I received a letter from Juliet. A hand written letter. And a few bags of tea she throws in there... what it feels like is God sending me all these different souls at this time. Traversing the maze of her handwriting a challenge indeed... to capture the meaning sometimes... sixteen pages is how many typed? Cannot remember now. Hadn’t written a letter in years outside of business or email, but we have been writing letters and it’s a fun and groovy thing. long distance table tennis. She wallops one back to me this time, just huge. Giant ... bam! I read a few pages a day, to savor it. I'm in the bathtub reading one. Perhaps just wasn't prepared for it. Juliet is so intelligent and wise and evolved.... so there... wasn't prepared for the emotional impact it would have on me. Immersed in lavender bubbles and water. Deciphering the hieroglyphics to obtain the ideas... certain sentences... certain passages carrying me off into some other place in my mind and in my heart. very meaningful. ‘This is lifetime important, this reconnection of ours,’ I think. This is something very important. To get to know Juliet now, after all these years, as if I really ever knew her before, which I would dare say I didn't; only enough to set up what is transpiring now. Our past encounters rather insignificant. I think to myself, ‘do present significant connections with others minimize past or other present connections we have with different people?’ I don't think so. I think we’re big enough to hold them all. How many friends can a person have? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?

[advantage of email over letters through mail is that you can respond immediately. Advantage of letters through mail over email is that you can respond immediately with email.... lol. But seriously, email is great in that you can respond to each thing a person says just by replying directly beneath whatever they have written or asked. With letters you have to sit there and remember or make note of each question or item that you wish to respond to. this is very inconvenient and troublesome. But the problem with email is that in general they don't have the air of importance or profundity that a letter still carries. The tendency is to brush them off quickly, read them, quick response, or no response at all even, and then off to the next... a lot of the depth of connection seems to get lost in the immediacy. Like television compared to film in that respect.]

Couldn’t quite grasp why it felt so important, her letters, and this reconnection. Juliet is happily coupled and childfull, so it isn't as if she is my future wife or something like that... [something occurs to me there. that if we were gay, then we could relate to the opposite sex from such a different perspective, free from the sexual or romantic angle. Just see them as they are as a person like we do with the same sex now... take it deeper.... like when I meet a guy who I think is cool, I don't start questioning it or wondering what it is. I just think, ‘that guy is fucking cool. or smart, or funny, or whatever.’ and that's the end of that. But when we are straight and we do meet someone of the opposite sex a lot of other things come into play in our minds. Beneath the surface. Bubbles. Preconceptions. Subconscious particles that are beyond present awareness that trigger certain reactions in us... Can I get beyond it? see past it? view women as purely other beings that are here. Like you would a dog or a cat or a child or another man?]  

[o.k. I took this further over the last few weeks, went deeper, and the truth is that it does even go beyond the opposite sex. so my theory on ‘what if we were gay—then it wouldn’t be there’ isn't going to fly. Because how often do we notice ourselves being attracted to someone of the same sex every now and then? So that happens as well... I believe it is our desire for some kind of ‘ultimate connection’ to a person, something deeper than just talking or hanging out...we want to bond with them, and as we are programmed now, sexual connection seems like the deepest bond we can come up with. Consciously we know this isn't true. with experience we know this isn't true. [this is for men, but many of us are dogs who would sleep with women we wouldn’t even talk to or eat a meal with just because we want to sleep with them for some crazy reason. And that's not a deep connection type of a thing, but just a glitch in our circuitry. We just want the rush.] But time has told that there are ways of getting these deep connections with other people that can last an entire lifetime that don't have anything to do with sex. just good old fashioned long term friendships... but still, under the surface, one does feel this desire to bond in a romantic or sexual way sometimes. For me, I spent some time ‘processing’ through it some time ago. so it wasn't so ‘on automatic.’ So now it is something I can just observe, rather than fall victim to.]

Perhaps it isn't so important to break it down. The impact itself is what is important. Waves of emotion and insight from what she writes at times. feels like an honor to know her, a privilege to read her. I am immersed in the bath water, tears inside when I read about the birth of her daughter, there is this passage: “Athena was born at home on the floor surrounded by 10 close friends, lots of delicious food, guitars, and candles burning. She came out with eyes wide open and a deep sigh—no crying—perfectly clean—nursed right away and looked me in the eye, grabbed my chin and smiled at me with her eyes full of universe.” At this I let out a huge cry of relief of some kind. Don't know why. Perhaps just from the sheer beauty of the passage. it was in reading this by someone I know, someone I know exists in the world, it was a reassurance... people like this exist in the world. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever read. picturing it in my mind. I imagined myself there... I imagined myself the father... why? don't know. just went with it. observed the idea appear in consciousness. Ah there's my beautiful wife on the floor having the baby. I will give them everything they could want. I will nurture and protect and smother them with love and caring and everything and anything they want. ... snap back... I remember they are hippies... they don't ‘want’ anything. They have everything they want right there at home. They even grow their own food... the one thing they would want you could not give them... to stay home and just be there all the time with them... God is that true? Could that be true? Nah, that's not true. its not going to matter; when its right its right. remembered bono announcing the night we saw him in Miami or phoenix or boston , don't remember, the birth of his fourth child right that very second, and he was five thousand miles away... could I find a girl who that's going to be o.k. with? I'm sure I will. O.k. enough about me. This is Juliet's stage... this is her play.

Thought it was one of the most profound things I had ever read. so this exists. people like this exist. Like Maddie. Like the King. Like Little Tree. Many actually. Like Bas. someone this pure and beautiful and honest. But in Juliet it is something different because when I read her it is as if I am reading myself. I understand what she is saying so purely that... I am in shock that someone thinks so much like I do. Liberated from societal constraints, fully evolved to the outermost limits in their thought. Dangerous, specious. They are words coming to me that I knew would already come to me. they are the culmination of lifetimes spiraling into this lifetime in this moment, whispering that I knew all along. Reassuring because I know the person perhaps. Calm and sometimes hurricane-like reassurances are shooting through me that we are not crazy in our pureness of heart and our razor-like will to make the world a better place. I felt so happy to read every line she had taken the time to write to me.

Our lives are very different right now. me and the boys. All the talk is always about money, and success, and fame, and style, and technology, and success, hit songs, and radio, and TV, and video, movies, other stars, other bands, other people’s money, other peoples girlfriends wives husbands producers press agents pimps and stylists. all day long it’s the phone and the computer screen... “with another 20 adds we’re going to jump to medium markets. Can the label swing another $75,000? How's the PR coming? Did you nab AP yet? Can you guys take a gig in phili on the 29th if we fly you there the next morning to meet that rep? Not much money in it but good exposure...” “not much money...” the ubiquitous phrase at our level right now... It’s a crazy thing. It is not of the same earth that Juliet walks. She speaks to me of the vegetables in the garden sprouting. Long time for me since those days... Neither world is either better or worse than the other. I think we need a healthy dose of both. when I am up to my eyes in materialism I crave soul feeding, and when I am up to my eyes in soul-feeding I crave materialism just as much. For me they are both extremely important. But lately it has just been all materialism. I know that is the nature of being a man. Building the empire. But it leaves me feeling empty sometimes. Juliet speaks of lilacs and daffodils blooming in the fields... I close my eyes and try to imagine lilacs and daffodils blooming in a field... all I can see is cars and people and airplanes, guitars, city streets, dark clubs, and computer screens in my minds eye... what does a daffodil even look like?

This is where we need women. They balance us out. without them, I don't think we are much.

Another passage from the letter, in closing, she says: “weaving the enormity of the tasks at hand with the immediacy of the present moment’s participation can be tough---have to laugh with it.” gotta love her. She’s going to hit before any of us do if she just manages to put a hundred pages together.

Current Spin:: Jay Z. love him.
Last screening: les destines. French film. Masterful. Three or four hours long. an absolutely beautiful world is created in the film. Takes me back to my future, or what I would like to see it blossom into. Growing up we used Limoges china. My mother adores it. I never thought about it till I got older. China. One can become quite obsessed with it. this film is the story of the Barnery family of Limoges. Watching the history brought me home. Moving, graceful, understated, poetic. As only the French can do, when they try. Still trying to get a hold of the language... for some reason it has not come easy. Can’t understand a fucking word they say.