I found myself complaining (a lot)

about my situation

but most people didn’t care.

Complaining

doesn’t do any good.

I don’t know if people consciously know this

but it’s the language of the loser

and one of the great mysteries

in life

is that

those who have, will be given more

and those who don’t have—even what they do have

will be taken away from them.

Still, there are chances for the loser

but he is so often wrapped-up in his own loserdom,

to acknowledge the opportunities.

Life isn’t fair, and someone with less talent

is always living the life that he wants.

I was trying to break-free from failure, but it was so comfortable now

that the prospect of success

made me nervous.

I had gone on so many first dates, that I had the routine down.

At the end, no attraction.

“No worries, we can be friends…” (but that was always code for: I never want to talk to you again).

A woman can tolerate me as a viable option before a date, but afterwards, I am defective, like a photograph of herself, when she gained 50 pounds. She never wants to see me again, and if she does, her desire is to take a pair of scissors to me, or just start ripping. These are the emotions that a loser inspires in others, and people don’t want to catch the cold which is so difficult to shake.

I frequently found myself in used bookstores. It was a place where I could think, listening to 1920s pop music. Strange, that most of the people who initially heard that sound, are dead.

I was in the philosophy section.

Most of them were men, who had horrible relationships with women.

I was looking for a bit of luck, but perhaps, I was only reinforcing my bad beliefs about the female by reading Schopenhauer’s essays On Women. He died alone with a poodle that didn’t love him. The children in his apartment complex called his dog Mrs. Schopenhauer. How is that for disrespect?

The black boy in my apartment complex asked me if I was single.

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?” He asked.

“Kid, do you want me to fix your bicycle, or not?”

He probably has a mother who is single, or he is just bored.

Well, I wasn’t going to walk into that bear trap.

It was like the 40-year-old single mom who waved at me, each time she walked past. She had a good body, but I knew she was crazy, and she had plans to suck my soul right out of me.

Meanwhile… I was in the bookstore, and I came across an interesting shelf. There were books on the Tao, Eastern Mysticism, and then a manuscript that was folded between the Bible and the Book of the Dead. It was yellow with age, and held together with brass brads.

A dissertation on sleep… and dreams. The price wasn’t marked.

When I looked into it, and flipped through it, it was like a dream diary. Somebody, had put years of their life into it.

I would have to lift it, which was not something that I normally did (usually, the closest I got to stealing was from the donation bucket at the library where patrons donated their DVDs. I didn’t take the money, but I did take the DVDs. If I didn’t like one, which was typical, I returned it. If I found one that I did like, I donated a dollar. Just to be clear, I didn’t take the money. It was 2 hours of escape that I was interested in.)

Like all great books, it was simple—the writing was written at a 5th grade level. No university PhD student had translated it from Russian to a kind of English that requires a graduate degree, a dictionary, and a bottle of booze—not to mention, a year of your life to understand it.

I had the strong feeling, that this book was applicable. It was the kind that I was going to read every night, and each morning. I might carry it in my pocket, and memorize it. We were going to be best friends. Most books, are stories that we forget—while some entertain us, there are others that speak to us—then, there are the books, that make us dream.

I put the yellow manuscript into my pants, and under my shirt.

As I was walking out of the bookstore, there was this blond girl standing there, holding a nerd under her spell. She was wearing a short mini-skirt with a spaghetti-stretch tank-top that showed-off her milky-white chest. In the middle of her breasts was a tattooed tree, enormous, and ugly, like the one Adam and Eve ate from, in the garden of Eden. She had a great ass too, but somehow, I pitied the man talking to her. He was going to make it.

I had the book in my pant, and I was already hard.

It’s like when you are so excited, the butterflies are flying out of you. They hatch in your stomach.

Before I read the book, I got myself ready in my apartment.

I made decaf espresso shots.

I got myself a bowl of double fudge chocolate ice-cream.

I lit candles.

I was preparing to go on a journey.

Like the Enochian keys, I figured the dream journal would open doors to another world.

I had done battle with demons, a couple years before—enough, to realize, I didn’t want to mess-around with the occult anymore.

If you have experience with something, it becomes real. That’s what they don’t tell you in school—everything is antiseptic, supposedly objective, and scientific. Now I believe in some of those people who believe in aliens. Most of them want attention, but you can tell the real encounters, by the fear in their eyes.

I started reading page one.

This book was going to change me, certain sure. The writer was doing it on an island, someplace in the tropics, near the Bermuda Triangle. His secretary was taking his dictation. He was trying all of the psychedelic drugs used in religious rituals to go on journeys into the mind. He kept getting lost, and scared. Language, could not describe his experiences.

Then, he accessed the songbook of the gods—a hymnal to engage in holy worship.

It was in a different language, other than English—kind of like speaking in tongues, because he knew the spiritual meaning of the words being spoken, as if he was praising the one and only God.

The Beach

Walking Back into the Primordial

Becoming a Sea Creature

Mating with the Deep

Coming Out Again

Touched, By My Own Kind

Becoming Known

For the First Time.

The book was filled with nonsensical verses, to be chanted, right before sleep.

I did, and when I woke up, I had been to a planet, like the Bahamas, with female kind, naked in the sun, wanting me. It was a teenage fantasy. I was diving under the reef, with octopi, and eels, that kept giving me these little love bites on my butt.

I looked around, to make sure it wasn’t Eve. She was there, under the water with me. And when I emerged, I woke up.

It went on and on, like this. One fantasy, after another.

I could read the song of songs, and fall to sleep, directly.

I got home from cubical hell, and chanted the lines, and went straight to heaven. Whoever wrote this book was a literary God.

To let it go, would be to let go of God, and in no time, I had it memorized.

I would be doing a tedious bit of paperwork, and I would say “F*ck it.”

Then, I would be dreaming.

People are seeking it, without knowing it, and hoping to fall asleep.

There are those who stand on a mountain, and look at the beauty and ugliness of the world, like mortal Gods, but they seldom feel like God, because they are human.

There are only a few moments, when man transcends himself.

I read the diary of dreams every night, before I went to sleep.

It feels like, I never woke up. My eyes are open, all of the time, but I’m still dreaming.

The Dream