Episode 39: The Universe Loves Irony!

SEXSPLOSIONS! And folks, from where I’m standing it looks like I’m gonna spend the rest of my life alone in a room with a vibrator and the Tao Te Ching. Alright?!? QUARTER LIFE CRISIS PARTY OF ONE! Universal irony. Spiritual immortality. CATCH 22’s. Dual Cultivation! WTF! Sitting and doing nothing FOREVER! “NOT YOU TOOOO…” Is everything thought I knew about myself wrong? LOCO FOR COCO PUFFS! & BAD POETRY… of course, what else were you expecting…

Excerpt 1:

“This week on Sunday nights are for hopeless romantics… The universe loves irony. 

So I’m sitting and watching a TV show, some murder mystery or other. And one of the characters goes, “Why is it the family values guys are always the ones getting caught with their pants down?” To which the other character in the car simulation replies, “The universe loves irony.” 

And boy could that not be a truer statement this week. Yep, folks, that pretty much sums it up. Alright, that’s the whole show! The end. 

So, there I am, sitting in my room, reading the Tao (or dao, those are interchangeable) of health, sex and Longevity, and I’m like 38 pages deep already. I’m like doing my required reading for school before hand. Yeah, that’s how you know you’ve found what you’re meant to be doing. I’m like, riveted. Anyways back to my point. So I’m sitting there like 38 pages deep and I read… that basically attaining spiritual immortality is almost impossible (you gotta find a master to teach you everything, dedicate your life to celibacy, and practice and breathing and sitting and doing nothing foreverrrr). Or, there’s another way to attain lasting health and longevity (within this lifetime) that just about anyone can learn to practice. The catch 22 is that it’s called ‘the parallel practice’ or ‘dual cultivation.’ And folks, this is the kicker… Turns out it’s the work that cannot be done alone… Yep, you need two people… dedicated to cultivating sexual chi and energetic forces TOGETHER. Well darn. A direct quote from the book “This method involves the mutual stimulation and exchange of sexual essence and energy between (well I’m just gonna change that to ‘two people’ because it says a man and a woman. But this book was written a long time ago, and hello, lot of us are gay…)” so anyways. 

Sometimes I forget that this is the path I have chosen, and that counterpart hasn’t quite showed up yet… And what I mean by hasn’t quite, is I mean HAS NOT. 

Now here is where “the universe loves irony” comes in…

It has not gone unnoticed that I am now studying something I spent probably 3 years of my life stoned in a room talking to someone about. My ex, the one I started this show about, was a mixed martial artist, and a devoted reader of esoteric texts. And a student of the Tao, Dao, or the Way, the path. And a partitioner of all things Zen, Chi Gung, and Tao. Finally all those years drinking whisky and smoking spliffs and talking endlessly about esoteric knowledge… are useful. See, it all comes full circle at some point. And yes, it does also not go unnoticed that I’m only really diving into this way of life now that we are no longer together. Kind of a shame… I’ve finally found an explanation for one of the wildest sexual experiences of my life. Where, literally it felt like the whole room caught fire with electricity around us and charged between us as we were suspended in complete and total disbelief and brilliant confusion at the mounting electrical storm we had created together, only to have it peak and crescendo in what felt like an explosion brighter than any fireworks display I have ever seen, at which point all we could do was laugh hysterically and say the word “WHAT?” over and over again until we both could actually speak again and looked at each other and said, “do you have any idea what that was?” To which both of us replied, “Absolutely not, I’ve never even read about that.” And here I am… Sitting with the answer between my hands, and kind-of wishing I could try that again……… Just saying. Not going to. But, you know. Now I understand. And I didn’t do the thing I wanted to do, which was text them and tell them I figured it out. Ohh well. Some things really are better left unsaid. 

And it also doesn’t escape my notice that since the last show I did last week… I went out on a date with someone that LITERALLY embodies everything I’ve been asking for: a solid, grounded, financially stable person, who just wants to build chicken coops, who has a homestead, who wants a simple life dedicated to work and self betterment. And somehow, SOMEHOW I just have this gut feeling that they aren’t my person. I mean you would pinch yourself if you were standing in the room, it’s EVERYTHING I’ve said I wanted. And yet…. ahhh the universe loves irony. I can just feel it in my bones. It’s not quite right. And that doesn’t mean we don’t have things to teach each other or help each other with, but sadly, I don’t think this is it folks… WOW THE IRONY. 

And it strikes me as EVEN MORE IRONIC, that for some reason some strange old feelings have cropped up out of nowhere for someone I went to highschool with; that by all general measures seems to want nothing to do with me. I know. I know. I ONLY WANT WHAT WANTS ME. Or something like that… 

And for the extra double whammy of irony. MY MOTHER, who literally never has anything to say about my love life (I mean thank god it’s a natural disaster) BROUGHT THEM UP OVER DINNER AND WAS LIKE, “Wouldn’t it be great if ___ could just get over themselves already and ask you out?! How do we make that happen?” and I was like “NOT YOU TOOOOOOO…” To which she replied, “Maybe we just invite them over for family dinner night, and I’ll be like: here’s a list of things you need to discuss…. They better all be talked about when I get back, ok BYEEEEEE…” 

And I practically sunk into the floor in a puddle of uncomfortable ooze and called that one a night… 

But really, I think all of my building and growing criteria aside. There is one essential thing I have yet to find in any partner. And don’t know how on earth I will find it. Someone who wants to practice “dual cultivation” partnered meditation and mindfulness centered sex practices, where you cultivate the energy and intimacy between two people in the hopes of growing and cultivating the primordial forces of life energy (chi) to nourish and sustain the body. 

And you know what, that seems to be a tall order these days. I’ll tell you an incredibly embarrassing story… When I was going through the initial phases of this program, I had to practice with a Tantric practitioner myself who assigned meditations, and journaling, and energy cultivation techniques, and when it came time for me to practice the partnered practices, (you know because I didn’t have a partner) my best friend at the time (the one now having the baby, that I talked about in the show before last) sat over zoom with me, and they did couples intimacy meditations with me because I had to practice with someone… Yep, if that’s not 100% lame status I don’t know what is! I mean for me, not for them, it was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. And probably the most vulnerable. 

So I think we can definitely say, solidly by now, that the freaking universe just loves loves loves it’s irony. Ooffff. 

So In the spirit of the Tao, or The Way… 

Dennis Lloyd spent a year and Thailand searching for himself and the soul of his music. And I have to hope that in some ways he was influenced by the culture around him. There is no mention anywhere that the lyrics of this song specifically refer to the Tao, but maybe he heard whispers, of the Way, and it slipped into his music. 

So I will play three songs, all called “The Way.” 

The first by Dennis Lloyd, the second by Fastball (which coincidentally was the song that played the most on the radio while my mother was pregnant with me apparently)

And I’ll follow that with ‘The Way’ by Macy Grey, one of my favorite artists. 

She’s says about the title song, off of the album, The Way. “The Way is really just life,"  in her Songfacts interview. "You struggle with what you want out of life. For me personally, it was just where I was at when I wrote it - kind of looking for the answers to a lot of things and trying to figure out how I was going to get where I wanted to go."

Which, she is right. The way, is just life. Because, “The Way that can be spoken is not the real Way”… because it is everything, and nothing. And the Way, understands that all things are connected, and will return back to the Tao, and come from the Tao. 

As, so, hopefully, will this universal irony... I mean can I sent it back? Can I unsubscribe please. 

Anyways, here is “The Way,” 

First, by Dennis Loyd,

Then by fastball,

And finally by Macy grey.”

Excerpt 2:

“Sometimes I think the creatures in my house survive off of ambient love. 

Don’t you need water? 

Sunlight?

Good food?

I sleep curled, on a cot against the wall.

Absent until morning.

I wonder if there is follow through in the dark. 

While my mind is turned blind. Or to stairways to the unimaginable.

Can you feel me in the in-between spaces?

The place

Betweenbreaths 

Betweenheartaches 

Betweenourhomes

I catch care between the slant of a stoneware lamp. 

Lust in the eyes of my creations,

one of my paintings glancing through me. 

I am aware,

That I have chosen every inch of life that has ever happened to me.

My stomach telling me, no, this is not right. 

My head, go for it anyways.

I am evercurious. 

Or maybe it’s my heart,

The pull and rush and sway of tides

I remember, I know, I have always known

How to find your fingers running through my hair. 

And it is still searching for you.

And if the heart is a lonely hunter, 

Best not leave any bones, or scraps. 

Only honesties. 

For the you that is silence on a Sunday afternoon.

For the you that is a raindrop reflecting gold on the leaves of fall.

It aches in me and whispers, 

No, not yet

Not yet.

Everything you thought you wanted has arrived, 

But that wasn’t it. 

I can still hear the sound of that voice. 

How can I be anyone else’s

if it echoes through every part of me? 

How am I even my own? 

This was supposed to be the year we found each other. 

Maybe that’s the problem, 

we already have.

Our humans just haven’t caught up yet. 

And so our boots sit,

Covered in the same New England dirt, by our

Requisite front doors.

Our trucks sit in our

Requisite driveways.

Our wooden bowls in the corners of our

Requisite rooms.

Our dogs asleep at our

Requisite feet.

Our minds both thinking,

“This will never work.”

And our hearts, exasperated, in our

Requisite chests. 

Begging we sit in enough silence to hear each other speak.”

- Olivia Wade