The clock above the doorway fell and hit me on the back as I entered the bathroom. Time is beating down on me as I attempt to purify myself. But from what I remember, that clock has never worked. And yet it’s remained there on the threshold, some silent guardian and reminder. You may not cross past this point. You may not look the sun in the eyes and find release. But when the sun finally falls and cracks across your back, what then? There are two more days left in my third death-rebirth cycle. By that time, I predicted, there will be no turning back. No turning your back. Nothing else falling on your back, hopefully. What comes then, I don’t know. A priest in the Temple of my own Heart. God’s hands holding me up or holding me back?

Martin Luther writes:

God works by contraries so that a man feels himself to be lost in the very moment when he is on the point of being saved. When God is about to justify a man, he damns him. Whom he would make alive he must first kill. God’s favor is so communicated in the form of wrath that it seems furthest when it is at hand. Man must first cry out that there is no health in him. He must be consumed with horror. This is the pain of purgatory… In this disturbance salvation begins. When a man believes himself to be utterly lost, light breaks.

So just go ahead and hit rock bottom. Stop fucking fighting it. Stop being a baby and clinging to childish ways of living and being within this world. Because by resisting, you aren’t in this world anyway. To be in this world is to suffer and die again and again at every moment with no hope of resurrection other than what you take as you pull yourself out of the sewers of alcohol and drug addled minds. When you wake up twenty years from now having wasted your life drinking and resisting life what will you do then, have another drink?

Fuck all of this. I have lived a life afraid of life, acting like its champion while running from it upon the field of battle. When you turn and actually fight, what are you fighting? The flowers of life and death. That Martin Luther quote made me cry when I read it. Crying is a recognition of the Truth held within a moment. What is that Truth? That Truth is crying. That Truth is crying out: oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?

Last night I dreamt something about a “pizza fight” and there was a circle of people who were insulting each other and calling one another names like “douchebag” and somehow the NBA was involved as some kind of regulating body in the whole thing.

It’s now two nights ago that I had that dream. In the intervening time period, I joined Harry Potter in the Order of the Phoenix, which I didn’t think was anything special. While we were waiting for the movie to start though I heard somebody two or three rows back say something about how a friend of his had named his daughter “Devotion.” All the muggles immediately started saying how horrible a name that is, but understanding something about the subject at hand, I find it to be quite beautiful. Maybe if I had a different last name though. I also found out last night that alcohol can land you in a mental hospital by 57 with early onset dementia shitting yourself and masturbating in front of strangers. Nobody ever seems to talk about this but I feel like maybe they should. Because I mean fuck, I was already dancing with the devil of not-drinking-anymore… But I seem to do this to myself in cycles. Maybe those cycles are astrological. Maybe they’re spiritual.

This past night I dreamt about living on the water in some kind of weird archipelago of floating tents, rafts and kayaks with a woman. Sea gypsies I suppose. Earthsea. Ged. I remember dreaming of this once before long ago. It may be one of those places I go, at night. I think my gypsying days may be almost over. “and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”

Anyway back to the dreams of a couple nights ago. I dreamt I went down to Arcadia to retrieve my soul. My entire family met me down there at the airport for some reason, except for my sister who is getting divorced. I got this scooter which eventually turned into a car. I also floated down city streets above it all. Not only that but I independently ran into both John Kerry and Bill Clinton. Seems they were attending some kind of secret meeting. I talked to a guard at the building about it. He put his arm around my shoulder and was very kind to me. Ophelia wouldn’t speak to or look at me. She almost never does in dreams. I eventually ended up back in Wallingford and then discovered a “new place to eat breakfast” called Frankie’s that only serves French breakfast items. Each of them cost $11.05. I didn’t want to spend that much but lingered for a while looking at the menu until someone behind the counter offered me half of a chocolate croissant for free.

I saw a sign yesterday that said, “Enjoy Our Entire Banana Collection.”

Was Mary Jesus’ first disciple or was it the other way around? Who is the Shaper and who is the Maker? I can’t tell anymore. I give up. “And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.” Don’t get involved with me kid. You wouldn’t understand… I live in the House of Reptiles, the House of Snakes, the House of Rebirth of Resurrection. Do you know what you’re doing? She grabs my face and looks me in the eyes.

Worship is the sound of the whip on the bowed back. Snake tames lion with whip shape sharp tip.

WORSHIP IS FOR WHIP.

PRAISE IS FOR RAISE.

To press is to impress. To stress is to press. To cause stress is impressing upon someone’s person an impression of exertion.

Worship is the whip. Snake is the shape. Praise is to raise this shape in the face. To hiss is to get hitched. I hate you because I love you because I can’t unknow what I now know but I can’t have you and all I can do is try to give it to others, to sisters and brothers, to fathers and mothers, to lovers and all others; to all of us to every one god or goddess or not can’t beat what I got. The Holy Grail is a real thing. I’ve seen it and held it but I couldn’t keep it because I couldn’t solve the riddle of the sphinx to join the Order of the Phoenix between us flames and names of our pleasures endless upon measure if not in this world than the next. What God has joined let no man put asunder.

I realize and accept the impurity of my heart. I devour my own rage anger and hatred daily and it devours me. It causes me no end of misery to not be of a single mind and of one heart that belongs to Truth and Love at all times and to you, O Lord. Because I know it can be done. I did it once but I couldn’t hold onto it simply because I tried to do so. Whom does the Grail serve? I still don’t know the answer to that most basic of questions set before the Grail Knight, indicating that I am no knight at all but still a squire as my Leonard says. I am still struggling. “He knew everything but where to begin.” But maybe this is just the voice of Mappo within me (The Grail is the vessel of the fullness of my love poured out upon my belovedevotion my beloved loved blood death devotion):

The idea of mappo is not a mere intellectual notion to be believed in or discounted but is a living reality of our 21st century. Mappo is our collective and individual inner condition of self-centeredness, corruption, deceit and evil. Institutionally, it manifests itself in corrupt governments, greedy corporations, war, repression and discrimination. In individual terms, it is marked by an acute form of excessive self-absorption and attachment, anxiety, depression, malevolence and fear.

Many of us may consider mappo a mere philosophical or metaphorical representation of our evil and corrupt times but it much more. It is the heart of our true inner dimension.

Realizing this, I can assuredly say that I am mappo too. Mappo is within me. There can not be G.R. Lewis without mappo and mappo can not be without G.R. Lewis. We are one. Understanding this, I reflect upon my imperfect self and know that I’m heavily burden with foolish nature. The reality of being a foolish being is just an individualized expression of mappo. Knowing this, I realize that everything is foolish and transitory. Only the nembutsu is real. Therefore I rely exclusively on the Primal Vow of Other Power and trustingly voice the Name-that-Calls, Namu-Amida-Butsu.

From that Edinger book: “I thought none but the Devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. Sure, thought I, I am forsaken of God; and thus I continued for a long while…”

But according to Anselm, fall satisfaction requires the return of more than was originally taken. This is impossible since man owes God total obedience even without sin. He has no extra resources to pay his penalty. For this he must use the grace provided by the sacrifice of the God-man Jesus Christ. In the sequence of sin and repentence God himself pays the fine by an influx of grace… Ego’s sin and subsequent penalty are necessary to generate the flow of healing energy (grace)

I don’t know where any of this leaves me. Probably where I started. Days later is the only difference. But the days are all the same lately. Until next week when I learn to walk on water… A strange girl once told me I give up too easily. Then I kissed her and walked away.