Day Sixteen: Journal of Infinite Testimony on Never Coming Back.

Don't go the way I have. I am far too gone now to know where I am. Far out there in the reaches of the netherworld. Out where radio waves never touch. Out where there is no sound of any civilization. Out where no one knows. I let go so much I even let go of letting go. I have no identity to rest on. No name. No face. Just memories that can't ever be recreated. The more I remember what I thought I knew the more I don't really remember anything. I once held a deep regard and a deep contempt for this place. This earthly home.

I once knew what it was like to feel the pain of trying. I once knew the young love that strikes you from out of nowhere. The nebulae of comatose that it puts you in. The consistency and the constant reminder that there is meaning. That there is value. That there is worth in the other. Now I don't know what that is. I don't know where the word where points to or where the word there points to. It has all meshed into one entity. One energy and I know there's no turning back. This holograph has no skin. This reality doesn't feel like something we are in. I don't care about the wars. The truncheons. The scars of long forgotten moments.

My soul is weary and it's ready to go home. If you are out there, you can have it all. You can take it all. You can swallow this hollow. You can burn this empty void. You can take all its books, all its records, all its descriptions, all its conniptions, its fits and you can gently go across its throat and slit it. I don't want this wall or this mirror or this voice in my head telling me things are going to get clearer. I want to completely disappear. I don't want anyone to remember me. I don't want to tell any more stories. All of them have been the same. Flittering this way and that. I might be wrong with all of this.

This might be just another test and if it is then please show me the way. Show me that none of this is just in vain. Show me that in this dark that there is really a light. That it burns bright. That the rainbow is really taking over. That all the world's goodness is more that this hollow. That love really does exist. That it's not just an idea that I seem to resist. That the touch of the skin and the smell of the hair is more than just the way that I stare. Is more than just endlessly falling down. Is more than just these clever names that we give. That I can really end on a good note and finally live. That this third act of my life, I will see the standing ovation.

I would love to see something more than just a shadow of a shadow of a shadow.

Day Fifteen: Journal of Infinite Testimony on The Real Me; Both Sides.

I want to write a funny allegorical story that makes you believe I am some funny, lighthearted comedian with an intense flair for word imagery but tonight I would rather write the real story of the real me that I have so far known myself to be through my observation and my actions. I am not the greatest guy that I make myself out to be. I have had a lot of heartbreak and I have also done a lot of heart breaking from being heart broken. I spent most of my life denying that it all happened the way it did but it happened the way it did.

I was born thirty-two years ago into a strange land that I didn't understand. What I understood was the beauty and simplicity of the moment. I would watch birds fly up high in the air and I would fly with them. I would watch people smile and wave as they walked by the small fence that enclosed our yard while I got lost in my imagination. I wondered why no one else ever stopped to look at the world all around them.

I still feel this way. I see the intricate. I see the unseen and I appreciate it more than the guns, the politics, the wars, the crimes, the raping and other such ugly things across the world that I have seen and witnessed. I am like a little kid that has never grown up. I don't even know what will happen if we do all grow up and lose this capacity to wonderment and imagination. It seems to me we have surely lost our way. We have so many toys that all do the same thing but we all fight over them. We have all these shiny beautiful things that the earth provides and that we weave from the earth and we store them up in big buildings and put locks and keys for no one to reach unless you have seventy-five-page documents that say you can pass through seventy-five different doors with seventy-five different people guarding them. We have the capacity to love and feed and embrace every single person on this earth as we are visitors to this place and don't own this it but we put signs for lease, rent or own everywhere and if you can't afford the price you get to go and live out on the streets and beg to live or die trying.

I sit here trying to fit myself in a box with words, I try to sell you the idea of me so you can help me pay my bills so I can make a living. I keep perfecting myself every day but as I cover up all the dirt, I get so clean that no one sees me anymore. I clean myself so well I become invisible. My beauty comes from the pain and suffering of the world. It comes from every injustice that anyone has ever endured. My beauty comes with the price of never knowing if what I am doing is the right thing or if there is even a right thing that exists at all. My life comes from traumatic abuse. Being kicked around like a prisoner of war. Thrown down the stairs. Thrown through walls. Punished for wanting to be an artist instead of some commodity sitting behind a desk with one thing to look forward to at the end of life; a gold watch that says thank you so much for sitting in that desk and never leaving outside of the confines of your own mind, or heart or being. Watching the body slowly rot and fester with the pain of being a cog, spinning the wheel.

I hate to throw this all your way and even if you read this far you either might stop now because it doesn't tell you something that makes you feel good or sell you something you can tell all your friends about or show off to everyone that you acquired because you own everything but don't own yourself. Is that the price for life? That you get to buy the whole world but still never be able to move around in it without someone else's permission or someone else's law. Hell, I am going to go right into the nitty gritty of it. I had been digging into the bottomless hell anyways so what does it matter at this point.

Damned if you do, Damned if you don't. If you want a get rich quick scheme or you want some enlightening marketing tool that you can sell to your friends, then look elsewhere because all I have to offer is the raw life experiences that I have walked through. All I have to offer are bricks that have been thrown at me. All I have to offer is misery and the opposite feelings of those things too which have brought the same pain from either side. It's either that I have loved too much. I have fucked too much. I have dawdled away all my time, energy and resources too much or that I have been too lazy, too gripped by manic episodes and depression. Sleeping on people's couches.

Accepting everything I can. Doing the best with what I know. Letting go of what doesn't work only to find this beautiful circle. No matter how many books I have read, how many religions I have studied, how many sciences I have digested, how many philosophies I have believed in, how many self-help books that have helped me to help myself lose myself even more in them. There is no answer. There's no quick fix. There's no success in three minutes. The only one's who seem to profit off of those ideas are the one's who have created them. I have learned that the truth cannot be created nor destroyed. The truth is naked and it's swinging its hips to the rhythm of life. It's not when the lips move, much like my long winded story right now that started out to be the real me but then went on a diatribe on the world outside of myself but I have realized that I am the whole world. I am every single sunrise and sunset.

I am the guy at the bar who drank himself to death from loneliness. I am the woman who hung herself in the midtown Manhattan motel because no one would love her or even be kind to her. I am the guy who won the lottery but didn't understand money and spent it all in one years time. I am the little girl still waiting for her father to wake up from the long sleep. I am every mother and father. Every widow. Every homeless one starving on the streets while billionaires sit on their balconies shouting that they should have read Oprah's new article on how to be a multi-millionaire.

I am the frank one who says all the wrong and right things. I am the politically incorrect one who you can't stand but you will be friends with if it helps your image. I am Shiva. I am Lakshmi. I am that I am. I am my father's son. I am my father who left when I was 5 because he didn't want to be my father. I am my mother who got dealt a bad hand but did the best that she could. I am my stepfather who suffers so much from the pain and suffering he kept inflicting on others because he hurt so much inside but kept numbing it with alcohol, drugs and abuse. I am the little boy who wishes he was never born into this world. I am the one who does not know how to ask for help because I have helped so many but don't know how to help myself. I am the one who got fired because he didn't love what he does. I am the old married couple who lost the fire and the zest.

What do we really do here besides create so much complexity, adversity, peace, beauty and then destroy it. I am an ancient city upon ancient city buried under so much of the earth, at the bottom of the ocean, in the middle of lands we have never explored. I am all the money wasted on superficiality, condemnation, campaigns about nothing but bullshit. I am the one who keeps putting off change because to let go of the old investment would mean that I would have to admit defeat.
I am the one who cannot seem to get up anymore. I am the one who judges myself. I am the one practicing privatized corporate punishment. I am a civilization who keeps trudging on. Who keeps seeing the poison everywhere that it is creating but won't change until the bitter end. I know there is beauty in this world too. I know there are mountains, trees, flowers, bees, honey. I know there are beautiful people too. Fragile as glass.

I love this world too. Don't get me wrong. I have had so many beautiful moments. I have seen children be born. I have seen people come out of adversity and see everything new. I have seen triumph. I have heard the most beautiful music made by angels. I have made love for hours and hours and hours into the-most-ecstatic realms I could never explain with words.

I have had homeless people walk up to me and sit down and talk and they start crying so much and hug me because all they wanted was someone to listen to their story about what happened to them before things went wrong. I have watched people die in the park and I sat there with one of them and he said don't leave until they come and take me away. I have seen the light and glow inside the eyes of fire. I have watched the flame dance for hours. I have listened intensely to all the conversations ever come my way. I have made love to so many women who have walked into my life. I have eaten so many beautiful meals with them. Smoked so many cigarettes when I thought it was cool until it started to make me feel a bit crazy. I have been pure gratitude for all moments, every single one that I write about now. Every single one because if I never had these experiences I would never know anything. I have been a friend to so many, intimidating to others, awkward to some, selfish to others, fair weather to some, unable to show up for others.

Too many experiences to know. Too many people to meet. Too many things to have. Too many beliefs to believe in and too many to break. Too many habits. Too many excuses. Too many too many's. Too much is too much. I just want to be simple again. I want to feel real again.

I want to know what it's like to have everything and share it and for the first time see the beauty on both sides.

Day Fourteen: Journal of Infinite Testimony on Found On The Island and The Torch Is Passed After The Sea, Lost and Found.

The man hands over the torch to me and tells me that it is my turn to walk into the darkness. The captain and I trade glances for a moment and he gives me a subtle little nod to keep going. After all, we endured such a strenuous journey across the sea of treachery and when we thought that it was all over we crashed landed right onto an island. The captain gets back on the ship, sets the sails and continues on.

The man disappears into the night and I notice that even without a torch he still has a light on. After they leave me with a torch in hand I walk on without a second thought. The sand becomes more and more secure as I walk away from the water, the beach, the captain, the torch bearer. I approach a big staircase with a giant wall on all sides. I wonder for a moment if I should try and walk around the wall or walk up the stairs to see where they go.

I decide to walk up the stairs. I reflect on many times in my life trying to go around what seems like an obstacle in my mind. Why not do the obvious thing this time. I feel in my gut that this is the right thing to do. I tell you everything even though it probably doesn't matter to you whether or not you hear it. It probably doesn't matter what you think about it. You still say nothing back. It's already been said. I take each step slowly and securely. I walk all night without stopping. Up and up and up many, many stairs. Nothing but the same slabs of wall all around me as I walk on forever into the night.

I get to the top and it is pointed. Much like the top of a pyramid. The steps get smaller and smaller until I am finally at the tip of the point. There is light all around me. It's not just one colored light. It's not just yellow, orange, green, blue nor white. It is then that I realize this is the top of the point. This is where it is quieter than quiet. Where it's more serene than serenity. Where all things become more focused than focus.

This is where everyone wants to be. This is where everyone is. One pointed focus. One channel. One place. One space. Seemingly multi-dimensional. Seemingly complicated. Seemingly confusing. Seemingly. That is the thing about the illusion. It's an illusion in and of itself. I know that this is not the end. This is not the only space to exist in. This is not the only place to exist in. There's more to this than clouds, weather patterns, changes, re-arranges, re-writes, characterizations, religions, creeds, nations, treaties.

This is the now. This moment, this moment, this moment and this moment and this moment and this moment and this one. This one. This. All of them endlessly moving. Endlessly churning. Endlessly learning. Endlessly this. I then turn to light and then slowly disappear into the vast infinite night.

Losing all forms. Losing all states.

Evaporating endlessly. Endlessly me. Endlessly free.

Day Thirteen: Journal of Infinite Testimony on Dreams of Dreaming Dreams.

I am starlight from all the galaxies. All the stars. All quasars, quarks and names. I am slowly burning out across the void. Slow fire. I am transformed into a holographic classroom of the future.

Everything is crystal nanotechnology. Everyone sits in the air in the lotus position. There are no such things as desks, chairs, stairs or surfaces. Everything floats. Everything is open space and cylindrical for starters. Then everything is imagination projection. Everything is shapeshifted. Everything is infinite multi-dimensionality. Everything arrives and departs at the same time but actually never left and never went anywhere. It just gave you the illusion that it did. It just sends itself a copy of itself to do whatever holographic work that it feels that it needs to do in whatever time period it feels that it needs to do it in. It can copy itself infinitely. It knows that it exists anywhere, somewhere, everywhere and nowhere. I am told that I don't take it seriously nor do I know how to have fun with it. I neither do anything nor do I do everything at the same time. I am told that this goes against the laws that I have agreed to when I had become more than just an idea of myself.

This still leaves me wondering; who did I agree with before I incarnated here. A question that seems to be left unanswered. So here I sit on a planet called Earth. With it's silly people and it's silly rules and all of it's people fighting for and against everything. Here I am in the middle of it all still wondering the same questions.

Who brought me here?

Day Twelve: Journal of Infinite Testimony on How When You Die In Your Dreams You Really Don't Die In Real Life

The gunman flies down a lone dirt road through a tropical forest that I don't know. We travel at thralldom's of speed which if you didn't know is faster than anything conceivable. We are beyond weightless-ness, timelessness and spacelessness but this is still some heavy shit happening.

There's a baby sitting in the passenger seat screaming it's lungs out. To the right of me, in the backseat is a man bound and gagged. I am just sitting here watching it happen. I can see a part of the face of the man driving in the rear view mirror. I also see his mouth frothing like a rabid wolfhound.

The adrenaline, the speed and the intensity are a catalyst for this moment. We cross a bridge into a small abandoned town. Not one person is around. It's like that typical western scene with dust blowing everywhere. Tumbleweeds and all. The silence of ghosts past all searching for fools gold.

We pull off into a small road on the side between two old buildings all boarded up. He puts the car in park then takes a moment to gather his composure. After doing so, he goes into a manic frantic temper tantrum. He picks up the baby in one hand and points the gun at it with the other. He then looks at me and asks me if it should live. I say of course it should.

What did it ever do to you? He becomes infuriated and instead points the gun at me. Breathes in deeply and fires the trigger. I see the slow motion. The bullet leaving the gun. Slowing down. Every millisecond revealing itself. I see the blue matrix inside the center of my head. I see consciousness. I see unlimited potentiality. I see infinite space. I hear the last echo. I feel myself leaving. I know none of this is me. It's just an image of myself. It's an expression of the infinite.

I say goodbye, farewell and wake up born a new.