O.k. what an adventure. I had to call a cab from the apartment and have him take all my luggage to the new hotel. And then I had to follow him. We’re talking like ten or more miles, maybe more. about a half hour drive right through the center of Rome from the bottom all the way to the top of it. I was following him on my scooter. He was driving very fast. through all these little streets, huge squares, and mammoth highways. Traffic everywhere. it was right out of a movie. Me following as close behind him as possible, sometimes driving up to 80 kms. If all that wasn't enough he takes me right into piazza di spagna (what we call the very famous “Spanish Steps”) which is where my new abode is, and this is a pedestrian only area and I'm whizzing through it on their motorcycle trying to follow him and these cops are chasing me. but I'm thinking ‘I'll just keep going and act like I don't see them, how much farther can this hotel be?’ they finally catch up to me blowing their whistles and everything and by now all the tourists are watching this. because of all the ruckus in this huge square. This lady cop starts shouting at me and pointing for me to pull over, thinking I'm Italian. and I'm like, (in Italian of course) I'm sorry I don't speak Italian. What are you saying?” and she's screaming back, “you don't speak Italian?! you speak Italian just fine! What the hell is wrong with you?! why didn't you stop?! Blah blah blah.” Finally the taxi cab driver comes running back to us shouting “he's an American. he's trying to follow me. i have all his luggage in my cab.” And she's like, “I don't give a shit. He's in a pedestrian only area and you know it. why did you let him come whizzing through here on that scooter like that?! you know better.” It went on and on. I continued to plead that I knew nothing about this and was simply following a cab. She was getting very angry at me and told me I had to walk this scooter like a mile in the opposite direction. At which I said very politely, ‘no way. I'm too tired. My hotel is that way. please let me walk it to my hotel.’ and miraculously she said yes. What a mess. It was one of those comedies from the seventies. Me and the lady cop, who was very hot and sexy by the way, and the cabby all arguing in front of thousands of tourists. And her waving this ticket book like it was life or death if she gave us a ticket. And I'm thinking I hope she does give me a ticket. I will fucking rip it up right in her face, hop on my scooter and take off down some alley. Then it will turn into a woody Allen movie. Classic. 

So. I woke up this morning and I just knew I needed to move. You live in one of these tenement buildings like this old one and you share a common courtyard with maybe fifty other apartments. Which is fin except in Italy where there is no AC. So everyone leaves all their windows open. All day and all night. so by 6 am you are wide awake to every conceivable sound from everyone else who is waking up. its really gross but you hear every person burp, use the bathroom, cough sneeze, talk to their spouses or kids, walking their dogs, making their breakfast, etc, etc. so by 6 am I was laying awake in their sweaty old disgusting bed listening to all these strange people do their thing. And I didn't get to sleep until maybe 2 or 3 because I was so hot. And I was just like o.k. now I  know what the lesson is. get the fuck out of situations that don't serve you. and next time don't take so long. I made it school. Groggy as hell and late as always because I got way lost and drove miles out of the city of Rome cause I got caught on some stupid expressway driving way faster than I had any right to be, but just to keep up with traffic so I didn’t get run over. By the time I got to class I was angry and grumpy and stressed.

After a while I cooled into what is turning into a very good class. Better than the one in Florence. This class is all adults rather than teenagers. We have a Ukrainian, two Slovakians, two Germans, a French man, me from the States, a Brasilian, a lady from Congo in Africa, a lady from Chile, and an Argentina. So lots of different languages floating around the room. Very little English, which sucks for me. But maybe that is a good thing in the long run. I am forced to speak italian or Spanish or Portuguese. or mumble in English while everyone laughs at me for trying to speak English to a teacher who doesn’t speak it.  

Rome. What is it like? Not as a tourist. If you’ve been here or you do come here someday as a tourist, stay three or four days to see the sites, casually walking the streets while you eat your gelato, shut up because you have no idea what its like. I'm talking what is it like if you are living here and driving around all over the place on a scooter or in a car, trying to find your way around and find a grocery store and drycleaners etc. totally different thing. For one thing, yes it is very hot, as one recent Navy guy from the states I met said, ‘you spend a lot of the day just thinking about how hot you are and trying to find places with ac.’ For another thing. The city is every bit as big as New York. Rome is huge. Its like Sao Paulo or Tokyo. But there is no grid system here like in New York. After all the city is twenty-five hundred years old. So its just a big jumble of streets and highways and plazas and squares and alleys and whatever else you can imagine. They go straight, crooked, diagonal. They cut off after only a block sometimes. And of course they are all one way. so you may be driving one way and then the street just cuts off and you can’t go anymore. You have to turn or turn around. Its just crazy. And there a very few traffic lights. So everyone just drives however they want to. the fastest and the bravest one wins. This is the only rule of the roads here from what I can tell. There are even fewer street signs. A lot of times you have to drive really far looking everywhere just to see what street you are driving on. This is all stuff that is hard to get used to if you live in the United States of perfection. Where everything is in its right place. 

After class I hopped on the bike and went to go find a new place to live. as Harry palmer would say, I started out on an adventure of creative study. I knew I didn't know what I was doing. I was exhausted from not getting much sleep. And I was driving a motorbike around a huge city. I got lost a hundred times. Cursed the city and cursed myself. I just kept going from hotel to hotel and asking do you have ac and how much is a room. I ended up in a tourist center where you can ask them anything and they find it for you. this was great. A Japanese lady actually helped me find this place after asking me all these questions about my preferences. I told her I need to take your picture. You are such a lifesaver. Thank you so much.

I found the coolest hotel right in the historic center. Literally in the most coveted area of the whole city. right in the heart of piazza di spagna. In the area where via del condotti is, which is the Rodeo Drive of Europe. its like the most famous street in Europe for shopping. Every single designer is all on this one street that spans a few miles. The hotel is very small and quaint and precious and is all done up in the King Louis the XIV style. It is gorgeous and I'm paying a ridiculously low rate for it because I promised them I would live here for a few weeks. People always say don't go through tourists places but I disagree. I always get great hotels and really good rates that way. 

this is my friend steph from Germany on the street of my hotel...

the hotel...

So this place is gorgeous. The walls are covered in beautiful brocaded fabrics. And its all this French furniture etc. the patterns are the same as at my house. So I am very happy and cannot believe that I suffered against my own intuition in that hell hole for a week. but this was a very important lesson. Life is not to be endured. It is to be enjoyed. 

Lauren Holmes is right. she is dead on. She is way ahead of her time with her theories. I have not read the peak evolution book in about six weeks or more because I have been studying other things. So I think I got a little off track to be honest with myself. I wasn't listening and watching the signs, or optimizers as she calls them. remember that emotions, how you feel, is one of the ten optimizers. So if you feel like shit, hello, wake up, there is something wrong. lots of things. I felt like shit there. I couldn’t even drive through the neighborhood without actually feeling horrible. But I ignored it and told myself I “had to endure it” in order to save money. And then a bunch of other justifiers will kick in too. anything to keep us stagnant or settled and before you know it you're totally settled on a life that is not optimal for you and you don't even know it. you think you are there. you think maybe that it is for the best. you think that is the best that you can do. you tell yourself that if something else was meant to be then it would happen, or you would find it. All bullshit. if something else is meant to be then you will find it if you look for it or go and hunt it down. This is up to you. 

My belief is that it is probably about fifty percent us, forty percent nature or God or the force, whatever you call it, and then I think maybe and this is just a theory in progress, about ten percent something else at play like combination spirits or guides or angels. You can feel that energy now and then. Perhaps it is just our higher self, or our future self, or passed on family members helping us. but it is something alive and conscious, but not in this plane, that is out there willing to lend a hand and kind of looking out of us. throwing us signals. along with this other more powerful force that could be called God or nature or the universe. But the rest, the majority of our destiny, I believe is up to us. each and every moment. I think this is the biggest challenge the religions of the world (except Buddhism) have in catching up to human consciousness or to reality. They are still relegating too much conscious power to the God force, as if the God force sits and thinks about each one of us every second of the day and does everything for us. when in fact he/she/it wants us and needs us to rise to the same level as he/she/it through being absolutely deliberate and in control of our lives and destinies. 

Its kind of obvious but maybe just not to religious people. in the past they used to say, these same religious people, that God was in control of the sun or nature. That's why we call it “acts of  God” when a storm blows down our house. But most thinking people don't give the God force this much power anymore. Its really very funny when you start to think about all of it. you can go on forever because really we just don't have a fucking clue. Were all just making it up. year after year and century and then we die so no one ever knows what the fuck is really going on. 

So yea now we've determined that God doesn’t knock down peoples houses anymore. Now we call that nature. Whatever the hell that is. now were back to random events. What is that? quantum mechanics maybe. But people still think God is this major force directing almost everything in their lives. And here's the clincher: maybe he/she/it is. for them. because they believe that. so if something doesn't happen that they really want, they tell themselves, I figure it wasn't meant to be. or if something really bad happens, then they tell each other, it was gods desire. God knows best. which I guess is just a philosophical way of saying “that sucks, but what can you do?” it sounds better to say it was gods plan. 

Thinking a lot about this lately because I have really been out on a limb the last few weeks. Just so out there. not really sure of where I am or where I am headed so yea I think a lot about God and talk to him a lot and really hope that there is some kind of plan. But what am being guided to believe is that there are LOTS of PLANS. Our lives can go in a million different directions. And God is just doing his own thing. Wanting us to go in the best direction, but not necessarily forcing us to do so. And it is totally up to me. it isn't up to God. He cares. Yes. He/she/it wants us to do the best. and to be the best. yes. And he wants us to be the happiest we can possibly be. Yes. But what is the difference between the person who escapes a Nazi concentration camp and lives to tell about it, or another person from the same neighborhood who gets gassed top death? Is it God? Is it gods plan? No. I don't believe it. I am sorry. God has little if anything to do with someone getting put into a gas chamber. God did not make that happen. And neither did the devil. I don't believe in the devil. In fact I'd be very careful speaking to anyone who actually did. No God does not put people in gas chambers and kill them. nor does he help them get out necessarily. 

people help themselves get out. Through their own strength. Through their own cunning and intelligence and faith in themselves and in this force that we cannot define yet, that some call God and others call the force or whatever. the people who lived to tell about the holocaust did so because they made it happen. They said everyday, I will fucking survive this. I will make it happen. They looked for the signs. I think God gives us all these little pushes and nudges and offers us lots of signs. If it is indeed just a very powerful force that is basically doing the same thing that we are which is just continuing to live and survive in the universe for thousands and even millions of years, the key to latching onto it and getting the most out of God then is to start to act like God. Is to start to act like a very powerful and in control conscious being who is in complete control of your own destiny and the destiny of others around you. become powerful strong knowledgeable confident righteous generous caring for others loving kind etc all the things we usually relegate to this God. Feel this God energy inside of us rather than praying to it as if it is outside of us. we need as a species to focus more on being gods and less on looking for a God. (although I admit I am sucker for it like the next guy.)  

o.k. so where the fuck are we? Oh yea the hotel. when I was at the apartment I felt sad, weird, confused, not myself, lowly, dirty, angry, and out of it. as soon as I lied down on this bed at this hotel (I immediately took a two hour nap before I even went to get my bags) I felt excited, alive, energetic, happy, back to myself, and full of ideas and possibilities. This is Naturality that Lauren Holmes talks about in her book. That is it to a tee. And what Tony talks about ‘being in State.’ You cannot make things happen when you aren't feeling good. and you can’t make miracles happen when you are just feeling o.k. or average. But when you are feeling on top of the world, you can make tons of stuff happen just from thinking about it. just from being in the right state. So yea I think that God/nature/the force did a great job at screaming into my ear not to stay at the rat trap, but I stayed anyway. and that's my point. I have spent the last ten years being this happiness addict, just totally addicted to being the best and the happiness that I could be and helping others to be the same. And then you get off course a bit and its easy to get lost out there and forget who you are. And you know who you are has some to do with where you are. If you're living in a dirty hole then you will start to feel and act like someone who lives in a dirty hole. Man is it a cycle. That's why its important to eat right. so you feel good. and stay real clean. not drink too much. Exercise a lot. Get manicures and massages etc. really take care of yourself. Keep yourself looking and feeling top notch like you would take care of a really nice sports car. Its like your pumping yourself up. making yourself feel good. and when you feel good you start to do things that someone who feels good does. And pretty soon you're creating little miracles all over the place. this is God. And this is where we belong. This is what we are meant to be doing and being. God like. To become gods and perhaps after death we join God. Become one with God. Become a part of this God-force. I'm sure of it. I think that people who say otherwise and I may be wrong but I certainly hope I'm not, I think they are caught in the dark ages and they are doing nothing but holding us back as a species. [just like they did when they said we had to pray to the sun. just like they did when they said that God was in control of our harvests. Just like they did when they said that the earth was flat. just like they did when you were put to death if you didn't worship Jesus or Allah. Etc etc.] I love the rituals and the customs and culture of religion. I really do. I just don't like the limitations of it. I hate when people make rules when there really are none. Just for the sake of having some rules. 

Heaven, resurrection, reincarnation. None of that I know about it. we’re here on earth now. that's all we know. maybe this is the whole trip. Maybe this is it. and if it is then that means we have to live it to the fullest. God I am so old now. I have been in school with all these teenagers the last few weeks and I cannot believe that I am not a teenager anymore. I know I sound like an old man saying that but its true. That feeling you had when you were a teenager never leaves you. you still feel like that same person but you realize that years and years went by, so we have to make sure that we are jamming a hundred and ten percent. And really loving this life. because it is all we know of. 

On the screen:  Jaws. While I was writing. But in Italian. what a freaky movie. I forgot.