5

13JUN2009

No notes for awhile because something big began happening and I didn’t want to risk f-cking it up until I was sure of the Notes’ role.
Sometimes I think they’re ego-centric, fueling the Ego, and other times I think they’re clearing my mind and making way for Focus.
Turns out the only difference is not found in the words of punctuation but the How of how I write them and how I read them. The how decides, so the notes are Real, because the How has been so strong lately ..
It begins with Forest__. I guess we are friends still. We were battle buddies during at AT exercise once, and the bond between us was strong. In the military, that tends to mean it’s everlasting.
Turns out he wasn’t saying hi and stopping to talk out of politeness or obligation, but because we’re friends, we have that bond.
Later, (on the night of the 11^th), I stepped into the BTN TOC building and there was W___ sitting at the bottom of the stairs awaiting the intel drop.
We talked, him mostly, and didn’t stop for an hour and a half, just like in the old days, that ease we had.
I made him laugh a couple of times -- a genuine laugh, where his eyes get bright and free -- and we went upstairs and talked some more as I sat at the guard desk ..
K____ came up to relieve me and W___ and I moved over and hung out on the stairs. K____ seemed to be ignoring us but looked up in surprise once when I mentioned a plan to maybe transfer back to L____burg ..
W___ had to go, and K____ looked relieved, stopped what he was doing on his laptop and started talking to me as if he had a list of things he’d been wanting to tell me.
And he did, for another hour and a half. We talked of his position in the company as an RTO and what we could do to get him into a line platoon.
He also suggested the idea of him and I being roommates instead of us having two rooms side by side. We‘d take out the middle wall and just live in one huge room. [Which we later did]. ..
I got a good look at them, W___ and K____, as I was up there on the landing and I knew my future. K____ looked more matured because his frame was bigger than W___’s, including his head, while W___ still looked like a kid with a slightly receding hair line.
Whenever I see Forest__ the only difference is that he’s more filled in like his skin is thicker or something.
My life after the café and my affair with E__ is three people. Add Sing__, my very first battle buddy, and its my whole adult life.
Add in my Good Year (which Forest__ was a part of) and the last one with the class in Arkansas and the other class with Rodriguez, and it adds up to all the people I most liked, most respected, and most wanted to be around, had all along liked and accepted me in turn.
Meaning: there’s nothing wrong with me ..
The peace I felt as I returned to my room and got ready for sleep was so broad I couldn’t stop to write notes and couldn’t articulate anything anyway.
The block of years in the House, and the block of years after the House, seemed to have matched -- not reconciled -- but matched. Balanced out. I know now my future will be like the second block and not like the first. No matter how much difficulty, they’ll never be like the first because it will always remain mere difficulty, and will never encroach upon my soul .. I’m not a baby boy anymore.
Why did my story have to begin at the farthest point away from Focus? .. As a boy I was strong as any other human being, but it didn’t matter because I was still just a boy.
On top of that I was Slow, and was told I was slow. The journey from unFocused to Focused is so complete, it makes me stop to see the Beauty of it.
When I look in the mirror now I’m all-of-the-sudden good looking .. I learned things like: If ego doesn’t have the power to make me happy, that means it doesn’t have the power to make me unhappy, it’s not Real.
Or like: I think my starting point was Ego, but it wasn’t, it was something Difficult that began happening to me as soon as I was conceived -- not even born yet -- but it wasn’t my beginning.
Now that I know my future my life seems so easy. All this time I’ve been holding back out of fear.
Now I feel like I could do so much better, because my life is mine now, my work, mine, my moments, mine.
No fear that they could be stolen or taken from me, twisted around, forced from me into something else and then handed back to me to accept.
I know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. It’s the spirit in which you do things in.
A spirit of Nature, or a spirit of Ego. When I am in the Natural spirit, all my actions are mine so I am highly-motivated, knowing I can do so much better and then doing better, living better.
When I am in the unNatural spirit, I feel lethargic, unmotivated, depressed, and even if I do the same actions, the same productivity, they lack the Quality and feel fruitless.
The reason it feels fruitless is because these actions are being performed in a spirit of making myself _good enough_.
Which means everything I do will always be a failure, because I’m already Good.
It’s the ego, the story, that creates the insecurities so that not-good-enough-yet spirit is adopted in order to repair them.
But the Ego isn’t Real. It’s just all in the head.
When I am in supposedly-degrading situations, when I am surrounded by Egos and Insanity, I fall into a Bromsden-like consciousness [from One Flew Over the Cuckoo‘s Nest], that sees how ridiculous they are.
I don’t accept the spirit in which they do things. He can’t change the actions, the story, or the situation, but he can recognize, and reject, the erroneous spirit.
I noticed as I lay down to sleep last night, my hands behind my head, that I haven’t been identifying with my past, nor my relatives, or family, even though I loved them. Little of it ever crosses my mind. It’s a freedom I’ve only dreamed of, wished for.
Now that everything I do, every movement I make, even down to the way I speak, or look, or sit down, isn’t ultimately a failure.
The How, or rather the masculinity is stronger.
Now that I know my future,
No fear.