Angst, Aggression, Fuck Average, Amazing

Have you ever had one of those days where you feel like you've been punched in the gut? Like... you waited to get the job you wanted only to find out that the seeds you once had in your bag unknowingly might prevent you from getting a visa in another country, not to mention barred from two in Asia, possibly more?  Nah, me neither. Angst.

Have you ever wanted to punch everything around you including the air? Like... you decide to take a huge risk and life change only to get knocked down... hard. Like, one of the only hard times in your life you're gonna get knocked down like that. But you get up, don't quit, and keep going. You take time during the adjustment and find a new place, new job, new secondary job, new bicycle, new gym. You reach your goal. You were able to take the step knowing you were going to get knocked down, probably harder than you've ever been knocked down before, but you do it anyway. And you're fine. You make new life plans only to then be kicked in the balls. Everything that you had saved up and worked for to make happen after that huge risk, everything that you gathered together and organized is then threatened for weeks to then be relieved, and then kicked in the balls. Aggression.

I realized that these feelings I have are normal, but the way I'm handling them are pretty average. Whatever is meant to happen always does. But look at the facts. Yeah, I fucked up back in the day unintentionally, unknowingly, and unwittingly for which I am now getting the karma kick in the face for it. But it isn't so bad if I think about it, because I realized that getting a travel ban from two countries means I've been living my life exactly the way I want to. That sounds a bit reckless, but when you've made the promise to yourself already that you're not going to sacrifice your beliefs and who you are for things, especially when you're not hurting a damn person for it, you've got to stick to your guns no matter what the consequences. So fuck average and fuck changing who you are, regardless of the consequences it may bring. Fuck average.

Macro photography--amazing.

Finding Jack 420: The Prequel is coming along VERY nicely. So fun. By the time you read this though you're not going to be able to see the pictures though... but you can download it for FREE :) More later.

My New Love

I have been so excited lately... although my world temporarily came crashing down today, I picked myself up with a couple of psychadelics and some meditation. Tears don't stop... but they never do when you are around this stage.

That doesn't take away from my excitement... even when I have the worst days.

I remember once, in Africa, I was backpacking on my own. I was somewhere in Malawi on an intercity locals bus. I saw a woman in a tea field, picking tea with her baby strapped to her back. I was on a bus and I was scared to death because I was the only white guy on this bus, soon to be traveling through the Tete Corridor during their civil war. My asshole was puckering in ways you could never of imagined, and I was getting the biggest rush from all of it.

This lady in the field, it felt like I was watching her for an hour. On a bus flying by. Her child started crying, so she pulled out one of her tits and flung it OVER her shoulder into the mouth of her crying child. An atomic bomb exploded in my mind.

I realized that she probably could of hung her tits all the way to the ground, unfolded them and used them as a red carpet for royalty. This lady had the flabbiest, stringiest tits I had ever seen in my entire life, and she looked all of, I don't know... maybe 30.  Looking at her in my mind and those flabby tits riding on that bus through the blackness of the night in nowhereland Africa... I realized that she probably had the hardest life I had ever imagined, and I promised myself that whenever I was having it rough, I was going to think about the African woman that probably had already born 5 children on the way to 10, works every day to feed her family and BLEEDS from her hands and her feet because she can't afford shoes. She has flabby tits because she can't defend herself against the husband that forces himself on her every night in an alcohol-fueled tirade and she is bidding her time for the drink to take him so much that she is then, finally, stronger physically than her uneducated, unemployable, deplorable shadow of a husband. 

My life and my problems are nothing. I think about that when I go through my struggles, as I have today. 

And that is where Buddhism takes it's play. I realize this and I am able to take joy in my sorrows, even if I'm crying while I'm smiling. I know that there will always be someone in a better situation, and frankly, one that will always have it much much worse in ways a privileged white man could ever fully understand.

I have no money, but I was able to pull together $30 and bought a macro lens. And I've been having fun crying. But that is the process of where I am. My new love is macro photography, these are my tears. Not really.