February 15, 2001

this is a love story, of sorts...

I began my journals (on paper) years and years ago. Emotions and thoughts flooded through me much too fast. I needed a way to make sense of it, so I bought a tablet of paper and a pen, and began to write.

When I was 17, I had an epiphany. I felt extremely powerful. People suddenly offered opportunities, rather than terrors. If I was a Buddhist, I'd say that I reached a higher level of consciousness. If I was a Christian, I'd say that I found God.

I had fallen in love with the world.

And I was dangerously close to becoming a hippie. I talked about love and peace, about the glory of humanity, and I carried a copy of Henry David Thoreau's Walden & Civil Disobedience with me where-ever I went. I had read it too.

I must have been convincing, because my friends considered me their spiritual guru. Years afterward, they told me that I had been the anchor in their lives, when things started to go bad.

There is a story about the greatest of all Buddha's, who was so devout he ascended to the highest level of consciousness and humanity. There he saw all of the suffering in the world. This saddened him, and he realized he could never ascend completely for he'd feel the world's pain. So he returned to the earth, to ease the suffering of others, knowing he could probably never return.

Not during the second time I fell in love, not during my first tab of acid, and not finally being free from college did I feel the same absolute certainty.

Although, if I'm sufficiently plastered, I become coherent and happy.

I wonder if there is a little buddha inside me struggling to get out.