The movie I'm most looking forward to seeing when I can get my hands on a copy is "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." I've heard that Brad Pitt is tremendous in it, but that's not really why I want to see it.
I want to see it because I have this thing for outlaws. In that sense -- even though I'm an expatriate -- I am an American to the core. I grew up an American, and in that psychic environment you really can't help but be conditioned by the mythic images of outlaws flitting across your TV and movie screens, and into your dreams. American heroes tend to *be* outlaws, in a way that you see in few other cultures. And the conditioning "took." The outlaw became my role model at a very early age. While other kids grew up wanting to be Hopalong Cassidy or Roy Rogers, I wanted to be Jesse James. And damn! if I didn't pull it off. I've lived outside the law for most of my life. Social law, "natural law," the laws that my spiritual teachers wanted me to live by...law, period. Like Jesse James, I really didn't do it with the intent *of* living outside the law; it just sorta happened. But it *did* happen, and it got me here, and now, and y'know I'm not all that displeased with here, or now, or me. So I kinda identify with screen outlaws. My favorite TV series is still "Firefly." For those of you who haven't seen it, its plot has been synopsized -- and accurately -- by critics as, "Outlaws in space." Duh...that's why I like it. It's a bunch of misfits (in every sense of the word, because they come from all spectrums of society, and not one of them 'fits in' to that spectrum or that society) who have adventures while roaming the frontier, both of the universe and of life itself. They take *risks*. And damn! if they don't get away with them. Mal and his crew are my idea of a good time. Cruising through space in search of adventure, never sure from one day to the next if they'll have enough money to keep on having adventures. And laughing a *lot* along the Way. They may be misfits, but they can *laugh*, man. And in my opinion that's a far more valuable and meaningful siddhi that being able to levitate. What my idea of a good time is NOT is many of the things that have been said about me on this forum lately. It's really a bit of a mindfuck to read some of the things that have been projected onto me and my life- style lately. I really don't quite know what to make of them. The ideas people have about who I am and what I do for fun just fuckin' boggle my mind. I keep forgetting that TMers, and followers of many other spiritual trips, have really never studied Fun As A Spiritual Path. We did, with Rama. One of the things I really "got" from studying with him is that fun is what being in synch with the Tao *feels* like. Fun is not a bad thing; fun is the universe telling you that you're doing something right. I honestly believe that this statement is as close to a "spiritual truth" as I have run into on this planet. If it is "true" -- and I don't know that it is -- I must be something right with my outlaw lifestyle. And if a few people take potshots at me from time to time *because* I seem to be having far too much fun for someone who wantonly disregards all the rules that they hold sacred...well...that kinda goes with the territory of being an outlaw, doesn't it? But you really can't let the potshots make you afraid to go out of the house, can you? So after I write this I'm going to go over to the same bar I wrote about here earlier, where I met the two wonderful young women from Cape Breton. And I might meet them again, and have another wonderful conversation with them. And even if they're not there, I know from my last visit that there is an interesting-looking poker game going on much of the time at a corner table. I might just ask if I can sit in. A good poker game would be fun. But unlike my old pal Bill Hickock, I'm going to wait for an empty seat against the wall before I ask. I'm not going to sit with my back exposed, at least not tonight.
