All of the feelings in between.

Just gratitude. For it all. For the struggle and the same lessons learned time after time after fucking time. Or for the love and arms or even the drives to know where. Or the falling and the crying and the I'm out of my mind. For the whole fucking thing. The long, endless journey with no destination besides fullness and aliveness or death in numbness and comfort. For each growing pain along the way and the sheer panic and moments of crystal clear clarity. Every fucking breath, every fight, every smile and every rain storm. For every sunny morning. For everything. 

Gratitude. Day One.

I'll start with you.

Since you're always the first thing that comes to my mind. This isn't because you're obvious. It's because you make me stronger. When I'm spiraling out of control, and you stop me. And remind me to breathe. Because you stand up for me, and stand up to me. And set me back in humility. To remind me how far I've come, and how very far I must go. Remind me to let the stress slide right off my back, because no matter what, you've got me. And I've got you. 

Do the fucking work.

As we get deeper and deeper, I get more and more peeled away. As you strip the layers of superfluities, you see the core. Radiant light yes, but deeper than that I see imperfections and rawness. When it's possible to be so insensitive and so sensitive at the same time you question everything you do on a level that makes you consider what kind of person you're being daily. Who am I? (I) Could I have handled that better, did I let myself be carried away? While being graceful cloud of energy masses floating from scene to scene it's so blissfully easy to be pulled by the inflation and deflation. In the pull of life, to create your own rhythm and float? How? You love. You love hard. It's only bullshit when your ego gets involved. Don't fool yourself into thinking your judgement is safe, and pure. None of us have enlightened in to evaporation, so you can be sure there is work to be done. Your world is a reflection of you alone. 

Crowds

Sometimes I can't breathe in crowds because I can hear what they're thinking. And I don't understand why they can't feel their souls. I loose mine in the chaos of trying to exist in society, but then when I die enough I hear her cry out to save me. When money and stress chain me to this real world in a way that makes my heart constantly beat sorrow, I can only find my bliss by connecting with my body and the words I love you. You ask why I say it so much, I can only explain all I do is feel. Feel everything, every molecule in my beating and vibrating body with joy or pain or whatever concoction my consciousness can imagine up. I only know how to bleed them and try to follow the lightness. For one day of auto-pilot makes me die a little more in a way that I cannot describe to anyone who has never freed themselves. I see the way you look at me and I know you don't understand why it's so hard for me to be like you. I never wished I could, but never imagined how painful and lonely my path could be. I stopped writing because I was connecting with my heart in a different way, when I realized I was always alone the words came back. 

I wish I could keep my feet on the ground.

I swear I don't mean to be like this. For you I wish I could keep my feet on the ground. Either twirling in circles or swirling ferociously in a hurricane. I know no in-between. Heart on your sleeve is an understatement when every emotion can be seen in my face and heard in every breath of my voice. I've never been good at hiding, just running. For you I wish I could keep my feet on the ground. That calm place I preach to go to, ceases to exist in my whirlwind of emotions and desires. I bounce from petal to petal, with my head looking back, chained to whatever has come before as I try to run faster. Every experience I've breathed through has carved veins in my arm, tainted with blood that will never cease to course through their streams. I cannot forget. I am not strong enough. This is my evolution and we all live and suffer through the process. Being bound to all that has come before and enslaved by time we cannot escape. This world doesn't fit me. I am not anything but energy and there is no limit to my chaos. In so many ways, I can not expel enough, and my constant struggle is to harness and focus. For you, I wish I could keep my feet on the ground.

Sanskaras

Sanskaras. are the imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience in this or previous lives, which then color all of life, one's nature, responses, states of mind.

Years pass before you realize you haven't grown up. Sometimes that's something I champion on my shoulders, other times that lack of growth is crippling. Free spirit, wise soul; I'm speaking to you. (To me.) Where are you? Your words slice souls, and even when they're easy to forgive they leave scars deep within the mind. How I yearn to burn off all these imprints from time. That timeline you use to get from there to here. All that has happened. In a way your mind can comprehend. Because you're always thinking, and always swinging, depending on those thought qualities. Every body movement, glance, and interaction leave those impressions. How do you go on when the scars are still bleeding? How do you stop the swinging mind? Find the stillness. Let their be chaos. And be the stillness. Resonate what your soul is, pure love. Express that through your words and actions steadily, for whatever stream of vibration you send out, will come back and you will bathe in it. Whether with love or with fear. I need more hearts burned into my chest. 

Joan of Arc

I am not afraid; I was born to do this.

Joan of Arc

The Death of Wanderlust

I remember distinctly sitting in my dorm room in Ireland listening to these twenty-somethings from all over the world talk about missing home, their lives, and all the different people in them. And not feeling anything. Nothing. I remember them rushing to book their flights home, and doing anything to put off finding mine. Roaming around the country for an extra month just to fill up some need for more. Same thing in Austin. Blank. Nothing. No desire for anything but more new. More exploring. I just wanted to be exactly where I was. Then New York and Hawaii, and Sydney, just kept filtering through my eyes. Through them. And then something happened along the way. I stopped feeling unattached. I fell in love, rented an apartment, got a job, then owned a business. And now, two days away from home and I want my bed, my boyfriend and my life. It's amazing. There's still this need to roam and explore. That'll always be there. I just don't need to be surprised to be happy. Traveling brought me into the present, with the amazement of everything that was around me. But I don't need it anymore. It's not that I won't or don't want to travel, I just don't need it to feel alive.

Don’t date a girl who travels

• Adi in Better Humans

Don’t date a girl who travels. She is hard to please. The usual dinner-movie date at the mall will suck the life out of her. Her soul craves for new experiences and adventures. She will be unimpressed with your new car and your expensive watch. She would rather climb a rock or jump out of an airplane than hear you brag about it.

Don’t date a girl who travels because she will bug you to book a flight every time there’s an airline seat sale. She wont party at Republiq. And she will never pay over $100 for Avicii because she knows that one weekend of clubbing is equivalent to one week somewhere far more exciting.

Chances are, she can’t hold a steady job. Or she’s probably daydreaming about quitting. She doesn’t want to keep working her ass off for someone else’s dream. She has her own and is working towards it. She is a freelancer. She makes money from designing, writing, photography or something that requires creativity and imagination. Don’t waste her time complaining about your boring job.

Don’t date a girl who travels. She might have wasted her college degree and switched careers entirely. She is now a dive instructor or a yoga teacher. She’s not sure when the next paycheck is coming. But she doesn’t work like a robot all day, she goes out and takes what life has to offer and challenges you to do the same.

Don’t date a girl who travels for she has chosen a life of uncertainty. She doesn’t have a plan or a permanent address. She goes with the flow and follows her heart. She dances to the beat of her own drum. She doesn’t wear a watch. Her days are ruled by the sun and the moon. When the waves are calling, life stops and she will be oblivious to everything else for a moment. But she has learned that the most important thing in life isn’t surfing.

Don’t date a girl who travels as she tends to speak her mind. She will never try to impress your parents or friends. She knows respect, but isn’t afraid to hold a debate about global issues or social responsibility.

She will never need you. She knows how to pitch a tent and screw her own fins without your help. She cooks well and doesn’t need you to pay for her meals. She is too independent and wont care whether you travel with her or not. She will forget to check in with you when she arrives at her destination. She’s busy living in the present. She talks to strangers. She will meet many interesting, like-minded people from around the world who share her passion and dreams. She will be bored with you.

So never date a girl who travels unless you can keep up with her. And if you unintentionally fall in love with one, don’t you dare keep her. Let her go.

Behind the Wheel

You'll always find something in your life to stress you out or make you upset. What I need to rediscover are those things that make me better and stronger and alive. They're still there. They're all still there. All the time. Coexisted and creating chaos (or a symphony). Pick the right thing to focus on. Focus on your problems, they'll get bigger, becoming monsters right in front of your eyes. Focus on what makes you stronger and better and up you go. Whatever you focus your energy on, you're feeding. It seems so simple from my bed. It gets so much more complicated behind the wheel. But that's the point, I'm behind the wheel. So monsters, back the fuck up. I'm back. 

Will you love me?

Everything still smells like you. And I'm trying not to notice, and most of the time I'm fuzzy, but then I wake up in the morning and everything's clear. I remember where I am, and how I got there. I look back at all the things I've done, and sometimes it's too easy to remember what you did wrong when you feel guilty. I remember doing things right (hold me), and wrong (GO AWAY). All of that residual childhood energy leaks out, when you forget how to act. But now I remember that everything's fragile and nothing's for sure. It makes you feel alive. Something that cuts deep into raw skin. And then all of a sudden I'm alive, listening to every breath come in and out.

Free Fall

I don't remember the last time I wrote. I don't remember the last time I needed to so bad. This house feels empty. I could literally feel the connection between us disappear as you walked out the door. You know how you can feel the person you love, even when they're far away? They're still with you. It's gone. Like all the wind comes out of you at once and you just feel everything you had slip away. Like you can't breathe and you don't remember how to rewind time or how it all came to this. And you just want to shut your eyes so it all disappears. Maybe you can wake up and it'll all be a dream. A really bad nightmare. But days go on. And the minutes seem like hours. And you just can't figure out how to turn off and go to sleep. It's that nauseous feeling of free fall. 

The Problem

Criminals.

Making money off education is a crime. The education system is a mindless factory. Our defense expenses are a crime. Our government is criminal and irresponsible. Interest is an abomination. Health insurance rapes it's customers and corrupts health care. Our minimum wage and debt reinforce slavery. Taxes and tolls towards empirical abominations overseas. And at home. Twenty five cents in sales tax from this coffee went where? Who's in jail? And what's this about marijuana curing epilepsy and cancer, while pills kill us? And what about addiction, depression, and anxiety? What about complacency? And humans on auto-pilot drifting through their lives? The ice caps are melting. The storms are getting stronger. Does that make you feel anything? 

Leaves

Sometimes I get so caught up in the dark I can't even see the light. But then I remember looking at you and just being stuck on how beautiful it was. It glows when I see it like that. It also reminds me how you wrap up around me. I get it then. I think about all the seasons now that I'm back, incase you can't remember the constant flux. Well I'll remind you. Nothing will stay the same, and isn't that funny? The leaves are floating as I drive through their atmosphere and I remember that it can all be beautiful.

Indian Toilet

I talked and talked about my fear of spiders in the bathrooms and it almost consumed me. It made me so sick. Sick to the point of waking up sweating in the middle of the night running for that same bathroom. And suddenly that fear was gone. And that same bathroom was within salvation. Isn't it funny how the universe gives you exactly what you need if you're conscious enough to realize it? It made me just sick enough, to get over my fear of spiders, and darkness, seems like I spend most of my time awake in the night. Sometimes things only come alive in the dark, just like spiders. We were talking and he was saying with everything having duality why avoid the darkness and only live in the light. Embrace both and find balance.

Optional Death

oh-glob

I had a dream about you last night. And it was weird because it wasn't of when we were five and rolling around in grass. Or when we we're 15 and trying to figure out what kissing boys was about, or even 21 when we went through our first stage of growing into adults and spent half our nights up in diners talking about everything over too many coffee cups. No, it was now, it was you and us in our apartment and in my mind I made this special place for you to be there. To be in my life, but it's weird, for the first time in my life you're gone. And I don't think you're ever coming back. And I remember when my first boyfriend broke up with me and I thought it was like voluntary death, and I couldn't imagine anything worse. Well this is so much the same, no matter how much I want what was to be there still, it's not. I went this way and you went that. And I accept it but I guess sometimes it haunts me in my dreams.

Simplicity

India seems to be easy for everyone else. Maybe it's the easiest place I've ever been and that's why it's so hard. Looking at my ego in the mirror when I can't do something, when I can't sit still. She told me to be careful of what I'm writing (I've never been careful of what I wrote). I need to send words into the void of the Internet to release. Maybe someone somewhere out there will get what I mean through all the abstractions. I'm learning what I'm not, and what I need to strip in order to see myself more clearly, but how much growth can you expect in five weeks? I think I need five lives. Om Shanti.

Fear of Spiders

 Everyone told me India was going to change me but all I can see so far is the smell of my sweat and how it reeks of India. That I'm terrified of the spiders the size of my unclenched fist in the hole in the floor that's supposed to be a bathroom but I think it's more the spiders in my head that make me want to cry. I'm frustrated that I've already cried more times that I'm proud to say and I still can't do a fucking handstand. My boyfriend's sick and even through all the fucking meditation and chanting mantras I can't fucking understand, we're fighting. And the only thing I can figure out to do is stay. Stay with the frustration and sadness and my stupid ego I can still hear in the back of my head. I guess I'll just sit here in silence until I can figure out what to do next.

Dharamsala; Part One.

After a 12 hour taxi drive from Delhi to Dharamsala, stopping (no joke) 20 times for directions, and one of the windiest mountain drives up the side of the first sight of the Himalayas, we finally got to town. But...cars can't drive up the road we're staying, so we get out, backpacks and all and start walking up this windy street. But then the street ends, with some foot bridge and we start climbing stairs up the side of the beginning of a mountain. Then the stairs end and we're just climbing. From behind in the dark we hear footsteps, and ask them if we're going in the right direction. Karo asks "Sam?" and we realize we ran into my yoga teacher. Night one.

The morning we finally see where we've traveled around the world to come to, Dharamsala. Completely unlike the endless country side towns (tents and shacks) and cities we've already seen. A tourist town, colorful bohemian tent shops and concrete sided buildings everywhere, nestled in a valley next to a waterfall. We saw a rainbow today, of course forgot my camera, always forget it when you need it. Never really need it though, we've got these eyes. That's all you really need right?

Mark joined the yoga program unofficially. Kind of abrupt introduction but I figured we always get exactly what we need. We're two of four Americans. Everyone else is from every other walk of life. It's a pretty radical rainbow of language and skin colors, clothes and cultures. It's been a trip already even if it ended right now. Signing off from the Internet cafe, where the power goes off at least 5 times a day.