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!

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.

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. :-)