Love Letters To The Dark

Dear Darkness,

I am sorry. How many ways can I say this to you? I am sorry. I am so sorry.

I am sorry you are misunderstood. I am sorry no one trusts you. I am sorry that for millions of years---if not since the inception of the Universe---you have been the target of all sorts of false accusations: the biggest of which being that you are the home and residence of all that is evil. A shocking accusation given the fact that such figures as Satan--who have long been the personifications and embodiments of evil in the Universe were not "of the dark," or made of "darkness," but were actually creatures of light?

Have we all forgotten that the "brightest angels" are the ones who fell with Satan, the brightest of them all?

Darkness, I am sorry. I am sorry that I believed for years that you were the residence and abode of all that is evil. I am sorry I believed the lies borne of fearful imaginations that lacked real understanding. I am sorry I grew up naive and feared a relationship with you like all those around me did---and taught me to.

I am sorry that I never took the time to know you. For now I know that real understanding cannot be based on a lack of intimacy or contact. How can people think they know you and what your nature is if they are constantly running from you, constantly defending against your presence by always turning on the light and burning up all the matter in the Universe to illuminate that dark spaces we fear hold all kinds of monstrous beings? How can we know you when we shun you so? It is as if we have never even met.

We have, though. Now I know better. Whether through fate, dumb luck, or an intense commitment to not accept what is given at face value I actually have taken the time to know you. This is why I bristle at uninformed and ignorant associations of you with the essence of all that is evil. I know better.

Now I realize that when we don't understand someone or something we fear them. I see now how you are mischaracterized and charged with offenses that you never commit. In fact, all of your beneficence and goodness---which you bless the whole Universe with---is overshadowed by our own secret fears that, rather than own and hold ourselves accountable for, we throw onto the seemingly blank and black canvas you present.

You, darkness, I fear, have been our aeons long scapegoat. You have carried our own sins. We pinned them upon you like the ancient tribes of Israel used to do with a goat, in hopes that we would be free of them. It creates a vicious circle where we never understand you and your grace, nor are we ever freed from our own fears and phantasms of the mind. It simply does not work and yet we do it again and again.

Who stops, though, to ask if we are the crazy for doing this? Who stops to consider that if something is not working and we are confronted with the same issue again and again then why do we keep doing the same thing? Why have we made you the target of all that is negative in US, dear Darkness? Have we made ourselves so small and weak that we cannot hold and carry any longer in our own hearts that which we do to each other? Why must we make you responsible for it all? Why must we make your dark womb and lightless space the creator of all that is wrong with creation?

Why, dear Darkness, have we forgotten the passage in the Book of Genesis about God creating light? Why have we---time and time again---perpetuated this madness about light being the birther of all that is good, when it is light itself that is created, not the Creator? Why have we lost awareness that the Primordial State is null and void and---as such---is closer to your own nature, dear Darkness, than that of light.

"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." ~~~~Book of Genesis 1:3

How come we do not realize that light is not our primordial nature? That light was created and is a created entity and is given to birth and death like all beings..... like Stars..... like humans.... like dreams.... .like nightmares?

How come we are blind to you Dear Darkness? How come that blindness does not lead us to our loving you--as in the statement, "Love is blind?"----but, instead, to our fearing you? How come the lies and illusions are perpetuated in the light, with the light? How come we don't even realize that you cradle us and our dreams every night? How come we have rendered your ever-present embrace the thing of demons? How come we forget that the enlightening fires of Hell that scorch souls eternally is aflame with light and illumination? How come we----for far too long---have gotten it all wrong, and continue to get it all wrong?

How come there are so few brave enough to know you? And that when they become brave enough to know you they realize that bravery is not even required to know; that if we wait long enough you are there Darkness; that you are always there; that it is the light that is fickle; that it is the light that comes and goes; that it is the light that projects all the fears on your canvas; that it is the light that lies and hides and blinds us with illusory play of mirages on the desert scorched into infertility by too much of its own blazing glory?

Darkness, I love you. I say this truly. Because I have taken the time to better know you. I have felt you with my eyes closed. I have known your embrace in deep, dreamless sleep. I now know that the explosion of light is temporary---is the stuff of fear and fantasy. That dreams come and go but you, my Dark Love, are always here.

Excuse Me Dating.... But Has Anyone Told You Lately How Bad You Suck?!?

Sometimes I feel like that little boy who wants to play baseball with his friends so bad, and yet he sucks so much at the game that he ends up always storming off in protest, stomping his feet and yelling as he leaves, "I hate baseball anyways! Baseball is a stupid game and it sucks!"

That's exactly how I feel about "dating." 25 years as an eligible "dater" will do that to you. Maybe even 5 years as an eligible dater will do that to some of us. I bet even the Dalai Lama has no compassion for dating. Dating really does suck!

For the most part, though, people don't. People are cool. Except when they are not. I generally love the process of getting to know someone. It is forever interesting discovering someone else's story and journey in life (provided that that "someone" is not spending the first hour going on and on about themselves.... that's usually me, though, so I am safe in that regard).

Perhaps it is this whole charade that starts out when we become interested in the process of "natural selection" courtesy of our biology. Stuff starts happening to us and we find ourselves oddly obsessed with activities that a year or two earlier never crossed our mind. I didn't feel like this when I was 12. It is all so new and fresh, and, as such, it tends to capture our fancy. Oh, the possibilities that exist.

When we don't have it, oh how we want it. When we have it, oh how we can't be rid of it fast enough! Be wary of growing up too soon kiddos!  :-)

Fast-forward 20 or 25 years and the best some of us can muster is a roll of the eyes at the prospect of "dating." The sentence "You want to go steady," just doesn't have the same ring to it that it did in the 70's and 80's while we grew up watching Brady Bunch re-runs, does it? The allure has vanished in the Bermuda Triangle of human psychology. That and one too many romantic hangovers. Could of been the Jagermeister, too. Just a little.

At best, later in life, dating becomes full of irony. Little wonder that so-called "romantic comedies" are some of the most appealing and popular fare that Hollywood offers up on a monthly basis. Romance/dating is comedic, satirical. It may even be a farce! Tragically, with we ourselves being the cruel butt of the jokes. Hello, my name is Owen Wilson.

No one is going to cry for us, though, are they? We know that deep down inside so we get tough and act like we don't care. Just like Timmy who takes his baseball bat and glove home, kicking stones down the street as he walks, muttering to himself, "I don't care. Who likes baseball anyways. It is such a stupid game. Only dumb people play baseball."

Yup, Timmy. It is. It is the dumbest game around fit for only dumb people. A game where even the worst player cannot help but dream of someday hitting a walk-off homerun.

Stupid game anyways! 

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall.... Who Is The Fairest of Them All.

If Beauty is really an inside job, as the saying goes, then how come so many of us spend so much time and money improving the outside? Is there a contradiction here? Are we all, more or less, hypocrites on this? 

 
Standing in front of a mirror we appear to ourselves as whom exactly? Are we a critical eye informed by popular culture---constantly and sinisterly examining our every nook and cranny for that which is not quite right, which can be improved, which can be cosmetically adjusted?

We change our skin colour at the tanner, whiten our teeth, pluck a few out of place hairs, have our hair coiffed and our nose adjusted, our eyes done and our forehead flattened of all appearance of wrinkles or folds granted us by the gods of time. We fight the battle against imperfection. Yet what is perfection? Who is perfection? And when they are there in the land of perfection as the perfect face and body and hair how can they make it last? Isn't impermanence slowly eating away at every perfectly placed hair? Doesn't wind blow our hair out of place? Don't unexpected tears smear our mascara? Doesn't age bring a little weathering to our face? Doesn't time have our way with us---regardless of whether we want it to or not?

Maybe we win a battle or two and fend of the agents of impermanence, yet do we win the war?

Ultimately, this flesh is a rotting corpse, is a skeleton, is but dust and ash waiting to return to its primordial state as dust and ash. The beautiful and the ugly share the same fate here. None escape it. I don't care if you have the credit limit and rolodex of a Dolly Parton. At some point the jig is up and the charade of maintaining appearances at any and all costs becomes yet another exercise in futility.

This is not to say that one should not bathe. Hygiene is healthy! It need not be vain, though. To spend so much time on our appearance comes at the expense of what. Does the poet never pass into birth? Does the musician not write that significant song because she was in front of the mirror obsessing about something that is maybe not worth obsessing over? Does the artist or genuis flounder because the voice from the depths is sacrificed to the gods of the surface?

My sense is that if true beauty does indeed come from the inside--and we actually believe it--then our time will match what we say our values do. We will give time to our insides. We will set aside moments to listen to our soul and not just to the voice coming back from the mirror as we stand there obsessing over that which is not worth obsessing over.

If beauty comes from the inside then cultivating our insides---our consciousness, our heart, our virtue, our character---is where beauty can be found by each of us. Perhaps we will even walk away from the mirror when we are looking for our own beauty, and instead pick up a pen or a paintbrush, an animal or another person, and then let the beauty that is inside us flow out into the world around us.... making the world a place richer with beauty precisely because we were not looking for it in a reflection, but in an active and ongoing gesture of Grace that is beauties insides flowing outwardly. Then... and only then... we might just discover how beautiful we really are no matter how we look.   :-)

Caution Ahead: Grandpa In Training: Slow Driver In Outdated Sedan

I drive slow. I mean, really s-l-o-w...... So slow that your Gran and Gramps roll up on me and tailgate my ass. I swear they even flipped me off. Simultaneously, I might add. I won't hold it against them. I am sure they are fine, upstanding citizens who go to Church regularly and gossip about their friends like all good Christians do.

The thing is that my 'style' of driving---yes.... I have 'style' when I drive.... is made for Sundays, only everyday of the week. I have no special day for driving slow and enjoying the scenery. Every day is like this for me. In fact, it is probably the one thing that I have found essential in disengaging from the proverbial "rat-race"---the one that even well-intentioned folks do not realize they are caught up in. Slow down. It is your foot on the gas, not someone else's.

I have wondered often what purpose getting on that hamster wheel and going as fast as possible serves? What is the goal? Are we racing to death? Does the person who drives faster get places sooner so they end up doing more 'things' in life? Or does the person who drives faster merely miss out on so many little things that are lost in the blur that is the view offered out the side window?

Does speed let us get more done? Or does speed rob us off sinking deeper into the one life we have?

I don't mean to pick on you lead-footers and NASCAR wanna-bes. I know you all pay your taxes and floss. I just think you all are fucking nuts riding my ass like you do. Literally. N-U-T-S!! Some of you are NUTS with small children. Which is double or triple NUTS according to wikipedia!

It's not like I set out with the intention of getting in your way when I left the house. No. Really. Contrary to what you may believe not all of us think about "you" all the time. Besides, what happened to savouring a moment or two? Do we all need to be perpetually freaked-out and live life like we are constantly 15 minutes late for an appointment (observation suggests that the answer to that question is "Yes.")? Where is the joy in that. Not to mention we make everyone around us a potential crash-test dummie. And no.... not in the sense of the Canadian band and our humming with them the song, "Mmmmm..... Mmmmmm..... Mmmmmm.... Mmmmmm..... God... something or other." Literal, crash-test dummies. Only without the attractive and stylish jumpsuits.

Yes, I know you have brand-new minivan and you want to see what it can do. I know I am impeding your progress to a better-life based on speed and efficiency. I know I am a roadblock in my 1991 Chrysler Imperial prepping for retirement in a gated Floridian retirement village where we all drive golf-carts and three-wheeled bicycles. I know I piss you off. And you know what? I am not sorry one bit. Why?

I am not sorry for me bothering to enjoy the road, the drive, the day. I am going to notice things that you whizz past and never see. I am going to avoid an accident or three that you will be in because you are moving too fast to effectively respond to other situations around you. I am going to live longer---on average. I am also going to have enjoyable conversations with the people who ride with me. We are going to stop frequently and look at things that we see alongside the road that interest. We are going to take more pictures of Sunsets and stop at more dumpy roadside diners and dives where we will discover secret culinary treats. We are also going to wave as you drive by with your foot to the floor, your blood pressure to the ceiling, and your middle finger raised and flying free like the true symbol of the United States of America that it is. Fuck yeah! We are going to enjoy ourselves and our journey no matter what. Because you know what the secret of peace on the road is: if you are the slowest driver out there no one ever impedes your progress, gets in your way, pulls out in front of you, cuts you off, or puts your life in danger.

So feel free to honk and wave as you drive by. I'll be having a nice day.

"I'm So Hungry I Could Eat A Horse!"

Has anyone actually ever followed through on that and eaten a horse. I am talking a full-sized horse, not any of those pint-sized ponies that people keep in their house and end up needing an intervention from their friends because of. I don't think being a Cowboy in 1883 and being forced to eat your trusty stead because you got lost on the trail and ran out of food counts either. Same for the Donner Party. Which always troubled me, now that I think of it: did they NOT eat their Horses before they started eating each other?

Dog food doesn't count either. I don't care how tasty it is! We are talking Filet of Secretariat here.

Funny how cows and horses are about the same size and we actually eat cows---unless you are from India, then you allow them to piss and shit on your front lawn (do they have "lawn" in India ) and eat rice with your hands---but no one ever says, "I am so hungry I could eat a Cow!" I mean, it is not like a Cow is to a Horse as a Mouse is to an Elephant.

This is where you interject and inform me that it is not meant to be taken literally and is just a figure of speech. It is not meant to mean that someone is actually going to eat a whole Horse---even if they could.... or wanted to. It is just someone saying they are really, really hunger and have a monstrous appetite. Kind of like when a guy without the assistance of an erectile dysfunction says he is going to make passionate love all night long. He doesn't really mean that he can. Anymore than he ate a Horse 2 hours earlier when he was "stah-ving!"

That is the peculiar thing about desire and how relative it is. Before the desire is fulfilled---while it looms on the horizon like an oasis in the desert---that desire feels larger than life. I really think I could eat a Horse, and I really could play Mailman all night long without being assisted by any pills or powders. That is how it FEELS in the moment. The desire feels massive and ravenous.... all-consuming. The proverbial eyes are bigger than the stomach is.

We are not lying either when we say how we feel in that moment. We are giving shape and substance to our subjective feelings. Our desire is all-consuming. That is how it feels. The irony, though, is that our capacity to hold and contain the objects of our desire is not as big. The willingness of our desire---the desire of our desire---is greater, in many instances than is our capacity for our desire.

Is that a little too philosophical? Perhaps. It need not be, though. I am sure any one of us can find immediate and direct examples from our own lives where our willingness led us to overestimating our capacity. It happens in love and relationships all the time. We don't need to just be talking about eating Horses here. That person who has the willingness to be faithful in marriage may not have the capacity to do so. Their desire is true and legitimate while their capacity to enact that desire is limited.

The same can be said for the person who is suffering with an addiction: one can have the desire for sobriety, and overcoming the abuse of a particular substance, while not having the capacity to actually do so. They may not be lying. They may not be dishonest. The lover who wants and craves you passionately---in the moment of intense passion---can be honest about their passionate desire to have you forever, while not being capable of actually doing that forever. The willingness is real. So are the limits of our capacity; and oftentimes the nature of all-consuming desire is such that it distorts our own perception of ourselves and the reality of what we are capable of. The result is that we overestimate how hungry we actually are.
 

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse, but I'll just settle for a burger.

The Apocalypse Is Coming! Repent Now! This Is Your Last Chance!

I haven't shaven in more than a week. Been drinking for days. I am making my signs and placards. You can find me on the corner of Franklin and Washington in virtually any majour metropolitan area. Remember to do your best to ignore me. To you, I don't exist. The message and messenger both meaningless.... insignificant. Their delivery an effort in futility.

Can you imagine being struck by the impact of something so profoundly that you feel compelled to share it? Can you imagine being "crazy enough" to invite shame and ridicule? Have you tasted such madness before? Have you known such passion?

Maybe you don't even have to imagine the power of such a message. Maybe you know both the impact of such an overwhelming feeling of necessity in having a message be delivered by you, as well as that messages insignificance to others. Maybe you know what it feels like to carry the most important message the world will ever see while also realizing at the same time that no one else cares. Really, they don't.

Is there anyone more ridiculed than the madman who thinks he has a message to share about the "end of the world?" This is clearly someone who does not know his place. While the common vagrant merely pushes his or her stolen shopping cart down the street---the one loaded with all of their belongings, from the cardboard shell to the dingy throw-away blankets, from the bottles as empty as their dreams to the stale bread collected from yet another alley's dumpster---the madman with a message actually is deluded into believing that his voice matters; that God would speak to him.

How ballsy, eh? Someone who cannot just put his or her head down and refuse to make eye contact with the public. Someone who cannot just beg and panhandle for spare change. Someone with enough gall to imagine that they have something important to share with others: a message, and a very important at that. Now that's balls.

How passionate does one have to be to stand and deliver a message like that in the face of overwhelming disgust and ridicule? Talk about faith. Being rejected more than a zit-faced 13-year old at his first High School Dance and still holding one's ground is something that I don't feel a lot of us can understand fully. To have no one talk you seriously, while you believe you are delivering the most important message the world has ever known.

I bet even a mustard seed dreams of having as much faith as the haggard old man donning his placards and heading out to the street corner to be ignored. In fact, even I am dreaming of one day having that much faith.

A Name Can Get You Killed Around Here

“When I get older I am changing my name,” Uriah proclaimed to me as we watched Michigan State football team mount a comeback against Georgia.

“Oh, really?” I asked.

“Yup,” he replied.

"What’re you going to change it to?” I wondered aloud to him.

He came back with something that sounded like “Uhmmm Zee….. Zeeee …. uh…. Zeke.”

Short for Ezekial, perhaps?

Maybe Uriah hadn’t really thought of it that much.... or that closely. Maybe I caught him off guard in wondering what his first choice of new last name would be. Maybe he just knew that Peckinpaugh was not cool.... nor normal.

Normal. Please God, for the love of all that is good, true, and beautiful do not name me something that stands out and gets me attention, especially cruel and invective attention that is unwanted. Heaven forbid my name ends up actually rhyming with some form of genitalia or gross bodily function, like vulva or scrotum.

I sympathized with Uriah. When I was just a boy I dreamt of one day changing my name. I used to dream of being named “Marty.” I know. Really, I did. My favourite Motocross Racer was Marty Smith and he had long hair and apparently quite a following amongst the ladies. Yeah, let me be Marty for a day. This 8 year-old boy is not as innocent and inexperienced as he looks. Come on over here and talk to ME, Ms. Honda of 1978.

Truly, I did. I knew exactly the place Uriah was coming from. Even if it stung a little at first to hear him say he wanted to change his name----which is the same as saying I don’t like the name I have and was given by you, or inherited from you---I did understand the apparent power and allure of a name other than the one we are given. What child hasn't wanted to change their name. Hell, Zen monks and priests do it all the time. You don't have to be "spiritual" or bent on "enlightenment" to want to change your name. You may just be seduced into believing that all the cruelty in the world is tied to the fact that your parents named you after your mole-faced Great Aunt. Mabel?? Really, Mabel??

If it were only that simple, though. If we could just call ourselves something new and change our existence. If we could just give ourselves a superhero name and begin saving the day. If we could only have the popular names, the above-average names, the attractive names, the wealthy names. Anything other than the name we have. Anything other than Peckinpaugh. God, Peckinpaugh?? Really, Dad??

When I was 21 and writing and recording music in an attempt to have it become my vocation in life I changed my name. I took on the proverbial "stage-name." Not one with the ring of a porn star or a stripper…. nor a glam-rocker from LA in the heydays of the 1980’s metal scene like Blackie Lawless, Nikki Sixx, or Rikki Rocket. I was not Titiana or William Hung. I merely dropped the Peckinpaugh and went with Zoe for a last name. David Zoe. That is who I was. That is who I thought I became. On the music I released and any of the promotion to do that is who I became: David Zoe.

It had meaning for me. It was significant. Zoe was chosen by me because of its being the Greek word for “Life.” I wanted to be newly animate and animated. It was a very soulful choice for me. I was, in a way, attempting to bring some “Life” to my life.

Of course a name change doesn’t always accomplish this as readily as choosing a name out of a hat. Not like a transplanted pig liver can, or a new love, or a dream. Changing my name didn’t really change me. It certainly didn’t change other people’s impressions of, or relations to, me either. I was not more famous or respected or noticeable. I was not more at peace inside. I was not suddenly free of all instances of anxiety about what this life is or is for, and how the fuck I am supposed to make my way through it without getting killed because I was cursed with the wrong name.

It was just a word. It is just a word. Sadly, though, they are words that can be deadly. Have the wrong name and it can literally get you killed. Whether humans have been Jewish or Irish or Latino or African-American---a name can really hurt. It identifies us as a specific member of a specifically targeted ethnic or religious group----or even as one who simply is “from that family”---the one that lives on the wrong-side of the tracks.

In the 1930’s my maternal Grandmother—who was born in Oklahoma and was Cherokee---moved to Michigan to run from both her name and her heritage. She, like so many others who have had to do so, left an area where she was boxed in because of her name and her race. She went North and passed for “white.” She was a relative success at it, too. No one caught on. Few of her friends knew she was Cherokee. She hid both her name and her heritage.

At what price, though. What is the price of us seeking exile from our identity, from our history, from our name? Do we end up running from who we are in running from our name? Isn’t there a history and a story to our names that is as much us as any Buddhist notion of emptiness is or New Age proclamation of our being "spiritual beings?" Isn’t it our name that connects us backwards in time---and forwards, for that matter—to our ancestors, our culture, our human roots?

Isn't it our name that gives us a sense of continuity? Isn't our name a testament to our lineage?

My own name change failed. I gave up pursuing music as a vocation---as most musicians end up doing! Yeah, I still played. I just realized the business of music was not where my passion was. Not to mention that I was not that good!

I didn’t quite know what I would do next. I drifted. I hung out in bookstores. I was looking for a new name…. a new identity, a new me…. a new dream. It really never occurred to me that I had the perfect name already, or that I embodied the perfect self. Caught up in the fever of everyone else is better, and infected with the virus of “I need to change,” the thought of already having or being what I needed to be most was as far from my thoughts as any thought could be.

Unbeknownst to me that was all about to change. This is how great life is. This is what can happen when we least expect it---actually, when we are expecting nothing at all.

One day in my late 20's, while returning a book at one of those bookstores I hung out at, I was required to fill out a “return form” with my name and address on it. In order to exchange the book I bought for another I had to tell the lady behind the counter my name. "Peckinpaugh," she said. "Really? That is your real name?"

"Yup," I said, matter-of-factly, “David Jon Peckinpaugh?"

"Wow," she went on, "that sounds just like the name of a distinguished writer or something.”