i.

It is not that I have been transformed but that the world has changed. The things I have always known are accurate still but in ways that mean different things. It is not my intension to be oblique. I simply am trying to reframe myself to the world.

I am, without question, a high intensity, highly adept man at dealing with the world. But what that means…And what I mean by the world is the question. There are those that would describe me as a Machiavellian bastard. I would not fight this definition although it feels course. I have suggested many times that I never do anything for only one reason. This is of course untrue as much of the time I am playing things by ear. This does not seem to preclude me finding multiple USES for everything I say. I am highly adept it seems at maintaining the illusion that is my mystique.

I seek to make the world better. Poet Warrior talks endlessly about how all motivations are either selfish or are intended to make the world better. Most actions are combinations of both. I seek to make the word better in ways that will make me very rich and be the most interesting things I can spend my time doing. This is both selfish and altruistic If I do it right.

I set my sights on changing foreign places I have not (until recently) been. I travel with a woman I love madly but to whom I am an old friend. I seek to find the best way to teach what I have learned. Instead I find that I finally understand some of the quiet bits of Buddhism that have always eluded me. I am a stranger in a strange land in a relationship I cannot control. I have a tiny command of the language and do not have my normal colossal resources. Strangely enough I could not be happier.

These places are showing me that the world is not what I always thought it was. I have lived in a narcissistic fragment of it. The fact that my companion cannot be controlled or manipulated is an absolute joy. The simple idea that I need work to make myself understood to a street vendor means that I must pay attention to my surroundings. This is also a joy. I find instead of the teacher I was contemplating as my next transformation I want to come a place such as this and know utterly nothing again. I have become handicapped by my knowledge. I seek the emptiness of discovery.

Both the Woman and the land are places where I can make my desires known but not enforce them. It is a kind of joy to be the supplicant…. Not the Machiavellian bastard.

I do not know where I go from here. I know it will bear little resemblance to what I would have planned scant weeks ago.