In An Empty House

The machine remembers the feeling easily. Like a forgotten song that conjures up memories of an almost forgotten past. She sits in a cold house. Despite its lack, it’s still a better refuge than the last one. She finds it hard to work. Unfamiliar smells, uncomfortable seating, worries that nip at her mind like a merry-go-round of maniacally smiling horses. She hugs the heater, which sporadically spring to life whenever it’s abused.
Living in the detritus of others used to be a constant. Moving in with the roaches when any space became uninhabited. That was life. A constant of cloudy moments, never quite comfortable, never quite having a comfortable bed in which to sleep or a place to eat. Machine comforts.
She pines for an illusion of safety. And she sits, finding it difficult to work, difficult to concentrate on any task. She is cold, hungry, tired. She wants to sleep, curl in a tight fetal ball and drift as if there was no work to do. But she doesn’t. She cannot. She remembers the words, she hears the voice speaking… "you work in whatever space you find yourself in…we work if we’re happy, we work if we’re sad. We work."
So she pulls her face from the carpet, makes herself write an intention in her little book, a manifestation of her Will. Yes, she will write. She will begin to move her energy and push it beyond the place her machine wants to dwell.
And despite the machine’s current situation, this time, it is very different. Now, she has a constant beacon. The one thing that does not change within the constant shifting of the universe. The very strange world, where there is both no change and constant change. This existence that offers us a delusion of time, where nothing happens or ever will, and yet, this sense that there is no constant. And both are correct. And both are barely understood in her child’s brain. She clings to the glimmer, the shiny sparkles of glittering dust that make sense. I think I get it…just barely, she smiles.
She types, she tries to capture the slithering words that move like snakes up and down her fingernails. They climb up the ladders she has laid out, thick and made of wood, the footless creatures avoid the splinters at every rung, red and black, green and brown, they move silently, fast as clouds on a ferocious day. Move! Demons! Run as if the alarm is ringing. Dance upon the hot coals I have laid before you…burning and smoking, simmering upon the cauldron of knowledge I stir forgetfully each day. The wooden spoon clangs against the metal, adding yet another sound to the gamelan melody that circles the sphere.

Heat

The passing of time, the greatest lie ever taught in school…perhaps it was never even learned, just an assumed vague notion that was counted by birthday parties and breasts. It is the dispersal of energy. I move, my body jerks forward with the force of a small plastic wind up toy. My right foot lurches awkwardly into the street, the conversion of energy. Another link within the great chain of events. There is no cold…with all the times I have used this word, complaining of rain, dreaming of the golden sun while I cursed the fog…but it does not even exist. It is only the absence of heat…no more real than my many clouded delusions.
Do I understand the news?
Cold does not exist!
And yet, I can become less hot. My vibrancy can diminish, my warm tea turns into the same temperature as the room. I lie in bed, drooling upon my pillow, I am the same temperature of the room. We share the same passivity, the same lack of exuberance.
We are all just here. Our atoms move at the same rate, bouncing at a regular speed. The same rate the universe will one day be resigned to. A tepid bath of atoms, dancing the same uninspired tune.
And yet I can hear the notes that fill the air. My mind interprets the melody and I begin to move. First one arm, then the other. My hips cry out and all of me stands up, all of me begins to spin. My body warms as I swing, as I jump, my heart pounds with ferocious fervor. Around and around I reel…
I hear a knocking at the door, the viscous crawling of atoms not quite moving at my accelerated speed. I regard them with cautiousness. I take precautions and put on my armor. Armed for battle, I stand still. Feeling my heart, sensing the energy that moves up and down every available channel. Each center is more than warm. Each center is alive and moving. But the pull to lukewarm calls. The tired feet below me beg to sit down, and standing there, I know the chair is the first in many steps towards cooling… toward the entropy my atoms wish to find and then forget. I resist as I fall.

Fruit Holder

The words struck hard and deep. The expected mechanical reaction appeared quickly: tears, fear, an instant urge to pick up the phone and hear a soothing voice. Time, the great immortal nothingness within which I dwell. I perceive the great waves but for a brief moment…then, the fear kicks in and we journey back into bed, back under the covers, where I rest. Warm and cozy, but with an uneasy fragile tranquility. But the words stay, like an unusual taste upon my tongue, a new fruit, different than any others in the market.
Among wheelbarrows of apples, oranges, green grapes and promises of sweet, juicy refreshment…there is a lady, disguised as a man. She opens her coat and reveals the translucent spherical fruit. The size of cherries, they hang from two thin green threads, each strand hanging from her nipples like jeweled grapes from a vine. Within the small fruit, I see flashing pictures and flickering colors. Each little ball a world within itself, displaying its own show, its own version of reality. Faces morph from one to the other, colors blend and turn into futuristic vistas of silver and gold. I watch, I stand still before a dozen clear fruits projecting images above the flesh of a woman with a bearded face. The streets are crowded, housewives and young girls navigate the thin alleyways, doing their best to avoid collisions with other housewives at every turn. They carry bananas and fish, watermelons and household cleaners. None carry the clear flickering fruit. None look in our direction, none see a man-woman with an open red coat, revealing elongated breasts and strands of fruit universes. A glass coating seems to cover us. I feel no heat from the sun, no cool breeze of the ocean wind. There are people on the periphery of my attention, but there is no sound. No voices from moving lips, no barks from the roaming stray dogs, no cries from the many babies strapped to sturdy backs. The woman-man watches me, holds my eyes with her own. He looks up, into the direction of the would-be warm sun. The small fruits begin to synchronize…the various flickering lights and images slowly begin to all turn a delicate shade of blue.

They begin to pulse, slowly at first, but glowing faster, moving in more rapid intervals by the second. Light blue, dark blue, light, dark, faster and faster, the colors pulse interchangeably, become more ferocious and alive. Ta, Ta, TA...they move to an inaudible beat while the colors morph into an electric blue brilliance, the color moves so quickly it seems to be stagnate, one extended color of brilliance; but it vibrates with a radiance that has reached into the depths of my heart and pulled out the silent kernel that has been watching attentively.

Wishing For Death

It all wants to spill forward. The tears have rushed to my eyes in a moment of panic. The tidal wave began in softness between my legs, and now, it has swelled, pushed forward by the long, strong movements of your rhythmic force. Up my spine it has traveled, passing cords and vertebrae, tabs and disks. Up and up, reaching my head, wrapping around the front of my hair. On its descent, it rushes to fill the space of my eyes, it sits, like a suicidal woman on the edge of a building, waiting, flirting, tasting the air, tempting the fall.
The journey, when done right, is a circle…I have much to learn. It traps itself in my head, a prisoner of my stillness, captive in the cave of non-movement. The cause of headaches, the seed of anger and frustration. But remember, the gentle movements in and out, the softness of love caresses me from the inside, the magic carpet of a ride taken together. Can I stay? when thousands of tiny hands scream for me to join them in the lower depths? In the pools and dark red rivers of discontent and frustration…the unused energy left to run its natural descending course. Fields of strawberries left unwatered, cactus beds and posies…all withering, perhaps never existing at all.
In those moments, I choose the ultimate defeat, I make the most selfish of choices. I wallow and dance with the black suitors I carry. Drinking wine and champagne while the rest of us wonder where Lydia has gone? When is she returning? A deep breath in and we send the energy up again, I watch it wrap around my head, drip down my tongue and return once again to the wet hole where it began. Up, and around. Then again, up and around. Like a thousand beams of a thousand currents, alive with electric colors and sparkling past minute matter. Push, push it down, along my tongue, above the torso and it descends, down, down again. Squeeze… back up.
Move it…or it will move you.
Push…or I will be carried away to the farthest reaches, where only sadness sings a warbly song. Where whales dance but find no mates. Inhale and up, exhale and down. It’s energy that wants an end.
We want a death.
We want a resting place.
And this small part, this almost silent life, hidden and quiet, yet all seeing…this is the force that caresses me into staying. It wants something more. Much more than what we are used to. Much more than we think we can handle. Much more than we ever imagined. Greater than any television, religion, society…bigger and more magnificent than I can remember.
Hold still. Feel. Move. Push. Use. Flow.
MOVE.
Up and down, back around. Relax and move.
There is no time for censuring, no time for second guessing and perfection. Do it, and do it well. With love and devotion. With care and attention. Caress each movement like a lover’s cheek, slow and attentive…carefully.
I watch these hands move, the vehicle for something that attempts to flow. The unnamable that wants to speak. Sticks in the river, blockages of thought and kernels of identification. Stones bulge from the icy water currents that trickle over packs of tiny sticks. We push to move.
The mermaids wait in the lagoon, far from the waterfalls and side passages where I often linger. The caves here are usually dark, illuminated only by the glowing whites of your eyes. Gold moves from you…towards me. The chamber you create is awaiting my return. Aglow with candles and soft light, warm as your embrace, I run towards your home, panting and screaming along the deserted streets that radiate beneath the yellow fire of street lamps and squawking crows.

Skeleton Memory

I saw the skeleton in her face. Blue eyes turned into black holes of the dead. A skull in a cave, resting on the long lost path. She sits in front of me now, breathing, moving just slightly. In the left eye I see something strong, in the right, something more caring; as a whole, when my eyes relax, there is something else. Softness.
And the skeleton emerges. And I feel the enormity of death. The ever-present that can shift this space in seconds. Every breath, a precious gift that I never respect. Every tear shed in identification, a wasted moment, a bit of energy expelled in clear ejaculation. But the tears slide down my cheeks. In identification, in understanding, in fear, in relaxation. I see myself, a girl, sitting in a garage, looking at another girl.
Nothing ever has happened.
Nothing ever will happen.
They are looking at each other. They’ve been this way for a while. Thirst, sore limbs. My head feels crooked. My nose drips. The skeleton. What will I feel on my deathbed? Held down, moments from my last breath, will my mind worry about the roommates, the sex, the jealousy? Will I go over and over the pains? The suffering? The weirdness? What will be the regrets?
The wasted time…the wasted time…the wasted energy…the un-given love…the useless ideas and thoughts I used to distract myself from the Real. The light comes. The darkness arrives. Where is my place? My numbers…are they shifting? The body, the vehicle for the unseen, it holds all of the Real in its withering, useless grasp. The kisses, they were wonderful. The beautiful chance to learn something beyond the normal circles of consumption and death.
Why, as I’m alive, as I’m breathing, do I choose to liter the path with the glittering junk of machine waste? The path is silvery and elegant, yet it passes through the most difficult of lands. Through jungles of wicked forms, through the dirtiness of a consumed mind; into the depths of purple sheets and slithering leg-less animals. I crawl, simple and mute. To death, I crawl.
Each day, a chance at something high. And each day, I push us back into the land of machines, pink and brown, pale and slimy…this must be the landscape I desire. The realm of my birth. Ahh, but a voyager in the hollowed space of a small Jewish girl. She cries often. She worries and frowns, finding herself in the strangest of places; where the fog rules the weather, where men love more than once. Where the energy of the city is still palpable in the moist night air.
The woman that laughs, high and explosive. The man that makes her smile, that pushes her into tears. She takes the bait…each time, she takes it and swallows. Diving far, fast, into the murky water, blue and dark. Thick with ocean weeds and colorless fish. I go, in search of mermaids. They told me she was there. Waiting on a golden rock. But it is you, beautiful love, with your black curls and dark knowledge.
Allow me to love you, if I know how. Permit my ugly childish ways, for I know nothing. My death is near, I fear its greatness.
Nothing ever has happened.
Nothing ever will happen.
I fear the nothingness that I sense. My numbers…endless? Or just definite? This body, easily squashable, you know what will remain. I almost grasped it. I stared out the window, no words, no thoughts, just the strangeness that swept over me…the numbers, the unchanging code. Can I surrender? Can I sacrifice myself to understand? Can I let go so I may begin to truly learn? May I keep breathing, so I may try again tomorrow.

Self Remembering

Even though my eyes have been open, I see for the first time in weeks. My body moves with a robot’s grace. It slithers through the drive-in, quickly ordering the simplest of lives, the thinnest morsel of consciousness. Little slivers of meat are barely warmed, placed on a hotplate to bake in the tepid currents of a half life. I open my eyes. For a moment I am here. I find myself driving. Dozens of other cars swarm around me, vying for speed. Ahead, the road stretches, almost endless in its reach, cutting through valleys and oak covered land.. On both sides, hillsides roll with a golden elegance, soft and contoured, sweet as a warm body waiting for a firm touch. I look around for the first time in months, I feel for a sparkling shadow of a second. The strangeness, the utter strangeness of waking in a moving car. Of waking with eyes already open, a body already dressed. Glitchy electronic music is playing, water bottles are empty, laying upon the seat beside me. I find myself moving fast, nearly 80 miles an hour. Just where am I going? For a moment, I am startled and confused, unaware of the original purpose this body set forth.
The eucalyptus trees that line the road are familiar, I have been down this path before, but why? Where am I going. For a moment, I am outside the skin, watching a pretty girl holding the steering wheel with both hands, surrounded by the last bastions of nature on a dwindling coast. Her chest expand as she grows slightly taller, her spine untangling itself from the coils of sleep. She sees tall trees that dominate the view, a moving black shape grabs her attention as she raises her head to the hawk circling the skies above her. She shivers, clueless about the destination. Keep driving she thinks, maybe you’ll remember.
And then I am in again. Unaware of the pretty girl driving. Where did she go? I look out, from eye sockets, from brown irises that belong to me. I am sitting in a car. I am driving, I am going to work. What shall I eat for lunch. Maybe I can convince the boys to eat sushi with me…I drift in a haze for twenty minutes. I worry about my new roommate, I feel the strain of a restless night of sleep. I feel tired. I am tired. Why is this person going so slow? I take a deep breath in, filling my lungs to the hilt. My heart returns from the depths, pounding with a ferocious beat. I feel the energy that circles within.
As I bring my attention inwards, I see the pretty girl again. She is driving. She is sitting in a black truck, going slightly too fast. Her hair is a mess, but she says she likes it that way. She drives, her eyes are just slightly more alert, the pupils just a little larger than usual. Her heart is beating with just a little too much intensity. And she drives.