I’ve been alive for 52 years and in that time I don’t believe I’ve ever fully experienced what it means to really be Alive. Oh sure I delight in attempting the impossible, like finding nutrition in a Paula Deen recipe. I also revel in the occasional happy alignment of distant hope and nearby reality; like the recurring dream I have involving Julie Andrews and a ♫few of my favorite things♫. After washing the sheets, I reflect that these events are all evanescent flash paper moments calculated by God to keep me engaged in his little Milky Way art project while he avoids any explanations of why I might be participating in it. As far as achieving a quintessence that a particular moment exemplifies the true meaning of being alive, I’m left wanting or at least wandering.

So in the absence of authenticity, I participate in a kind of “Occupy David” movement whereby I occupy my body, but under protest in hopes of getting the straight dope on whatever the hell it is I’m doing here in the first place. Perhaps you’ve seen this Occupy Movement in the trailer park where you live. This Movement represents the 100% of us who must intuitively feel our way around earth without an owner’s manual or even a GPS to assist us in where we’re going? And yet we’re expected to do the bidding of those rarefied souls who dwell on Mount Olympus (metaphor for something absolutely unseen but powerfully felt). They orchestrate all the power flowing through the universe and we get to be stalking horses in their Game of Thrones. It’s such an Unfair Labor Practice whereby we’re coerced into starring in their earthly video game without receiving any of the lucrative residuals they get; unless of course you consider 3000 cable channels some kind of reward for the kind of inconvenience we put up with. This studio system is broken and in need of replacement with a new system incorporating something called “the consent of the governed.” We rebelled for less in 1776, but we sit idly by and take it in the shorts in 2013. Actors of the world unite. We have nothing to lose but our ignorance. But how do we rebel without making a bad situation worse? Don’t want no Syria. I want my water treatment plants to work. When I flush, I want it to go away.

You Say You Want a Revolution

So here’s my plan. I say we earthly actors go on strike or at least undertake a job action till those on Mount Olympus (again with the metaphor) that control the means of production become less stingy with the plain truth. That means you Holy Ghost and probably the Monsanto Corporation too. Our message is this: It’s time to power share the truth with us or we’re opting out and then see how fun you’re little video game is when it’s supposed action figures are all just milling in a relaxed state instead of frenzied in our struggle for higher achievement. We’ve got leverage too y’know. We’ll give in a little too. You can charge us for Free Will if you want. Call it moderately priced Free Will, just so long as you imbue us with the true spirit of God whose absence we feel so acutely. From your lofty perch you guys (and ladies I presume) control everything while you throw us a bone by letting us select the darkness of our toast. Hey thanks Lord and Master. You try shoveling my snow for a week and see how you feel about, “Oh I like to experience all 4 seasons.” Well screw you and the spiritual zephyr you blew in on.

Dis-Connectivity

Times are though. I mean thought. I mean trough. I mean times are tough (this damn English language). In these difficult economic times (when has that not been true?) Google Maps encourages “Occupiers” to use their street view and take a Google Staycation. You can go anywhere you want from the comfort of your lap top. Let’s listen in.

Overheard at a Lions Club Pancake breakfast at Our Lady of Amniocentesis in Paramus NJ:

Wilma:            Fred and I are taking a Google Maps, Street Level Staycation this summer. We’re going to Rome.

Betty:              How nice for you. And where will you roam?

Wilma:            Rome.

Betty:              Yeah, That’s what I said. Where will you roam?

Wilma:            In Rome. As in Arriverderci Roma!

Betty:              Well why didn’t you just say Rome?

Wilma:            I did.

Betty:              Anyway the pancakes look ready now. Chow?

 

Wilma:            Ciao? OK. If you and Barney are leaving then ciao, but I’m staying for pancakes.

Betty:              No. Chow? As in Arriverderci Chow!

Wilma:            Well why didn’t you just say chow?

Betty:              I did.

 

 

Hyper Awareness

In truth I know this “Occupy David” movement (in Barcelona it’s called Occupado Davido) is only a temporary activity, for we’re all merely visitors on this most terrestrial of planets. Yes I’ve learned my lines and undertake my part with gusto until I’m evicted from the stage by more knowing Mount Olympus Stage Mothers who booked me into this earthly gig in the first place even though I was residing quite sweetly in the bosom of God till I was conscripted into this touring company. The whole competition thing is a complete travesty because everyone knows Meryl is going to win the Oscar. Besides, I’m trough with acting. I mean through with acting. What I really want to do is direct.              Yeah I know – And people in ice water want hell.

The Feeling Groovy Caveat

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a really cool groove, whereby I can abide all this dualistic nonsense I’m immersed in and cherish the moments I experience apart from watching TV. Then I realize that like on a vinyl record, there is only one groove to be in and we’re all in it but at different points along the pathway (for those not perceptive enough this analogy is profoundly metaphoric). Some souls are listening to the first cut of side 2 of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album and experiencing the spiritual heights of the George’s Within You Without You while others are “occupied” by the apocalyptic crescendo of John’s A Day in the Life – all on one groove. It’s the same groove only configured differently and articulated and manifested expressively at different points along the path. But if we lifted the needle and obtained a fresh perspective we’d discover we’re just playing the same record over and over as in: The phone calls! They’re coming from inside the house. Get out now!                     I realize this analogy may be lost on those who’ve only known mp3 players… such is life. In fact this analogy is probably lost on everyone. The point remains however – listen to your own inner music.

This One’s for Me

I readily admit that my perspective in life has changed regularly to suit the moment. Additionally I endeavor to live life fully by sucking the life’s blood from any situation. While this may sound chameleonic and vampiric; you must realize it’s been my singular goal to include the words chameleonic and vampiric in the same sentence since I learned them in 1974. Bucket list item achieved…Boo-ya, Ka-ching.

There’s a wise New Age adage that cogently exhorts: Be Here Now. And I agree completely with it, but in practice I’m more like: Be Here Soon. That is, when all my conditions are met and I’m totally satisfied with the moment, I’ll Be Here Now. Until then I simply Occupy David till I get the straight dope – straight dope: a phrase which also doubles as my sexual orientation and spiritual IQ. Maybe Foreigner said it best when they beseeched, “I wanna know what love is.”

But how can these so called conditions ever be met? After giving it some thought I realized the answer would have to enter me through grace and not via linear thought forms. When grace wasn’t available I resorted to something resembling prayer. And it was  through Activated Catalytic Exudation (my scientific term for prayer) I realized I miss being separated from God or whatever that connective thing is that casts a net over us all and inspires us to love and be loved. Like you, I’ve been cast out (or more aptly “miscast”) and I acutely feel that separation when I’m not distracting myself with cat videos or going to the Museum of Modern Art and being impressed by the Impressionists. BTW, there’s a new interactive food wing at MoMA where patrons can sample the complex soup stocks of Bullion Cubists. One spoonful and you’ll agree – Golda Meier was a beautiful woman. And just try eating an omelet from one of the Abstract Eggspressionists.          

So. How to Legally Feel More Alive

Sometimes I think I need to have one of those vivid near death experiences or NDEs to truly appreciate and intensify my life. Preferably a near death experience that doesn’t get anywhere near actual death. That’s what I mean about not knowing what it really means to be alive. Why must it take a near death experience or an “evening” with Julie Andrews to fully flower my appreciation for life? So ass backwards. It’s the old cliché: You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. My fear is that without a near death experience, I’m just going to continue this half-assed near life experience.  I know. If I didn’t write about it, it wouldn’t seem so complicated. Write? So I’ll come back to it later, but for now here’s some pleasant written distraction (written just for you {read ME}) till we focus again later on Being Here Now.

List of Benign Distractors Designed as Analgesics

1.    The San Francisco Gay Pride Parade is featuring the vehicle from the TV show My Mother the Transgendered Car. Talk about drag racing.

2.    Somehow the Monsanto Corporation has managed to Copyright the Alphabet. The alphabet – English, Cyrillic, Runic, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Arabic. And I now have to pay 5¢ a consonant and 10¢ a vowel just to write this jaunty jeremiad. You can’t even grow an idea nowadays without using Monsanto’s proprietary fertilizer. But I don’t worry about that. There’s enough bullsh*t in this screed to fertilize a dictionary – which, incidentally, I discovered has been copyrighted and mapped by Google. Damn power aggregators. What’s left in the Public Domain – a sunset? No. Sunset magazine has that copyrighted too.

3.    Where Have All the Warlocks Gone and Other Chaff? And when I say warlock I refer to the friendly warlocks of my youth from Bewitched like Uncle Arthur or Dr. Bombay and not the evil power usurpers from Game of Thrones or the Bush administration.

4.    Meanwhile here I am on eBay trading my Verizon carryover minutes for United Frequent Flyer miles which I then parlay into a fabulous timeshare in Toledo on Lake Michigan. And people think I’m crazy because Toledo isn’t even on Lake Michigan, it’s on Lake Erie. That’s their problem because when I get out of the shower and look in the mirror, half the time I see Rihanna staring right back at me – in the altogether I might add.

5.    Life is an auto immune disease whose only cure is to be twittier than the other guy or to be so present (Being Here Now) that people think you’re in a trance. Either way you still have to dance for your supper.

6.    Truth be told, there was a time I would pluck any errant gray chest hair to counteract the untidy notion that I was getting older. And through the years as my pecs were overrun with a gray hoary frost, I finally just said, “Pluck it.”

7.    Events like these made me feel vincible. And this vincibilty led to tremendous self-doubt. For example one bright and sunny morning (which is the daylight corollary to “It was a dark and stormy night.”) I found myself wandering in the garage until my neighbor poked his head out and said, “For God’s sake David, will you please get out of my garage and go home. And another thing. It’s not “♫In the meadow we can build a cornhole.♫” It’s snowman. We can build a snowman you putz. Now out of my garage before I call the exterminator.”

Well that’s out of my system and I’m back in the groove. Groovy? Oh no. As I earlier explained that’s half the problem. Anyway for those who would like to visit: I’m Here Now. Aaaaaah.

I’m Not Really Following All This Either

And that’s my point exactly.