Long One, Take What You Want

If any person was to actually think about life, just take a good hard look at the stories we live out, I would think that they would have to conclude that one it makes no fucking sense at all, it doesn’t benefit anyone to live the way we do, nor to believe in it, and two, it’s highly suspect that any of this was what life had in mind when it created all this so either we are seeing it wrong or it is wrong. Of course, what is can’t be wrong, since it already is, and wrong is just a word that lives and has its meaning in us, it doesn’t exist as anything else. Yeah, it should be easy as hell to get here, I think I did that when I was maybe a youngster. That’s really what my whole rebellion was about.

So I’m trying something new now, actually I’ve done a bit of it before and you might say the writing sort of compliments it, but I’ve never really totally dived into this one. I’d tell you what it is but I’m not going to, you wouldn’t practice it anyway so I’ll save my words there. Probably you have to be hard up to actually do it, or just have a real sense of wanting to have an actual dream while you’re here, I’m not sure but there’s no point to putting it all on here anyway. I think you have to keep some things to yourself, sometimes they don’t even work unless you do, so there’s that. If it happens that some wild shit starts happening we’ll know what caused it and you’ll know because I’ll write about that since I’m always writing about that. It’s not an unpleasant activity but it does take a lot of focus and one’s natural inclination when you first learn of it is, “I’ll only try that if I have to.” Maybe, I’ve gotten to this point. It seems like it, or maybe there’s just a type of sequence, and this is just what it naturally leads to. One things for sure, things don’t just develop out of the blue, like out of a vacuum, there’s some type of rhyme and reason to everything and just because humans can’t see this doesn’t mean anything after all most of us don’t actually see anything even when we’re looking straight at it.

If you think about a memory, okay think of one, there it is in your mind’s eye, right? Now notice how you’re looking at it, it’s kind of double sided, one minute you’re right back in it like it’s happening in real time all over again, and then you switch to another view, you’ve stepped back and you’re looking from some other vantage point. Depending on how impactful it was, is what determines how much influence one single happening can have on you. You might make some assumptions about the world depending on what it was. I did that with my car accident. I concluded basically that no driving was all that safe and depending on the speed of the car, the faster you go the more likely it is that a single mishap, a miscalculation that might happen in an instant through no fault or volition of your own might end it all, right there and then. Just because millions of people the whole world over drive cars everyday, we drive to work, the store, long distances, or whatever because we’re used to doing so, it doesn’t make it a benign activity. It’s only really benign until something goes down that you weren’t expecting, then another type of awareness arises, and this one says, “What is this strange activity and why is anyone doing it? That doesn’t just look fucking crazy, it probably is.” I actually don’t mind it if I’m going around 40 to 50 mph but once it reaches 75 to 85 like it does when my son’s driving, my body lets me know how crazy it is to be flying through the air in a vulnerable metal box with an engine. Before the accident, I was basically oblivious to all this. I’ve actually driven really terrible cars all over the country. It’s truly weird how not knowing something, it tends to just leave you alone. You are totally unaware of it, and maybe that’s because it is also unaware of you.

The mind of a human while a truly fascinating thing, is also terrifying. The things that some humans are capable of dreaming up with imagination basically leaves the average, morally aware in terms causing harm person in a state of shock and probably severe confusion. It’s very hard to reconcile this idea that there’s no doer, everything is really a primitive ego pattern and it’s all being generated from there idea. If this was true, then whatever started it all off must have been terrible. Not even ego arising and getting stuck at a childish level of development really explains it because children are lovely. They are playful and loving, not evil and full of hate. So there must be something else going on, a pathology of some sort has taken over the collective mindset is all I can think. I hope it’s just me, maybe I just notice these things, but the level of world conflict going on right now seems to be going through the roof. For all outward appearances, the world is going to shit right now. And yet, besides the rising costs of just about all goods and services, I’d have to say my life is still very much okay, if not a blessing. When I do watch the news, I see it quite differently. What I really see is a base inner pattern of fear projecting visions as emanations of imagination, both individually and collectively. I wonder really what determines if something will collectively present itself as some wide spread delusion. Is it just that a person hears some falsehood and having zero ability to discriminate what might be nice to believe in and what wouldn’t, they choose badly and the rest just follows from there? Is it a sensation of fear within their own body that binds them to some collective delusion, making them think they are actually experiencing some facet of it, and thereby inducing them to seek out some involvement in it on some level? I’ll tell you this with all the nasty illusions going on right now, I have never been more grateful for my ordinary, uneventful existence. The fact that I might be truly satisfied with just a good bowl of soup, or just going for a walk with the dog, maybe watching a movie, having a good night’s rest, even a cup of coffee later in the day is a treat, yes, the ordinary, telling my son I love him before he goes to work in the morning, if I even hear him I usually get up and give a hug as well, these and more truly undramatic, under demanding situations are perhaps the most sensible way to live. The idea that I might go out and fight or even speak out about anything is not an option here. Anyone who does so, do they not add their own energy to some fire? And isn’t it all backwards anyway, when what they are really fighting is a lie within their own imagination? Are they not bound to cause even more harm by any involvement no matter how altruistic it seems in the moment? I say it’s better to leave everyone alone. I have nothing to say any more on any subject. If I was to say anything and mean it, it would be this, “Be nice to the children and each other, that is the only way.” Oh, and maybe be kind to yourself, because that will be the foundation of your whole inner life.

I think what really gets skipped in most awakening circles is the subject of how you are looking. Usually, it’s claimed that you will spontaneously snap out of it and just start observing in a totally new way, a way I might add that will fix or solve everything but I think that’s the wrong approach. It took years, decades even depending on how old you are, to settle into a single way of perceiving not just yourself and the inner world that is consistently bubbling up in you, but everything else around you and it’s not just going to disappear no matter what you see and for how long. A pattern is a pattern after all. Seeing the way you do is something that you’ve relied on for all of your life, basically for everything. You have to know what you’re dealing with, and where you are going, without sight, you’re in the dark, so that’s no small thing. Emotion is really the glue that makes you see anything the way you do see it. If there’s no emotional tie in fact you might not see something at all even when you’re looking right at it. It just won’t even register as anything, much less something significant. So we have to retrain our eyes, and along with retraining the eyes it will follow that you will retrain the brain to see what is and maybe what isn’t. Of course, this is no small feet. You’re up against a pattern that is so embedded in everything you do to just survive, to get along in the world, that unraveling its structure can have other strange effects, many of which you won’t like so much. We build up such fantasies about life and what we think we’re looking at, so that’s more than a little destabilizing, it can actually be devastating. Of course, it’s not just a matter of your outer environment suddenly shape shifting into something else, but the one who sees being seen through. Who was that person looking out through your eyes? The identity takes a massive hit right there, not withstanding that you see how foolish it was, but how utterly unstable it was. You come to rely on this thing called the identity to move you around, over and through, around and about, and suddenly it’s not what you thought it was? What the fuck? But more than that, it’s going to go right back to how it was always working, and then where does that leave you? Basically, now you’re just a mad sort of person who thinks things are not what we learned they were, and no one else is on board with that, so you’ll be alone with no one to talk to about any of it. There will be no one to share it with, no two buddies going out into this vast imagination to explore it together. The strength of the number two is forever totally missing. You’re just an odd one now and as your vision changes, the things you’ll witness get stranger still.

Even so, exploring and ultimately changing the way you see can have profound effects not just on you but on your life in general. Let’s put it this way, our eyes are conditioned to look based on the needs of the inner dialog we have going on in our heads. What this means is that they just naturally pick up or seek out the items or situation, that somehow correspond to the stories we believe in right then, what we think is happening in our lives at any given moment. Basically it’s like this, let’s say you’ve got some idea that you’re going to make some muffins, for whatever reason that’s your objective right now. So you go to the store to get the ingredients for the recipe, and all you seek out is those specific items like flour or blueberries or whatever you use. There’s a whole structure to the store that you don’t see, you basically miss everything else because that’s not important to your inner dialog that you want to make muffins today. Of course, that doesn’t mean other things won’t pop out at you, they very well could, for instance you might see a woman yelling at her kid, or notice a jar broken on the floor on the aisle you’re walking down, or whatever. Mainly though these other situations will just seem insignificant, not exactly obstacles to your task, but you barely notice them nonetheless. Obviously it’s not about going to the store, that’s not the point. The point is really that your inner stories are constantly directing your vision, so that whatever it sees gets related back to that, usually in a positive or negative way, things are either cooperating with your story or they’re not. When they are that’s great, your spirits sort of lift, but when they’re not, you sink. Usually our whole lives are lived on this perceptual line of vision. It’s either going our way or it isn’t, and a tremendous amount of energy is spent maintaining a balance between these two opposing polarities. There’s a tension, and it’s not out there, but in you, that keeps you on a tightrope so to speak, you’ll walk paths then that correspond to your inner story, and never venture onto those that don’t. The inner story is good, everything else registers as dangerous.

I’m not saying this is bad per se, you’ve got to use your eyes but on the other hand, if your eyes are fixed only to see things that correspond either favorably or negatively with the story you already know, what are you missing out on? What other directions and paths might be available to you if only you had the eyes to see them? Where perhaps is your authentic life then, the one you were meant to live? Maybe there is or there isn’t such a thing but who knows? Maybe you were specifically designed for a path you’ve never seen or even imagined was yours to take? If your eyes are locked down into one way of seeing, then that means you’re not using them, you are a prisoner to the ways they’ve been conditioned to function, right? So that’s something to think about and let me clear here, if we don’t think about it, if we don’t use this tool we have called thinking, we’ll never be able to figure out whether or not there is such a thing. So you can silence your mind if you are so inclined, shut it down and off so completely as to not see anything anymore, or you might actually discover it’s useful. If you think about ways to free your perception, and then implement them, who knows what you might be privy to seeing and therefore experiencing. It might open up a whole new life for you. So yeah, there are exercises you can do to facilitate an opening up of how your own eyes are perceiving the world right now. I have my own, and for sure, there are probably many, maybe it’s a matter of what you become aware of to use, which is already a new type of seeing. I don’t know about you but I don’t know anyone at all who is interesting in even exploring this. Everyone I come across already thinks they are seeing clearly, and as long as you do, you’ll never ever suspect there are other ways of doing it.

So we had a thing go on at my job. Basically there was a gambler who thought they were special so they reserved a table. That seems fine except they never showed up, two nights in a row, the dealers were tasked with standing there doing nothing but for the event that the table was ready if they decided to use it. Let me tell you, gambling for this particular person would be like putting a quarter in a gum ball machine and either getting a piece of gum or maybe they were unlucky and nothing came out. They have enough money to buy up all the gum balls being made all over the world but they’d rather see if the machine will give it to them. To me that’s just very strange, I just can’t even see the fun in it. They might be off on a tropical island, sipping martinis and getting a massage five times a day, spending their evenings eating five course gourmet meals on a terrace watching the sun go down on the horizon of the ocean, and they’re here, in the same building as me? I didn’t know what to make of it. It seemed more than a little entitled to expect people who were there to make a living so their families could eat and have electricity, and just use up their time for nothing. No players means no tips for us on any game. Of course, I could feel more than a little disgruntled about the whole arrangement unless I look at it with a different set of eyes. Maybe a pair that says, “What has gone so wrong that you’d wind up here doing this? That seems a little low given you’re probably one of the richest people on the fucking planet. Are you out of pleasures that money can buy so you’d rather take a risk of losing your lunch money just to be entertained for a few days? And you won’t even lose your lunch, your lunch is probably complimentary no matter where you show up, “Oh, welcome, how fine that you would grace us with your richly endowed presence, everything’s on the house.” That we fawn over those who have managed to imagine riches beyond belief, is maybe very telling of where we are as a culture, only money matters, if you got it you’re special and if you don’t, you’re nothing, my toilet needs a good scrub down and do it for free. I’ll give you something for your time if I feel like it. Of course, there’s zero risk for this gambling, even if they lost every hand for a week straight, the hit would be less to them than me missing out on a cup of coffee. It would be so unnoticeable as not to even matter at all. When I’m talking rich here, I’m talking very rich. I’m not going to mention the name because I can’t really do that but just suffice it to say, you’d know who I was talking about if I did. With a different set of eyes though, what would I see? What about some eyes that didn’t even register this distinction of money, just another human being with a story going on in their head, one that many people might envy and revere for sure, but just a story nonetheless, no different than any other one? Might I see differently then? Might I see just another hapless hopelessly lost traveler on an empty planet going nowhere then? Could I conjure up some compassion for their confused plight, the one everyone is beholden to? Is there any difference between us at all, or is it just another pair of eyes that awareness is using to look out of temporarily? Does the amount of money you imagine actually change what you are? Or maybe there was no one actually there at all? Maybe I’m not really here the way I feel and think I am most of the time, the illusion of stories is just that strong, we tell them because it’s the only way to have something to say, and yet, none of it no matter how it presents itself is ever what you think it is.

It’s a curious thing worth looking at here though, this rich versus poor mind set that is so wide spread because there’s things about it that really seem to get to a lot of people, for instance, nothing gets a population moving faster than a sense of injustice. If they feel they have been scammed especially financially by an invisible group of people they’ve never encountered in their entire life, a war might break out. The idea of those greedy people taking everything, maybe rising prices and getting even richer for no other reason than to amass a few more numbers on their already grotesquely large bank account ledgers is very strong both emotionally and motivationally when it comes to large upsets within and among populations but I have a different premise here. I would propose the idea itself is what does this, not the actual movements of a select group of invisible people who are supposedly out there doing it. There are many people, and I admit I’ve fallen prey to this myself on numerous occasions, that can really get depressed when they think they are looking at or seeing that other people out there, maybe other people they don’t deem are good or even smart, are benefitting in some way from one’s own labor and even life in general. Most of us are workers right? The workers work, while someone else gets rich, this seems to be a theme woven in history and time immemorial. It’s always those advantage takers out there who seem to thrive off the compliance and stupidity of the masses and the masses never rise above it, very few ever escape the idea that someone out there holds them hostage to bills and more bills and just the ever rising costs of mere survival in any comfortable sense of the word but what if it wasn’t true? What if the idea itself was false? Shit, what if there was no one out there like that, no one at all? What if the tactic itself was really just an idea that you’d ultimately only have to believe in without a doubt in order to make it true for you and your life? That’d be wild wouldn’t it? No one anywhere benefitting from anyone else anywhere. What if it wasn’t happening now nor had ever happened? What if it was just the belief itself that made anyone experience anything that seemed like a kind of lack? What if the images of rich people and rich goings on was just a way to keep you in the dream of your current life as it has always been, basically a tactic given to ego, to keep ego as a your sole operating system? Shit, that’d be even more insane than anything else wouldn’t it? Let’s say we believe there are forces in this world that are against the common man ever thriving the way he wants to thrive but it’s all in his head as belief. The belief in riches beyond measure are clearly often held up for show in most social media platforms, hell half of youtube now is about how you can rise to the ranks of riches, if only you just follow this simple formula, you too could spend your life basking on a beach doing absolutely nothing else. How wonderful would that be? But seriously how easy is it to control the world wide population, to get them to work forty hours a week for forty years, and for what, a few modern comforts? Honestly, if it had never happened this way, we wouldn’t really have a civilization, we’d just have a shit load of chaos going on right? No formal structures to anything would have ever developed the way they have. And yet they did, that’s exactly how ego developed and grew to such huge proportions that now anyone you can meet is only ever talking from there. If you even try to hint at the idea that things might not be what they think it all is, you’ll be met not only with denial, but a real sense that no one actually wants to be rid of the cancer that infects them every waking hour of the day. People love their delusions more than they love anything else. They will also fight for them, which is what a war really is. The idea that there are a few shifty people at the top deciding it all is ludicrous, no small amount of people could actually control humanity but something could, something that continuously feeds the population delusion after delusion could easily gain the upper hand but what is that?

In Nagualism, there’s a term for it, it’s called the flyers. It’s hard to believe there’s more than one type of intelligent awareness in the world since that’s not what the sages say, but I think there is. The reason the sages don’t talk about them is because if you shift your assemblage point to another position, the one I think most sages moved it to either by chance or by continuous intent, the flyers don’t have any dominion over you anymore. They can only make suggestions and feed off of people who in the common assemblage point for one don’t know they exist, and for two wouldn’t know how to ward off their insane suggestions if they did. What if the idea that you don’t have enough right now is one of their suggestions? What if they’ve been using it forever with very good results, it causes upsets to occur spontaneously on a continuous basis, both within a person and within entire cultures? I mean you have to wonder how an entire species basically suffers from the same malady, don’t you? The delusion that there’s an other who has more than you has been around forever. All the pillaging of the ages can be traced to this single idea, but how did it arise? At what point, did humans start to covet and steal from their neighbors and each other? I’m not saying I’ve actually seen one of these “flyers” but it’s been suggested to me that I could if I was so inclined to look for one. Apparently, in order to see one, you’d have to have cultivated and accumulated a high degree of inner silence, it’s only when the mind has receded that they can actually become visible to our human eyes. I know it sounds crazy but every time a person gets a bad feeling, some strange thought that maybe comes out of nowhere, it just hits you, maybe for no reason you start to think badly of some random person you barely know or whatever, you start to remember some memory you think is yours about how someone slighted you last year or last month, there’s a flyer nearby and it’s influence has attacked your inner sanctum. What if we’re not the only species in this universe we inhabit and what if we’re not the smartest one either, what if letting us think we are wasn’t even our own idea? Yeah, shit, then what?

Guess we’re truly fucked on some level. If only a modicum of inner silence, of having control over our own awareness, of deciding for ourselves what to accept and reject, based on our own inner knowing could free us, how many of us can be free? What do you think the flyers would do if some movement of freedom among us was to grow in popularity and this would threaten their food supply since they feed off of human misery? They’d ramp it up wouldn’t they? They’d suggest all sorts of shit and humans in their ignorance would believe it all, wouldn’t they? This actually makes more sense to me than Eve got Adam to eat the apple, doesn’t it? Why if there was a God would it ever care about a fucking apple and whether anyone ate it? Why would knowledge itself be forbidden? That makes no fucking sense, unless you’re a flyer just out there making up shit and may be laughing your ass off, okay maybe they don’t have asses, they’re just energetic beings, so no arms, no asses, but you get the idea. Then it actually makes sense. How stupid and crazy can we make this fucking species, this delicacy of ours? What about a story about a God and his tree of knowledge? We’ll get them to think this is all their fault, they fucked up and now they’ll all have to suffer for it. I’ll bet they’ll fall for that. What about making them believe there are others who have it better than they do? Yes, that could cause a shit ton of havoc. Oh look, it worked, they’re killing each other, and now that one is crying, let me get over there, that’s just easy prey and I’m hungry, I can’t get enough of this paradise.

Yes, you should watch your thoughts. You should watch when they come, what time, where you think you are when some random shitty thought pops up out of nowhere and nothing. We are trained to believe this is just us, it’s probably just our childhood trauma resurfacing, that person is triggering some inner insecurity I have. But what if that’s not the problem, what if it isn’t you, it’s only that you are susceptible to the flyers when you’re vulnerable because you’re always vulnerable? What if silencing your mind isn’t because you’re looking for God or to get in touch with the elusive present moment? What if it is a type of control you exert over the forces that would prey on you if you just let your mind wander aimlessly in any direction? What if the flyers and suggesters of this world don’t have their usual influence when you’re in control of when your mind is quiet and when it wants to think? You decide what it will think, you’re not in the business of taking any outside suggestions no matter where they come from. If you are a sovereign being, then what is there to decide anything for you including what you’ll make of reality as it pertains to your own well being? Do you not have the capacity to do this for yourself not some of the time but all of the time?

I’m not here to actually advocate or affirm the existence of flyers but let’s just look at things objectively. With Halloween and all its demon images just past us, you kind of have to wonder. Of course, throughout history humans have described sometimes in detail the presence of ghosts, apparitions, and all sorts of shit like that. Is it just a movement of mind, mere imagination? Or is there something here that influences imagination, but is part of imagination so no distinction can be made there? What about a dark mood descending on you or some sense of foreboding people report before an unsavory event? What about freak accidents? Are those just carelessness, periods of time when the attention is maybe completely absent and errant forces have the upper hand? Maybe people are left stunned and say, “I don’t know what the fuck happened. It was like I just blanked out and then…” And who or what determines what people will be influenced by, why as a child did you come across some idea that would later be revealed not to have served you but hindered you in some regard? Is it all just random luck? Or some blatant vulnerability that left you open to influence and persuasion of less than ideal concepts of living? Why does the very same idea maybe trigger you one day and the next you’re able to let it completely sail past you or not even notice it at all? Is it because you are otherwise engaged, maybe with yourself and your own existence that creates a barrier that shelters you from some negative force that’s passing through the environment? Or how about this: how does a character the likes of the current president actually rise to power? I mean let’s look because its not like he really has any curb appeal, he’s not handsome, he’s not well spoken, he doesn’t possess some superior intellect or super intelligence, no he’s just your average type of human fumbling around in the dark recesses of his mind like anyone else you can come across. Maybe that was his appeal, his averageness. He’s like your accident prone Uncle Joe who works as a mechanic, the shop is such a mess that you wonder how he gets anything done in there, but he manages to make a living nonetheless. He seems happy enough, but if you question him on anything he won’t have an answer because he doesn’t actually know why or how he’s prone to do anything one way and not another. Were people drawn to their own ineptness then? I’ve heard commentaries, conspiracy theories that declare most human leaders are but planted by some superior or devious cabal behind the scenes of which they are just puppets, straw men that take orders from someone else, perhaps powerful people with an agenda to enslave mankind to its own idea of what they should do and how they should live but I don’t think that’s it. First of all, you’d have to completely remove a person’s agency and inner knowing of anything to just get them to follow along lockstep to someone else’s ideas and most people are more messy than that. They are far too complex to just completely control, our emotions alone generally dictate how our days will go, and no one can completely dismiss what’s going on inside them on some cellular level but what about forces that no one sees? Forces that act upon them without their conscious knowledge of them? That seems much more likely.

The book of Enoch describes some type of spiritual entities who having disobeyed God came to interfere in human affairs. Then there’s the Archons in Gnosticism who supposedly govern the material sphere and keep humans trapped in ignorance. Throughout the mythologies of human history, the whole evil versus good dilemma is populated with the same theme which is: there are forces of some sort that cause havoc with human existence. Most spirituality just sums it up by saying, “Oh yeah, that’s the ego, all evil doing comes from this which is a thing that belongs individually to you’, but I don’t really think that’s right. For one if it belongs to you then you should know what it is, or at the very least how it got to be there and I just don’t see this. I’ve seen otherwise friendly people, at least they usually are with me, devolve into absolutely incongruent illogical forms of rude behavior at the drop of a hat, and not because I did anything to cause it, it just shows up. Usually they don’t even remember the episode, like if you tried to figure out what was so upsetting they don’t remember anything as if they weren’t even there when it was happening. I used to think, “Oh, I’m just imagining this person like this right now so it’s my own imagination that’s making it appear the way it is. I don’t think this anymore after all why should something I witness over there have anything to do with me or my own consciousness? That would be absurd, no? I don’t think it’s a person’s mind playing tricks on them either or their beliefs causing it. I think maybe there really is something to it when a person flies into a type of unaware disturbance, and not even they are aware of what’s happening to them usually. I mean that’s just fucking bizarre on some level if you ask me. I’d say the only real defense you have over witnessing totally unsavory behavior in others is to just sit back and marvel at the absurdity of it all because it never makes sense. Of course, it’s also wise never to actually engage it either, I just sit and stare, and basically look away if I have to. I never try to talk to a person who seems under some spell of madness since clearly they are mad so nothing I say will make sense to them anyway. Even trying to diffuse some situation seems like a no go to me, so I don’t do that either. I leave shit alone that has nothing to do with me every single time. I guess that’s how I roll now.

If you really stop to think about it, you’re basically living in a mad house, and the mad hatter of Alice in Wonderland’s saying ““Trust me. I know a thing or two about liking people, and in time, after much chocolate and cream cake, 'like' turns into 'what was his name again?'” basically rings true for me. I might like you initially but it won’t take me long to figure out I really don’t, usually just one conversation will actually do it. I usually just think then, “Yep, nothing in common here”, just as I suspected. The most comical part of all is that for most of my life I wanted other people to like me, and now if they even take an interest for some reason, I’m like, “That’s close enough. You have your life and I have mine and I’d like to keep it this way for the most part.” I can actually appreciate people and this whole spectacle of drama but from a clear and substantial distance. Mainly I’m talking about regular people here, people who have no interest in seeing anything beyond what they are already seeing and living with. To me that’s like taking one single story and twisting it up into a million other ones except it’s the same story just with different plot lines and different details. Stories can only be interesting I guess when you think they are real or true, but basically they are all the same. There’s the hero’s and the villains and a single life is full of both of them. Actually I guess people are always thinking about other people, maybe where they stand with them or they think about what someone else is thinking about them. Now I can’t even imagine it. I don’t actually think you can think for one, so how could you be thinking about me, you couldn’t be. And I’m actually good with that. I think that’s a wonderful fucking thing right there. No one actually thinking about other people would clear a lot of shit up. I guess for one, you’d never have to think of yourself in relation to anyone else, which is usually a load off there.

Oh, well, it will be all be okay then. You’re just having a little dream, that’s all, nothing to really stress over I’d say. It goes up and down and takes some turns and then at the end, maybe you shoot back out probably through some cosmic chute and you’re basically right back where you started no worse for wear.

I tell my players now when I tap out to leave a table, “Gamble and prosper, but always remember this, if you’re not living on the edge you’re probably not even in the game.” I usually get a laugh from at least a few of them, the more feisty ones I’d say. And that’s good enough. If I can get a laugh now, I think, maybe I’m doing my job.