“Full Circle”
Fiction. Based on a True Full Circle Venice Experience.
#Folk #AndrewKeegan #SamuelJ #LarisaRose #Spirituality
About Full Circle Venice:
Co-founded by Andrew Keegan, Full Circle is “an open source spiritual community center that offers growth-oriented workshops and other events.[x]” Many musicians, poets, and artists have frequented the temple to showcase their creative expression.
Samuel J, “All Your Love”
“Ultimately acceptance is surrendering so love is surrendering. Love is acceptance. Love is not resistance. And that can mean ultimately loving someone, which was my situation. I had to let that person go ‘cause I realized like that I wasn’t able to serve to be the best of themselves in their journey and the process of what they were living in that moment in time any longer.” - Samuel J.
Surrender
He tried his best to love her, but she fought him every step of the way. He wanted to stay committed, but she kept pushing.
“Someday, you’re going to push me away,” he told her, wearing a pair of sad red eyes.
He held her hair up the night before when she was puking in the toilet. She said some nasty things to him.
“I hate you.”
“You’re stupid.”
“I want a divorce.”
Coming home from social outings became a ritual of domestic abuse.
“Calm down.”
“You’re drunk again.”
“Here let me help you.”
Coming home from social outings became a ritual of helping the disabled wife.
Their master bedroom toilet that he had finished installing two months prior was now filled with pieces of half-digested fish, red wine, and bile. He kept holding her hair because she wouldn’t like the smell of dry vomit on her pillow when she came to the next morning. She would be her sweet self again, remembering the night before like a fading dream. He kept her hair up while she hurled out the poisons in between dry heaving and half-digested food.
The following morning, she couldn’t remember the damage she had caused. How could he bring her attention to the fact that she was killing them both slowly, from the inside out?
One day he did stop pushing back. After four years of pushing, she had succeeded.
He had finally surrendered.
Heart Breaking
“My heart is breaking,” Teller told Angelie. “She took my heart and gave it to my best friend.”
Angelie didn’t know what to say to him. All she could do was hug him and feel that part of his pain so he didn’t have to bear it alone.
She turned to Samuel J’s page inside The Love Story Journal volume one and showed it to him.
He smiled at the quote and took a picture of it. “Thank you,” he said. “Even though these words are very familiar, I still sometimes need a reminder.”
They embraced in a hug of kindred heartbreak. He kissed her on the forehead, as a big brother would with his sister.
He smiled at her, “You’re going to heal so many people with this project.”
“And you, your songs,” she replied.
They looked into each other’s eyes in complicity.
It would be the second to last time they were at Full Circle together. The first time they had connected was two years ago when she had filmed him perform live.
A Brazilian Dream
Teller remembered the time when he embraced the Brazilian woman he loved–a woman who came from poverty, the woman against all odds, dodging the system of things, so she picked up the camera, and followed him down the dangerous ally where thugs, pimps, and trafficked women were hiding.
Through her connections, she had created safe passage for Teller to engage, interact, and meet the locals. Her smile and her curves danced with the beat of Brazilian house. When he plucked those strings of his guitar, he sang through the soulcry of the broken dreams they built together–A time when they had embraced, between hot and cold sweats, under the moonlight shining upon the obsidian ocean where they had professed their love for one another. This was his heart, knowing she was now in the arms of another man, crying through this song.
Low Energy Vibrations
She can not judge, for she is just as flawed. If she were to walk in the shoes of the most tormented criminals, would she be any different? The noises in her mind – a mind that connects dots through the spiritual and the matrix realm- also torments Angelie. The daemons keep telling her to stuff her face. The attacks manifest as anxiety. It keeps whispering in her ear, “you’re hungry, you’re thirsty, you’re starving, you’re alone, you’re scared, you’re weak, you’re” …. Judgements.
Shut the fuck up!
She knew that if she kept eating like this, drinking like this, and sitting in front of a computer screen like this, she would quicken the sand that fall through the narrow neck of the hourglass. She can’t stand all the violence. She hated the fact that there are people who still exploit children, women, and the vulnerable, including all the animals that are being exploited in the name of commercial diet and power play for spiritual power.
She is as guilty as the herd. She hates that people don’t understand and attack men like David for speaking truth, for the cults that try to place strongholds on her mind and body, for the soul suckers that drain energy. Misery loves company. Lower energy vibrations. And the irony in all of this is that she can’t blame them… Not that they are blameless, but we are all connected in this matrix, so we are all complicit to the state of this world.
That is why she is here at Full Circle Venice, sitting next to David Seaman, while celebrating the music of artists she had interviewed – Samuel J and Larisa Rose – who became her friends.
Forgive to Live
Can Angelie forgive when she is tormented? Can she forgive the hexes, the spells, the negative energy projected by other people’s ego, by mainstream media, by pop culture, and by the bombardment of the vulgar? Can she forgive herself for being complicit just by living and breathing through the habit of commercialized living when adventurers, like Samuel J, dare to venture into the most dangerous of places and create music with kids?
She showed David The Love Story Journal and was eager to be that space where he could rest his tired shoulders into a journal that inspires people like him to keep doing the great work–the thankless job–even Pizzagate investigative journalists need love, encouragement, and hope too–the same way she needed words of encouragement, love and inspiration that morning when she admitted to her love story community that she was battling her daemons the day prior.
The Serpent Swallowing its Tail
Raising Vibrations. The colorful vibrations. Nothing ever dies. It comes back around like…
She had wrote a personal note to her community, “Yesterday was a real battle to live.”
Her community responded with love.
Beatrice reached out.
Mary reached out.
Maybelline, Tyrone, Shalina, and onwards. People. Angels. Beacons of light.
It did take a lot of courage, because already the voices in her head screamed, “People will say you are doing this for attention.”
“You can always call me,” Mary interrupted her negative thoughts via Facebook messenger.
Ocean
Samuel J had personally invited MJ to his show with friends at Full Circle before he left again to travel the world. Costa Rica was his next stop, to perform in support of saving the indigenous and endangered animals. Previously, when he was living in Brazil, he wrote an album to raise money to build a music school for trafficked kids. Kids who were used as commodities to traffic drugs, sex, or other depravities for the daemons of the strongman, the richman, and the blindman. Predators who prey on the poor in the name of profit. And so, he cries through his song.
Seaman
MJ recognized the man talking to the musician who was about to open the show at Full Circle Venice. She recognized him because she is sensitive to truth, and sensitive to a journalist who was committed to the ugly truth. She found it ironic that he would be here, of all places, in a temple that, that according to many conspiracy theorists, would be considered a new age cult. Perhaps it was no coincidence that he happened to be standing right behind her in line when she was talking to Aaron, the documentary filmmaker and a mutual friend of Samuel J, who six months ago, was dancing with her in a drunken bliss at Xanadu party, when Larisa Rose had invited her out. This time, at Full Circle, it was Samuel J who had invited her out. Aaron recognized her.
“Hey partner,” she gives him a smug smile.
“Hey,” he said. “How goes the journalist?”
“Hanging in,” she said, “I have another partner coming.”
“Dana,” she said. “Can you make sure she’s on the list?”
“I have you as MJ +1” he checked.
“Thanks love.”
“Enjoy.”
MJ had hoped that Dana would show, though hours earlier she had texted MJ that her car had broken down. She lived in a tough part of Long Beach, and MJ wanted to create a culture clash for her, open her eyes to a world of unicorns, and jar her identity as an African-American inner city basketball player. Dana believed that she lived in a world where she was trapped in the system, and MJ wanted her to discover that, regardless of race or class, everyone is trapped in their own system together.
Instead, the man from Colorado, the lead YouTube Journalist on Pizzagate, was standing behind her.
After he finished conversing with the musician, he was heading her direction. She stopped him, “Excuse me, but are you David?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” he responded.
“I am so grateful for the work you do,” she told him, “I have been following you on YouTube, and I would be honored to buy you a drink.”
The man who exposed truth so that which is hidden could be revealed. The man who, against all odds, still stood for the truth, even when it is hideously ugly and nobody else wanted to look at it, was standing next to her at the bar. She was a giddy girl.
And she was honored to buy him a drink.
He got water and she got an Izzie. She invited him to sit next to her where she had already laid a blanket out for the entire show.
“What brought you here?” she asked.
“That man who is about to play,” he nodded toward the stage, where John, the musician, was giving his introduction.
John began playing “Teardrops in Venice,” and asked the crowd to sing along, “Thank you for my happiness. Thank you for my happiness, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
It was a friend of a friend who was playing while they were sitting side by side. MJ was in awe that one of her heroes was sitting next to her. In this temple where angels cry in song, she prayed that this space would also heal a man who has been the recipient of hatred from people who do not want to acknowledge the truth he exposed.
The man played, and in between songs, she looked at him and said, “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“I have to interview you,” she said. “I interview artists about how they have transformed their pain into passion.”
At this he smiled, as if to acknowledge for a moment of vulnerability that “pain” is an understatement.
“Tomorrow, if you come to Sea Breeze Spring at 8:00 a.m., I will have 20 minutes for you,” he said.
MJ smiled. She had so many questions, but mostly, she wanted to discover his walk as a lone wolf journalist committed to truth. A truth that is so ugly that many people in this world are not willing to collapse the cognitive dissonance between spirituality and science, between the beauty and the vulgar, between the bubble and the beast.
Beautiful Chaos
Aline gave MJ a long embrace, and MJ melted into her warm wooled embrace. The embrace lasted for quite some time. Even in Alina’s unconditional acceptance of who she is, MJ knew that this was a loving and nurturing energy that she was still not willing to embrace fully. It felt awkward. She was used to being alone, bitter, and angry. Yet, this was the space of truth Alina held for her. Her hug was as soft as her cheeks, complemented by her moon shaped eyes. Alina knew of MJ’s suicidal ideations from the Facebook post she left for her Love Story Creative community the day before. She embraced her pain the way MJ wanted to embrace David’s pain for his courage investigating the Pizzagate scandal.
The Full Circle Venice community grieved, but it was a beautiful grieving. Their tears were made of love and their cries were made of music.
Full Circle
Three years of friendship.
The woman swaying next to MJ was carrying Andrew Keegan’s seed, rocking her back and forth, while MJ was rocking Foxy to the same rhythm an hour later at that same spot.
Keegan had held so much space by co-founding Full Circle Venice for the many artists in this conscious community in Venice. A community of unicorns, filled with colors, in full spectrum, in full circle.
When MJ first met Samuel J three years ago, she was his Uber driver. It wasn’t until Andrew Keegan’s friend had invited her to partake in the festivities at Full Circle where Samuel J was playing that they had begun connecting through art. The first time she saw Samuel J perform live, she had filmed him and the footages she sent allowed him to book a bigger performance in Rio. He agreed to interview with her on the topic of heartbreak, something he was familiar with in song, but not too comfortable speaking candidly about in conversation, but he did it anyway because he believed in the mission, and he believed in her passion.
Now, MJ was there to witness the last performance Samuel J will perform inside this spiritual center in Venice because the center is closing. She was also there to witness the reaction of Samuel J and Larisa Rose, two of the artists she had interviewed and produced inside this video journal. They have all come full circle–their images imprinted, their stories replicated, designed to inspire hope through music, through art, through creative expression. And it couldn’t have been a more perfect circle here in Venice–on Rose, for Larisa Rose and for Samuel J.
Hero in You
Hero In You
It was a smear campaign. It was a censorship and intimidation campaign. MJ knew that this battle is becoming closer to truth than what was just a YouTube fantasy. She had bought him a drink. She was suppose to meet him at his hotel to interview him the next day. He is a real person. An average person like herself who is doing what he has to do, who has to stand in his truth against all odds. And these things do hurt. She knows. She is an empath, like many of the people; like Samuel J, like Larisa Rose, like MJ, like Aline, like so many people in this high energy temple.
She understood David. His spirit was broken. The dark energies attack when you expose the ugly truth because it knows that once light has shed upon it, it ceases to continue festering. The day before she was spiritually attacked. Mental anguish.
Living was a battle as the battle in this life is to live.
It was a thankless job–to expose real evidence of pedophilla among the powerhouses that were so close to home–our country of America. God sees everything even if we can not prove it, but He sends those who are willing to receive, those who are brave enough to go the distance, to answer the call to action of the hero’s journey.
Men like David walk a lonely path. It was a thankless job, but it was a necessary job. People like David are the real heroes.
The next day, she texted David, “I understand.” Even though she may only understand a fraction of what he was really going through. She was too afraid to touch Pizzagate, like many of her liberal friends, colleagues, and creative manifestors. He was the black sheep who bears the burden of the ugly while the rest of us focuses on implementing the pretty.
MJ texted him Samuel J’s song, Hero, thinking of the time when Samuel J first texted her the link to his song during a time she was feeling down and helpless.
In those moments when she felt like the weight of the world was just too heavy for her to carry, small miracles of this came through
It was a song- cry for help.
She sent David the link.
“Thanks,” he texted.
She continued.
Revelation 2:10
John 15:18
Acts 14:22
“Thanks.”
This song was for both of them. He was just a step ahead of her in the walk towards hard truth, despite standing behind her in line at Full Circle. She knew that God had them cross paths for a reason.
Bonded by Fire
Bonded by Fire
When two or more gather in my name…
“Are you Christian?” she asked Rosa, once upon a time ago. “No,” she answered.
Angelie thought about the version of herself before she converted to Christianity–Loving, hopeful, spiritual, but not Christian. It was also love, it was also good intentioned, and it doesn’t mean she is going to hell just because she’s not Christian. She looked at this community and, to a conservative Christian, this would be considered a cult; a place of false worship. Listening to Larisa’s heart, her angelic voice, her song, and her good intentions, Angelie knew that there was a lot of hope. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day what religion you belong to–what matters is love.
It’s either there or it is not. It eludes words, explanation and definitions. Love is there. Larisa’s song is angelic and her heart amplifies the voice that reflects those intentions.
It was acceptance for Larisa, as someone so angelic who happened to have once lost everything, sleeping in the cars where the windows looked out to different sceneries, deserts, and the brilliance of the changing landscape. She was a traveler and so was Samuel J. They were bonded through a bonfire. MJ was there to witness it a year ago when they had sung their songs together in the camps of Shadows of Light. The three of them in Full Circle.