where to begin? the other day, i was in florida - panama city beach - it was early in the morning and it was sunny. i was driving along the beach road, which was kind of disgusting. theme parks, fast food restaurants, souvenir shops, hotels, etc. just like one really long too tall strip mall. but, luckily this country is going to shit and even the resort areas have their bad spots. razed hotels or plots of land cleared for development, but no money to develop.
and it is in these gaps that i got to see the gulf of mexico. oh, i have seen it before. just once, if i recall correctly (and oftentimes i do not.) that one other time was in the spring of 2000, in corpus christi texas. i was with steve, we had left new york a few weeks (days?) earlier, we were on a tirade in his little silver car that i would one day wreck. we were traveling 25 miles per hour 24 hours a day. that means our rate of travel was so quick that the average speed our bodies felt we were moving at was 25 mph. which is fast, considering that (on this trip) i am traveling about 2.7 mph 24 hours a day. so, if i were walking without ever stopping over the last 184 days (or so) i would have covered the same distance that i have.
anyway, enough math.
so, through these 'cracks in the system' i saw the gulf of mexico. it was wondrous. the water was a dark dark blue out deep, closer in it was a lighter-than-sky blue (like if you mixed 3 parts of sky blue paint and 1 part white paint -i said enough math!), and the sand was a brilliant white. it looked like snow. i had to have me some of that.
so, i parked on top of one of the razed hotels and got out of my truck. i saw some people wading, but just two people, and a few people far away just sitting on the beach. on this trip i have seen the pacific ocean, at least two of the great lakes, a few major rivers, the atlantic ocean and now the gulf of mexico. i swam in the pacific, lake michigan, and now the gulf of mexico. i was terrified the
first time i swam in the pacific, mostly because there werent many other people swimming. i didnt go into the atlantic because no one else was in there and just feeling it, it felt cold. so i walked to the gulf and felt the water it felt cold.
but i had SEEN people in there. it couldnt be too cold. so i walked back to my truck and derobed in the lot that used to be some hotel. with my sandal and shorts on i walked back to the water and started wading. i stood knee deep for a long time. the water was cold, but i guess it wouldnt really get warmer and i was already half in, so when a wave came upon me i lowered to it and let it splash my body and then i went in. it was pretty glorious. i had no idea that it would be so salty. i chased some waves for awhile and then i looked in the water.
 the gulf of mexico |
it was pretty neat, i was about four feet deep and i could see my shadow on the sand beneath me, thats how clear the water was. i played at this for awhile and then i noticed fish! schools of little fish were swimming about me, oblivious to my presence and i was happy about that. i walked around looking at fish for awhile and then i got scared of sharks. i know - pretty dumb. but once i got it in my head i couldnt get it out. so i went back close to the shore just waiting, knowing that a shark was gonna come up on me at any moment. and i would have the last laugh because i sensed it before it happened.
needless to say, it never did happen. but i freaked myself out pretty good thinking about that. so i stood up near the beach for awhile watching the tiny clams burrowing into the wet sand as the surf rolled away. that was neat. and then the dreaded moment came upon me. another reason why i dont like to go into these oceans and gulfs and such is the walk from the water to the truck - with wet feet. there wasnt a 'foot washing' station for me to wash the sand away and this was a dilemma. i could use my towel, but with that much wet sand it would take a long time to get it sufficiently off and would make my towel all sandy in the process.
so, i decided that i would wait it out. i got out my book, my sunglasses, and my chair. i sat in that sad lot for more than an hour waiting for the sand on my feet to dry so i could just wipe it off with my hand. it was pretty nice. the sun was beating down on me and it was like i was on spring break. instead of thousands of college co-eds looking for meaningless sex, it was just me and some other guy eating a sandwich in his truck. why had he parked right next to me in such a large abandoned lot?
a cloud covered the sun and after tolerating this for a few moments i decided to investigate. i looked up and saw that while the cloud/sunblock was just a large wisp there was a legion of dark clouds rolling in from out on the gulf. the sun would soon be gone and my feet were only half dry. i hedged my bets and toweled them off. then i had to make a choice. i could jump in the back of my truck and slip out of my shorts and back into my trousers or i could just drop trough there in the parking lot. my sandwich friend was still parked next to me, now on his third cigarette (at least! - i mean, doesnt this guy have something better to do?) but i decided instead of jumping into my truck sandy and still a little wet i would just change in the lot. it would be easier and quicker.
once changed, happy about my foray into the water, i got back into my truck and headed on to pensacola. halfway there i spotted a library and stopped there overlong. it was dark when i came out and i had to decide if i wanted to stay where ever i was or continue on to pensacola. i decided to push on. pensacola was a dead city even just at 8 o'clock on a monday. i went to a bar and then found a place to sleep. although i was looking forward to spending time in pensacola (plan-it-x south) i convinced myself that i wouldnt actually talk to anyone that i may have a chance to meet and pushed on for mobile alabama.
and it was on this drive that i started thinking. well, not started, mostly when i am driving i am thinking. or i am singing at the top of my lungs, making a fool out of myself. the thing is, while i am driving, i come up with some great title for blog posts, and some great ideas for things to write about. but i forget about them as soon as that trucks stops running. it is annoying.
the thing that i was turning over in my head on this trip was the singularity. and i had mapped out the precise points that i wanted to talk about, a history of my belief, titles that i had read and the way i morphed things to consider what i was doing/thinking a new religion. this was when i was younger. it started when i was 15 or so. around that time my dad took me to the city (chicago) for my birthday. all i wanted was to go to this bookshop on the northside and get some books. this was before the internet was a thing for me so i dont really know how i even learned of this bookshop.
but, it was all old books and had a particularly large section on the occult and religion/spirituality. i went straight there. i bought 'the satanic bible' by anton levey (looking back on this, i wonder if my dad knew what i was purchasing? why would he let a young son have such a thing? this thought deserves its own paragraph...hold on), a couple books by aleister crowley, a book called 'the varieties of religious experience,' and (i think) a stephen king book. i was big into him then as well.
i remember that we, as a family, went to church when i was younger - maybe up until i was 7 or so. and then for holidays like easter until maybe 10 years old. i was in catholic school for first and second grade (i think) and then moved to public school, but only because the catholic school closed. in my adult years i have never gotten any sort of religious whiff from anyone in my family, extended, on either side. i assume that folks on my moms side went to church at some point, but by the late eighties it wasnt a thing to do anymore and certainly not part of my nuclear family. (an anomaly to this is that, later in her life, my younger sister got real big into god and church and stuff...but by the time she was born and growin up church was a thing of the past for the family.)
so, there was no reason for my dad not to want me to have such books aside from the general societal misunderstanding of them. (like, there is no such religion as 'satanism' the satanic bible clearly states that the idea of the book was to be a pillar to non-religion.) i got these books, was happy for them, and i went home and devoured them. i got more crowley books and got really big into him, more books on religion (a history of god by karen armstrong, the bhagavad gita, other strictly religious texts, and alot of philosophy from the 15-16-1700's where intellectuals would write about the power of man over god and things like that.)
anyway, all of this went into me. and then i kind of forgot about it for awhile. it stewed. in my life i made friends and turned away from books a little bit. but some of the things resonated. like "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and other crowley-isms. it was that statement and reading aleister crowley in general (along with those philosophers) that led to reading about government and economics. which led me to discovering, adopting, and espousing the idea of anarchism.
things were fitting nicely together. and after i got into the world on my own, i started 'tasting the stew' as it were. i started writing ideas of my own about religion and politics - well, as "of my own" as they could be. what i whipped together i ultimately dubbed "the singularity." and the basic premise of it is that the world and the universe and everything that there is was and ever will be revolves around your self. in this life, i was the center of my own universe, everything revolved around me. everything that happened was somehow related to the choices and decisions that i made and was making and that i had the power to change/alter/direct to future.
and not just me. anyone that adopted this belief was their own singularity, they were their own center of the universe and everything in this life revolved around them. and they were accountable for everything that happened in the world. it was self-empowering but hard to convince people of or explain to people without sounding, well, conceited. somewhere i think i have some outline of this "religion" but i havent consulted it in many years. i started thinking about it in richmond, when (somehow) muna got me to talking about it. something i hadnt done in quite awhile.
and then when i was driving, it all came back to me. and i reaffirmed my belief in all of this mumbo-jumbo. i dont know why or if any of this matters. i guess i am just writing down that i do not believe in order, i do not think that there is a master plan or a destiny, i think that we each make choices that send ripple effects throughout the world around us and wider. that each of us is capable and responsible for affecting the change we want to see.
of course, as i write my affirmation of this belief i am driving around the country saying "fuck-all" to the world around me. i never said i wasnt a hypocrite.
