So yesterday after we left the coffee shop, we ventured to two more…then as I was getting home I got a phone call from the neighbor who shares the back alleyway and sits directly behind my sister’s house. He (Justin) is my first ‘in person’ friend here, given I have been using the internet as a tool to meet other people in various ways, some unsavory, but for the most part threading together pretty innocently. I met him the other day as my sister basically emasculated him as he stood, fairly stoned and silly, stripping the screws which held his deck in place to get an ipod that had haphazardly jumped from his mitts, slipping stealthily in between the narrow boards on the back of his farmhouse. My sister, being the quintessential rock star, shooed him away to get the screws up, which she did fairly easily, leaving Justin to scratch his head wondering how she could just step in and kick his ass with very little effort.

So he called last night and I went over, had a little wine, a little something, and then I asked him about the two bikes sitting there mocking me. So he took me on a little bike ride around the two lakes in Washington Park, or Wash Park, as the locals like to call it. Prior to that, I stood in his dining room freaking out about politics like I did the first day I met him…and we discussed the idea of heaven and even ventured into whether or not suicide made sense. The one thing that struck me was how many little things I have figured out while just talking to the guy…which is probably just something that could happen if I weren’t always so afraid of speaking aloud…but this heaven on earth idea I am pretty fixated on, given I told him I couldn’t waste my time preparing to get into heaven later…and how sad it must be for those sitting around waiting to get there, not understanding heaven is power and choice. It kind of tied into this idea we talked about the other day when we were talking about December 2012 and what would happen. I am quite the conspiracy theorist when confronted, and I think something, or somethings may indeed happen because people cannot be trusted, and there will be people to try and prove the existence of their maker by any means necessary. My new friend thinks that it might be a shift in consciousness…people will be forced to maybe think a new way with things that come to light. My argument was that there would have to be a damn good reason for that day to be THE day (say, aliens?-make fun of me, I really don’t care, I very well could be right with that deduction)…I simply believe every day our consciousness changes with the realization and acknowledgment that our world is forever changing and what we know evolves with every moment that passes while we are forever experiencing life.

In any case, I believe that we have heaven on earth because we are directly responsible for changing our own realities, and even though there are sometimes things in our way we do not plan for, it is still essentially up to us to change them. As I said to him, I don’t think that being free to float around up in the clouds is too heavenly given you cannot really imagine being able to reap the rewards of your own actions. If said heaven did exist, it would be unchanging and flat–there would be no conflict, there would be no strife, but what fun would that be? After all it is our worst times that give us the power to appreciate our best times. Everything would be even, everything would be heavenly, you’d never fight or okay, maybe you live your best moments infinitely to the end of time…but with no risk or reward, no conflict, no choices that make a difference…what would the point of it all be? I am not sure there is much of one given stagnation to me seems like hell.

This is not to say that life might be hell for some. I am sure it is…I just think that those who let life destroy them don’t understand what role they play in the directions events take…and being able to fix your own situation, especially being blessed enough to be born here, born free in many ways, (but not all, of course)–but being given the opportunity to have a hand in your own fate seems like the kind of exercise we should all revel in…laying down and letting life kick you in the ass (as life has done to me on more than a few occasions) without a fight is just not something I can endorse.

And yeah, my heaven yesterday was that bike ride and what I felt sitting with my back up against an old tree sitting next to my new friend as the sun went down…