I cant say what it is: maybe its that I feel as though I am a tiny little heathen vying to be recognized for owning a status saved for people who don’t really care for it. I have this recurring vision that I’m a child sitting on my knees before an edge of a great abyss. I hear this voice and always she says ‘there you are child’; she smiles. I feel elated. Wow its powerful. She only smiles, and she doesn’t have a face or a form, but I seem to crawl into her arms anyways, an area as wide as space is deep and I feel so much relief, like what I experience when my mind forgives the germs and pardons my weakened feet from walking, sliding into a period open only for rest. Its pure forgiveness. Its peace. Its the reason I keep coming back.

But now I wonder why I even have the respect to write: my skin is heavy with filth and frowns, my mind is a steady torch growing tall in the articulated breeze that comes from the wicked west from where I hear my thoughts cheer ‘get real’ at a rally of long chins and gray faces. I react when I know I shouldn’t, I give in and give up and sulk on the bathroom floor; a cup of tea reminds me to work with something other than the mystery of my own mind. The vacancy sign is definitely on, waiting for ease to rent to room. Where is stillness now? I soak my head in chemicals to hide the markers of an aging crown and I frolic through the words that dump from me like an elephant takes a shit. I’m tempted to throw it all away, to burn the forest down before the wildfire devours his prize, to win the flow and to fuck it all, like an elephant takes a shit. God it must feel good to evacuate so much useless matter, to give it to the ground: I’ll give myself to the process, like an elephant takes a shit.

4th Step

I know why you wear your glasses to bed: you’re afraid you wont see what’s coming when you’re asleep, that if you open your eyes and have a moment to react you may react wrongly because you cant see…I know this…I watch you sleeping, I see those eyes moving in the space on your face while you wait at the edge of dreams for a reason to engage your reflexes and then boom! Too late; the nightmare is real and blood is already pouring; if only you had been wearing your glasses…

And what diet have you consumed that has left you so bloated with fear? Who has your heart in a bind and who before has pricked it a million times with nasty needles of demented perfection? You seek approval in all forms, wanting to be wanted by all people in all ways. And when you fail to find that source of acceptance you suffer a gentle stab, you  feel it sink in and slide around, you feel it grow around your heart and change you, you feel it arrest your thoughts and turn them so that they are unfamiliar and throbbing like your pulse that sets the tone for your prize of resentment.

You will cry now, wont you? Remembering the pleasant taste of freedom, a memory vague and teasing, like the flavor of strawberry licked from the fingers of your vacant sweetheart. Why do you source the misery from which you run? Is there a place to phrase the pickled prayers of a self-anointed princess? You are nothing, you think. You have nothing and you come from people who have less still. So go, then, leave this world like you’ve wanted before; the skin of your wrists is already written with scar tissue gossip of a lonely end.

And to whom are you now attached, I wonder? From whom do you leech the vibrant energy of approval? Does he say ‘I love you?’ And what do you reply? You might sit still and soften those eyes behind the forged glass that shields your sinister intentions; so afraid to be alone you keep him with your smile all the while you silently repeat the mantra of mortal insecurity in your mind: ‘please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me….’ You’re so afraid to be alone! The form of the man is no matter so long as he craves you, cradling your virginity or catering to your finite innocence with the force of his fist; to you it is no matter. The kind one thinks of himself the answer to your history of abuse, the ill-tempered one sees you as weak and sees him a savior who violently demands recognition of his heroic cock.

Is it security you seek? Daily sessions of unconditional affirmation? Like congealed animal fat the weight of your uncertainties hangs in pockets of condensed self-pity, you roam the earth a victim of the hurt you have been prescribed by the crooked sources of power in your sick society: you believe them though all they have done is reduced you to another consumer casualty waiting to wear an American flag around the grave;  in death you’ll be as valued as the cost of your tomb. Until then, I hate the way your lips coil around the words of your favorite pop-star icon.

I know you fight it, you’re wrapped in your own skin shaking like a dying dog, a look of anger drips wet with worry and is smeared across the canvas of your nighttime portrayal. It is pain to descend into darkness, to release the demons you have all day concealed with a half-ass smile and neon bright words that defend your make-believe bliss. For you life is a thin dress of sugar which coats a swollen seed of malcontent.

What would you need to release the beast? How long until you give birth to your morbid offspring; a word or a glance or a thought or a sentence that spews like vomit from your soured insides? You deliver unto the world that with which it has you impregnated; coils of hurt, anger, hatred, and grief. Your life is a permanent gestation of a broken fetus with a broken heart; your child wears the crown of thorns long before it’s born, she is doomed to carry the burden of a thousand stubborn mistakes; thank you, mother murderer.

So what now? You’ll sleep eventually, wearing the pink frames or cuddling them close to the scabs on the knuckles of your graying hands, awaking to feed your aging addictions, one by one they surface and you place them in line, one after another, each one fulfilled only brings you closer to the next; you cherish your alcoholic itinerary and so long as you’re awake you function like a machine driven by a programmed response that has you constantly inputting random data and outputting arbitrary waste, the sad cycle of someone convinced they are deprived and only partially a person.

So you learn of things which only jumble spiritual reception and from it you produce no good action except the action to deny that divinity exists outside of dreams. You are alone, you prefer to be alone, so no one can ever get close enough to learn why it is that you wear your glasses to bed… but I know, I watch you as you sleep…

I was on an early morning run heading west in pursuit of the edge of our east bay landscape, the Oakland waterfront. It was dark when I reached the docks, and I paused but never stopped breathing as I stood upon a wooden mound where I gently began to embrace the vacant space. I opened my heart with deliberate movements, siding with the ways of the world for once instead of posing a challenge. With my eyes I traced the  vertical line of my arm extending towards the blinking lights of hovering planes, and in the stillness I watched a few seagulls become a hundred singing songbirds in the sky. I watched them manipulate the urban seascape, crouching in spaces that weren’t meant for their inhabitance: they had made a home there anyways. I turned my back to the sea and saw a row of tall trees, palm trees I think, though their manicured appearance obscured their actual identity.

It was early and no one was watching; sinking into the stereotype that has haunted me since I declared my intentions to grow long my leg hair I did what any hippie would do: I hugged one of those ‘palm’ trees. Both my arms were wrapped only slightly around its waist, and I waited for some shock or sequence of tremors that would signify an energy exchange, but all I experienced was myself hugging a tree, a tree that occupied the tiny cell it had been given, a prisoner anchored in tainted soil surrounded by pavement and mocked by all the tassels and frills of the Waterfront hotel. Looking around I saw that most of the urban setting resembled a prison, only, of course, from the perspective of everything non-human. The trees seemed forlorn and sad standing as though they’re energy had been arrested and publicly displayed for people’s twisted pleasures.

There is an undeniable element of control in our macro-world: we destroy nature and build in its place a space where we pick and choose what goes here or there, making orphans of earth’s offspring and adopting them as our pets, our accessories, our pleasure things.

And in becoming the stereotype I began to cry, my arms were now scratching the surface of mystery tree and I didn’t care if anyone was watching. And then it came, those precious words whose arrival I eagerly await usually while sitting with eyes closed in front of a candlelit Buddha were now caressing the icy moisture on my face. Maybe it was the tree, maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the lingering high from the toxic residues I inhaled working night shift behind the counter of a bleach-soaked café; whatever the inspiration, my mind was held by pure knowing and I was content.

This was the message received:

(in the voice of a tree; think ‘Treebeard’, Lord of the Rings):

“Though we may appear to be taken, though we have been brought here and cropped here, made to stand here and provide here, we are victims of nothing and prisoners of no one. What we have we share freely and that makes us free, free to stand where-so-ever our trunks are planted. Growth is not extending in the manner of the will; would I be any happier a tree if I existed in a forest? If instead of garbage and cement I saw wild things and living dirt? If I allowed such expectations to boil and coalesce then I would certainly be a bitter tree, for that is surely not my reality. But what is my freedom is my choice: I choose to be, to see growth as extending towards being, towards God, infinite and always: see you a roof limiting the height of my leaves? See you a bottom stunting the depth of my roots? See you anything but an open tree, available for you to experience, ever present and alive? My needs are supplied by factors unbounded by the human powers that have placed me here: rain will fall, air is all ways, and love is in the earth that feeds me. There is a beauty in every presence; I choose to show who I am; a happy tree, a tree that is free, a free form of beauty.”

“You, human child, are a tree. Some days you think of yourself a wilted stem in a broken pot, without proper water, suffocating and dry, hungry and dying. Other days your mind is aligned with the truth of your presence and you are as I, tall and free, the boundaries that once seemed to hold you dissolve in your own radiance and you are fearlessly love. Which do you choose to be, human child? Do you wish to grow outwards, expanding your selfish influences across shaky grounds, collecting and conserving for the benefit of your useless fears? Or will you choose to grow upwards and beyond what is shallow and immediately satiating, will you coil your roots down into the meaningful depths of understanding and will you reach your mind to occupy the space where thoughts are lit by the same force that awakened the stars? Will you cling to your greedy expectations or will you simply be? Life will not give you anything: what is meaningful are those lessons that awaken within you that which you already know. You are a tree as I am a human, the word is irrelevant and the form is no matter because the love is the same.”

And it was then that I accepted Tree as a profound teacher of historic wisdom, a living example of that which is known but forgotten and confused and complicated and overshadowed, that which has the power to restore and replenish our disconnect and our hurt: like a tree all we ever truly need to do in this world is breathe, and all we were ever truly meant for is being. There is no prison that can suppress higher potential that is outside the body of the bearer of destructive thought; change your mind and watch as the whole world becomes your best friend.

On my run home I saw nothing and everything and felt my heart and was alive in no need of anything but my own feet to run past the trees that stood like anointed professors in universal uniform presenting freely the greatest display of love.

It was later that day that I had two remarkable encounters with absolute strangers, or as I have come to understand the definition of stranger: brothers with whom I have only recently been reunited. One man guessed my birthday and guessed correctly, figuring that early morning was when I played in the waves of spiritual awareness. He also predicted that I am becoming a great Dancer: he spoke of these truths based purely on my energy.

The other thanked me for being so kind, for allowing him to see my spirit and for sharing with him a simple moment of softness.

I wasn’t trying to impress anyone; all I did was think of Tree that day, but the love was recognized, received, and reciprocated twice by two men who perhaps have themselves met Tree. In the hours to come I gratefully experienced a new channel of living; I changed my mind and discovered that life force flows when small things are done with great love, like, for instance, hugging a tree.

We Depend on Technology/Doctors for Survival

The health care debate is a topic of conversation from which I usually shy away: I am bored with its constant inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and the futility of it all. Health care for everyone? No. It will never happen. And while we think we have a right to inexpensive care, treatment, tests, procedures, diagnosis and results, we have more importantly the right to know that the conflict of health care is a matter that cannot be resolved by the policies and politics of our finest liberal creations.

You know that lollipop image that comes to mind when you think of your childhood visits to see the man whom mommy called ‘doctor’ but who reminded you more of what Santa would appear if he colored his eyes with pencil lead and wiped his beard with a short piece of dulled sandpaper?

Oh memories: doctor visits are as much a part of any childhood as training wheels and power pads, and are as normal today as they were in Maine in the early 1960’s, when a curious man by the name of Jack Wennburg began accumulating valuable though unnerving information regarding medical practice in the United States. His findings aren’t shocking: they gracefully merge with the heartless currents that propel our civilization.

From the moment we are born so also is born a medical record bearing our name, the contents of which are oddly obscured and grow to represent the choices of not only ourselves, but of our doctors, hospital executives, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, administrators, consultants, secretaries, and assistants alike.

Where the manner in which we live surely influences our fluctuating health so does the questionable behavior of our health care practitioners. We are taught to understand that our healthcare system preserves the purity of the patient/doctor relationship, that we are safe in the hands of an educated professional, that his knowledge of our body far exceeds our remedial understanding of ourselves, and in having great respect of his italicized diploma expensively framed we can trust his opinion, estimations, judgments, and referrals.  This can be true: I am in no way demeaning the glorified intellect of a man who trains for years beyond that of his Ivy League pals. What I intend to advocate is this: there are so many other players in the healthcare game; though it may be a patient and her doctor within the walls of a hospital room, the influencing factors which drive his decisions have little to do with empathy and in no way reflect an honest concern for betterment and health.

Health care is a complicated business which relies on the faithful cooperation of a patient to purchase health insurance and attend appointments when recommended and as needed. As a loyal participant in this complicated scheme, the doctor has to ensure that his needs are met as well. He avoids malpractice suits by exhausting all resources for diagnosis, by subjecting the patient to a plethora of tests and immunizations, by referring the patient to specialized doctors, by recommending procedures he knows to be overcompensating the patient’s condition; he engages his patient with a ‘just to make sure’ attitude, which sends the patient on an expensive journey through the healthcare maze in an effort to quiet all haunting possibilities and paranoid suspicions. In believing that the doctor’s requests are sincere the patient plays like a puppet in his hands, affirmed by the subconscious American mantra that more health care is better health care.

The business of health care is a competitive one, where there are as many doctors as there are fish in the sea, and where patients have some freedom in choosing their medical mate. When matched, a doctor’s patient thus becomes a very valuable source of reliable income. The patient is milked, visiting and revisiting the doctor several times a season for a number of fabricated reasons, all the while under the assumption that it is in the best interest of his health to do so. Again, this may be the case, but often times what is truly being accomplished is patient abuse: the ignorant patient is highly fertile in bearing the monetary offspring of a doctor’s greedy intentions, and she will always and unknowingly choose the more expensive option, and as advised will return to him for future dates, behavior which is purely manipulated by her conniving professional counterpart: she will keep coming back, and so will her cash.

In addition, health care reform is tainted by the fact that the technology used in hospitals is quite expensive. There are medical supply companies who want to be included on pay-day, continually advancing and redefining the tools utilized in the modern world of western medicine. CAT scans, MRI’s, blood tests, biopsies, radiation therapy:  who pays for the availability of these resources? You, the patient. It has been said that the modern methods of doctors and his staff are no more effective in the advancement of patient health than the primitive traditions of doctors past (we are a very sick nation, statistics show we fall far behind other less advanced countries in terms of citizen health and mortality rates). We tend to believe that cutting edge equipment promises positive results, that it somehow is making us healthier; hence the more trust we can instill in its ability to cure our ailments. But hardly do we need these machines and microscopes which generally serve only to satisfy our insecurities and calm our worst fears. But they add to our tab, the doctor’s salary, the profit of everyone really, except the patient.  In essence, where there are less expensive ways to accomplish a medical conclusion, the team of doctors and his administrative, legal, pharmaceutical, and insurance squad would rather the patient be made to afford the illusory advantages of fancy techniques.

Of course the topic of pharmaceuticals cannot be ignored: drugs are very, very costly and very cleverly advertised. They are the chemical conclusion of expensive research sold by private companies for the purpose of stimulating a profit. Like a drug dealer to his drug lord the doctors are responsible for delivering the toxic prescription to the most ideal recipient, a patient whom the doctor feels may benefit from the drug, or in the least, will not immediately die from the recommended dosage.

The world of western health care is not to be understood as the media intends: it is in fact an intricate structure with many parties involved so as to sustain the private interests of the executive counsels in charge. Again, it’s a business, and as such, it is not to be entered into with optimism and expectations of honesty and good-will. The entire industry is structured around the gullibility of the patient: everyone profits when the patient believes she is sick, as the very thing being marketed and sold is health care by a system designed to bargain the welfare of an entire people.  In reality, the patient’s health is sacrificed from fear of lawsuit and loss of patient business, as well as with the integration of expensive advancements and the prescription of legal drugs. Besides the required disclaimers visible in small print on documents and pill bottles, a patient is never usually aware of the risks associated with trusting her doctor. Where she is mis-diagnosed, over diagnosed or undergoes a series of exhaustive tests beneath the harmful rays of technological radiation, the patient could be exposing herself to ill-inducing elements, realistically serving her with exposure to health harmful elements or surgeries all while under the assumption that she is on the road to recovery.

In terms of health care reform, I strongly encourage the exhausted and the weary, the sick and the frustrated to re-evaluate the reliance upon doctors and the industry alike. This type of medicine is designed to treat the symptoms of a person with a business approach, trial and error experimentation, insignificant renovations and subsequent recalls. The only sure way to advocate health care reform is to stay away from it: take care of yourself the way nature intended through nutrition, abstinence from all chemical substances, rest, and exercise.

Sound simple? That’s the beauty of it all: where western medicine seeks to complicate and execute trickery and beguile, natural medicine seeks to simplify and refine. It is simple because we are simple: take care of the human body and mind and we will flourish without the need for an annual check-up and chemical maintenance. Earth is our home: we are animals to be nourished, not test subjects for the sadistic enjoyment of our inhumane industry or the financial exploitation of its parts.

There are centers in this nation that can take the sick and make them healthy minus all contributions of western science and its money laundering pawns. There is a level of consciousness the human mind can access which removes the obsession for all things artificial and morally opposed. In every human born is the link to the knowledge of self-sufficiency and optimal survival: the modern process of life with all its distractions aims at diluting this inherent connection, spoiling the nature within as we have the nature all around. But it can be re-learned, re-formed, recycled and renewed: such is the era of holistic health care, of sustainability, within which the need for health care reform is not of critical importance.

In anticipation of being criticized for failure to mention cases of trauma or emergency I will say that health care is necessary and useful. If I were shot in the arm or bit by a rattlesnake I would be a fool to fix myself a macrobiotic meal after a session of acupuncture. There are certain injuries for which the hand of a western doctor is the safest application, and anti-venoms or prescription medicines which are derivatives of natural roots and herbs that can be suggested and administered.

Here we encounter the dilemma: we live in a risky society where explosive damage and sudden injury are always a possibility, and thus in the least a certain minimum amount of insurance is required so as to avoid outrageous and unexpected fees.

This minimum amount of insurance could and would be available to all citizens affordably if it were the case that the demand for healthcare were low. Health care is a business, and thus it operates on the conditions of business: if demand is low, profit is low; therefore cost is lowered to attract business. But the demand for health care is increasingly high because we have come to rely upon it for all our problems, issues, concerns, fears. We are dependant on it for answers, whereas we should learn to depend upon ourselves. As a nation we are sick with cancers, virus, allergies, depressions, immobility: the cause of which we attribute to bad luck and the cure for which we seek medical attention.

But the issue first is this: why are we so sick? There is poison in the food, the water, the soda, the stress, the pressures, the supplies, the materials, the air, the soil: it requires a certain level of openness to explore the lies and hypocrisies of our corporate suppliers, and a certain level of education to avoid such habits and commodities. Once we all begin to demand healthier options, organic options, sustainable options, American made options, they will supply it. We will be healthier, and our world will support it. Healthcare would be available to everyone cheaply because but a small population would demand it rigorously.

So you wanna argue about health care reform? Here’s an idea: let’s reduce health care costs by reducing our dependence upon it; we can do this by living healthy. Live healthy by way of education, which will grant liberation from brand names and acceptance of the life nature intended us to live.

What a rude awakening to awake to the news of nature’s ‘fury’ as we scramble to make sense of senseless acts of slaughter. In the media aftermath nature is portrayed as a problem because of repeat global episodes of unpredictability occurring in patterns of infrequency. Nature becomes our enemy, our oppressor, an obstacle to overcome, a detriment to our efforts of survival. Man vs. Nature, a concept that implies a duality, a distinct separation stressed between all things ‘man’, and all things ‘nature’.

We challenge nature, use our methods of containment, manipulation, modification, and domination. Every interaction we have with nature is one colored by this impression of it: that we see it as some devilish force pushing opposite our motives that go unquestioned and assured.

And when any such thing happens as a violent rain, a swarm of hungry microbes, an earthquake, a drought, oceanic shock waves, flooding, species endangerment, beached whales, dead dolphins, heat spells, rising water levels, melting ice, or an increase in the intensity of storms and surges we think of it as a natural dilemma, and we hang our heads and clean our messes and continue on as we have in the past. We spray the crops with contaminants, we poison the water with the byproducts of modern invention, we deplete the world of resources for our own stubborn use, we dispose of our garbage in the habitats of world’s creatures, we build fences and bridges and causeways and entire city structures across the landscapes of living nature, we suck and feed and leech the life from our planet like a virus from its host, believing that we must survive in this manner or perish, and shall anything attempt to demonstrate otherwise, should some earthly event consume our achievements and swallow our neighbors we only unite in remorse and fight the force of nature armed with the strength of 2400 years of misguided science and fueled by the false presumption that she threw the first punch.

Man vs. Nature: what a silly idea to think of man as separate from nature, as operating under a different set of principles from the very thing which spawned him! But it has been done, and now it must be undone: we are in desperate need of a revolution of thought, and our perspective of our relationship to our environment must be deconstructed and reconstructed so as to conform to the design of planet earth.

The green revolution is a disgraceful attempt to remedy this fallacy of human consciousness, targeting the sympathetic tendencies of the average person by overwhelming him with images of dying polar pups and apocalyptic repercussions of stringent denial. It has become the marketable face of corporations and policy, the hot new item on the shelf, the ‘must have’ and the ‘can’t do without’. The mission of this so called period of ‘going green’ has not the best interest of nature at heart. Rather the greedy lechery of business CEO’s and their monetary objectives are all that stand to profit. Nature is the exploited means to their end, where emotion is employed to produce empathy and regret; we are told to feel sorry for nature, to wrap our arms around her, to love her and protect her, to cuddle her creations and feel remorse for all we have done by complying with economically devious plans: heal the world by buying this product and that car, engage a quick fix to appease our justified feelings of guilt and daunting selfishness.

But this isn’t a probable solution at all, indeed there is no solution to the problem of nature because the problem isn’t nature, its mankind. And our destructive habits are but a symbol of our lack of reciprocity between man and his home planet. What must change is our way of thought. Man vs. Nature must become Man for Nature, we must revisit our history to understand the origins of our perpetual mistakes, we must identify as creatures of this planet no different than the ones perishing on our behalf, we must remember that nature is exactly that, something bigger, more powerful, and more universally profound than we. It is not to be subjected to our will and superiority but to be respected and trusted to restore its own inherent balance and beauty. We must understand that we can only truly be a positive contributor to earth by refusing to harmfully interfere, and instead vow to perform those acts which are in accordance to the laws of nature apart from our own self righteousness and egoist beliefs. Where before we have treated the symptoms of nature as though it is diseased and thus in need of a prescription remedy we need to understand the entirety of it, and in doing so we begin to see just how damaging our modern existence has become, and just how exactly to rectify our behavior.

Use the energy efficient light bubs, recycle your plastics, till your soil, treat yourself to organics: but know that these efforts are of but minimal impact in the grand scheme of it all. Nature will be fine, she may be changing, but it is mankind who needs to adapt to this change, and not nature which needs to be fixed. You cannot put a Band-Aid on the wounds of the world, though you can refuse to accept the idea that you can. All we have are our tools of submission to the truth of our parasitical collectiveness. Where most see a disaster in the current trends of nature’s explosive occurrences I see a wild animal bucking the pests from her back.

And then of course there is also the idea born from the mistrust of the supremely wealthy and the politically powerful players in the monopolistic structure of our society, where the forces of nature are in fact the forces of man; they have been harnessed, learned in laboratories in the world’s finest universities and government basements, where the most disturbing scientific research is conducted and released upon the most politically insignificant, monetarily poor, essentially helpless and morally dispensable civilizations of the world.

That we have the knowledgeable capacity to mimic and instigate natural disasters is unquestionable. Also unquestionable is the motivating consequence of such an action: to promote mass fear of our environment in an overwhelming consciousness, and subsequently urge the reliance upon those in power for answers and support who then guide the common majority in the engagement of investments in the marketable products of big business in return for security and protection from such events.

What is questionable is the audaciousness of men on earth: could they really be accountable for the deaths of thousands of innocent people and the consequent destruction of entire hometowns?

That question is not for me to answer, only to ask. My angle is not to sell or bargain information but to encourage the individual to conduct his own inquiry into the realities of his reality. In either case, whether nature be truly in and of herself reacting to years of human neglect and abuse, then she shall have her way and win her wars, and all we need do is sit back and watch our creations crumble in awe of the virtues of universal balance, and perhaps in our societies there will be born that personal humility that has been lacking for centuries on the western front. If on the contrary, the dramatic materialization of nature’s vivid episodes are purely a systemic effect of the active weapons of mankind intended to illustrate a false state of dire global circumstances, then so be it as well: in either case, again and again, from here and onward through time, let there be a light-bulb moment in the mind of every man, where he realizes either the poisonous essence of his own insignificance at the mercy of nature’s reprise, or accepts the unsettling potentials of man’s poisonous essence when the rulers of the world wield their wands and create from it the last day of life on earth.

Utter disbelief, hate and confusion for the city junkyard which produces fifteen broken winged birds every seven days. They know their methods of protection are methods of inhumane slaughter but they do it anyway; why? Who knows. A broken winged bird in the hands of animal protection is a dead bird: she has no other option. So what then? The death of these animals is sanctioned by the city within which the free birds meet their unfortunate end purely on account of their innate patterns of flight which were evolutionarily learned before the construction of this forsaken junkyard. Is this a reflection of how heartless we’ve become? How destructive, selfish, and thoughtless are our actions, when in order to protect our garbage from the threat of vermin and vice we remove the beauty of the environment from the skies. Fishing for birds: what a waste, a disgrace, a testament to the very thing we need to change: our way of life, our ways of thinking.

My first thought: ‘how long has it been there (my boob)?’ For twenty six years I have had this body, though not really. Me and my body go way back, though how far back I cannot remember, for it has changed and I have changed, like with the addition of boobs (and my mental adaptation to the inevitable addition of boobs). I wonder about my relationship with my body, and I notice that I am separating the idea of ‘me’ with the concrete existence of ‘my body’. Glancing down at freckles (right boob named for wounds incurred while surfing plus one bikini minus one rash guard) I think of how little attention I give to the physical ‘me’, how I assume its tangibility and mobility, though never really granting it any responsibility of personal identity. It’s all there: freckles, the other one and all the rest of my body, my instrument, my tool, my home really.

Mind and body: two separate things? Yes. Without a shadow of a doubt. How else can I account for my strange relationship with this, this thing? I am my head, my thoughts, my mind, my emotion, my soul, my ability, my desires, my passion. My body is simply the means for utilizing, expressing, achieving, surviving these things. In our first years on earth we are born into our bodies and (because of a lack of better option) we struggle to learn the limits of our operating mechanism, sometimes painfully (we cry when we fall down go boom) sometimes with great happiness and success (our first ride on a bike with training wheels off).

However we sometimes think we are our faces, our outfits and the length of our legs. We are identified based upon these facets of ourselves by our governments, institutions, and societies. So be it: to all the world I am a face and a name, to transportation security the information on my ID card, to the police the black and grey mug shot complimented by the description of my physicality: ‘no tattoos, with piercings’. These are but shallow observations which only serve to best expedite the process of cataloging a dangerously overpopulated planet. Thus body becomes identity, mind becomes obsessed with image, and body rules the mind. Umm, would you care for another non-fat-half-decaf-mocha frap-no-whip with your copy of ‘how do I look’ magazine?

Not that taking care of your casing shouldn’t be important: it needs attention, and it is designed to remind us of that natural fact (it emits foul odors reminding us to bathe, pains our guts when we deprive it of nutrition, chokes our throats when we have ignored the need for water). Our bodies are the only way we are allowed to survive, given to us by the mysterious Gods or the basic truth of evolution (and the passions of our parents): our brain needed a vat, and it was given a whole human body. How about that?

Some people say that indeed the mind and the body are so connected in every respect that the one is a cause for the other, and vice versa, (this is a theory called ‘Monism’ in the language of philosophy). They are those that say that we have reactions in our brains which cause such and such chemical firings which lead to such and such reactions which influence our fragile balance which cause manifested physical actions. So these things like love and anger and passion and desire become attributed to the physical tangible nature of our bodies and have nothing to do with an abstract non-physical concept ‘mind’, therefore shunning the notion that mind and body are isolated. Our minds, they say, are formed by the experiences of our bodies. Our actions, they say, are influenced by the cellular and genetic make-up of our bodies. Thus our bodies rule like kings over our minds, because there is only one reality, and everything can be reduced to matter.

But put yourself in a dark closet: power off your body, if you will. No sight, no senses, no smell, no touch, nada. Just you, your mind is all you discover, your thoughts which are uninhibited by the limitations you have placed upon your body. Tie me up and sew my mouth shut and I still exist, I still have thought: I am my mind and my mind will adapt despite the condition of my body, whether it be mutilated, severed, restricted, confined, overweight or under dressed.

Mind is mind, body is body. Mind tries to understand body and in doing so confuses the two. If mind and body are truly equal, if it is the case that I cant have mind without body and body without mind then why does my brain challenge the existence of my body? Why does the brain which discovered science isolate itself from the body and then propose the truth that they are not separate? My body never challenged the existence of my mind. It can’t. It’s subordinate. It’s at the mercy of me, my mind (insert evil laugh here).

This topic is one of pure mental masturbation, I know (one way mind and body are the same). I have always seen the human race as a lot of intricately designed puppets controlled by the hands of a mini-person sitting comfortably within the essence of the body, the identity, the personality, the character, the brain; how so ever you wish to understand it. Glancing down at my own body I was suddenly aware of how isolated I can sometimes become from my appearance, and I cannot say that this is true for everyone, but how amazing a picture of the world when we imagine that we have the power of action, that we do not attribute love and rage and hate and depression to molecular happenings said by science to be largely predetermined at birth and outside the scope of mental control? How awkward a thought of the world where instead of people we imagine the human body as a vehicle and the mind the cockpit, possessing the ability to move the earthbound matter in accordance with one’s values and will?

I am dangerously close to having to assess the topic of reincarnation, so I’ll tuck my boob back in my shirt and enjoy the rest of the flight.