the year of the rooster

happy new year!

i have a cousin who was born in the year of the rooster. i believe he is as a rooster is believed to be: watchful, meticulous, grounded and persistent. he got the useful traits! i got the imagination and the dysfunction needed to create beautiful dreamlike pursuits always trying to be on the dime at dawn.

we grew up together. together, we were balanced as a duo. in adulthood, things change. sometimes it takes years to notice. and years more to make sense of it all. i suppose that is why we are giving the gift of humor, just as long as we don't apply it tastelessly.

today i'm going to a buddhist monastery in the hills of watsonville to celebrate the year of the rooster. it is a first for me, celebrating lunar new year at a monastery that is. in the lunar calendar, it is 4703. hmm...the western world is behind [grimace softening into smile but without sarcasm].

as of late, i've opened the doors and have let karma among a lot of other things in. something is happening, it is transformation i think. some emotional protective membrane covering my senses are shedding. everything outside of my skin, my closed reality is diferent. all looks different, tastes and smells different and feels and sounds different. and there is another sense that is fleeting and hard to describe but it is there. it is definitely there. if i let it, it speaks to me in its own way. and sometimes it feels like a brand new thing each time though i recognize it.