You Make Us

#10:  April 2012 (11833) – New York City:  SMILE – Pass It On.

                That’s a pretty simple message, but I think that’s all we’re trying to do here in the universe.  The universe is a smile, with an initial happiness, a sinking sadness, and then a beautiful battle overcome to reach happiness again.  It began, and it’s been going down and up ever since, no matter whose face it’s wearing.

                I’ve read a lot of books in my life, and traveled many places, and met many people, and seen many frowning, blank and smiling faces.  I’ve experienced numerous pleasures and happily fewer pains, and stretched my mind to understand all of humankind, searching everywhere, unsure of what I would find.

 
                After all of that rigorous study and searching, all I can say that matters on this earth is to be smiling, or better yet, exerting yourself in such a way that the universe smiles, which usually will return to brighten your day.  Obviously we cannot have perpetual smiles, or nothing would happen and the smile would lose value, it now being without opposite.  That is why the curve lowers before rising again.  But sometimes you just have to be on the lower part of the curve and feel it to the utmost, so that when you begin climbing to the high point of the smile again, you’ll appreciate it and feel it more fully than you could have ever imagined.  There's nothing to say when you’ve just been walking along a straight line the whole way.  Some might say such a way is the way.  Do what you will do.  But chances, are what you'll go through, when viewed from afar, will look like some kind of gigantic "U."

             Speaking of which, I’ve got this bag hanging in my room, and there’s a huge smiley face on it.  It says “SMILE” beneath the smiley face.  It’s my main relic from India.  Before I left home I was all about pyramids, and even though they didn’t have any true pyramids in India, there was this temple complex in the southern city called Madurai that had these large psychedelic triangular prism tops to their temples.  Inside I found this bag in a gift shop and bought it.  Then I had this weird debate with an American about the world.  I hadn't seen many Americans, and although the company was alright at first, he wasn't really enhancing my enjoyment of the only world I'm in.  He kept saying that God made the world perfect but humans had ruined it, and kept complaining about everything that was wrong with the world, and I thought, "blah who cares you just got to India, you’ll figure it out on your own."  I said that the whole point of evolution was for people to smile, and he said, “What if that smile was created by something bad?" and started down a whole road of prosecuting guilty pleasures, and I just had to calm him down a little by, oh, I don't know, pointing out the beautiful elegant intricate rainbow colored work of art surrounding us to celebrate the divinity of the universe as manifested by mankind, with all of the happy smiles walking about, both as group celebrations and as solitary souls....

             Let the universe (33) decide which smiles are worthwhile, and smile according to your own lifestyle.

The excerpt above is from a photo piece I wrote in May of last year, although I did just edit it and add a few sentences.  As one of my students told me his motto was earlier, "Honesty is the best policy," so that's the truth.  Last night I discovered a file on my computer which was 34,741 words and 80 pages long.  I had written about 74 pictures, detailing my move from NYC to California, and several months of my residence there up to that time.  I read the first 20 pages, and I couldn't believe that I had completely forgotten about the writing.  I decided to do an inventory, and it turns out that from writing about pictures alone--an exercise that began in the summer of 2011 and apparently resumed briefly during the course of a couple months last spring--I have 848 pages containing 451,827 words.  That doesn't even take into account the 138 page book I put online for free on this website and for one dollar on Amazon.com (technically I am a professional writer :), the 90 page novella that I am extending into a novel, or any of the writing I have published in public for free on this web page.  I am currently organizing and tallying those pieces, and I'm sure the result is over 1,000 pages.  That began at the beginning of the journeys, toward the end of 2009, but didn't really pick up consistent steam until basically a little more than a year ago.  I bring this up because writing, language and developing my voice while listening to the voice of the world is the way I spend my day.  Sometimes I feel like I don't produce enough, and then I look back a little and realize I produce plenty, I just don't distribute in a way that lets me know people are smiling when they experience what I have to say.

And once again, we have the smile.  So, if you're already on top of the smile, why would you keep improving?  Well, that's actually more up to the universe than you.  Take today's class, for instance.  We were talking about a student studying because she had to for a new job, and since we were discussing "sayings," I told them that "necessity is the mother of invention."  You know, like Frank Zappa's band.  Anyway, that means that the world you live in requires you to walk down into the valley so you can remember what it's like to walk up a hill to the smile that not only meets you at the top, but is also is created through the way you move.

One of my favorite people claims to never be satisfied with her abilities at her chosen art, and that it will take a lifetime to master, because there is so much to learn and do, with endless possibilities for creativity.  Then the artist balances this by saying that the mere act of performing the art makes this artist feel the beauty of life shining, and the greatest inspiration comes from the smiles in the audience.

So it's almost like the motivation to keep expressing inner truth through artistic creation has the same source as the urge to go explore everything the world has in store: you want to experience the newness of the world in many ways, whether through literal exploration of its sensations or with journeys through artistry, your soul's key.

If you take action and do something well, it can fill the world with bliss best expressed with a smile, making this all worthwhile.