What a weird year. (I mean etymologically wird, having one's own thing, one's wird).

December 2003, meeting Marco at the restaurant, walking around aimlessly in the cold New York winter through the contemplative greens of Central Park. Then the months of Wilber mania, then leaving the Society. Then here--the excitement, the headiness (note the intended pun). I felt real excitement for the first time in a long while. Then her. For once feeling home, feeling like a regular guy. A sweatshirt wearing, snuggling with his girl on the couch Sat. afternoon kinda guy.

All that gone. The innocence, arrogance, ignorance of it all. Forever wiped away by the ever-pressing urges of Eros and attention. But Eros has jumped into a room in my psyche that feels alien and absent, like running from a crowded party at an unkonwn mansion into a completely empty, distinct-less parlor and not being somehow to find a way back to the party. Or maybe you don't want to go back anymore.

Losing Chloe, losing the job, the integralist agenda--actually I take that back. Those were the things I wanted, the things I desired, where I put my attention and I actually suceeded. I got the job, the girl, the house, the colleagues, and none of it (of course) brought any ultimate satisfaction.

It was suceeding and then having it all taken away that caused this transformation. It's all (or most anyways) object to me now. The academic ascesticism, the minsiterial call (I wonder what a post-metaphysical ministry looks like...hmm).

I am being pulled further and further back towards The Witness. Or maybe its just apathy. Whatever. Apathy still seems to be self-concerned: concerned about not-caring. I'm feel like I don't give enough attention to myself to be apathetic.

Artifacts, artifacts. This writing, the movies I watch, interviews, even the art. Where is the revelatory in our dreary, dense world?

All this is grace.

Up until this year I still had some "sign-i-ficant", slight perhaps but real enough, connection with most of my peers to articulate, however weakly and over-emotionally, my life choices, my values, my life-plan. That is no longer the case. I am unmoved, unspoken, like Christ befoer Pilate to this world wallowing in misery and partial moments of escape.

Never understood the pull towards the artistic until now. Until the True has dried up. Until the True became my weapon in my arsenal and not the embedded warrior ideal. It rests on my belt now.

Here is thsi empty canvass, this empty parlor. Let us create, let us converse, let us heal one another. Let us embody Source in our co-presence.