Today, the ways and means are everything to those who imagine themselves to be qualified professionals. Nothing is romantic or funny, and everything is gravely important (or completely unimportant) and so serious to the professional artist! And we have to be professional, and remind each other everyday - or as everyone knows - we cease to exist! Oh, but it isn't right to crack jokes like this - not to the serious professionals! Not unless the joke makes fun of my unimportance - since I'm not allowed to be a professional. Remember, the professionals know that they deserve to be professionals, and to suggest otherwise or that it isn't fair is just wrong! The professional has so much free time to create! He makes the loser like me appear deservedly left out.

But what's it about? The artist, whether professional or left out, is entangled in a vast complicated mess made by the structure of society, techniques of production and, nowadays, the evaluation of viable, acceptable work... To liberate a personal vision, the artist must rise above society's goals, and other people's judgements. We would all agree with the assumption that if ingenuity cannot be frightened off, then of course, artistic genius may prevail. We only need adapt to new mediums. (Should human civilization chance to prosper, what kind of art and literature do we see coming in future ages? I believe a close relationship may develop between latent psychological powers, as yet largely untapped, and creativity. Exactly what form this might take is anybody's guess. Evolution may intimately link the minds of individuals. Technology may find a way to broadcast the nightly dream for all to see. Perhaps we can reach ecstatic illumination and spiritual communion. Maybe we can learn not to kill our early innocence and child-like aesthetic ecstasy. Perhaps not. We may even fulfill the ageless longing that inspired the finest poetry - the wish to get to know one another, and be loved. To peruse the ringlets of your lover's hair, grazing her ear with your lips - instead of changing the channel. Perhaps love will be so perfect - poetry and song will neither be needed to express thwarted passions after all desires are finally fulfilled. Only joking.)

You cannot think unless you accept one chance - that all things may be possible. Let's start with some compelling illustrations based on some myths central to the Western psyche: perhaps the one thing in common between the faith of religion and desires of poetry is the wish to attain to desirable feelings - of harmony, awareness and ultimate reality - knowledge and understanding combined. The scriptures named the wisdom of god, "Grace." The beholden wonder of eastern enlightenment is perhaps a higher form of emotional wisdom, too: perfect peace and release from care. Human feelings of love, grace, lust and love are always discovered poised among a garden of delightful pleasure... Yet realize: we need righteousness only so we can leave it behind in paradise. We honor the law only because we hope for divine grace. Faith is supposed to grant us our every wish, but mainly a free passport back into paradise. But the human way, of life amid our sensitivities, emotional and physical, transmutes the spiritual command into the coupling of two lovers - because we are made for physical intimacy. So, the divided sex of men and women is united by hunger lust. We do not pity without first loving.

We know what we want, but we still suffer from a desperate inability to reach it. We're human beings: that's why. Money and drugs, sex and cars - pretty clothing and homes - knowing that you don't live in a slum... None of these things will bring you perfection and joy... But you experience the wish no matter how many mistakes you need to make, to know yourself, to remember your weakness and exercise your strength. Desires for transcendence... if only wisdom would simply dawn on us. Great teachers suggest we need only decide to behave ourselves, and so come to wisdom, too. Instead, we bear the burden of expectations; self-centered and mutely desperate, we crash through the world. Wondering what to do, you wish for the end of your imaginary hopes - and so maybe you might give up, never to write or paint again - if only that simple resignation would make peace with your heart, at last... Because we're human, we suspect ourselves overmuch; inevitably, the foolish wish to surpass ourselves, even amid the failure of self-trust, reveals but one more key to help figure out an insatiably human design.

Enter the conjecture like a mortal... You enter her instead... Ask yourself: why are there women you wanted to know - but never got to know? That puzzle supplies some inclination, stirs up uneasiness and makes you look suspiciously in the mirror... You want to trust yourself, so you do. The self is unwanted and yet indelible, the only thing you need to escape - but can't. Yet, the only thing you can give to someone is your self. Your soul is the myth of a belief in a god. We need that too, because God, if it is, must make us ask questions, and through us, must know the truth, too.

Your poetry, your musing, your deepest love, all of it belongs to you - because we know nothing. Wishing to see can't see enough. Somebody tells us "vision" is a misnomer, and it's only the history of mental derangement. How sad, that people shut off to talent beyond their own... So, why do we feel so hung up by presentiment, as if we were already told what we were supposed to learn - but never do figure it out... I think that it isn't disappointment or failure - but misapprehension of our true ends... We only wish for wisdom and cannot live long enough, alas, to actually achieve it... Oh, but that leaves you hanging too much; you want someone to tell you the absolute truth, right? Sorry brother, maybe come back next millennium...

You laugh at yourself. Ten thousand years from today, human being, ah, how unrecognizably the same you shall be... Ah, but maybe not! Art forms do make the future, so how can we predict them? Right now, the future tends to make us dream of improbable things... The future is made already - it makes us make it, in fact... Everything we can learn tomorrow is already suggested by today; at least, that's the mood of the 21st century. But 10,000 years from today - perhaps our progeny will be happy to have forgotten us.

Today, the telescope, the calculator, this computer - use them and think... Everything we can learn proves that we are not so small as the universe makes us feel; the knowledge we possess is as vast as all there is, for all the universe is contained in the imagination of one who resembles us, too: a friend, your mother, your god... The advance of knowledge begins to see that the human accident does have some design to it... The universe appears made for sparking life even though the space and matter actually occupied with life takes only a few molecules from the whole of corporeal matter... How lucky we are - to be living dust... Can't you see that? We are alive, not cold and luckless as moon rocks or wisps of dead nebula...

Are you at one with your guesses, happily at home to your credit card appeal for blessing and equality? The universal equinox of debt and forfeiture, that holy day, blessing all appeals forgiven, the salubrious yes of your superstar neuterdom! We're all the same in our wayward wish for truth... We cannot be deceived anymore... Can you honestly let the light go out on all sincerity before you beg from the bottom of your heart?

I'm a man and couldn't forgive you without squeezing your taut nipples first. Religion only wanted to remember sex. But the question today remains - can we forgive the useless repression of religion? And how can you love me? I want to punish your pussy with my frustration and spit on the tender pearls of your genitalia. I want to make you wail sweet hymns and beg for nursery rhymes, slapping at your cunts till they sting red, till they go numb. I'll siphon my piss up your asshole before sucking and fucking you to orgasms explosive as supernovae. I'm without shame tonight and shall die, unforgivably, of my hard on...

Wake up! A dreamy mare prances her wish for retribution, redemption and transfiguration. The crucifix lies between the breasts of virgins; they wait for some loving mouth to engulf their breasts. Once the great writers are gone - who can you turn to? Those who know how to make sound business decisions? The big literary publishers have been consumed by multinationals. Now, they are called, "imprints." So, forget about publishing your great novels, kids. ...Poetry of the future, art forms of the future? They need privacy and concern such as we aren't likely to win, even with our sedated, complacent, accept-anything lifestyles... Ha! Please, I'm not really drugged enough to hope for impossible things. The future remains unknown. The measure of wit is the inspiration it gives. Anything is possible: literacy may yet occupy some new, unanticipated dimension, and the written word may become simply an artifact of early human progress, supplanted by some more rapid, deeper and direct kind of communication.

Perhaps the future will free us to "read" whole books instantly. Maybe we can impregnate our brains with the fountain of all human wisdom, and remember all of it. Oh, but I doubt that's likely. Literature will continue and we will still have to work hard at finding new ideas, too. There will always be cycles of intellectual ferment and terrible stagnation.

Far far in the future... What is the future - is it really 10,000 years away? Can we imagine that I wonder? I don't know. Humanity is a stream of water flowing into the abyss. That rainbow will not disappear if the water doesn't end... In the distant future, mind may be transformed into some sublime form. Maybe some world awaits us that doesn't depend on embodiment; but whether we are destined to discover it or not, how can we know? It seems unlikely.

To articulate poetry is a gift. Imagination that lasts forever comes from a brief physical sensation. Poetry proves we don't decide to understand things. We are given to know. As for today, human being remains a span between the foolish will of desire and the sublime hope for wisdom. We cannot abandon our dreams or forget what we are. Beyond the appetite for material possession and appetites already satiated, the human being may one day become perfectly free, but not until, unabashedly, we have achieved an as yet untried sensitivity for creating ends in goodness and harmony...

~ I'm still locked up inside the Jokhang temple. Her accent was a drawing of straws. She lived to drawl because her luscious body tolerated anything silly you could imagine. I was daydreaming in auburn since nobody else was listening. Meanwhile, all the other Westerners in Lhasa planted themselves in the cafes - most grimly determined not to know me at all... But when I approached them, everyone turned out to be quite friendly.

Language happens to you - this is what makes you great, that and your ability to put some ideas into your gift... I laugh and still can't understand how posing coolly, coldly or dug under could help anybody to write well! Fine poets have always rejoiced in their obscurity, an inglorious stigmata that begets pride, joy and shame. One and all of us are confounded and inspired by the comfortable disregard of mostly everyone who has neither time nor psychic physiognomy to understand us. The odd poet makes it big; he or she is usually a coincidence between a fortuitous thirst among the public and that specially gifted artist who can read as well as write... Very popular and gimmicky authors, on the other hand, always have to play their cards upon soft sentiments, hard urges and human curiosity: the love for pets; fear of immanent and brutal death, and easy sex with perfect sluts...

...Today in Lhasa, I'm wondering how many of those Italians and Germans gave any cash to the legless beggar, the energetic one sweeping the dirty puddles from the sidewalk, raising his scratched and filthy palms in helpless appeal for bread? Not very many: those Italians and Germans seemed even more seriously worried than the mean Canadians with whom I'm familiar. I didn't give the beggar much money, but I did give something... Because the beggar was looking into my eyes and so pathetically sweeping, sweeping aside the puddles from my path. Seeing that - I want to die! Yes, I know: rich men, poor women and unloved kids kill themselves everyday... But that legless being wants to live! Tell me if you understand anything at all!

Ah yes, you're so angry. Laugh at this formless, senseless panegyric against nothing but frustration. I'm not crazy. I'm doing this on purpose. Perhaps you are a past master at the art of self-pity... You also knew why you were really singing, or travelling, or painting, or trying to write an original piece of fiction. I never stop running away from everything I never understood. Why did I end up alone, surrounded by so many people who insisted they were so much more sincere than I? My clownishness wasn't for them and I didn't want them to watch me! Now I'm on my knees before the presiding magistrate, begging for mercy. All the evidence is heaped up so high against me. My defense is nothing new - genuine befuddlement... I had a plan. It's my secret - I'm entitled to one.

I want you to tell me why. I'm still in Tibet, wondering when I can see my mother again, and if I will, before she dies... Why are all these monks looking at me as if they know that I've just realized I'm only one more tourist? At least some of the monks are smirking. But some look even more serious than the average Tibetan in the street. ...Perhaps they know what I am really thinking. How many masters can you serve before you have to be true to yourself - to discover what you believe? Maybe these monks expect me to know something, or tell them something that they should know. Like what, I wonder?

I'm just not the bright sun. I'm slow, confused and arbitrary in my tastes. Like all my brothers in the city, I've been born into the age that makes a real world of fantasy and it's pretty difficult to escape back into real life. I shudder at this comedy of imbecility that we call civilization! But you won't catch me putting on any false sincerity. I'm bread crumbs. You really think I just want money, like all the rest? That I'm one more Pharisee with no intention to admit it? All right, I tell you the truth, for once: I'd take her money, sure I would, but only after I fucked her up good! I'd tie her up and spank her bum bright red. Not very original, am I?

I'll go down, climb off my solitude, yes I will. I'll stand there between the vendors, and not buy a thing, and see if anybody comes close... Like a zombie handed the gun to kill, or given a chance to deny a poor, thirsty slit - I was like a new prototype with power to spare... But wait, wait - till the last minute...

Outside on the roof - everyone vanishes. I find the stairway out, forgetting all. I can't bear to glimpse another statue or carving! I'm the jaded minion of intransigent dreams. I know why people are afraid of fellows like me! I'm untouched by expectations. I've cast everything aside - adrift, waiting for answers - silently, patiently, a man without any home. But this wish to be uprooted and forget the past is so unforgivable. Nobody needs those who have nowhere to go back home to! This deliberate solitude cannot come off as eloquent or chivalrous. Besides, "people like me," are viewed as invulnerable to any chance for seeing how others see us. Maybe I'm gifted, but that doesn't matter much. I appear backwards - dated by dreams - imagining that community is sometimes an enemy to "integrity." So what? I'm entitled to my personal delusions... You need only understand that I disavowed conventional hopes, perhaps to get passed disillusionment.

I only persuaded myself that I was a fine artist. But why? Only to go on - not to die - that's all there is to it. I'm just another big head... The fib after the last lie beefs up the inertia behind my idea that creativity is the god of imagination. Mooooo! Milk me mama, I'm holy too..! Like hell! My toothless wish never to stop writing seems narrow, not heroic. All this work, this whole CD ROM is a silent, inscrutable wish to save my heartland. For this disastrous devotion to art - I want mental release - not forgiveness! Because I was afraid to fall apart; or worse, into laziness, slumbering away - exchanging dreams and work for emptiness, abandoning my lovers, running away... One who goes blind only wants to see again...

Perhaps I have always been blind. First, I need to satisfy the senses. The aesthetic natural inside the poet may have a very sensuous imagination, yet remain untouched - spiritually...