world is a house on fire

…and losing and letting go… there's an art in everything. That's how the love flows in. And out. And in again.

(with music) TOPICS: I don't know, the usual brain hurricane 4am freak-out? Sometimes I feel like this podcast is my evil secret, where my buried id comes out like a werewolf or Mr. Hyde and goes on paranoiac tirades that would drive away anyone who dared to get close enough to listen and defeat the point of speaking or singing out, that desire to connect and be seen and heard. But maybe my habits of trying to use one word that turns into ten, an unstoppable firehose flow when people only have a couple minutes to listen and then will get bored and irritated with not getting a turn to talk, are meant to be shaped and guided or even pounded into freewheelin' freeballin' freestylin'. Maybe I need to stop trying to push the river of words and remonstrate with myself about not becoming my father, whose verbal press was unstoppable and unspeakably cruel as it used up every particle of air in the room and left no breath for the rest of us -- a man so like our last president in his endless diatribes and rambling and paranoia. Maybe instead of exacerbating that by pouring shame on myself, and fear, and abusing myself in thought for being The Worst Ever and Doing This Loneliness To Myself with my pain and shame and fear (and self-abuse) I really need to bring up and bring in the alliteration and rhyme and tighten the circles to come back in time for a rhythm to hold me. Maybe instead of trying to slow down when that feels like death, I should lean into going faster, harder, and aim my crazy toward more musicality. Even if I fail I'll land among those whose supreme love pours out relentlessly in acts of creation and recreation that are born, live and die even as they hit the air. And keep going. It's worth a shot, anyway. And I'm running out of time. I can copy my heroes, no matter how unworthy I feel, and just keep going so fast I don't have time to park on my failures and despair.

Off the cuff to try something scary... no courage without fear...

Trying to let go of a question that is probably Too Much To Ask…

(with music) TOPICS: what to keep and what to save, living toward my values, letting go, circles of gift exchange, faith and imagination, trust, the contagion of animal fear, getting distance and height and perspective in the hopes of clarity, wishing for some serious long-term chill that doesn't demand or enforce chill or calm or silence. Can I surrender and still retain what's most important, and err on the side of not really knowing what that is yet? To whom do I surrender, and what? To whom and what am I responsible, and for what? Is anyone responsible to me? Will there come a time where words are actually less important, impactful, necessary and practiced than actions? A time out of time, for flow and music and equity, and seeing eye to eye -- long term, without expectations?

(no music) Emergency self-therapy/brain-storm session on the importance of having an outlet, taking my voice with me, and using and loving my words even if no one else wants them.

'Dreams' by Stevie Nicks (presumably; I'm back to not-giving-a-fuck-perfect-is-the-enemy-of-done stylings).

'Drift Away' by Dobie Grey (I think?), 'Any Road' by George Harrison

'Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story' by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I wish I could have done a better job, but I'm making music like I'm running out of time… which I am. In the end, have I sung enough? Will you hear my story, between these lines, from time to time?

'Carried Away' by Graham Nash.

'See the Changes' by Stephen Stills

(with music) TOPICS: unrequited desire, letting go to let flow, grief for a husband tying to desire to recreate what I loved best in me, and a desire to see desire for things about others as a lust to embody and emulate those things as best I can in myself. What I need to surrender, what I must keep, the buffet of my love being a WYSIWYG affair, not waiting for it because everyone who loves me has gone away, or we've not been enough for each other. Resolving to live and love with wild courageous vulnerable reckless childish abandon and love my way to the destination, knowing I might fall and fail, feeling the fear and not feeling the faith and leaping anyway. Everybody's gotta trust sometime. Please don't let me become my parents. I will do my best to try to be more like you were, my long-lost love, and give you back to the world that couldn't love you right and save your life. Maybe somewhere there's a place where I'm enough and not too much, with just who I am in the ever-changing flow of moments. Where everything I've done and been and learned and made up till now will have grown me in the right ways to be the man I need to be to enter, and harmonize with what I find there. Some doors I think I have to go through alone, vulnerable, and nakedly myself. I'm here. I trust in you. Should I? show me.

(with music) TOPICS: needing to be alone, the arts of letting go & asking & giving without expectation, the art of hello without expectation of return, despair, pain, desire, hugging a fire, dreaming of warmth, visiting cold dead ground and windswept cliffs, feeling like broken glass, paranoia and marijuana and other mind-altering things, always being afraid of stepping out of line and 'the man' coming to take me away, mask-related harassment and fears and symptoms, a desire for release from these last demands and cages, preparing to fly fly away, hoping to leap into (or possibly build) a better world & life and live in harmony and flow with it rather than at odds and hounded by it. But also longing for a pile of literal hounds to rest under. Drowning in a sea of puppy love, where everyone would love to drown. Except cat people, I expect.

(with music) TOPICS: putting myself into life, the courage of feeling the fear and doing it anyway, the creative act of getting out of bed and coming away from the ledge, 'Harold & Maude,' Lewis Hyde's 'The Gift,' enthusiastic consent and giving over coercion and demanding and market exchange in life and art and sex and love and play and friendship and time and attention, making choices informed but not imprisoned by the past, the tangled webs and cages money makes for us, pitfalls and pit stops, seeing the world through the lens of a dreaming mind, ways of making meaning and following my heart, courageous over-sharing, how being raised in atmospheres of invalidation led for me to so much disregulation and distrust and self-destructive habits and overdramatic idiosyncratic weirdness and overall distress and pain. The connectivity of art versus the disconnect of extrinsically imposed rewards and demands. The courage to give, and live, and give myself to life with a big old 'YES' or even a weary 'this is not all there is' in spite of everything.

…I forgot the music, but please enjoy some Hawaiian vocabulary? It is very musical, even if the instrument is a little fumbling with new ways of speaking. I must go pour out some acts of creation.

With any luck, I finished it in time and it works. I hope you like it. This is how I made it: https://www.instructables.com/Playable-Cardboard-Ukulele/

(with music) My voice will go with you, if you want it. Aloha & mahalo.

(with music) TOPICS: talking my way through an art-of-asking fail that brought me a lot of what I didn't want, unsolicited advice, being less passhole-aggresshole, the power and ironic connection that no-frills 'nope' has to offer, longing for a world apart from transactions and future-fears and past-traumas that is more human and messy and in the moment and built on trust and desire for connection and allowing people to do well, flow over force, what not to say to a tightrope walker or leap-of-faither right before the big moment, building up courage through practice, building up momentum through urgency, leaping over pain and fear and risk and through the fire out of desire, being in the Zoom where it happens as a path to get in my own game, how being so close to achieving a goal can seem like being further away than ever and the importance of not giving up right at the finish line just because I can't see it and don't trust that it's right there, finding out what I need to survive by doing it and letting go and learning from failure and pain what I can and can't function without, a time to ride or die, going without a net or friends or family to catch my fall, the importance of wholehearted commitment to such a risky practice, not letting disappointment or anxiety or failure wrap its chains and anxiety around me and park me talking and thinking endlessly about what hurts when it's time to act mindfully to the best of my ability with what I've got. It's almost time for one final run. This is the moment it's all been building toward. Things I learned and heard along the way that I didn't even recognize the importance of at the time, things I overheard while talking to myself and listening to others suddenly have enormous usefulness. And most of all I know even if I fail it will all have been worth it. Especially the painful, messy, scary parts. They made me strong, made me survive, made me determined, made me brave and daring and bold. I've been asking and hearing variations on 'no' my whole life, including unsolicited and violent and threatening ones, but all the time life was calling and asking me, and I was refusing the call and saying 'no' and listening to others instead of my heart and soul and body. Please, even if I can't get what I want, let me get what I need. Gods know it would be, maybe not the first time, but the best time.

(with music) There are so many songs about rainbows because humans exist on a spectrum of humanity. Spectrums are ways of seeing things, whether colors or ourselves or each other. What we perceive in ourselves and each other informs our choices in how we treat each other. No matter how unconscious or habitual, we are humans, and can learn to change our choices, bit by little bit, toward or away from our hearts' desires. This is the truth! This is my belief! …At least for now. Who knows what I'll know and believe tomorrow? It's not here yet. This is today, I am alive, and still I strive. It's the striving, not the freezing and parking on an idea or ideology or identity, that is the flow of life. We pour out creation because we must. Because life is pain and I want something better, I want something more, something I dream of and must create because my dreams are uniquely mine and only exist in my head until I put them out there, with all the risk and vulnerability that implies. Be the hat. Pass the hat. We came from fire and earth and water and wind, and will someday return to those things. Who we are is what we do with the time in between, with what we've got.

(with music) TOPICS: love droplets & love cactuses, when you're going through a desert of abandonment keep going -- hard, the melancholic beauty of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the time of COVID, gaining insight into the loss of my husband as well as the lack of parental acceptance, what not to do if you think your kid is suffering from low blood sugar, what not to do with your newborn infant if you want them to feel loved and wanted, being burned out on the sound of humans speaking without listening, when 'no' or 'go away' doesn't work, cutting and running, what I do and don't regret, not waiting for it, seeing heaven in a wild flower and eternity in a moment, radical acceptance, radical letting go, preserving childish enthusiasm and an open heart, trust falls into life, letting my heart drive and telling my jerkbrain to switch off for a while, when simple acts of strangers' kindness trigger tears and grief, seeing failures as new information it takes courage to listen to, risking it all to win or lose but playing as well as I can with what I've got in the time available, and continuing my practice of not basing my choices on -- or listening to -- the advice and opinions of those who aren't paying the price and getting in the game. Also: how micro-dosing regularly with venting + validation with a network of skilled chill friends might prevent this island-destroying endless eruption of destructive lava-word-flow in the future. If I survive this fiery mess. And how messes make for some of the best and most inspiring, passionate, courageous, compassionate, loving people I know.

Excised from the original text (with some deletions at my own unique human discretion, not to put words in the author's mouth, but to dismiss what insults my soul and add my commentary to chime in with my own unique experiences and add rather than reduce or erase): https://marthalhyde.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/special-case-of-type-i-ptsd-rejected-children/

(with music) TODAY'S SPECIALS DE JURE*: red foam noses for aspiring holy fools and sacred clowns, silk purple roses for those without the wherewithal to find and appreciate those flowers that die even as they to perfection grow, a limited supply of unique hats for aspiring Mad Hatters, pinballs for those who need to roll on and gather no moss in the Rube Goldberg machine of life (and may need an extra play), a song on this coin-operated Live Alexander Banjolele Jukebox (see list; 25¢), a magic trick, a joke (limited repertoire, an acquired taste for wordplay and risqué humor strongly recommended, WARNING: CONTAINS COARSE LANGUAGE), idiosyncratic art nouveau tarot reading (I tell your present unconscious b/c no one knows the future), an oracular reading of some other kind, a recitation of many cheerful facts about some obscure subject, circumlocutory improvised sermons on subjects such as art & the art letting go & flow, a recitation of pithy/comedic (sometimes obscure) movie quotes, a medicinal story or song curated and tailored to suit your unique hurts, balls-to-the-wall hammy spicy Shakespearean recitations complete with affectations, a hula hoop dance (looking's for free; touching is strictly prohibited), bonfire (unless prohibited by local burn bans), free paint-pen vandalization of anything you own including your body (no genitals please), gold plastic easter egg with a mystery treat and fortune (supplies limited), various and sundry articles of clean clothing (mostly shirts), an older slightly worn-out Toyota Camry Hybrid with some issues that still runs well and will get you out of a sticky situation (1 only; act now and get a full range of helpful tools & supplies for a road-trip-hero's-journey to discover who you are away from any demands or expectations or obligations or anyone who knows your name and is in a rush to tell you who you are and what you can do and be). Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone; basically don't be a dick. No shirt, no shoes, no problem (want a shirt?)! Roll up, roll up, the Electric Lunatic E Pluribus Unum Traveling Show may be coming to a town near you! If you have your own vehicle and a mind to join this socially distanced circus, please inquire within (music/libations will greatly improve chances of a successful audition). Don't eat the brown acid or the yellow snow. First aid available upon request, including 10 minutes of compassionate listening to sorrows followed by a song (sessions limited, come early, 4am-ers have priority). The Junk Man hath spoken. Nyah! * 'By Law.' Practices that are legally recognized, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. It is possible to have multiple simultaneous conflicting (de jure) legalities, possibly none of which is in force (de facto).

'Shape of You' by Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, Kandi, Kevin “She'kspere” Briggs, Ed Sheeran & Johnny McDaid . After that last podcast I needed a simple silly dimpled lovely loving love song to put a little love in my heart and a little more love in the world. Science has concluded that there is just too little of it. I can show you studies, but why study love when we can dance about architecture and load up cowboy bar jukeboxes with Kendrick Lamarr instead? Hey, babe, take a walk on the Weird Side with me. FUCK I NEED SLEEP.

Original text -- which has been edited for this reading at my transgender discretion for my own comfort and 'sanity' (ha) -- here: https://marthalhyde.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/special-case-of-type-i-ptsd-rejected-children/  . Part 2 may be forthcoming… or not.

(with music) TOPICS: the importance of protest even without solutions offered, parallels between neglectful/abusive parenting and neglectful/abusive governance, the importance of walking the walk one talks a big game about, the importance of listening not to win or debate but to respect and collaborate if you want people to actually talk to you, a wee bit o' revolution, how emergencies without end have steamrolled the rights and needs and voices of the dependent and vulnerable in people's charges, and how empathy has died of COVID-19. Also: the golden pinball machine of my dreams has been located, targeted, and I'm getting set up for my attack run. Gonna bulls-eye that womp rat with ALL THE BALLS. Also if we want people to comply with demands why is non-compliant behavior and resistance rewarded but obedience unjustly punished and suspected? Rules are for people who make them and people who break them, apparently, in spite of supposedly being there for the good little humans stupid enough to obey them. But then consistency never really has been a human trait…

'The Rose' by The Divine Miss M (a.k.a. Bette 'Fuck 'Em if They Can't Take Joke' Midler)

'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' by George Harrison

'A Whiter Shade of Pale' by Keith Reid, Matthew Fisher, Danny Cordell, Procul Harum.

In the book Alice notes that the melody of the White Knight's 'own devising' is, in fact, 'I give thee all, I can no more' (a.k.a. 'My Heart and Lute') -- by Irish poet Thomas Moore. Here is a GORGEOUS countertenor + classical guitar rendition of said tune by Tu Shi Chiao: https://youtu.be/BxTV0IEVYb4  ...I love countertenors OMGs…

All this has happened before, and it will all happen again. And I feeeeeeeeel like I've been here before… and you know it makes me wonder: what's going on?

(with music) TOPICS: talking myself down after an encounter that left me feeling deeply troubled & questioning my commitment to my values & desirous of grouping demographics in order to dismiss an entire category of persons to try to avoid future hurt. Which makes sense, given my past experiences, and has been a valid choice in the past that reduced my vulnerability, but I don't want to live that way anymore. So this takes a while, but I feel like past-me who wound up having to go through feeling disgusting and ashamed and calling RAINN in the middle of the night to get stuff off my chest and yet feel like I had to hide it, silent all those years, I got to walk in the sun and show that the darkness wasn't me but something someone else chose to put on me. I have no reason to be ashamed of other people's choices, nor my aggressive or angry valid responses born out of a love of myself and my body and my desire to reclaim it for myself after being invaded and violated.  I want to love again, and again, and risk being hurt and be able to pick myself back up and re-orient to being the kind of man I want to be -- not the kind of man who raised me, or the replacement asshole he was grooming me to become, like his father before him and his father before that. Nooooooooope!

'Do it Anyway' by Benjamin Scott Folds. The video has THE FRAGGLES IN IT Y'ALL: https://youtu.be/mEyrfFwf3rI

'Dark Star' by Stephen Stills

(with music) TOPICS: new context, longing to make music and connect with others, hindrances of the COVIDity of it all, a blindfold's power to free me from people-pleasing and getting lost in harmful speculation of what goes on behind others' eyes, being burned out on 'performing' roles of gender or artistry or self or identity according to nebulous expectations and implied rules, the importance of noise canceling technology for massage studios and really anywhere with paper-thin walls, hierarchy and competition as antithetical to equality and radical acceptance of each other as perfectly imperfect and human, as well as being in the moment without pasts or explanations or future speculations. A deep, deep need in me for making music and being heard with kindness.

(with music, sort of) TOPICS: argh money worth value humanity of it all. I never got back around to it but my loathing of money and lack of desire to engage with it means my life and choices tend to belong to anyone who doesn't have that problem. Money sucks, sucks my soul out, but it seems unavoidable if I want to have any freedom or choices or rights at all. It just destroys my ability to value and relate to others in healthy ways and form genuine stormy-weather-proof connections to others. Maybe it's not just me. Maybe that's why we all suck at this, and why socially distancing seemed like a reasonable thing to do indefinitely regardless of the human cost to the most vulnerable among us. 'Cause who cares, right? They can just bootstrap it. BOOTS COST MONEY. SO DO STRAPS. AND LIFE IN GENERAL. Okay, I'm stopping. I really need to figure out where I can settle for a bit that's not going to push me over the edge. Repeatedly.

(with music) TOPICS: something about carrying my banjolele with me in search of a great listener, blah blah blah other people, moralizing, agonizing, extemporizing… WHALE! Er… where was I?

What it says on the tin.

(with music) TOPICS: the art and risk of asking, asking vs begging, first COVID vaccine dose, art communes/intentional communities, high-control environments (cults as well as abuse as well as nations as well as begrudging conditional charity and support), endless rules for one side not followed by the other leading to inevitable rule-breaking, not picking other people's noses or picking on people who do pick their noses or putting up with people who do, not attaching so hard to absolute truth, needing vocal morning pages and meds still, seeing what we want to see and treating that as the truth until what we believe becomes reality and justifies seeing it everywhere, paranoia self-perpetuating, trying to get different perspectives on people at the most difficult time I've had to do so and not attach to anything that could feed the distrust monster I'm trying to starve out, humans as analog in an increasingly digital environment of viewing/treating/talking about ourselves & each other & how terribly lossy and judgy that is getting for everyone. More than machinery, WE NEED HUMANITY. More kindness amidst the chaos. More asking, more acceptance of 'no,' less demanding and begging and manipulating and please, y'all, can we? I want to learn to ask, and wean off dependency on telling and demanding, can we all join in this harm reduction/recovery from control & distrust process together? Any positive change. If we don't know where we're going, any road will get us there. Won't you please join me? If you find a new way, you can do it today. You can make it all true or you can make it undo, you see. It's easy. All you need is love. Give it, get it, keep the gifts circulating in kindness, and love will pour into and through you. What've you got to lose? Fear? Do you really need it as much as it doomsays you do? Does it protect you, or cage you? There are no wrong answers (including none at all), no grades, and take all the time and space you want. Any road.

'Smile' by Charlie Chaplin. Every recording I've heard of this features really dedicated vocalists with lots of flourishes -- Nat Cole, Natalie Cole, Janelle Monaé, Judy Garland, a whole passel of creme de la creme singers like Josh Groban & Celine Dion and an opera tenor and oh I give UP -- and I just honestly don't even know. So I half-assed it and there we go. Because I've been trying for days and I don't feel any closer. Better to do it imperfect and move on.

'Set the Fire to the 3rd Bar' by Tom Simpson, Nathan Connolly, Jonny Quinn, Gary Lightbody, & Paul Wilson

(with music) TOPICS: a thousand ways not to socialize, in search of just one that works. A thousand places not to belong, in search of one that says "fuck yes!" to all of me. Friends without conditions I can't meet, without expectation of benefits I can't afford. Also acting, learning, Amanda Palmer, arguing alone and with others, letting go versus capitulating, emotion regulation through words and thoughts without erasing the need to feel feelings and the importance of emotional needs that I'd like other people to stop predicting and interpreting and ask instead. Being burned out on asking, how that ramped up and amped me all the way to 11 and then yanked off the knob in a world and life that's a house on fire. Who do you love when everything is burning down?

(with music) TOPICS: difficulties trusting myself and others, difficulties with saying and hearing no (and insisting on the respect of getting to say it), difficulties with asking, rejection dysphoria, when 'just say no' or 'fight back' is idiotic and unrealistic and we know that because of the scars we still bear from trying that route, different motivations for isolating from people, the mythical unicorn of friendship that's comforting and contains free and easy regular use of the word 'no' on all sides, questioning love and trust, whether frank discussion of sex and bodies is testing boundaries or just comfort with the messiness of humanity, talking in big circles to try to find my way out, looking for patterns of externals to help me find people worth trusting, feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Also can you imagine if I had to eat all the words I said on this podcast? Like Pizza the Hut, I'd eat myself to death. But the plea is self defense -- the unsaid words were eating me alive, metastasized in the cancerous silence that filled every breath of me, consuming my will to live and say anything at all. It's not hard to shut me up, but it's hard to get me to ever come back if I have given up trying to communicate with you. There are plenty of people in the world, and I haven't met them all. Huzzah for finally getting my shot at COVID-19 vaccine!

(with music) TOPICS: flow, the zone, ecstatic 'peak' experiences, the overlap of laughter and orgasm, the place where time and ego and names and labels don't exist, letting go to let flow, the inadvisability of holding on to things that must be free to exist (e.g. butterflies & love & moments), antidepressants and avoidance of pain as antithetical to this dude's brain in the pursuit of a bearable life (let alone one worth living), sleeping low in a seatless '56 Caddy, having a projector dream my dreams for me, marveling at the wideness of the world every moment, the spaciousness of timelessness with phones silenced and away, eternity in a moment, philosophy and theology and the many Alex-friendly funny ways I've gotten there (e.g. Pratchett & Doug Adams & The Good Place), thinking and talking as numbing agents, a quick & versatile rundown of helpful things to have in a (working) automobile, ingredients of a better first aid kit than off-the-shelf, being in it to play it rather than win, the power of pain as messenger and teacher and sign of life and blood-hot desire for continued life, acceptance of the limitations of power and control as a way of reducing suffering and still showing up for life, stepping outside of things to learn what is actually optional and what is worth enduring, and who decides and judges the measure and naming of all things (and whether it's actually useful). A matter of taste and perspective, all of which is personal and subjective and contextual. Context, Alex, context! Change the context, get new information. It's gorgeous here but it is time for a new context, so hit the road and go on. Today I'm alive, like all the days I've lived before, even if I've been habitually sleepwalking through most of them. And unaware of the ways I'm still asleep inside.

(with music) TOPICS: letting go, letting go more, finding ways of thinking about and approaching issues that is useful and draws on my areas of strength rather than giving it away, in search of signs of encouraging music listeners and friendly connections, trying to stop anticipating windmills to tilt at but knowing they do exist, listening more to feelings (my own and others) and having clearer connections rather than pathologizing and numbing them, public displays of affection vs. public displays of aggression (and marveling how backwards intolerance/censure of them are), focusing more on needs and feelings and actions and choices and the moment than labels and arbitrary words that take me away from who someone is, aiming to reduce self-consciousness and experiences that make me worse at everything, narrative psychotherapy, logotherapy, a desire for less 'therapy' and more humanity and kindness, the kindness of even more letting go and letting flow, making and leaving room for better possibilities, pirates come into it at one point (the fantasy and the reality), finding a balance between fantasy and reality and recognizing the pitfalls and uses of both, not self-censoring before the world has a chance to. Stories and words that help, and stories and words that hinder. Actions and words that encourage growth, over those that shut down and drive away. Letting my words slither-slip away across the universe.

'Sound of Silence' by Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel

(with music) TOPICS: money, money changes everything, for the love of money, must be funny in a rich man's world, money (so they say) is the root of all evil today, money-based solutions to money-based problems, abuse-based solutions to abuse-based problems, denial-based solutions to denial-based problems, accounting & tax accounting, paranoia, targets, communism and redistribution of wealth whilst still operating within economically-underpinned power structures as doomed to repeat the same sins of power, the dreadful wasteland of knowing there's a problem (a big one) and not knowing what to do about it, how to be kind by DOING more kindnesses (however small), acknowledging both problems and ignorance as a necessary first step to change, letting go, the relief of giving without expectation, the cost of expectations, money fears, being born in 1980 to two people who saw the end of the year as the death of all hope for the future, the things about the 80s that reinforced that for them, and all from the mad mind of the result of this ill-conceived conception.

(with music) Even more 'Radio Dada' than usual, all over the place and disconnected in theme as well as content. How will this fadge? And what is 'fadging,' Billy Shakes? …Oh, you're dead? Well, shit. Guess I'll go eat worms. Or get eaten by them.

'Wasted Time' by Don Henley, Glenn Frey, & Jim Norman. Playfully, lightly murdered here for your amusement by moi after two previous botched attempts (and one attempt to beat a dead horse after this recording was mercy-scrapped).

(with music) Inspired in part by watching 'The Queen's Gambit' on Netflix.

(with music) TOPICS: balance, moving slower, toward the ocean, in 3-D space without checking with the internet first. It lies.

(with music) TOPICS: memories of road trips, caring less about what others (and I) think and say, shifting focus more to feeling and doing, living and loving, letting go of places and moments when they have gone without forgetting the love and learning, flying on into the future, belonging always where I am through listening and feeling and leaving where I feel unwanted or an unwanted obsessive focus inside me on pain or others' unknown interiority or both. Also Eddie Izzard. Running to embrace life rather than backing away like it's a snarling bear. It's my life. It's happening right now, outside the door, outside my head and theories of mind and pain and storm of thoughts. It's blowing and flowing through everything, including me. How breathtaking, and breath-giving. What is taken is given again in the next heartbeat, the next breath.