What’s up Everybody.

I hope this finds you blessed and well, and that your 2009 (can you believe the sound of that?) allows you nothing but the most satisfying, healthy life. I also hope you are ready to get involved in your new life of service. That’s right, it’s 2009 and you need to make ’09 what it needs to be – healthy, vital, lithe, lean, mean and green — that is you in 2009 – because by visiting this page you are on your way to becoming a SAMURAI and a samurai is one who serves, and our world is in so much trouble and we are in so much danger that we all need to do whatever we can.  How’s that for an extended sentence. But you can still have the most exhilarating life by getting healthy and giving back!

The good news is that I’ve never seen people so activated, and I’ve been in the struggle one way or another for a long time. I see people ready to work, get involved. Produce tangible change by our own minds and hands. What we have to do is get ourselves energized through specific action leading to measurable results. Specific steps with achieved benchmarks reaching larger and larger goals. Resist polluters and planetary destroyers, specifically work on healing ecosystems, our bodies, our waters, our relationships, ourselves, work diligently and with great care with children, allowing them the Socratic method of self-discovery which unlocks their creative, incisive potential.

Every truly beneficial action you take is a breath into the next 5,000 years. I simply refuse to believe that we are a nation of millions that’s just happily and sloppily waving as we go over the cliff, taking the whole Earth down with us.

20 years ago, it was “It takes a nation of millions to hold us back.”  Now, it’s gotta be: “It takes a nation of millions to move us forward!”

OK — we can talk more about the movement stuff later.

My 2008 was  a lil rough. But I aint complainin, because of course I could be in Gaza or Darfur or any of a thousand hells, so I know I’m blessed. But I had my (still a little new) faith shaken in people — can you believe I let a few “false prophets” come into my life where I must’ve been sleep for real and I trusted them, only for them to try to wreak damage. And I am the last person who is naive, so I don’t know what happened.  I remember the past life where I used to trust no one — can’t go back to that now. Gon work on this.

Anyways — Happy New Year ( yeah I know it;s a little late but you know .. non-profit mugs are BUSY!)  Stay tuned for a lot more activity and interaction in 09! We’re gearing up for some big advancements forward.

PEACE

P.S. I got a question: Why are most dudes crazy?  It’s funny — I was once the most wretched, messed up, self-destructive person, but now Im just a regular, well-adjusted dude. All I do is work hard and work out and take care of my son and his ma. Why is it so hard to find somebody who ain’t crazy — esp when they ain’t seen half the shit I have.  Hey I’m just askin.

Anyway, beneath the shattering chaos, cacophony and madness of the modern world, the deepest well of life still pulsates. I see so many broken people in this world. Guess I was one myself, but I recovered. The chaos, stress and madness of modern life is so extreme and loud that few people even touch the surface of that pulsating, quiet deep well beneath us. In the Will Smith movie I AM LEGEND, the other survivor, that woman from South America, tries to explain how and why she just knows she needs to head north to what used to be Vermont.

“Things are different now,” she says. “It’s quieter now. You can hear God.”

Will can’t understand what she means.

The original gift of life was — and perhaps still is — sacred. In silence. Still there. Still here. Just have to look so hard for it, beneath all our hatred, ugliness, chaos, war, evil, and destruction. Life being sacred, and birthed in silence and health, it should not have to be that the only way we can truly hear God and Earth again is for the human race to be annihilated, as the Will Smith movie proposes. Right now, nothing is sacred. And at Blockbusters all across America, nearly half the DVDs people rent for entertainment are torture-porn movies graphically showing young girls being brutalized, murdered, cut to pieces alive.

Anyhow, Bob Ray Sander’s big column about the book (and me) comes out tomorrow in the Sunday Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and on top of all the stress at work, i’ve felt like this last week was like being forced down a gangplank, or an impending serious trial. I’ve dreaded this moment my whole life, having for most of life hated and resisted the fact of my “orientation.” All this time I’ve being able to keep it low. After tomorrow, everybody gon know my business, what I had to do to survive, and for me it is a public turning point I guess. Ugh. But I know if I’m gon keep it real, I gotta really keep it real, and that includes my vulnerabilities, not the cartoonish street thug version of keeping it real that so many put on. Which ain’t to say I’m a punk, or ever will let anybody punk me regardless of whether I’m straight or not, but… Pretty stressed bout all this. Of course, my probs are nothing, and I am so blessed and lucky compared to so many other people, so I’ll shut up now.

But I must emphatically make a correction here, pertaining to an otherwise good review of Ghetto Plainsman that came out on Sept. 1 in Whole Life Times.

I greatly appreciate the compliments, but wow some facts in this review are wrong! I was not born and raised in the ghetto; I fell (deeply) down into it. As is very clear in the book, I actually had a very rural childhood, and ended up in the cities. And I did not have a crack addiction — I smoked crack only once in my life.

In my lowest, I did try nearly every drug at one point or another, but doing drugs was just never my thing.

The addiction was alcohol aided by utter despair and a sense of everything hopeless and collapsing, both personally and in the world.

It is very important for me to have the facts straight.

In other news, publicist Marvin from Jade Dressler Communications in NYC and I had a good time at our first event, In the Life Atlanta, over Labor Day Weekend, where I was one of the featured authors at the Literary Cafe. The response was great. We met a lot of folk from all over the country who are dong great work, and we were all glad to know of each others’ efforts to improve our tenancy here on Earth, from doctors fighting HIV/AIDS contagion in prison to women trying to help stem despair and violence in Detroit to artists, writers, singers from all over, and much more. We also of course sold books, and made a lot of friends. ATL is a great city, and Im looking forward to the book signing there that is being planned now for later this fall. Thanks to everybody who stopped by the booth in Piedmont Park on Sunday, and to all the organizers of ITL-ATL.