed into a man holding some groceries, slamming him into the pavement right in front of some police cars,  where his head hit very, very hard, with a sickening smack. I stood up and looked at the person who had grabbed me, and he said “sorry. I didn’t want you to get plowed”
The man on the ground was being attended to by the Berkeley Police and an Alameda sheriffs, and they were freaking out, and I am not sure if he made it or not.
But I did.

There was a lot of blood and it looked really bad. it could have been me.
I asked the man who pulled  me back  his name, and he said “Jeremiah”
I thanked him and he brushed it off like it was no thing.
I could have been the guy on the ground easily, if it wasn’t for this stranger.
Apparently fate has other plans for me, But I was reminded that this can end with no warning suddenly and violently.
I am grateful tonight that I got to walk away, and sorry for the man who did not. I will burn a candle tonight for him, and also thank God for my stranger angel who kept me here.
While a lot of people are mourning the deaths in Connecticut, and I with them, we should also thank fate and God, for our being here every day. I thank my Grandmother and father too, for guiding Jeremiah to me to help me, because I feel them around me protecting me every day since I got my Funerary lines. I miss my grandmother’s physical presence terribly, and wish I had spent more time with her when I could. But she talks to me, and so does my father. I guess they just needed a little official recognition.
I got the message. This can end at any moment. Game over. Bye bye. roll credits. Fin. Hasta La Vista.

Live life today. don’t look back. move forward at all costs. breath every breath and love every person you can until you can’t any more. This is all. This is it. I get it.

I am lucky, I live to see another day.
Thanks, Jeremiah, wherever you are. And may peace be upon the souls of all who passed today.

P. Infante

December 14 2012.

I am moving. Quickly. Like time is of the essence, which it is.
I am now 51, fit, open-minded, repairing my body and heart from several years of indolence, which culminated in a disastrous fall season, all while I was working on getting my life together.
You come to appreciate time when you can faintly see the other side, and friends start dropping off, and if you are lucky, very lucky, you might even be able to know what your purpose in life is, or at least one of the purposes.

I am very lucky. I don’t know where it came from, the desire, and strength to make a loving choice to fully embrace life once again at this late stage in the game. I sometimes attribute it to my family’s iron constitution, and massive survival skills.
Others times I think it’s my friends, and teachers who have shielded me from the worst storms at times, and often from the storm of myself.

But mostly, now I think it is God and my dead who guide me through these dangerous passages that have claimed the lives of so many of my friends. Drugs, life choices, untreated mental illnesses, and an increasingly dangerous world, take their toll on all of us. I recently, once again, discovered my purpose.
I am here to carry the story, and remember them in words and songs. I am living history. I am the page upon which their histories are written, and I ran from this, avoided it, and denied it for many years.

I had 7 years sober when around 2008 the stress of a bad relationship, a band project that was seemingly overwhelming, the stress of 35 years playing music on tour and in clubs, and my own untreated depression caught me off guard one night, and i took to drinking and using drugs to medicate the pain again, as I had so many times before in my life. A close friend died, and I lost the place I was staying.
Then I realized that the project I was doing could not have been launched at a worse time (the financial crash of 2008, the buyout of all the mid-sized venues I had played at for years, by clear channel INC, and a total drop in CD sales) and after struggling with if for three years, I dropped my project, the first rock Opera about Oakland, and with a broken heart, and dwindling resources, I left the east bay and ran for 5 years, avoiding closeness in relationships,  friendships and creative projects, and traveled across the globe and the state.  LA, Bristol UK, New York, Canada, I moved from place to place, always being haunted by the specter of the woman I loved, and what I regarded as my first musical failure.
During this time a young popular DJ and great producer named El Kool Kyle, would ask me into his studio on occasion to sing on some of his tracks and produce with him, encouraging me in that way that only young people can, and he was instrumental in getting me to consider singing again. I sang on a few tunes, but I still wasn’t ready to get back into it fully. he didn’t care and would basically just make me sing when he wanted me to. It probably kept the dram alive in me, without me even knowing it.
My time running away. It was a long run. Very tiring. I thought often of falling on my sword,  and it felt like death was an option a lot of the time.
Around may 9th of this year, I made my last drink (Inshallah) a fine concoction of expensive rum, fresh coconut water, and organic mandarin limes,  and had a fun, if drunken night in SF when I was working for my Friend Benjawan’s Language company. Benjawan was the catalyst for a lot of change for me, being all of 5 feet tall, and weighing in at around 105 pounds (I think) she was nonetheless a heavyweight achiever, who believed in my dormant potential,  and pushed gently for me to be a better person.

The next morning, I went to an AA meeting and have been sober ever since.

As I got a grip on my life, everything happened at once. The woman I had left the east bay trying to avoid came back and did me in all over again. (My fault for not remembering what the first few times were like.)  I needed surgery . I got badly injured working out. I lost my oldest friend, my mother was sick,  and I was homeless, and broke. I have written about this before, but I do it again here, because I still  can’t believe sometimes, that it all happened at once. or that I even survived it all. I felt a little betrayed by the universe and was having problems with the idea of any kind of higher power, much less and kind of god, or even spirituality.
I took to working out daily despite the pain of a bad knee injury that was constantly painful, and depression that I finally have been treated for, and take medication for.  I totally changed my eating habits. I attended meetings full time, and reestablished many friendships I had lost, or thought I had lost, when I was running away from my life, and  also started praying, not only for myself but also for family and friends dead and living and also those who I felt had hurt me.
I became skinnier, stronger, more spiritually balanced, and emotionally grounded, cried a lot, and then on November 26th  I had my funerary lines ceremony, a commemoration of all my dead, especially my dead family members, and also to mark the year I survived the  worst spiritual storm of my entire life.
The lines changed me in a lot of ways.  I came to realize  by seeing them on my face daily, that being marked by life is a natural process, once that can either define or destroy a person depending on how they deal with it.

I called someone I had only met once as he played with his group at the cheeseboard pizza, in Berkeley, and along with my good friend the great Singer Orlando Torriente, asked him to form a group with us. This was a different kind of group. These would be all the songs i sang at night walking ion the streets at night in 4 countries, and for over 5 years. The songs no one had heard. The songs I used to pour out my heart, ad pain, and the songs that tell the story of my life to the sky and dark  streets wherever I walked. The person I called, who I now regard as the best acoustic guitar player I have ever met, Dan Fries, a flamenco master, with an incredible grip on all forms of music. We asked Rosanna Schneider, an ,beautiful funk and soul singer who possesses a gritty high range voice, not unlike La Lupe.
From the first moment we all sang together, it blew us away. I discovered I could hit notes I never could before, and my voice for some reason, had been freed, and elevated. We are rehearsing, and plan on launching our band this spring.

Meanwhile, I was asked to play a simple gig with Dan’s band, Trio Paz, and I said yes without hesitation.

I have worried a lot lately, about my life, my love, and my future, and my confusion about life.
From the moment I began singing tonight,  that all disappeared. The crowd, a large group of around 600 Colombians, part of a large family that runs a multinational corporation, responded like crazy, and it was on. Suddenly nothing mattered except singing again. My body totally relaxed. My mind was at ease. My voice was doing whatever I wanted it to.
I remembered why I began singing in the first place. Standing on the veranda of the Claremont hotel looking out over the east Bay I love so much toward Oakland, I knew that this was the beginning of my new life. A life in music. A life singing everything I felt and had experienced. This life I was born to. I was born to sing.

I am not running anywhere this time, I’m staying right here, wherever the music takes me, and committing and surrendering to  what I was sent here for. The events of the past months have only made me stronger and built in me a new heart and faith, in the everything around, and in me. I am made whole and indestructible.
I owe far more than a passing thanks to my friends and family who continued to believe in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. They never quite let me forget who I am and what I was capable of. When I would falter,  they helped  carry me here. I love them all.
So, after 4 successful bands, 5000 gigs in my life, over 100 deaths, and horrific heartbreak, and a struggle for calm and sanity, I know what to do. Finally. Again.

This place, and all the people in it,  hereby put on notice.

I’m back. and I’m not stopping until the whole world hears the song and the story.

Love,

Piero Amadeo Infante, December 14th 2012.

After all this, after everything that has happened this year, I have become a stronger and more resolute man. the dark places explored, now I have but to put one foot in front of the other.

the path has led me through death, chaos, heartbreak, injury, being broke, technically homeless, and fighting for my sanity.

it has been dark at times, but all this, each  single thing, and, explosive event  has propelled me forward into the unknown like an arrow shot in the dark, at an invisible target, by an unseen celestial Archer with a vast sense of
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Today was my fifth day practicing living without anger, and it was another strange day. I am getting used to a new feeling in my body. I can only call it lightness, and I am beginning to like it, even though it feels vulnerable.
Though sometimes, what could be called anger or resentment still wells up, I am usually  coping by admitting how I really feel beneath the anger, which is a secondary emotion.
Today, suddenly I was caught off guard by a swell of anger like that, setting me on fire for about three hours, until  I went to a meeting and simply admitted how I felt about the events of the past few months.I felt  unvalued, unloved, abused, and discarded.
The minute I let the words out of my mouth, I began to feel better again. The anger floats away, and it’s vise grip on my mind eases.
This is a difficult new practice, but really worthwhile in terms of inner peace, of which I  really could use more . Some of these events have made me not want contact with females, or to touch or hug them. Maybe it is a sense of fear that I might get hurt again, and also, I have been feeling physical pain , a discomfort, and ache all over for days, since I started letting go of the anger, which makes  sense since I have used it to hold myself together  and protect myself from emotional injury for years now. Now  that I work on being not angry, the pain swells through my body, especially my heart and head, and sometimes I have to just stop and sit down and cry. it passes, and then I move on with my day. I realize that I have starved myself of affection for a little while now, and doing that, while keeping me out of trouble, may have also been hurting me.
Affection doesn’t have to be physical, and I learned that today in a really beautiful way.

After coming out of a book store, a young lady, perhaps 40, struck up a conversation with me, saying she had seen me talking with someone on the street, and recognized me. She was beautiful in the most natural way I think I have seen in a lady in years. She was seemingly without guile, and something about her put me at ease. Her eyes. honest. deep. sensitive. no games there.  we sat and talked.
After a while, I realized that we were really attracted to one another, and at one point we just stopped and stared into one another’s eyes in silence. This has not happened to me in years. Her eyes, were brown, deep, and while they had that “tapatio” look I love, there were not sad. they were curious about me. She wanted to know about me. I told her a little about myself, and she looked deeper, and something happened in my heart. the icy knot that has been there for months,  melted, and I felt like I could breath again, and she noticed and smiled, ad touched my shoulder. I felt faint , and tingly all over, and shuddered (in the good way) and felt goosebumps on my skin. Something had been transferred.

It was prana, expressed as a compassionate interaction, a looking into someone and caring about them. I could tell she cared about me. It warmed me inside, and out, and while it was deeply emotional, and a little romantic, it was decidedly not sexual. It fed my heart, and body, and i was reminded of the artist Alex Gray’s description of his piece, “Deities  and demons  drinking from the milky pool” which he described in the following way:
““I had a vision of the group soul of humanity as a perfectly circular pool of intense living light. All around the rim of the milky pool were a complex variety of sexual rites, a metaphor for all social interaction. Translucent Hindu deities swooped over the group taking the excessive energy of the shimmering pool and passing through the group as ecstasy and pain. I saw that the reason we were all brought together was to provide a psychic energy feast for the Gods and Goddesses. I saw my heart as the axis of karmic, earthly, and universal energies, transected by and uniting the polarities of male/female, birth/death, good/evil, and love/hate. To maintain a balance of forces we all fed both Deities and Demons.””

Her and I were drinking at the milky pool together.

I realized that I had been starved for female Prana, which was not to say it was sexual on a physical level, but deeply so on a spiritual one. The affection and compassion a woman shows you, when she cares, loves, and feels empathy for you, is a life force that sustains the entire world, and mother archetypes abound in this conversation. It nourishes the soul, and is an angelic force that permeates through your entire being, and warms and caresses your heart.
The attention, and connection was really deep, not  intense in a surface electric kind of way. It was deeper.  it wasn’t mental fascination, but mutual care, and I could tell that she too, had taken a beating at the hands of her dedication for someone who had badly hurt her. Like a couple of soldiers who made it through the war, we huddled as it rained.
We parted after two hours or so, and exchanged numbers and said we’d meet for coffee on vine, and she hugged me tightly and we went our separate ways.
It was what I needed. I felt warm for the rest of the evening, and loose, and content.

The two side of my soul coin, the anger, and feeling hurt on one side, and the receiving attention and affection, on the other, made it really clearly what I was needing all this time,  A real love, one that didn’t hurt, or lie. One based on mutual respect as humans, and one that came from  a place of high inner spiritual strength, and not emotional addiction, or trauma.
I am not saying that this lady would be that, or that I would even try to place her in that role, but the possibilities were wonderful and the energy amazing, and realized what I have been missing all these years, as I chased ghosts into shadows, to be hurt every time. I was missing the pool of energy that comes from a healthy,  kind person, who actually cares about you for more than what they can extract from you. it was a revelation to me, and one I intend on exploring. I think my time with bad girls, and drama is over. Maybe it’s an age thing, maybe it’s that time in my life. Maybe it was just me all the time, and I could have chosen this years ago. Maybe I just needed one more lesson in pain.
Lesson learned.
I am glad to be alive, and glad for all that has happened over the past months, even the hard stuff, because it has propelled me into becoming stronger that I have ever been before, because I had to, to survive this.
I think fate and God had a plan the whole time.

I’m listening now.

For four straight days, I have let go of all forms of anger as they came, in favor of admitting to myself when I am hurt, lonely, feeling betrayed, weak, unloved, unneeded, or mistreated.

It still feels weird, and I still feel a little disconnected from myself a lot, but as the anger slowly loses its vise like grip on my mind and heart, a result of not feeding it, I am coming to know the difference between anger and self-respect. For much of my life there was sometimes no separation between the two, because often when I reacted to something cruel or abusive that someone did, it was out of a sense of self-preservation, That I am coming to respect more, along with my intuition which is very sensitive about people and things these days.

Recently  by accident, I stumbled upon details of something bad that happened on august 8th, months ago, which proved the person involved to be a serial liar, and manipulator. Normally I would use anger at a person like that,  but instead this time I merely told them I was blown away by their actions, and that they had disappointed me greatly.  I wished them well, and hoped they would be happy. Still, I didn’t hold my tongue., and at the same time, I did not resort to anger. It freed me, and freed me from the person, and the situation,  and this was all due to the fact that I did not allow anger to be the deciding emotion, or action that ruled this encounter. I allowed the sadness and feelings to simply wash over me without fighting them, and let them take me away for a little while, which they did, before letting me go, where I  found myself relaxed, and glad I did not try to fight the current of these feelings.

Today, for about an hour, my feelings were that I was hurt, lonely, feeling betrayed, weak, unloved, unneeded, mistreated, disposable, foolish for trusting, disrespected, used, and dispensed with, by someone I truly loved and trusted.
This does not make them or anyone else a villain in this drama,  it’s just how they treated me and how I felt about it. Sad, and really hurting. Admitting this kind of sensitive stuff, saves me the tiresome effort of putting up defenses, and barricades, and lashing out, which come to think it is an appropriate response when someone is hurting you.
Still, I didn’t do that, and  I didn’t use anger to cover up the shame I felt at letting someone abuse me,  and the loss I still feel. Its real, and I don’t have to hide it.

There were several smaller incidents today that also let me use this new non-anger strategy as a way of coping

I never really thought I would be able to do this, and never really thought about it at all, but I think this is how I want to live. free from not only anger, but also from people who incite it deliberately or, accidentally.

I am glad I get a chance ion sobriety to clean house.

I am on my third straight day, of practicing admitting to myself honestly how I feel about things, rather than using anger to control my emotions.
The effect today has been nothing short of amazing. I felt relief from my emotional turmoil for the first time in months.

The practice consists of merely admitting to yourself, and saying aloud how you really feel, while you are alone in a room or somewhere by yourself. This jailbreaks the perceptions out of the traps of control, and also, out of the idea that you can effect change in anything else but yourself, using anger, which is a logical fallacy.
My heart feels at ease. This does not mean per se, that I have to like everything, or not be forthright about how I feel, it just means admitting to myself first, before sharing my feelings with other people.

I still feel like I am in danger of coming apart at a cellular level, and that my body will simply dissolve, without the anger that has been its binding for so many years. I feel ungrounded, and a little shaky, and aside from the spiritual and emotional reasons for that, there is also the physical reality of my neurochemistry, which being so used to regular doses of the anger-enhancing chemicals norepinephrine and cortisol, that I am literally detoxing, and going cold turkey from some brain drugs  that have been regularly dispersed in my brain over the course of my life.
While I am early in this practice, I haven’t felt this relaxed in months.  I think I am on to something.

I am going to be admitting how I feel about everything, daily,  from now own, straight, no chaser, no trying to control it, and no feelings of justice,  villainizing, or angry personal judgments, about myself or anything or anyone else.
It was hard getting here but very worth it. I am breaking chains and I’m feeling good.

Try it sometime.

Love,

P

I watched the moonrise over the hill in the azure light before dawn
The raven cried in the distance
“It is upon you” it said. “your initiation”

Through twilight, I saw back through our veiled history, so long hidden from my knowing, and found no villains, no victims, and no earthly design. Only the moment of conception, the second in which I was conceived within you, the regency of fate, and the power of a love that always was,  and will never end.

The blood, cries, pain, tears, and splitting of our meeting, all now the testament of a new birth

The newborn is my heart. One that now sees clearly why, and how. It was all meant to happen for a reason
Now I understand.
I was the dead fighter, the phantasm of dark dreams, the unwhole wanderer. Destroyed, and then made living again by your passing, like the passing of a comet.

I can only thank you for once again  freeing me, and once again, being witness to my rebirth.

See the sigh of the initiated, and know my respect.
I am the initiate of the fire of us , and I live again.

Free. I am free.