I wonder

if people understand the intimacy of what is happening in these pages: a soul lain bare. To pull no punches is a difficult trick to master, but that is what I have attempted to do here in these pages. I’ve been doing this for almost five years now, and if one were so inclined, they would have one of the most in depth understandings of a human being for that timeframe as could perhaps be possible.
What’s on my mind?
What’s not on my mind?
Right now…
Good-bye.
It’s a bit premature, admittedly.
However, what most people fail to understand is that this is my last opportunity to find a space among other human beings.
I’ve been a lot of places, done a lot of things, and want for nothing but time to appreciate the splendors that are granted to the sentient.
That is not, however, leisure time. To appreciate something properly is a lot of work, and that’s what I want to do.
Here’s a secret that nobody knows—soul laying bare: should the venture fail, society will lose me. Not that that’s any kind of significant loss for something as mighty as society, and it would be more like a self-imposed hermitage than anything else.
“Living as if I weren’t even here”
Why would you want to do that?
Do you know how much living you must be capable of in order to make it appear as if you weren’t there? There is no getting around the fact that you are. No matter how much you tell yourself that your “being” is just electric impulses flying around your brain, and that this is all a kind of illusion being fostered by the sensory information that is coming in to the brain, there is no getting around the question that, based on all probability, I probably shouldn’t be, and yet here I am.
What a question that is.
I have investigated many questions. That question wins. It beats them all. What is it about something that makes it seem like there ought to be nothing?
The only answer nature can’t give man, but the only real question we want answered is this: what are we supposed to be doing here?
All right, we are. What now? What comes next? What is it about life that makes me want to do more and more of it? To climb more mountains, to dig in the earth, plant seeds and see what she can grow. To touch what it means to be a part of the natural order of things once again.
Damnit all to shite and fuck!!!!
I’m lost there aren’t I.
GODDAMNIT!
Why don’t I just go write Walden.
Fuck.
But that’s where it’s at, isn’t it?
That’s why Walden is Walden. Nature. She has taken on an entirely new nature in the past couple of weeks as a result of the fact that I am now beginning to look at nature on a cosmic scale. In other words, nature was worked out a system of systems that works consistently and strings these systems together in order for things to keep moving. One of the unfortunate drawbacks of all these systems is that they eventually fail. You could almost say that nature is BUILT with a failure device inside it, constantly acting, trying to fail, if only to learn. At any rate, this aspect of nature repeats itself at the level of cells and at the level of the universe in equal aspects.
It’s actually quite hard to imagine, but perhaps that’s just me. I just had a hard time imagining NOT writing. I think I was actually trying to not write this week, just to see how things went, but then, as soon as I started doing it, the fingers just wanted to keep going. There’s your fucking Hume for you, too. He’s been showing up like a bad rash recently.
That’s how my brain works, by the way, and I know it is: input through reading, process through subconscious (who knows how long this can take), and output through action based on learned outcomes. I read Hume more than six months ago, but my brain is only really now coming to understand the significance of the things he was talking about.
That, and I feel too much. It can be dangerous, sometimes, because I know that there are areas of my mind that I could go into that would make me feel so much I would probably vomit. Caroline. Can’t go there. She’s been coming up in my mind lately, and flashes and rushes of memories go through me so hard it’s like being punched repeatedly in the stomach: the good and the bad altogether. I owe her everything. It’s hard to imagine my character without her in my life.
Being in this place is weird. The rememberer has been remembering things that it hasn’t remembered in a long, long time. I have pity for people who can recall memories readily at any time. Having access to those depths of emotion at your constant beck and call would be too much for me and I’d have a breakdown. Perhaps it’s because I don’t remember the details of things… all I remember are the impressions, feelings, and emotions. The details, where everything was, what who was wearing, and everything surface gets lost in the intricacy and detail of the sketched feeling that I put together in my head to go with image.
Neruda understands: why do I feel the whole of your love at once?
The whole of love is pleasure, pain, bliss, fury, and even things like boredom, consolation, and most things in between. The whole of anything is all of those things. I’m afraid that that’s just the way it works when you take on the whole of something.
Here’s a whole something I’m not sure I’m ready for: another relationship. I’ve been through the mill now. I’m jaded. I’m aware that I’m jaded. I’m aware that I’m full of shit. I’m aware that I’m not very good at socializing. What I want is more clearly stamped in my head than ever. It’s a later-twenties male sexual revolution. We don’t want what we used to want. If we wanted a ho, we’d go to the club and get some chick all fucked up and convince her that having sex with us is a good idea. Vapid is a word that quickly comes to mind. I don’t have time for that. I also don’t have time to deal some old bullshit relationship that isn’t bound for a life together, while, simultaneously know that I don’t want “a life together” just yet AND how painful it is to get into a relationship knowing that it’s going to end.
It doesn’t hurt any less simply because you know it’s going to end, and sometimes it hurts more. That’s not fair. There’s a quandary for you:
What am I supposed to do about love now?

Change

is what’s needed, and change is what’s planned, but we need your change.

In brief:
My compatriot(s) and myself are heading off to the lands of the east(ern United States).
Whilst others might join, the two main adventures are:
Myself (currently employed as sub-vice grill overlord and pizza creator extraordinaire—go to Grinder’s in the Crossroads district of Kansas City…
That’s where you’ll find me, all my fancy degrees and ideas, and great philly cheesesteaks.
Namelessfacelessother: best friend and confidante of myself for more than a decade, and currently about to graduate with what we’ll call a degree in biodynamic agriculture.
The two of us, with other like-minded folks, have a vision.
That vision is based on family, love, care, devotion to learning and effort, the perpetual quest into the character of the human being, and awareness of all that is around us.
We want to see how much of our stamp we can cut out of nature, how much we can develop within her and with her to use the relationship to its fullest, how we can rip ourselves out of the blind numbness of a pervasive ideological culture—and before anybody says anything: they are ALL pervasive ideological cultures…that’s almost the point of a country.
What we want to know is if culture, standing alone and unthreatening, can survive inside the other culture.
We’re pretty sure it can.

So, in stage one, we will build a farm.
It will be as self-sustaining as possible.
It will be biodynamic.
It will be organic.
It will become a part of the nature around it.

Thus the need for change… pocket change… lots of it.

You see, we have the funding for the land and the house already—praise whatever entity it is that pops into your mind when you say your prayers, but we need to find a place in the very literal sense of the term.

So, myself and my compatriot—with his wife in London wishing he and myself the best of luck I’m sure—are going to find a place.

On the ground, in a car/truck/van/camper/whatevermakesitselfavailabletous we will set off to look at lands in the east coast that are near to universities with appropriate doctoral programs (we all want to continue our educations), to hospitals (my compatriots wife has recently graduated from Med School and is looking to be Dr. Mrs. Compatriot in the USA), to fishing (and potentially hunting) possibilities, to mountains (as much as the Midwest is my home, my heart belongs in rather more rugged terrain), and with the appropriate kind of soil for growing the most diverse crops.

We have managed to both acquire one month of time to devote purely to this adventure.

We will be in a car together.
We will scout the land together.
We will sleep in our mode of transportation or camp when possible.
We need only money for food and gas for thirty days.

I, on behalf of—even though he might not approve—my compatriot, therefore plead with you for your bits of spare change, shrapnel, coins, or whatever you want to call them.

Make a little jar and write on it:

Change
For Eli and Jesse’s Road Trip
And Change

Then, dump all that spare change you get into it. We’re not asking for any more than to help us out for the next two months… we leave on May 1st.

If it makes you feel better about the donation, the scope of the biodynamic organic farm extends even further into the future, but you can email me for the dynamic unveiling of that surprise… which isn’t really at all surprising if you are even vaguely aware of who I am…

Anyhow, pocket change please.
Can we have it?

Know that your donation today
Could have a huge impact on tomorrow.

(obviously we accept cash, checks, and gas card donations as well… don’t get it twisted… if you want to help us out like that, we’d be SUPER HAPPY about it.)

{All donators eligible for free stays at “Sated”←potential name for farm}

May all beings be happy,
May all your change be good,
And may the seeds of
Equanimity ripen in your mind.

Peace
Much Love
And Gonzo
Myself

changesated@live.com

Also, go to poeticmindofeli.blogspot.com

Communion

It is now that we break bread.

Here is my body, which I give unto you—residence in the present: body mind spirit.
Take and eat.
Here is my blood, which I give unto you—what can flow more clearly from the soul than words.
Take and drink.

Invocation finished. I mixed them… did you see it?
Damn my eyes.

Everybody I meet seems to want to talk about the soul. Everybody everywhere who is sufficiently aware of themselves, their environment and their culture seems to have a nagging draw toward the things of the ephemera.
A lot of people don’t even realize that what they are attempting to describe is precisely within my personal understanding/definition of soul.
I laugh when thinking of defining the soul.
It’s like trying to define “an.” What does “an” mean?
Well, it’s an article.
I didn’t ask what its function was. I asked for its definition.

Can you see my path?

Function. Utility.
Perhaps we are here to be of some use, but perhaps this use-value goes beyond our scope of understanding and means something on the universal scale.

Seekingly find being.

We must all seek for the thing-in-itself inside the thing-in-itself. As these things—soul, god, and the like—exist as words, it is in the nature of words themselves that the nature of these things can be investigated. If the things of the spirit take primacy over the things of the physical world, then why is the manifestation of those spiritual things in the form of language?
What is god without the name of God?

In the beginning was THE WORD, and THE WORD was with god, and THE WORD was god. From a purely grammatical point of view, the message here is obvious, and yet it has been overlooked for so long. THE WORD is the subject. God is the object. Anybody who’s studied anything about the nature of the subject/object debate can understand this importance.

Sartre’s gaze: in becoming the object of another’s gaze I recognize in myself my perpetual state of object-hood. To all others I am an object of scrutiny. When we are not subject, our psyches feel terror.

I’m mixing things up again, and I know it, but we lie to ourselves perpetually and explain away our insignificance by making ourselves the most important being on the planet. That is, until somebody looks at us.
That’s how fragile it is my friends.
As soon as we recognize the fact that we are just some object in the mind of the Other, the structure cracks and has the potential for total collapse.

Most people feel all of this as opposed to knowing what they are feeling and why, but their experience with it is similar to everybody’s. The eyes are portals to the soul. When two people’s eyes meet, if they linger there at all, they cannot help but give away enough of their soul for the other to feel them—every piece contains a map of it all.

So, it’s no real mystery why most people want, in the deepest parts of themselves, to discuss the deepest part of existence. What is it about something—the fact that something “is”—that makes us believe there probably about to be nothing? We look around at the great cosmic fluke that has given rise to our various civilizations, and what the reasoning person sees is that based on all probability none of this should be here.

But nature has her ways, and they are not so different from human ways, but they occur on such a magnificent scale that there is no REAL way to comprehend it. Nature goes beyond the Earth: our planet is in the nature of the universe. Nature has a policy of attempting to give as much possibility to everything as it possibly can. In other words, even if the probability were to read something like 1:1,000,000,000—nature can usually supply the billion or two or three that it requires to find that one. The almost billion other attempts are all important, but they are also pretty standard failures. It is the anomalies that need to be investigated. It is in the point-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-one percent that we ought to be looking: these are the ones whose mysterious point of soul has extra-perceptual manifestations of spirit. The probability of YOU, and YOU alone existing is astronomical. Perhaps there is something in the universe that makes of some people’s probability beyond astronomical and places them squarely within the universal. Find these people. Their soul peaks out consistently, no matter how much they attempt to hide it. It emanates from them sub-consciously, spiritually and it carries weight unlike any kind of physical burden—and you’d better believe it’s a burden: imagine the weight of feeling the pull of the universe without having any idea what it is, how it came to be, or why it pulls you in the directions it does.

To feel is an enormous thing. To feel the universe is indescribable.

To those earnestly seeking to know, I bid you seek fervently and find forever everywhere.

I experience the most joy when sending my love through spiritual channels to those I love all over the world. Maybe, sometimes, you feel something good for half a second for absolutely no reason… well, you might’ve just been a part of my daily love dosings. Now, in no particular order, I give my love to:

May all beings be happy.

Timeline

of my life
(Part II).

The importance of my time in New York City should not be underplayed. What made it so important was that my intellectual and emotional development was occurring simultaneously. My body and my mind were going through a phase of intense growth, with the resultant growth pains—breaking hearts and broken minds. The reading, understanding, reflection, and searching into the self of the mind and spirit made of me something else. When I left, I was not what I was, I was what I was going to be: an artist, a writer, a wanderer, and free. I had been writing a book that was making my lose my mind called Fodder… it was suspended until I return to New York City.

That was the summer of 2008. I took a road trip across the country with my ex-girlfriend. We stayed in Tennessee. We were not meant to be. It was fun. We were not meant to be.

In the Fall of that same year, I sent my resume to a recruiter whose job it was to find jobs in Korea for teachers of English as a second language.

In September of 2008, I was on my way to Ochang, South Korea. On my first night in Korea, in a small town where I can’t seem to find ANY English, my co-worker Bon brings me a quart of milk and a two liter bottle of water. I thank him, cry, and nestle into my tiny bed.

While in Korea the most appropriate question might be: what didn’t I do. Most of it I did with one or two other people, but a lot of it was alone… honja.

There’s something called Mudfest which seems to speak for itself.
There’s BIFF—an international film festival in Busan.
I got paid money to play my guitar and entertain people.
I went busking on the streets of Suwon.
I hosted an open mic night.
I learned to hate Seoul.
I learned to speak some Korean.
I met the best human female I think I have ever met in my life (Park Inae… I love you dearly).

However, one of the most important things I did was reading. I read everything. I was in Korea for two years, and in those two years I put such titles as Being and Nothingness, The Republic, A Treatise of Human Nature, Phenomenology of Spirit, Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, and Vanity Fair among countless other novels and books of poetry.

It was during this time that I was also writing a book about the experience of being a foreigner/teacher in South Korea.

It was during this time that I wrote a play in three acts based on Voltaire’s Candide and the idea that man exists in three states: suffering, boredom and work—which became the three acts.

I fell in love with a Super-Korean girl named April. She was lovely, older, and a great lover, but her Korea streak made her need to seek other attentions. It ended.

I met truly good people. I was party to what I’d assume is a felony. Friends of mine who were in a band that was playing in Dagu on the same night as our city hockey team was playing Dagu decided to rent a giant bus and take everybody together. A mini-fridge was thrown out a window. A fire extinguisher was discharged into my room. Fleeing happened. We were involved.

Nights of soju and roses.

After my contract finished in September 2009, I went to another school in November in Suwon, but I took a wee break to visit my recently married friends in London (the aforementioned Italian bird and high school wrestling buddy) and Agent X in New York City.

Korea was a peak of freedom. I climbed mountains. I ascended where westerners hadn’t dreamed of seeing. I searched through the depths of literature and the soul. The very first F1 race in Korea happened in 2010, and I was there for it by myself. It was beautiful. I wandered around the tiny town of Mokpo. They have these little parks and tiny hills to climb. There’s a giant jjimjilbang next a bus terminal where we caught a shuttle to the race. I almost got stuck in the race parking lot… alone… in the middle of nowhere… but hey, we’ve been there before.

No fear. No edge. When having a plan is good, having no plan is fine, and needing a plan is as good as anything, something happens to the mind.

I suppose that it would be possible to say that I accepted the reality of nature. When put into a natural situation, even if harsh, I could survive or die and be happy either way. It’s hard to die in manmade situations if you’re simply paying attention. Be very aware all the time, thinking, “Now I am living in this way.”

The truth holds no fear for me, nor does the bone-crunching power of nature—unless you consider it in the same vein as the fear of god: knowing but at peace with.

It is 2011. I haven’t really been in Kansas City for a decade. I live with Agent X. The future is fuzzy, but I can see an outline. This residence is my seventeenth roof to live under in ten years. May all beings be happy…

and may my loved ones feel the happiness I desire for them in every moment. Share love. Share life. Be well. Be calm. Go forth. Go safely. Do intently. Do proudly.