To me just looking at places everyday in the ads and the listings and the pictures of New York, it seems like it could get really easy to feel totally isolated and alone there sometimes. Just because it’s so big. You know? I just looked at a place in the lower east side and I swear to God I got the shivers all over my body imagining living there. so far away from everything. I think I would have to be more midtown or uptown myself. Would feel more secure for some reason. Like the park is home base. And the farther you are away from the park, the more away from everything you will feel.

Searching on google for something, I happened upon the words ‘cider house rules.’ I couldn’t remember what it was about exactly but I knew it was a movie. It was a movie that I had seen once. That had won some awards. That starred that guy who is in over a million movies, Michael Caine. I just sat there staring at the words ‘cider house rules.’ I remembered that was one of those ‘won an academy award. Must see it’ movies at one point in our lives. I looked at the date. It said 1999. I thought to myself, ‘wow. So there is it. I saw this movie. I went out of my way to rent and watch this movie at some point in my past. And now looking back, did it mean anything? Does it mean anything to me now?’ I can’t even remember what the movie was about now. what is it about our collecting things like the experience of seeing a movie that seems so important to us in our moment to moment present? And what is it about us that later forgets the entire experience? Was it important at some point? It certainly doesn’t seem important now. so the question that is begging to be answered now is, how important are a lot of these things that we do day to day that we at one time consider important? And more, what is important? In the larger picture of our lives. What is important?

I opened up Outlook and looked at my current task list. 243 items still to do. what an insanely silly workaholic I am. Make sept 11th video, finish ttv website. Research Luxemburg. Research Christian Science. Study history of Colombia. Live in Paris, learn French. Take African safari... the list goes on forever. I thought to myself, how many of these items in the bigger picture are even important? It’s a tough call. I know people who say that once they have children that it becomes the most important thing in the world to them. and as much as I can understand that emotionally, I wonder, ‘so that's it?’ Having kids is it? that's the big rainbow at the end of the tunnel? That's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? For me personally, it has to be more.

When Cleopatra and I were together, for a time there, I thought that that was meaning enough for me; our house, our stuff, our relationship, our pet names for each other, our friends, our goals, our careers. When that ended I realized that there had to be more to it; because after all, there are plenty of single people in the world who don't have that kind of love in their life. so where is their meaning? Has to be more. and then from there you think about your family. Your parents and your brothers and sisters and all that. and as wonderful as all that is, that can’t be it either. Again, there are people who don't have any of that in their lives either. So there must be more. there has to be some deeper meaning to this life. But what it is I do not know yet.
For the last three or four days I have found myself in deep contemplation over this. not that I am trying to beat a dead horse, because I know I have contemplated this more than possibly anything else in my short life, but I cannot shake it. I cannot help but feel that Cleopatra and I breaking up and me selling everything I own now and having this freedom now to do whatever I please and go where ever I please is some kind of gift from the universe to find this deeper meaning. I am free. Truly free, as I have never been before. Whether or not there is an actual answer to this dilemma I do not know but I am sincerely glad right now that I have been able to escape marriage and children as of yet. Because I wouldn’t be able to give of myself fully until I come to terms with this hunger. There has to be more to our human experience than hunting and gathering and mating and collecting things. I must find the answer. 

If there is a God, and I believe there is, in some form, [I'm not against the big man upstairs, just against the box that organized religious people try to put him in] then I believe that for every one of us God provides the answers we need in our lifetimes to feel whole and satisfied. I have this vision of God as a really loving generous open hearted force that guides each of us in the right direction towards what we need most in our lives. For me, I haven't found that yet. I love my music and my writing and my friends and my family, but I cannot help but feel that there has to be more to it. it is an intuitive knowing. No. Not necessarily. More like an intuitive longing. I long for the day when this yearning is fulfilled and I am at peace with a deeper understanding of why we are here and what the real meaning is. until that day, I will keep wandering and learning and searching.

Last screening: The Weather Underground. This is important. Documentary about the Weatherman. Group of revolutionaries who declared war on the American government in the sixties and seventies and blew off all these bombs all over the country as a form of protest

They said, “We are all guilty by our acquiescence of the atrocities being carried out around us and in our names.” The same could be said about us today certainly. We live our humble happy lives here at home and any number of atrocities are carried out all over the world in our names. The Iraq war is certainly an example of this. But so is that story of the employees at the Gap stores here in the States opening up a shipment of new clothes that were made in Indonesia, and “Help us” was scratched on the inside of the box. There is just no end to it. and indeed it can seem quite daunting a task to fathom how on earth we are meant to right all of the inequities going on around us.

They pointed to the dichotomous and ironic creedo that was the American way of life, the unspoken law that “all violence that is not carried out or sanctioned by the U.S. government is either criminal or mentally ill.” If our government is doing it then its o.k. If one of is doing it we are either mad or a criminal. Now we can’t be surprised or even impressed by that observation. History shows that its always been like that since we've been here and had formalized governments.

What is amazing is how different the people are today concerning the Iraq war compared to the Vietnam war thirty years ago. There is an apathy in modern America that is truly breath taking.

The loss of ideological heroes and values was so severe in the sixties that America went into shock and denial in the nineteen-seventies. And we are still there today I believe. What will shake us out of it? I don't know.