dance your way to god

we all have trouble with gurus. whether lovers or friends, people on a pedastal or outcasts on islands, they ultimately prove to have feet of clay, if they fall in love with their own image.

personally, i've listened to the 'tao te ching' over and over. lao tzu did it right. he wrote down his thoughts and disappeared. he resisted the temptation to be anybody. (when mourners were weeping over a body, chang tzu, the taoist phisolopher, said, 'he must not have lived right, otherwise these people would be laughing.')

yet in my lifetime the the guru i've enjoyed the most is rajneesh, later known as osho. alas, when he came to america, all went wrong, and he never quite recovered his feet after much wandering and his return to india. (after his death the poona ashram became an upscale resort.) this said, i really much enjoy readings from his early years.

my favorite book is 'dance your way to god', meetings with his disciples. finally i decided to pull out a few found poems and aphoristic gems. (the guy was an insatiable reader, originally a professor, and he digests and regurgitates the spiritual wisdom of the world - with a sense of humor.)

here's my little contribution to the memory of what he was at his best. i still find what he says very encouraging and relevant to my travels through this lifetime.

www.pbase.com/wwp/way

and for the latest listings: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/root&view=recent

the tough questions...

is addiction bad for you? should you avoid your insane grandmother? does it really pay to have money in the bank? can you live on the street happily (no bills)? always blows me away to pass a panhandler sitting amongst his belongings, smoking a cigar, and petting his perfectly healthy cat!

the ragged edges of life, as long as i don't have to be around them too much, are very entertaining. and without obsessions we'd have no art, no electric lightbulbs, or panty-hose. it's the wild ones who come up with the exotic inventions and who destroy themselves in dramatically entertaining ways (fodder for the movies).

i used to try to figure things out, and i had a lot of prejudices. ultimately, i realized it's great that most people have jobs and lead settled, dependable lives. this leaves plenty of room in the cracks for the rest of us. true, there's always a certain uneasiness being outside the mainstream. my most memorable grafitti on a men's room wall in berkeley, california: "the price of freedom is loneliness." i'm not sure it's true, yet every important choice involves risks.

so, here's what a friend called a 'sordid tale.' one of the seven one-act plays i wrote last summer: www.pbase.com/wwp/addiction

also you can get a quick rundown of my latest picture and literary posts at http://www.pbase.com/wwp/root&view=recent

have you tried hypnosis?

once i listened to a tape of milton erikson hypnotizing someone. spooky. compelling. then i got his book, 'my voice will go with you' and read it a couple of times. sometime later i found a copy of transcripts from his monologues. they reminded me of poetry, so i wrote some of my own: www.pbase.com/wwp/trances

reading more about hypnosis (and being hypnotized once by a therapist friend), it dawned on me: we're hypnotizing ourselves all the time. first thing in the morning on waking, we have to recover our personality: i'm so and so, living in such and such a place, that's my purse/wallet, now let me find my face in the mirror. we re-create ourselves every day.

and of course, there are times when we've been jolted awake, no time to put on our habits or remember our address. (the chinese say you're blessed if you have a bad memory.) if only we thought to change aspects of our character/looks at such a moment. ah, it's too terrifying. we assume the old rags of identity as quickly as we can.

some days

i wake up feeling: "it's all over. i've had my chance. blown it." that's the depressive phase. i'll do whatever helps me survive the mood, take a twenty minute nap, go for a walk, look at an art book, watch a movie, call a friend. then somehow the mood switches to the manic phase. i've never felt better, more optomistic. this seems to be the path of those living outside the mainstream, by their wits, trying to create from whatever they find around them.

mostly i like artists who make work from their everyday lives. nan goldin takes pictures of her friends, her drug and love crashes. francis bacon painted people he knew well and when isolated, painted self-portraits. david hockney documents his private life as though it were a graphic novel.

my favorite books of my friends are 'gentle vengeance' by charles lebaron, based on his first year at harvard med. 'poemcrazy' by susan wooldridge, how to survive through words. 'my sister from the black lagoon' by laurie fox, growing up in a mad family and using fantasy to become an adult!

tales of overcoming adversity by creating works of art. perhaps we need them in a mass society where we seem to be drifting monads, no one more important than another.

www.pbase.com/wwp/son

www.pbase.com/wwp

let's talk about love!

the terrible temptation? the great need? whatever we say will sound true to someone.

the desire to have your back rubbed, (sex), the house full of physical warmth when you come home from work (a reason to work). something to keep our life off-balance. the unexpected. the expected.

personally, i've always been miserable when depending on someone else for my happiness. (last night, ran into an old friend. he looks a lot less depressed after his second divorce. maybe artists should never marry.)

on the other hand, the warm, fuzzy feelings, where will you get them? a friend maintains they all come from your own kids. but with these extra parts of your nervous system running about beyond your control, what then?

i've consulted the goddess herself, and this is what she has to say on the subject: www.pbase.com/wwp/aphrodite maybe a word of wisdom will help you through the treacherous whirlpools of love.

woody allen meets ingmar bergmann

at least one can hope! i can't think of how to describe my first play - 'the wedding of love and death' - to be done at the blue room theater, years ago. the wedding dress made of toilet paper was probably the highlight.

the only time i've proposed was by mail to a woman ten thousand miles away and from another culture (japan). wisely, she turned me down.

still, what if?

www.pbase.com/wwp/wedding

creating your own worlds

friends have said a number of wise things about me. one: you want everybody talking about you, but you don't want to be there. two: you keep a toe in reality so you can live the rest in fantasy.

what an incredible invention the computer is! when i got my first laptop five years ago, i had to try everything, spent hours and hours with different programs. this was my only venture in 3d with bryce 5 (now of daz productions.) it was fun just to explore and experiment. i've posted a few samples: www.pbase.com/wwp/dreamscapes

if you've had to work hard all your life, this would be the perfect toy on your deathbed, providing your spirit with possibilities for the next time around.