Happy Fat Tuesday! Hello, Ash Wednesday!

It's Lent and it's time to repent, at least as far as Catholics are concerned! I’m with them this time, embarking upon what I have attempted to pull off several times before with cleanses: the whole kit and kaboodle of enlightenment. Well, maybe not the WHOLE kit and kaboodle. But a full understanding of as much as I am aware of not knowing.

As in: I know there’s things I can’t imagine in this world; i know i don't know what i don't know. So let's be clear- i realize I am most definitely far from being omnipresent and omniscient. But you can't fault me for striving for the Golden Ring.

I feel that I have been lingering at a level of consciousness that is so ready to quantum leap up, it’s almost scary to me. I feel so built up with potential energy that when all my parts click into place….watch out. This will be interesting, to say the least. I have a feeling that this 'in between period' will be considered ‘good’ in the end. But right now, I feel at the very end of a period of darkness that has lasted many cycles: 2 months, 2 years, 14 years, my whole life. Don’t get me wrong, my life has been good, and I am so thankful for the magic of it. But there have been issues still, just like with anyone. And I’ve been actively working my best to get a handle on them for the past 14 years. I feel I’m getting to culmination of a certain level of my quest for enlightenment. Not necessarily THE whole kit and kaboodle. But the whole kit and kaboodle as far as I know it. Right now, it's darkest before Dawn. Beyond that, I’ll be at the low end of a new totem pole of light.

This time around, I am re-joining the Roman Catholics in their zeitgeist ritual of their liturgical year: Lent. You gotta Love Lent. It’s this austere purgatory cleanse period that is book-ended by “Hell” and “Heaven.” Most everyone knows that Lent leads up to the Resurrection and eventually the Ascension of the man called Jesus Christ. But most people don’t realize that leading up to Lent is Mardi Gras, the most balls-out party binge RITUAL of the year – the very timing of which depends on Christmas AND Easter by proper New Orleans standards.

“The traditional carnival celebrations which precede Lent in many cultures have become associated with the season of fasting if only because they are a last opportunity for excess before Lent begins.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent

I realize that many people know this, especially Baby Boomers and beyond, but you’d be surprised the amount of people that don’t understand the origins of Mardi Gras these days. It simply seems that the real party people usually don’t know the first thing about Lent (Irish not included), and the good Catholic is at least not *supposed* to know about things like Mardi Gras. I certainly wasn’t taught about it in Catholic school.

I first realized that Mardi Gras was a bonafide religious holiday when I was in New Orleans in my senior year of college, January ’95, and got the picture rather quickly that Mardi Gras wasn’t just a day... it was at least 40 days beginning with the conclusion of the Catholic Feast of the Epiphany which is the 12th day of Christmas. The more I read and write about this in the context of my cleansing activity especially in the last two years, the more normal I feel in my painfully fun cycles of binge and purge that I have endured in this human body. I’m beginning to realize that this is just all part of the normal human experience; that it’s almost necessary to have the ‘bad’ because it inspires the ‘good’; that one should not feel guilty or in judgment of rolling around in the mud. The mud is indeed where we learn our lessons; getting ‘dirty’ is how we grow.

I have certainly been rolling around in the mud as of late. Most of us are, or else we wouldn’t be here. The real pain in the ass starts when you actually realize that you’re rolling around in mud and that you’re getting your clothes and reputation all shitty…and yet, you still do it. My Dad always loves to say ‘ignorance is bliss’, but I’ve come up with its corollary: knowledge is HELL! Incomplete knowledge that is. Complete Knowledge, aka GNOSIS is nothing but blissful (as far as I am betting). but the halfway zone is HORRIBLE! It’s the Death Valley of Transformation- where you’re neither receiving the pleasures of sin nor the transcendent fruition of enlightenment. What sucks the most is knowing how ‘bad’ you actually are in the present moment. I know this ‘Purgatory’ region very well, and I’m ready to do exactly that: Purge this ignorance ‘story’ from my body. Erase my amnesia, please!

Wow, I just flashbacked to the speech I made which won me and subsequently disqualified me from being the President of Regis High School, NYC in 1990. “Perge’ Senatum!” I exclaimed from the podium, quoting a Cicero war campaign speech. I resounded my Latin teacher’s over-zealous translation verbatim: “Cleanse the senate of this filthy debauchery and political cesspool!” The Headmaster of the school was pissing in his pants, but the Dean of Discipline was certainly not, especially after he heard me play a pre-recorded EXACT imitation of his voice endorsing me and my running mate as the best candidates on the ballot. We were almost kicked out of high school, nevermind the race. But that’s another story, another time. For now i will paraphrase: "Cleanse this body/mind/soul of the filthy debauchery of my adolescence!"

Tomorrow, I once again begin the upward climb to the next level. I intend to break through into some level of Transcendent orbit never yet achieved in this lifetime. It will likely not be THE transcendent orbit where i go poof into Nirvana and merge with the Universe. But it will be a HIGH transcendent orbit relative to the one I’m in now. But for now, I am going to the Frolic Room, my favorite bar in the world on Hollywood Blvd. It’s the former green room for the Pantages Theatre, where the starz would come to do their shots in between sets. The bartenders there know my name and it has been the scene of many notable experiences in the party realm. But yes, more stories for other times. ☺