Early morning: an amazing thing had happened: quickly because my bath is running. Had spoken with God/higher self/whatever that night and just said, you know, I'm tired of the Juliet creation. I'm here in New York now. my heart is bursting open and I want to love and be loved. I am tired of loving Juliet or thinking about loving Juliet. So alas I am going to discreate this now. But what still struck me as not very pleasing about the situation was all the signs from the universe about her. the coincidences, the synchronistic events, the dreams and visions. It was like some kind of cosmic joke. Appeared entirely like some beautiful scene from a Richard Bach novel and yet... nothing. My intuition led me to believe that she was not it. a best friend at best. and yet... what then were all the signs for? To show me how strong our minds were at manifesting things that were at the forefront of our consciousness? Perhaps the signs were God’s/the universe’s way of showing me that it wasn't so much about fate or destiny as it was about our own ability to create our own reality.

Having always been one who was vulnerable to the belief in fate and destiny over chaos and chance events ruling our lives, I found this conclusion challenging. And yet, there it seemed to be, right in front of me. in my heart, I could feel in that moment that Juliet was not the one. that she may indeed possess many and most of the qualities and characteristics that I have searched for in a woman all my life and yet I could feel that she was not the one, even though perhaps I really wanted her to be sometimes. For various reasons. Not the least of which would be the pure romanticism of falling in love and marrying the girl you have had a crush on since junior high school. That was so up my alley that you can picture me drooling at the thought of it.

And yet, there it was in my heart, the knowing. Somehow the creation had changed. I had changed the creation. And felt now, that she was actually, someone else. someone I have not yet met. But still, there, in the cold dark of the night I struggled with what God/spirit/the universe was trying to tell me by sending all of these signs into my life over the last six months about dear Juliet. Perhaps it was not she at all? perhaps a different girl who shared the same name? could be. but I didn't believe that to be so. Too many other signs about the town she lives in as well. no, there was something... something to the signs. But what?

In that moment I resigned myself to the fact that I may never know what any of it meant, and in all honesty I could not care anymore. I am here. she is there. I am wild and crazy and live life like a train out of hell. And she is in the great northwest of Washington for Gods sake, living on a farm, slowly, methodically, peaceably. Our lives were not meant to be bound; but only to cross. I could feel that.

And in that moment I prayed: and yet God, if there was something to this, certainly Juliet would know it as well... yes? it wouldn’t be all me, unless it were all in my imagination only. Just my creation.... and only my creation? Are we all just prisoners of our own creative imaginations? Each of us bound by nothing more than our individual creative abilities? Are there no absolutes whatsoever? No fate? No destiny? she has received some signs certainly... many dreams she has relayed to me over the last six months.... but still... perhaps if she received the same type of signs as I have then she too would wonder about this as much as I do. perhaps she does and because of her current circumstances she just cannot reveal the matter. Well, I will sleep now. and if there is something to this, then certainly Juliet will get a sign of some kind as well.... if there is no sign to dear Juliet then I will wash my hands of it once and for all and move on.

The next morning I logged onto the Internet over a cup of coffee and hit ‘send/receive,’ and there in my inbox is an email from Juliet. I open it up and I could not believe what I saw before me. I almost fell off my chair. But as is almost always the case when we experience something magical or mythical, I was too stunned to move at all. The opening lines of her email were, to directly quote it here:

“Subject:    bizarre dream

Dear Fishy

alright. get this one. i dreamed we got married. it was super-surreal. a big church to-do that was completely out of scope. the "here comes the bride" organ dirge music was going, the  dress was BIG and white and on, my hair was BIG and veil-festooned, the pews were packed with poloi, and i was standing amidst it thinking, shit, i am getting married and this is absolutely the furthest thing from my plan right now. besides, i would have designed it all completely different. not like "my big fat greek wedding", certainly!!! i looked around at all the people, felt the scratchy layers of my hideous dress, felt someone holding my hand and i looked over and it was you Fishy, looking equally horrified and very uncomfortable and nervous in a tightly tied tuxedo rig. oh, i am marrying Fishy, I thought.” How bizarre...

So, there it is. magic. Absolute fucking magic. So we certainly cannot laugh too heartily at the idea of God anymore as much as just laugh along with Him/Her/It. The amazing thing is that this experience, I mean the fact that I fell asleep asking God to show me a sign by showing Juliet a sign and that very same night she dreamed that we were getting married.... hmmm.... but the experience somehow liberated me from the creation itself. Stunned but complacent now to move on. It is right there, to me, anyway, in front of us, the messages and signs, more so than what one could even hope for in your average Carlos Casteneda novel. What we do with it on the other hand is an entirely different matter. And at this point, I must be deadly honest, I succumb to the fact that I have had so many realizations about these matters since I have moved here, having seen more beautiful and eligible women in the last month than I have seen anywhere else in my entire life altogether, that in the end perhaps it just doesn’t matter. Perhaps the Juliet saga is a wild card thrown in by the great gods with joyous senses of humor for illumination of a different sort; more metaphysical and metaphorical than literal. As a warrior, as a mystic, and as a man, I feel that I can draw much from the experience, the least of which being that the possibilities are endless as they are laid out before us by the powers that be; that Juliet may indeed be my soul mate, but perhaps not my wife. That perhaps she was my wife in a past life and this is the great and final parting of the ways that we both need to finish our karma together and move on with our respective lives. Or that perhaps she holds a different message entirely. but that the only way to get to me the great gods know is through my longings for love and sex and romance and the like. Whatever the case may be, I remain awestruck by the event. And I will never again doubt our power to create; our power to transmit thoughts and feelings through the ethers is undeniable to me now.

Later that day...

Voted today via an absentee ballot. It was a good feeling. I don't know if it is going to help. I don't know if the president is even going to matter, whoever it turns out to be. in any case it was a good feeling to exercise that small or great freedom, depending how you look at it, and cast my little vote.

Osama bin laden appeared on TV today looking healthier and safer than he ever has and threatened us again. I chose a good time to move to New York I guess. He said it didn't matter who we voted in as president but rather what our current foreign policies are going to be. so he's obviously alive and well and doing fine and yet johns Hopkins university released it’s study today showing that we have killed over one hundred thousand [100,000] Iraqi people since we invaded that country.... See study here:
At Least 100,000 Dead in Iraq
U.S. War is a Blood Bath for the Iraqi People

In a medical study being published today, scientists have concluded that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 Iraqis, "and may be much higher." It further revealed that most of the 100,000 Iraqis who died were killed in violent deaths, primarily carried out by U.S. forces' airstrikes. "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," according to the study. The study was designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad (The Lancet, October 29, 2004).

The population of Iraq is approximately 25 million people. Were this slaughter carried out on an equivalent scale in the United States, it would be comparable to a death toll of one million people. Even the youngest and most vulnerable have not been spared: as a consequence of the U.S. war against the people of Iraq, infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward.
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For the record, for future generations, trust me when I say that NO ONE in America really cares about this. If you are looking back now and reading about this from a historical perspective, let it be known here now that in the year 2004 none of us in America even know about all these deaths in Iraq, let alone care about them. we are not a society that pays attention to the death, torture, tragedies, or pain of others unless it somehow directly affects us. that is just where we are now as a people in our short history. Regardless of what you may have been taught or are currently being taught.
Our own universities as you just read above have just come out with a report that is telling us that with our own hands we have been directly responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 innocent people in some other country and it didn't even make the front page of any of our newspapers, but a B movie actor you probably have never heard of did. his smiling face is everywhere today as he is trying to get our current president re-elected so he can kill more people.

Trust me when I say to you future generations that there is no generation more tuned in to news and information and tech than my generation, currently called Gen X, and the one that came after us, known as the Gen Y kids, and although in the last year we have killed more than 100,000 Iraqi people, no one speaks of it and no thinks about it among us. We are completely closed off to it, as if because it is not happening to us, because it did not happen to us, is therefore completely not our business and entirely not our concern. What we do hear about everyday ad nauseum is the 1000 of our own troops who have died. And even this fails in comparison to how much more we hear about pop stars and celebrities and cool things that we all need to buy.

We are like all the great empires that preceded us and I am afraid sometimes that will come after us, entirely consumed with making money and looking good and keeping up with everyone else around us. And unfortunately we are entirely unconcerned with how many thousands or millions of people we kill in other parts of the world, regardless of the reasons. If my life ever becomes one of fame or infamy allow me to say that I am barely any different than the rest around me, regardless of what I may portend.  If you ever have the laboring displeasure to read my diaries, it will become easily apparent that I too am consumed in my own insignificant day to day comings and goings and although I speak out about the atrocities being carried out in our name, I do almost nothing about it.
This is the nature of who we are as a people in America today; and who we are today as a species known as human beings. Unless the bombs strike in our own backyard we care very little.
End of message

So obviously something isn't working. We’ve killed over a hundred thousand people in some other country and Osama bin laden is still alive and well and threatening us. But I'm not saying I know what the hell we should do. man part of me says bomb the whole area and finish the job. But that's just a little part of me. I'm sure there’s a part of that in all of us.

anyway, it looks like the election is now coming down to Bruce Springsteen versus Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Boss versus the Terminator. The intelligent and enlightened everyman versus the robotic smiling sound bite quoting bodybuilder in all of us. Leave it to America. I'm so sick of this fucking election that I could puke quite frankly.

Went to a get together with some good friends tonight and everyone was just so sick of hearing about all of it and talking about all of it, at this point I don't think they even care anymore. Everyone had the same complaint. Nothing but the same old meaningless soundbites. Can’t believe anything that anyone says. Etc. why can’t anyone just stand up and just tell it like it is. that's what I heard all night.

we got drunk and waddled home. glad that Osama bin laden hadn't attacked us yet, at least not tonight, and glad that the 100,000 people killed in this war weren't us. tonight we will sleep and tomorrow we will forget about it. in a few years, this will all be history. We will catch it on some ‘remember it back when’ news special on A&E or Bravo or NBC. And no one will be any wiser or dumber from any of it. Life will go on. And that is the nature of being alive today in this God for saken world that we call home. no wonder we invented the concept of heaven. We had to.