Streaming Consciousness on The First of January

Thus ends the first day of the new year, with the soft rocking of this chair, and the sounds of the forest.  My mother's always divine cooking sits warm and rumbly in my nicely round tummy.  Her apple pie is even now doing a delighted tango across my soul, calling all of my demons forth and making tail wagging puppies out of them all.  There are many things wrong with the world, many things wrong with me.  But tonight they all feel inconsequential to the great truth - I love this life.  I love the Goddess that chose me to be the bearer of this Sufi soul.  I've wrestled with something I've been writing for three days now.  And all I've accomplished is one brilliant paragraph that I forgot to save when the power cut off like it does so often in this part of India, that was lost forever to the hatred of my battery, and the ocean of positivity that surges within me.

It's been a hell of a year.  Full of inexplicable lows and unexpected and expected tragedies, and highs that burned like wildfire and then disappeared like morals in a whorehouse, so infrequent and so fleeting, they barely left any lingering traces.  Or maybe that was just me this year.  So many things I did I wasn't proud of, so many things I thought I was better than only to realize that life brings us all to our knees sooner or later.

But whilst I knelt I learned to accept, and to turn that acceptance into the will to stand again, and brush the dust off me.  I shall stride into this new dawn like the Gypsy of Faith I was created to be.  Nothing tells me I'm on the right path like the joy that comes to me just as my eyes close and sleep wraps its arms around me here, on this bed in my room on the edge of a sea of grass that whispers softly to me all night long.

I am a foolish man.  I am a dreamer.  I am a grouch.  I am a poet.  I am an actor.  I am a man searching for a quiet lasting happiness.  I'm a man who found home in the heart of a girl only to be told that home wasn't for me.  I'm a man who will find Home again.  I am a joy.  I am the laughter that won't stop, I'm the tears that come from that.  I am the music that fills this house.  I am the wagging of my dogs' tails.  I am the frenzy in their barking.  I am the amused giggles on my sisters' faces, the look of fierce pride in my father's.  I am my mother's arms around me, I am the contented sigh she gives when looking up at me from the shadows of my chest.  I am Hope.  I am Love.

Goddess forgive me my missteps.  Guide me back to the center of the dance floor, and I'll get the steps right this time.  Let this year be filled with the warmth and the friendships that have made Bombay home.  Let me not trouble anyone with my complicated mood swings, or my occasional misanthropic spells of aloofness.  Let me be honest with myself, and with the girls of the fragile hearts.  Let me be a better man, the man I look for in the mirrors.  Let me laugh long and true, let me write things that will only make you smile.  Let me finish the book I began.  Let me learn what love really is.  Because I know I've gotten it wrong before.

I hear the winter pull away from the clouds, and gather all of the rain drops glistening on the leaves, and carry them into my room.  He knocks and enters, then stands on the floor and smiles.  It's good to be home.  I love the winter, and he loves me.  I love the Lake, and she's always loved me.  She's smiling like an indulgent mother as I write this.  I hear her stroking the shore my house sits on, like a lullaby.

The National and their miraculous music fills my room for hours, as I sit writing, as I dream, as I laugh at myself and all of my insecurities, as I remember to remind myself to remember who I'm supposed to be.  And that that person is quite a remarkable guy.

This is going to be a great year.  The world shall not end in fire, but be reborn in each of us like the seed of a magic beanstalk, carrying us into the sky, making giants out of our dreams.

We are the happy heart of this world.  We are what give the Gods some hope.  We are broken and alone only until we look around and within.  We are perfect as we are.  We are all poets with Sufi souls.  We are the music that makes the world twirl.  We are exactly what we need.

Bless you all.  Look in the mirror and smile.  And say "I love you."