Free Refills

These past several days, I have been in Portland, having the most excellent adventures. On Sunday, during Omelet Day, Marie and I were listening to Bishop Briggs (whose goddamn sexy music you should listen to), and I said, “I’d really like to see her live. I should look up tour dates.” So I did. In a delightful coincidence, she was playing in Portland Monday (i.e. last) night.

My flight back to Denver was scheduled for Monday night, so on Monday morning, as part of my practice of saying Yes to opportunities, I looked into changing my ticket. Well, my budget fare would have dictated that I more or less had to buy a new ticket entirely, which meant I was facing spending about $300 to see the show, which felt a little steep. I said, “Oh well,” and let the idea go.

About half an hour later, I got a call from the airline, offering me a voucher in exchange for postponing my flight until Tuesday morning.

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That’s enough, right? That’s a complete story right there. The airline called me. Ever hear of that happening before? Me either.

But the story continues: I bought my ticket to the show straightaway, but Marie wanted to think about it, and then didn’t have time to check for herself until later. By the time she checked, the only seats still available were the next price-tier up from what I’d paid–too much, in other words. So I said, “Come with me to the venue. When we pick up my ticket from will call, we’ll see if they’ve released any other seats, and you can decide then whether or not to join me.”

When we went to get my ticket, I asked the woman in the ticket booth if there were any seats available at the same price as mine near where I’d be seated. She looked at the seating chart, then looked up at me. She said, “The seat right next to you is available.”

I believe the look on my face was what we call a knowing smile. I glanced at Marie. Marie, who understood completely, smiled and handed over her credit card.

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And because you were wondering: Bishop Briggs absolutely killed it.

Late last week, in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Las Vegas, I asserted that the only way forward, the only thing likely to ever truly help, is love.

My declaration was a bit tepid, weighted with sadness as it is. “Love?” some part of me responded. “The earth is bathed in blood. Don’t talk to me of love.”

But nevertheless I sought out wisdom on the nature of love, and found it.

If your heart hurts, as mine does, may these words be a salve for you, as they have been for me.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

–1 Corinthians, chapter 13

I do not particularly call for gun control. First of all, Second Amendment jurisprudence is what it is, and seems unlikely to change. Second of all, any proposed legislation has to actually help solve the problem. All too often, after a horrible event, we hear people say, “We have to do something.” No. We have to do something that works.

But mostly, my rationale is cultural. There are many, many law-abiding gun owners in this country, and many of them have been conditioned to believe in a terrible angry fear that we are coming for their guns. Would anything genuinely good happen if we actually were?

There can only be one truly positive way forward. We must meet their fear with love, again and again and again.

I haven’t forgotten that just yesterday I questioned the value of this very approach. Sometimes it feels so toothless and naive. But what else is there?

Late last week and and through last weekend, I experienced a rush of positive energies. At drop-in tennis that Thursday, I found my way to an energetic shift like I’d never experienced before. On Friday, during my drive back from New Mexico, I made space to do some processing of the events of the past few weeks. (The northern New Mexico landscape, beautiful and remote, supports that space. Even the interstate is nearly empty, making the drive between Las Vegas, NM, and Raton a great time to sink into whatever you’re feeling and thinking). And then it was a great weekend, two days of open energy, including a fun party and some good times with friends. I went to bed Sunday night exhausted but with an open heart. I woke up Monday morning feeling similarly open-hearted, and, yeah, went straight to my phone to see if any of the people I’m currently thrilled to hear from had sent me a message since the night before. No messages. Since the phone was in my hands, I did a quick glance at the New York Times website, and that’s when I learned of the massacre in Las Vegas.

It hit me with the weight of fist. The bruise it left on my heart, remains tender with sadness.

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As I have watched the expansion of flow in my life, manifesting in ways that are often indistinguishable from magic, I know that this exact same expansion is increasingly available to all who seek it. We have only begun to glimpse our highest potential.

In the same world in which flow expands by the day, a man possessed by some cold demonic hatred brought an arsenal into a hotel room and rained death into a crowd whose only crime was enjoying themsevles.

On my good days, I believe the increase in flow is a great gathering wave, ready to sweep toward a better world all that lies before it.

On the bad ones–like when I wake to news of a bloodbath–I wonder if this will forever be our fate: that every step forward will be met with a commensurate act of resistance. If our surging movement toward completeness evokes a sickness of annihilation.

I pray: can not the surging wave of love put an end to all this evil? But also: what other choice do we have, but to try?

I’ve always enjoyed myself in Las Vegas. Yes, it is less a city than a giant machine to separate people from their money, around which a city has been built, and it is crass, sometimes even hideous, but people go there to have a good time, and I believe it is a good thing when people go somewhere and have a good time. I’ve gone to Las Vegas for many reasons, including for concerts, and when I’ve gone to Las Vegas for a concert, I’ve always had a really good time.

I wonder, then, if an attack like this is not just an attack on the people at the event nor on people as a collective, but on the very idea of the goodness of the experience itself, that it is good and pleasurable to go somewhere with thousands of other people for the express purpose of experiencing joy together. If the goal is to make us cringe at the offer of connection and choose instead fear and pain. If the demon that possessed the body that fired all those bullets sought not only to kill people, but also to destroy all that is good and joyful, and in so doing sought to drive us into the demon’s own madness, and thus perpetuate itself in the world.

Yesterday I posted a joke, though it did not really feel like a day for joking. I had wanted to acknowledge my sadness about what happened in Las Vegas, but every simple expression defied me.

I posted a joke because I couldn’t find a way through the sadness to say something useful. It seems I still can’t.

I’m trying, though. My drafts on the subject stretch on and on. I feel an obligation to speak, but nothing I say seems to matter at all.

Yesterday I posted a joke. Today, I wish I had another one to tell.

It was cold and rainy in the Front Range today. A month from now, a system like this would bring snow rather than rain. Snow.

Game of Thrones doesn’t entirely make sense to ski and snowboard people. “Winter is coming,” characters keep intoning, their voices deep with foreboding.

Huh? we think. Don’t you mean “WINTER IS COMING!!”

A few weeks ago, my mentor Jerry said to me, “I don’t think you’re actually a writer. I think you’re meant to be a teacher. Writing is just your modality.”

Well. There’s a bigger story there, including just how disruptive I found that assertion, and how I put it out to the universe and got some pretty clear messages that, goddammit, he’s right. Look for more on this subject in the days ahead.

Anyway, if it’s the case that I’m meant to teach, then Free Refills should be supportive of that in as many ways as possible. I should write pieces that teach, either directly or via the example of my own walk along this path. (I’ve sometimes done a pretty good job with the latter, I think.) The format of Free Refills should also support that mission–an obvious way would be to make it easier for readers to find information that’s useful to them.

But I think to truly succeed at that mission, Free Refills also needs to support a community. I’ve stated before that the true goal of FR is to change the world. While one person working alone can generate good ideas, it takes more than just ideas to effect change. Without people committed to bringing change about, even the best ideas are little more than words.

Let us pretend for a minute that, after having had two separate epiphanies this summer regarding the formatting, and thus evolution, of Free Refills, I really had done something as stupid as leaving the specific details in my head rather than writing them down. Were that case–and this is purely hypothetical, I assure you–what would I do? How would I attempt to productively move forward if my recollections of the exact ideas were now vague and hard to see?

Well, I’d pretty much have to say to myself, “Tough fucking shit.” Sure, I’d do my very best to recall just what it was that I was thinking, based on the desultory notes that do exist, and I’d attempt to follow the breadcrumbs from other people’s work that inspired the ideas in the first place. After that, I’d just have to accept that I might have to substantially figure it out anew. I’ve observed that the best way to generate ideas is to work with whatever ideas I already have, no matter how thin and impoverished, and then make room for magic to happen.

Lucky for me, this is all hypothetical. My recall of those epiphanies is perfect, and it’s only out of silly self-consciousness that I’m not today telling you all about them. So don’t worry about me.

A couple of months ago, I published a piece in which I said that I’d figured out how to organize Free Refills so that it truly supports my assertion that I’m building something lasting here. A few weeks later I wrote that I had figured out how to reformat the site to properly communicate the work that I’m trying to do now. In each case, I said that it all came to me in a big download.

A big download? How intriguing! How sexy!

And then did I zero-draft an explanation to myself about how it all will work? Did I go to my notebook and draw up some mock-ups and tree diagrams explaining the site’s structure? Or did I instead leave it all sitting in my brain, in the expectation that I’d remember it all, despite having experienced again and again and again than any idea that I don’t write down may as well have been an idea in someone else’s head for all the good it does me? Am I now finding myself with only a let’s call it incomplete recollection, and so find myself stuck trying to replicate a pair of epiphanies? I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to have done that, would I? Surely not with something so important, right?