5 ways to tell you’re becoming enlightened

5 things you WONT expect on your spiritual journey

There were men vs dinoasaurs men v super storm men v apes and the men were always winning

All their heroes were men who dealt in violence, all of them on the silver screen. There was no complexity to the characters. The all wore jeans that showed engorged grouns white shirt that showed off biceps. They hit women and they smoked cigarettes. They died racing cars or decimating pipe bombs

She fell asleep watching true crime

She fell asleep conjuring her great great aunt Obedience

She fell asleep crying about her great Uncle Otis who slept with saltine crackers on his bedside table. 24 children living through the Great Depression

Her best friends name appeared in Instagram head lines for negotiating the 19th highest salary per episode on a network tv show. She was proud. She was living in this friends pool house. This news seemed to secure this situation for the foreseeable future.

Cult of identity v cult of personality

Cult of tragedy

Cult of getting excommunicated

Cult of nothing

She was no match for someone really believing in something. This sobered her up quickly

The cruelest part of it was that that’s what she believed all men wanted, and now they would only confess it to message boards to other men, never to women

I meet a man who wants to give me children but first he wants to save a cool 5 million

To pillage

Sexy student comes to the Hollywood hills house of her piano tutor for private lessons

Just from a human perspective — I wondered how we were continuing on in a world where our roles a mothers and fathers came second to any job title. It wasn’t a success to have human relationships?

Charlie wanted to be like Jack Kerouac or that one terrifying artists masturbating beneath the floor boards but actually he just reminded me of the porn star who had unfortunately been a defining face in my early days of masturbation.

There was a video where he was in the far reaches of the frame, watching something awful go down int he center. He was touching himself through his black jeans. We could see him getting harder.

Charlie always reminded me of him instead. Self mythologizing in a way that felt surface, that felt like service first and foremost to a stiffening cock.

I was shocked when he finally moved out of the city, with a younger girl who was by all means lovely. I fell in love with her a little bit just from the small moment I encountered her, from the one shot I saw of her blonde hair pushed back behind her ear, then falling on her floral Dress. I never heard her speak only saw her lips curling slightly into a smile. Then we should laugh and fall into him.

I heard a rumor he would marry her once they got to Philly.

I’m not sure if that ever happened, but it was troubling that he would creep into the corners of my mind when googling sexy nun denied orgasm at 3 am, all from the stature of that punishing priest. The one who thought to name himself after the rebel without a cause.

It took me until I was 25 years old to realize that yes, I was actually at a huge disadvantage/ playing a different game entirely because I realized I had been raised to see my life and its stages completely defined by my men.

It finally started clicking that all these men in my life wanted to be something, and I had been encouraged to focus more on being with them;

This was discussed frequently. But when it dawned on me so deeply, I felt disturbed.

How could we find romance when everything around us encouraged the urge to pillage.

I read my little brother’s essay for social studies about a possible civil war in 2025. I was never thinking that when I was 13. I still had braces and I thought about boys.

Thinking about boys I guess is the constant here.

I saw lots of girls who looked like me online, getting naked, getting railed, getting rimmed …………….

It really flattened any sexual healing id supposedly come here for.

Instead I had to go sit on the park bench in the hot humid summer air and wait for fireflies to come. To stare down the figures coming towards me and think about them jumping me and escalate this fantasy until their faces became way more close.

I saw Charlie in the park when I was sitting with my new boyfriend before he became my boyfriend. I was wearing a yellow dress with flowers this time and my hair was blonde.

Part of me wanted to give myself over to him in a pornographic way. Maybe I could convince myself it would be an art piece. Or important for my writing to be led inside his bedroom. I wanted to know what it looked and smelled like. I bet he had a loft.

Did he keep a knife by the bed? Did he keep his doors locked ? Did he have a mattress on the floor? Did he own a mattress or just sleep on the bare floorboards?

The problem was there did not need to be any more characters like him, nor any more human beings turning themselves into these avatars.

I thought he was sexy because he was flat like I was, a trope, an archetype, something that would damage me in the long term, but I would sure as hell get off on it.

In this video he was bending her over.

In this video he was punching her in the stomach.

Ali gave me miu miu heels. They gave her blisters. They matched my purple purse. She’s got them from Chloe Sevigny’s closet, when she was taking care of her newborn baby during 2020.

I wondered if we should go to Paul’s baby grand.

Ali’s ex boyfriend had gotten blasted on the internet for making paintings so terrible that it made onlookers hate all art and all artists, or art galleries, and male painters.

He was a total fuck boy. You know somethings wrong if they are over 6” and single?

At the last show I attended he hung a canvas that said “cafe Penis”

I thought..... wow this is really transgressive and special. So life affirming to live and love in New York City.

Sometimes I really zone out when bae talks about video games. I hope it’s not too hurtful for him. I think we’re doing just fine. My grandfather said never date anyone you wouldn’t marry.

Ask yourself this question: If nothing changed about this person could I be happy with them for the rest of my life?

Never marry anyone you would not want your child to be like.

I wondered if my friend would be able to break up with her boyfriend before their Euro trip or if it would happen in scenic Greece. It’s so sad that I can be such a judge mental bitch about men when I have truly strung along some of the worst.

I shuddered to see an ex was wearing Birkenstocks in a recent photo.

We made hot or not lists for the new year but I didn’t know which column our tik tok dance addiction fell into. I wondered why I wanted to spend soooo much money on Collagen gummies and face masks.

What did it mean that I was buying the things people were selling me?

We made pineapple coconut smoothies and waited for our boyfriends to call, Laying out on my bff’s slanted roof.

Her dad was moving the lawn and I could see his head moving through the gaps between my toes. I danced and wiggled them as he bee lined through the green.

My friends best friend grew up 3 blocks away in a ranch style house with a heart shaped sunken rock pool. We went all the time and her mother soothingly described the benefits of salt water. She brought out gin and tonics and smoked a spliff as the sun set. Green lizards were peeking out on the periphery of the fenced in yard.

I wondered how my girl friends could ever leave California. Especially when they had all this here, a mom and a pool, and the sun dipping like that.

The taco truck by Echo Park had a line stretching down the block. The air was thick and stretched time. I saw everyone I ever knew at that truck. They all passed me by while I waited in line to order.

Then I drove to Pasadena early in the morning to see my friend Ramona and her parakeet Apple. The bird perched on her shoulder, and ate pancakes off her plate.

Her mother was taking a long shower and I could hear her gorgeous opera singing.

The red clay around us held heat. We rubbed our backs into it. I stared up at the sky and prayed to God life could get better than this. Or if not it could just stay as good as this one precious moment.