"Ask passion for mercy and ...[it'll]...throw you a rope"

I finally feel like the things I came out here to do are happening. I haven't found some throbbing soul beneath the fresh drywall and flourescent crucifix of Boise, but I have an invincible summer within me, you might say. I have time here. Virtually everything I've ever been good at is now at its apex. Constantly self-imposed challenges as though someone were watching over my shoulder. I whined a bit about my lack of comradarie, and found out it was only because I wasn't trying.

I've talked about this before, but I really think that there is one important binary opposition in life. Virtually every other duality that occurs in the daily procession of our life stems from this: FEAR or LOVE . See (acknowledging that I'm not perfect, and moving on) the scurrying mammal in us is conditioned to be afraid. To run from looming shadows as they eclipse us, to retreat to our holes and wait for the panic in the street that must be brimming with danger to die down and go home. We've all assembled our lives, because our history is based on this impulse, to assimilate. To monger in groups is to shed the probability that anguish or pain will touch us. So we buy into things; bunk movies, exploitive fashions, shit politics, ridiculous automobiles, recklessly hacking the real estate system as a lifestyle. Whatever token of participation we can purchase and then immediately retreat to put as much of it between us and everyone else as possible.

But love. An amorous appreciation that we are all really doing this, or really could. That we're all after the same thing and there's simply varying degrees of confusion. And then your folly seems so reasonable, and the collective dream so simple. So hard to believe that we've miturated upon it by systemically deeming whole swaths of people as less valuable than us. Or that we're willing to mechanize our greed into tactical airstrikes to insure that all the above stays put; or better yet continues to swell cancerous.

And the finer detail is that, personally, the attitude of love adds color and optimism and pleasure to virtually everything. As though approaching every choice with the question of which option is from love, and which from fear, automates the most difficult decisions.