Part IV - "Leaving the Cave"
As the school year ended that Spring, I began spending much more of my time reading and researching material, turning more and more into a hermit, locking myself away from society. The more I seemed to learn, the less I felt I could connect to society. I was drifting away from my family and friends. Bouts of sanity started, and my mind seemed to be going in all directions. I really didn't know what to think anymore. Anytime I seemed to touch alcohol in this period, I would never be able to have more than a few drinks, because I would always feel the anger come over me. My true emotions would come out, and they seemed to always be so chaotic and scary.
The past several years I had been developing intellectually by the most means, with the traditional understanding of intelligence referring to knowledge. However, the analytical part of my mind was most dominant. Over the past year, poi had developed me physically, helping me reconnect with my body for the first time since a kid. And for the most part, I was socially developed. I say for the most part, as I get 'lost' in conversation sometimes. It's just the way my brain works with all the [thought] tangents bombarding me all the time (as of lately though, it happens pretty rarely).
However, for long time I had been emotionally sheltered. My relationships with girls were bland at most and never seemed to go anywhere. My parents weren't the most emotionally comforting, neither were my friends. There was Binney though. I will note Binney is her childhood nickname and likes to be called Kathryn now, as she'll probably be reading this at some point. I met Binney the first day I moved to Scarborough and we had an on and off relationship as friends throughout high school. We were from two different social groups at the time, and you all don't need me to elaborate on that social structure.
She had moved to Florida also after high school and lived only a half hour north of me, which we eventually figured out one day online through good old instant messaging, right after I had moved into to my first house. We started hanging out again for the first time in a couple years. Binney and I had a lot of late nights up talking about pretty open minded topics, most specifically spiritually. At times we'd systematically tackle the subject together, and others we'd compare and to each others experiences.
Binney helped me develop the emotional side of me, through thought and experience. This side to me is what some would refer to as the "heart chakra." There are several other key friendships I've had with girls (I Just discussed this with my friend next to me, and she agrees the term 'girls' works here
).
I just came to a realization in that if I proceed further, I need to bring my good friend 'Infinity' on board. Some people will just call this 'math' or others 'logic' or 'deductive reasoning'. Words are of little importance here. I've taken seven years of French up to now without a huge success. A year of Latin did go much better here. The rare chance where you get to meet a 'true' teacher and shows their passion with their word, and knows how to bring life into something old and forgotten. School was plagued with repetition for me, and tended to teach me more about human behavior then college accredited knowledge. Before I continue to go off on this stray tangent of emotional outburst (oh, the irony), I must get back to my point: Good ole (note the number three here) mathematical theory.
Maybe this can clarify some ideas as I wrote it earlier this week:
It's a sad thing if one thinks they can't find 'truths' within one own self. Almost all my philosophical concepts I have developed on my own completely outside of other influences. I wrote a paper that is for the most part identical to Plato's allegory of the cave, before I even knew it existed. 2500 years apart, and developing the exact same thoughts about 'universal truths' then god damnit that has to be some serious universal truths! Here's a lesson people in universal truth. If you were born, and thrown into a jail cell from birth with no reference material (ie holy books) and able to figure something out without any outside influences, like here's a rat, oh and there's another rat, a little bit fatter, but still another rat. OMG wait, that's two rats! Then there you go, that's a universal truth. And thus, the two rat void the fat concept was born!
I hope a was able to connect you to this notion in an abstract way, because in it's essence, it is an abstract concept. So first one needs to accept the intrinsic nature of math, and well, vice versa. They are one in the same. That is something that words cannot 'prove' to you, as the numbers easy do that themselves. So lets break down infinity to the number line. This can then be broken down further into let's say positive, negative, and zero. Zero is what one would consider balance and harmony. The polarity aspects of life [positive and negative] can be found all across the board. A common aspect of this in nature, and not exclusively biological nature, is that of the sexes. And easier way to reference the broader scope of this at hand is the masculine and feminine energies. A basic understanding of balancing these energies (ie male + female = 0) can be seen in why we seek relationships. These energies are not predetermined necessarily by biology, but are an influence. And well, these energies exist within each of us, just at different levels. My close relationships with girls in my life truly helped develop this side of me.
So back to Binney.
Anyways, come towards the end of the school year we started hangout again on a regular basis as her stay in Florida had only lasted less than six months [and moved back home thereafter]. Binney would come over usually sometime in the late evening, after hanging out with her girls and getting out of work being she was a waitress.
I want to stay here on the record. Binney, wait... Kathryn is one of the beautiful and honest persons I have ever met. However, she has always seems to be plagued with the consistent bad luck. And I've never felt she has deserved any of it. Something I've had a hard time understanding why and wished it wasn't so. I am not going to dive into this any further.
Binney helped bring some faith you could say for me back into society, pull me out of his hermit head thinking. I was learning to balance myself, and function as a more productive person on every level.
Technically, we're still at the end of last spring (2008). But at the end of last spring, I went to another Wildfire. This time my experience was just as eye opening in terms of discovering myself as I continued to learn from these unique experiences [but of common lessons]. I had drove down to Connecticut this time, with a fire spinner who lived north of me in Bangor and had been seeing on and off that fall. Our lives at the moment [along with the distance] made it more into an occasional but rather enjoyable relationship. In the Spring, we ended up not seeing each other for awhile. We had continued to try to make plans in the winter into the spring, but for the most part, the snow kept us apart. Portland had the most snowfall on record that winter, as the snow was reaching the tops of people's roofs throughout Maine.
I was really excited to see her, and go to the festival with her. However, I had a hard time expressing my emotions during the beginning of the trip you could say. I basically sent her the wrong vibes. That first night at Wildfire I could feel that our flame wouldn't be rekindled. I believe she hooked up with someone that night (along with sorta standing me up that night too, but no hard feelings as I still think she's a wonderful bright person). Anyways, that night I was in the tent by myself rather frustrated and tried to meditate (I'm not sure if I said I started to meditate on a regular basis I'm probably going to have to rearrange this piece, but I'm missing some serious points/changes in my life right before my 'council of elders' dream. Mainly to do with my experiences trying to meditate on a daily basis. Keyword trying, but nonetheless successful.). It was one of the hardest times ever for meditating for me up to that point, the emotions were overwhelming at points, but slowly I worked through the 'layers' in a short period of time and was able to get to sleep that night.
That morning, I wanted to meditate for a much longer time, as last night really only calmed me down at the moment. I wanted to work through the situation in a positive means and have a straight rational heard for this coming day. It was around seven in the morning when I got up. There was no one awake for myself, or so it seemed. I got my stuff together, and went to the main field area with the dining hall. I found a big boulder rock overlooking the lake, and lit a giant (I mean giant! It lasted for over four hours!) piece of incense and sat down to meditate. I noticed someone else over at the lake practicing what it looked like to be Tai Chi. All he was wearing was a pair of Thai pants. I then entered one of the greatest meditative experiences of my life.
Forty-five minutes later I opened my eyes feeling completely refreshed and ready for an absolutely exhilarating day. As I jumped off the stone, the man who was practicing Tai Chi had finished himself as was walking up the hill toward me.
He came up to me and offered his hand out introducing himself as 'Tim'. He immediately wanted to apologize for his remarks toward me to a conversation we had online on a discussion board. For the most part, it was a complete miscommunication with each other, and we both realized this. We immediately ended getting into deep conversation right after that, and it led to one off the greatest fifteen minute discussions I've ever had.
Someone who at one point had become very angry at, was now someone I was enjoyed a very intellectually stimulating conversation with. We both easily realized we had a 'moment' with each other. For the rest of the festival, we continued to have conversations on and off, along with myself taking his "The Tao of Poi" class.
At lunch, I ended up eating outside with a group of people I was somewhat familiar with, but got into conversation with them no problem at all. People were very open on all levels with discussion. It was an atmosphere full of positivity and friendliness. No one was by means shy. Just like Abby.
Everyone got up at the table almost at once, and these were two eight ten foot long picnic tables pushed together. I was sitting on the end of one.
After everyone gets up, I hear "Where you from in Maine?"
I look at the other end of this table, and there's this cute girl smiling at me. "Outside of Portland, in Scarborough." I responded. It turned out she has family there, and we began talking. After a few sentences, I moved down to her end, and we started talking face to face. From that moment on, the rest was magic.
The next few days with this girl was speechless. I felt like I had completely transcended into another world of absolute bliss. My day had started out from going from depressing **** to pure joy.
After the festival, I continued to see Abby almost on a weekly basis, as I would take the bus or train down to Boston to see her. She was a student at Boston University. We resonated extremely well with each other, but alas like most things, it was short lived. Knowledge can sometimes hurt. But what can come from it, is so much beautiful. Thank you Abby for that.
The summer came as I spent most of my time performing, mainly doing solo shows as the circus had fallen apart. I had picked up mainly various performing arts to extend and build upon my act: Fire staff, fire breathing, and contact juggling (David Bowie in 'Labyrinth' ring a bell?). They were things I mostly had picked up last fall at Wildfire, even though I had started fooling around with a staff a little bit before then that August [of 2007].
I'd usually perform Friday nights in downtown Portland in a stone park. I'd start after sunset, usually sometime after eight, and go for up to two hours, sometimes longer. Performing by myself had one big advantage, as I was making over forty dollars an hour at times in cash. With the circus, we'd split the earnings all evenly. It would really tire me out, and I usually would retreat back home to pass out, but it was working me out like nothing you could believe.
The first few days of August I went to my third BelTek, an art and music festival in Central Maine, usually more commonly referred to as a rave. This time it was much bigger than the previous years, almost twice the attendance, totaling over 1,200 people from all over New England. Previously, it usually consisted of mostly Mainers and I could say the vibes were much more positive then. College students from Massachuetts and New York seemed to definitely change the 'feel' of the festival that year.
However, I was on the flyer that had been handed out for the past several months, and was the main visual performance. My performances were of an absolute phenomenal nature. I was thoroughly impressed with myself and pride of my work. I have not gotten so many 'thank yous' from people that night which I greatly prefer over 'the idolizing of my skills'. I want to share the beauty of the moment, nothing more.
This was the first time at a festival where I remained for the most part sober. I smoked a little herb and had some wine, but didn't touch any of the stronger psychedelics. I had to take in account performing with fire in extremely large groups [of very inebriated people], but [the now common theme of usually] being broke came into most effect with the sobriety.
This allowed me to see a different side of humanity, positive and negative. It definitely made me appreciate and respect psychedelics much much more for what they were, and how to appropriately use them. I had grown the understanding over the past few years in how important they are to be treated as tools, in the view of learning and enjoyment, but not within a purely recreational perspective. As I had for myself in the past, people were primarily using them as an 'escape' from the realm of mundane society. I saw very few if any any 'light bulbs' going off in the ravers and trippers, before, during, and after their experience. The old philosophy from high school of "getting f-ed up" still existed through the majority of people. It seemed like I was on my own in my unique perspective. I still had sometime to realize patience with my fellow members of humanity, along with respect and understanding for the way things were.
Right around the same time, I started an art gallery with a co-op of artists. My works I have displayed so far in it consist only of my photography. Up to this point, I have shared very little of my artistic side besides several short references to it. In seventh grade, I discovered my passion for wildlife photography in capturing unique perspectives of nature. As of just recently, I realized my use of balance and implementing phi (the golden ratio) into my works is why my work stood out with a lot of people. I loved doing macro photography, getting pictures of the small yet intricate world around us. I took a particular interest with spiders and their webs. This summer I got my hands on my first true digital SLR (photo quality was still great with my old work), a Nikon D60. A started to drift toward a new subject manner, and do to the amount of rain we had this summer (one of the wettest also on record), I began mushroom hunting a bunch.
In Florida a few years ago, I had started to go mushroom hunting in cow fields for obvious reasons. I grew to love the hunt, even though I rarely had any luck. In the process though, mycology (the study of fungi) began to really interest me.
In Maine, there were hallucinogenic mushrooms, but as I soon realized they were pretty rare (except for Amanita Muscaria, but that's another story for another day). I did discover that there were many different species of edible mushrooms, along with beautiful but deadly mushrooms scattered around. The small but serious intent of danger was there which I thrived on, just like my days of racing. However, I approached the matter in a very responsible and logical fashion. As you can see, I am still alive to this day with no ill side effects ever experienced (and was worth every bite of yummy juiciness). That summer, I took over a thousand pictures of mushrooms and fungi alone, with an estimated three hundred different species. On the last day of August, I had an art show at a local wine bar [where I was a regular at and had met Keith]. My main exhibit were photographs of Maine fungi. I also had other pieces of art media along with much more wildlife photography from throughout the years. I even released my first book at it. A fifty plus page book of my artwork and philosophical writings mixed together called "
If Time is an Illusion...". However, due to printing problems, I didn't have any solid copies (I've been trying to resolve that actually as of lately in getting a bunch made. Hopefully, I can maybe add this piece too to the printing press.). The work stayed up for the entire month of September, and overall my exhibit was a huge success in terms of appreciation. But to our now ailing economy, I managed to sell only one piece of work.
A couple nights before this, I had a most unusual and wonderful experience with yet another girl. Since the full moon in the end of July, many strange things had started to happen in my life, but for the most part in a completely positive aspects (I ended up getting into quite a few discussions with people up to even weeks after this 'full moon' who had something interesting and peculiar with the day, and half the time I wasn't even the first to mention it). There was an overwhelming amount of synchronicities that were happening throughout each and every day. As soon as you began to recognize them, you couldn't help but notice how integral they were to your daily life. I began meeting an many different types of people in a very interconnected and spontaneous type a way. My social patterns had seemed to of been dramatically accelerated, especially in terms of the positive and meaningful relationships that I was making. The same went for figuring out who I was in relation to the world. I began to realize the inherent 'interconnectedness' of reality. With this new philosophy to look out upon things, September catapulted me into a crusade never undertaken by me within the mind. I was 'waking up' to the true nature of reality.
...Part V to come tomorrow most likely, and will focus on the present moment and the potential paths to come. Thanks for reading!