The night the words came out

I have known for years that I would share this. This day, the anniversary of the attacks on New York City and Washington, is the day.

I didn't write this on 9/11. It came out of me three months later, on Dec. 16, 2001, as I was jumping through all the hoops I have to jump through for the holiday season. I was feeling so empty, like many of you did. Remember how you felt? Christmas? What Christmas?

I was home that night and didn't want to do anything. Pre-blog days. I wanted to talk, but there was nobody to talk to. I wanted to cry, but there was nobody to cry with. I wanted ... I wanted ... I wanted to get it out of me.

And I did. That night, I found a notebook, and as I wrote as fast as I could in a nearly illegible script, I realized that I had to make big changes in my life and in what I believe in. Here is a portion of the original ...



Don't bother trying to read my scribble. Here is what I wrote that tortured night, lying on the bed with a composition book in front of me:

This book is all in black and white, but it's all about shades of gray.

It's about a journey I'm planning to make, that I want to make. Don't know when or how or where. But I do know why.

But I'm trying to make the universe make some sense. Religion just isn't doing it. It's meant to be mystic, OK, but why so confounding? Why so anachronistic? I guess the biggest question is why does the Big Guy whatever his name is allow so much killing and death and misery in his name, for his sake? We have the Taliban's guerrillas running planes into skyscrapers in NYC, we have Jews & Muslims killing each other in the name of God. And we have ??? Christians that don't love, that gossip, that hate, that don't love their neighbor. That don't do anything or follow any of the lessons of Jesus. And I ask, WHY!! And I don't get an answer. Maybe there is none. Maybe I have to move on.

Not that I think any religion has the answer or some insight on the cruel joke being played on us. But it would be nice if there can be a manifestation of some divine order just once in a while. Instead of some cosmic geopolitical chaos theory.

It doesn't make sense, and I don't want to try making sense of it anymore. I'm hurt too deeply when there terrible things happen. Am I the only one? The only one wondering why TV seem to want to exploit the situation & scare people as much as possible, exploiting the millions to see one possibility and dwelling on that. Of not letting people just get on with their lives. Do people want to hate, or are they being taught by the so-called leaders?

So they ignore Jesus' message and focus obsessively on the societal taboos. About sex. About nudity. About all the no-nos we've heard too much about. And it's the 19th century again. Have we come so short of that ideal? Is evolution wrong?

I want to leave that behind me. I want to move on. Turn the page. Get on with life. And that way may be mysticism and modern-day witchcraft. No abracadabra or black magic stuff. Just being in better harmony with the universe and the world around me. Being able to wonder at the infinite. Being able to find a oneness with life. Being able to hug life and hug others and feel them hugging me back. There is too much loneliness in the world. And nobody's doing anything about that.

I don't know how I'm going to do this. It's damn scary. What I have to do is find a path to this other existence. I have to find a way. I need to know if there is another way and then look at it and decide if it's right for me. Only my soul can say that.

But I'm terribly disillusioned about life like it is right now. You'd think that someone who is 51 would have felt that long before. So maybe I'm behind the rest of the world.