May I burn the man at home this year and finally become a full participant.
May I kick the culture consumption habit cold turkey, and get on with resonating funky genius and vulnerable enthusiasm on my own channel, 24-7.
May I see every public space as Center Camp and roll on the ground with strangers; tenderly and worshipfully contacting one-in-other.
May I strut my feathers, leathers, muppet cape, and naked benevolent childish soul everywhere I go, feeling fully in character.
May I trick out my apartment like a theme camp and invite people in off the street to lavish them with gifts of attention and affection, lovingly prepared.
Because I can. Because I am rich and overflowing, and giving is why I am here.
May I encourage the deity in everyone I meet, embellishing us all with fur, goggles, nudity, and dust, and allowing myself full excitement about who we might be.
May I share shattering rock-bottom truths with everyone, as casually as tea, like we are all old lovers with nothing left to prove or improve on, safely settled in the silky oscillation between me and we.
May I love fully, fluidly, everyone who pulls me deeper into living, and release all concern about how my love looks.
Remembering: We are in the desert! We are dusty, unkempt and beautiful! We are mad ones, saints, and divas all, and there is no expectation of tidiness!
Remembering: There will be grit and friction. There always is. But in the cathartic blessing of our meeting and self-discovery no one notices.
Remembering most of all that my emotional transparency is my ticket to this event, past the gate and greeters, to unity and a friendly universe: always honored and gratefully received.
May I hallucinate freely: seeing station wagons as giant bunny slippers and motorcycles as mobile cupcakes.
May I witness installations of genius and dreams made real in the familiar built world, and may I touch the pregnant possible with both my hands.
May I witness the angel-animals around me, strutting their beauty and hope, their frailty and unfinishedness, strolling calmly beside an abyss of judgment with quirky unique poised artful equilibrium, and may I yell out my approval and applaud.
May I witness the gifting happening everywhere, and jump in with smiles, kind words, and hugs that are as comforting in the civilized wasteland of formality as popsicles and mist baths ever were.
May I burn the man every day. May I take its idealized ass down. May I take the icon I am supposed to be and lovingly douse it with gas.
May I take its habits, opinions, head noise, timidity and ego-protective arrogance, and give them fire. This is my religion: THAT MAN will BURN.
May I build the temple every morning, honoring and celebrating those who have sung the song of my life and held my heart like their own dear infant in their arms.
May I build the temple every morning, be awestruck by its beauty each day, smear it with prayers and tears, and release it in holy smoke.
May I smell it burn and know: That was it. This day was my life, and it is over.
And if I am blessed to wake once more…may I do it all again. May I do it all again more fiercely. May I do it all again more generously. May I do it all again more goofily and ecstatically; holding nothing back.
May I do it all again, every day, so that my life is filled with the love I feel as I walk, bike, or ride an octopus through the eternal city of dreams where my soul feels at home.