Some notes on crucibles.

My method regarding the relationship I was in and which has now gone into some spontaneous regenerative process is of utility.  I did in fact ride to the brink of jettisoning the relationship with a heart and mind  of determination.  What is interesting is the quality of the determination.  My intention was to move into a relationship, either some future iteration of this one or some other wherein certain of my needs would be met. This intention,  (qualified by merits one might find in a magical or other ceremonial operation)  was conditioned with the conception that all and any involved would achieve some greater measure of wholeness by moving through the process..   

What went on was something that had every aspect of a breakup and diaspora..  but then what ensued involved a tiny immature black Japanese kitten,  A fantastic dancer in a club in Hiroshima and a midnight phone conversation with an Amazonian shamanness deep in my confidence..  which phone call of course happened on the full moon just after an intensive healing ceremony involving Ayahuasca and the prospect of my arrival there to design/build temple space...  

Long and short,  everything exploded.  there was tears and anger and dejection...  and then somehow, later that day a healing ceremony involving 7 Japanese people,  some leftover Amazonian medicines,  some illicit materials from the market district and some inspired interaction between Tarot, human desire and some brand of diagnostic yogic interpretations of people's energy states and auras unfolded without agenda or previous experience.  Things just happened..  and it was clear choreography like any great ceremony...  When it was done...  the intention came full in its most unexpected manner,  everything was rearranged like the shuffle, perfectly stacked between hands of Pinnochle...   poof!  new world!

Love Arts Unbound

      In a volley of text messages with my first Love, from a relationship that started in my 18th year, I salvoed "I need someone to laugh at me"  and proceeded to explain a situation regarding what I see as the changing of my current relationship which is in process now.   I realize I chose her for the laugher for a very important reason...  There is no one on earth with as long a view on me and my character as well as what I am in the arena of Love Art.  I wanted to hear from someone who had no illusions,  but also no antipathy..  At least in my summation,  we've made our peace,  but continue to hold each other in regard and with special meaning for the gamut, or gauntlet of our lives and mutual becoming in those years..

     My unequivocal note to a Japanese woman, Miyuki, whom I danced with a couple of times and have some interest in knowing better was copied to 1rst loves message.  It is this  "hmm.. sounds complicated... I want to dance with you... I want to feel this amazing connection. I don't do complicated and I won't stay at a hotel. You're fantastic and I think we could share some incredible things... Figure out what you really want and get back to me.. I'll be in Japan for another week. If you want to see me, invite me to your house... we'll dance and talk and eat... otherwise... meet me in Nepal."

   
      To which 1rst Love replied "You acquire and discard mystical loves at a rapid pace these days.".  I thanked her sincerely in response.  But not as one might expect, because it sent me reconsidering myself as in error or mistaken...  that sort of reaction can be found in numerous other articles by other authors.

What riveted me was the word "Discard".  This is something that has been going through my head for years..  The idea that changing the relational elements of a relationship for whatever reason is Discarding  someone.  In some cases I find this to be the case.  Not always though.  (hanging participle?)

     Our society has a preloaded, largely unexamined presumption that every time you get into a relationship,  you should make it last forever in the state that it is begun.  It's a beautiful concept, but is it always the best idea?  I propose that it is not for everyone and not in all cases and we as visitors here must change when it becomes apparent that it is in the interests of ourselves AND the person we are with.   The saying "good for the goose, good for the gander" comes to mind.  And though many might think otherwise, I intimate that if you really look at it and if you look at your experience on a more whole and discerning perspective, it is in fact impossible for someone to do what is right for their health, their needs and their heart which in the end is not good for everyone else including the so called "jilted lover".  

     I do not mean to say that it doesn't hurt.  My reference is to our soul and it's unquenchable need to be what it is and in its way.  Nobody gains from remaining in a dysfunctional partnership.  And one should never disguise their feelings in manner of staying with someone who does not inspire them. In the case of being in a relationship with someone who is no longer invested it is demeaning to the receiver and destructive to the one carrying that load.  

     As anyone with eyes to hear knows, not all pain is futile. nor is it without gifts.

     My reflection on the trend of culture thinking that staying with people forever is a necessary condition has 2 origins that I reckon. 

1. In the past we were civilized in such a manner to lose track of the abundancy of life and so people needed to stick together, often no matter what happened. 

2. It hurts.  I don't like to hurt people even if an unavoidable circumstance might do so.  I also don't want to be hurt though I know what a gold mine it can be when we are blind.

     In regards to "Discarding people",  this is the juicy bit,  the valence.  In my younger years this seems to be the outcome of leaving relationships.  In retrospect I see that it is, in my opinion, a conditioned cultural artifact.  To wit,  If I've loved someone for 3 years and then realize that we are no longer fit to each other for whatever reasons and we've worked and discussed and tried whatever changes or ideas we could come to, then sometimes the answer is, "Though I love you still, I must go". 

     In the realm of the heart,  what is real is real,  the heart can not compromise, nor can the soul if we are alive.  That which feeds the heart and the soul must be had in order that we grow.  The caveat for my reasoning is an important factor to this understanding and that is the question of the manner in which separation is made.  To the point, when we must go, then we must,  but incumbent upon us is to do our utmost in clear communication, moreso, clear understanding. 

From my experience in "leaving relationships"  and watching others do so,  the understanding is often cluttered with various homages to why things suck.  This is not the definition I am working from.  Understanding in my process refers to sense of true soulful communion if it is viable and I reckon it is if we haven't sullied the temple of our love too terribly in the arrival at this juncture.

     I've spent a number of years relating to and working with the ceremonial world.  I would say the earliest was some of the moments in a real Roman Catholic church, some of which can be quite pervading in a real cathedral.  Later I went to a summer camp for boys run by the YMCA and we had opening and closing ceremonies which were quite exciting.  These camp ceremonies involved the counsellors dressed in loin cloths, made up in some Native American approximation  and doing reenactments of Native American stories which involved mach battles with flaming torches,  big bonfires,  drummers way back in the forest booming everywhere through the trees and across the waters of the lake While an elder recited the story. In later years I took a role in these ceremonies.

     I developed a lifelong interest in ceremony, though I had left the church by around 6 years old at the hands of an abusive boyfriend of my mother's who sure could pray and was handy with a leather belt.  These days I say "Life is ceremony" and within the patterns of our lives there are many ceremonies.  I am reminded of the Mandelbrot fractal.  One of the elements of any ceremony, to make it worth anything, is the opening and closing thereof.  From my perspective,  a love relationship falls in this domain.  Like any ceremony,  though we may choose when it starts, we do not always know when and how it will end.

In love,  cierto,  we don't really choose its beginning or its end though we might like to reckon so.  It is important here to note,  I am making a definitive bifurcation  between loving someone and the state of a relationship as well as the types of love one may be referring to.  That is, we can be "in love" or simply 'love'  but not be in love.  I know there are those who say it is not realistic to think  that we should continue to be in love with a partner after some time.  I don't agree and I don't mind if I'm a dreamer.

     A point I feel drawn to understand for myself is once again the word "discard".  My case and point is my note to 1rst love.  I still love her,  she is not discarded though we are no longer "together"  in the intimate relationship sense, but we still have discussions,  think of each other and make each other laugh.  I never discard anyone, because people aren't things and they always have meaning once they have entered our lives.  Nothing made by men or gods can nullify this reality.  I am a man,  we are souls in physical vessels creating a world of experience and nothing can change our love as it is all that we are, who we may bed down with one year vs. the next aside.

     The important facts in my perspective have to do with the ceremony of it all.  How a thing is done,  just like a place where we may dwell should have good proportions, adequate light,  smooth passages, natural elements, peaceful places and creative spaces etc..  Our ceremony must have them as well as good entrances and exits.  By bringing true, deep understanding to the changing of relationship,  we can go from a futile, destructive, painful rejection to another quality of series of realizations.

     The thesis is alchemy.  We come together for all variety of reasons, we part for a multitude more.  My intention is to cut through the barbarity of "discard" and rejection and the need to change relationships only after people become intolerant of each other, but instead to begin thinking with ceremonial a-logic. First, I imply that instead of 'ending"  relationships we begin to use the word change or evolve,  because that's what it is!  Each relationship is a ceremony and every ceremony has a crucible.  What we get from the crucible is dependant upon the ingredients we put in AND the condition of the wholeness of the locus and the time in which it is done. Ceremony or alchemy does not depend on any standard sort of physics.

     When we change a relationship, for example,  from a monogamous love relationship to some other kind of partnership, we are retaining the monoatomic gold from the crucible to be put to further revelation.  To do this,  we must as lovers come to a sometimes difficult but simple understanding;  Though we have loved each other,  the crucible has delivered to us this stone and this work is done..  The change can come without all of the desolation and grief if it can be done without the "how much this sucks"  homage.

Closing Ceremony. 

     1rst love was a great mystical love, but we parted of necessity and so it is a reality that everything in the universe has some magical clock by which it runs.  My purpose is that love is not diminished only the power of our worldly self to give attention to anything without pause. Exit with as much love as you enter and eventually understanding will trump culturally endowed habits of interpretation.  Only love lasts forever,  but not a particular architecture of relating between any entities whether it be man and woman or even river and mountain.

Love and Light

J.W. Starr

Thuoc lao CHINH HIEU - 8 Hang Ga - Ha Noi

Or a Potent Vietnamese Tobacco.. Tonight's Experience.. Smoking Hang Ga and walking. This is not for Amateurs. I don't know exactly what this stuff is or if there is something added to it. It has incredible, overwhelming power. It is strong and should not be smoked anyplace where there are obstructions to reaching an operational toilet or satisfactory whole which can be evacuatated into.

A white haired, striking featured, potent seeming man loaded a typical bamboo water bong for me when I was in Hanoi. His tobacco came in a special silver bag and was from Saigon I think. It was of even higher octane and led to me losing all facility to see or hold my body up and so I sagged toward the table in front of me. The fall wasn't far as we were sitting on some combination board/bucket improv bench. To be sure of the rush, in Hanoi, they pack the bowl full and smoke all in one long improbable pull.

I could not at the time come close to taking it that way. Of course the Vietnamese men around me took this as hilarious and various of them proceeded to instruct me at separate instances. They were excited to see me taking to their culture in this way and poured me copious glasses of Vang Dalat, the wine of the region. Though I couldn't pull the loaded bowl, I was treated as a honored guest for my earnest endeavor.

Ms Guerilla and I purchased some 30 bags of this stuff on our way out of the party at the beer hall (can't remember the proper title, but his is close). We were on our way to the Airport enroute to Fukuoka, Japan that hour and wanted to bring this wonder of Vietnam along.

Faculty of Seeing

I mention "Faculty of Seeing" in my previous post. In case clarification is needed; Faculty of Seeing refers to discernment. When one discerns one does not feel emotions. One sees without wanting or disliking or expecting or judging or even thinking. Most people do not have mastery of this skill. It is a skill and must be developed like any muscle. If one doesn't have the skill then one doesn't know what it is. This makes sense if you think about it. It's a state, it's not an intellectual idea. You can't understand the meaning of the word unless you do it.

Loving People | Leaving People

The marriage I've left behind was the result of confusion within a complex of excitement, change and desires as well as fears. Something I realized about the experience is that one ingredient of my confusion was something very beautiful though it led to some pain. I had reached a place of feeling love and compassion toward people in a way which I never had before. This was a product of my personal evolution which I had been nurturing much of my life. This expansion of my capacity to love happened at the same time in which I met SleepingGuru, whom I later married and have now separated from.

I felt love so much more deeply than I ever had and this led me to the assumption that she was somehow integral to that. This wasn't true and I realize that now. The truth is that I was never in love with her, but I loved her. I had no meter with which to tell the difference in my expanded state. That relationship taught me the difference and gave me a meter.

As I consider the action of karma here I see with new clarity. I am sad to have hurt SleepingGuru. As I reflect I see what is most crucial. The part of me that fears some cosmic retribution, or the onlookers who predict it would see that occur in my life if I did not learn the lesson. By seeing this in full clarity, looking directly into the mechanism, the lesson is fully integrated and the karma is broken.

I think this is interesting for people who come from the west to consider. We are deeply conditioned by guilt and punishment ideas in our culture. Karma is not punishment, it is action. When we have expanded beyond the level of the action, by encompassing all aspects, like being on both sides of a coin, there is a release. Or in other terms, the thing that makes a mess of people is continuing to do something, which creates inertia and causes the sorts of rebalancing phenomena that bring about more pain.

The universe has no need nor mechanism with which to cause pain once we stop doing the thing that hurts. Conversely, if a relationship ends and one person continues to labor in pain while the other is joyous then this is also a karmic lesson. (I do not know that SleepingGuru is in continuing pain or no) Understand that Joyousness is a divine spiritual state not an emotion. One who has acted without compassion must resolve this in order to be joyous. The one who is in pain is in a process of remanifesting the same painful experience. This pain is not a result of something that was done to them. The true karmic lesson is that this person is allowing their mind to use theirself, they are in fact asleep and dreaming. They are causing the pain which they are experiencing to theirself. When they take control of their mind, the pain will stop.

This pain cycle will be deepened and lengthened by blaming the partner for the pain. This is because the pain is not under their control once this happens. Then if other sleeping people tell the one who is suffering that they have been in some way wronged and encourage this blaming aspect, the whole problem becomes a kind of distributed agreement and reinforcement to continue to be in pain.

As I left the situation I asked myself how I got into the thing to begin with. This has been an incredible wellspring of wisdom and transformation for which I am deeply thankful. I am also Joyous. I feel I've had to take some huge risks which have delivered me into a life I had never imagined. I would not be who I am if I had not had that experience and I don't think those lessons could have been learned any other way. In retrospect I feel like we were handed a perfect package, custom made for us to learn everything we needed to become ourselves.

I don't know how SleepingGuru is processing things now. I know when we were together she lacked the skills to move through pain and work with herself in such a way. She had trouble loving herself and in discernment generally. From her notes to me I know that some of what I described above regarding "the partner in pain" was going on in her. This is her journey and what she must gather from what we did.

There are a lot of things that went on which people around us will never understand and probably couldn't until they've developed the faculty of seeing. I do not blame her. Part of the reason I have left and my life continues to expand in joy is that I don't use my energy in that way. I don't have it in my world. I thought about it as I was being blamed and realized that in fact I felt hurt, abused, manipulated, undermined; All sorts of blamable things. But I made a decision. I feel love, I am creating the most amazing life anyone has ever lived. I am ready for the world.

Karma and Love

As I listen to the discourse in my head with the various voices and opinions regarding my leaving behind my previous life I hear one that comes to ideas of karma. What my reflection yielded as I sat in silence is the following; Karma is not a mechanism, the function of which is to make us suffer. It is a flawless mechanism by which we can learn the truth of ourselves without any other instruction.

Sanguine: Varously described as very happy or bloodthirsty

I love it. Kampeki! If I had 17 yen I would go and get a Big Mac.

Starbucks, I swore I'd never speak to you again But I'm back with tail severed and inserted in my empty eye socket....

What the Fuck is going on?

I'm going to tell you. But FIRST!!!

Crumbling Empires! Burning Effigies! Rotting Corpses of financial institutions and their lackeys.. Any Direction is Misdirection. Nowhere is a place I've heard of but they say you can't get there from here! Curses! Screeching Invective! Inspiration and it's Loss! Now I relieve some pressure from my root so's I can give your ear a proper thrashing!

Getting Married, Getting Unmarried, Getting Remarried. I'm eating rice grown by nuclear disaster zone farmers. Being in perpetual on-the-road-ness puts one in a special frame of consciousness and gives a different set of concerns. The word is infected. Burn this message as soon as you read it. Burn this message before you read it. Too Late - Shikaku! Send money. Money won't mean much for much longer.. I'm a gypsy... so is this crazy Japanese lover. Now we just need to remember how to play all the wild-oold-world dance love and drinkin' songs.

Ysitta! but Her secret name - Prize and Penance. So perfect. Creative, beautiful, forceful, selfish, cruel, demanding, visionary, spirited... so nourishing. We make love twice a day. She asks me permission for things even though she's going to do what she wants anyway.. just giving me a chance for scorn.. for punishment or forgiveness.. Everything so different when there is this much passion driving everything. The dream manifesting. Go with the heart or just go.

Pressure building up slowly from underground. I think therefore you don't have to.. I recommend sending love letters to people you barely know. You can sign my name if you don't feel up to it. But I'm going to take the credit. I'll dress up like you when I show up at the grass and mud cottage on the hill where your lover was born. Get there first or I'll give'r the Guerilla Love - there's no going back!

20 Yen short of a Big Mac

That's it. I want to eat a Big Mac in Hiroshima. I'm really only 17 Yen short.

Well.. yea it is possibly crazy

I'm sitting in my apartment in Hiroshima, Japan. It's really a vacant commercial space in the heart of the commercial district, the Hondori. This is a very precious bit of space, valued at some 300,000 yen per month, it is owned by the father of my Japanese fiance, Miss guerilla. It's empty as of now.. except myself and Miss Guerilla who, through her artifice and my disregard for people's opinions, have occupied and created an improviso kitchen and sleeping space via a borrowed tent and various camping gear which we were using on island beaches in September.

The father, Yukinobu... not impressed with me. We had a great time when I first arrived. Something happened which neither I, nor Ysitta are aware of. There are a lot of possibilities which I've given up on calculating. Tadashi, the gay, inarticulate, but concise 40 year old brother described my meeting with her father as, "It seemed like he found his other son". I'll find a way to bridge the gap. Making love to his daughter in a consistent, ongoing manner being part of the core of my plan. These sorts of things always work! It's simple though. Her family is crazy. Really. So I've stopped worrying about it. It will work, they don't have a choice and the will of Ysitta and I is volumetrically more powerful than that of her parents disgust, or any other detractors from the cause. And our likely half-Japanese child is sure to draw some relaxing of barriers.

I've been drinking a live ferment sake and wandering the city. I stopped through the Peace Park with a guitar and played under the bridge. This is an amazing spot where at night it is lit like a stage and the acoustics are fab. Another musician, young Japanese, stopped through and showed a fair amount of amazement at what I was singing and playing. So I was playing a little show under a bridge in Hiroshima. I love it. I also realize I have most of what I need to put my music career together. What is left is competent folks to write and play with. OK

I'll take my drunkish ass to the watering hole.

Poop-Eye the Ninja Sailor

Mcdonalds on Hondori.. 2^nd floor dining area.
Taigee! Hiroshima-ese for debilitating exhaustion.
Highschool students, mostly chics
passed out and strewn like wounded band of knee-socked Samurai
I wish I could ask them more about it,

I'm tired too. Long evening in conversation with angry Polish backpacker and young female Doctor. We had a drink at Molly Malone's Pub. He didn't like other people at the hostel on account they stayed in for the night. Some calculus he makes where they aren't “carpe diem” enough for his tastes. Takes me a little while before I realize my battery is being drained in this foray, but I escape relatively uninjured.

Slept 5 ½ hours at Popeye Media Cafe. I call it Poop Eye in my thoughts.

Windowless, concrete container room, prolific Manga library in print and digital media,

game and video stations, private booths for singles or groups.

Wireless and direct network connections, dual widescreen monitors and fully reclining faux-leather game chair with poly-fur blanket. I wonder about post-masturbatory cleaning policies with minimal visualization. Dull electronic hum and whir of 200 PC Tower-power supply heat fans, overhead air circulation, heating and cooling supplies ambient vibration. No air supply to outside that I can see. Counting on nature of gases to distribute themselves evenly for oxygen resupply. Complimentary shower. Hot water, instant ramen, tea and slushie drinks for sale at the desk.

Slept some, woke up to counter clerk shaking me as my alarm was blaring APHEX electronic dance music, from some album where the titles are just serial numbers. New software, not intuitive to half-sleeping, bleary eyed people, couldn't turn it off for at least a few long minutes. I was deep in REM, always leaves me with sense of discontinuity to be interrupted.

Going to meet Miss Guerilla very soon.

I love her

I never bet on her punctuality,

I will be punctual nonetheless.

Out to the country by van.

Macrobiotic foods, miso, local farm greens tasting.

Lunch, exceptional quality and care in the food and event. I like these people.

Feelings of welcome, openness and interest.

Understanding more of the language, enough that I'm encouraged,

Motivated to develop my strategy for learning. I want to be in this conversation.

I imagine a child must feel like I do now, but without the commentary.

Gratitude,

J.W. Starr

President of the Society For People Who Don't Give A Shit About Convention

What Does a Guerilla Love Artist Do?

I remember listening to Osho speak about life and whether you want to live your truth? I was in a rental house with a film crew, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico eating cacao beans lightly toasted and dipped in honey. While I listened, I reflected on a moment with a fiery, talented lover of Chinese/Trinidad decent from the year before whom I will call AOI. She proclaimed with vehemence, "I have to live my truth". This came out of the dynamic of AOI breaking her engagement to be married in the process of our becoming lovers. Lying in bed with me, looking for some way to feel OK with everything. Probably I offered my light, but still useful sentiment like, "If you're not committed with everything you've got now, you've just saved yourself and him a lot of heartache later by jumping ship."

My My, I love how our own words can become so prophetic with a little bit of fermentation. But, her words at that moment sounded so forced and built up. They were covering pain and disbelief in an attempt to find some truth out there, which in my observation, like closure, we create for ourselves in here. Looking for it and trying to weave masks of it seems like a way of driving ourselves into cycles of self-torture. And so Osho came with the idea, "live your truth? Why do you want to do that? If you think you have truth, then you have to protect it, defend it, get other people to believe it so it doesn't fall apart... Live your art instead". What a moment.

It was the quintessential element of what I felt when I saw AOI pushing so hard while I felt so at ease. I saw it again in my own life as questions arose while I exited my marriage to SG (Sleeping Guru). Maybe if AOI had shown up at the right time I never would have been married? Perhaps. And perhaps, one incredible series of learning and transformation would not have had its vehicle? Perhaps I did AOI a favor by creating that clarity in her life, while I needed to go through my marriage to learn what I did? My perspective informs me that we've each gotten the medicine we need and it is up to us to be sure it is integrated. There won't be truth, there will be ongoing unfoldment, artful evolution of life and learning.

One of the things that has been fascinating to me throughout this and so many of my previous experiences is the intractable nature of the continuum that to me is heart, art and will. Once my heart informs me there is nothing that can be done to edit it or uninterpret. The art will come in an act of will and things will happen. It is almost terrifying until I realize that it is simply various aspects of my own "only partially knowable at any given moment" Self making themselves apparent in different ways at different times.

The important questions in my perspective are: How do I really feel deep down? How long will it take for me to correct course? How can I do this with best results for myself and people I'm connected to?

I see that an AOI did come for me in the form of Miss Guerilla. I call it, "waking me more fully to myself". The seed of an entirely new life was planted in a single moment of eyes locking and penetrating each other without fear or veils, or words.

This incubated itself for months while simultaneously my marriage dismantled itself. My feeling is that there wasn't a failure but a great success. It may seem counter, but here is Voltaire, "if Columbus in an island of America had not caught the disease, which poisons the source of generation, and often indeed prevents generation, we should not have chocolate and cochineal". I ask myself the question, "how long should we suffer over perceived missteps before we look at what we've gained from any experience?", "and reap the benefits?".

An aside I've been chewing on this morning; What is the name, in any language, for a gift that is given with love and intention and that can not be received, perhaps not understood or identifiable to the recipient? Yet it is still there, still imparted and still working. What if the giver does not know what they've given?

If you have a word for this, please send it!

Love and Light,
J.W. Starr - Henshin Operator

No Soft Landings In Hiroshima This Week.

I awoke at 11:30 AM in the Reino Inn just south of here. I had slept without much disturbance except a series of intense dreams after sunrise in the dormitory on the 3^rd floor for 12 hours. This great sleep was the aftermath of a 24 hour travel period for Miss Guerilla and I which started in Hanoi, Vietnam and proceeded to the Intl Airport by car -> Jet Plane -> Busan, South Korea -> Fukuoka, Japan -> Bus -> Train -> Bus -> Hiroshima Terminal -> rain hike with 60 lbs of gak.

I feel a lot of good things in me and bubbling up. Fukuoka entry was easy and friendly which already puts me in glowing mood. International borders can bring a great variety of experiences and this entry so far from home and with such deep personal import was an auspicious omen. Few questions, little inspection, no suspicious eyes, so happy not to explain the very strong, questionable looking Vietnamese tobacco or the 8” chef knife. Breathe.

Vietnam was a bottomless bag of experience and education in many of life’s mysteries. It was true to the tarot forecast which was represented in The Moon. It was also a great incubator for the health of my fledgling relationship with Miss Guerilla (MG). Coming back to Japan together and seeing such a difference in my own associations and comfort as well as my reception by Japanese people whether they know me or not is strong medicine. I had a feeling of coming home, which, however it derives is a good feeling. And after a month together almost every moment, there was no rush on either side to get time alone. We dropped gear, repacked things for me and went for something balancing to eat at a vegan, whole foods café.

I’m sitting in Starbucks at the NHK Radio building at the street I can’t read from here, listening to the Hip-Musak Christmas Catalog which is not to my taste whatever. It’s 5:30 PM-ish and I’ve been here swilling Coffee since 1:30-ish. I’ve had to carry all of my gear around the city with me today in the rain, have no place to sleep due to a street festival of some kind drawing people into the city. Odds are looking like I’ll have to sleep in a video game booth, Manga Café on Hondori.

I am reminded of a yogic position which involves holding one’s arms out at a “T”. The time is recommended at 10 minutes. If you think you can do this by might alone, please try. The thing that makes the arms stay up there is not the muscles, they can’t do it. I am very happy and it is not by might alone. I see stars, thank you Mr. Wilde.

Miss Guerilla is working out some understandings with her family regarding what we are doing as we both realize that this leap off a cliff we’ve taken with our hearts has landed us in a deep, warm lagoon with a lot of fresh fruit, birds and clear skies.

Today might seem like an inconvenient day, but my spirit is exalted.

As The Guerilla Love Artist, how else should my devotion be captured and directed?

Maybe there are some soft landings.

Assertion and Agression | Growth and Decay

Hanoi Vietnam, 5:25 a.m., air conditioner of upstairs unit just kicked on as I sit here on the 3rd floor balcony looking out into the hazy, pale, neon green light of hotel something 4 doors down in this tiny Old French Quarter Street. The cathedral bells just rang from, I believe, 2 different locations just slightly juxtaposed in time to create a layered sound that gave me impression of events happening just out of synchronization with each other, but in some collusion nonetheless. I'm in the glow of my terminal to the infosphere drinking the remainder of the Vang Dalat which I opened night before last and do not wish to let expire into vinegar world as I do not have a kitchen here to convert wines gone-off into sauces or marinades. (Vang Dalat is Vietnam's red wine)

My mind is awash with topics of all sorts. There are Dali-esque mindscape with Hanoi-haze-clang-rumble sunrise, Motorbike beeps and putters, the prying sound I've come to associate with much of the Vietnamese which I do not understand and is spoken in the streets, My guerilla lover asleep in the room behind the french door to my right, what the hell am I doing? What is most provocative and piquant though is the huge tarot spread Ysiita (guerilla lover) and I put down yesterday morning. Of central focus and pressure to my mind is the Fortune trump card and the placement it occupied in the reading. I'm reading from a Thoth Deck that I've had for 15+ years. If you haven't worked personally with divination or don't believe in it, I can offer that from my experience, this deck knows me and it is no longer just a pile of paper rectangles with glossy images on them.

Fortune is simple, powerful and direct and gave it's "no bullshit" klaxon as the fist card pulled. The reading dealt with a lot of long reaching questions about our business interests and personal lives which we are joyfully and intentionally intertwining. Fortune, like a reaper and an angel was there at the door, or in this case, at the bifurcation point of every fractalized decision that one can make reminding us, "reap what ye sow". Yip, thanks dude.

The magic of tarot is that it always teaches, whether we believe it or not, like it or not, understand it or not. It exerts a pressure, which is very difficult to escape without reckoning. Even if one doesn't believe, still they are proving it right or wrong in their thoughts and so there! Still the dance of stars and archetypes parading in the twilight. I love it.

For me, now, this is a commentary on assertion in many forms. I am saturate these past days with this and with the balance of growth and decay as precipitates of our choices. In my meditations I am seeing the relationship of assertion and growth as the life expanding qualities which become aggression and decay in their destructive forms. The Fortune trump and many ensuing cards gave a great personal narrative to this dynamic within both our lives and prospective goals.

The shades of consequence between these words and the values they indicate are of great import in the world we have created together as a species and in the world we wish to create. If it is not apparent to you, consider the idea that the world we have been inhabiting is over with and a new one is being birthed right now, right on top of it and within it. This process is a seamless manifestation of collective dreams, thoughts and intentions and is determined just a bit more with every act, every thought, every word each day, each moment, each breath.

Of great import within collective dreaming if we would like it to go nicely is the framework of the creative dialogue and how we each understand and employ the tools. Assertion is a tool by which we make plain our intentions to ourselves and others around us. Aggression is when we export our assertions onto the actions of other people. One is necessary to create intentions, one triggers a cycle of decay. Choices.

Lack of assertion of one's desires or needs leads to decay. Simply enough, if one looks at the past, there is at least one thing that we can all agree on, that is, that in the next moment, something will happen. Seems stupid perhaps, but, what do you think is going on? Something always happens. Where does that Something come from? Who decides? uh huh. If we are just floating around waiting, wondering, ignorant as to our purpose and power in this everflowing river of creation then we get a series of happy or unhappy accidents. We're still creating our experience, but we're letting it be determined by our unconscious, often unexamined habits, motivations, frustrations or inspirations.

Know thyself, know what you want and say so. As long as we hide in ignorance of our own authorship of what we encounter we are deceiving our self, though not very well or for very long. For me this morning, with my gut in shambles I am reflecting on this as a simple constant choice as to how experience can unfold. On the morning after that rigorous encounter with divinatory art everything has fresh meaning. I see from this spot that there is a world which I have begun to assert as my chosen path. I see that the real results that occur in each moment as a derivation of the ones just past are always a precise reflection of the seeds that were planted.

My gut hurts because I ate too much and drank stuff that pissed off my pink membranes and other parts. I knew what would happen and I did it anyway. This was not assertion, this was decay. A little decay is educational and can lead to wisdom. Continued decay, in this case, is the refusal to become wise, which is in a sense, aggressive ignorance. In the light of the tarot's reminder of these facts and my own charting of new course, I see an important breakwater about me. It is time to unseal the vaults, use all that I've been given and be not blinded to what I know.

What we know is deep and I invite anyone to consider. Do I know? How to breathe? How to sit? How to chew my food? How to exercise my body? What food to eat? Which drink is good? What is too much? How to drive my passion? What extinguishes it? Who is a friend? Who is a trickster dissolved in their own confusions? What has value? But how often do we do something that disregards what we are certain of? Why might we do such a thing? Is there a cure?

Before I came to Vietnam about 4 weeks ago I asked the tarot what was of greatest consequence in this leg of my journey. It answered THE MOON. This was a forecast of a journey into the abyss of our own dark and hidden nature. AH, how I love the adventure. If a thing doesn't undo us first, how can there be a place for the gifts which it gives?

With Salt, MSG and Polysorbate,
J.W. Starr, Guerilla Love Artist

Moon Blessing - Soul Journey

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? I mean this in the “how much Johnny Walker did we drink last night” as well as a “Sri Ramana Maharshi cutting through the illusion” way. I have answered this question in a variety of ways in my lives. Some of the answers have been silence, the name my mother gave me, I can’t remember and I don’t care. Today I am going to say that I am J.W. Starr, Guerilla Love Artist, Intergalactic Plumber, Tansdimensional Henshin Agent and Rock Star. It’s not glamorous all of the time, but I love my job. God buys me wine.

I love my job, I love my Job, I love my Job. I don’t have a phone or fax and it doesn’t matter because the boss never calls me. Somehow though, I am always supposed to be on time, in uniform and properly briefed on whatever it is I’m given assignment to do. I’ve argued about this and even fired myself, but it doesn’t change anything. I wake up somewhere with a solid preternatural sense of what the next steps are and I do them or else... or else? Or else all the fun goes away! Everything just gets grey and the sunsets aren’t as stunning and no wine.

It’s 11/11/11 a full moon and the changing of the age from Pisces to Aquarius. I’m without a home-base, I don’t like what I look like, my clothes are mostly wrecked, I don’t know where my income will flow from, I’m separated from my previous partner... I must need a new identity meat-wise (That is, here in the meat.. this place where the meat dances endless in the light of spirit). It’s also about time I reckon for new mission orders to become apparent and assemble. This requires some cooperation from my multiple self at various levels of being. Most of the knowable part of the process I will perform from here sitting at a terminal, writing my way clear and then waiting for the new directions to flow in as they will. This big moon should be a great help in that.

Clearing. Danshari! Before I do a new install there needs to be someplace to put the new stuff: ideas, activities, energies, feelings, resources, knowledge. Before I can receive there must be a place to put the gifts and I must ask for what I require.

What has been, is in process or should be cleared?

I’ve let go: my wife, home, much ease, many illusions, many habits, many distractions, many fears, many structures of conception which did not serve.

I’ve noticed that there are still hold-out bits mentally/emotionally regarding the marriage, the house and some concern over my stuff. These thoughts are poisonous, contain anger, fear, vengefulness and nonabundant energy. I am ready to let go of all of this and invite spirit to enter and guide me. I choose the high road. I ask for grace and guidance in letting go of what is done and creating a blessed place for the life I have chosen and which I am being guided to.

I send blessings to SG (this term will represent the partner who I am separated from and stands for Sleeping Guru. This designation has meaning for me and will gain substance for those who read Guerilla Love Artist) and all of the healing she requires. I release my anger and other toxic feelings and invite the light to cleanse me. I forgive her and I forgive myself. I release the house and make a promise to myself that I will not squabble over whatever articles remain in question, I ask spirit to assist in dispensing all as is necessary, to each that which they require to be whole. I have what I need. When the time comes for our final agreements let us arrive and leave each other with simple peace.

Energy Clear? I release my poor posture, uncomfortable body placements and internal pressurization that leads to loss of calm. Danshari!

I release my unconsciousness that appears in any guise.. ego-talk, “aggressive” conversation, disrespect, disdain, anger, fear, guilt, destructive habits, struggle and nonabundance, eating fast.

I release any anger I have left for anyone. Let all of me be filled with compassion for all beings, including myself. I forgive and ask to be forgiven by those who need this peace to heal. Let that compassion be expressed in my words, actions, thoughts, emotions and what pervades and surrounds my path.

I hereby lay down all of these objects/subjects of old and my spent relationships to them and to those people who they touch. Let all of these be burnt in offering in the fires of spiritual purification. And let what comes forth from the ashes be the most pure life, essence and purpose.

With this empty vessel (this new crucible):

I set my intentions anew. If there are intentions from previous that are still worthy or in need of upholding, then I trust they will come forth and assert themselves. What has been cleared is cleared by my will, my intention and by the grace of spirit. This Empty vessel is awaiting fulfilment by love, grace and devotion. I invite spirit to enter me through my breath, my mind, my body, my will and vision to help me fill this holy vessel.

Selfless Service to all mankind. I am a hand of God.

Practice, the bits I have together: I feel in the midst of metamorphosis. Here I will lay down the ingredients as I see them and how I intend to proceed.

Ysiita is with me and I feel that I have found truly a soul partner. If grace will grant then I will (and am) take Ysiita, Miss Guerilla to me and create a life of grace, dignity, art, passion, generosity and Joy. If it is the will of spirit we will create a family to help steward the next phase of earth development.

****** I'll skip the logistical details here.

Path to freedom is led by risking what we think we have in the quest to open our heart become what we are. Don't get to comfortable Jack!

Love and Light

Guerilla Love | Genesis

Art imitates life, Life imitates art. After I saw this rotation occur a few thousand-million times from the eyes of a gaggle of lifetimes on miriad planets in different galaxies inhabiting sundry bodies equiped with all kinds of bizarre mouths, appendages and genitalia, while taking pleasure from things I have no definitions for... I've realized that the imitation part can be reflected upon, fermented and evolved into something more authentic. Life can become an art form in itself. I am my own greatest work. Only the carcass-strewn road behind and the untouched canvas ahead.

I'm writing this from a restaurant and hotel called Ngoc Hoa owned by a Mr. Tuan. I'm sitting in a blue plastic lawn chair beside a laminate table with blue/red plaid cloth. A tourist joint, it is my Starbucks of the northern Vietnamese, Cat Ba island beach. There is a flat screen TV over where Tuan, his staff and presumably his daughter or young lover are have lunch. The TV is airing some fashion catwalk bathing suit models to a repetitive loop of the jazzy "Hey Mambo" song from I think... 50's.

Tuan is a native of the island and speaks very functional if narrow english. Tuan also seems to have some perspective which many I've met in my travels seem to be missing. I wouldn't describe him as an artist, but he has a quality of authenticity that he delivers consistently. His daughter sings what I would consider crappy pop song (singular) over and over again in the restaurant. I find this distracting, but it does not agrivate me nor prompt me to leave. She sings a song I don't appreciate, but she sings it very well and the repetition, which I find maddening, bespeaks passion of an artist. I've met artists whose lives seem devoid of art. I've met people who don't paint but who live their lives with vision.

If I were feeling dialectic I might say that the one who lives the vision has some artifact of achievement in hand which the struggling artist, whose life is a seeming series of misdirections, is indeed searching for through his painting process which is really an aspect of his soul which has been severed from the rest of his life. I might say that, but it's just a convolution to swim through and consider. I don't believe it. Both are experiences I feel I've had at different times and both are highly instructive.

Instructive of what? What do we want as individuals? To me the gold is taking the visionary process of painting or designing a thing out of the isolate box of creating just that one thing and seeing how everything in our experience is a seamless canvas upon which we can create. Keep expanding the vision and include ourselves within it. As our painting blends with those around us we give birth to a thrilling collaborative vision. Poof Eden!

Guerilla Love Artist

Love with Impunity.

Go Ape!

J.W. Starr
Guerilla Love Artist

Funerals, Phone Numbers and Cousins

It was a hot day. Sun was unobstructed and it felt like a steam bath. It was over ninety and it had rained for just a few minutes, "thick" would describe it well. The funeral had been that morning and we were all gathered at my aunt’s house for a reception. Little sandwiches and potato salad, some coffee, fruit and tiny cakes.

I'm hungry but I can't eat much of anything, I'm gluten intolerant and the wheat conspiracy goads me like a comicbook nemesis, sneering and assailing me everywhere I go. My cousin has the same problem, but decided he would ignore it. He had a few feet of intestine removed. I’ll refrain and allow people to consider me troublesome.

I go out to the pool. My uncle Mike is there. He's a jarring, right-wing, sarcastic jerk. I really like him. He sees things his way, he's straight and he'll never leave you with a veil of mystery about his feelings. He's also very loving which doesn't seem to me like it should fit, but he makes it work. He's also my Godfather. His wife Aunt Nancy is there too. They are very similar in views though she isn't as driving a sarcastic element. We get along very well. We get into a conversation where she starts talking about my cousin Uni who I haven't seen in 16ish years. Uni is very close with them.

My cousin Uni was in town from San Francisco to visit with them in Connecticut. She related all the crazy things my cousin was into and then her husband chimed in with his extraordinary sarcasm. It was really funny and intriguing. I hadn't seen Uni in a long time and there aren't too many people in the family whom I am like or feel that I can talk to, but here was my aunt describing someone who had done a lot of things that sound very familiar and right to me.

I told Aunt Nancy I wanted Uni's number and she told me that she was planning to come down to NJ in a few days. I hadn't thought about her in years. I felt like I was going to have a chance to find my lost sister, all sorts of cheesy, funny and even longing sensations ran through my mind. It could be like Luke finding out his sister was alive and could become a Jedi as well!

I'm an only child. In the summer when I was quite young I would go to Atlantic City with my grandmother. Uni lived there, we are very close in age, and we would go to the beach together with her sister Elizabeth. Uni and I always got on very well. Once every summer we would get to go to Connecticut to see uncle Mike together. Then it stopped. I didn't see her and we never talked and I don't know why.

My grandmother was in the pool. She heard what we were talking about and said, "You know, she had a real case for you when you were little". This of course was funny. I especially liked the 40's slang usage of the word "Case". My aunt chimed in with some supportive bit like, "Oh yea, you two loved each other".

I started remembering her more as we were all talking, I also remembered my Uncle Tom being uncomfortable leaving us alone because we were so likely to wrestle. He became really uncomfortable when that happened. His face would turn red as he leaned over the car seat, driving on the highway, to discipline us by volume and mean-face.

Uncle Tom became angry easily and had a temper. We used to play cards and he would try to cheat and even at 10 years old I could beat him. My grandfather, Duke, really knew how to make him mad and smiled whether he won or not. When people get mad they lose at cards. That was a big education. Duke is still alive, Tom isn’t, that is also a big education.

It wasn't the kind of wrestling where anyone was trying to win and come to think of it, I don't think I ever made her cry or even got mad at her, I guess I really did care about her, it was like we didn't want anything to get in the way of whatever we were doing. More mature than a lot of my adult relationships. Her sister couldn't stand it. She hated us both whenever we were together. We did cut her out of things though, kids can be mean.

In a conversation with my mother later I was talking about the poolside talk. She looked at me and kind of cracked a mischievous smile. "Uni huh? She really had a thing for you when you were kids!", I replied with something like, "Yea, Nan said something similar, it might be a little weird if she still feels that way.". My mom laughed, "You know you two aren't related at all.". She explained the intricacies of that part of the family. This created something I would almost describe as dilemma, but it wasn't. I did have to reevaluate my feelings in the light of this though, like what would Luke do if he found out Lea wasn't his sister?

I feel bizarre. It's all so distant and confused and seemingly from another life. I called her. We spoke for a moment, but the timing was poor, she sounded confused but excited, we had to let it go. We called back and forth for most of a week. I finally got through to her on my way up to my mother's today. We spoke for 2 hours. It was a really refreshing and warm conversation.

Her voice was so familiar but matured and saying words a thirteen year old would only say in a movie. The mix of memory, sense and emotion was disarming. The sound of her voice was doing things to me, it slid past any filtering or barrier I might have had. I felt like a kid, but then I realized we were discussing mystical religion and personal development in what seemed to be an erudite but relaxed manner.

"When are you going to be around? We've got to do something!", I declared. She agreed a lot. It turns out she was already in NJ, just not in Atlantic City, but would be there the next morning. She said she'd call me when she got in.

I'm trying not to let my self think over it all too much. It's a really complicated set of feelings and the only way I can see to approach it is just to go, no expectations, no plans. Chips fall where they may... I am glad we're not related though. :-)

All Godot All the Time

Free myself. Free myself instead of waiting for someone or some event to free me. I’m ready. It’s time. I want it to happen. I’m closing down everything, every open cycle, every door opened and aired. Multiple lines of action moving to some nearby point of culmination. Little things, they must be signs; Mark leaving town. Shari’s washer should be fixed soon. I’ve got no real place to live. Warehouse is cleaned and emptied. Things are stored. Everything is ready, everything but this paper, this document that holds my future in balance…

I feel really stupid sometimes when I realize in retrospect the sorts of things I take as meaningful or useful information, omens if you will. Like I’m constantly reading the chaotic, ever-flowing bones of every situation.

Anyway, I’ve cleared my mind as well as I can. I know what I want and I’ve done all I know in order to effect it. So now I wait. I don’t like waiting. It’s shit. It’s All Godot all the time here. If I can figure out how not to wait, then I would, but I don’t know how to… I’m drinking coffee and waiting which is one of the worst ways of trying to wait there could be. I think a lot about failure. I try to pull myself together. I succeed temporarily. I talk to a lady who says everything happens for a reason. I agree with her, but I still don’t feel very good.

My soul is tired. I don’t want to live in coffee bars anymore. I don’t want to be in Baltimore. I don’t think I want that much, mostly I don’t want. I want to go. I want to be free and it keeps evading me. Maybe it always will? I don’t want to get drunk and high all the time. I’m ready to change. I’m ready to go. I want to cry but it just doesn’t come. I know I shouldn’t let myself get so bent out by this. Things are still mostly OK. I need to adjust my thinking. I need to get back to accepting things I guess. This shit just keeps going around in circles. I’m sure I needed to take some real action, I did that. Now my desire to see things go to completion is driving me crazy.

A test? Sure, anything can go under that category. I wonder if I’m failing? I’m at the point where I’m giving up on everything I wanted to do this year. This doesn’t feel like Success. The world as I’m seeing it right now is like some receding blip in my vision. All I have is struggling against nothing. I had it right for a little while this morning and soon enough I’ll start drinking again and it’ll all be ok again. I don’t think things will ever make sense and I’m about to stop caring. This doesn’t seem like a good thing, it also doesn’t seem like the proper outcome for some lesson I’m gathering from all of this. I don’t know how to cope anymore but to stop caring.

The Wrong Animal

Promises

Implementations

Wake up in a different world

Looking into different eyes,

From different eyes,

Into different eyes.

So little motion,

So much sense.

Manageable,

Lacking that feeling of oversaturation

I’ve become so used to accepting,

But never really did.

The endless moment all curled up around my feet,

Like a comfy, warm blanket,

Friendly,

Nonthreatening,

Nothing like the eternities I used to while in.

All their apocalypse and explosion,

Fire and noise and Madness and Passion,

Where have I landed?

Have I grown old or stale while my flesh is still supple?

I don’t think so,

Perhaps I am finally taking advantage of some of the wisdom

Which has been poured into me

but has had so little purchase;

Like so much semen in the wrong animal.