It’s the yearning for stability and wanting to run wild at the same time that ultimately conjures madness. I play and dabble, work keeps me coloring within the lines, it keeps me grounded; without it I may drift into my fantasies and never find my way out. It is difficult to be good and decent all of the time, redemptive nobility is exhausting, it wears strenuously on every fiber of my being.

The requirements to be righteous wear so heavily I fear I may forget to come back to it, I may stay in my pleasurable debasement. Work helps me to stay pure, and there’s something about me that needs to be cleaned on a regular basis. Those filthy parts that want to get lost in drink and drug, fuck the drummer in the bar bathroom, kiss the girls and take off to another country for a weekend naked in the sun, the bed, the bars, the music. That part is palpably real, so real that I have to work daily toward more noble obligations to bury her, because given enough room to breathe she will burst out. She will consume all of me and that is why I must protect the other pieces.

She does not settle, she will expect to be the sole, exclusive standard; she demands full allegiance. She will not be content to do good only, she will bring as much, if not more trouble.
It is her; she is the piece no one will understand, she is the piece no one will offer stability and freedom. She is the piece they will never trust because they cannot understand what is untamed. The peaks and valleys are exasperating to the most dedicated of explorers. Too many sharp angles mingled with round, swooping curves.

Too much sex, too much brain. They see too many pieces and realize she is not a fairytale. She is the precipice, but of what, they cannot determine. She is the piece they all desire to be close to for a moment before they feel the impulse to run back to their more virtuous accommodations where everything is exactly as it appears, where there are no surprises.

They lack appetite, afraid of raw humanity. They fuck for sport not for VERITAS; absorbed in their bodies, praying at the alter of the perfect orgasm they will never find because they have exchanged their sensitivity for their ego.

They can get away from her, I can’t, I don’t want to. Without her I may resolve to settle, accept things as they are; I would stagnant. I may become prone to accept mediocrity from myself and others.

She is not afraid of life. She understands pleasure doesn’t have to be followed by guilt in order to be pleasure, she understands life is not linear and she isn’t afraid to follow the spiral, she understands purity and degradation can coexist without insulting one another.

She doesn’t have to pretend superficiality is depth, she isn’t concerned with your feelings, because your feelings are yours, they are your responsibility to handle or not. She will not protect you from her. If you need protection, you are not worthy of approach. She doesn’t require your validation because she doesn’t require you. She may want you; she is wise to know the difference.

Her unyielding sense of herself doesn’t allow for power struggles, emotional chess, and polite meaningless transactions. You arrive to her with your strength in tact, you show up already an equal or risk losing the shred of identity you have. It is not her will to build you or to put you back together when she is finished.

She understands power, she does not shrink in the face of it. She is straightforward; she is not manipulative, she is honest, fearless, vulnerable and strong. She isn’t seeking enlightenment, she knows enlightenment; not the kind that looks trite and effortless when written, but the enlightenment that is universal, not so trite, and not always beautiful.

Zen is energetic, enlightenment requires the veritable strength of character to follow it through, ask the questions and not to look away when the answer is ugly. That is enlightenment. It is the beautiful sway of correctly aligned chords, but it is also the brassy beginner smashing around making cacophonous errors until they resign their talent because they don’t have the tenacity to get through the hard part. She believes the failure to follow passion is the antithesis of enlightenment. Passion is enlightenment. Settling for less then, that is degradation.
I’m no longer certain which part of me is wanting to lace up my running shoes, grab my passport and take off on the first plane leaving the country. I don’t know if I’m running away or toward something. I only know my legs are aching to be stretched out, I, am longing to be stretched out.

Perhaps she is the bastardized version of my whole, but it is equally possible she is the potential my total fails to live up to. At either rate, it is becoming more and more impossible to tell the difference. Both options are justly valid.

Her mantra is my constant companion, she is me and she whispers, “I am the mother who has no children. I go into the ugly places where light is necessary, I am the necessary light. I am the wise companion to the heathens, because I am the heathen. I hold witness to their struggle and offer my empathy in exchange for their secrets. I allow them to taint me, I am their witness. I am Picasso and DaVinci, the sultry blues and the depth of a symphony. The poetic sweetness of a Bordeaux and the miscreant infamy of Absinthe. The church and the brothel. My own God and friend to my Devil. The convergence of divinity and mutation. I am not your saint, you will not find redemption, do not seek shelter in the crevices of my body. I am your unadulterated Joy. That which compels you to live outside yourself, to sacrifice your comfort for your freedom. That simple emotion you are afraid to ask for, ashamed and too cynical to believe in, yet forever hopeful to reclaim”.