Tonight I’m home alone. I just smoked a bowl of the good. Now I’m listening to Pianoscapes by Michael Jones. He’s awesome. I’m really enjoying this peaceful space. I love being dad, but the boys are not at all peaceful. They fight non-stop with one another, yelling, screaming even, and mostly arguing over toys, “that’s mine!” sort of thing

I told them they should copy the Merry Pranksters, that acid family from the 60’s, and put all of their things in a pile in the playroom. Then when one of them wants something, he can go get it out of the pile. And then, when he’s done with it, he can return it to the pile. They didn’t buy this at all.
.

For now I’m alone and it’s peaceful. And when they do come home from the YMCA and Karate tonight, they’ll be going right to bed. I usually play Pianoscapes or maybe Ecstasy by Deuter for them when they go to bed to calm them out for sleep. I like to end their day in calmness and love.

I’m reading a book now by Scott Westerfeld, a science fiction space opera sort of story, a hard to put down sort of story too. Tonight I’ve read more than I can usually read in several days. Most of my reading, if any, is at night after the boys are asleep.

Sometimes I read when the boys are around too, mostly to distract myself from their energies, but still be there when they need me – with homework or a new drawing by Callahan or something on the computer that Jake wants me to see or listening to Zane tell me that he’s the other dad, that he and I are the dads here.
.
.
So, every day I pray that I will continue to find this peace in my heart. So far, ever since the late sixties, I’ve always been able to find it. I first found it back then when I was alone for weeks at Dinky Creek, in the High Sierras. I found it then when I was vision questing with the help of acid and peyote.

Now I can find it by just turning my head off, by stopping my world, as Don Juan would say. Although, sometimes these days, I do have to isolate myself, maybe going upstairs to meditate or taking a walk or a hike in the nearby woods. But whatever I have to do, I have always been able to find the peace in my heart.
.

However, finding the peace in my life has always been much more difficult for me. What I really need now for peace in my life is more money for my family. We’re living on the edge. And it’s scary, and it’s certainly not at all conducive to peace. I have always done poor well, Aspen has too, but I can’t ask this of the boys, not until they’re old enough to make their own choices.

And come to think of it, maybe having more than enough money would be interesting too, as interesting perhaps as it was traveling on the fly, finding work in one town in order to buy enough food and gasoline to move on to the next.

So yes, I do need more money. I also need more medicine for my work of exploring consciousness. I need more friends too, friends with whom I can share my life and my work, friends like Ramon and Paul and the many others I’ve had in the past. When these very real and important personal needs are met, then I’ll have peace in my life as well.
.

Of course, I wish that there would be peace in the world too. But I don’t expect it. After all, look at what’s happening right now in the world these days, in the United States too, what with the right wing Christians and the mega-corporations at war with the rest of us and trying basically to enslave us in their subtle webs as they overthrow our democracy.

Don’t take my word for it. As Michael Moore says, ”Today just 400 Americans have the same wealth as half of all Americans combined.” He goes on, “Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined.”