The Golden Cow

'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart . . .
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.' Carl Jung

Part 1: The Condom Story

It was down to the last minute. He had to get condoms. Only a few hours remained until his plane would depart for Argentina. “I will need a 40 pack just to be safe,” Tomas Church said. This trip promised him his first chance at Adventure—fun, inspiration, romance and exploration. Of course he anticipated exploring the cities, towns, and countryside, even more he would glimpse towards the landscape of his heart. For in Buenos Aires, he will meet up with Sarah Sears for whom his feelings have grown quite strong, quite quickly.

Tomas typically holds back in a smothered, quiet “I will let the world roll over me” way. At least then he can feel its full, heavy embrace. Through a dreary doldrum, he counted relief crossing out another day on the Tiger wall calendar that his grandma gave him every year since he mentioned once at age 8 that he liked tigers.

He inherited a sleepwalk world he could drift through on the back of his wistful daydreams and faulty hope. With just enough talent and smarts to get by, he favored the comfort in the familiarity of living with his parents to the unknown failure following him. His parents ran roughshod over him, but he thought it gave him time to find himself. In his feeble state, he believed he must have been born 100 years old, for he knew it all but had no energy to make a move. His kingdom waited anxiously.

He wanted more, but didn’t know where to start. He deferred to his all-knowing parents, boss, friends/co-workers, “everyone knows better than I… me, even my grammar’s fucked,” he thought. “But this is my chance, I won’t let it slip away. To hell with my wanker job.” Even in this sluggish economy he knew he could do better. “I know what I want,” he said resolutely. “In my secret world I have been building for this for years.” He, now Me: electrical life, jolted off the table. Out of character, he stormed off into the unknown. Abrupted<. His mom, Franny, shrieking at his sight, said, “What is wrong with you?” The regularly scheduled program has been interrupt-- to bring you this --static>. “Almost grotesque I wasn’t what they saw,” he thought. Unapologetically, he picked himself up, lumbering forward about to disappear. Forever.

Though they acted like it was the first they knew of his trip. “Are you going somewhere? What? You’re going? I thought we talked about this.” They only hear what they want to hear. It had been a month long campaign to stop the trip, stop him from leaving. “Stop him!” she cried like he was some pig faced bandit treading off on her pearls. This wasn’t the first his parents had heard about his trip. A multitude of attempts to pick apart his motives and point out his flimsy romantic reasonings. Multiple subtle cues and guilt trips, mind games, sideline mentionings, worries wore at him, somehow he held his ground. It. Faced with this hideous shape- his mom crying, “how could you. Leave your own mother?”, couldn’t handle it and his dad, Stu, was in an uproar, storming off, slamming every door until he reached his tv room. Voices trail off behind Tomas as he heads off on a mission.

“Something in her fabric matches with mine and shakes me out of me”, he thought. This inter-stitching calls him forward to put it all on the line. Everyone reminds him of how impossible it all seems, even before it barely has begun. He knew the chances looked slim, as for them working out as a couple. She lived in another country far from his and she didn’t have a clue where she would end up when the dust settled. She had traveled half a year and had another six months to go. He was just taking his first steps out his cloistered life. Her family was jockeying for her to come back and stay close to home. She had found her home, not as a place, but as a sense of being, here, there and in between. Still she searched for something more. Though he was more than ten years her senior, he felt he had as much to learn from her as she said of him.

He would break free in a few precious hours and he still needed to do a million things: pack, cook, make a birthday present for Sarah and do his chores, but more importantly, he remembered he needed to pick up the condoms. He stopped his running around frantically packing to hone in on his one main mission-- it was love or death. In the few precious weeks they had been together their love had developed many varieties and eccentric peculiarities, but their avenues of expressing themselves physically were seemingly inexhaustible.

“Always be prepared,” he told himself. “A man is always prepared. If a Boy Scout can be prepared, then a man too must find his way reasonably so. I draw this to the obvious conclusion and hence extrapolate my raison d'être.”

Now this simple excursion doesn’t turn out so matter-of-factly after all. His usual pharmacy was out of stock of Golden Cow Condoms, his favorite brand. After a second pharmacy not carrying it, what was supposed to be a quick bike ride up the street, had hit a serious snag.

He could settle for another brand. Trojans were in stock and could suffice. They were even on sale. The brands were probably equal in quality and identical in design and testing, but something happened way back when; something that he cares not to remember. Nonetheless, here he jaunted back and forth around the city on his bike to another store, in order to fulfill his quest to find his sacred brand of condoms and restore peace to the land.

All across Santa Monica he has biked. On this religious tantric crusade. For Love, in an inspired pursuit of preparation. One of the physical, he need to be prepared, but also one of mental preparation to show up as the man he was stretching so desperately to become. If he could change and prove it to the world: his needling parents and dawdling, transient friends, would change too. “Maybe they would finally hear me,” he says to himself as he locks his bike to the chain linked fence.

“Come on… RiteAID!” he gave the store a pep talk as he entered. The automatic sliding doors opened with a SHWWTH like Star Trek.

He smiled to himself as he walked thru the store remembering how she would curl off the words with her indecipherable accent, “I want you to sex me, right now!” Dumbfounded, partially unsure of what she had said and partially he couldn’t believe it was happening to him--Right now? he looked around… right now!
+ + +

We are walking across a busy six-lane boulevard that heads to downtown Buenos Aires- I look up a bushy tree’s skirt, where her eyes lead me. She loves to climb trees more than a squirrel… And then we make love riding in the front seat of the top deck on a double-decker tour bus squeezed into my sleepy bag, heading deep into the countryside to a secret secluded beach… And then we are on a train to Italy & while we make love I have to keep one eye open and one hand ready to swat away the thieves pawing at our bags… And then we enrapt ourselves in the warms waters of laguna blanca, bobbing in the lake, watching the sunset melt blue into gold.

Planes, trains and automobiles. Rooftops and wagon wheels. Fire escapes and walnut trees – We are up in this, alive--thick, bushy tree of feeling. The branches bend and sway with our wild whims-- a couple of content squirrels oblivious to the world.

Walking endless miles of dark unsafe city streets, we seduce the world to rise up with us, protected by the glow of love, our cloak of invulnerability. We tug at the forgetful world, pulling the people up out of their open sullen graves, sneezing life back into the forgotten. “You’re not dead, you’re only sleeping!” we remind them.
~ ~ ~

“Yeah...” Tomas took a deep breath, “I need the 40 pack.” Any extra pedaling was well worth it. “And riteAid my friend has come through,” he said to himself. He almost didn’t recognize them because Golden Cow changed their packaging from the plain faded colors to this new sleek design. “Wow, shiny gold packaging, how provocative!” he thought. “Makes me even more committed to them. Yes,” he said aloud after reading the package again, “I too am invested in having great, ‘Longer Lasting!’ protected sex.”

He grabbed a box and headed to the check out line. He remembered, when he was a kid, he had been embarrassed to buy condoms. He would hide the package under a box of Fruit Loops, a bottle of YooHoo, and an issue of Vanity Fair, hoping no one would notice. Now he prided himself on the honor of following through responsibly. He felt grateful to even need to buy condoms. It was a Class A problem to have and he submitted to its resolution wholeheartedly. The check out guy and Tomas nodded a knowing nod to each other. “See we know. And we trust,” Tomas realized. “40 pack,” the checkout guy said as he held it up and nodded again approvingly.

He biked home with the box held above his head like he had just won the Tour de France. “Buenos Aires here I come!” A victor. Victorious, he crossed the finish line and escaped decades of debris and inertia. As his plane leaned forward into the redeye air he laughed and cried tears of delight. He freed himself. His journey had begun. Anticipation fizzed inside of him like lighting, “I am about to see a beautiful, loving, generous, old-soul, young, sexy woman. With her I feel free to say whatever I am feeling. Something unlocks. And I give myself permission again. Poetry comes out. And all kinds of funny hijinks that no longer need to hibernate. We will join our madcap forces as one amazing, alive, vibrant, multi-tentacled, love-worshipping behemoth. Mwahahahha! Share, Taste, Savor, Life, Slurp it Up, Together! I can’t believe it’s happening. I am doing it,” he thought incredulously. He headed off into the world, opening himself to life, love and the unknown, scared as shit, but prepared.

Expansion Quote

"The expansion phase is a demanding one, but if the choice is made for life & for following our true convictions, our energy level is intensified." Gail Sheehy

I find this quote to be so true. I found the quote in my Harbrace College Grammar Handbook as i was doing my daily grammar practice, which sometimes i think is not helping, but i will prevail.

I have noticed that as I clear out what is inessential in my life, my energy, motivation, clarity and creativity has expanded.

I clear out old energy thru completing old projects, goals, task, and commitments on which i had been dragging my feet. I focus my attention on the work that is most important and get it done and off my mind. I do the scariest or most dreaded tasks of the day first. I put daily time and energy into the things that i love and bring me joy- this is such a gift to my soul! I remind myself that to get better at something takes practice and persistence- (read Mastery: The keys to success and long-term fulfillment by Aikido Master George Leonard) And if i love it,it is worth doing and doing well.

Love+Peace

Welcome

This blog shares words, numbers, growth, inspiration, art, life, and then some.

I have started a process of completing incompletes, finishing old unfinished business.

The practice involves going thru the many stacks of my old writing journals , napkins and bundles of scraps of paper. There are approximately 24 in number. I work for at least 1 hour per week. Extract the good or rather fairly good stuff and burn the rest.

My intentions are:

To purge all the paper, To clear space for more creativity to come into my life, To find any lost poems that still speak truth, To learn from the past, To cut the cords that draw my energy away, To collect ideas for future short stories, characters, and dialogue, and To improve my writing thru understanding & unlearning my bad habits

2 months into it I have already learned a lot about myself that i had forgotten. How heart broken, lost, lonely, and misunderstood i was in high school and college. This pain was so much a part of my identity back then and i still seen this pattern lurking in the background, sneaking up and biting me in the ass.

Tonight I found probably my first journal, circa 1993: High school senior year...

Good to be alive!