I'm feeling it. Well, actually, I'm totally fucking exhausted to the point of being goofball jittery, but sitting here on a borrowed bed after spending a week dancing along the edge of what I can really do as a person, I'm all strung out, a little hung over, but sizzlingly alive. It's hard to articulate. Words fail, but General Tso's Tofu provides.

Earlier this week I visited with Bill, my Pa, my step-father, father of my sister, who was around the house from when I was about three until I left home and did me a world of good in-between. He and my mom had a really interesting relationship, one which reached a romantic coda when I was a teenager (and was ergo semi-oblivious to this, or perhaps just too self-absorbed to care) but they stayed together as a logical family unit until my sister left for college.

He's married now to a wonderful artist named Patti -- hence the domain name -- who's lives most of her life out in DC, and who he (and my mom) have been friends with since they were wild and young. Yeah. Life is strange that way. I remember meeting Patti when I was a kid in Iowa when we were out there one summer on the farm, her and her then-husband Skip -- who was part of the wild and young thing too -- come out to visit and break the news that Skip had cancer. Skip died. We all went to his funeral in DC. They played The Circle Game.

Patti is dying now too. Same cause. All things considered I was impressed by how well she's holding up, and Bill's doing a stellar job of taking care of her, but it's clear where things are going and it was bittersweet seeing her; made me feel sick to my stomach to say goodbye.

And it feels weird and advantage-taking to say it, but that very real, heavy, pressing reminder of just how finite our time on earth really is is why I'm feeling the way I do now, which frankly I'm enjoying. Contrast reveals, and the old words sing: Life Is Holy And Every Moment Precious. Thanks, Patti.

Also fueling the fire is that I'm reading Dave Hickey's Air Guitar, and I feel he's a kindred spirit in the over-use of five-dollar words and full-hearted embrace of the Public. He made it ok, seems to be happy and shit. That's always nice to see.

To sum up, post-postmodernism recognizes and embraces the relativity of all things, understands that meaning is born from a web of associations, and takes away from this not just the apple-pie wisdom that "life's what you make it," but also a critically empowering lesson in terms of how things get made. We are procedurally literate. We see and feel the romantic keen of Meaning, and fill ourselves with the knowledge of it's construction like so much Holy Ghost Power.

Everything is a choice, so, in the words of Jimmy Carter, "Why Not The Best?" There's just no time for anything but Love, but Action, but Brotherhood, but Glory. Anything less is marking the days, waiting on revelation. Nothing ventured isn't just nothing gained; it's really a gigantic cosmic loss.

I go back and forth on the Zen question, about what can and can't be actively done or achieved through intention and attachment, what you might call "direct action" in life. It's tricky. As they say, when the student is ready the master will appear, and all the great things in life will come to you in unforced moments. In the words of my mother, the universe is not a tease -- but you have to let yourself go to it as well.

You have to be ready, to be hungry, to be willing to take a chance, to give yourself permission to speak freely. You have to have faith. You have to embrace your shadow self. You have to keep on plugging away.

This is a struggle for me just like it is for every other poor confused soul who braves the world free of easy fictions and light on the self-delusion. We all long for the comfort of certain knowledge, are envious of those who appear confident and calm. I know well enough that other people see that in me, and in this I take some solace, because it lets me assume that everyone else is really just as uncertain under the hood too. But that doesn't make any of this feel less urgent. Gotta make something happen. Gotta believe. Got to be Free.

It's scary to be here -- to feel my spirit opening, like I could fall in love again, like I could get my heart broken -- but scary in a good way, the Allen Ginsburg way, the way that lets you know you're really on to something.

To be honest I have no idea what that something is, or where all this is headed. It's just getting started, I think, and I want to try and Go With It even if I'm not sure what the goal is. I feel like my thirst for long-term/big-picture clarity holds me back and away from the thrum of the present. It's a cop out.

So I'll go with the flow, with the excitement. It's keeping me up at night. Ideas. Philosophies. Business plans and political schemes. Thoughts of women and dreams of paradise. This is why they pay me the big bucks.

Speaking of which, in the meantime there's still a shit-ton of work to do, a lot of boxes to check and a lot of miles to travel. It's the hard yards from here until the end of the year, and maybe even a little into January, but after that... I have a feeling that 2008 will be a Whole New Thing.