some light reading

So little is happening to me right now, I thought I'd just keep dropping links to interesting people I've found. Here are some cool poems I found this morning from moesmith88:

Love Poem

Summer of '98 - goths

I like how this guy accepts himself so fully. He seems to have a healthy attitude about himself and his life. I think he's an actor too, who has taken a break from acting in order to have a regular day job or something. That shit can be hard to deal with for creative artists. Putting their art aside and taking a day job, that is. I never used to take myself seriously as a musician while I was studying music and trying to make a living from it, but now that I have a regular job and only play on the side (just like my dad always wished I would), I've realized that I'm actually a pretty serious musician. I think that's kind of ironic.

more on my favourite subject

Several times in my life, I've had a feeling that I was being reborn. It has often felt painful, like I'm trying to squeeze my way through a tight opening into the light, but it also has sometimes felt warm and peaceful. I think that feeling of being reborn is analogous to the constant rebirth of one moment to the next, as time progresses and marches on.

However, I've never before experienced as much rebirth as I have in the past six months or so. Since quitting my last job in tearful desperation and beginning a new job that, unbeknownst to me, had ultimately as little or less hope than the last one did, I've been caught in a whirlwind of psychic and spiritual activity and growth. A lot of that growth has manifested itself in a deep sense of self-awareness, and I've also noticed that like many of the really important things in my life, it has just come to me without much directed thought or effort. The only thing I've tried to do as a practice is to submit to whatever forces felt to be at play at the time, and to try to observe their effects as they occurred. (To help me further reconcile and understand what was happening, I've used this journal to make note of the observations.)

In general, my attitude about life and living and relationships and basically everything has changed quite a bit. Where once I was worried or obsessed about so many different things and concerned with righting the many world's wrongs, I have come to recognize that too much energy focused too deeply on events and troubles in my life simply leads me deeper into depression and unhappiness. By successfully cultivating a more detached attitude about my life, the events in it, and even my own personality, I've noticed a pervasive sense of equanimity seeping into the depths of my very soul. Everything feels just fine to me now, because everything I see and experience is a regular and beautiful part of our universe. Including me. Including that boss I used to hate. Including that short doorway in my basement I smack my head into once a week.

For what feels like has been about a month or three, I've been settling much deeper into this sense of emptiness, of void, of... (I can never find the right words to describe it) And one of the by-products of this newfound awareness has been quite a literal sense of detachment from my own self and personality and life. I've never been scared off by that though, because it has felt natural and The Right Way To Be. But I've been rethinking that just a touch in the past few days. Not with respect to the validity of the underlying, core feeling and awareness (which I do believe is true, and Right), but more with respect to how that awareness manifests itself in me outwardly in my life.

I think I'm ready to start being Active in this life, outwardly. I don't need to be a hermit, or a monk on a hillside, or a teacher, or a student, or anything in particular. The awareness will continue to sink in more deeply over time, I'm sure, but my outward actions in my life, job, and relationships do not have any bearing on that deep, inherent Understanding. Therefore, I could stand to shape up a bit more in my own external life, since I now understand that it won't have an adverse effect on my own Awareness. I haven't quite understood that until recently - I thought that I had to live a certain way in order to maintain that connection - but I no longer believe that's true, and I think I'm strong enough to move on from that and act out more.

The results, undoubtedly, will look just as normal as they would in any regular old active person. But to me, they'll feel like I'm finally LIVING.

paid accounts

A good friend of mine just bought me a year's subscription to LJ as a birthday gift, and when I processed the registration, it looks like only about 2,800 people have paid accounts here.

Not to admonish anyone who still has a free account, but I have to say that I would encourage anyone who uses LJ regularly to sign up and pay away! You don't get a whole lot of extra features and services, but your account is moved to a faster server, you can create and modify your own journal styles, and let's face it, this is a great initiative to support, too, don't you all think? If I hadn't received it as a gift I would have bought one pretty soon myself.

mouth hanging open

I'm completely tripping out on what an amazing community this is. I've been reading the LiveJournal Business community, and I came across a post with a million replies call talent pool. I'm amazed at the depth and breadth of this community, and overwhelmed by the possibilities inherent to it...