Here I sit, in everywhere at the same time.

From the Belly of the Human Beast: a moment different, yet exactly the same.

I've thought that my mind is playing tricks on me before. There's a recognition, an awareness, that keeps me from believing that these tricks are more than that, more than a trick. The truth is that it might all be a trick, a combination of perception and proposed reality that we teach and tell ourselves about. I've done a fair amount of drugs. Hallucinogen induced madness is something that I can comfortably say is a familiar state. When I imagine that I'm hearing the song that was playing but isn't anymore, when I feel the touch of someone thousands of miles away on the surface of my skin, when something happens that doesn't make sense I can chalk it up to a life of misused mental energy, a side effect of drugs. But was that a mistake? Were drugs a waste? Maybe not. My first time on acid presented me with a depth of horror I had never known. I laughed and many stories were born in that moment, but what I realized during that trip that probably looked so happy on the surface was the same thing I'd known all along, the same thing that my “mental illness” provided me with at an early age. Each moment, every perception, anything that has ever existed or could possibly exist is real under the right circumstances.

Earlier today I wanted to write some words reflecting my current situation which I will do my best to summarize briefly as it, in itself, is no longer my objective of tonight's words. There's a woman I love whose love and connection with my life, has changed and birthed such a positive level of new possibilities. I am forever grateful of our minds and the human condition. We, as a life form not much different than any other on the most basic of levels, are the ones who express love in words that others hear and read. There are stories born from the hope that love provides. But what is hope? This is the reason I write. Although I'll organize my intention and breathe deep in order to finish the goal of summation first.

Not only has a new reality of love revolutionized my life, but my choices and the consequences of them are providing a similar level of new awareness. I've done what I thought I wouldn't, what I dreamed I wanted and have learned to be false. I've created the isolation that always fueled my perception of myself as some self diagnosed wanderer. After realizing how little a life of wandering means, I've finally achieved it at it's best.

I work with children. This is one explanation of what I do. My reality, the way it feels, is far different and can not be embodied in the term “youth worker.” The work done by myself and the others in the field of social services, those who, for whatever reason, do the grunt work of the field, are playing an essential role to this human existence and no matter how hard the day and how good the day off feels, there will never be enough recognition for these people. Humans throw away humans, and those are the people we work with. The grunts do the work that no one wants, in places that people ignore, at houses where the neighbors watch out their windows at night while clutching the phone, ready to dial the police. You see, I am here, in a suburb of a major city like any other. As we humans, one form of life, are not much different than insects, for all we know, I am in anywhere that people have been. This is New York City. It's the outskirts of L.A. It's the belly of the beast, the last ditch effort of the perception of pain, by our mistaken minds.

Two kids leave the unit and return with a pounding of a glass door. It didn't shatter, but it should have. If it did, nothing changes. This work requires one overall task. If nothing else, there is a reality that this one objective, the only real job description, gives me a simpler job than most. I have to do my best to keep these kids alive, for the hours that I work, and nothing more is required if I accomplish that. There's no need to worry when I go. On the train home I'm already on thoughts of my own little circus of pain and sorrow. The thoughts of these kids, the idea of caring for them the way everyone and everything, should be cared are not an option. At least not in the way we love our mother. You don't get caught up in this work. There's no choice on whether or not to attach. If you do, you're gone. You'll burn out faster than candle in the ocean, and then the kids are without you, as a worker, as a momentary protector, whatever that means.

At the end of the day, I can take comfort in these thoughts. No, I don't worry when I am not here, about the kids who I know are in more pain than most have known. Even while I'm here, I don't worry. Someone raped these children. This is a literal statement for some, and an ever present truth for all. People can break, and stability is a joke to those who know only harm. I'll never give up hope for these children, or any child who has ever been through immense trauma, but the reality is that they are broken. People are capable of more resilience than any of us can even understand, but there are those, the kids who never had a chance, that may do nothing else but live in pain, causing pain for others as long as they exist. Hate is all they know. Like a child passing through the early years during the development of language processing abilities who doesn't get the gift of being taught another language at such a perceptive time, these kids might not have the option or desire to believe that love is anything but a bluff, that fear and pain are the only true constants. If I told you that I had dark skin, that of a native African, while you were looking at my Caucasian colored face, you'd call me a liar. That is the reality of these kids. Love isn't real, so stop trying to rename pain. If there ever was an uphill battle worth defining that age-old phrase, trying to help a broken child learn love and hope is it.

So again I am sidetracked, but not far enough to lose the point of these words. My reality, the world I have created by believing that love isn't real for me, that wandering is the only way to happiness, the truth that I no longer live by which states that love could never be more than a transient experience and thinking it lasts is the greatest mistake. Thankfully, and much credit is due to the woman I mentioned earlier who has helped me to learn so much about my own heart, I believe in love's endless possibilities once again. And it's not just love. Life is potentially infinite, with all the facts of science and the power of faith crossing evenly and forming a center, a dot, the mix of the outside and inside, the universe and the mind, we are exactly where we must be. We are the dot, but so much more if we choose.

When I arrived at work last night I was lectured in an almost hostil way by my coworker for walking to the house where we work. She mentioned many logical concerns. We'd never met before last night. As this woman who didn't know me explained intently, with positive intentions forming the base from which she spoke, that I should have take a taxi instead of walked I began to wonder about what I should do next time. Melbourne isn't special. There's a vast amount of violence currently being reported by the media. Random beatings occur daily and are even caught on surveillance cameras and then shown to the public to ask for their help in finding the assailants. People are beaten, even killed, many put in such distress physically, that they are barely alive and may never be the same again. These people are caught on camera, the only true system of policing in this country, and still they are not identified. There's no stopping the reality of life. It's the only true reality. We live. We die. It goes on. Or stops. It has been, and always will be. But what is life without the perception of it?

Gangs of Sudanese refugees were the primary reason that my coworker was so concerned last night. She told me about the beatings that these groups have committed, and their reasons. These refugees, the ones that do perform violent acts, are much like the children I work with, only even more extreme. In Sudan, from the little I know, their daily reality might have been worse, even for a single day, than the worst day of your life or mine. What if you not only suffered the death of a family member but witness it as well? What if it happened often, family members died, were tortured, deprived of anything good about humanity? Would you believe in anything else? There's no point explaining to a group of people who have been through so much trauma that they don't fear death or taking a life that my life is worth living. If I meet one of these groups and they've made the choice to attack, I am helpless. Buy a gun? Use a knife? No. I'm not a liar. Those things wouldn't do anything to protect me from a group of people who exist without our western perception of a soul, that little thing that we all have which makes us all really good people underneath. I won't be biased. I won't fear these gangs anymore than I will fear the deadly spiders, no bigger than a dime, which hide under toilet seats in this country. The truth about life is almost half about death. If I die, I die. That is all. We can talk and remember but eventually, all memories will fade and life will be there or it won't. So it goes.

The woman last night was right to remind me of the natural hazards of walking through these heavily crime stricken areas to my night shifts. But what I wanted to say, what she couldn't hear, was that my reality, all of our reality, is exactly that way at every moment. We are always being threatened.

The nightly news just aired a report on Asian gangs suspected of similarly brutal beat downs of random bystanders. A new tax has been proposed on bars and clubs, a massive lift in permit fees, which the government hopes will stop the third major cause of these recent reported violent incidents: drunk people. So here we have it. The police chief of Victoria is on the news daily responding to the media's reports of his officers failings. There's not enough police here to do the job. He said, on a report last night, that some of the responsibility for this type of violence falls on the people. He said that it's important that people communicate about the wrongs of violence. It's a clear last ditch effort. The media blames the police. He blames the people. The people are free to blame whomever they choose. But the reality of my life, my manifestation of this time of wandering, is simple. I've moved to a foreign country, into an area where an American accent might be the reason I get beaten near death instead of just robbed, working a job that is by far the only activity I can equivocate with hiking to the peak of Everest in flip flops. The place is full of logical fears, the job as well. The woman I love has the fear that I'll make the same mistakes I've made before. I tell her things have changed. I know they have. I'd trade all of this perception, all of these lessons that everyone says I'm supposed to go through, for a night with her. This brings me to love, the other factor. Knowing it and being so far from the woman that I dream about, is yet another struggle. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I eat every day and always have a place to sleep. I'm alive. But, without realizing it, I gave myself everything I ever feared and asked for during moments of pure brash arrogance.

The life of a wanderer must be fueled by something. I've given myself that life, for now. I'm in love with one woman, struggling to be the best man I can be at every moment, while knowing that no matter what I do, whether I smoke or not, am rich or poor, I could get killed on my walk to work every single night or soon after I arrive. This isn't an irrational fear. The medias reports locate the main areas for violence. These are the places that I walk through to get to the houses where I work. So I can quite smoking, be calm and compassionate at all times, and here's the other side, the other truth, that could theoretically make all my understandings pointless, or just the utterings of a man cut down by life: There have been massive increases in local violence. The causes are racial and substance fueled. If I make it through the dark paths lined by barbed wire and far from the security cameras that barely can be called protection, then I get to a house where kids live who have blank eyes. Some of them, most of them, are sad children. But there are those few who, if you don't give them a glass of milk when they ask, would see no reason not to kill you or burn the house down. If I make it to work, through the slums, and survive the rabid possibilities that working with abused youth provides, I can take a shit and get bitten by one of the many deadly spiders in this area. Death is always haunting us, and this moment is no different than any other. Life is always paralleled by death and in this period of my existence, that fact is utterly inescapable.

If I ignore the the gangs, there's the drunks. If I ignore the kids violent behaviors, there are the behaviors of their parents or even some guy they fucked with that day who could show up looking to kill someone. At the end of the list, if I ignore the spiders, the snakes could kill me just as well. It's a game, or maybe it isn't but one thing is for sure. Life is fragile.


A moment comes and the phone rings. I'm currently working at a house, with the ever present dangers that I just described, with my best friend Pete. We're working together on the night shift. There's no better company than that in a job like this, or any for that matter. The phone call was from the emergency DHS worker who explained that one of us would need to go provide a transport for another client who is in the hospital at the moment. I hesitated on the phone with the man, hesitated to say that things were fine and the one night that I happen to be at work with my best friend, one of us will need to depart and actually could because we've stabilized our house. But it's my job. Things are calm here, for now. But they're not calm everywhere. At this house, there are two overnight staff who need to remain awake for the purpose of having an extra person in case something like this happens. And Pete broke his wrist and elbow yesterday. Not a life threatening injury, but it's worth mentioning that it happened within the first ten minute of Pete receiving a new skateboard in the mail. He got on the board, went down the hill, and slid out, falling backwards. He didn't get it from the gangs, the kids, or the spiders. Life is fragile. Pete got beat up by his skate board.

What this means is that Pete, who knows the area well, is unable to legally drive the company vehicle and therefore I am the designated floater and it's my job to find this hospital, in a world of right sided steering and left lane driving, and bring the kid home through streets that I have never seen. Life is fragile. So is each moment. I'm glad I had a chance to talk with Pete about life and cars tonight, some of our favorite subjects, before this moment. I'm glad I appreciated my best friend being here before the endless variables of life manifested in a phone call. Whatever comes next, nobody knows. Waiting for what we think will happen is pointless. This job provides a heightened experience of that truth. It's fragile. Every second where all are living and are well is potentially the last before the worst kind of metaphorical shit hits the blades of the whirling fan of life.

So now, after four pages, I come to my point. Distance, like all feelings and perceptions, is no more real than we make it. As my best friend, Pete knows what I'll like and what might make me think. Tonight, about an hour ago, he handed me an article and told me to read it. I put down the magazine I was reading and started reading the article he had suggested. It was about biocentrism, the best path science has presently to take in the pursuit of their scientific goal of making sense of it all. It was a fascinating read. As I knew it would be. And in it the writer reminded me of some of the other central truths that our world provides. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, distance between objects mutate depending on conditions like gravity and velocity. This means that there is no absolute definition of distance. Space is not empty, but instead full of potential particles made solid only by our perceptions. Distance is a perception. When I leave, and Pete is here, there is no real difference. As far as what we know from scientific studies, we aren't any farther apart than we were while sitting right next to one another. It's all subjective. I'm not trying to say that me being outside and Pete being inside is the same thing as us both sitting next to each other on the couch, but I will say that I am not sure it is at all different.

And my love, the woman that I speak of, the woman whose love and heart, whose strength and beauty, has shown me a new potential, although theoretically on the other side of the world, may not be that far from me at all. If space is not empty, than there is a line of potential particles which, if I focused on directly, could connect me directly to her at every moment, regardless of our individual placements in the percieved universe.

That's the point of these words and here is the brief summary. Life is fragile. Love, in my opinion, is the great gift of the thinking, expressive human mind. Love is the combination of the minds ability to create and the desire we humans have to believe that our hearts think too. Friends are never further than they feel. And fear should just as well be thrown out in general, rather than be something we apply to life's moments. If I fear the gangs, the drunks, the kids, or the spiders something I trust, like a skateboard, could jeopardize my health just the same.

At this point I feel the need to thank any of you who have read this far and hope that there is something that you have gained from these words. That is the goal of all of my words, of communication in general, to better the interaction, to heighten the experience. If someone has read this far, thank you for giving me the credit of thinking I know what I'm talking about. That isn't a self deprecating statement. It's the truth. I'm merely observing. What I know, I may never know. All I have is my perceptions and I thank you for indulging in their importance.

To any and all who support my writing, please note that it is not a choice and never has been. This is my favorite strength. I'll never stop writing. I'll never stop learning and watching the world. It is who I am, who I choose to be.

Since the realities that we are aware of, since the concreteness of everything is more subjective than we think, I'm going to pretend that I hear a violin in my ears for the remainder of my night. If I desire it, it will happen. A melody will accompany each step. A tune, soft as an angel's wing and as full of purpose as a bullet in a gun, will carry me through until tomorrow. If my mind likes, it can decide that it's a figment of my damaged senses, broken from drugs. Or I can deal with the other side, the one that I believe, the one that takes into account the immeasurable nature of faith and hope. With enough want, anything is possible. Throw in faith and hope to the scientific equations that leave us with little more than the truth that life is far more intense and complex than anything we have imagined so far and we've got a reason to live throughout any pain. If we know that we can manifest a sweet melody when logic says it isn't there, than anything, and I truly mean anything, is possible at any time. Every moment I spend living, thinking, sitting or standing, I am doing the most important job. And so are you. We're being human, one form of life. We're living, surviving, evolving. Life evolves. It is the only job. If we live, than we are doing whats best. Faith in the infinite nature of science and faith, of hope and a humble heart, is all that I need to carry me through until I reach the point where I just know that life is about to end.

We must trust our instincts. Although mine tell me that there is a serious need to worry, that this path I am walking is far more dangerous than I am even aware of, I have faith that I will survive to live the next important moment, whatever it is and wherever it happens. If not, I've lived and felt love, while knowing that all melodies are little more than manifestation available at all moments. That is the reason that I am happy to be a man and not a bug. But I know nothing of the perceptions of a bug so this is purely one sided.

The truth is mostly about not knowing. Discoveries lead us to more questions. Maybe it just is. Not that we shouldn't ask why and pursue the answers, but maybe life just is a combination of natural elements and the human creation of hope. Even if that's all we've got, I feel blessed to have it. Until next time, create your world exactly the way you'd like and you'll have it. Don't worry if it comes out a different color or if the shapes don't match your dreams, you've created exactly what is in front of, and inside of, you at all times. We are human. We hope. We know. We don't. The rest is up to you and I and anyone else who has ever lived. So good luck on your journey, I know I'll put importance on the idea of luck throughout mine, and I'll take the good luck you send back. Farewell, for now.