Late night talks last night with Little Tree. In the dark of the night. When the deepest and most secret thoughts are easily revealed. I tell her how it is almost as if I know that if I were in a relationship I would feel more fulfilled, because I am aware, deeply aware, of how much more meaning I could derive out of being in a relationship, rather than being single. It’s a great feeling to be in a relationship. Easy to get your attention sucked into it---the whole me, her, us, and then when you have kids, them thing. 

Easy to create something that seems bigger than just yourself. But when you break up you realize that a lot of it was just illusion. The whole us thing, the home, the family, and all that. I think older married couples realize that too. once the kids move out, then all of a sudden they realize that it really is just them on their own after all. not all the time. just sometimes. But it is amazing once a couple breaks up how this whole image of ‘the home’ ‘the couple’ ‘the family’ and all the other institutions that are created when two or more people come together seem entirely meaningless and non-existent because now its just back down to two homes of one persons. So you're still back to just being you. When you're a couple you take all this pride and give all this attention to a lot of things you wouldn’t when you are single. Furniture or photos or your pets---many items you bought together or that you tell yourself have some special meaning. 

But when you're single you have the opportunity to be more of a nomad. Those things aren't as important to you because you aren't using them as bonding items with another person I guess. When you are single the meaning that you derive out of life has got to come from somewhere else. It cannot come from your relationship or your marriage or your children because you don't have any of that. So that s where the challenge is, but that is also where there is much joy. 

Telling her that sometimes when I go out with some girl and I think she's really awesome I just want to get away because I just don't think I'm ready for it. part of me is dying inside to meet some girl that is going to be every bit as beautiful and smart and wonderful as I would want, and then another part of me is like praying desperately that that isn't going to happen today. Because that isn't the type of thing that you can stop or put on hold or slow down once it starts. And there's just so much that I want to do that I don't want me to become an “us” right now. even though I always say that I do. And I know how it feels. This is what's so funny about it. I mean I have always had girlfriends. This is my first time being a single guy. And I know how wonderful it is and how easy it is for it to take over your life and become your everything. But the fact is that i don't want it to. not yet. I want to keep exploring. I want to be able to keep traveling as much as I can. and I don't want there to be an “us” who is traveling. I want it to be me. my thing. me doing my thing.

crazy. I know. and all this time I thought I was looking for the super hero girl. But now I think I'm looking for something deeper. I hashed it out last night over the phone and really came to terms with it and understood what I was feeling for the very first time. the thing is that I know that any time you want to you can meet the love of your life, fall in love, settle down, have children, buy a home, buy a lot of stuff, start collecting photo albums of everything, plan your little family trips every year, send out your photo Christmas cards and all that. and that is meaningful. I mean, hey let’s be honest, for most people, that is their meaning. That is the most meaningful part of their entire lives. That's what they live for. Ask anyone who has kids about it and that's what they say. They get that glimmer in their eye and they tell you that you just don't know until you have kids what its like and how much they love them and how much it means to them. so I know that's there. I know that's an option. all of this is so beautiful. And honestly I can’t wait to experience it. but not now.

But man I am hoping that there is more to life than that. I think that is why I travel and learn so much. I try to figure that out. Why I am so obsessed with learning new cultures and languages and subjects. And I guess its just that I am still searching for some kind of a deeper meaning than the usual wife house two cars and kids thing. I mean I had that for six year with Cleopatra; thank God we didn't have kids. But I have to tell you, I would have stayed in that forever if it would have worked out, but she let me travel all over the world and stay away as long as I wanted so that was great, but the point is that once it ended and I realized how impermanent that stuff is, I mean we see it all around us, every time a couple breaks up, its just so damn impermanent, so I just don't want to put all of my love there. all of my soul. I don't want to put all of my importance attention there. don't want to place all of meaning into just a relationship. I really want to believe that there is more to life than that. There’s gotta be. There has to be more to life than just your future family and you giving up a lot of your life to raise your kids and build their lives, which is what everyone I know now is doing. 

I guess now that I am thinking about it I can see that it doesn’t have to be that way. you can live your life and really live it, finding meaning, and still have the husband or wife and the kids too, just don't put all your eggs into that basket as if that is your only source of meaning. I think once I've seen a lot of other places around the world. Lived there. breathed it in. Made it my own. then I will be ready one day to settle down and do the family thing. but for now I would really like to see and hear and experience something magnificent. Something godly and fantastic. I would really like to know that there was something really meaningful in this world besides just making more people, and creating more life. Imagine if that's it? I mean imagine if just being born, and then living a little, only to create some offspring, and then to raise them so they can do the same thing, is like the only real meaningful thing in this world?! Imagine that?! God the fucking horror. I mean if that's it, then I am going to be a very unsatisfied person in this life. 

Very few people can understand you when you talk this way. people tell you that you're searching (duh..) that you can only find it within yourself (duh..) that one day you will stop searching (maybe; I don't necessarily believe this—maybe you just get older and lazier and tired of searching), and they say it from a place as if they once searched and now have stopped, and then you find out that they never even traveled out of their own state. As if they were on this big search and they found everything they were looking for in some religion. Which is really sad and scary to me. Because seriously if they were really searching and not just some muggle then if they ended up at Christianity or Islam as their grand meaning of life then man I am a fucking Martian then. I am so far removed from all of that crap at this point. I mean, honestly, no offense towards any of the humans but if religion is your end all be all for meaning in this life then hey more power to you, but for me it better fucking be more than that. 

It better not have anything to do with religion. It better be a whole lot bigger greater sexier smarter and more profound than anything going on in man’s disastrous feeble ideas known as religions. God, forgive the pun, but can you imagine if God really did turn out to be as dumb shallow and close minded as man makes him out to be in his religions? 

[I am not ruling out the God equation, but I look at religion like a lot of science over the years. I mean, if you have the whole world going around saying that the world is flat, but if one man, even one man, can see past the horizon and tells you hey I don't think its flat anymore guys, then we’re going to have reason to believe that you just may be able to see past the horizon that everyone thinks is there. And at this point we have millions of people on the planet who are seeing past the horizon that the major religions of the world are claiming we cant see past. So lets just get with the program and move on guys. I think that's all a lot of people are saying. Out with the old and in with the new so we can open ourselves up to some of the other possibilities.]

Yes exactly. What we should do, but won't yet, is keep all the churches and temples all over the world cause they definitely have a nice vibe. No one is going to argue with that. but go inside all of the churches and synagogues and temples around the world and take out all the statues of all the different gods. I'm not saying we have to burn them or throw them away or whatever, but maybe just lock them all up in a big warehouse for a few hundred years, just in case I was wrong and we change our minds... but we get rid of all the gods in all the churches and we replace them with statues of human beings who have existed throughout our history who have exemplified what God is to us. instead of honoring these gods that we don't aren't even sure exist, we make the churches and temples around the world places where we go to worship and have reverence for our fellow humans who have existed before us who have been almost God-like. There could be a church of John Lennon for instance. Liverpool would probably want that one. And Descartes. And Nietzsche of course. And Kant. And Plato. And for Galileo of course. Florence would love that wouldn’t they? Their church of the time actually put him in jail in his lifetime. Pity. [What’s ironic is that Florence already has Galileo’s tomb in a church as if now he is almost considered a God... fancy that.] France could have a few churches for Voltaire of course. We could have churches dedicated to Thomas Edison of course, and to Henry ford. And Ben Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci. The list goes on and on. What an inspiration religion would become. We’d start to appreciate our own divinity. Hey I know Bob Dylan isn't dead yet, but just imagine him up there hanging on the cross. He’d look great.