When something clicks, when you make a discovery or a realization, the reason why it feels like you've uncovered the secret to an existence of easily renewable happiness and inner-shining (from that day forward) is because every piece of the puzzle, once it's snapped into its place, carries with it a taste of the whole puzzle. Just like every taste of Spirit carries with it a taste of Spirit's Spirit. It's sort of like they're the same as far as your tongue is concerned. Pepsi, and the God that created Pepsi, both taste like Pepsi.

Now, let's get down to business. I learned today that it is better to say, "I'm going to have beer," than, "I'm going to drink beer."

Further: I've been going to Gateway to FunLand a lot lately. It's not actually called that, but I call it that. It's got air hockey, and Dance Dance Revolution. It's got go-karts and mini-gulf and batting practice. I'll go more soon.

Lastly here are some things that I've been sitting and pondering tonight:

- What is it about Charlize Theron that makes me want to sit on a front porch and smoke a cigarette and talk about her to a deaf/mute who can't talk back or change the subject, except by walking away or making easily readable hand motions?

- What is it about Charlize Theron that causes me to build little fires in Lindsey's neighbor's backyards, and read the smoke for signs of my future? .... with Charlize Theron? I ask the flames.

- My fortune cookie at dinner tonight said, "A heavy burden will be lifted from you by a telpephone call or a letter." Adding the obligatory, "in bed," my request is: could someone phone me while I'm in bed and tell me Charlize Theron is on the other line, waiting to hear this love poem I wrote for her?

The poem goes:
Your face is like
the best thing I've ever seen
I don't even like looking at other people's faces
because yours is so much nicer

And your eyes are like
the eyes of an Egyptian serpant
whose great regal head
is coaxed out of a straw basket
and you're looking around
like, "who is mine?"
and I'm like, "me!"

And your ears
seem like they could
be sold on eBay
for the price of my heart

But I honestly want to kiss you on the cheek
and then later on the lips

I want to take it so slow with you
that by the time I am making out with
your irrepressible love box
we are both in Heaven

You are the greatest human
You make me happy to be alive
Just hearing your breath, in my mind,
from California
or wherever you are
is like when that kid
had Free Willy jump over
his fuckin arm

It's like knowing God exists
for a Christian

It's like knowing wheat will happen
for a farmer

It's like being tranqulized
for a horse

You are the best thing that ever happened to Earth;
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

Has anyone seen the 2001 film Sweet November? It's with Charlize Theron. She plays a strange lady who cuts all her relationships off at a thirty day marker because she has one of those fatal illnesses that leaves her looking and seeming totally healthy. It also stars Keanu Reeves. The movie got horribly reviewed, for reasons that become evident. The catch-word thrown out, a word that must have been symbiotically transmitted from one reviewer to another, so pervasive was its use, was 'cloying'. Yes, cloying. This movie was as unanimously disclaimed as 'cloying' as American Dream is being disclaimed as 'packaged'. So? I didn't mind. It was my first opportunity of July 29 to ponder the one, Charlize.

When I think about Charlize, I tend not to turn inward. Intro-, the way of my spection, is not. It's Charlize I'm interested in. And perhaps, subsidiarily, what about me is so h-bent on uniting with the whatever about her.

That's right! Unity!

Moving on: the second movie I watched was Monster. At first glance, you might see how watching a movie like Sweet November first was a bad idea. But at second glance, when you note the 12 beer I consumed while watching Sweet November, you are stuggling to calculate just how bad a decision it could've possibly been. Way bad. I'm one of those fellows that often chooses not to refrain from getting wildly identified and involved with the images and audios that come my way during a narrative unfolding motion-picture style. And 12 beer, if anything, exacerbates that tendency like a genie is exaggerated by lamp-rubbing. Hoky F, we are talking. But in the end, how enjoyable was it? So much so. Monster is truly an amazing movie.

After a brief interval of Drum-Circling it up, I decided to stick emotional dynamite into my most emotional place, and go for the emotional kill with Cider House Rules. (Another Theron flick, of course.)

Yep. Boom!

A day filled with fun. Yes. All kinds.

Gateway to Fun Land was invoked, again, this time in honor of Lindsey's birthday, with good friend Brendan along. We swung bats, pushed petals to metal, contemplatively nudged putters. Sipped things that tasted better than air or water in a cooled-off interior. Toured offerings of civilized society, and each other's day-to-day headspaces, by speaking.

I bought a horse book later in the day, because it's what I wanted to do.

There's something that you may not know about me. I spent a lot of time with horses. It's time that floods back on me when I'm sitting doing nothing. When there are no girls or beer in front of me. All the different times, and the different identities, on the road to as true and powerful a horsemanship I could muster. Times when I was driving with my brother, way too far, to work with tame horses for scared owners. Times when I would chase a horse around for three hours in a flimsy roundpen, fail to catch it, and go inside for a burger and a nap, and know I'd done good work, even though I'd been right pissed the whole time. Times when my horse was so far under water or snow only his wee struggling head was poking up. And there I would be, on his back or swimming beside him, giggling and concerned.

It's an odd thing, to aim your life at excellence in a specific area. To outpace your peers. To solicit the attention of the truly great in your field, on virtue of your talent and promise, your dedication and presipration, showing so clearly in your eyes and your actions. And then to let it all go for something else. In this case, writing.

And then, again, I began this business of aiming myself at excellence. Of attracting notice from the truly great, if not the truly great in my field, on virtue of my talent and promise. Of trying and failing and trying again to narratively induce a nexus of effects. Of learning and being inspired, and all that.

Where has it all gone? Conviction, dedication, straining and striving. What the fucking hell?

To answer this question, I bought a horse book. And now I'm reading it.

So what. So I am intended for something. Being readied, as a bride, for the enaction of this often stretching causal alignment.

My prayer, then, is to open to it. To let the opportunity of my being yield unreservantly to its culmination. Like that guy in the Fountain, floating in his bubble to the Big Light. To be swallowed and reissued, moment by moment: this is me.

So what. So I am wanting for something. Being entrusted with thirst, that I may feign enduring it, and graduate to pursuing its remedy.

My prayer, then, is to hold not to the inevitable; to cease grasping at all I am righted by birth, and let these gifts, instead, be immersed in me.

So what. So I see you wanting for something. I see you grounding the desire for incontravertible acceptance, for security without end, for the loving arms of everyone around you.

My prayer, then, is to add my arms. And impart with them their irreversible seal. Unless you are smelly, or a hobo.

A parade came by my street this morning. I wanted you to see it. There were horses, and onyx, and unicorns. They shon, those unicorns; blue, and gold, and pink. Their horns seemed the oldest part of them. Silver and twisting. I wanted you to be with me there, on the bench in front of the house, sitting beside me. I wanted to see your smile.

I imagine there are parades like this where you are. Wonderful floats, of wood and stone, rolling along at the pace you want. Out your window, you notice the parade. Here a grey ship rescued from the bottom of the ocean, gliding on hidden tracks, drifting stolidly by, haunted and forgotten. Here a troupe of monkeys unicycling. They weave a pattern you're sure looks good from overhead. The performance is impeccable, and fleeting. Here is a fashionable group of men. They wear berets and sunglasses, and they walk atop the world they own.

I imagine this, but I cannot be sure it is the case. I have ceased to hear you. I have ceased to see you, save in my mind, where you are always. It has been given to me, to love you. It is my birth-task, and I abide it with great dedication. You are the air I breathe. You lift me up on wings of eagles. These are things said to God, about God. They are things I say to you.

A parade came by my street this morning. I wanted you to see it.