Home Truths

It's useless to deny fear. Because fear is like the virus. It will always be there. Hiding in the gut and the corners of my brain like the virus. You have to live with the fear, like you live with the virus.

Woke up late, P left in hazy sleepy see you later darling, but he is coming back late [he said he wouldn't, but I already have enough experience with the guy to know how he gets carried away when with people; I washed his BBQ dishes from last night. I am so tired can barely see].

I cringe to see photos of the devstation in Lebanon. I think of how my country is hated, and how it is like a bullied child that lashes out indiscriminantly, defiantly, and how the cycle of suffering is inflicted, and how the worst thing is not even acknowledging the suffering of the other, and how awful it all is.

More Home Truths:

B/c of the way I was raised I always knew how fragile and transitory & unreliable life is, but the diagnosis just confirmed my worst suspicions. Living with HIV is like living with a timebomb ticking away. You don't know when it will expload or what the carnage will be, you don't even know if it will expload or something else will destroy you before it does. It sheds a harsh light on the transitory nature of everything - relationships, beauty, youth... But I learned 2 things. One is that my own core is persistent. Meditation (which I don't do in a conventional way but only by focusing on whatever it is I do at that moment) helps me emerge into the freedom that this knowledge gives. The second thing I learned is even harder to accept: that the only thing worth living for is the Now. Just like in sex, if you wanna come, you have no choice but to give in to the now, to let go [ERP studies show that orgasm is marked by deactivation, not activation, of brain areas, probabaly the ones responsible for anxiety and fear and inhibition and emotional (and in my experience even physical) pain. Their deactivation equals bliss, as many a heroin addict could attest]. So in life, if you want to live it, you must Remain. Feeling your broken arm, feeling your fatigue, your sweaty brow, the uncomfortable dryness of your skin, your RSI, your cramped neck, your unsatiable hunger, your loss... feeling it all, the good & bad, the painful & pleasurable, the terrifying & reassuring, the grief and the joy, all the facts of your own being, of your self and your existence.

HIV is a gift, wrapped in the larger package of life which is also a huge gift. At least sometimes, I can see that, the Gift of the Present - like B says, it ain't called the present for nothing.

Today I was supposed to be flying alone to Thailand. Because I broke my arm, I'm staying. Although the KLM-stewardess-like doctor was right: my arm is eventually good enough to travel, even if with some discomfort and pain. With some hardship I would have been able to fo, but I don't want to go... I don't need it, at least not right now. For the present moment, I can take my journy right here, right now.