Winning the Lottery

I was extremely fortunate to have Matthew Davison, host and instructor of the Douglass Street Laboratory, show us this video this week.



It was a part of a writing exercise exploring an event that changed a character's life.

I was having a rough week. I was angry. In fact, I still am. It is an anger driven by hurt driven by insecurity. An awful cocktail.

This video shook me.

It reeled me back into the moment, the gears of reality, life (raw, pure potential) -- which never intended to have anything to do with superficial assessments of beauty and desireability, which is what I had been grappling with.

This video took me back to the day I saw "What the Bleep Do We Know" for the first time, years ago. I don't recall how I came to hear about this film, but I remember leaving the theater thinking that the film would save my life.

And as the weeks after the film unfolded -- I realized that this was true.

The hours of my life passed like pages turned in a book of theorems and proofs. I could influence my reality in a very literal way.

It is a strange thing once you realize you can do this -- in that you actually stop doing it sometimes. It is like winning the lottery all the time, so much so, that sometimes, you choose not to play.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am Science

You step out of the movie theater,
popcorn dust and the odor of rancid butter
are in your clothes.

You walk through the lobby
and come out the other side of the glass doors, slightly dizzy,
lips trembling,
the way the baby leaves on the mint plant on the porch do
when you walk up the front steps.

It is night.

It is cold and you have no jacket.

The light from the streetlamps is refracted
and sends long-armed stars of bright white all around you.

There are kids yelling a few blocks down the street,
near the pool hall and the bank.
Something about fuck.
Something about someone not knowing anything.

The course is bone straight,
your steps crooked,
and the ground you walk on looks wet,
although it hasn't rained in months.

You are on the edge of knowing.

The cut glass of a secret is in your hand.

The excitement makes your nostrils tingle
and your breath and stomach are flipping like gymnasts.

Don't turn around,
because you don't care what the truth is.

Move forward through the night
as your shadow,
as cells sloughed off in the wind,
as stray hairs,
as even the tiny bits of rubber wearing off of your shoes
shuffle and reshuffle behind you,
like an airport arrival and departure board gone haywire,
as you take your steps away; toward.

Things lock into place
only when you look at them.

Definitely. Look.