Is anyone? How do you quantify happiness? And in relation to what? As a man? As a human? As a citizen? How does anyone who has been cursed with self awareness wake up with out screaming and pissing themselves? How do the happy ignore the bomb dropping in the distance? Is happiness another word for distracted? Do we give up part of ourselves to be happy? Are some of us so desperate to be happy that we crawl on all fours like a dog? Is happy another level of contentment? Or is contentment just a form of tunnel vision? Do we have to put the blinders on to be happy? What do we gain from being happy? Is the physical response enough to live on? Can we quite our thoughts enough to let the endorphins do their work? Are you looking for happiness? Are you looking for a yes or no answer? How long before looking leads to coveting? Is God happiness? Is religion happiness? Is a new outfit happiness? Is getting fucked up happiness?

I could go on and on.. All I have done is pass along what runs through my head every morning before I am even out of bed. It always ends with the same question, "What the fuck am I doing with myself?" To which I respond differently each time, if I even have a response. I haven't yet convinced myself that happiness is a real thing. Humans conventions are so ingrained in us, making us believe that there is inherent qualities to something that doesn't exist. All a person can do, I believe, is examine surroundings and make conclusions. I am in good health, therefore I am happy. I am not crippled, therefore I am happy. I am not starving, therefore I am happy. Suffering always exists but only because we are cursed with consciousness. Resort to the primitive. An animal looks to us and thinks, "All their needs are met and they have no natural predators." If they had a definition for happiness, this would be it. We are bombarded on all sides by things that tell us we are not complete until we buy this or do that or look this way or act this way or believe this or that. FUCK ALL THAT! Do we need others, sure. Do we need Calvin Klein, fuck no.

Ever since we left the caves, built bigger and better implements that cater to our nature and stared into the sun, calling it chicken, we have questioned more than we should. We cast the sacred bones and shake our fists at the gods, calling for a miracle or relying on the microscope to take away the pain. There has been a disconnect from ourselves. We have lost, or never had, the part of our animal selves that keeps the modern man in check.

Primitively. As cavemen, we are kings. Kings set upon thrones of the dead, staring into flickering screens, waiting for some sort of absolution. Our subjects gone, starved or left for better places, our court decaying around us, and still we stare into those screens, looking for validation. On and on and on.

fuckit...

H.

What's coming through is alive.
What's holding up is a mirror.
But what's singing songs is a snake
Looking to turn my piss to wine.

They're both totally void of hate,
But killing me just the same.

The snake behind me hisses
What my damage could have been.
My blood before me begs me
Open up my heart again.

And I feel this coming over like a storm again.
Considerately.

Venomous voice, tempts me,
Drains me, bleeds me,
Leaves me cracked and empty.
Drags me down like some sweet gravity.

The snake behind me hisses
What my damage could have been.
My blood before me begs me
Open up my heart again.

And I feel this coming over like a storm again now.
And I feel this coming over like a storm again now.

I am too connected to you
To slip away, fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,

Considerately killing me.
Considerately killing me.
Considerately killing me.
Considerately killing me.
Without the skin here,
Beneath the storm.
Under these tears now,
The walls came down.

And as the snake is drowned
And as I look in his eyes,
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of those times.

I could have cried then.
I should have cried then.

And as the walls come down
And as I look in your eyes
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
and will die.
It's all right.
(I don't mind)
I don't mind.
I don't mind.
I don't mind.

I am too connected to you
To slip away, fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,

Considerately killing me.
Considerately killing me and
Considerately killing me.

Torreya; ancient earth

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. -John Muir

Again I sit with the same falleness. Man's knowledge lost to time and sin, forgotten dominion over the soil and the sky. I sit in that part and feel the power of the it. My pen in a fury on the paper in front of me, my pulse quickened with the ideas pounding through my veins.

I return. I reuse. I regret.

I am without the fever that possessed me in the wonderful place. It is necessary, NECESSARY, to climb those rocks and speak with those trees. To speak with oneself in that place. That is really what matters. The ability to hear yourself. Remove the rest of the damned human race from your field of view and find the power of solitude.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual. -John Muir

The idea of progress has been so strained by the human race that those of us with common sense become sickened by the very mention of the word. Forward is only a matter of perspective. It is without power.

From My Cold Dead Hands

“Like all artists I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.”

–Dennis Hopper