song of the day: union of the snake (Duran Duran)
word of the day: aprosexia (inability to concentrate)
monk of the day: ken wilber

the joy of taxes. i'm completing taxes for 2003 (we had an extension this year cuz i was on the road). it's so weird when you go back and review an entire year on paper. i always see some receipt from a Holiday Inn in some town and have flash backs to that part of a tour- what i felt like, what the show that night was like. what's funny about finances is that when you're in the middle of it- fighting to get out of debt, struggling to pay bills, pulling all your taxes together- it can haunt you like a spectre, you become engulfed. it is such an amazing mind fuck. i mean it literally plays fuck with your head. i'm healthy, happy, in love, secure, everything a being needs, and what's more the luxury of a life where i can cultivate attention, work on awareness, etc. most people in the history of the planet have had to bust their ass just to scrape together food, find a place to sleep, muddle through endless miserable austerities and hardships. i have nothing to complain or worry about, period. but then i start running legers, doing books, concocting the inebriating brew of thoughts, reactions, and contractions that sends me spiraling into a house of mirrors. it's such a JOKE! we're all going to be dead in a moment. literally, this is the moment of our death- the present moment. whenever we die, it will be in the present moment. do i really want to be put to sleep for the millionth time by my craving for drama and illusion? it never ends. there is always, always something i can get fucked up about, but i have to choose to submerge myself in the anasthesia for it to happen. the practice is just the empty, simple awareness inhabiting the being in the World. it's super important to attend to taxes, legers, and accounting. but i can't mistake them for something real. the sum of our financial worries and struggles is vapor- all impermanent. but the natural behavior of love is to attend to it fully in the moment as is needed, whether it's a number on a page or a diaper on a baby, or the face of a stranger. i've noticed hanging out with rich people that they are every bit as anxious and consumed by money as the ones who don't have it. in fact, more so. it's a strange inverted relation, the more you have, the more urgent it becomes to maintain and expand it i guess. i lived for years and years in a van, in a one room loft, in hotels, it never felt as though there was any lacking or problem. but when my daughter was born, my mind went to new places- crazy places, of worry, concern- letting all kinds of fictional scenarios pull me all over the place. because i was now responsible for another person forever, it really freaked me out and made me clench my jaw and stare out windows and stuff. HA HA HA!!! but it's ok. i can only do the best that i can do, if i truly try my best and just keep working doing what is in my power to provide for my family and be a decent person in the world, what more is there? doing it as / from / for love- that's what. i do think it's important to be engaged in money matters. it is not "beneath" spirituality, it's part of it. it's one of the parts i need to diligently work on...